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 facade 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.