The Goose Man Part 64

Daniel felt as if a cord in his soul had been made taut and were vibrating without making a sound. The steps of the eight people, as they died away in the distance, developed gradually into a rhythmical, musical movement. What had been confused became ordered; what had been dark shone forth in light. Weighed down with heaviness of soul, he went on, his eyes fixed on the ground as if he were looking for something. He no longer saw, nor could he hear. Nor did he know what time it was.

After a year and a half of congealed torpidity, the March wind once more began to blow in his soul.

But it was like a disease; he was being consumed with impatience. His immediate goal was the cloister of sede at Osnabruck, and from there he wanted to go to Berlin. He could not bear to sit in the railway carriages: in Wesel he placed his trunk on a freight train, and went from there on foot, his top-coat hung over his arm, his knapsack strapped across his back. Despite the inclement weather he walked from eight to ten hours every day. It was towards the end of October, the mornings and evenings were chilly, the roads were muddy, the inns were wretched. This did not deter him from going on: he walked and walked, sought and sought, often until late at night, pa.s.sionately absorbed in himself.

When he came to the coal and iron district, he raised his head more and more frequently. The houses were black, the earth and the air were black, blackened men met him on the road. Copper wires hummed in the fog and mist, hammers clinked, wheels hummed, chimneys smoked, whistles blew-it was like a dream vision, like the landscape of an unknown and accursed star.

One evening he left a little inn which he had entered to get something to eat and drink. It was eight miles to Dortmund, where he planned to stay over night. He had left the main road, when all of a sudden the fire from the blast-furnaces leaped up, giving the mist the appearance of a blood-red sea. Miners were coming in to the village; in the light of the furnaces their tired, blackened faces looked like so many demoniac caricatures. Far or near, it was impossible to say, a horse could be seen drawing a car over shining rails. On it stood a man flourishing his whip. Beast, man, and car all seemed to be of colossal size; the "gee" and "haw" of the driver sounded like the mad cries of a spectre; the iron sounds from the forges resembled the bellowing of tormented creatures.

Daniel had found what he had been looking for: he had found the mournful melody that had driven him away the day Eleanore died. He had, to be sure, put it on the paper then and there, but it had remained without consequence: it had been buried in the grave with Eleanore.

Now it had arisen, and its soul-its consequence-had arisen with it; it was expanded into a wonderful arch, arranged and limbed like a body, and filled as the world is full.

Music had been born to him again from the machine, from the world of machinery.

IV

Jason Philip Schimmelweis had been obliged to give up his house by the museum bridge. He could not pay the rent; his business was ruined. By a mere coincident it came about that the house on the Corn Market had a cheap apartment that was vacant, and he took it. It was the same house in which he lived when he made so much money twenty years ago.

Was Jason Philip no longer in touch with modern business methods? Had he become too old and infirm to make the public hungry for literary nourishment? Were his advertis.e.m.e.nts without allurement, his baits without scent? No one felt inclined to buy expensive lexicons and editions de luxe on the instalment plan. The rich old fellows with a nose for dubious reading matter never came around any more. Jason Philip had become a dilatory debtor; the publishers no longer gave him books on approval; he was placed on the black list.

He took to abusing modern writers, contending that it was no wonder that the writing of books was left exclusively to good-for-nothing subjects of the Empire, for the whole nation was suffering from cerebral atrophy.

But his reasoning was of no avail; his business collapse was imminent; in a jiffy it was a hard reality. A man by the name of Rindskopf bought his stock and furnishings at brokers' prices, and the firm of Jason Philip Schimmelweis had ceased to exist.

In his distress Jason Philip appealed to the Liberal party. He boasted of his friendship with the former leader of the party, Baron von Auffenberg, but this only made matters worse: one renegade was depending upon the support of another. This was natural: birds of a feather flock together.

Then he went to the Masons, and began to feel around for their help; he tried to be made a member of one of the better lodges. He was given to understand that there was some doubt as to the loyalty of his convictions, with the result that the Masons would have none of him.

For some time he found actual difficulty in earning his daily bread. He had resigned his position with the Prudentia Insurance Company long ago.

Ever since a certain interpellation in the Reichstag and a long lawsuit in which the Prudentia became involved, and which was decided in favour of its opponents, the standing of the company had suffered irreparably.

