Daniel riveted his eyes on the monk, took the box, hesitated for a while, and then opened it. In it, carefully packed in sawdust, was the mask of Zingarella. It was a part of Daniel’s meagre luggage; wherever he went it followed him.
Father Leonhard sprang back terrified. “What does that mean?” he asked.
“It means sin and purification,” said Daniel, holding the mask up in the light of the setting sun. “It means grief and redemption, despair and mercy, love and death, chaos and form.”
From that day on, Father Leonhard never said another word to Daniel Nothafft. And whenever the strange musician chanced to play the organ, the monk arose as quickly as possible, left the church, and sought out some place where the tones could not reach him.
III
That summer Daniel came to Aix-la-Chapelle and the region of Liége, Louvain, and Malines. From there he wandered on foot to Ghent and Bruges.
In places where he had to make investigations, he was obliged to depend upon the letters he received from his publisher to make himself understood. Condemned to silence, he lived very much alone; he was a stranger in a strange land.
He had no interest in sights. It was rare that he looked at old paintings. The beautiful never caused him to stop unless it actually blocked his way. He went about as if in between two walls. He followed his nose, turned around only with the greatest reluctance, and never felt tired until he was ready to lie down to sleep.
And even when he was tired the feeling that he was being robbed of something gnawed at his soul; he was restless even when he slept. Haste coloured his eye, fashioned his step, and moulded his deeds. He ate his meals in haste, wrote his letters in haste, and talked in haste.
It pained him to feel that men were looking at him. Although he invariably sought out the most deserted corner of whatever inn he chanced to stop at, and thereby avoided becoming, so far as he might, the target of the curious, he was nevertheless gaped at, watched, and studied wherever he went. For everything about him was conspicuous: the energy of his gestures, the agility of his mimicry, the way he showed his teeth, and the nervous, hacking step with which he moved through groups of gossiping people.