Part 18

“I found so much there in Erfft,” said he, “so much human kindness that was new to me; I dislike the idea of seeing some ulterior motive back of it, or of putting one there myself. Do you understand now?” She nodded.

“But must is stronger than may,” he concluded, and went.

The Baroness became quite interested in his case. The position of second Kapellmeister at the City Theatre was vacant, and she tried to have Daniel appointed to it. She was promised that it would be given to him; but the usual intrigues were spun behind her back; and when she urged that the matter be settled immediately and in favour of her candidate, she was fed on dissembling consolation. She was quite surprised to be brought face to face with hostile opposition, which seemed to spring from every side as if by agreement against the young musician. Not a single one of his enemies, however, allowed themselves to be seen, and no one heard from by correspondence. It was the first time that she had come in conflict with the world in a business way; there was something touching in her indignation at the display of cowardly fraud.

Finally, after a long, and for her humiliating, interview with that chief of cosmopolitan brokers, Alexander Dörmaul, Daniel’s engagement for the coming spring was agreed upon.

In the meantime the Baroness took lessons from Daniel. She expressed a desire to familiarise herself with the standard piano compositions, and to be given a really practical introduction to their meaning and the right method of interpreting them.

It was long before she became accustomed to his cold and morose sternness. She had the feeling that he was pulling her out of a nice warm bath into a cold, cutting draught. She longed to return to her twilights, her ecstatic moods, her melancholy reveries.

Once he explained to her in a thoroughly matter-of-fact way the movement of a fugue. She dared to burst out with an exclamation of joy. He shut the piano with a bang, and said: “Adieu, Baroness.” He did not return until she had written him a letter asking him to do so.

“Ah, it is lost effort, a waste of time,” he thought, though he did not fail to appreciate the Baroness’s human dignity. The eight hours a month were a complete torture to him. And yet he found that twenty marks an hour was too much; he said so. The suspicion that she was giving him alms made him exceedingly disagreeable.

A servant became familiar with him. Daniel took him by the collar and shook him until he was blue in the face. He was as wiry as a jaguar, and much to be feared when angry. The Baroness had to discharge the servant.

Once the Baroness showed him an antique of glass work made of mountain crystal and beautifully painted. As he was looking at it in intense admiration, he let it fall; it broke into many pieces. He was as humiliated as a whipped school boy; the old Baroness had to use her choicest powers of persuasion to calm him. He then played the whole of Schumann’s “Carneval” for her, a piece of music of which she was passionately fond.

Every forenoon you could see him hastening across the bridge. He always walked rapidly; his coat tails flew. He always had the corners of his mouth drawn up and his lower lip clenched between his teeth. He was always looking at the ground; in the densest crowds he seemed to be alone. He bent the rim of his hat down so that it covered his forehead. His dangling arms resembled the stumpy wings of a penguin.

At times he would stop, stand all alone, and listen, so to speak, into space without seeing. When he did this, street boys would gather about him and grin. Once upon a time a little boy said to his mother: “Tell me, mother, who is that old, old manikin over there?”

This is the picture we must form of him at this time of his life, just before his years of real storm and stress: he is in a hurry; he seems so aloof, sullen, distant, and dry; he is whipped about the narrow circle of his everyday life by fancy and ambition; he is so young and yet so old. This is the light in which we must see him.

V

The apartment of Daniel and Gertrude had three rooms. Two opened on the street, and one, the bed room, faced a dark, gloomy court.

With very limited means, but with diligence and pleasure, Gertrude had done all in her power to make the apartment as comfortable as possible. Though the ceilings were low and the walls almost always damp, the rooms seemed after all quite home-like and attractive.

In Daniel’s study the piano was the chief object of furniture; it dominated the space. Fuchsias in the window gave a pleasing frame to the general picture of penury. His mother had given him the oil painting of his father. From its place above the sofa the stern countenance of Gottfried Nothafft looked down upon the son. It seemed at times that the face of the father turned toward the mask of Zingarella as if to ask who and what it was. The mask hung on the other side of the room from the oil painting; its unbroken smile was lost in the shadows.

