The Goose Man Part 6

"Well, however that may be," Anna Siebert continued in a colourless voice, "the manager rushed into my dressing room, threw the contract at my feet, and said I had swindled him. How on earth could I have swindled him? I am no prima donna and my agent had told him so. You can't expect a Patti on twenty marks a week. In Elberfeld I got twenty-five, and a year ago in Zurich I even drew sixty. Now he comes to me and says he doesn't need to pay me anything. What am I to live off of? And you've got to live, haven't you, Zephyr," said Anna as she picked up the cat, pressed its warm fur to her cheek, and repeated, "You've got to live."

She let her arms fall to her sides, the cat sprang on the floor, hunched up its back, wagged its tail, and purred. She then went up to Daniel, fell on her knees, and laid her head on his side. "I have reached the end," she murmured in a scarcely audible voice, "I am at the end of all things."

The snow beat against the window panes. With an expression on his face as though his own thoughts were murdering each other, Daniel looked into the corner from which Zephyr's yellowish eyes were shining. The muscles of his face twitched like a fish on being taken from the hook.

And as he cowered in this fashion, the poor girl pressed against his body, his shoulders lowered, past visions again arose from the depths of the sea. First he heard a ravishing arpeggio in A-flat major and above it, a majestic theme, commanding quiet, as it were, in sixteenth triads.

The two blended, in _forte_, with a powerful chord of sevens. There was a struggling, a separating, a wandering on, and out of the subdued pianissimo there arose and floated in s.p.a.ce a gentle voice in E-flat minor. O voice from the sea, O humanity on earth! The eighth note, unpitiable as ever in its elemental power, cut into the ba.s.s with the strength that moves and burrows as it advances, until it was caught up by the redeemed voice in E-flat major. And now everything suddenly became real. What had formerly been clouds and dreams, longing and wishing, at last took shape and form and stood before him. Indeed he himself became true, real, and conscious of his existence in a world of actualities.

On his way home he covered his face with his hands, for the windows of the houses gaped at him like the hollow eyes of a demi-monde.

VIII

Zingarella could not imagine why the strange man had left. He seemed to be quite indifferent. Her heart beat with numerical accuracy, but there was no strength in the beats. The sole creature through which she was bound to the world was Zephyr.

Night followed night, day followed day. Each was like the preceding. She spoke when people took enough trouble to speak to her. She laughed when they had the incomprehensible desire to hear laughter. To-day she wrapped this dress around her shivering body, to-morrow another. She waited for the time to come when she was to do something definite. She lay in bed and dreaded the darkness; she pondered on the injustice of the world; she thought of her own disgrace, and reflected on the need that surrounded her. It was too much for her to bear.

A man would come, and at daylight he would leave and mingle with the rest of the people on the street. When she awoke she could no longer recall what he looked like. The landlady would bring in soup and meat.

Then some one knocked at the door; but she did not open it. She had no desire to find out who it was. Perhaps it was the man who had been with her the night before; perhaps it was another.

She had neither curiosity nor hope. Her soul had dissolved like a piece of salt in water. When she returned home on the third day she found Zephyr lying by the coal-scuttle dead. She knelt down, touched the cold fur, wrinkled her brow, shook her bracelet, and went out.

It was getting along toward night, and the air was heavy with mist. She went first through lighted streets, and then turned into others that were not lighted. She pa.s.sed through avenues of leafless trees, and walked across silent squares. The snow made walking difficult. When it was too deep, she was obliged to stop every now and then and take a deep breath.

She reached the river at a point where the sh.o.r.e was quite flat and the water shallow. Without thinking for a moment, without a moment's hesitation, just as if she were blind, or as if she saw a bridge where there was none, she walked in.

First she felt the water trickling into her shoes. Then she could feel her legs getting wet, as her clothes, soft, slippery, and ice-cold, clung to her body. Now her breast was under the water, and now her neck.

She sank down, glided away, took one deep breath, smiled, and as she smiled she lost consciousness.

The next day her body was washed up on the sh.o.r.e some distance beyond the city. It was taken to the morgue of the Rochus Cemetery.

IX

Schwalbe, the sculptor, was attending a funeral. His nephew had died, and was being buried in the same cemetery.

As he pa.s.sed by the morgue he caught sight of the body of a girl. After the child had been buried he went back to the morgue. A few people were standing near the body, one of whom said, "She was a singer down at the Academy."

