Part 49

“If I only could, Friedrich, if I only could! If my tongue would only move! Or if there were some one who felt with me and could speak for me!”

“Try it; the first word is often like a spark and starts a flame.”

Daniel was silent. The intruder said deliberatively: “That goes deep down to the recesses of the heart and up high to the things that are immortal.”

Daniel looked over at him sharply, and saw that it was the Goose Man.

II

All effort to get Daniel to talk was in vain. Along toward midnight, Benda took leave of him. Agnes unlocked the door for him; he said to her: “Look after him; he has no one else now.”

Daniel lay on the sofa with his hands crossed behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. His eyes were hot; at times he trembled and shook.

“It isn’t very sociable here,” said the Goose Man, “the air is full of tobacco smoke, and there is a draft coming in from that dark room.”

Daniel got up, closed the door, and lay down again.

The metallic exterior of the Goose Man seemed to become flexible, somewhat as when a frozen body thaws out. “You have gone through a great deal,” he continued thoughtfully. “That any one who wishes to create must also experience is clear. Experience is his mother’s milk, his realm of roots; it is where the saps flow together, from which his forms and figures are developed. But there is experience and experience, and between the two there is a world of difference.”

“Superfluous profundity,” murmured Daniel, plainly annoyed. “To live is to have experience.” He took council with himself in the attempt to devise a means by which he might get rid of the importunate chatterer.

The Goose Man again struck up his gentle laugh. He replied: “Many live, and yet do not live; suffer, and yet do not suffer. In what does guilt lie? What does it consist of? In not feeling; in not doing. The first thing for some men to do is to eradicate completely the false notions they have of what constitutes greatness. For what is greatness after all? It is nothing in the world but the fulfilment of an unending circle of petty duties, small obligations.”

“There is a fundamental difference between the creator and all other men,” remarked Daniel, at once excited and troubled by the conversation and the turn it was taking.

“Do you appeal to, depend on, refer to music in this present case?” asked the Goose Man, his good-natured look becoming more or less disdainful.

“In music every creation is more closely related to an unconditional exterior than is true of anything else that man gives to man,” answered Daniel. “The musical genius stands nearer God than any other genius.”

The Goose Man nodded. “But his fall begins one step from God’s throne, and is a high and deep one. Do you know what you are? And do you really know what you are not?”

Daniel pressed his hand to his heart: “Have you ever known me to fight for evanescent laurels? Have I ever tried to feed the human race, which is a race of minors, on surrogates? Have I ever imitated the flights of Heaven with St. Vitus dance, confusing the one with the other? Have I not always acted in accord with the best, the inmost knowledge I had, and in obedience to my conscience? Was I ever a liar?”

“No, no, no!” cried the Goose Man, by way of appeasing Daniel’s unrest. He took off his cap, and laid it on his knee. “You were always sincere. There can be no doubt about it, your heart was always in your profession. All life has streamed into your soul, and you have lived in the ivory tower. Your soul was well protected, well protected from the very beginning. It was in a position similar to that created by a swimmer who rubs his body with grease before plunging into the water. You have suffered; the poison of the Nessus shirt you have worn has burned your skin, and the pain you have thereby suffered has been transformed into sweet sounds. So they all are, the creators, invulnerable and inaccessible. That is the way you picture them to yourself. Is it not true? Monsters who take up the cross of the world, and yet, grief-laden though they be, grow beyond their own fate. Such is your lot; and so do you look to-day in your forty-second year.”

Daniel was not prepared for this tone of bitterness; he turned his face to the corner where the Goose Man was sitting. “I do not understand you,” he said slowly. The pitiable crying of little Gottfried could be heard from the room opening out on the court, and then Agnes’s quieting lullaby.

“If you only had not lived in the ivory tower!” cried the Goose Man. “If you only had been more sensitive and not so well protected! If you had only lived, lived, lived, really and truly, and near to life, like a naked man in a thicket of thorns! Life would have got the best of you, but your love would have been real, the hate you have experienced real, your misfortunes real, the lies, ridicule, and betrayal all real, and the shadows of those who have died from you would have taken on reality. And the poison of the Nessus shirt would not merely have burned your skin; it would have penetrated to your very blood, it would have found its way to the deepest, most secret recesses of your heart. Your work would have been carried on and out, not in a struggle against your darkness and your limited torments of soul, a slave before men and unblessed of God. Eliminate from your mind now, forever and completely, the delusion that you have borne the sufferings of the world! You have merely borne your own sufferings, loving-loveless, altruistic-egoist, monster, man without a country that you are!”

