Part 75

At the same time Gertrude rose up in her bed, and stared with eyes as if she were beholding, who knows whom? at the door. After she had stared for a long while, she got up, opened the door, went out into the hall without making the slightest noise, came back, went out again, came back again, and got in bed, left the door open, sat upright and gazed at the closed door across the hall behind which she knew Daniel and Eleanore were. Her hair hung down in two long braids on either side of her head. Her pale face in this frame of black hair above it and on both sides of it looked like a wax figure in an old black frame.

Of the pictures that were being formed in her mind and soul, there was not a single twitching of the muscles to indicate what they looked like.

For her the entire world lay behind that door. It seemed to her that she could no longer endure the knowledge she had of what was taking place. In her maddened imagination she saw women stealing through the halls of the house; in every corner there was a woman, and with every woman there was a man; they embraced each other, and sank their teeth into each other’s flesh. It was all as criminal as it was irrational; it was a shame and an abomination to behold. Everywhere she looked she saw reprehensible nudeness; all clothes seemed to be made of glass; she could look neither at a man nor at a woman without turning pale. She had only one refuge: the cradle of her child. She would rush to it and pray. But as soon as her prayer was ended she again felt stifled in the poisoned air about her, while the desire to acquit herself of the crime of which she felt guilty, unable though she was to define the crime or determine her part in it, robbed her of her sleep. She felt that a great jagged stone was suspended over her head, that it was becoming less and less firmly attached every day, and that its fall if not imminent was certain.

Hour after hour passed by; Daniel finally appeared in the vestibule. He was not a little terrified when he saw the burning lamp and Gertrude sitting up in bed.

He went into the bedroom, closed the door, walked up to the cradle, looked at the child, and then went over to Gertrude. She cast a glance of infinite inquiry at him. It was a look that seemed to implore him for a decision, a judgment. At the same time she put out her hands as if to ward off any approach on his part. When she saw that he was astonished, she softened the expression on her face, and said: “Give me your hand.”

She took his right hand, stroked it, and whispered: “Poor hand, poor hand.”

Daniel bit his lips: “Oh woman, what ...?” That was all.

He sat down in silence on the edge of her bed. Gertrude looked at him in the same tense, anxious way in which she had studied him a few moments earlier. He sank down beside her, and fell asleep with his head on her breast.

She kept on holding his hand. She looked into his pale, narrow face and at his angular brow, the skin of which could be seen to twitch every now and then under the loose flowing hair that hung over it. The oil in the lamp was getting low, the wick had begun to smell. She was afraid however to put it out lest she might waken Daniel. She looked on in silence as the light became dimmer and dimmer and finally went out, leaving only the red glow of the wick. This too died away in time, and it became dark.

XII

For some time Eleanore had noticed that the baker’s boy, instead of carefully putting the rolls in the sack each morning as had always been his custom, threw them through the lattice on to the ground.

The newspaper boy stopped speaking to her; the postman smiled scornfully; and even the beggar, at least she thought so, asked for his alms in a tone of impudence.

One day she was passing through Schmausen Street; a woman was leaning out of the window. Seeing Eleanore coming, she called back into the room, whereupon a young man and three half-grown girls rushed to the window, began making remarks to each other, and gaped at her with looks that made her turn deathly pale.

Another time Daniel brought her a free ticket to a concert. She went, and as soon as she reached the hall she was struck by the discourteous and indecent manner in which the bystanders looked at her. A well-dressed woman moved away from her. Some men kept walking around her, grinning at her. She found it intolerable, and went home.

Exercise in the open had often driven away the cares that chanced to be weighing upon her: she went skating. As soon as the people saw her, they began to whisper among themselves. She did not bother about them or their remarks; she cut her beautiful figures on the ice as if she were quite alone. A group of young girls pointed at her with their fingers. She went up to them with pride glistening in her eyes, and they all ran away. Those who had formerly paid homage to her avoided her now. Her soul rebelled within her; meeting with so much unexpected and cowardly vulgarity enflamed her sensibilities and ennobled her self-respect.

