Читать книгу The Goose Man - Jakob Wassermann - Страница 8

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Daniel attended the gymnasium at Ansbach. He was to complete the course of studies that would entitle him to the reduction of his military service to one year and then enter business. This had been agreed upon between Jason Philip and Marian.

The boy’s zeal for study was small. His teachers shook their heads. Their considerable experience of the world had never yet offered them a being so constituted. He listened more eagerly to the lowing of a herd of cows and to the twittering of the sparrows than to the best founded principles of grammatical science. Some of them thought him dull, others malicious. He passed from class to class with difficulty and solely by virtue of a marvellous faculty of guessing. At especially critical moments he was saved through the help and advocacy of the music-master Spindler.

The families who gave the poor student his meals complained of his bad manners. The wife of Judge Hahn forbade him the house on account of his boorish answers. “Beggars must not be choosers,” she had called out after him.

Spindler was a man who asserted quite correctly that he had been meant for better things than wearing himself out in a provincial town. His white locks framed a face ennobled by the melancholy that speaks of lost ideals and illusions.

One summer morning Spindler had risen with the sun and gone for a long walk in the country. When he reached the first barn of the village of Dautenwinden he saw a company of strolling musicians, who had played dance music the evening before and far into the night, and who were now shaking from their hair and garments the straw and chaff amid which they had slept. Above them, under the open gable of the barn, Daniel Nothafft was lying in the straw. With an absorbed and devout expression he was seeking to elicit a melody from a flute which one of the musicians had loaned him.

Spindler stood still and looked up. The musicians laughed, but he did not share in their merriment. A long while passed before the unskilful player of the flute became aware of his teacher. Then he climbed down and tried to steal away with a shy greeting. Spindler stopped him. They walked on together, and Daniel confessed that he had not been able to tear himself away from the musicians since the preceding afternoon. The lad of fourteen was not able to express his feeling; but it seemed to him as though a higher power had forced him to breathe the same air at least with those who made music.

From that day on and for three years Daniel visited Spindler twice a week, and was most thoroughly grounded in counterpoint and harmony. The hours thus spent were both consecrated and winged. Spindler found a peculiar happiness in nourishing a passion whose development struck him as a reward for his many years of toneless isolation. And though the desperateness of this passion, though the rebelliousness and aimless wildness which streamed to him not only from the character of his pupil but also from that pupil’s first attempts at composition, gave him cause for anxiety, yet he hoped always to soothe the boy by pointing to the high and serene models and masters of his art.

And so the time came in which Daniel was to earn his own bread.