“Who are you? What are you trying to say?” asked Daniel, automatically, falteringly, with pale lips.

“Oh, don’t you see who I am? I am the Goose Man,” came the reply, spoken with a loyal and devoted bow. “The Goose Man, lonesome there behind the iron fence, lonesome there on the water at the fountain, and yet situated in the middle of the Market. An insignificant being, tangible and intelligible to every one who passes by, though a certain degree of monumentality has been ascribed to me in all these years. But I pay no attention to this ascription of greatness; I laugh at it. I give the Market, where the people come and haggle over the price of potatoes and apples, a certain degree of dignity. That is all. They see me as I stand there, always upright, under the open sky; and despite my distinguished position, they have all come to look upon me as a cousin. For a time they gave me a nickname: they called me by your name. But they had no right to do this; none at all, it seems to me. I have looked out for my geese; no one can say a thing against me.”

The Goose Man laughed a quiet, inoffensive laugh; and when Daniel turned his face to the corner, the chair was empty, the strange guest had vanished.

III

But he came back. And when Daniel’s mind and body were both completely broken down and he was obliged to remain in bed, his visits became regular. He sat next to Benda, for Benda had taken to calling on Daniel now every day and staying with him until late at night. But Daniel grew quieter and quieter. Sometimes he would make no reply at all to Benda’s remarks or questions.

The Goose Man came in behind Dr. Dingolfinger and stood on tiptoes, as curious as curious could be, and looked over his arm when he wrote out his prescriptions. The Goose Man was a little fellow: he hardly reached up to the doctor’s hips.

He hopped around Agnes when she cooked the soup and expressed his sympathy for her; she looked so pale. Though only thirteen years old, there was the worried look of a mature woman in her face; she would cast her eyes around the room as if trying to catch a glance of human love in the eyes of another person; her looks were timid and stealthy. “Some one should be caring for her too,” said the Goose Man, shaking his head, “some one should be making a good, warm soup for her.”

Though it would be unfair to say that the Goose Man was offensively concerned, he seemed to be interested in everything that was going on in the house. When the officials of the fire department came to cross-question Daniel about the fire, he became angry and gruff, and did not wish to let them in. “Give the poor man some rest, some peace, after all these years of suffering,” he implored, “give him time to collect himself and to meditate on what has taken place.” And in fact the members of the fire department left as soon as possible; they did not stay long.

The Goose Man was always in a cheerful humour, always ready for a good joke. At times he would whistle softly, and smooth out the wrinkles in his doublet. There was a certain amount of rustic shyness about him, but his affability, his good manners, and his child-like cheerfulness removed any unpleasant impression this rusticity might otherwise have made. He generally spoke the dialect of Nuremberg, though when with Daniel he never spoke anything but the most correct and chosen High German. His natural, acquired culture and the wealth of his vocabulary were really amazing.

Ten times a day at least he would scamper into the room where little Gottfried was sleeping and express his admiration for the pretty child. “How you are to be envied to have such a living creature crawling and sprawling around in your home!” he said to Daniel. And in course of time Daniel actually came to have a new affection for the child.

As soon as the Goose Man felt perfectly at home in Daniel’s house, he took to bringing his two geese along with him. He would place them very circumspectly in a corner of the room. One evening he was sitting playing with them, when the bell rang. Andreas Döderlein stormed in, and demanded that some one tell him where his daughter was.

“Upon my word and honour! An old acquaintance of mine!” said the Goose Man, laughing and blinking. “I see him nowadays in the café much more frequently than is good for his health.”

“I must urgently request you to control yourself,” said Benda, turning to Andreas Döderlein, and pointed to the bed in which Daniel was lying.

“My daughter is not a bad woman. Let people overburdened with credulity believe that she is bad,” cried Döderlein, with the expression and in the tone and gesture of the royal Lear, and shook his Olympian locks. “The fact is that violence has been practised on her; she has been driven into ruin! Men have stolen the sweet love of my dearly beloved daughter through the use of vile tricks and artifices. Where is she, the unfortunate, betrayed child? With what is she clothing her nakedness, and how is she finding food and shelter—shelter in a world of wicked men?”

