The Goose Man Part 9

It was impossible for him to forget her gentle look or the coyness of her hands. He knew her fate; he knew her soul. But he was condemned to silence. To withdraw from contact with the world and into the deepest of loneliness had been her lot; it had also been his. At present it was possible to get only one picture of her, the one her brother had given: she sat in her cell and combed her yellow hair.

He held no one responsible; he blamed no one. He merely regretted that men are as they are.

A former university friend of his came in, and tried to get him interested in collaborating on a great scientific work. He declined. As soon as his colleague of other days had gone, he visualised to himself the entire conversation: The man was affable and insistent; and yet there was in his very being an underground, enigmatic hostility. It was the hostility he invariably felt whenever he had anything to do, either of a purely external, business nature or in a social way, with men of other faith. The least he had to fear was a prejudiced inimicality, as if the individual in question were on the point of calling out to him: You stay on that side, I'll stay on this. Keep off the bridge.

He was fully aware of this, but his pride forbade his fighting against it. He renounced his natural right to life and a living. He declined the university conceded privilege of co-existence. To go out and actually win for himself the right to partic.i.p.ate in the inevitable contest of forces, or to secure even this poor privilege by supplication, or to defend it by argument, or to cajole it into his possession by political wiles, seemed to him contrary to reason and at odds with common sense.

He would not do it.

He refused to knock at the door which he himself had bolted and barricaded.

From this self-imposed embarra.s.sment he suffered to an almost intolerable degree. It was the irrational and fraudulent phase of matters that made him suffer. Did men act as they did because they were so strong in their faith? Not at all. Did he believe in those racial differences which made them believe? Not at all. He felt at home on the soil that nourished him; he felt under obligations to the weal and woe of his people; he was bound heart and soul to the best of them, and realised that he had been spiritually developed by their language, ideas, and ideals.

Everything else was a lie. They knew that it was a lie too, but out of his pride they forged a weapon and turned it against him. To deny his relationship to them, a relationship that had been proved by his achievements and enthusiasm, was a part of their plan; it was also a part of their evil designs.

To strike up acquaintances, seek out congenial companions, or take an active part in social organisations was repulsive to him. He did not care to be dragged into fruitless and empty community of effort or social co-operation. Defiant and alone, he explained his case to himself. Since it merely intensified his agony to compare his lot with that of others who seemed to be similarly situated, he did not do it. He avoided in truth all reflections that might have made the world appear to him as having at least a semblance of justice.

He was consequently filled with a longing which took more definite shape day by day, and finally developed into a positive and irrevocable decision.

About this time he made the acquaintance of Daniel, and through him he came to know other people. He saw at once that there was something unusual about Daniel; that there was something in him which he had never before noticed in any one. Even his outer distress was a challenge to greater activity, while his inner agitation never permitted his a.s.sociates to rest in idle peace.

It was not easy to be of a.s.sistance to him; he rejected all gifts which he could not repay. He had to be convinced first of his duty and indebtedness to the friend whom fate had made cross his path. And even then he stood out for the privilege of being theoretically ungrateful.

Benda and his mother succeeded in getting him a position as a tutor in some private families. He had to give piano lessons to young boys and girls. The compensation was not great, but it at least helped him out for the time being.

After the day's work was done, the evenings and nights bound the two more and more firmly together.

VII

One evening Daniel entered the house and met Herr Carovius. But he was so absorbed in thought that he pa.s.sed by without noticing him. Carovius looked at him angrily, and walked back to the hall to see where the young man was going. When he heard him ring the bell on the second floor, an uneasy expression came over his face. He rubbed his chin with his left hand.

"The idea of pa.s.sing by me as though I were a block of wood," murmured Carovius spitefully. "Just wait, young man, I'll make you pay for that."

Instead of leaving the house as he had wished, Carovius went into his apartment, lighted a candle, and tripped hastily through three rooms, in which there were old cabinets and trunks filled with books and music scores. There was also a piano in one. He then took a key from his pocket, and unlocked a fourth room, which had closed shades and was in fact otherwise quite oddly arranged.

He went to a table which reached almost the full length of the room, picked up a piece of white paper, sat down, and wrote with red ink: "Daniel Nothafft. Musician. Two months in jail."

