The Goose Man

by Jakob Wassermann

He came on this account to cherish a feeling of superb disgust for shrewd dealers who were carried along on the wings of fashion. He took a dislike to anything that was famous; for fame smelled of and tasted to him like money. He shuddered at the mere thought of the chaos that arises from opinions and judgments; the disputes as to the merits of different schools and tendencies made him ill; he could not stand the perambulating virtuosos of all zones and nations, the feathers they manage to make fly, the noise they evoke, the truths they proclaim, the lies they wade about in and make a splash. He stood aghast at the mention of a concert hall or a theatre; he flew into a reasoned rage when he heard a neighbour playing a piano; he despised the false devotion of the masses, and scorned their impotent, imbecile transports.

All their music smelled of and tasted to him like money.

He had bought the biographies of the great masters. From them he familiarised himself with their distress and poverty; he read of the petty attitudes and fatuous mediocrity that stood deaf and dumb in the presence of immortal genius. But one day he chanced to read that Mozart’s body had been buried in a pauper’s grave. He hurled the book from him with an oath that he would never again touch a work of that sort. The mordant smoke of misanthropy blew into the fire of idolisation; he did not wish to see any one; he left the city, and found peace only after he had reached a lonely, unfrequented place in the forest, where he felt he was out of the reach of human feet and safe from the eyes of men.

At night he would walk rapidly through the streets; his head was always bowed. If he became tired, he betook himself to some unknown café where he was sure he would not meet any of his acquaintances. If some one whom he knew met him on the street, he did not speak; if any one spoke to him, he was blatant and bizarre in his replies, and hastened off as rapidly as he could, with some caustic bit of intended wit on his loosened tongue.

To enter the room where Philippina and the child were required much effort; at first he was able to do it only with pronounced aversion. Later he came somehow to be touched by the form and actions of the child: he would come in a few times each day for a minute or two only, take it up in his arms, have it poke its tiny hands into his face or even jerk at his nose glasses; he listened with undivided interest to its baby talk. Philippina would stand in the corner in the meanwhile, with her eyes on the floor and her mouth closed. He became painfully aware of his obligations to her because of her inexplicable fidelity to him, and knew that he would never be able to reward her for her unique and faithful assistance. He was grieved at the same time to see the child so motherless, so utterly without the attention that ennobles. The child’s bright eyes, its outstretched arms hurt him: he feared the feelings slumbering even then in its breast, and was driven away by the thought of what might happen in the future.

One morning in August he arose with the sun, went to the kitchen and got his own breakfast, took his walking stick, and left the house. He wanted to go to Eschenbach on foot.

He walked the entire day, making only very short stops for rest. At noon the heat became intense; he asked a peasant, who chanced to drive up in his hay wagon, if he might ride a little. He had no definite end in view, no plan. Something drew him on; what it was he did not know.

When he finally reached the little town it was late at night; the moon was shining. There was not a soul on the street. The windows of his mother’s house were all dark. He climbed up the steps, and sat down as close to the front door as was physically possible. He imagined he could hear his mother and the child she had in her care breathing.

It seemed so strange to him that his mother knew nothing of his presence. If she had known he was there, she would have unlocked the door and looked at him in astonishment. And if he had not felt like talking, he would have been obliged to lay his head in her lap and weep. Nothing else was possible; he could not speak. And yet the fear lest he talk, lest he be forced to tell everything, took such firm hold on him that he decided to start back home without letting his mother know that he had been there and without having seen either her or the child. The peculiar restlessness that had driven him away from his home and impelled him to go on this unusual journey was silenced as soon as he sat in the shadow of his mother’s little house.

But he was so tired that he soon fell asleep. He dreamed that the child and the old lady were standing before him, that the former had a great bunch of grapes in her hand and the latter a shovel and was shovelling up the earth, her face revealing a soul of sorrows. Eva seemed to him to be much more beautiful than she had been a year ago; he felt drawn to the child by an uncontrollable power and a painful love that stood in a most unusual relation to what his mother was doing. The longer his mother shovelled in the earth the heavier his heart became, but he could not say anything; he felt as if a glorious song were pouring forth from his soul, a song such as he had never heard in his life. Enraptured by its beauty, he woke up. At first he thought he could still hear it, but it was only the splashing of the water in the Wolfram fountain.