The Goose Man Part 7

Within he found a young man whom the caster addressed most respectfully as Dr. Benda, and who was about thirty years old. Dr. Benda was being shown a number of successful casts of a figure ent.i.tled "The Fountain of Virtue." It was quite a little while before the caster turned to Daniel and asked him what he wanted. In a somewhat rude voice and with an unsteady gesture, Daniel made it clear to him that he wished to buy the mask. The caster removed it from the door, laid it on the counter, and named his price. He looked at the shabby clothing of the newly arrived customer, concluded at once that the price, ten marks, would be more than he could afford, and turned again to Dr. Benda, so that Daniel might have time to make up his mind.

The two conversed for quite a while. When the caster finally turned around, he was not a little surprised to see that Daniel was still standing at the counter. He stood there in fact with half closed eyes, his left hand lying on the face of the mask. The caster exchanged a somewhat dazed glance with Dr. Benda, who, in a moment of forewarning sympathy, grasped the situation perfectly in which the stranger found himself. Dr. Benda somehow understood, owing to his instinct for appreciation of unusual predicaments, the man's poverty, his isolation, and even the ardour of his wish. Subduing as well as he might the feeling of ordinary reserve, he stepped up to Daniel, and said to him calmly, quietly, seriously, and without the slightest trace of condescension: "If you will permit me to advance you the money for the mask, you will do me a substantial favor."

Daniel gritted his teeth-just a little. His face turned to a greenish hue. But the face of his would-be friend, schooled in affairs of the spirit, showed a winning trace of human kindness. It conquered Daniel; it made him gentle. He submitted. Dr. Benda laid the money for the mask on the counter, and Daniel was as silent as the tomb.

When they left the shop, Daniel held the mask under his arm so tightly that the paper wrapping was crushed, if the mask itself was not. The sad state of his clothing and his haggard appearance in general struck Dr.

Benda at once and forcibly. He needed to ask but a few well chosen questions to get at the underlying cause of this misery, physical and spiritual, in human form. He pretended that he had not lunched and invited Daniel to be his guest at the inn at the sign of the Grape.

Daniel felt that his soul had suddenly been unlocked by a magic key. At last-he had ears and could hear, eyes and could see. It seemed to him that he had come up to earth from out of some lightless, subterranean cavern. And when they separated he had a friend.

THE NERO OF TO-DAY

I

The spectacle of wellnigh complete degeneracy offered by the roister-doistering slough brethren of the Vale of Tears gave Herr Carovius a new lease on life. He had a really affable tendency to a.s.sociate with men who were standing just on the brink of human existence. He always drank a great deal of liqueur. The brand he preferred above all others was what is known as Knickebein. Once he had enjoyed his liberal potion, he became jovial, friendly, companionable.

In these moods he would venture the hardiest of a.s.sertions, not merely in the field of eroticism, but against the government and divine providence as well.

And yet, when he trippled home with mincing steps, there was in his face an expression of cowardly, petty smirking. It was the sign of his inner return to virtuous living; for his night was not as his day. The one belied the other.

He had a quite respectable income; the house in which he lived was his own private property. It was pointed out to strangers as one of the sights of the town; it was certainly one of the oldest and gloomiest buildings in that part of the country. An especially attractive feature of it was the smart and graceful bay-window. Above the beautifully arched outer door there was a patrician coat-of-arms, consisting of two crossed spears with a helmet above. This was chiselled into the stone.

In the narrow court was a draw-well literally set in a frame of moss.

Each floor of the house had its own gallery, richly supplied with the most artistic of carvings. The stairway was s.p.a.cious; the tread of the steps was broad, the elevation slight; there were four landings. It symbolised in truth the leisurely, comfortable tarrying of centuries gone before and now a matter of easy memory only.

Often in the nighttime, Herr Carovius recognised in the distance the ma.s.sive figure of his brother-in-law, Andreas Doderlein, the professor of music. Not wis.h.i.+ng to meet him, Herr Carovius would stand at the street corner, until the light from Doderlein's study a.s.sured him that the professor was at home. On other occasions he would come in contact with the occupant of the second floor, Dr. Friedrich Benda. When these two came together, there was invariably a compet.i.tive tipping of hats and pa.s.sing of compliments. Each wished to outdo the other in matters of courtesy. Neither was willing to take precedence over the other. The polished civility of the young man made an even greater degree of pretty behaviour on the part of Herr Carovius imperative, with the result that his excessive refinement of manners made him appear awkward, while his embarra.s.sment made coherent speech difficult and at times impossible.

When however he came alone, he would take the huge key from his pocket, unlock the door, light a candle, hold it high above his head, and spy into every nook and cranny of the barn-like hall before entering his apartment on the ground floor.

II

Herr Carovius was a regular customer at the Crocodile Inn; a table was always reserved for him. Around it there a.s.sembled every noon the following companions: Solicitor of the Treasury Korn, a.s.sistant magistrate Hesselberger, a.s.sistant postmaster Kitzler, apothecary Pflaum, jeweller Grundlich, and baker Degen. Judge Kleinlein also joined them occasionally as a guest of honour.