He then covered the paper with mucilage, pasted it on a wooden box which looked like a miniature sentry-house, and nailed a lid on the box, using tacks that were lying ready for this purpose.

There were at least five dozen such boxes on the long table, the majority of which had names attached to them and had been nailed up.

The closed room Herr Carovius called his court chamber. What he did in it he termed the regulation of his affairs with humanity, and the collection of little wooden cells he called his jail. Every individual who had offended, hurt, humiliated, or defrauded him was a.s.signed such a keep in which he was obliged to languish, figuratively, until his time, determined by a formal sentence, was up.

Nor was this all. In the middle section of the table there were a number of diminutive sand heaps, about thirty in all, and on each one was a small wooden cross and on each cross was a name. That was Herr Carovius's cemetery, and those who were figuratively buried there were, so far as he was concerned, dead, even though they were still going about their earthly affairs as lively and cheerful as ever. They were people whose mundane careers were finished, as he saw it, and under each of their accounts, reckoned exclusively in sins, he had drawn a heavy line. They were such people as Richard Wagner and his champions, the local stationer to whom he had advanced some money years ago and who entered a plea of bankruptcy a few months later, the authors of bad books that were widely read, or of books which he loathed without having read them, as, for instance, those of Zola.

There were still a third noteworthy section of the table, and that was the so-called Academy. This consisted of a plot of ground, surrounded by an iron fence, and divided up into twelve or fifteen square fields, each of which was painted in fresh green. In the middle of each field there was a wooden peg about two inches high, and to the middle of each peg there was attached a name-plate. From the tops of some of these pegs little banners of green cloth fluttered in the breeze.

The fact is, Herr Carovius had a weakness for a.s.sociation with aristocrats. In his heart of hearts he admired the manners of the aristocracy, their indifference and self-complacency, their irrefragable traditions and their noiseless and harmonious behaviour. To the pegs of the Academy he had affixed the names of some of the best families he had known; among others, those of the Tuchers, the Hallers, the Humbsers, the Kramer-Kleets, and the Auffenbergs. Whenever he had succeeded in making the personal acquaintance of the members of any of these families, he went straightway to the Academy and hoisted the appropriate flag.

But, despite all his effort, he had never in the course of time been able to run up more than three flags, and these only for a brief period and without any marked success. Some one had recognised him on the street or spoken to him at the concert, and that was all. The Academy looked, in contradistinction to the jail and the cemetery, quite deserted. Finally he was able to hoist the Auffenberg banner. Herr Carovius felt that the Academy had a great future.

VIII

Kropotkin the painter had once upon a time received an order to make a copy of a Holbein for Baron Siegmund von Auffenberg. He never finished the picture, owing to lack of ability; but he had become acquainted with Baron Eberhard, and years later, having met him quite accidentally, took him to the Paradise, where the infamous brethren were then in the habit of gathering.

Eberhard's appearance at the Paradise was short-lived; he disappeared in fact as quickly as he had appeared. But this brief s.p.a.ce was sufficient for Herr Carovius to become intimately acquainted with him.

The first time he sat at the same table with him he was noticeably excited. His face shone with a mild spiritual glow. His voice was sweet and gentle, his remarks of an unusually agreeable moderation.

He turned the conversation to a discussion of the superiorities of birth, and lauded the distinction of the hereditary cla.s.ses. He said it was from them only that the people could acquire civic virtue. The brethren scorned his point of view. Herr Carovius came back at them with an annihilating jest.

During the rendition of this hallelujah-solo in praise of the n.o.bility, Eberhard von Auffenberg intrenched himself behind a sullen silence. And though Carovius used every available opportunity from then on to flatter the young n.o.bleman in his cunning, crafty way, he failed. The most he could do was to inspire Eberhard to lift his thrush-bearded chin in the air and make some sarcastic remark. Fawn as he might, Carovius was stumped at every turn.

One night, however, the two enjoyed each other's company on the way home. That is, Carovius never left Eberhard's side. Annoyed at the failure of his former tactics, he thought he would try his luck in another way: he ridiculed the arrogance of a certain caste which affected to attach less importance to a man like himself than to some jackanapes whose handkerchief was adorned with an embroidered crown.

