It was late at night. Daniel could not sleep. The Goose Man crouched at
his feet on the edge of the bed, and looked at him as one looks at a
dear brother who is suffering intense pain.
"I cannot deny that it is difficult for you to continue your life," said
the Goose Man, trying to subdue his bright voice. "When we sum up your
situation, we see day following day, night following night, and nothing
happening that can be a cause for rejoicing. Everything has been cut
off; the threads have all been broken; the foundation on which you
built has been completely annihilated. You are like the mother of many
children who loses them all, all of them, on a single day by one
terrible stroke. The labour of years remains unrewarded; your work has
been in vain; in vain the blood your heart has poured out, the
deprivations you have submitted to; your whole past is like a bad,
disordered dream. Oh, I understand full well; I appreciate your
situation. It seems hard, very hard, to go on and not to despair."
Daniel covered his face with his hands and moaned.
"Have you ever asked yourself how the hand of murder came to strike you?
Ah, this Philippina! This daughter of Jason Philip! I am almost four
hundred years old, but such a person I have never seen or known. But
look back over your past! Do it just once! Open your eyes; they are pure
now and capable of beholding. Have you not suffered the Devil to live by
your side, to take part in your life? And were you not at the same time
impatient with the angels who spread their wings about you as my geese
spread theirs about me? The Devil has grown fat from you. The vampire
has battened on you, has fed on your blood. All this comes about when
one is unwilling to give, when one merely takes and takes and takes.
That makes the Devil fat; the vampire becomes greedier with each passing
sun. Ah, so many good genii have fled from you! Many you have frightened
away, you, bewitched, you, enchanted! Well, what now? What next? Hell
has claimed its full booty; Heaven can now open again to your new-born
heart."
"There is no Heaven," groaned Daniel, "there is nothing but blackness
and darkness."
"You still breathe, your heart is still beating, you still have five
fingers on each hand," replied the Goose Man quietly. "He who has paid
his debts is a free man: you have paid yours."
"I am my own debt, my own guilt. If I continue to live, I will sin
again. Were I to live over the past, back into the past, I would
contract the same debts."
"But there is such a thing as a transformation, and through it one
receives absolution. Turn away from your phantom and become a human
being--and then you can become a creator. If you once become human,
really human, it may be that you will not need the work, symphony or
whatever else you choose to call it. It may be that power and glory will
radiate from you yourself. For are not all works merely the round-about
ways, the detours of the man himself, merely man's imperfect attempts to
reveal himself? Did you not love a mask of plaster more than the
countenances that shone upon you, the faces that wept about you? Did you
not allow another mask, a thing of the mirror, to get control over you,
and so to besmirch your soul and strike your spirit with paralysis? How
can a man be a creator if he deceives, stunts, and abbreviates the
humanity that is in him? It is not a question of ability, Daniel
Nothafft, it is a question of being, living, being."
Daniel tossed his head back and forth on his pillow, writhing in agony.
"Stop!" he gulped, "stop, stop!"
The Goose Man bent over him, and crouched up nearer to his body like an
animal trying to get warm. "Come out of the convulsion," something cried
and exhorted within him, "break your chains! Your music can give men
nothing so long as you yourself are held captive. Feel their distress!
Have pity on their unplumbed loneliness! Behold mankind! Behold it!"
"There is so much," replied Daniel in extreme torture, "a hundred
thousand faces bewilder me, a hundred thousand pictures hem me in. I
cannot differentiate; I must flee, flee!"
There was something inimitably tender, reassuring, and resigned in what
the Goose Man then said: "I speak to you as Christ: Rise and walk! Rise
and go in peace, Daniel! Go with me to my place. Be _me_ for just one
day, from morning to evening, and _I_ will be _you_."
Daniel got up, and before he was conscious of what he was doing, he had
put on his clothes and was out on the street with the Goose Man. They
crossed the market place, and Daniel, in a crepuscular state of mind,
climbed up, with the help of the Goose Man, and took his place on the
base of the fountain behind the iron railing. The two geese he took
under his arms. He stood perfectly still, rigid, just like the Goose
Man, and waited in anticipation of the things that were to come.
V
But nothing extraordinary happened. Everything that took place was quite
prosaic and obviously a matter of custom.
The sun rose, and the market women took the cords and covers from their
baskets. Fresh cherries, young pears, and winter apples shone in all
their brilliancy of colour and lent variety to the drab square. Sparrows
picked in the straw that lay on the street. The sun rose higher; its
early red gave way to a midday blue. Clouds drifted over the roof of the
church. The women gossiped. Wagons rattled by, errand boys called to
each other, curtains were drawn from the windows, and men and women
looked out to see what the weather was going to be like. There were
sleepy faces and anxious faces, good faces and bad faces, young and old.
Maids and humbler housewives came to make their purchases. They examined
the fruit with seasoned care and experienced hand, and bargained for
lower prices. The peasant women praised what they had, and if their
praise was ineffectual, they became abusive. Once a sale had been made,
they would take their balances, put the weights in one pan and the fruit
in another, and never cease praising what they were selling until they
had the money safe in their pockets. Then they would count over the
coins they had received, and looked at them as if to say: "It is fine to
earn money!"
But those who paid out the money bore the mien of painful care and
solicitude. They seemed to be counting it all up in their heads; to be
taking lessons in mental arithmetic. They would think over how much it
were wise or permissible for them to spend. The thing that impressed
Daniel most of all, and the longer he stood there the clearer it became
to him, was this: Each purchaser went right up to the very edge of the
territory staked out for her, so to speak, by some mysterious master.
