The Goose Man Part 3

XII

"Fetch me a sandwich, Theresa," Jason Philip commanded, "I'm hungry as a wolf."

"Didn't you eat anything at the inn?" Theresa asked suspiciously.

"I was at no such place." Jason Philip's eyes gleamed, and he shook his head like a lion.

So Theresa went to fetch his sandwich. It was queer to observe how much distrust and contradiction she was able to express through the sloth of her movements. But her daughter Philippina was already hurrying down the stairs with the sandwich.

At this moment Jason Philip became aware of his sister-in-law. "Ah, there you are, you shrinking flower," he said lightly, and held out his pudgy hand. "Theresa will put you up in the little room under the store-room. You have a pleasant view of the river there."

Theresa handed him the bread. He sniffed at it, and frowned because it wasn't thickly enough b.u.t.tered. But he had not the courage to complain.

He bit into it, and, with full cheeks, turned once more to Marian.

"Well, that son of yours has disappeared again. A nice situation.

Shouldn't wonder if he ended in the penitentiary. The best thing would be to ship him off to America; but it isn't clear to me how we're to get hold of him at all. It was really premature to ask you to come."

"If only I knew what he's living on," Marian whispered, with repressed anguish.

Jason Philip indulged with broad psychical comfort in an anecdote: "I was reading the other day how a giraffe escaped from the Zoo. You've heard of giraffes. They are long-necked quadrupeds, very stupid and stubborn. The silly beast had run off into the woods, and the people didn't know how to capture it. Then the keeper hung the stable-lantern over his chest and a bundle of hay on his back, and at nightfall went into the woods. Scarcely had the giraffe noticed the gleam of the lantern when it came up in its curiosity. At once the man swung around.

It smelled the hay, nibbled, and began to feed. Slowly the man went on, and the beast went on nibbling and feeding. First thing you know it was back in its cage. Now don't you think that when hunger begins to torment him, your Daniel could be tamed with a bit of hay too? It's worth your thinking about."

Jason Philip laughed merrily, and Zwanziger grinned. His boss was a source of humour. At night, when he sat in his favourite tap-rooms over his beer, he would entertain his boon companions with the witticisms of Schimmelweis, and always won their applause.

A lean old man with kid gloves and a top-hat entered the shop. It was growing dark, and he had peered carefully about before entering. He hurried up to Jason Philip, and said in a cracked falsetto: "How about the new publications? Anything very fine?" He rubbed his hands, and stared stupidly from under his thin, reddish lids. It was Count Schlemm-Nottheim, a cousin of the Baron von Auffenberg, the leader of the liberal party.

"I'm entirely at your service, sir," said Jason Philip, holding himself as rigidly as a sergeant who is being addressed by a captain.

He led the count to a corner of the shop, and opened a heavy oaken chest. This chest contained the p.o.r.nographic publications forbidden by the state. They were sold quite secretly and only to very reliable persons.

Jason Philip whispered, and the old count turned over the heap of books with avid fingers.

XIII

Marian climbed up the steep, dark stairs, and rang the upstairs bell.

She had to tell the maid who she was and even mention her name to the children. The latter laughed at her stiff, rural courtesy. Philippina, who was twelve, acted arrogantly and swung her hips when she walked. All three had their mother's square head and a cheesy complexion.

The maid brought up the bag. Then Theresa came too and helped her sister unpack. With her acrid, unfeeling voice she asked many questions, but without waiting for an answer told the tale of marriage and births and deaths that had taken place in the city. She avoided Marian's eyes, because she was silently considering how long her sister's visit would last and to what expense it would put her.

She did not mention Daniel, and her silence condemned him more completely than her husband's acrimonious speeches. She held firmly an almost religious doctrine of the complete obedience which children owe their parents, and doubted Marian's power to punish properly a breach of this sacred law.

When Marian was left alone, she sat down by the window of the little room, and gazed sadly down at the river. Without any curl of waves the yellow water glided by and washed the walls of the houses on the other bank. She had a view of the Museum Bridge and another bridge, and the crowding of people on the bridges disquieted her.

She walked through the streets, and stopped at the head of the Museum Bridge. She thought that every human being who lived in the town must pa.s.s by here sooner or later. Her attentive glance searched all faces, and where one escaped, she followed the figure as it melted into the dark. But as it grew later the people were fewer and fewer.

At night she would lie awake, and listen to the dull echo of the feet of the last pa.s.serby. Next day from morning to twilight she would wander up and down the streets. What she saw weighed on her heart. The city people seemed to her like dumb animals, tormented and angry. The narrow streets stopped her breath; the hubbub deadened her senses.

But she was never tired of seeking.

On the fifth day she did not come home until ten o'clock. Theresa, who had gone to bed, sent her a plate of lentil soup. While she was avidly eating the soup she heard steps in the hall and a knock at the door.

