The Goose Man

by Jakob Wassermann

Falteringly, and in the affected and finical tone he not infrequently adopted, he told the story of his youth, commenting on the everlasting discord between his father and his mother and the disagreeable quarrels that used to take place at home. He said that just as soon as his mother would ask that something be done, his father would demand the opposite. The children soon saw that father was going his way and mother hers; they were not unaware of the fact that their parents cordially distrusted each other and even went so far as to lay traps for each other. He insisted that his mother, with all her amiability and gentleness, was obsessed with the idea of teasing, annoying, and wounding his father on that very point where she had already and so often teased, annoyed, and wounded him before; and that this lack of reason and consideration on her part, coupled with the absence of kindness and candour on his, had made the paternal home a hell, torn at the hearts of the growing children, and in time so hardened them that they suspected every friendly face they saw, and withdrew, as if so from something vile, from every hand that was reached out to them. He related further that in this loveless wilderness brother and sister had been drawn to each other, that in Emilia’s heart, and his own as well, this mutual friendship was cherished as a sacred, inviolable possession, so sacred that it impelled them in time to establish a league against all the rest of the world. How did they conduct themselves once this league had been founded? If they read a book it was in common; they kept no secrets from each other, advised each other, and shared their happiness and sorrow equally, until one fine day Emilia’s father appeared before her, and informed her that Count Urlich had asked for her hand and that he had promised that he should have it.

At this point in the story, Eberhard became silent; he bit his lips; his ashen face, that had never before reminded Agatha so much of the old Baron, betrayed an incurable grief.

Agatha was familiar with this incident, in rough outline; but as Eberhard related it, it stirred her soul to the very depths. “One must try to forget,” she said.

“Forget? No, that I cannot do; never have been able to do. Be it a matter of virtue or of vice, I cannot forget. Emilia, then still half child and only half woman, was made flexible in time. But that my mother did not do everything in her power to prevent this gruesome deed, and that it caused her to sink deeper and deeper into the coils of domestic anguish by reason of her innate and gnawing weakness—that was the bitterest experience of my entire life.”

“But she is your mother, Eberhard. Never in the history of the human family has a son had the right to condemn his mother.”

“That is news to me,” replied Eberhard coldly. “Mothers are human beings like any one else. Even mothers can commit a sin by filling their children with the poison of distrust and disgust with life. Father and mother, parents: they are a symbol, a glorious one when they hover above us and around us, worthy of respect and calling for filial veneration. But if I am bound to them only by the ties of duty, they are not symbols; they are mere phantoms, conceptions of human speech. There is no duty but the duty of love.”

Sylvia had sat in perfect silence. Unconsciously she had followed the most beautiful law of harmonious souls: to wield an influence, to have power, not through the use of words and the elaboration of reasons, but by a pure life, an unquestioned existence. Agreement and disagreement lay like a play of light and shadow on her brow.

In this way she reminded Eberhard more and more of Eleanore.

Perhaps it was the power of this memory that moved him to promise that he would go with Agatha on the following day to his mother. The sole condition he imposed was that he be assured that he would not meet his father.

Seeing that he was relentless in this request, Frau von Erfft conceded it, though she had a reassuring premonition that the events and the hour would be stronger than will and purpose.