Gertrude had to do all the household work; they could not afford a servant. In the years of Daniel’s absence, however, she had learned to copy notes. Herr Seelenfromm, assistant to the apothecary Pflaum, had taught her. He was a cousin of Frau Rübsam, and she had become acquainted with him through Eleanore. In his leisure hours he composed waltzes and marches, and dedicated them to the princes and princesses of the royal family. He also dedicated one to Gertrude. It was entitled “Feenzauber,” and was a gavotte.

When Daniel learned of her accomplishment, he was so astonished that he threw his hands above his head. The rare being looked up at him intoxicated with joy. “I will help you,” she said, and copied his notes for him.

When they walked along the streets she would close her eyes at times. A melody floated by her which she had never before been able to understand. As she bought her vegetables and tried to drive a bargain with the old market woman, her soul was full of song.

Certain tones and combinations of tones took on definite shapes in her mind. The bass B of the fourth octave appeared to her as a heavily veiled woman; the middle E resembled a young man who was stretching his arms. In chords, harmonies, and harmonic transformations these figures were set in motion, the motion depending on the character of the composition: a procession of mourning figures between clouds and stars; wild animals spurred on by the huntsmen who were riding them; maidens throwing flowers from the windows of a palace; men and women plunging into an abyss in one mass of despairing humanity; weeping men and laughing women, wrestlers and ball players, dancing couples and grape pickers. The pause appealed to her as a man who climbs naked from a deep subterranean shaft, carrying a burning torch in his hand; the trill seemed like a bird that anxiously flutters about its nest.

All of Daniel’s compositions came close to her heart; all his pictures were highly coloured; his figures seemed to be full of blood. If they remained dead and distant, her sympathy vanished; her face became tired and empty. Without having spoken a word with each other, Daniel would know that he was on the wrong track. But all this bound him to the young woman with hoops of steel; he came to regard her as the creature given him of God to act as his living conscience and infallible if mute judge.

He hated her when her feelings remained unmoved. If he at last came to see, after much introspection, that she was right, then he would have liked to fall down and worship the unknown power that was so inexorable in pointing him the way.

Spindler had a beautiful harp which he had bequeathed to Daniel in his will. It had remained in Ansbach in the possession of the old lady who kept house for him. Daniel had forgotten all about the harp. After his marriage he had it sent to him.

He kept it in the living room; Gertrude was fond of looking at it. It enticed her. One day she sat down and tried to draw tones from its strings. She touched the strings very gently, and was charmed with the melody that came from them. Gradually she learned the secret; she discovered the law. An innate talent made the instrument submissive to her; she was able to express on it all the longings and emotions she had experienced in her dark and lonely hours.

She generally played very softly; she never tried intricate melodies, for the harp was adapted to the expression of simple, dream-like harmonies. The tones were wafted out into the hall and up the stairs; they greeted Daniel as he entered the old house.

When he came into the room, Gertrude was sitting in a corner by the stove, the harp between her knees. She smiled mysteriously to herself; her hands, like strange beings loosed from her body, sought chords and melodies that were his, and which she was trying to translate to her own world of dreams.

VI

Her command of language was more defective now than ever. She was seized with painful astonishment when she noticed that in matters of daily intercourse Daniel’s mind was not able to penetrate the veil behind which she lived.

He said to himself: she is too heavy. He was dumbfounded at her conduct, and displeased with it.

“The gloomy house oppresses you,” he said in a tone of ill humour, when she smiled in her helpless way.

“Let us run a race,” he said to her one day as they were taking a walk through the country. An old tree in the distance that had been struck by lightning was to be their objective.

They ran as fast as their feet could carry them. At a distance of about ten metres from the tree, Gertrude collapsed. He carried her over to the meadow.

“How heavy you are,” he said.

“Too heavy for you?” she asked with wide-opened eyes. He shrugged his shoulders.

Then she slipped out of his embrace, sprang to her feet, and ran with remarkable swiftness a distance that was twice as long as the one he had staked off; she did not fall; she did not want to fall; she dared not.

Breathing heavily and pale as a corpse, she waited until he came up. But he had no tenderness for her now; he merely scolded. Arm in arm they walked on. Gertrude felt for his hand; he gave it to her, and she pressed it to her bosom.

Daniel was terrified as he looked into her face, and saw her thoughts written there as if in letters of fire: We belong to each other for time and eternity.

That was her confession of faith.

VII

She lay wide awake until late at night. She heard him go into the kitchen and get a drink of water and then return to his room. He had forbidden her to come to the door and ask whether he was not going to bed soon: she was not to do this, it made no difference how late it was.

