Schwalbe, the sculptor, was attending a funeral. His nephew had died,
and was being buried in the same cemetery.
As he passed by the morgue he caught sight of the body of a girl. After
the child had been buried he went back to the morgue. A few people were
standing near the body, one of whom said, "She was a singer down at the
Academy."
Schwalbe was struck by the pure and beautiful expression on the girl's
face. He studied it long and with no little emotion. Then he went to the
superintendent, and asked if he might take a death mask. The permission
was given him, and in a few hours he returned with the necessary
implements.
When he removed the mask from the face, he held something truly
wonderful in his hands. It showed the features of a sixteen-year-old
girl, a face full at once of sweetness and melancholy, and, most
charming of all, an angelic smile on the curved lips of this mouth of
sorrow. It resembled the work of a renowned artist, so much so that the
sculptor was suddenly seized with a burning desire to regain his lost
art.
He was nevertheless obliged within a week to sell the mask to the caster
by whom he was employed in Pfannenschmied Street. Schwalbe needed ready
money. The caster hung the mask by the door at the entrance to his shop.
X
At the end of December Daniel found himself with not a cent of cash, so
that he was obliged to sell his sole remaining treasure, the score of
the Bach mass in B-minor. Spindler had presented it to him when he left,
and now he had to take it to the second-hand dealer and part with it for
a mere pittance.
Unless he cared to lie in bed the whole day, he was obliged to walk the
streets in order to keep warm. His poverty made it out of the question
for him to go to any of the cafes, and so he was excluded from
association with the brethren of the Vale of Tears. He had moreover
taken a violent dislike to them.
One evening he was standing out in front of the Church of AEgydius,
listening to the organ that some one was playing. The icy wind blew
through his thin clothing. When the concert was over he went down to the
square, and leaned up against the wall of one of the houses. He was
tremendously lonesome; he was lonely beyond words.
Just then two men came along who wished to enter the very house against
the wall of which he leaned. He was cold. One of these men was Benjamin
Dorn, the other was Jordan. Benjamin Dorn spoke to him; Jordan stood by
in silence, apparently quite appreciative of the condition in which the
young man found himself, as he stood there in the cold and made
unfriendly replies to the questions that were put to him. Jordan invited
Daniel up to his room. Daniel, chilled to the very marrow of his bones,
and able to visualise nothing but a warm stove, accepted the invitation.
Thus Daniel came in contact with Jordan's family. He had three children:
Gertrude, aged nineteen, Eleanore, aged sixteen, and Benno, fifteen
years old and still a student at the _gymnasium_. His wife was dead.
Gertrude was said to be a pietist. She went to church every day, and had
an inclination toward the Catholic religion, a fact which gave Jordan,
as an inveterate Protestant, no little worry. During the day she looked
after the house; but as soon as she had everything in order, she would
take her place by the quilting frame and work on crowns of thorns,
hearts run through with swords, and languishing angels for a mission.
There she would sit, hour after hour, with bowed head and knit.
The first time Daniel saw her she had on a Nile green dress, fastened
about her hips with a girdle of scales, while her wavy brown hair hung
loose over her shoulders. It was in this make-up that he always saw her
when he thought of her years after: Nile green dress, bowed head,
sitting at the quilting frame, and quite unaware of his presence, a
picture of unamiability, conscious or affected.
Eleanore was entirely different. She was like a lamp carried through a
dark room.
For some time she had been employed in the offices of the Prudentia, for
she wished to make her own living. So far as it was humanly possible to
determine from her casual remarks, she thoroughly enjoyed her work. She
liked to make out receipts for premiums, lick stamps, copy letters, and
see so many people come in and go out. Stout old Diruf and lanky Zittel
did everything they could to keep her interested, and if, despite their
efforts, it was seen that a morose mood was invading her otherwise
cheerful disposition, they took her out to the merry-go-round, and in a
short time her wonted buoyancy had returned.
She seemed like a child, and yet she was every inch a woman. She
insisted on wearing her little felt cap at a jaunty angle on her blond
hair. When she entered the room, the atmosphere in it underwent a
change; it was easier to breathe; it was fresher. People somehow
disapproved of the fact that her eyes were so radiantly blue, and that
her two rows of perfect white teeth were constantly shining from out
between her soft, peach-like lips. They said she was light-hearted; they
said she was a butterfly. Benjamin Dorn was of the opinion that she was
a creature possessed of the devil of sensuality and finding her
completest satisfaction in earthly finery and frippery. For some time
there had been an affair of an intimate nature between her and Baron von
Auffenberg. Just what it was no one knew precisely; the facts were not
obtainable. But Benjamin Dorn, experienced ferreter that he was, could
not see two people of different sexes together without imagining that he
was an accomplice in the hereditary sin of human kind. And one day he
caught Eleanore alone in the company of Baron von Auffenberg. From that
day on she was, in his estimation, a lost soul.
The fact concerning Eleanore was this: life never came very close to
her. It comes right up to other people, strangles them, or drags them
along with it. It kept its distance from Eleanore, for she lived in a
glass case. If she had sorrow of any kind, if some painfully
indeterminable sensation was gnawing at her soul, if the vulgarity and
banality of a base and disjointed world came her way, the glass case in
which she lived simply became more spacious than ever, and the things
or thoughts that swarmed around it more and more incomprehensible.
One can always laugh if one lives in a glass 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.