Jason Philip entered. "Come along at once," was all he said. But she understood. With trembling fingers she threw a shawl across her shoulders, since the October nights were growing cool, and followed him in silence.

They went up hill to Adler Street, turned into it and then into a narrow, dark little alley at the right. A lantern hung above a door and on a green gla.s.s pane were inscribed the words: "The Vale of Tears." A greenish light suffused the stone stairs that led to the cellar, the kegs and the desolate room filled with chairs and benches. A sourish smell of wine arose from the place.

Beside the entrance there was a barred window. Beside it Jason Philip stopped, and beckoned Marian to join him.

At the long tables below them sat a queer crowd. They were young men, but such as one never finds in ordinary houses and only very rarely in the streets. Want seemed to have driven them to huddle here, and the night to have lured them from their hiding places-shipwrecked creatures they seemed who had fled to a cavern on some deserted sh.o.r.e. They had absurdly gay cravats and sad, pallid faces, and the greenish light made them look altogether like corpses. It was long since a barber had touched their hair or a tailor their garb.

A little aside from these sat two old fellows, habitual topers, not in the best circ.u.mstances themselves, yet rather astonished at this dreary Stygian crew. For they themselves at least received their weekly wage of a Sat.u.r.day night, while those others had obviously for years not worked at all.

But in a dusky corner sat one at a piano and struck the keys with a strange might. He had no score before him, but played from memory. The instrument moaned; the strings hummed pitifully; the pedals creaked; but the man who played was so bewitched by his music that he cared little for the inadequacy of its communication. Wild as the tumult of the playing sounded, the shrill and raging chords, the wild clamour of the treble, the driven triplets and seething tremolos of the ba.s.s, yet the deep emotion of the player, the ecstasy and world-estranged madness in which he was, lent the scene a melancholy and a solemnity which would have had its effect even without the greenish cellar and the cavernous pallor of the listeners.

Marian had at once recognised the pianist as Daniel. She had to hold fast to the bars of the window and lean her knees against the wainscoting. It was not for nothing that Jason Philip was known as a thorough wag. The comparison to Daniel in the lion's den was too much for him. He whispered the words to Marian. But since the window was open and the music had first risen and then, at this moment, paused, his words penetrated to the people below, and several heads turned toward him. Marian was thoughtless. She believed that the piece had ended.

Faintly and fearfully she cried: "Daniel!"

Daniel leaped up, stared at her, saw Jason Philip's mocking face, hastened to the door, the steps, and was beside them.

He stood in the doorway, and his lips began to form words. The unhappy boy, she thought, and it seemed to her as though power would be given her to press back to his heart the words she trembled to hear.

It was in vain. The words were uttered. He did not wish to see his mother any more; he was content to live alone and for himself and to be free. He needed no one. He needed only to be free.

Jason Philip hurled a glance of contempt at the blasphemous wretch, and drew Marian away with him. To the very corner of the alley they were accompanied by the excited voices of the people in the Vale of Tears.

Next morning Marian returned to Eschenbach.

FOES, BROTHERS, A FRIEND AND A MASK

I

Daniel had rented a room of the brush-maker Hadebusch and his wife, who lived on Jacob's Square behind the church.

It was March, and a sudden cold had set in; and Frau Hadebusch had a superst.i.tious fear of coal, which she characterised as Devil's dung. At the back of the yard was the wood pile, and logs were brought in with which to feed the oven fires. But wood was dear, and had Daniel fed his little iron stove in the garret with such costly food, his monthly bill would have reached a fabulous height. He paid seven marks a month for his room and counted every penny so as not to shorten the period of his liberty by any needless expenditure.

So he sat freezing over his books and scores until the first warmth of spring stole in through the windows. The books he borrowed from the library at the King's Gate, and paid six pfennigs a volume. Achim von Arnim and Jean Paul were his guides in those days: the one adorned the world of the senses for him, the other that of the soul.

On the police department's identification blank Daniel had called himself a musician. Frau Hadebusch brought the paper into her living room, which, like all the rooms of the house, seemed built for dwarfs and reeked of limewater and lye. It was at the day's end, and in the room were a.s.sembled Herr Francke and Herr Benjamin Dorn, who lodged on the second floor, and Frau Hadebusch's son, who was weak-minded and crouched grinning beside the stove.

Herr Francke was a town traveller for a cigar house, and was regarded as a good deal of a Don Juan by the female servants of the neighbourhood.

Benjamin Dorn was a clerk in the Prudentia Life Insurance Company, belonged to a Methodist congregation, and was respected by all the respectable on account of his Christian walk and conversation.

These gentlemen examined the doc.u.ment thoroughly and with frowns. Herr Francke gave it as his opinion that a musician who never made music could scarcely be regarded as one.