Three evenings of the week were devoted to opera, the others to drama.
The first Kapellmeister was a middle-aged man whose curly hair made him
the idol of all flappers. He was lazy, uncultivated, and his name was
Lebrecht.
The director was an old stager who referred to the public about as a
disrespectful footman refers to his lord. At Daniel's suggestions for
improving the repertory, he generally shrugged his shoulders. The operas
in which he had the greatest confidence as drawing cards were "The
Beggar Student," "Fra Diavolo," "L'Africaine," and "Robert le Diable."
The singers and the orchestra were not much better than those of the
lamented Doermaul-Wurzelmann troupe. The possibility of arousing them to
intensified effort or filling them with a semblance of intelligent
enthusiasm for art was even less. Privileges based on length of service
and the familiar traditions of indolence made aesthetic innovations
unthinkable.
Wherever careworn Philistines and slothful materialists occupy the seats
from which art should raise her voice, advancement, progress born of
sacrificial application, is out of the question: the most it is
reasonable to expect is a bourgeois fulfilment of inescapable duties. In
such, cases the flower droops; the dream vanishes; the free-born spirit
has the choice of fighting day in and day out against the collective
demons of pettiness and mediocrity, or of going down in admitted defeat.
"Stuff the people can easily digest, my dear boy, that is the idea,"
said the director.
"What are you so excited about? Don't you know these people haven't a
musical muscle in their whole soul?" said Lebrecht.
"For nine consecutive years I have been singing F sharp at this opera
house, and now here comes a _musicien_ from the backwoods and demands
all of a sudden that I sing F!" This was the commentary of Fraeulein
Varini, the prima donna whose outstanding bosom had long been a source
of human merriment to pit, stall, and gallery.
"Ah, he is a greasy grind determined to arrive," said the first
violinist.
"He's a spit-fire," said the lad who beat the big drum, when Daniel
threatened to box his ears for a false intonation.
The Baroness had secured a publisher in Leipzig for his cycle of sixteen
songs; the compositions were to be brought out at her expense. That did
not have the right effect: it was not something, Daniel felt, that he
had fought for and won; it was not a case where merit had made rejection
impossible. He had the feeling that he was selling his soul and was
being paid to do it. Moreover, and worst of all, he had to express his
gratitude for this act. The Baroness loved to have somebody thank her
for what she had done. She never once suspected that what Daniel wanted
was not benefactors, but people who were stirred to the depths of their
souls by his creations. The rich cannot sense the feelings of the poor;
the higher classes remain out of contact with the lower.
His excitability saved him. In his magnificent solicitude for the
mission that is at once the token and the curse of those who are really
called, he shut himself off from a world from which the one thing he
wanted was bread; bread and nothing else.
After the publication of the songs a review appeared in the _Phoenix_
which had a remarkably realistic ring to the ear of the layman. As a
matter of fact it was merely an underhanded attempt at assassination.
The thing was signed with a big, isolated "W." Wurzelmann, the little
slave, had shot from his ambush.
Other musical journals copied this review. A half dozen people bought
the songs; then they were forgotten.
It was no use to hope. The trouble was, he needed bread, just bread.
V
It was often difficult for him to find the peace and quiet necessary for
effective work. May brought cold weather; they had to make a fire; the
stove smoked; the potter came in and removed the tiles; the room looked
like an inferno.
Gertrude was pounding sugar: "Don't be angry at me, Daniel; I must pound
the sugar to-day." And she pounded away until the hammer penetrated the
paralysed brain of the listener by force of circumstances.
The hinges of the door screeched. "You ought to oil them, Gertrude."
Gertrude looked high and low for the oil can, and when she finally found
it, she had no feather to use in smearing the oil on. She went over to
the chancellor's, and borrowed one from her maid. While she was gone,
the milk boiled over and filled the house with a disagreeable stench.
The door bell rang. It was the cobbler; he had come to get the money for
the patent leather shoes. The wives of Herr Kirschner and Herr Ruebsam
had both said that Daniel must not think of appearing at the coming
recital at the Baroness's without patent leather shoes.
"I haven't the money, Gertrude; have you got that much?"
Gertrude went through her chests, and scraped up five marks which she
gave the cobbler as a first instalment. The man went away growling;
Daniel hid from him.