This they felt was correct, certain though they were that to have gone
beyond the allotted limit would have brought swift and irremediable
ruin. The money was paid out with such studied caution, and taken in
with such a sense of victory! There was something touching about it all.
This daily life of these small people seemed so strange, so very
strange, and at the same time so in accord with established order: it
seemed indeed to be a practical visualisation of the sanctity of the
law.
In all the transactions due respect was paid to the formalities of life,
and nothing was veiled. There was fulness, but no confusion; many words,
but no misunderstanding. There were the wares and there were the coins.
The scales showed how much was being given and how much taken. The fruit
wandered from basket to basket, and human arms carried it home. Each
bought as much as could be paid for; there was no thought of going
beyond one's means.
The clock in the tower struck on the hour, and the shadows moved in a
circle about the objects on the square. So it was to-day; and so it had
been four hundred years ago.
Four hundred years ago the houses stood there just as they stood to-day,
and people, men and women, looked out of the windows, some with kindly,
some with embittered faces.
Is that not Theresa Schimmelweis creeping around the corner? How old,
decrepit, and bent with years! Her hair is stone grey, her face is like
lime. She is poorly dressed; she does not notice the people she meets.
She sees nothing but the full baskets of fruit; for them she has a
greedy eye. And she looks at Daniel behind the iron fence with an
expression of painful astonishment.
And is that not Frau Hadebusch hobbling along over there! Though her
face is that of a crafty criminal, in her eyes there is a panicky,
terrified look. She has no support other than the ground beneath her
feet; she is a poor, lost soul.
There comes Alfons Diruf, who retired years ago. He has become stout and
gloomy. He is out for his morning walk along the city moat. There goes
the actor, Edmund Hahn, seeking whom he may devour. Disease and lust are
writ large across his jaded face. There is the sculptor, Schwalbe. He is
secretly buying a few apples to take home to roast, for otherwise he has
nothing warm to eat. And there is Herr Carovius, ambling along. He looks
like a wandering spirit, dejected and exhausted.
Beggars pass by, and so do the rich. There are respected people who are
greeted by those who see them; there are outcasts who are shunned. There
are those who are happy and those who are weighed down with grief. Some
hasten and some hesitate. Some seem to hold fast to their lives as a
lover might hold fast to his fiancee; others will die that same day. One
has a child by the hand, another a woman by the arm. Some drag crimes in
their hearts, others walk upright, free, happy to face the world. One is
being summoned to court as a witness, the other is on his way to the
doctor. One is fleeing from domestic discord, another is rejoicing over
some great good fortune. There is the man who has lost his purse and the
man who is reading a serious letter. One is on his way to church to
pray, another to the cafe to drown his sorrows. One is radiant with joy
over the business outlook, another is crushed with poverty. A beautiful
girl has on her best dress; a cripple lies in the gateway. There is a
boy who sings a song, and a matron whose eyes are red with weeping. The
baker carries his bread by, the cobbler his boots. Soldiers are going to
the barracks, workmen are returning from the factory.
Daniel feels that none of them are strangers to him. He sees himself in
each of them. He is nearer to them while standing on his elevated
position behind the iron railing than he was when he walked by them on
the street. The jet of water that spurts from him is like fate: it flows
and collects in the basin. Eternal wisdom, he feels, is streaming up to
him from the fountain below; each hour becomes a century. However men
may be constituted, he is seized with a supernatural feeling when he
looks into their eyes. In all of their eyes there is the same fire, the
same anxiety and the same prayer; the same loneliness, the same life,
the same death. In all of them he sees the soul of God.
He himself no longer feels his loneliness; he feels that he has been
distributed among men. His hate has gone, dispelled like so much smoke.
The tones he hears now come rushing up from the great fountain; and this
fountain is fed from the blood of all those he sees on the market place.
Water is something different now: "It washes clean man's very soul, and
makes it like an angel, whole."
Noon came, and then evening: a day of creation. And when evening came, a
mist settled over the city, and Daniel came down from his high place at
the fountain, set the geese carefully to one side, and went home. He
arrived at the vestibule; he stood in the door of the room looking out
on the court. His eyes beheld a wonderful sight.
The Goose Man was sitting playing with Agnes and little Gottfried. He
had cut silhouettes from bright coloured paper and made them stand up on
the table by bending back the edge of the paper. There he sat, pushing
these figures into each other, and making such droll remarks that Agnes,
who had never in her life really laughed, laughed now with all her
heart, and like the child that she in truth still was.
Little Gottfried could only prattle and clap his hands. The Goose Man
had placed him on the table. Whenever he made a false or awkward move,
the Goose Man would set him right. He seemed to be especially skilled at
handling and amusing children.
When Daniel came in, the Goose Man got up and went over to him, greeted
him, and said in a kindly, confidential tone: "Are you back so soon? We
have had such a nice time!"
In the room, however, there was the same haze that had settled down over
the city when Daniel left the fountain. Agnes and Gottfried were seized
with a terrible fear. The boy began to cry; Agnes threw her arms around
him and cried too.
Daniel went up to them, and said: "Don't cry! I'm with you. You don't
need to cry any more!"
He sat down on the same seat on which the Goose Man had been sitting,
looked at the tiny paper figures, and, smiling, continued the game the
Goose Man had been playing with them.
Gottfried became quiet and Agnes happy.
"Good-night!" cried the Goose Man, "now I am again myself, and you are
you."
He nodded kindly and disappeared.