Schwalbe was struck by the pure and beautiful expression on the girl's face. He studied it long and with no little emotion. Then he went to the superintendent, and asked if he might take a death mask. The permission was given him, and in a few hours he returned with the necessary implements.

When he removed the mask from the face, he held something truly wonderful in his hands. It showed the features of a sixteen-year-old girl, a face full at once of sweetness and melancholy, and, most charming of all, an angelic smile on the curved lips of this mouth of sorrow. It resembled the work of a renowned artist, so much so that the sculptor was suddenly seized with a burning desire to regain his lost art.

He was nevertheless obliged within a week to sell the mask to the caster by whom he was employed in Pfannenschmied Street. Schwalbe needed ready money. The caster hung the mask by the door at the entrance to his shop.

X

At the end of December Daniel found himself with not a cent of cash, so that he was obliged to sell his sole remaining treasure, the score of the Bach ma.s.s in B-minor. Spindler had presented it to him when he left, and now he had to take it to the second-hand dealer and part with it for a mere pittance.

Unless he cared to lie in bed the whole day, he was obliged to walk the streets in order to keep warm. His poverty made it out of the question for him to go to any of the cafes, and so he was excluded from a.s.sociation with the brethren of the Vale of Tears. He had moreover taken a violent dislike to them.

One evening he was standing out in front of the Church of aegydius, listening to the organ that some one was playing. The icy wind blew through his thin clothing. When the concert was over he went down to the square, and leaned up against the wall of one of the houses. He was tremendously lonesome; he was lonely beyond words.

Just then two men came along who wished to enter the very house against the wall of which he leaned. He was cold. One of these men was Benjamin Dorn, the other was Jordan. Benjamin Dorn spoke to him; Jordan stood by in silence, apparently quite appreciative of the condition in which the young man found himself, as he stood there in the cold and made unfriendly replies to the questions that were put to him. Jordan invited Daniel up to his room. Daniel, chilled to the very marrow of his bones, and able to visualise nothing but a warm stove, accepted the invitation.

Thus Daniel came in contact with Jordan's family. He had three children: Gertrude, aged nineteen, Eleanore, aged sixteen, and Benno, fifteen years old and still a student at the _gymnasium_. His wife was dead.

Gertrude was said to be a pietist. She went to church every day, and had an inclination toward the Catholic religion, a fact which gave Jordan, as an inveterate Protestant, no little worry. During the day she looked after the house; but as soon as she had everything in order, she would take her place by the quilting frame and work on crowns of thorns, hearts run through with swords, and languishing angels for a mission.

There she would sit, hour after hour, with bowed head and knit.

The first time Daniel saw her she had on a Nile green dress, fastened about her hips with a girdle of scales, while her wavy brown hair hung loose over her shoulders. It was in this make-up that he always saw her when he thought of her years after: Nile green dress, bowed head, sitting at the quilting frame, and quite unaware of his presence, a picture of unamiability, conscious or affected.

Eleanore was entirely different. She was like a lamp carried through a dark room.

For some time she had been employed in the offices of the Prudentia, for she wished to make her own living. So far as it was humanly possible to determine from her casual remarks, she thoroughly enjoyed her work. She liked to make out receipts for premiums, lick stamps, copy letters, and see so many people come in and go out. Stout old Diruf and lanky Zittel did everything they could to keep her interested, and if, despite their efforts, it was seen that a morose mood was invading her otherwise cheerful disposition, they took her out to the merry-go-round, and in a short time her wonted buoyancy had returned.

She seemed like a child, and yet she was every inch a woman. She insisted on wearing her little felt cap at a jaunty angle on her blond hair. When she entered the room, the atmosphere in it underwent a change; it was easier to breathe; it was fresher. People somehow disapproved of the fact that her eyes were so radiantly blue, and that her two rows of perfect white teeth were constantly shining from out between her soft, peach-like lips. They said she was light-hearted; they said she was a b.u.t.terfly. Benjamin Dorn was of the opinion that she was a creature possessed of the devil of sensuality and finding her completest satisfaction in earthly finery and frippery. For some time there had been an affair of an intimate nature between her and Baron von Auffenberg. Just what it was no one knew precisely; the facts were not obtainable. But Benjamin Dorn, experienced ferreter that he was, could not see two people of different s.e.xes together without imagining that he was an accomplice in the hereditary sin of human kind. And one day he caught Eleanore alone in the company of Baron von Auffenberg. From that day on she was, in his estimation, a lost soul.

