Chapter 3

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.

He had anticipated with rare pleasure the sight of the sea. He was prepared to behold the monstrous, titanic, seething, and surging element, the tempest of the Apocalypse. He was disappointed by the peaceful rise and fall of the tide, the harmless rolling back and forth of the waves. He concluded that it were better for one not to become acquainted with things that had inspired one’s fancy with reverential awe.

He could quarrel with nature just as he could quarrel with men. The phases of nature which he regarded as her imperfections excited his anger. He was fond, however, of a certain spot in the forest; or he liked a tree in the plain, or sunset along the canal.

He liked best of all the narrow streets of the cities, when the gentle murmurings of song wafted forth from the open windows, or when the light from the lamp shone forth from the windows after they had been closed. He loved to pass by courts and cellars, gates and fences; when the face of an old man, or that of a young girl, came suddenly to view, when workmen went home from the factories, or soldiers from the barracks, or seamen from the harbours, he saw a story in each of them; he felt as one feels on reading an exciting book.

One day when he was in Cleve he walked the streets at night all alone. He noticed a man and a woman and five children, all poorly dressed, standing near a church. Lying before them on the pavement were several bundles containing their earthly possessions. A man came up after a while and addressed them in a stern, domineering tone; they picked up their bundles and followed him: it was a mournful procession. They were emigrants; the man had told them about their ship.

Daniel felt as if a cord in his soul had been made taut and were vibrating without making a sound. The steps of the eight people, as they died away in the distance, developed gradually into a rhythmical, musical movement. What had been confused became ordered; what had been dark shone forth in light. Weighed down with heaviness of soul, he went on, his eyes fixed on the ground as if he were looking for something. He no longer saw, nor could he hear. Nor did he know what time it was.

After a year and a half of congealed torpidity, the March wind once more began to blow in his soul.

But it was like a disease; he was being consumed with impatience. His immediate goal was the cloister of Œsede at Osnabrück, and from there he wanted to go to Berlin. He could not bear to sit in the railway carriages: in Wesel he placed his trunk on a freight train, and went from there on foot, his top-coat hung over his arm, his knapsack strapped across his back. Despite the inclement weather he walked from eight to ten hours every day. It was towards the end of October, the mornings and evenings were chilly, the roads were muddy, the inns were wretched. This did not deter him from going on: he walked and walked, sought and sought, often until late at night, passionately absorbed in himself.

When he came to the coal and iron district, he raised his head more and more frequently. The houses were black, the earth and the air were black, blackened men met him on the road. Copper wires hummed in the fog and mist, hammers clinked, wheels hummed, chimneys smoked, whistles blew—it was like a dream vision, like the landscape of an unknown and accursed star.

One evening he left a little inn which he had entered to get something to eat and drink. It was eight miles to Dortmund, where he planned to stay over night. He had left the main road, when all of a sudden the fire from the blast-furnaces leaped up, giving the mist the appearance of a blood-red sea. Miners were coming in to the village; in the light of the furnaces their tired, blackened faces looked like so many demoniac caricatures. Far or near, it was impossible to say, a horse could be seen drawing a car over shining rails. On it stood a man flourishing his whip. Beast, man, and car all seemed to be of colossal size; the “gee” and “haw” of the driver sounded like the mad cries of a spectre; the iron sounds from the forges resembled the bellowing of tormented creatures.

Daniel had found what he had been looking for: he had found the mournful melody that had driven him away the day Eleanore died. He had, to be sure, put it on the paper then and there, but it had remained without consequence: it had been buried in the grave with Eleanore.

Now it had arisen, and its soul—its consequence—had arisen with it; it was expanded into a wonderful arch, arranged and limbed like a body, and filled as the world is full.

Music had been born to him again from the machine, from the world of machinery.