Jason Philip had no other choice: he had to go back to bookbinding; he had to return to pasting, cutting, and folding. He returned in the evening of his life, downcast, impoverished, and embittered, to the position from which he had started as an ambitious, resourceful, stout-hearted, and self-a.s.sured man years ago. His eloquence had proved of no avail, his cunning had not helped him, nor his change of political conviction, nor his familiarity with the favourable turns of the market, nor his speculations. He had never believed that the order of things in the world about him was just and righteous, neither as a Socialist nor as a Liberal. And now he was convinced that it was impossible to write a motto on the basis of business principles that would be fit material for a copy book in a kindergarten.

Willibald was still the same efficient clerk. Markus had got a job in a furniture store, where he spent his leisure hours studying Volapuk, convinced as he was that all the nations of the earth would soon be using this great fraternal tongue.

Theresa moved into the house on the Corn Market with as much peace and placidity as if she had been antic.i.p.ating such a change for years. There was a bay window in the house, and by this she sat when her work in the kitchen was done, knitting socks for her sons. At times she would scratch her grey head with her knitting needle, at times she would reach over and take a sip of cold, unsugared coffee, a small pot of which she always kept by her side. Hers was the most depressed face then known to the human family; hers were the h.o.r.n.i.e.s.t, wrinkliest peasant hands that formed part of any citizen of the City of Nuremberg.

She thought without ceasing of all that nice money that had pa.s.sed through her hands during the two decades she had stood behind the counter of the establishment in the Plobenhof Street.

She tried to imagine where all the money had gone, who was using it now, and who was being tormented by it. For she was rid of it, and in the bottom of her heart she was glad that she no longer had it.

One day Jason Philip came rushing from his workshop into her room. He had a newspaper in his hand; his face was radiant with joy. "At last, my dear, at last! I have been avenged. Jason Philip Schimmelweis was after all a good prophet. Well, what do you say?" he continued, as Theresa looked at him without any noticeable display of curiosity, "what do you say? I'll bet you can't guess. No, you will never be able to guess what's happened; it's too much for a woman's brain." He mounted a chair, held the paper in his hand as if it were the flag of his country, waved it, and shouted: "Bismarck is done for! He's got to go. The Kaiser hates him! Now let come what may, I have not lived in vain."

Jason Philip had the feeling that it was due to his efforts that the reins of government had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the hands of the Iron Chancellor. His satisfaction found expression in blatancy and in actions that were thoroughly at odds with a man of his age. He held up his acquaintances on the street, and demanded that they offer him their congratulations. He went to his favourite cafe, and ordered a barrel of beer for the rejuvenation of his friends. He delivered an oration, spiced with all the forms of sarcasm known to the art of cheap politics and embellished with innumerable popular phrases, explaining why he regarded this as the happiest day of his eventful life.

He said: "If fate were to do me the favour of allowing me to stand face to face with this menace to public inst.i.tutions, this unscrupulous tyrant, I would not, believe me, mince matters in the slightest: I would tell him things no mortal man has thus far dared say to him."

Several months pa.s.sed by. Bismarck, then staying at his country place in Sachsenwald and quarrelling with his lot, decided to visit Munich. There was tremendous excitement in Nuremberg when it was learned that he would pa.s.s through the city at such and such an hour.

Everybody wanted to see him, young and old, aristocrats and humble folk.

Early in the morning the whole city seemed to be on its feet, making its way in dense crowds out through the King's Gate.

This was a drama in which Jason Philip had to play his part: without him it would be incomplete. "To look into the eyes of a tiger whose claws have been chopped off and whose teeth have been knocked out is a pleasure and a satisfaction that my mother's son dare not forego," said he.

His elbows stood him in good stead. When the train pulled into the station, our rebel was standing in the front row, having pushed his way through the seemingly impenetrable ma.s.s of humanity.

The train stopped for a few minutes. The Iron Chancellor left his carriage amid deafening hurrahs from the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude. He shook hands with the Mayor and a few high-ranking army officers.

Jason Philip never budged. It never occurred to him to shout his own hurrah. An acidulous smile played around his mouth, his white beard quivered when he dropped the corners of his lips in satanic glee. It never occurred to him to take off his hat, despite the threatening protests all too audible round about him. "I am consistent, my dear Bismarck, I am incorruptible," he thought to himself.

And yet-the satisfaction which we have described as satanic seemed somehow or other to be ill founded: it was in such marked contrast to the general enthusiasm. What had possessed this imbecile pack? Why was it raging? It saw the enemy, the hangman, right there before it, immune to the law, dressed in civilian clothes, and yet it was acting as though the Messiah had come to town on an extra train!

Jason Philip had the feeling that Bismarck was looking straight at him.

He fancied that the fearfully tall man with the unusually small head and the enormously blue eyes had taken offence at his silence. He feared some one had told him all about his political beliefs.

