The Goose Man Part 14

"You are going to leave? Where are you going?" asked Daniel, in faithful amazement. Benda bit his lips, and was silent.

"Do you see these big white spots here? They have neither mountains nor rivers on them. Those are places that have never been trod upon by European feet. There is where I am going." He smiled a gentle smile.

"Really? When?" asked Daniel, filled with dismay at the thought of losing his friend.

"I have not decided when, but it will be soon. I have work to do over there. I need air, room, sky, the free animal and the free plant."

Benda's mother came in. She was rather tall, walked with the difficulties of age, had sharp features and deep-set eyes.

She looked first at her son and then at Daniel. Then her eyes fell on the atlas and remained fixed upon it, filled with an expression of horror and anxiety.

Daniel did not know what to say. Benda, still smiling to himself, began to talk about other things.

XIII

At the death of her mother, Gertrude Jordan was nine years old. She had crept into the death chamber and sat by the bier for three hours.

Perhaps her seclusion from the world and a.s.sociation with people dated from that hour. As she was leaving the death room, the clock on the wall struck, and a c.o.c.k crowed in the distance.

"Why do you tick, clock?" she asked in a loud voice, "why do you crow, c.o.c.k?" And again: "Who makes you tick, clock, who makes you crow, c.o.c.k?"

She had grown up, and no one knew anything about her. It was even difficult for her own father to approach her; how she was const.i.tuted, mentally and spiritually, he did not know. She never a.s.sociated with girls of her own age. Her dark eyes glowed with wrath when she heard the senseless, sensuous laughter of other girls.

The first time she partook of the holy communion she swooned and had to be carried out. Jordan then took her to Pommersfelden to his sister, the widow of the district physician Kupferschmied. At the end of one week she returned alone, completely broken in spirit. She had seen a calf slaughtered; the sight had made her almost insane.

From the time she was fifteen years old she had insisted on having her own bed room. When she was sixteen she demanded that the maid be discharged; she herself did all the cooking and kept house. As soon as she had finished her work, she would take her seat by the quilting frame.

Through her father, Benjamin Dorn had come into the family. Gertrude liked him because Eleanore made fun of him. He did not seem to her like a man; he reminded her rather of the languishing angels she embroidered.

He brought her all his religious tracts and edifying pamphlets, but she could not grasp the language. He took her to the Methodist revivals, but the noisy gnashing of teeth at these meetings terrified her, and after a few times it was impossible to persuade her to go back. He also recommended that she read the Bible, but she could find nothing in it that brought her peace of mind. It seemed that she had a wound in her soul that would not heal. Long after she had abandoned Benjamin Dorn and his cheap sanctimoniousness, he imagined that she still loved him and looked up to him. She managed, however, to come into his presence only on the rarest occasions, and then she never spoke to him.

Divine worship in the Protestant church seemed to her like a sort of bargain day on which the people a.s.sembled to do business with Heaven instead of on work days. She missed the dignity; the sermons left her cold; the ritual made not the slightest appeal to her.

She never heard from any one at any time a single sentence that really enlightened her or remained fixed in her memory. It was the jejune insipidity of an entire age, the stale flatness of the world that she felt to the very depths of her soul. If she wished to make her heart glow, if she became unusually fearful of the empty air and the empty day, she stole secretly into the Church of Our Lady or into St.

Sebaldus, where the house of G.o.d was more solemnly decorated, where there were more lights burning, where the prayers had a more mysterious sound, the priests seemed to be more affected by what they were doing, and where the worshipper could sense the awful meaning of life and death.

All external beauty, however, was repulsive to her. She hated even beautiful scenery and fair weather, regarding them as temptations to mortal man intended to lead him into some sort of folly. She loved nothing about herself, neither her face nor her voice. She was indeed frightened at the sound of her own deep voice. She did not like her hair, nor had she any use for her hands.

One winter evening she took from her hand the gold ring, an heirloom from her mother, presented to her by her father, and threw it into the creek. Then she bowed down over the ledge, and seemed to feel as if she had relieved her soul of a great burden.