They gossiped about their neighbours, their acquaintances, their friends, and their colleagues. What they said ran the whole gamut of human emotions from an innocent anecdote up to venomous calumny. Not a single event was immune from malicious backstairs comment. Reputations were sullied without discrimination; objections were taken to the conduct of every living soul; every family was shown to have its skeleton in the closet.

When the luncheon was finished, the men all withdrew and went about their business, with the exception of Herr Carovius. He remained to read the papers. For him it was one of the most important hours of the day.

Having feasted his ears with friends in private, he now turned to a study of the follies, transgressions, and tragedies that make up everyday life.

He read three papers every day: one was a local sheet, one a great Berlin daily, and the third a paper published in Hamburg. He never deviated; it was these three, week in and week out. And he read them from beginning to end; politics, special articles, and advertis.e.m.e.nts were of equal concern to him. In this way he familiarised himself with the advance of civilisation, the changes civic life was undergoing, and the general status of the aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and proletariat.

Nothing escaped him. He was as much interested in the murder of a peasant in a Pommeranian village as he was in the loss of a pearl necklace on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris. He read with equal concentration of the sinking of a steamer in the South Sea and the wedding of a member of the Royal Family in Westminster Abbey. He could work up just as much enthusiasm over the latest fas.h.i.+ons as he could over the ma.s.sacring of enslaved Armenians by the Turks. If he read with care and reflection of the death of a leading citizen, he pursued the same course with regard to the reprehending of a relatively harmless vagabond.

It is only fair to remark, however, that his real sympathy was with those events that have to be entered on the calamitous side of life's ledger. This was due to a bizarre kink in his philosophy: he studied the world primarily from the point of view of its wars, earthquakes, floods, hailstorms, cyclones, and public and private tragedies in the lives of men. Happy and rea.s.suring events, such as the birth of a healthy child, the conferring of an order of distinction, heroic deeds, the winning of a prize in the lottery, the publication of a good book, or the announcement of a legitimate and successful speculation made no impression on him. At times they even annoyed him. He kept his mind, in other words, riveted on the evils, sorrows, woes, and tribulations that come to pa.s.s either on this earth or in the starry firmament above, and that were somehow brought to his attention.

His brain was a storehouse of fearful and ferocious happenings; it was a catalogue, an inventory of disease, seduction, theft, robbery, larceny, a.s.sa.s.sination, murder, catastrophe, pest, incest, suicide, duel, bankruptcy, and the never failing family quarrel.

If he chanced to enrich his collection by the addition of some especially curious or unheard-of incident, he took out his pocket diary, noted the date, and then wrote: "In Amberg a preacher had a hemorrhage while delivering his morning sermon." Or: "In Cochin China a tiger killed and ate fourteen children, and then, forcing its way into the bungalow of a settler, bit off the head of a woman as she was sleeping peacefully by the side of her husband." Or: "In Copenhagen a former actress, now ninety years old, mounted a huge vegetable basket on the market place, and recited Lady Macbeth's monologue. Her unconventional behaviour attracted such a large crowd of pa.s.sersby that several people were crushed to death in the excitement."

This done, he would go home, happy as a man can be. To idlers standing in the doorways or servants looking out the windows he would extend the greetings of the day, and that with really conspicuous cordiality.

If a fire broke out in the city, he was present. As his eyes peered into the flames, they seemed intoxicated, obsessed, seized with uncanniness.

He would hum a tune of some sort, look into the anxious faces of those immediately concerned, busy himself with whatever had been salvaged, and attempt to force his gratuitous advice on the fire chief.

If a prominent citizen died, he never failed to attend the funeral, and, where possible, to join the procession on the way to the cemetery. He would stand by the grave with bowed head, and take in every word of the funeral discourse. But his lips twitched in a peculiar fas.h.i.+on, as if he felt that he were understood, and flattered.

And in truth all this did flatter him. The defeat, distress, and death of other people, the betrayals that take place in any community, the highhanded injustice of those in power, the oppression of the poor, the violence that was done to right and righteousness, and the sufferings which had to be borne by thousands day after day, all this flattered him; it interested him; it lulled him into a comfortable feeling of personal security.

But then he sat down at his piano at home, and played an adagio of Beethoven or an impromptu by Schubert, his eyes with fine frenzy rolling in the meantime. And when the mighty chorus in a Bach oratorio resounded, he became pale with ecstasy. At the hearing of a good song well sung he could shed copious tears.

He idolised music.

He was a provincial with unfettered instincts. He was an agitator with a tendency to conservatism. He was a Nero without servants, without power, and without land. He was a musician from despair and out of vanity. He was a Nero in our own day.