Gertrude was sitting in the living room making clothes for her
baby-to-come. There was a happy expression on her face. Daniel knew that
it was a display of maternal joy and expectation, but since he could not
share this joy, since indeed he felt a sense of fear at the appearance
of the child, her happiness embittered him.
Between the fuchsias in the window stood a robin red-breast; the impish
bird had its head turned to one side, and was peeping into the room:
"Come out," it chirped, "come out." And Daniel went.
He had an engagement with M. Riviere at the cafe by the market place.
Since he no longer saw anything of Eleanore, he wanted to find out how
her plans for going to Paris were getting along.
The Frenchman told of the progress he was making in his Caspar Hauser
research. In his broken German he told of the murder of body and soul
that had been committed in the case of the foundling: "He was a mortal
man _comme une etoile_," he said. "The bourgeoisie crushed him. The
bourgeoisie is the _racine_ of all evil."
Daniel never mentioned Eleanore's name. He tried to satisfy himself by
the fact that she kept out of his sight. He bit his lips together, and
said: I will. But a stronger power in him said, No, you won't. And this
stronger power became a beggar. It went around saying, Give me, please,
give me!
The billiard balls rattled. A gentleman in a red velvet vest had a
quarrel with a shabby looking fellow who had been reading _Fliegende
Blaetter_ for the last two hours; he would begin over and over again at
the very beginning, and break out into convulsions of laughter every
time he came to his favourite jokes.
Daniel was silent; he insisted somehow on remaining silent. M. Riviere
wished, for this reason, to hear something about the "Harzreise." By way
of starting a discussion he remarked quite timidly that _sans musique la
vie est insupportable_, "There is something about music that reminds one
of insanity," he remarked. He said there were nights when he would open
a volume of Schubert's or Brahms's songs, leaf through them, read the
notes, and hum the melodies simply in order to escape the despair which
the conduct of the people about him was emptying into his heart. "_Moi_,
I ought to be, how do you say? stoic; _mais_ I am not. In me there is
_trop de musique, et c'est le contraire_."
Daniel looked at him in astonishment. "Come with me," he said suddenly,
got up, and took him by the arm.
They met Eleanore in the hall. She had been up in the new flat with the
whitewasher. Her father was to move in the following day.
"Why was all this done so quickly?" asked Daniel, full of a vague
happiness that drew special nourishment from the fact that Eleanore was
plainly excited.
"Mere chance," she said, and carefully avoided looking at him. "A
captain who is being transferred here from Ratisbon is moving in our
place. It is a pity to leave the good old rooms. The second-hand dealer
is going to get a deal of our stuff; there is no room for it up there in
those two cubby holes. How is Gertrude? May I go up and see her for a
minute or two?"
"Yes, go right up," said Daniel stiffly; "you can stay and listen if you
wish to. I am going to play the Harzreise."
"If I wish to? I almost have a right to; you promised me this long ago."
"She thinks after all that I want to catch her," he thought to himself.
"It will be better for me to drop the whole business than to let the
idea creep into her stupid skull that my composition is going to make
propaganda for our private affairs." With bowed head he ascended the
stairs, M. Riviere and Eleanore following along behind. His ears were
pricked to hear anything they might say about Paris; they talked about
the weather.
As they entered the room Gertrude had the harp between her knees; but
she was not playing. Her hands lay on the strings, her head was resting
on the frame. "Why haven't you lighted a lamp?" asked Daniel angrily.
She was terrified; she looked at him anxiously. The expression on her
face made him conscious of many things that he had kept in the
background of his thoughts during his everyday life: her unconditional
surrender to him; the magnanimity and nobility of her heart, which was
as dependent on his as the mercury in the thermometer is dependent on
the atmosphere; her speechless resignation regarding a thousand little
things in her life! her wellnigh supernatural ability to enter into the
spirit and enjoyment of what he was doing, however much his mind might
presume to write _De profundis_ across his creations.
It was on this account that he recognised in her face a serious,
far-away warning. At once cowardly and reverential, conscious of his
guilt and yet feeling innocent, he went up to her and kissed her on the
hair. She leaned her head on his breast, thus causing him to feel,
though quite unaware of it herself, the whole weight of the burden she
was placing on him.
He told her he was going to play. He said: "I have lost my picture
again; I want to try to find it in others."
Gertrude begged him, with a pale face, to be permitted to stay in the
living room. She closed the door only partly.