Eleanore tried time and time again to come near her sister, but each time she was thrust back. Though Gertrude never conversed with people, every word that was said about Eleanore reached her ears; she felt ashamed of her sister. She could not bear the looks of Eleanore, took an intense dislike to her, and in the end was obliged to summon all her courage in order to return her greeting. It was impossible for her, however, to reproach Eleanore; for that she did not have sufficient command of language. In truth, her control of words was exceedingly limited. Everything, grief as well as injustice, she was forced to stifle within her own soul. She grieved about Eleanore, and became at the same time more and more nervous and excited. It seemed that something about her sister was tantalising her, drawing her on, worrying her, making her lose sleep.

Her restlessness became so great that she could no longer sit at the quilting frame; in fact, it was no longer possible for her to do any kind of exacting work. Something drew her out of the house, and once she was away, something forthwith drew her back home. Her heart beat violently when she was alone, and yet, if her father or brother or Eleanore came in, she could not stand their presence, and took refuge in her own room. If it was hot, she closed the windows; if it was cold, she opened them and leaned out. If it was quiet, she was filled with fear; if it was not quiet, she longed for peace. She could not say her prayers; she had none to say; her mind and soul were muted, m.u.f.fled, dumb. She felt the hours following each other in regular order as something terrible; she wanted to skip over years, just as one might skip over pages of a tiresome book. And when the worst came to the worst, and she did not know what on earth to do, she ran to the Church of Our Lady, threw herself prostrate before the high altar, buried her face, and remained perfectly motionless until her soul had found greater peace.

Something made her go to Eleanore; she did not want to do it, but she could not help it. She was naturally vigilant, and she wished to ward off misfortune if possible. She was obsessed with an uncanny feeling, a gruesome curiosity. She dogged her sister's steps in secret. One time she saw from a distance that Eleanore had started off with a man who had been waiting for her. She could not move from the spot; Eleanore caught sight of her.

The next day Eleanore came to her voluntarily, and told her quite candidly of her relation to Eberhard von Auffenberg. Concerning what she knew of Eberhard's fate she said nothing; she merely indicated that he was extremely unhappy. She told her how she had met him the previous winter on the Dutzendteich at the ice carnival, how he ran after her, how glad she was to show him a little friendship, and how much he needed friendship.

Gertrude was silent for a long while. Finally she said, with a voice so deep that it seemed to have burst from being too full: "You two either must get married, or you must not see each other any more. What you are doing is a crime."

"A crime?" said Eleanore astonished, "how so?"

"Ask your conscience," was the answer, spoken with eyes riveted on the ground.

"My conscience is quite clear."

"Then you have none," said Gertrude harshly. "You lie, and you are being lied to. You are sunk in sin; there is no hope for you. That man's evil looks! His ugly thoughts! And the thoughts of the other men! They are all beyond redemption. You are spotted through and through. You don't know it, but I do."

She got up, kicked the chair from her with her heels, and stared at Eleanore with her mysterious black eyes: "Never mention this to me again," she whispered with trembling lips, "never, never!" With that she went out.

Eleanore felt something like actual loathing for her own sister. Filled with an indescribable foreboding, she detected in Gertrude the adversary that fate had marked out for her.

XIV

When the autumn days came on and it began to get cold, Daniel was a frequent visitor at Jordan's. Although he had a warm stove now of his own, he took pleasure in remembering the comfortable corner of a year ago. He had a greater affection for things and rooms than he had for human beings.

It was rare that he came in contact with Jordan, for now that he was no longer with the Prudentia, it was hard to locate him: he was doing odd jobs for a number of concerns, and this kept him more or less on the go.

Benno came home after office hours, only to betake himself to his room, where he shaved and made himself as elegant-looking as possible for the social engagements of the evening. He did not like to be alone with Gertrude, so he never came until after six o'clock, when he knew that Eleanore would be at home. Realising that Eleanore was diligently pursuing the study of French and English, and that her evenings were therefore of great value to her, he begged her not to be disturbed by his visits. He said that he found nothing so agreeable as sitting still and saying nothing. After an hour or two, however, he left, murmuring an indistinct farewell as he did so.

