Death in Venice and Other Stories (16 page)

Many of the houses had exteriors with openwork bell gables exactly like the older ones in his hometown, and on their doorplates he recognized many of the names from those days, names that seemed to signify something delicate and priceless to him, yet nonetheless also brought a kind of recrimination, reproach and longing for what had been lost. And everywhere he went, inhaling the damp sea air in deliberate, pensive breaths, he saw eyes that were as blue, hair that was as blond, and faces that were of exactly the same type and shape as those he had glimpsed in his unusually tormented, remorseful dreams during that one night in his hometown.
It happened several times that, in the middle of the streets, a glance, a melodic word, a peal of laughter cut him to the quick . . .

He didn't hold out for long in this cheerful city. Unrest—sweet and foolish, part recollection and part expectation—drove him on, along with the need to lie peacefully on the beach rather than to play the role of the avid sightseer. So one gloomy day (the sea turned black) he boarded another ship and sailed north along the coast of Zealand toward Elsinore. There he continued his journey without delay by carriage, traveling three quarters of an hour along the main coastal road, never more than a short distance above the sea, until he reached his final and true destination amidst a small settlement of low-lying houses, the small white beachfront hotel with green shutters, whose shingled tower looked out upon the sound and the Swedish coastline. He disembarked, took possession of the sunny room reserved for him, filled the shelves and cupboards with the things he had brought along and prepared to live for a while in the place.

8

September was almost over, and there were not many visitors left at Aalsgaard. Meals were taken in the large, ground-floor dining room with its open crossbeams and its tall windows looking out on the enclosed veranda and the sea. The proprietress headed the table, an elderly spinster with white hair, colorless eyes, faintly rosy cheeks and an uncertain warble of a voice, who constantly twiddled her red hands, trying to find a somewhat advantageous pose for them on the tablecloth. Also present was an old gentleman with a short neck, an icy gray sailor's beard and a dark bluish face, a fish merchant from the capital who spoke German. He seemed to be afflicted with congenital congestion and suffered periodic sinus attacks, for he would occasionally put a ringed index finger up to one of his nostrils, press it shut
and snort vigorously through the other to clear the passages. This didn't prevent him, however, from constantly addressing the aquavit bottle that was kept in front of him at lunch and dinner, even at breakfast. Lastly there were three tall American boys together with a chaperon or tutor who always tugged at his glasses, never said anything and spent his days kicking around a ball with them. Their reddish blond hair was parted in the middle, and their faces were long and expressionless. “Please give me the
wurst
-things there!” one of them would say in English. “That's not
wurst
, that's
schinken
!” one of the others would reply—that was all they and their tutor ever contributed to mealtime conversation. Otherwise they just sat mute, drinking warm water.

Tonio Kröger could not have wished for better company. He enjoyed the peace and quiet: he would take in the guttural consonants and bright, sorrowful vowels of the Danish language during the brief conversations between the fish merchant and the lady of the house, occasionally exchange a couple of words with the man about the current state of the barometer and then excuse himself, walking through the veranda down to the beach, where he spent many an idle morning hour.

Sometimes it was still and summery there. The sea lay lazy and smooth in blue, bottle green and reddish streaks, with sparkling reflections of silvery light playing over its surface, as the seaweed withered to hay in the sun and jellyfish dried out in the sand. It always smelled slightly of decay and also slightly of tar from the fishing boat against which Tonio Kröger leaned so as to have the open horizon, not the Swedish coast, in view while he sat in the sand. But the gentle breath from the sea nonetheless swept pure and fresh over everything.

And then there were gray, stormy days. The waves lowered their heads like bulls preparing their horns for the charge and ran furiously at the beach, awash and covered with dripping-wet seaweed, mussels and driftwood. Between the long swells great troughs formed, pale green and frothy under the overcast sky, while there
beyond the clouds, where the sun was shining, a bright velvet gleam blanketed the water's surface.

Tonio Kröger stood surrounded by the roaring of the wind and surf, absorbed by this timeless, profound, deafening din he loved so very much, and when he turned to go, everything around him suddenly seemed so calm and warm. But at his back he always sensed the sea, calling out its greetings, tempting him. And he smiled.

He walked inland across the solitude of fields and was soon swallowed by beech forest, such as stretched out for miles over this hilly region. He sat down on a bed of moss and leaned against a tree, so positioned that a strip of ocean was visible through the other trunks. Now and then the wind carried over the noise of the surf, a sound like distant wooden planks falling against each other. Crow caws above the treetops, hoarse, desolate and forlorn . . . he held a book propped upon his knees but didn't read a single line. He savored a deep oblivion, floating weightlessly over space and time, and only occasionally did his heart shudder with sorrow, pierced by a short stab of longing or regret, whose name and origin he was too lethargic and distracted to question.