"What are you, any way, what is your vocation?" asked Eberhard von Auffenberg.

"I don't do anything," replied Carovius.

"Nothing at all? That is quite agreeable."

"Oh, I do work a little at music," added Herr Carovius, entirely pleased at the curiosity of the Baron.

"Now, you see, that is after all something," said the Baron. "I for my part am as unmusical as a shot-gun. And if you do not do anything but interest yourself in music, you must have a great deal of money."

Herr Carovius turned away. The positive dread of being taken for a rich man wrestled with the vain desire to make the young Baron feel that he really was somebody. "I have a little," he remarked with a t.i.tter, "a little."

"Very well; if you will loan me ten thousand marks, it will give me great pleasure to make you a present of the crown on my handkerchief,"

said Eberhard von Auffenberg.

Herr Carovius stopped stock still, and opened his mouth and his eyes: "Baron, you are taking the liberty of jesting with me." But when Eberhard indicated that he was quite serious, Carovius continued, blank amazement forcing his voice to its highest pitch: "But my dear Sir, your father has an income of half a million. A mere income! The tax receipts show it."

"Well, I am not talking about my father," said Eberhard coldly, and once more threw his chin in the air. "It is evidently a part of your heraldic prejudices to feel that you can coax the income of my father into my own pockets."

They were standing under a gas lamp at the Haller Gate. It was dripping rain, and they had raised their umbrellas. It was perfectly still; it was also late. Not a human being was to be seen anywhere. Carovius looked at the seriously offended young man, the young man looked at Carovius, then grinning a grin of embarra.s.sment, and neither knew how to take the other.

"You are surprised," said Eberhard, resuming the conversation. "You are surprised, and I don't blame you. I am a discontented guest in my own skin; that much I can a.s.sure you. I am as abortive a creature as ever was born. I inherited far too much that is superfluous, and not nearly enough of the necessities. There are all manner of mysteries about me; but they are on the outside. Within there is nothing but stale, dead air."

He stared at the ground as though he were talking to himself, and as though he had forgotten that any one was listening, and continued: "Have you ever seen old knights carved in stone in old churches? If you have, you have seen me. I feel as if I were the father of my father, and as if he had had me buried alive, and an evil spirit had turned me to stone, and my hands were lying crossed over my breast and could not move. I grew up with a sister, and I see her as though it were yesterday"-at this point his face took on an expression of fantastic senility-"walking through the hall, proud, dainty, innocent, with roses in her hand. She is married to a captain of cavalry, a fellow who treats his men like Negro slaves, and who never returns the greeting of a civilian unless he is drunk. She had to marry him. I could not prevent it. Somebody forced her into it. And if she is carrying roses now, it is as if a corpse were singing songs."

Herr Carovius felt most uneasy. He was not accustomed to hearing things like this. Where he lived people called a spade a spade. He p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and made a wry face. "It is the way he has been trained that makes him talk like that," he thought; "it is the result of constantly sitting on gold-embroidered chairs and seeing nothing about him but paintings."

"I am going to sit on such chairs too," he was happy to think, "and I shall see the paintings, too." He pictured himself between the Baron and the Baroness, marching up to the portals of the castle, flanked on either side by a row of liveried servants, the nervous ma.s.ses catching sight of the splendour as well as they might. The rear of this procession was being brought up by the young Baron, who had returned home as the penitent Prodigal Son.

"One must have a feeling of personal security," remarked Carovius. He wondered whether the Baron had reached his majority. Eberhard replied that he had just completed his twenty-first year, and that certain things had made him feel that it would be wise to live independent of his family and to renounce his claims to all family rights for the time being. What he really had in mind was the desire to avoid, so far as humanly possible, a.s.sociation with all professional money-lenders.

Herr Carovius felt that this was an extremely serious case. He claimed moreover to understand it perfectly and to be ready for anything, but insisted that nothing must be withheld, that he must be given undiluted wine. He made this remark just as if he were holding a gla.s.s of old Johannisberger out in the rain, sniffing as he did with appreciative nostrils.