He was the Nero of our day living in three rooms. He was a lonely bachelor and a bookworm. He exchanged his views with the corner grocer; he discussed city ordinances with the night watchman; he was a tyrant through and through and a hangman at heart; he indulged in eavesdropping at the shrine of fate, and in this way concocted the most improbable of combinations and wanton deeds of violence; he was constantly on the lookout for misfortune, litigation, and shame; he rejoiced at every failure, and was delighted with oppression, whether at home or abroad. He hung with unqualified joy on the imagined ruins of imaginary disaster, and took equal pleasure in the actual debacles of life as it was lived about him. And alongside of this innate and at times unexpressed gruesomeness and bloodthirstiness, he was filled with a torturing pa.s.sion for music. This was Herr Carovius. Such was his life.

III

For nine long years, that is, from the time she was fifteen until she was twenty-four, his sister Marguerite kept house for him. She got his breakfast, made his bed, darned his socks, and brushed his clothes; and all he knew about her was that she had yellowish hair, a skin full of freckles, and a timid, child-like voice. His astonishment was consequently unbounded when Andreas Doderlein called one day and proposed to her. He had moved into the house the year before. Herr Carovius was amazed for the very simple reason that he had never known Marguerite except as a fourteen-year-old girl.

He took her to task. With unusual effort she summoned the courage to tell him that she was going to marry Doderlein. "You are a shameless prost.i.tute," he said, though he did not dare to show Andreas Doderlein the door. The wedding took place.

One evening he was sitting in the company of the young couple. Andreas Doderlein, being in an unusually happy mood, went to the piano, and began playing the shepherd's motif from Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde."

Herr Carovius sprang to his feet as if stung by a viper, and exclaimed: "Stop playing that foul magic! You know as well as you are living that I don't believe in it."

"What do you mean, brother?" asked Andreas Doderlein, his head bowed in grief.

"What are you trying to do? Are you trying to teach me something about this poisoner of wells?" shouted Herr Carovius, and his face took on the enraged expression of a hunchback who has just been taunted about his deformity. "Does the professor imagine that he knows better than I do who this Richard Wagner is, this comedian, this Jew who goes about masked as the Germanic Messiah, this cacaphonist, this bungler, botcher, and bully, this court sycophant, this Pulchinello who pokes fun at the whole German Empire and the rest of Europe led about by the nose, this Richard Wagner? Very well, if you have anything to teach me about him, go on! Proceed! I am listening. Go on! Pluck up your courage." With this he leaned back in his chair, and laughed a laughter punctuated with asthmatic sighs, his hands in the meantime resting folded across his stomach.

Andreas Doderlein rose to his full stature, see-sawed a bit on the tips of his toes, and looked down on Herr Carovius as one might look down upon a flea that one had caught and was just in the act of crus.h.i.+ng between two finger nails. "Oh, ho," he said, "how interesting! Upon my word, brother Carovius, you are an interesting individual. But if some one were to offer me all the money in the world, I should not like to be so ... interesting. Not I. And you, Marguerite, would you like to be so interesting?"

There was something distinctly annihilating in this air of superiority.

It had its full effect on Herr Carovius: his unleashed laughter was immediately converted into a gurgling t.i.tter. He opened his eyes wide and rolled them behind his nose-gla.s.ses, thus making himself look like a water-spitting figure on a civic fountain. Marguerite, however, timid as she was, never saying a word without making herself smaller by hiding her hands, glanced in helpless fas.h.i.+on from her brother to her husband, and dropped her head before them.

Was the feeling of Herr Carovius for Andreas Doderlein one of hatred? It was hatred and more. It was a feeling of venomous embitterment with which he thought of him, his name, his wife, his child, the thick, bulky wedding ring on his finger, and the gelatinous ma.s.s of flesh on his neck. From that evening on he never again visited his sister. If Marguerite got up enough courage to visit him, he treated her with crabbed contempt. She finally came to the point where she would pa.s.s his door with not a thought of entering it.

When the first child was born and the maid brought him the glad tidings, he squinted into the corner, t.i.ttered, and made bold to say: "Well, my congratulations. It is good that the Doderleins are not to become extinct, for so long as one of them is living, _plaisir_ will not have vanished from the earth."

Little Dorothea formed in time the habit of playing on the steps or around the old windla.s.s well in the backyard. Herr Carovius procured forthwith a mean dog and named him Caesar. Caesar was tied to a chain, to be sure, but his snarls, his growls, his vicious teeth were hardly calculated to inspire the child with a love for the place near him. She soon stopped playing at home.

Four years had elapsed since the Carovius-Doderlein wedding. Herr Carovius was celebrating his birthday. Marguerite called with Dorothea.

The child recited a poem which she had learned by heart for her uncle's benefit. Carovius shook with laughter when he saw the girl dressed up like a doll and realised that the recital was imminent. Dorothea had of course the enunciation of one of her age. When through, Herr Carovius said: "Honestly, it would never have occurred to me that such a little toad could croak so beautifully."

Though the man knew so little about women that it would be perilous to attempt to measure his ignorance of them, he nevertheless felt, as he looked into Marguerite's radiant face, a certain disappointment in life-a disappointment which he would try at once to benumb but which delighted him.