The scornful smile died away. Jason Philip detected a lukewarm impotency creeping over his body. The sweat of solicitude trickled down across his forehead. Involuntarily he kneed his way closer to the edge of the platform, threw out his chest, jerked his hat from his head, opened his mouth, and cried: "Hurrah!"

He cried hurrah. The Prince turned his face from him, and looked in another direction.

But Jason Philip had cried hurrah.

He sneaked home shaking with shame. He drew his slippers, "For the tired Man-Consolation," on his feet. They had become quite worn in the course of his tempestuous life. He lay down on the sofa with his face to the wall, his back to the window and against the world.

V

Daniel had been in Berlin for weeks. He had been living a lonely life on the east side of the gigantic city. One of the managers of Philander and Sons came to see him. He returned the call, and in the course of two hours he was surrounded, contrary to his own will, by a veritable swarm of composers, directors, virtuosos, and musical critics.

Some had heard of him; to them he appeared to be a remarkable man. They threw out their nets to catch him, but he slipped through the meshes.

Unprepared, however, as he was for their schemes, he could not help being caught in time. He had to give an account of himself, to unveil himself. He found himself under obligations, interested, and so forth, but in the end they could not prevail against him: he simply pa.s.sed through them.

They laughed at his dialect and his rudeness. What drew them to him was his self-respect; what annoyed them was his secretiveness; what they found odd about him was the fact that, try as they might to a.s.sociate with him, he would disappear entirely from them for months at a time.

A divorced young woman, a Jewess by the name of Regina Sussmann, fell in love with him. She recognised in Daniel an elemental nature. The more he avoided her the more persistent she became. At times it made him feel good to come once again into intimate a.s.sociation with a woman, to hear her bright voice, her step more delicate, her breathing more ardent than that of men. But he could not trust Regina Sussmann; she seemed to know too much. There was nothing of the plant-like about her, and without that characteristic any woman appealed to him as being unformed and uncultured.

One winter day she came to see him in his barren hall room in Greifswald Street. She sat down at the piano and began to improvise. At first it was all like a haze to him. Suddenly he was struck by her playing. What he heard made a half disagreeable, half painful impression on him. He seemed to be familiar with the piece. She was playing motifs from his quartette, his "Eleanore Quartette" as he had called it. It came out that Regina Sussmann had been present at the concert given in Leipzig three years ago when the quartette was performed.

After a painful pause Regina began to ask some questions that cut him to the very heart. She wanted to know what relation, if any, the composition bore to actual life. She was trying to lift the veil from his unknown fate. He thrust her from him. Then he felt sorry for her: he began to speak, with some hesitation, of his symphony. There was something bewitching, enchanting in the woman's pa.s.sionate silence and sympathy. He lost himself, forgot himself, disclosed his heart. He built up the work in words before her, pictured the seven movements like seven stairs in the tower of a temple, a glorious promenade in the upper spheres, a tragic storm with tragically cheerful pauses of memory and meditation, all accompanied by laughing genii that adorned and crowned the pillars of the structure of his dreams.

He went to the piano, began playing the melancholy leading motif and the two subsidiary themes, counterpointed them, ran into lofty crescendos, introduced variations, modulated and sang at the same time. The pupils of his eyes became distended until they shone behind his gla.s.ses like seas of green fire. Regina Sussmann fell on her knees by the piano. It may be that she was so affected by his playing that she could not act otherwise; and it may be that she wished thereby to give him visible proof of her respect and adoration. All of a sudden the woman became repulsive to him. The unleashed longing of her eyes filled him with disgust. Her kneeling position appealed to him as a gesture of mockery and ridicule: a memory had been desecrated. He sprang to his feet and rushed out of the room, leaving her behind and quite alone. He never said a word; he merely bit his lips in anger and left. When he came back home late that night, he was afraid he might meet her again; but she was not there. Only a letter lay on the table by the lamp.

She wrote that she had understood him; that she understood he had been living in the past as if in an impregnable fortress, surrounded by shadows that were not to be dispelled or disturbed by the presumption of any living human being. She remarked that she had neither intention nor desire to encroach upon his peace of mind, that she was merely concerned for his future, and was wondering how he would fight down his hunger of body and soul.

"Shameless wretch," cried Daniel, "a spy and a woman!"

She remarked, with almost perverse humility, that she had recognised his greatness, that he was the genius she had been waiting for, and that her one desire was to serve him. That is, she wished to serve him at a distance, seeing that he could not endure her presence. She implored him to grant her this poor privilege, not merely for his own sake, but for the sake of humanity as well.