Gesa's orchestral duties consisted in supporting, along with an old flutist, the musical disorders of a narrow-chested, long-haired youth, who hammered waltzes and polkas on a tired old spinnet, while at the same time, as he confessed to little Gesa with a sigh, he had vainly longed all his life to be entrusted with the execution of a funeral march!
The circus gave its performances from two to four in the afternoon, and was always empty. While Gesa, behind the orchestra rails, fiddled his simple part mechanically, his childish eyes peered out into the ring beyond. There he saw the acrobat, bedizened in paint and tinsel, with pink tights and green silk hose, a gold circlet on his head, throwing somersaults in the air, and contorting his limber body on a trapeze. He saw the dwarf, with his big red bristly head, and his tights, yellow on one side and blue on the other, making disgusting jokes. The dwarf was always applauded. The little monkeys tremblingly played their bits of tricks. The smell of sawdust, gas, orange peel and monkeys crept into the little fiddler's nostrils, he sneezed. Then he grew sleepy, and his bow stopped. "Allons donc!" wheezed the pianist, stamping his foot. Gesa opened his eyes, and met those of his mother, who sat blonde and phlegmatic at the edge of the ring. She smiled and nodded to him; he fiddled on. When the chorus singer was not hindered by rehearsals at the theatre, she never omitted a performance of the circus. Gesa imagined she came to hear him play.
But one fine day Gesa was rude to the dwarf Molaro, and paid for it with his place in the orchestra. Margaretha, however, still continued a regular visitor at the circus.
And then there came an April afternoon with cold showers of rain and violent blustering wind. Winter and spring waged war without. Gesa, who since he had ceased to have a regular occupation, read incessantly in the knight and robber romances of his mother, sat bent over the faded and tattered leaves of an old journal, completely lost in a tale of terror, both elbows planted on the shaky table and a finger in each ear. Margaretha entered, and came up to him.
"Your supper stands already prepared in the cupboard," she said, stammering and hesitating. "You--you need not wait for me. I shall come home late. Adieu, my treasure!"
"Adieu, mama," said he, indifferently. He was used to her coming home late and scarcely looked up from his reading. She went. Five minutes later she returned.
"Have you forgotten something, mother?" he asked.
"Yes," muttered his mother. She was flushed, and searched about aimlessly, now here, now there. At last she came and bent over the boy, kissed him once, twice, thrice, pressing his head to her breast. "God guard thee," she murmured, and went away. Gesa read on. Presently, he was obliged to brush away something bright that obscured the already indistinct print of the journal. It was a tear of his mother.
Gesa lay down that night as usual, when Margaretha was engaged at the theatre, without fastening the door. When he awoke next morning, he found his mother's bed empty. Frightened he cried "Mother! mother!" He knew she could not hear him; he cried out to relieve the oppression at his heart. Slipping into his clothes he ran down into the street. The gutter, brimming full from the melted snow, quivered in the morning wind. Slanting red sunbeams shimmered in the church windows. A few melancholy organ tones sounded through the grey walls out into the empty street. Gesa wept bitterly. "Mother!" he cried, louder and more pitifully than ever--"Mother!" She had always been kind to him.
He looked up and down. The whole world had grown empty for him. He understood that his mother had deserted him. The children in the Rue Ravestein understand so quickly! A long thin hand was laid on his shoulder. He looked up, beside him stood a gentleman whom he knew. The gentleman lived on the first floor of the house where Margaretha's garret was. He was pale as the Christ on the great Crucifix, and looked down almost as sadly. "Poor fellow!" he murmured, "she has left thee?" Gesa bit his teeth into his under lip, turned very red and shook off the stranger's hand. He felt for the first time that pity can humiliate. The strange gentleman, however, stroked him very softly on the head, and said once more, "Poor fellow! You must not blame her. Love is like that!"