The Goose Man - Jakob Wassermann

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stood still and looked up. The musicians laughed, but he did not share in their merriment. A long while passed before the unskilful player of the flute became aware of his teacher. Then he climbed down and tried to steal away with a shy greeting. Spindler stopped him. They walked on together, and Daniel confessed that he had not been able to tear himself away from the musicians since the preceding afternoon. The lad of fourteen was not able to express his feeling; but it seemed to him as though a higher power had forced him to breathe the same air at least with those who made music.

      From that day on and for three years Daniel visited Spindler twice a week, and was most thoroughly grounded in counterpoint and harmony. The hours thus spent were both consecrated and winged. Spindler found a peculiar happiness in nourishing a passion whose development struck him as a reward for his many years of toneless isolation. And though the desperateness of this passion, though the rebelliousness and aimless wildness which streamed to him not only from the character of his pupil but also from that pupil’s first attempts at composition, gave him cause for anxiety, yet he hoped always to soothe the boy by pointing to the high and serene models and masters of his art.

      And so the time came in which Daniel was to earn his own bread.

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      Spindler journeyed to Eschenbach to confer with Marian Nothafft.

      The woman did not understand him. She felt tempted to laugh.

      Music had meant in her life the droning of a hurdy-gurdy, the singing of a club of men, the marching of a military band. Was her boy to wander from door to door and fiddle for pennies? Spindler seemed a mere madman to her. She pressed her hands together, and looked at him as at a man who was wasting trivial words on a tragic disaster. The music-master realised that his influence was as narrow as his world, and was forced to leave without accomplishing anything.

      Marian wrote a letter to Jason Philip Schimmelweis.

      One could almost see Jason Philip worrying his reddish brown beard with his nimble fingers and the scornful twinkling of his eyes; one could almost hear the sharp, northern inflection of his speech when his answer to Daniel arrived: “I expected nothing else of you than that it would be your dearest wish to be a wastrel. My dear boy, either you buckle under and make up your mind to become a decent member of society, or I leave you both to your own devices. There is no living in selling herrings and pepper, and so you will kindly imagine for yourself the fate of your mother, especially if a parasite like yourself clings to her.”

      Daniel tore up the letter into innumerable bits and let them flutter out into the wind. His mother wept.

      Then he went out into the forest, wandered about till nightfall, and slept in the hollow of a tree.

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      One might go on and tell the tale of continued rebellion, of angry words on both sides, of pleas and complaints and fruitless arguments, of bitter controversy and yet bitterer silence.

      Daniel fled and returned and let the slothful days glide by, stormed about in the vicinity, and lay in the high grass beside the pools or opened his window at night, cursing the silence and envying the clouds their speed.

      His mother followed him when he went to his little room and pressed her ear to the door, and then entered and saw the candle still lit, and went to his bed and was frightened at his gleaming eyes which grew sombre at her approach. Full of the memories of her early cares and fears for him, and thinking that the darkness and the sight of her weakness would prevail upon him, she pleaded and begged once more. And he looked up at her and something broke in his soul, and he promised to do as she demanded.

      So we see him next at the house of the leather merchant Hamecher in Ansbach. He sits on a bale of leather in the long, dismal passage way or on the cellar steps or in the store room, and dreams and dreams and dreams. And gradually the worthy Hamecher’s indulgent surprise turned to blank astonishment and then to indignation, and at the end of six months he showed the useless fellow the door.

      Once more Jason Philip condescended to grant his favour, and chose a new scene and new people for his nephew, if only to remove him from Spindler’s baneful influence. At the mention of the city of Bayreuth no one became aware of Daniel’s fiery ecstasy, for they had never heard of the name of Richard Wagner but always of the name of the wine merchant Maier. And so he came to Bayreuth, the Jerusalem of his yearning, and forced himself to an appearance of industry in order to remain in that spot where sun and air and earth and the very beasts and stones and refuse breathe that music of which Spindler had said that he himself had a profound presentiment of its nature but was too old to grasp and love it wholly.

      Daniel did his best to make himself useful. But in spite of himself he scrawled music notes on the invoices, roared strange melodies in lonely vaults, and let the contents of a whole keg of wine leak out, because in front of him, on the floor, lay the score of the English Suites.

      At a rehearsal he slipped into the Festival Playhouse, but was put out by a zealous watchman, and on this occasion made the acquaintance of Andreas Döderlein, who was a professor at the Nuremberg conservatory and a tireless apostle of the redeemer. Döderlein seemed not disinclined to understand and to help, and expressed a real delight at the deep, original enthusiasm and burning devotion of his protégé. And Daniel, intoxicated by a rather vague and not at all binding promise of a scholarship at the conservatory, fled from Bayreuth by night, made his way on foot back to Eschenbach, threw himself at his mother’s feet, and almost writhed there before her and begged and implored her, and in words almost wild sought to prevail on her to attempt to change the mind of Jason Philip. He tried to explain to her that his life and happiness, his very blood and heart were dedicated to this one thing. But she, who was once kindly, was now hard—hard as stone, cold as ice. She understood nothing, felt nothing, believed nothing, saw only the frightfulness, as she called it, of his incurable aberration.

      All these matters might have been related at length. But they are as inevitable in their character and sequence as the sparks and smoke that follow upon fire. They are quite determinable; they have often happened, and have always had the same final effect.

      What clung to Marian’s soul was an immemorial prejudice against a gipsy’s life and a stroller’s fate. Her ancestors and her husband’s had always earned their livelihood in the honest ways of a trade. She could not see what the free tuition at Döderlein’s conservatory would avail Daniel, since he had nothing wherewithal to sustain life. He told her that Spindler had taught him how to play on the piano, that he would perfect his skill and so earn his sustenance. She shook her head. Then he spoke to her of the greatness of art, of the ecstasy which an artist could communicate and the immortality he might win, and that perhaps it would be granted him to create something unique and incomparable. But these words she thought mad and pretentious delusions, and smiled contemptuously. And at that his soul turned away from her, and she seemed a mother to him no more.

      When Jason Philip Schimmelweis learned what was afoot, he would not let the troublesome journey deter him, but appeared in Marian’s shop like an avenging angel. Daniel feared him no longer, since he had given up hoping for anything from him. He laughed to himself at the sight of the stubby, short-necked man in his rage. Gleams of mockery and of cunning still played over the red cheeks of Jason Philip, for he had a very high opinion of himself, and did not think the windy follies of a boy of nineteen worthy of the whole weight of his personality.

      While he talked his little eyes sparkled, and his red, little tongue pushed away the recalcitrant hairs of his moustache from his voluble lips. Daniel stood by the door, leaning against the post, his arms folded across his chest, and regarded now his mother, who, dumb and suddenly old, sat in a corner of the sofa, now the oil portrait of his father on the opposite wall. A friend of Gottfried Nothafft’s youth, a

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