At times he would bring a book with him and read. If he chanced to look up, he saw Eleanore bending over the writing table, her hair, bathed in a flood of golden light from the lamp, falling in fine silken threads over her temples, while her mouth was firmly closed, her lips inclined to droop at the corners, but in a lovely fashion. Then he saw Gertrude.

She did not wear her hair loose; she put it up in a tight knot above her neck. Her dress was no longer the Nile green; it was made of brown cloth, and on the front was a row of glistening black b.u.t.tons.

At times Eleanore would make some remark to him, and he would reply. At times the remarks between the two spun out into a verbal skirmish.

Eleanore teased, and he was gruff; or he mocked, and Eleanore delivered a curtain lecture. Gertrude would sit with an expression of helpless amazement on her face, and look at the window. She purposely remained unoccupied; she purposely postponed her household duties. The thought of leaving the two alone in the room was unbearable.

What Daniel did and said, how he walked or sat or stood, how he put his hands in his pockets and smacked his lips, all this and more aroused a sense of fear and shame in her. She regarded his candour as impudent presumption; she looked upon his capriciousness as malevolent irrationality; his indifferent manners and his disposition to slander she felt certain were of a piece with the scorn of the devil.

On one occasion he dropped a caustic remark about the bigots who contend that G.o.d is a moralising censor. Having this phase of ethics under discussion, he also paid his respects to those people who look upon every worm-eaten pastor as an archangel. Gertrude got up with a jerk, and stared at him. He stood his ground; he merely shrugged his shoulders. Gertrude whispered: "Men without faith are worse than contagious diseases."

Daniel laughed. Then he became serious, and asked her what she understood by faith. He wanted to know whether she felt that faith was a matter of lip service. She replied, with bowed head, that she could not discuss sacred matters with a man who had renounced all religion. Daniel told her that her remark was slanderous. He wanted to know whether she had ever taken the pains to find out precisely how he stood in matters of religion, and if not, was this the reason she pa.s.sed such final judgment on him with such suddenness and conviction. He asked her point blank whether she was quite certain that her so-called faith was better than his so-called unfaith. Not content with this, he asked where she got her authority, her courage, her feeling of security; whether she felt she had evidence to prove that she had carefully examined his soul; and whether she had at any time interviewed G.o.d.

He laughed again, whistled, and left.

Gertrude remained motionless for a while, her eyes fixed on the floor.

Eleanore supported her chin on her hand, and looked at her compa.s.sionately. Gertrude began to tremble in her whole body, and, without raising her head, she stretched out her arms to Eleanore. Though quite unable to interpret this accusing gesture, Eleanore was terrified.

The next time Daniel came, he resumed his seat by the stove, and remained silent for a while. Then, without the slightest warning or apparent motivation, he began to discuss religion. And how? With the old spirit of defiance, as if from an ambuscade from which he could send out his poisoned arrows, with calculating maliciousness and cold rebellion, with the air of a man who has been defeated, who is now being pursued, and who is willing to concede more to the earthly order of things than to the divine. Thus he sat, the incarnation of blasphemy, and once more shuffled the features of his face until he looked like the sedulous ape.

Eleanore felt that he was denying both himself and G.o.d, and that with violence. She went over to him, and laid her hand on his shoulder.

Gertrude, a death-like pallor playing over her face, got up, pa.s.sed by her and Daniel, and did not appear again that evening. Nor did she appear the following evening. From that time on she avoided his presence.

For one remarkable second and no longer, Daniel fixed his eyes on the shape of Gertrude's legs. He became suddenly conscious of the fact that she was a woman and he was a man. During this second, one of the rarest of his life, he perceived the outer surface of her body, but without the enveloping clothes. He thought of her as a nude figure. It lasted only a second, but he pictured her to himself as a nude. Everything she had said and done fell from her like so much clothing.

He had a feeling that his eyes had been opened; that he had really seen for the first time in his life; and that what he now saw was the body of the world.

The nude picture followed him. He fought against his disquietude.

Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He conjured up the picture in order to destroy it with coolness and composure; but it would not be destroyed, nor would it vanish. One day he chanced to meet Gertrude by the beautiful fountain. He stopped, stood as if petrified, and forgot to speak to her.