“I cannot deny that it is difficult for you to continue your life,” said the Goose Man, trying to subdue his bright voice. “When we sum up your situation, we see day following day, night following night, and nothing happening that can be a cause for rejoicing. Everything has been cut off; the threads have all been broken; the foundation on which you built has been completely annihilated. You are like the mother of many children who loses them all, all of them, on a single day by one terrible stroke. The labour of years remains unrewarded; your work has been in vain; in vain the blood your heart has poured out, the deprivations you have submitted to; your whole past is like a bad, disordered dream. Oh, I understand full well; I appreciate your situation. It seems hard, very hard, to go on and not to despair.”
Daniel covered his face with his hands and moaned.
“Have you ever asked yourself how the hand of murder came to strike you? Ah, this Philippina! This daughter of Jason Philip! I am almost four hundred years old, but such a person I have never seen or known. But look back over your past! Do it just once! Open your eyes; they are pure now and capable of beholding. Have you not suffered the Devil to live by your side, to take part in your life? And were you not at the same time impatient with the angels who spread their wings about you as my geese spread theirs about me? The Devil has grown fat from you. The vampire has battened on you, has fed on your blood. All this comes about when one is unwilling to give, when one merely takes and takes and takes. That makes the Devil fat; the vampire becomes greedier with each passing sun. Ah, so many good genii have fled from you! Many you have frightened away, you, bewitched, you, enchanted! Well, what now? What next? Hell has claimed its full booty; Heaven can now open again to your new-born heart.”
“There is no Heaven,” groaned Daniel, “there is nothing but blackness and darkness.”
“You still breathe, your heart is still beating, you still have five fingers on each hand,” replied the Goose Man quietly. “He who has paid his debts is a free man: you have paid yours.”
“I am my own debt, my own guilt. If I continue to live, I will sin again. Were I to live over the past, back into the past, I would contract the same debts.”
“But there is such a thing as a transformation, and through it one receives absolution. Turn away from your phantom and become a human being—and then you can become a creator. If you once become human, really human, it may be that you will not need the work, symphony or whatever else you choose to call it. It may be that power and glory will radiate from you yourself. For are not all works merely the round-about ways, the detours of the man himself, merely man’s imperfect attempts to reveal himself? Did you not love a mask of plaster more than the countenances that shone upon you, the faces that wept about you? Did you not allow another mask, a thing of the mirror, to get control over you, and so to besmirch your soul and strike your spirit with paralysis? How can a man be a creator if he deceives, stunts, and abbreviates the humanity that is in him? It is not a question of ability, Daniel Nothafft, it is a question of being, living, being.”
Daniel tossed his head back and forth on his pillow, writhing in agony. “Stop!” he gulped, “stop, stop!”
The Goose Man bent over him, and crouched up nearer to his body like an animal trying to get warm. “Come out of the convulsion,” something cried and exhorted within him, “break your chains! Your music can give men nothing so long as you yourself are held captive. Feel their distress! Have pity on their unplumbed loneliness! Behold mankind! Behold it!”
“There is so much,” replied Daniel in extreme torture, “a hundred thousand faces bewilder me, a hundred thousand pictures hem me in. I cannot differentiate; I must flee, flee!”