Chapter 6

Andreas Döderlein always took Sunday dinner with his children. He loved a juicy leg of pork, a salad garnished with greens and eggs, and a tart drowned in sugar. Old Jordan, who was privileged to sit at the table, let the individual morsels dissolve on his tongue. He had never had such delicacies placed before him in his life. At times he would cast a glance of utter astonishment at Daniel.

He very rarely took part in the conversation. As soon as the dishes had been removed, he would get up and quietly go to his room.

“A very remarkable old man,” said Andreas Döderlein one Sunday, as he sat tipped back on his chair, picking his teeth.

“Ah, we have our troubles with him,” said Dorothea abusively, “he is an incorrigible pot-watcher. He comes to the kitchen ten times a day, sticks his nose up in the air, asks what we are going to have for dinner, and then goes out and stands in the hall, with the result that our guests come and stumble over him.”

Andreas Döderlein emitted a growl of lament.

“How are your finances, my son?” he asked, turning to Daniel with an air of marked affability. “Would you not like to bolster up your income by taking a position in the conservatory? You would have time for it; your work as organist at St. Ægydius does not take up all your time. Herold is going to be retired, you know. He is seventy-five and no longer able to meet the requirements. All that we will have to do will be for me to give you my backing. Three thousand marks a year, allocation to your widow after ten years of service, extra fees—I should think you would regard that as a most enticing offer. Or don’t you?”

Dorothea ran up to her father in a spirit of unrestrained jubilation, threw her arms around his bulky body, and kissed him on his flabby cheek.

“No thanks to me, my child,” said the Olympian; “to stand by you two is of course my duty.”

“What sort of a swollen stranger is that, anyhow?” thought Daniel to himself. “What does he want of me? Why does he come into my house and sit down at my table? Why is he so familiar with me? Why does he blow his breath on me?” Daniel was silent.

“I understand, my dear son, that you would abandon your leisure hours only with the greatest reluctance,” continued Döderlein with concealed sarcasm, “but after all, who can live precisely as he would like to live? Who can follow his own inclinations entirely? The everyday feature of human existence is powerful. Icarus must fall to the earth. With your wife anticipating a happy event, you cannot, of course, hesitate in the face of such an offer.”

Daniel cast an angry look at Dorothea.

“I will think it over,” said Daniel, got up, and left the room.

“It is unpleasant for him,” complained Dorothea; “he values his leisure above everything else in the world. But I will do all in my power to bring him around, Father. And you keep at him. He will resist and object. I know him.”

Thus it was brought to light that Daniel was no longer a mysterious and unfathomable individual in her estimation. She had found him out; she had divined him, in her way to be sure. He was much simpler than she had imagined, and at times she was really a bit angry at him for not arousing her curiosity more than he did. What she had fancied as highly interesting, thrilling, intoxicating, had proved to be quite simple and ordinary. The charm was gone, never to return. Her sole diversion lay in her attempts to get complete control over him through the skilful manipulation of her senses and her priceless youth.

Daniel felt that she was disappointed; he had been afraid of this all along. His anxiety increased with time, for it was evident that everything he said or did disappointed her. His anxiety caused him to be indulgent, where he had formerly been unbending. The difference in their ages made him patient and tractable. He feared he could not show her the love that she in her freshness and natural, unconsumed robustness desired. On this account he denied himself many things which he formerly could not have got along without, and put up with, many things that would have been intolerable to him as a younger man.

It needed only a single hour at night to make him promise to accept the position old Herold was leaving. He, as parsimonious with words as in the expression of feelings, succumbed to her cat-like cuddling. He capitulated in the face of her unpitying ridicule, and surrendered all to the prurient agility of a young body. Dark powers there are that set up dependencies between man and woman. When they rule, things do not work out in accordance with set calculation or inborn character. It takes but a single hour of the night to bend the most sacred truth of life into a lie.