One day in December she crossed the Wine Market, and started to pass through a narrow street that led to the Halle Gate. Standing at the entrance to the alley were a number of men engaged in conversation. She recognised Alfons Diruf among them. She thought they would step to one side and let her pass, but not one of them moved. They gaped at her in unmitigated shamelessness. She could have turned about and taken another street, but that defiance on the part of those men made her insist upon her rights to go the way she had originally decided upon. Impressed, apparently, by the flaming blue of her eyes, the scoundrels at last condescended to shift their lazy frames to one side. They formed an espalier through which she had to walk. But worse than this were the lewd looks that she knew were following her, and the laughter that greeted her ears. It was the type of laughter ordinarily heard at night when one passes a low dive, in which the scum of human society has gathered to amuse itself by the telling of salacious stories.

She often had the feeling, particularly after dark, that some one was following her. Once she looked around, and a man was behind her. He wore a havelock; he turned quickly into a gate. A few days later she had a similar experience, but this time she was frightened worse than ever, for she thought it was Herr Carovius.

One evening as she was leaving the house she saw the same figure standing by the church on the other side of the street. As she hesitated and wondered whether she should go on, another person joined the first. She thought it was Philippina. The two began to talk, but Eleanore could not make out who they were; it was snowing, and there was no street lamp nearby.

She could not tell why, but she was suddenly seized with anxiety for Daniel; for him and for no one else. She felt that unless she went back something dreadful would happen to him. She rushed up the steps to the attic room, and knocked at his door; there was not a sound. She opened the door and went in, but everything was dark. In the darkness, however, standing out against the white background from the light of the snow, she saw his body. He was sitting at the piano; he had his arms on the lid, his head between his hands. Eleanore hastened up to him, and, with a tone of sweet sadness in what she said, threw her arms around his neck.

Daniel took her on his lap, pressed her head to his bosom, and laughed with open month and shining teeth but without making a sound. He often laughed that way now.

XIII

He laughed that way at the intrigues that were being forged against him by his bitterest enemy, Fräulein Varini, and which resulted in his meeting with distrust and opposition in everything he undertook at the City Theatre.

He laughed that way at the anonymous letters, filled with insulting remarks, which were being sent him by his fellow citizens, and which he read with naïve curiosity merely to see how far human nastiness and bestial hate could go.

He laughed that way when he received the letter from Baroness von Auffenberg informing him that she was forced to discontinue her lessons and recitals. She said that her constitution had been weakened, and that she was going to close her town house and spend the winter at her country place at Hersbruck. Daniel heard however that she spent a great deal of her time in town, and that she had arranged for an elaborate cycle of musicales, a thing she had never dared to do under his administration. Andreas Döderlein had been engaged as her musical adviser: now she could rave and go into ecstasies and hypnotise her impotent soul in the mephitic air of artificial aroma just as much as she pleased.

And he laughed that way at the weekly attacks upon him and his art that appeared in the Fränkischer Herold, copies of which were delivered at his front door with the regularity of the sun. The attacks consisted of sly, caustic sneers, secrets that had been ferreted out with dog-like keenness, gigantic broadsides based on hearsay evidence, and perfidious suspicions lodged against Daniel Nothafft, the artist, and Daniel Nothafft, the man.

The articles never failed to mention the Goose Man. Daniel asked to have the allusion explained. The Goose Man was elevated to the rank and dignity of an original humourist. “What is the latest concerning the Goose Man?” became a standing head-line. Or the reader’s eye would fall on the following notice: “The Goose Man is again attracting the attention of all friends of music. He has had the ingenious audacity to make the opera ‘Stradella’ more enjoyable by the interpolation of a funeral march of his own make. The ever-submissive domestic birds which he carries under his arms have rewarded him for his efforts in this connection by the cackling of their abundant and affectionate gratitude.”

The birthplace of these inimitable achievements in the field of journalistic wit was the reserved table at the Crocodile. If ever in the history of the world men have laughed real honest tears it was at the writing of such news bearing on the life and conduct of the Goose Man. The editor-in-chief, Weibezahl, was the recording secretary at these intellectual Olympiads, and Herr Carovius was the protagonist. He had access to reliable sources, as newspaper men say, and every evening he surprised the round table with new delicacies for Weibezahl’s columns.

Daniel was ignorant of what was going on. But the Goose Man, the expression as well as the figure, became interwoven with his thoughts, and acquired, somehow and somewhere in the course of time, a transfigured meaning.