Then he lay beside her, his head on his arm, and looked at her with eyes that had lost their earthly, temporal glow. Man, where are your eyes anyway, she would have liked to exclaim. And yet she knew where they were; she knew, too, that it is dangerous to disturb a somnambulist by calling to him.

One night he had found it impossible to do his work. He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared into the light of the lamp for an hour or so, hating himself. Gertrude saw how he raged at himself; how he really fed, nourished his lack of confidence in himself. But she could not say anything.

A publisher had returned one of his manuscripts with a courteous but depressing conventional rejection slip. Daniel spoke disparagingly of his talents; he had lost hope in his future; he was bitter at the world; he felt that he was condemned to a life of unceasing obscurity.

The only thing she could do was look at him; merely look at him.

He became tired of having her look at him; a fresh, vigorous remark would have served his purpose much better, he thought.

She measured her work and his not in terms of reward; she did not seek for connection of any kind between privation and hope; nor did she measure Daniel’s love in terms of tender expressions and embraces. She waited for him with much patience. In time her patience irritated him. “A little bit more activity and insistence would not hurt you,” he said one day, and thrust her timid, beseeching hands from him.

He saw himself cared for: He had a home, a person who prepared his meals, washed his clothes, and faithfully attended to his other household needs. He should have been grateful. He was, too, but he could not show it. He was grateful when he was alone, but in Gertrude’s presence his gratitude turned to defiance. If he was away from home, he thought with pleasure of his return; he pictured Gertrude’s joy at seeing him again. But when he was with her, he indulged in silent criticism, and wanted to have everything about her different.

The judge’s wife on the first floor complained that Gertrude did not speak to her. “Be kind to your neighbours,” he remarked with the air of a professional scold. The next Sunday they took a walk, on which they met the judge’s wife. Gertrude spoke to her: “Well, you don’t need to fall on her neck,” he mumbled. She thought for a long while of how she might speak to people without offending them and without annoying Daniel. She was embarrassed; she was afraid of Daniel’s criticism.

On such days she would put too much salt in the soup, everything went wrong, and in her diligent attempt to be punctual she lost much time. She was fearfully worried when he got up from the table and went to his room without saying a word. She would sit perfectly still and listen; she was frightened when he went to the piano to try a motif. When he again entered her room, she looked into his face with the tenseness of a soul in utter anguish. Then it suddenly came about that he would sit down by her side and caress her. He told her all about his life, his home, his father, his mother. If she could only have heard each of his words twice! If she could only have drunk in the expression in his eyes! They were filled with peace; his nervous hands lay in quiet on his knees when he spoke to her in this way on these subjects. His twitching, angular face, weather-beaten by the storms of life, took on an expression of sorrow that was most becoming to it.

When she had a headache or was tired, he expressed his anxiety for her in touching tones. He would go about the house on tiptoes, and close the doors with infinite care. If a dog barked on the street, he rushed to the window and looked out, enraged at the beast. When she retired, he would help her undress, and bring her whatever she needed.

It was also strange that he disliked the idea of leaving her alone. There was something child-like in his restlessness when he was at home and she was out. He pictured her surrounded by grievous dangers; he would have liked to lock her up and hold her a captive, so as to be sure that she was quite safe. This made her all the weaker and more dependent upon him, while he was like a man who presses what he has to his heart, plagued with the thought that by some mischance it might escape, and yet clings to it also lest he be disturbed by the thought of another more precious possession he loved long since and lost a while.

Once he came to Gertrude while she was playing the harp, threw his arms about her, looked into her face with a wild, gloomy expression, and stammered: “I love you, I love you, I do.” It was the first time he had spoken these eternal words. She grew pale, first from joy and then from fear; for there was more of hatred than of love in his voice.

VIII

He felt that association with congenial men would help him over many a dark hour. But when he set out to look for these men, the city became a desert and a waste place.

Herr Seelenfromm came to his house now and then. Daniel could not endure the timid man who admired him so profoundly, and who, in the bottom of his heart, had an equal amount of respect for Gertrude. The young architect who had been employed at the St. Sebaldus Church while it was being renovated, and who loved music, had won Daniel’s esteem. But he had a repulsive habit of smacking his tongue when he talked. Daniel and he discussed the habit, and parted the worst of enemies. His association with a certain Frenchman by the name of Rivière was of longer duration. Rivière was spending some time in the city, looking up material for a life of Caspar Hauser. He had made his acquaintance at the Baroness von Auffenberg’s, and taken a liking to him because he reminded him of Friedrich Benda.

