The Goose Man Part 63

Little Agnes was sitting on the floor, sucking a stick of candy. She was always happy when Philippina was around; she was afraid of her father.

Friends had told him that his apartment was too large now; he was advised to give it up and take a smaller one. He became enraged; he said he would never do this voluntarily, for the house meant a great deal more to him than merely so many rented rooms; and he insisted that everything be left just as it was.

One day at the beginning of spring he said to Philippina: "I am going away for a long time. Watch the child, and don't let the old man upstairs suffer for anything. I will send you the money to keep up the house on the first day of each month, and you will be held responsible for everything that takes place. Moreover; I want to pay you a set wage: I will give you five talers a month. There is no reason why you should work for me for nothing."

The shaking and shuddering that Daniel had often had occasion to notice in Philippina returned. She shrugged her shoulders, looked as mean as only she could, and said: "Save your coppers; you'll need 'em; you mustn't try to act so rich all of a sudden; it ain't good for your health. If you have any money to spend, go out and git Agnes a pair of shoes and a decent dress." Daniel made no reply.

Her greediness in money matters had certainly not diminished since the day she began to pilfer from her parents. She loved money; she adored the shining metal; she liked to see it and feel it; she liked to take bank notes in her hands and caress them. It gave her intense pleasure to think that people looked upon her as being poor when she was actually carrying more than a thousand marks around in an old stocking stuffed down in her corset between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She loved to hear people complain of hard times. When a beggar reached out his hand to her on the street, she felt that he was doing it as an act of homage to her; she would cause her bosom to heave so that she might feel the presence of the stocking more keenly. She was pleased to think that one so young had made herself so secure against future eventualities of any kind.

She felt, despite all this, like scratching Daniel's eyes out when he spoke of paying her regular monthly wages. This she regarded as base ingrat.i.tude. If it were at all possible for grief to find ineradicable lodgment in her envious, unenlightened, malicious soul, Daniel's offer of so much per month made it so.

She ran into the kitchen, and hurled knives and forks in the sink. She went to old Jordan's room, knocked on his door, and made him open it; then she told him with all the anger at her resourceful command that Daniel was going away. "There is hardly a cent in the house, and he's going on a jamboree!" she exclaimed. "There is some d.a.m.ned wench back of this. Go tell him, Herr Inspector, go tell him what a dirty thing it is he's doing-going away and leaving his child and his old father in the lurch. Do it, Herr Inspector, and you'll get potato dumplings, ginger-bread, and sauce for dinner next Sunday."

Jordan looked at Philippina timidly. His mouth watered for the food she had promised him; for she was holding him down to a near-starvation diet. He was often so hungry that he would sneak into the delicatessen shop, and buy himself ten pfennigs' worth of real food.

"I will make inquiry as to the reason for his going," murmured Jordan, "but I hardly believe that I will be able to move him one way or the other."

"Well, you go out and take a little walk; git a bit of fresh air,"

commanded Philippina; "I've got to straighten up your room. Your windows need washing; you can't see through 'em for dirt."

Late that evening Daniel came up to say good-bye to Jordan.

"Where are you going?" asked the old man.

"I want to see a little of the German Empire," replied Daniel. "I have some business to attend to up in the North, in the cities and also out in the country."

"Good luck to you," said Jordan, much oppressed, "good luck to you, my dear son. How long are you going to be gone?"

"Oh, I don't know yet; possibly for years."

"For years?" asked Jordan. He looked at the floor; he tried to keep his eyes on the floor under his feet: "Then I suppose we might as well say good-bye forever."

Daniel shook his head. "It makes no difference when I return, I will find you here," he said with a note of strange a.s.surance in his voice.

"When fate has treated a man too harshly, there seems to come a time when it no longer bothers him; it evades him, in fact. It seems to me that this is the case with you: you are quite fateless."

Jordan made no reply. He opened his eyes as if in fear, and sighed.

The next morning Daniel left home. He wore a brown hunting jacket b.u.t.toned close up to his neck with hartshorn b.u.t.tons. Over this hung a top-coat and a cape. His broad-brimmed hat overshadowed his face, which looked young, although so serious and distracted that voices, glances, and sounds of any kind seemed to rebound from it like swift-running water from a smooth stone wall.

Philippina carried his luggage to the station. Her dress was literally smothered in garish, gaudy ribbons. The women in the market-place laughed on seeing her until they got a colic.

When Daniel took leave from her and boarded the train, she did not open her mouth; she wrinkled her forehead, rubbed the ends of her fingers against each other, stood perfectly quiet, and looked at the ground.

Long after the train had left the station, she was still to be seen standing there in that unique position. A station official went up to her, and, with poorly concealed ridicule at the rare phenomenon, asked her what she was waiting for.

She turned her back on him, and started off. She came back by way of St.

James's Place, and talked for a quarter of an hour with her friend Frau Hadebusch. It was Sunday. Benjamin Dorn was just coming home from church. Seeing Philippina, he made a profound bow.

