The Goose Man. Jakob Wassermann

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СКАЧАТЬ case. Even bad dreams remain on the outside. Even longing becomes nothing more than a purple breath which clouds the crystal from without, not from within.

      The people were quite right in saying that Jordan was bringing up his daughters like princesses. Both were far removed from the customary things of life: the one was translated to the realm of darkness, the other to that of light.

      Daniel saw both of them. They were just as strange to him as he to them. He saw the brother, too, a tall, glib, dapper youth. He saw the old house with its dilapidated stairs, its rooms filled with cumbersome, provincial furniture. He saw the alternating currents of life in this family: there was now rest, now unrest, now quiet, now storm. Life flowed out from the house, and then life, the same or of a different origin, flowed back in again. When he came, he talked with Jordan himself rather than with any one else; for he always knew when Jordan would be at home. They spoke in a free and easy fashion and about things in general. If their conversation could be characterised more fully, it might be said that Daniel was reserved and Jordan tactful. Gertrude sat by the table and attended to her needlework.

      Daniel came and warmed himself by the stove. If he was offered a sandwich or a cup of coffee he declined. If the offer was made with noticeable insistency, he shook his head and distorted the features of his face until he resembled an irritated ape. It was the peasant spirit of defiance in him that made him act this way. He nourished a measure of small-minded anxiety lest he be indebted to somebody for something. To temptations, yielding to which would have been spiritually mortifying, he was impervious. When, consequently, his need became overpowering, he simply stayed away.

XI

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      His want grew into a purple sheen. To him there was an element of the ridiculous in the whole situation: it was 1882 and he had nothing to eat; he was twenty-three years old and quite without food.

      Frau Hadebusch, virago that she could be when a dubious debtor failed to fulfil his obligations, stormed her way up the steps. The rent was long overdue, and uncanny councils were being held in the living room, in which an invalid from the Wasp’s Nest and a soap-maker from Kamerarius Street were taking part.

      In his despair, Daniel thought of entering the army. He reported at the barracks, was examined—and rejected because of a hollow chest.

      At first there was the purple sheen. He saw it as he stood on the hangman’s bridge and looked down into the water where pieces of ice were drifting about. But when he raised his distressed face a gigantic countenance became visible. The great vaulted arch of heaven was a countenance fearfully distorted by vengeance and scorn. Of escape from it there could be no thought. Within his soul everything became wrapped in darkness. Tones and pictures ran together, giving the disagreeably inarticulate impression that would be made by drawing a wet rag across a fresh, well-ordered creation.

      As he walked on, it seemed to him that the horror of the vision was diminishing. The countenance became smaller and more amiable. It was now not much larger than the façade of a church and what wrath remained seemed to be concentrated in the forehead. An old woman passed by, carrying apples in her apron. He trembled at the smell of them; but he did not reach out; he did not try to take a single one of them from her; he still held himself in control. By this time the entire vision was not much larger than the top of a tree, and in it were the traces of mercy.

      The sun was high in the heavens, the snow was melting, birds were chirping everywhere. As he sauntered along with uncertain steps through Pfannenschmied Street he suddenly stopped as if rooted to the pavement. There was the vision: he caught sight of it in bodily form on the door jamb of the shop. He could not see that it was the mask of Zingarella. Of course not, for it was a transfigured face, and how could he have grasped a reality in his present state of mind? He looked from within out. The thing before him was a vision; it joined high heaven with the earth below; it was a promise. He could have thrown himself down on the street and wept, for it seemed to him that he was saved.

      The incomparable resignation and friendly grief in the expression of the mask, the sanctity under the long eyelashes, the half extinguished smile playing around the mouth of sorrow, the element of ghostliness, a being far removed from death and equally far removed from life—all this caused his feeling to swell into one of credulous devotion. His entire future seemed to depend upon coming into possession of the mask. Without a moment’s hesitation or consideration he rushed into the shop.

      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 entitled “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

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I

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      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 associate 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 СКАЧАТЬ