The Goose Man. Jakob Wassermann
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asked him how he was getting along, and looked with regret at his sunken cheeks. Her virile expression was rather displeasing to him. He was surprised to see how rarely she lowered her eye lids. He said he was getting along quite well. She smiled.
“It’s terrible that a man has to have a monster in his body that must be fed,” he remarked. “Otherwise one could storm the heavens and steal the songs of the angels. But this was not to be. You have first to flutter your wings until they are wounded and break your chains, and by that time such ethereal power as you may have had is dissipated.”
He wrinkled his face until he again looked like the wily ape. “But I am going to see it through,” he said. “I want to find out whether God drew me from the urn as a blank or a prize.” He could be very eloquent when he talked about himself.
Eleanore smiled. It seemed to her that it was merely necessary to bring a little order into his life. She consequently assumed the responsibility of looking after his room.
In Tetzel Street they met the inspector. As Jordan walked along at the side of his beloved daughter, it seemed to him that the grey walls and weather-beaten stones of the houses were no longer so earthy or weighed down with time. Eleanore looked toward the West into the purple glow of the setting sun. She was not quite herself. There came moments when she suffered from homesickness for a fairer land.
She thought of Italy. She conjured up lovely visions of sunny bays, blooming groves, and white statues.
Daniel however went on toward the Füll. The workmen were coming from the suburbs, and in their tired faces he felt that he recognised his own world. “Oh,” he sighed, “I should like to get nearer the stars, to make the acquaintance of more dependable hearts, of hearts that are truer even than my own.”
Just then he looked up at Benda’s window, and saw his light. He was ashamed of himself.
V
The first time Eleanore visited Daniel it was along toward evening. She heard from a distance the piano and the shrill crowing of Daniel’s voice. Down in the hall she saw three white figures cuddled up close to each other like hens on a roost.
It was the Rüdiger sisters trying to drink in the creative efforts of the artist. That they were eavesdropping at the fount of art they understood both in the good and the bad sense: their enthusiasm was praiseworthy, their courtesy was deficient. When they caught sight of Eleanore on the stairway, they were terrified, and rustled into the adjoining room.
The three elderly hearts beat impetuously. It was Jasmina’s turn to read from Rückert’s poems. Jasmina had not the shadow of a desire to perform; her sisters were equally disinclined to listen.
“It is not right,” the three kept saying, when they heard of Eleanore’s visits. “It is not right.” Even Meta the maid was of the opinion that her calls were highly unconventional.
As Daniel played on and merely nodded to her, Eleanore’s eyes fell on the mask of Zingarella. She stepped up, took it down from the nail on the wall, and examined it in perfect silence.
Daniel had in the meantime left the piano. A loud cry from him startled her: “What the devil are you doing?” he exclaimed in a tone of immoderate anger. He took the mask, which she was handling so lightly and tremulously, out of her hands, and replaced it on the nail with affectionate care.
The sensitive girl at once began to cry. She turned to one side in order to conceal her tears. Daniel was irritated, but the first thought that occurred to him was how he could make amends for his rudeness. He fetched a worn book, and offered to lend it to her. It was a translation of that beautiful old novel, “Manon Lescaut.”
Eleanore came frequently after office hours, but never remained long; she did not wish to make the people at home uneasy. During the short time she stayed she always found a number of things to do, such as straightening up the papers on his table or arranging his scores.
She became acquainted with Benda; he took a liking to her. It did him good merely to be in her presence, and he could not understand why she did not have the same wholesome effect on Daniel. Daniel seemed thoroughly unappreciative of the girl. He was like a man who goes along the street carrying a basket full of eggs: his sole ambition for the time being is to see that not a single egg is lost or broken.
The two would frequently accompany the girl home. Daniel always talked about himself, and Benda listened with a smile. Or Benda talked about Daniel, and Daniel was all ears.
What did people say? That Eleanore was now trotting around with three men, whereas she formerly had only one on her string, the Baron, and that you are going to hear from this affair.
Every now and then a snip of ugly gossip reached Eleanore’s ears. She paid not the slightest attention to it. She looked out from her glass case on to the world with cool and cheerful indifference, quite incapable of placing the established interpretation on the glances of calumniators.
VI
Benda could have sketched Daniel’s face in the darkness: the round forehead, the little nose, pointed and mulish, the rigidly pinched lips, the angular musician’s chin, and the deep dimples in his cheeks.
His ignorance of the musician was complete. Like all scholars, he nurtured an ingrained distrust when it came to the supernatural influence of art. For the great musical compositions which, in the course of time and as a result of the homage of succeeding generations, had come to be regarded as exemplary and incontestable, he had a feeling of reverence. For the creations of his contemporaries he had no ear.
That it was hard to understand and appreciate, he knew. That it was bitter not to be understood or appreciated, he had experienced. That the discipline associated with all intellectual work demands its tribute in the form of sacrificial renunciation needed no proof in his case.
The musician was something new to him. How did he regard him? As a blind man whose soul was on fire. As a drunken man who made the impression of repulsive sobriety on other men. As an obsessed individual who was living an excruciatingly lonely life and was unaware of it. As an unpolished peasant with the nerves of a degenerate.
The scientist wished to find the established and formulated law in the musician—a task that could lead only to despair. The friend surveyed the life of his friend; he allowed the personalities of many young men whom he had met in life to pass before his mind’s eye. He looked for the criteria of common interests; he sought a law, even here. He sat in the dusk, and read from the works of the philosopher Mainländer. Then he laid the book to one side, and said to himself: “The youth of to-day are lacerating, devastating themselves. … It is a fearful age. Measure, proportion, and balance are gone. Every model becomes a caricature. The individual is absolutely dependent upon himself. The flame is without container, and threatens to burn the hand that would check it.”
In Daniel he had found his brother in fate. Music became his brother in torture. On seeing his friend lacerated and devastated, he saw twitch from the eye of Gorgo herself the profoundest of wisdom. But he did not lay bare his own heart.
One night, after unending conversation had brought them both to silence—like ships which, tossed about by the winds, at last drift into the harbour—Benda, taking up with an angry, exasperated remark by Daniel as it echoed back from the other shore of this silence, said: “We must not be vain. We dare not usurp a privilege which has no other basis than our inner task. We must never stand before our own picture. It seems to me that an artist should be of exalted modesty, and that without this modesty he is nothing but a more or less remarkable lout.”
Daniel looked up at once. Benda’s big teeth were visible under his bushy moustache. He