The Goose Man - Jakob Wassermann

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incisive word.

      Benda continued: “The great majority of what you call talent is ignominious. Talent is a feather duster. All that comes from the finger tips is evil. The man who has a distinct goal and is willing to suffer in order to reach it, that man we can use. And otherwise—how beautiful it all is after all! Heaven is above us, the earth is beneath us, and in between stands immortal man.”

      Daniel got up, and seized Benda’s hand. There was nothing more vanquishing than Benda’s handshake. His good strong right became a vise in which he shook a man’s hand until it became limp, a perfectly delightful benevolence radiating from his eyes in the meanwhile.

      The two men exchanged the fraternal “thou.”

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      Eleanore returned the copy of “Manon Lescaut.” When Daniel asked her how she liked it, she never said a word. Since he thought that it was an excellent book, he began to scold.

      She said: “I cannot read books in which there is so much talk about love.”

      He gazed into space in order to allow her voice time to die away. There was a violin tone in her speech, the charm of which he could not escape. When he fully realised what she had said, he laughed a short laugh, and remarked that her attitude was one of affected coyness. She shook her head. Then he teased her about going with young Auffenberg, and asked her whether real love affairs were just as disagreeable to her as those related in novels.

      The flaming blue of her eyes compelled him to look down. It was not pleasant for him to admit, by action, that the expression in her face was stronger than his own. She left, and did not allow herself to be seen for a few days.

      When she returned, he was naïve enough to renew his banter. She took her seat on the corner sofa, and looked straight into his face: “Do we really intend to remain friends, Daniel?” she asked.

      He cast a side glance of amazement at her, not because he was particularly struck by her charming suavity and marked winsomeness, but rather because the violin tone in her throat resounded more strongly and clearly than ever. But it was quite impossible for him to give an affirmative reply to her question without puckering up his lips and putting his hands in his trouser pockets.

      She said she had no desire to seem important in his estimation, that she merely wanted him to regard her as different from other girls. She insisted that he concede her one privilege if they were to remain friends: he was not to talk to her about love, either seriously or in jest. She remarked that for months the very word love had called up ghost-like recollections. Why this was so, she said she could not tell him, not now, perhaps years from now when both had grown old. She could not do it, for if she endeavoured to refresh old memories or revive what she had half forgotten, her whole past arose before her, flat, languid, and insipid, easily misinterpreted by the person who heard the story, however clear it might be to her. She repeated that this was the way it was, and she could not help it. Once again she asked that he spare her feelings on this point.

      Her face took on a serious expression; it resembled an old picture. There was something dream-like in her words.

      “Well, if that is all you have on your mind, Eleanore, I am sure that it will be easy for me to respect your wish,” said Daniel. There was a manifest lack of feeling in the kindness he displayed. It seemed indeed that the secret to which she was attaching so much importance was far removed from his egotistically encircled world. The little fountain in the garden was rustling. He listened to see if he could not catch the dominating tone in the continual splashing.

      Eleanore turned to him now with renewed if not novel candour. She was closer to him in every way—her eyes, her hands, and her words.

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      Daniel had just completed an orchestral work which he had entitled “Vineta.” He wished to have Benda hear it. One evening about six Benda came in. Everything was ready. Daniel sat down at the piano. His face was pale, his smooth upper lip was trembling.

      “Now think of the sea; think of a storm; think of a boat with people in it. Picture to yourself a wonderful aurora borealis and a sunken city rising from the sea. Imagine a sea that had suddenly become calm, and in the light a strange phenomenon. Conjure up such a scene before your mind’s eye, or conjure up something totally different, for this is a false way of getting at the meaning of music. It is plain prostitution to think anything of the kind. Ice-flat.”

      He was just about to begin, when some one knocked at the door. Eleanore entered. She whisked across the room, and took her seat on the sofa.

      The piece opened with a quiet rhythmical, mournful movement, which suddenly changed to a raging presto. The melodic figure was shattered like a bouquet of flowers in a waterfall almost before it had had time to take shape and display real composure. The dissipated elements, scattered to the four corners of the earth, then returned, hesitatingly and with evident contrition, to be reunited in a single chain. It seemed that the mad whirlwind had left them richer, purer and more spiritual. They pealed forth now, one after the other, in a slow-moving decrescendo, until they constituted a solemn chorus played in moderato, melting at last into the lovely and serious main theme, which in the finale streamed away and beyond into infinity, dying out on an arpeggiated chord.

      Where the piano failed to produce the full effect, Daniel helped out with his crow-like voice. It was the uncanny energy of expression that prevented his singing from having a comic effect.

      Benda’s eyes were so strained in the effort to listen intelligently and appreciatively that they became dazed, glazed. Had he been asked he could not have said whether the work was a success or a failure. The feature of the performance that convinced him was the man and the magnetism that radiated from the man. The work itself he could neither fathom nor evaluate. It took hold of him nevertheless because of its inseparable association with the human phenomenon.

      Daniel got up, stumbled over to the sofa, buried his face in his hands, and sighed: “Do you feel it? Do you really feel it?” He then rose, lunged at the piano, seized the score, and hurled it to the floor: “Ah, it’s no account; it is nothing; it is an abominable botch.”

      He threw himself on the sofa a second time. Eleanore, sitting perfectly motionless in the other corner, looked at him with the eyes of an astonished child.

      Benda had gone to the window, and was looking out into the trees and the grey clouds of the sky. Then he turned around. “That something must be done for you and your cause is clear,” he said.

      Eleanore stretched out her arms toward Benda as though she wished to thank him. Her lips began to move. But when she saw Daniel she did not dare to say a word, until she suddenly exclaimed: “Heavens, there are two buttons on his vest which are hanging by a thread.” She ran out of the room. In a few moments she returned with needle and thread, which she had had Meta give her, sat down at Daniel’s side, and sewed the buttons on.

      Benda had to laugh. But what she did had a tranquilising effect; she seemed to enable life to win the victory over the insidious pranks of apparitions.

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      In years gone by, Benda had known the theatrical manager and impresario Dörmaul. He went to Dörmaul now, and took Daniel’s new work along with him; for the versatile parvenu, who always had a number of irons in the fire, also published music.

      A few weeks elapsed before Benda heard from Dörmaul: “Incomprehensible stuff! Crazy attempt to be original! You couldn’t

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