The fact concerning Eleanore was this: life never came very close to her. It comes right up to other people, strangles them, or drags them along with it. It kept its distance from Eleanore, for she lived in a gla.s.s case. If she had sorrow of any kind, if some painfully indeterminable sensation was gnawing at her soul, if the vulgarity and ba.n.a.lity of a base and disjointed world came her way, the gla.s.s case in which she lived simply became more s.p.a.cious than ever, and the things or thoughts that swarmed around it more and more incomprehensible.

One can always laugh if one lives in a gla.s.s case. Even bad dreams remain on the outside. Even longing becomes nothing more than a purple breath which clouds the crystal from without, not from within.

The people were quite right in saying that Jordan was bringing up his daughters like princesses. Both were far removed from the customary things of life: the one was translated to the realm of darkness, the other to that of light.

Daniel saw both of them. They were just as strange to him as he to them.

He saw the brother, too, a tall, glib, dapper youth. He saw the old house with its dilapidated stairs, its rooms filled with c.u.mbersome, provincial furniture. He saw the alternating currents of life in this family: there was now rest, now unrest, now quiet, now storm. Life flowed out from the house, and then life, the same or of a different origin, flowed back in again. When he came, he talked with Jordan himself rather than with any one else; for he always knew when Jordan would be at home. They spoke in a free and easy fashion and about things in general. If their conversation could be characterised more fully, it might be said that Daniel was reserved and Jordan tactful. Gertrude sat by the table and attended to her needlework.

Daniel came and warmed himself by the stove. If he was offered a sandwich or a cup of coffee he declined. If the offer was made with noticeable insistency, he shook his head and distorted the features of his face until he resembled an irritated ape. It was the peasant spirit of defiance in him that made him act this way. He nourished a measure of small-minded anxiety lest he be indebted to somebody for something. To temptations, yielding to which would have been spiritually mortifying, he was impervious. When, consequently, his need became overpowering, he simply stayed away.

XI

His want grew into a purple sheen. To him there was an element of the ridiculous in the whole situation: it was 1882 and he had nothing to eat; he was twenty-three years old and quite without food.

Frau Hadebusch, virago that she could be when a dubious debtor failed to fulfil his obligations, stormed her way up the steps. The rent was long overdue, and uncanny councils were being held in the living room, in which an invalid from the Wasp's Nest and a soap-maker from Kamerarius Street were taking part.

In his despair, Daniel thought of entering the army. He reported at the barracks, was examined-and rejected because of a hollow chest.

At first there was the purple sheen. He saw it as he stood on the hangman's bridge and looked down into the water where pieces of ice were drifting about. But when he raised his distressed face a gigantic countenance became visible. The great vaulted arch of heaven was a countenance fearfully distorted by vengeance and scorn. Of escape from it there could be no thought. Within his soul everything became wrapped in darkness. Tones and pictures ran together, giving the disagreeably inarticulate impression that would be made by drawing a wet rag across a fresh, well-ordered creation.

As he walked on, it seemed to him that the horror of the vision was diminishing. The countenance became smaller and more amiable. It was now not much larger than the facade of a church and what wrath remained seemed to be concentrated in the forehead. An old woman pa.s.sed by, carrying apples in her ap.r.o.n. He trembled at the smell of them; but he did not reach out; he did not try to take a single one of them from her; he still held himself in control. By this time the entire vision was not much larger than the top of a tree, and in it were the traces of mercy.

The sun was high in the heavens, the snow was melting, birds were chirping everywhere. As he sauntered along with uncertain steps through Pfannenschmied Street he suddenly stopped as if rooted to the pavement.

There was the vision: he caught sight of it in bodily form on the door jamb of the shop. He could not see that it was the mask of Zingarella.

Of course not, for it was a transfigured face, and how could he have grasped a reality in his present state of mind? He looked from within out. The thing before him was a vision; it joined high heaven with the earth below; it was a promise. He could have thrown himself down on the street and wept, for it seemed to him that he was saved.

The incomparable resignation and friendly grief in the expression of the mask, the sanct.i.ty under the long eyelashes, the half extinguished smile playing around the mouth of sorrow, the element of ghostliness, a being far removed from death and equally far removed from life-all this caused his feeling to swell into one of credulous devotion. His entire future seemed to depend upon coming into possession of the mask. Without a moment's hesitation or consideration he rushed into the shop.