The Goose Man

by Jakob Wassermann

There was always something wrong.

Daniel shuddered at the mere presence of these people; he was repelled by their occupations, their amusements, and the cadavers of their ideals. He did not like the way they laughed; nor could he stand their dismal feelings. He despised the houses out of which they crept, the detectives at their windows, their butcher shops and hotels, their newspapers, their Sundays and their work days. The world was pressing hard upon him. He had to look these people straight in the face, and they compelled him to haggle with them for money, words, feelings, and ideas.

He learned in time, however, to see other things: the forests on the banks of the Main; the great meadows in the hills of Franconia; the melancholy plains of Central Germany; the richly variegated slopes of the Jura Mountains; the old cities with their walls and cathedrals, their gloomy alleys and deserted castles. In time he came to see people in a different and easier light. He saw the young and the old, the fair and the homely, the cheerful and the sad, the poor—and the rich so far away and peaceful. They gave him, without discrimination, of their wealth and their poverty. They laid their youth and their old age, their beauty and their ugliness, their joys and their sorrows, at his feet.

And the country gave him the forests and the fields, the brooks and the rivers, the clouds and the birds, and everything that is under the earth.

X

It was winter. The company came to Ansbach, where they were to play in the former Margrave Theatre. “Freischütz” was to be given, and Daniel had held a number of special rehearsals.

But a violent snow storm broke out on the day of the performance; scarcely two dozen people attended.

How differently the violins sounded in this auditorium! The voices were, as it seemed, automatically well balanced; there was in them an element of calm and assurance. The orchestra? Daniel had so charmed it that it obeyed him as if it were a single instrument. At the close of the last act, an old, grey-haired man stepped up to Daniel, smiled, took him by the hand, and thanked him. It was Spindler.

Daniel went home with him; they talked about the past, the future, men and music. They could not stop talking; nor could the snow stop falling. This did not disturb them. They met again on the following day; but at the end of the week Spindler was taken ill, and had to go to bed.