A strange thing happened: the Goose Man took the gigantic arm of the Olympian, put his mouth to his beefy ear, and, with a sad and reproachful look on his face, whispered something to him. Döderlein turned red and then pale, looked down at the floor, and went away with heavy, rumbling step but silent lips. The Goose Man folded his arms across his breast, and looked at Döderlein thoughtfully.

“He is said to have taken to drinking,” remarked Benda, “is said to be living a wild, dissipated life. It seems incredible to me. The Döderleins are generally content to stroll in lust along the banks of the slimy sea of vice and let other people fall in. The Döderleins are born in false ermine, and they die in false ermine.”

“And yet he is a human being,” said the Goose Man, so that only Daniel could hear him.

Daniel sighed.

IV

It was late at night. Daniel could not sleep. The Goose Man crouched at his feet on the edge of the bed, and looked at him as one looks at a dear brother who is suffering intense pain.

“I cannot deny that it is difficult for you to continue your life,” said the Goose Man, trying to subdue his bright voice. “When we sum up your situation, we see day following day, night following night, and nothing happening that can be a cause for rejoicing. Everything has been cut off; the threads have all been broken; the foundation on which you built has been completely annihilated. You are like the mother of many children who loses them all, all of them, on a single day by one terrible stroke. The labour of years remains unrewarded; your work has been in vain; in vain the blood your heart has poured out, the deprivations you have submitted to; your whole past is like a bad, disordered dream. Oh, I understand full well; I appreciate your situation. It seems hard, very hard, to go on and not to despair.”

Daniel covered his face with his hands and moaned.

“Have you ever asked yourself how the hand of murder came to strike you? Ah, this Philippina! This daughter of Jason Philip! I am almost four hundred years old, but such a person I have never seen or known. But look back over your past! Do it just once! Open your eyes; they are pure now and capable of beholding. Have you not suffered the Devil to live by your side, to take part in your life? And were you not at the same time impatient with the angels who spread their wings about you as my geese spread theirs about me? The Devil has grown fat from you. The vampire has battened on you, has fed on your blood. All this comes about when one is unwilling to give, when one merely takes and takes and takes. That makes the Devil fat; the vampire becomes greedier with each passing sun. Ah, so many good genii have fled from you! Many you have frightened away, you, bewitched, you, enchanted! Well, what now? What next? Hell has claimed its full booty; Heaven can now open again to your new-born heart.”

“There is no Heaven,” groaned Daniel, “there is nothing but blackness and darkness.”

“You still breathe, your heart is still beating, you still have five fingers on each hand,” replied the Goose Man quietly. “He who has paid his debts is a free man: you have paid yours.”

“I am my own debt, my own guilt. If I continue to live, I will sin again. Were I to live over the past, back into the past, I would contract the same debts.”

“But there is such a thing as a transformation, and through it one receives absolution. Turn away from your phantom and become a human being—and then you can become a creator. If you once become human, really human, it may be that you will not need the work, symphony or whatever else you choose to call it. It may be that power and glory will radiate from you yourself. For are not all works merely the round-about ways, the detours of the man himself, merely man’s imperfect attempts to reveal himself? Did you not love a mask of plaster more than the countenances that shone upon you, the faces that wept about you? Did you not allow another mask, a thing of the mirror, to get control over you, and so to besmirch your soul and strike your spirit with paralysis? How can a man be a creator if he deceives, stunts, and abbreviates the humanity that is in him? It is not a question of ability, Daniel Nothafft, it is a question of being, living, being.”

Daniel tossed his head back and forth on his pillow, writhing in agony. “Stop!” he gulped, “stop, stop!”

The Goose Man bent over him, and crouched up nearer to his body like an animal trying to get warm. “Come out of the convulsion,” something cried and exhorted within him, “break your chains! Your music can give men nothing so long as you yourself are held captive. Feel their distress! Have pity on their unplumbed loneliness! Behold mankind! Behold it!”

“There is so much,” replied Daniel in extreme torture, “a hundred thousand faces bewilder me, a hundred thousand pictures hem me in. I cannot differentiate; I must flee, flee!”

There was something inimitably tender, reassuring, and resigned in what the Goose Man then said: “I speak to you as Christ: Rise and walk! Rise and go in peace, Daniel! Go with me to my place. Be _me_ for just one day, from morning to evening, and _I_ will be _you_.”

Daniel got up, and before he was conscious of what he was doing, he had put on his clothes and was out on the street with the Goose Man. They crossed the market place, and Daniel, in a crepuscular state of mind, climbed up, with the help of the Goose Man, and took his place on the base of the fountain behind the iron railing. The two geese he took under his arms. He stood perfectly still, rigid, just like the Goose Man, and waited in anticipation of the things that were to come.