M. Rivière loved to hear Daniel improvise on the piano. He knew so little German that he merely smiled at Daniel’s caustic remarks; and if he became violently enraged, M. Rivière merely stared at his mouth. He had a wart on his cheek, and wore a straw hat summer and winter. He cooked his own meals, for it was an obsession of his that people wanted to poison him because he was writing a life of Caspar Hauser.

When Herr Seelenfromm and M. Rivière came in of a Sunday evening, Daniel would reach for a volume of E. T. A. Hoffmann or Clemens Brentano, and read from them until he was hoarse. He tried in this way to find peace in a strange world; for he did not wish to weep at the sight of human beings who seemed perfectly at ease.

Gertrude looked at him, and put this question to herself: How is it that a man to whom music is life and the paradise of his heart can allow himself to be so enveloped in sorrow, so beclouded by gloom? She understood the smarting pains in which he composed; she had a vague idea of the labyrinthine complications of his inner fate; these she grasped. But her own soul was filled with joyless compassion; she wished with all her power to plant greater faith and more happiness in his heart.

She meditated on the best means of carrying on her spiritual campaign. It occurred to her that he had had more of both faith and happiness at the time he was going with Eleanore. She saw Eleanore now in a quite different light. She recalled that Eleanore was not merely her sister but the creator of her happiness. Nor was she unmindful of the fact that through the transformation of her being, love and enlightenment had arisen to take the place of her former suspicion and ignorance.

She ascribed to Eleanore all those powers in which she had formerly been lacking: general superiority and stimulating vigour; an ability to play that lent charm to drudgery and made the hard things of life easy; brightness in conversation and delicacy of touch. In her lonely broodings she came to the conclusion that Eleanore was the only one who could help her. She went straightway to her father’s house to find out why Eleanore so rarely came to see her.

“I don’t like to come; Daniel is so unkind to me,” said Eleanore.

Gertrude replied that he was unkind to everybody, including her herself, and that she must not pay any attention to this; for she knew full well that Daniel liked her—and perhaps he himself was offended because she never called.

Eleanore thought it all over, and from then on visited her sister more frequently. But if it did not look as though Daniel did everything in his power to avoid her, this much was certain: he never said a word to her more than human decency required, and was an expert at finding reasons why he had to leave the room when she was there. Eleanore was gainfully conscious of this; it hurt her.

IX

One morning Gertrude returned from the market, carrying a heavy basket full of things she had bought. As she came in the front door she heard Daniel playing. She noticed at once that he was not improvising; that he was playing a set piece, the tones of which were quite unfamiliar to her.

As she came up the steps, the basket no longer seemed like a burden. She went quietly into the living room and listened. Something drew her closer and closer to the piano. Daniel had not noticed that she had entered the room and sat down. He was wholly lost in what he was doing; he never took his rapt and wondering eyes from the music before him.

It was his draft of the “Harzreise im Winter.” For a year and a half, since the time he had composed it in Ansbach, he had never again thought of it; it had lain untouched. Suddenly the fire of creation had flamed up in him; he could once more bind the incoherent, and make what had been merely implied or indicated take definite shape.

He would play a movement again and again, trying to connect it with what went before or came after; he would take his pencil and write in a few notes here or there; then he would try it again, and smile to himself in a strange, confused, and yet enchanted way, when he saw that the motif was complete, perfect. Gertrude was drawn still closer to him. In her awe-struck admiration she crouched on the floor beside him. She would have liked to creep into the piano, and give her soul the opportunity it sought to express itself in the tones that came from the strings. When Daniel had finished, she pressed her head to his hips, and reached her hot hands up to him.

Daniel was terrified; for he recalled instantaneously another occasion on which another woman had done precisely the same thing. His eye involuntarily fell on the mask of Zingarella. He was not conscious of the connection; there was no visible bridge between the two incidents; Gertrude’s face was too unlike that of its momentary prototype. But with a feeling of awe he detected a mysterious liaison between then and now: he imagined he could hear a voice calling to him from the distant shores of yonder world.