Part 101

Philippina carried his luggage to the station. Her dress was literally smothered in garish, gaudy ribbons. The women in the market-place laughed on seeing her until they got a colic.

When Daniel took leave from her and boarded the train, she did not open her mouth; she wrinkled her forehead, rubbed the ends of her fingers against each other, stood perfectly quiet, and looked at the ground. Long after the train had left the station, she was still to be seen standing there in that unique position. A station official went up to her, and, with poorly concealed ridicule at the rare phenomenon, asked her what she was waiting for.

She turned her back on him, and started off. She came back by way of St. James’s Place, and talked for a quarter of an hour with her friend Frau Hadebusch. It was Sunday. Benjamin Dorn was just coming home from church. Seeing Philippina, he made a profound bow.

Frau Hadebusch slapped Philippina on the hip, and smiled at her knowingly.

Herr Francke was no longer living at Frau Hadebusch’s: he was in jail. He had promised to marry the cook of a certain distinguished family; but instead of hastening the coming of the happy day, he had gambled away the savings of his bride-to-be.

Daniel had a letter of introduction to the Prior of the Monastery at Löhriedt. He was looking for a manuscript that was supposed to have been written by a contemporary of Orlando di Lasso, if not by Di Lasso himself.

He remained for over two months, working at his collection. He found his association with the monks quite agreeable, and they liked him. One of them, who held him in especially high regard because of his ability as an organist, gave him to understand that it was a matter of unaffected regret to him that he could not greet him, Protestant that he was, with the confidence that a man of his singular distinction deserved.

“So! I wish I were a Jew,” said Daniel to him, “then you would have a really unqualified opportunity to see what God can do without your assistance.”

The monk in question was called Father Leonhard; he was a short, wiry fellow with black eyes and a dark complexion. He seemed to have had a great deal of experience with the world, and to have no little cause for contrition and repentance: there was nothing conventional about his religious practices; they were, on the contrary, of almost redundant fervour and renunciation. Daniel was impressed by the man’s faith, though his soul shuddered when in his presence: he regarded him as an enemy, a Philistine, and preferred not to look at him at all.

He lived close by the monastery in the house of a railroad official. Father Leonhard came in to visit him once. Daniel was sitting by the window busily engaged in making some corrections. The Father looked about the room: his eyes fell on a round, wooden box lying on a chair; it looked like a cake box.

“The people at home have sent you something to nibble at,” remarked the Father, as Daniel got up.

Daniel riveted his eyes on the monk, took the box, hesitated for a while, and then opened it. In it, carefully packed in sawdust, was the mask of Zingarella. It was a part of Daniel’s meagre luggage; wherever he went it followed him.

Father Leonhard sprang back terrified. “What does that mean?” he asked.

“It means sin and purification,” said Daniel, holding the mask up in the light of the setting sun. “It means grief and redemption, despair and mercy, love and death, chaos and form.”

From that day on, Father Leonhard never said another word to Daniel Nothafft. And whenever the strange musician chanced to play the organ, the monk arose as quickly as possible, left the church, and sought out some place where the tones could not reach him.

III

That summer Daniel came to Aix-la-Chapelle and the region of Liége, Louvain, and Malines. From there he wandered on foot to Ghent and Bruges.

In places where he had to make investigations, he was obliged to depend upon the letters he received from his publisher to make himself understood. Condemned to silence, he lived very much alone; he was a stranger in a strange land.

He had no interest in sights. It was rare that he looked at old paintings. The beautiful never caused him to stop unless it actually blocked his way. He went about as if in between two walls. He followed his nose, turned around only with the greatest reluctance, and never felt tired until he was ready to lie down to sleep.

And even when he was tired the feeling that he was being robbed of something gnawed at his soul; he was restless even when he slept. Haste coloured his eye, fashioned his step, and moulded his deeds. He ate his meals in haste, wrote his letters in haste, and talked in haste.

It pained him to feel that men were looking at him. Although he invariably sought out the most deserted corner of whatever inn he chanced to stop at, and thereby avoided becoming, so far as he might, the target of the curious, he was nevertheless gaped at, watched, and studied wherever he went. For everything about him was conspicuous: the energy of his gestures, the agility of his mimicry, the way he showed his teeth, and the nervous, hacking step with which he moved through groups of gossiping people.

He had anticipated with rare pleasure the sight of the sea. He was prepared to behold the monstrous, titanic, seething, and surging element, the tempest of the Apocalypse. He was disappointed by the peaceful rise and fall of the tide, the harmless rolling back and forth of the waves. He concluded that it were better for one not to become acquainted with things that had inspired one’s fancy with reverential awe.

He could quarrel with nature just as he could quarrel with men. The phases of nature which he regarded as her imperfections excited his anger. He was fond, however, of a certain spot in the forest; or he liked a tree in the plain, or sunset along the canal.

He liked best of all the narrow streets of the cities, when the gentle murmurings of song wafted forth from the open windows, or when the light from the lamp shone forth from the windows after they had been closed. He loved to pass by courts and cellars, gates and fences; when the face of an old man, or that of a young girl, came suddenly to view, when workmen went home from the factories, or soldiers from the barracks, or seamen from the harbours, he saw a story in each of them; he felt as one feels on reading an exciting book.

One day when he was in Cleve he walked the streets at night all alone. He noticed a man and a woman and five children, all poorly dressed, standing near a church. Lying before them on the pavement were several bundles containing their earthly possessions. A man came up after a while and addressed them in a stern, domineering tone; they picked up their bundles and followed him: it was a mournful procession. They were emigrants; the man had told them about their ship.

Daniel felt as if a cord in his soul had been made taut and were vibrating without making a sound. The steps of the eight people, as they died away in the distance, developed gradually into a rhythmical, musical movement. What had been confused became ordered; what had been dark shone forth in light. Weighed down with heaviness of soul, he went on, his eyes fixed on the ground as if he were looking for something. He no longer saw, nor could he hear. Nor did he know what time it was.

After a year and a half of congealed torpidity, the March wind once more began to blow in his soul.

But it was like a disease; he was being consumed with impatience. His immediate goal was the cloister of Œsede at Osnabrück, and from there he wanted to go to Berlin. He could not bear to sit in the railway carriages: in Wesel he placed his trunk on a freight train, and went from there on foot, his top-coat hung over his arm, his knapsack strapped across his back. Despite the inclement weather he walked from eight to ten hours every day. It was towards the end of October, the mornings and evenings were chilly, the roads were muddy, the inns were wretched. This did not deter him from going on: he walked and walked, sought and sought, often until late at night, passionately absorbed in himself.