V

But nothing extraordinary happened. Everything that took place was quite prosaic and obviously a matter of custom.

The sun rose, and the market women took the cords and covers from their baskets. Fresh cherries, young pears, and winter apples shone in all their brilliancy of colour and lent variety to the drab square. Sparrows picked in the straw that lay on the street. The sun rose higher; its early red gave way to a midday blue. Clouds drifted over the roof of the church. The women gossiped. Wagons rattled by, errand boys called to each other, curtains were drawn from the windows, and men and women looked out to see what the weather was going to be like. There were sleepy faces and anxious faces, good faces and bad faces, young and old.

Maids and humbler housewives came to make their purchases. They examined the fruit with seasoned care and experienced hand, and bargained for lower prices. The peasant women praised what they had, and if their praise was ineffectual, they became abusive. Once a sale had been made, they would take their balances, put the weights in one pan and the fruit in another, and never cease praising what they were selling until they had the money safe in their pockets. Then they would count over the coins they had received, and looked at them as if to say: “It is fine to earn money!”

But those who paid out the money bore the mien of painful care and solicitude. They seemed to be counting it all up in their heads; to be taking lessons in mental arithmetic. They would think over how much it were wise or permissible for them to spend. The thing that impressed Daniel most of all, and the longer he stood there the clearer it became to him, was this: Each purchaser went right up to the very edge of the territory staked out for her, so to speak, by some mysterious master. This they felt was correct, certain though they were that to have gone beyond the allotted limit would have brought swift and irremediable ruin. The money was paid out with such studied caution, and taken in with such a sense of victory! There was something touching about it all. This daily life of these small people seemed so strange, so very strange, and at the same time so in accord with established order: it seemed indeed to be a practical visualisation of the sanctity of the law.

In all the transactions due respect was paid to the formalities of life, and nothing was veiled. There was fulness, but no confusion; many words, but no misunderstanding. There were the wares and there were the coins. The scales showed how much was being given and how much taken. The fruit wandered from basket to basket, and human arms carried it home. Each bought as much as could be paid for; there was no thought of going beyond one’s means.

The clock in the tower struck on the hour, and the shadows moved in a circle about the objects on the square. So it was to-day; and so it had been four hundred years ago.

Four hundred years ago the houses stood there just as they stood to-day, and people, men and women, looked out of the windows, some with kindly, some with embittered faces.

Is that not Theresa Schimmelweis creeping around the corner? How old, decrepit, and bent with years! Her hair is stone grey, her face is like lime. She is poorly dressed; she does not notice the people she meets. She sees nothing but the full baskets of fruit; for them she has a greedy eye. And she looks at Daniel behind the iron fence with an expression of painful astonishment.

And is that not Frau Hadebusch hobbling along over there! Though her face is that of a crafty criminal, in her eyes there is a panicky, terrified look. She has no support other than the ground beneath her feet; she is a poor, lost soul.

There comes Alfons Diruf, who retired years ago. He has become stout and gloomy. He is out for his morning walk along the city moat. There goes the actor, Edmund Hahn, seeking whom he may devour. Disease and lust are writ large across his jaded face. There is the sculptor, Schwalbe. He is secretly buying a few apples to take home to roast, for otherwise he has nothing warm to eat. And there is Herr Carovius, ambling along. He looks like a wandering spirit, dejected and exhausted.

Beggars pass by, and so do the rich. There are respected people who are greeted by those who see them; there are outcasts who are shunned. There are those who are happy and those who are weighed down with grief. Some hasten and some hesitate. Some seem to hold fast to their lives as a lover might hold fast to his fiancée; others will die that same day. One has a child by the hand, another a woman by the arm. Some drag crimes in their hearts, others walk upright, free, happy to face the world. One is being summoned to court as a witness, the other is on his way to the doctor. One is fleeing from domestic discord, another is rejoicing over some great good fortune. There is the man who has lost his purse and the man who is reading a serious letter. One is on his way to church to pray, another to the café to drown his sorrows. One is radiant with joy over the business outlook, another is crushed with poverty. A beautiful girl has on her best dress; a cripple lies in the gateway. There is a boy who sings a song, and a matron whose eyes are red with weeping. The baker carries his bread by, the cobbler his boots. Soldiers are going to the barracks, workmen are returning from the factory.