Frau Hadebusch slapped Philippina on the hip, and smiled at her knowingly.

Herr Francke was no longer living at Frau Hadebusch's: he was in jail.

He had promised to marry the cook of a certain distinguished family; but instead of hastening the coming of the happy day, he had gambled away the savings of his bride-to-be.

II

Daniel had a letter of introduction to the Prior of the Monastery at Lohriedt. He was looking for a ma.n.u.script that was supposed to have been written by a contemporary of Orlando di La.s.so, if not by Di La.s.so himself.

He remained for over two months, working at his collection. He found his a.s.sociation with the monks quite agreeable, and they liked him. One of them, who held him in especially high regard because of his ability as an organist, gave him to understand that it was a matter of unaffected regret to him that he could not greet him, Protestant that he was, with the confidence that a man of his singular distinction deserved.

"So! I wish I were a Jew," said Daniel to him, "then you would have a really unqualified opportunity to see what G.o.d can do without your a.s.sistance."

The monk in question was called Father Leonhard; he was a short, wiry fellow with black eyes and a dark complexion. He seemed to have had a great deal of experience with the world, and to have no little cause for contrition and repentance: there was nothing conventional about his religious practices; they were, on the contrary, of almost redundant fervour and renunciation. Daniel was impressed by the man's faith, though his soul shuddered when in his presence: he regarded him as an enemy, a Philistine, and preferred not to look at him at all.

He lived close by the monastery in the house of a railroad official.

Father Leonhard came in to visit him once. Daniel was sitting by the window busily engaged in making some corrections. The Father looked about the room: his eyes fell on a round, wooden box lying on a chair; it looked like a cake box.

"The people at home have sent you something to nibble at," remarked the Father, as Daniel got up.

Daniel riveted his eyes on the monk, took the box, hesitated for a while, and then opened it. In it, carefully packed in sawdust, was the mask of Zingarella. It was a part of Daniel's meagre luggage; wherever he went it followed him.

Father Leonhard sprang back terrified. "What does that mean?" he asked.

"It means sin and purification," said Daniel, holding the mask up in the light of the setting sun. "It means grief and redemption, despair and mercy, love and death, chaos and form."

From that day on, Father Leonhard never said another word to Daniel Nothafft. And whenever the strange musician chanced to play the organ, the monk arose as quickly as possible, left the church, and sought out some place where the tones could not reach him.

III

That summer Daniel came to Aix-la-Chapelle and the region of Liege, Louvain, and Malines. From there he wandered on foot to Ghent and Bruges.

In places where he had to make investigations, he was obliged to depend upon the letters he received from his publisher to make himself understood. Condemned to silence, he lived very much alone; he was a stranger in a strange land.

He had no interest in sights. It was rare that he looked at old paintings. The beautiful never caused him to stop unless it actually blocked his way. He went about as if in between two walls. He followed his nose, turned around only with the greatest reluctance, and never felt tired until he was ready to lie down to sleep.

And even when he was tired the feeling that he was being robbed of something gnawed at his soul; he was restless even when he slept. Haste coloured his eye, fashioned his step, and moulded his deeds. He ate his meals in haste, wrote his letters in haste, and talked in haste.

It pained him to feel that men were looking at him. Although he invariably sought out the most deserted corner of whatever inn he chanced to stop at, and thereby avoided becoming, so far as he might, the target of the curious, he was nevertheless gaped at, watched, and studied wherever he went. For everything about him was conspicuous: the energy of his gestures, the agility of his mimicry, the way he showed his teeth, and the nervous, hacking step with which he moved through groups of gossiping people.

He had antic.i.p.ated with rare pleasure the sight of the sea. He was prepared to behold the monstrous, t.i.tanic, seething, and surging element, the tempest of the Apocalypse. He was disappointed by the peaceful rise and fall of the tide, the harmless rolling back and forth of the waves. He concluded that it were better for one not to become acquainted with things that had inspired one's fancy with reverential awe.

He could quarrel with nature just as he could quarrel with men. The phases of nature which he regarded as her imperfections excited his anger. He was fond, however, of a certain spot in the forest; or he liked a tree in the plain, or sunset along the ca.n.a.l.

He liked best of all the narrow streets of the cities, when the gentle murmurings of song wafted forth from the open windows, or when the light from the lamp shone forth from the windows after they had been closed.

He loved to pa.s.s by courts and cellars, gates and fences; when the face of an old man, or that of a young girl, came suddenly to view, when workmen went home from the factories, or soldiers from the barracks, or seamen from the harbours, he saw a story in each of them; he felt as one feels on reading an exciting book.

One day when he was in Cleve he walked the streets at night all alone.

He noticed a man and a woman and five children, all poorly dressed, standing near a church. Lying before them on the pavement were several bundles containing their earthly possessions. A man came up after a while and addressed them in a stern, domineering tone; they picked up their bundles and followed him: it was a mournful procession. They were emigrants; the man had told them about their ship.