All effort to get Daniel to talk was in vain. Along toward midnight,
Benda took leave of him. Agnes unlocked the door for him; he said to
her: "Look after him; he has no one else now."
Daniel lay on the sofa with his hands crossed behind his head, and
stared at the ceiling. His eyes were hot; at times he trembled and
shook.
"It isn't very sociable here," said the Goose Man, "the air is full of
tobacco smoke, and there is a draft coming in from that dark room."
Daniel got up, closed the door, and lay down again.
The metallic exterior of the Goose Man seemed to become flexible,
somewhat as when a frozen body thaws out. "You have gone through a great
deal," he continued thoughtfully. "That any one who wishes to create
must also experience is clear. Experience is his mother's milk, his
realm of roots; it is where the saps flow together, from which his forms
and figures are developed. But there is experience and experience, and
between the two there is a world of difference."
"Superfluous profundity," murmured Daniel, plainly annoyed. "To live is
to have experience." He took council with himself in the attempt to
devise a means by which he might get rid of the importunate chatterer.
The Goose Man again struck up his gentle laugh. He replied: "Many live,
and yet do not live; suffer, and yet do not suffer. In what does guilt
lie? What does it consist of? In not feeling; in not doing. The first
thing for some men to do is to eradicate completely the false notions
they have of what constitutes greatness. For what is greatness after
all? It is nothing in the world but the fulfilment of an unending circle
of petty duties, small obligations."
"There is a fundamental difference between the creator and all other
men," remarked Daniel, at once excited and troubled by the conversation
and the turn it was taking.
"Do you appeal to, depend on, refer to music in this present case?"
asked the Goose Man, his good-natured look becoming more or less
disdainful.
"In music every creation is more closely related to an unconditional
exterior than is true of anything else that man gives to man," answered
Daniel. "The musical genius stands nearer God than any other genius."
The Goose Man nodded. "But his fall begins one step from God's throne,
and is a high and deep one. Do you know what you are? And do you really
know what you are not?"
Daniel pressed his hand to his heart: "Have you ever known me to fight
for evanescent laurels? Have I ever tried to feed the human race, which
is a race of minors, on surrogates? Have I ever imitated the flights of
Heaven with St. Vitus dance, confusing the one with the other? Have I
not always acted in accord with the best, the inmost knowledge I had,
and in obedience to my conscience? Was I ever a liar?"
"No, no, no!" cried the Goose Man, by way of appeasing Daniel's unrest.
He took off his cap, and laid it on his knee. "You were always sincere.
There can be no doubt about it, your heart was always in your
profession. All life has streamed into your soul, and you have lived in
the ivory tower. Your soul was well protected, well protected from the
very beginning. It was in a position similar to that created by a
swimmer who rubs his body with grease before plunging into the water.
You have suffered; the poison of the Nessus shirt you have worn has
burned your skin, and the pain you have thereby suffered has been
transformed into sweet sounds. So they all are, the creators,
invulnerable and inaccessible. That is the way you picture them to
yourself. Is it not true? Monsters who take up the cross of the world,
and yet, grief-laden though they be, grow beyond their own fate. Such is
your lot; and so do you look to-day in your forty-second year."
Daniel was not prepared for this tone of bitterness; he turned his face
to the corner where the Goose Man was sitting. "I do not understand
you," he said slowly. The pitiable crying of little Gottfried could be
heard from the room opening out on the court, and then Agnes's quieting
lullaby.
"If you only had not lived in the ivory tower!" cried the Goose Man. "If
you only had been more sensitive and not so well protected! If you had
only lived, lived, lived, really and truly, and near to life, like a
naked man in a thicket of thorns! Life would have got the best of you,
but your love would have been real, the hate you have experienced real,
your misfortunes real, the lies, ridicule, and betrayal all real, and
the shadows of those who have died from you would have taken on reality.
And the poison of the Nessus shirt would not merely have burned your
skin; it would have penetrated to your very blood, it would have found
its way to the deepest, most secret recesses of your heart. Your work
would have been carried on and out, not in a struggle against your
darkness and your limited torments of soul, a slave before men and
unblessed of God. Eliminate from your mind now, forever and completely,
the delusion that you have borne the sufferings of the world! You have
merely borne your own sufferings, loving-loveless, altruistic-egoist,
monster, man without a country that you are!"
"Who are you? What are you trying to say?" asked Daniel, automatically,
falteringly, with pale lips.
"Oh, don't you see who I am? I am the Goose Man," came the reply, spoken
with a loyal and devoted bow. "The Goose Man, lonesome there behind the
iron fence, lonesome there on the water at the fountain, and yet
situated in the middle of the Market. An insignificant being, tangible
and intelligible to every one who passes by, though a certain degree of
monumentality has been ascribed to me in all these years. But I pay no
attention to this ascription of greatness; I laugh at it. I give the
Market, where the people come and haggle over the price of potatoes and
apples, a certain degree of dignity. That is all. They see me as I stand
there, always upright, under the open sky; and despite my distinguished
position, they have all come to look upon me as a cousin. For a time
they gave me a nickname: they called me by your name. But they had no
right to do this; none at all, it seems to me. I have looked out for my
geese; no one can say a thing against me."
The Goose Man laughed a quiet, inoffensive laugh; and when Daniel turned
his face to the corner, the chair was empty, the strange guest had
vanished.