Many a day passed like this, although he couldn't have said how many and felt no need to find out. Then, however, came a special day when something different took place. It took place under sunny skies and in the presence of others, and Tonio Kröger wasn't even particularly amazed.

The day even began as something festive and delightful. Tonio Kröger awoke very early, quite abruptly, his sleep broken by a delicate, indefinite anxiety, to the sight of a miracle, a display of light conjured up by magic fairies. His room, which had a glass door, a sound-facing balcony and a thin white gauze curtain between the living and sleeping areas, was papered in delicate colors and decorated with small, cheery furniture: thus it always looked bright and hospitable. But at that moment, it had been supernaturally transfigured and illuminated before his sleepy eyes, dipped again and again in an
ineffably fair and misty rose-colored light that gave the walls and furniture a golden tint and made the gauze curtain glow in mild pink . . . For a long time Tonio Kröger couldn't comprehend what was happening. But as soon as he went to the glass door and looked outside, he saw that it was the sun on the rise.

It had been overcast and rainy for several days, but now the sky was spread out like tightly spanned, pale blue silk, shimmering and clear, over land and sea. The sun, streaked and bordered by clouds shining red and gold, rose solemnly above the flickering ripples of the water, which seemed to shudder and begin glowing beneath it . . . That was how the day began, and, dumbfounded with joy, Tonio Kröger threw on his clothes, ate breakfast before everyone else downstairs on the veranda, swam for some distance in the sound in front of the small wooden changing hut, then took an hour's walk on the beach. When he returned to the hotel, several omnibus carriages stood out front, and from the dining room he could see, both in the adjacent piano parlor and on the terraced veranda, great numbers of people in basic middle-class attire sitting at round tables consuming buttered bread and beer and carrying on animated conversations. There were whole families present, with older and younger members, even a few children.

At his second breakfast—the table was heavy with cold dishes, smoked goods, salted foods and pastries—Tonio Kröger inquired what was going on.

“Guests!” said the fish merchant. “Visitors from Elsinore on an excursion, ball guests. Yes, God help us, we won't get any sleep, not tonight! There'll be dancing, dancing and music, and you have to think it will go on for quite some time. It's a family gathering, a country outing followed by a reunion back here, essentially a package deal, or something similar, to take advantage of the nice weather. They've come by boat and carriage, and now they're eating breakfast. Later they're going on a bit further by land, but they'll return this evening for dancing and other amusements here in the dining room.
Yes, damn it all to hell, we won't be able to sleep a wink . . .”

“It's a nice change,” said Tonio Kröger.

After that nothing more was said for quite some time. The proprietress fidgeted with her red fingers, the fish merchant snorted through one nostril to clear the passages and the Americans drank warm water and stared with their long faces.

Then all of a sudden it happened:
Hans Hansen and Ingeborg Holm walked through the dining room.
—

Tonio Kröger, pleasantly tired from his swim and brisk walk, was reclining in a chair eating smoked salmon on toast—he sat facing the veranda and the sea. Suddenly the door opened, and the two of them entered, hand in hand, leisurely strolling. Ingeborg—blond Inge—was dressed in bright colors, just as she usually had been during Mr. Knaak's dance lessons. She wore a lightweight floral dress above the ankle, and around her shoulders was a broad white tulle collar with a low neckline that exposed her soft, supple throat. Her hat was dangling from its two tied ribbons from one of her arms. She had perhaps gotten a bit larger since then, and her fabulous ponytail was now braided around her head, but Hans Hansen was the same as ever. He was dressed in his fisherman's jacket with the golden buttons, its wide blue collar folded back over the shoulders, and in one hand he held his sailor's cap by its short straps, swinging it back and forth at his side without a care. Ingeborg kept her long horizontal eyes averted, probably vaguely embarrassed at the stares of the diners. Hans Hansen, however, turned toward the breakfast buffet, his head straight and defiant, his steel blue eyes measuring each of the guests in turn, mustering them with a certain contempt. He even let go of Ingeborg's hand so that he could swing his cap back and forth more vigorously, to demonstrate what kind of a man he was. Thus, against the backdrop of the calm sea growing ever bluer, the two of them passed before Tonio's eyes. They walked the length of the dining room and disappeared through the opposite door into the piano parlor.

This happened at around eleven-thirty in the morning, and while the regular hotel guests remained seated over their breakfast, the party in the next room and on the veranda got up and departed. They left the hotel by the side door, which also served as an entrance and exit, not one of them setting foot in the dining room proper. They could be heard getting into their carriages, joking and laughing, and then came sounds of one vehicle after another beginning to grind its way down the gravel road and into the distance . . .

“So they're coming back?” asked Tonio Kröger.

“That they are!” said the fish merchant. “And it's a crying shame. They've arranged for music, I should point out, and I sleep directly above the dining room.”

“It's a nice change,” Tonio Kröger repeated. Then he stood up and went.

He spent the day as he had spent all the others, on the beach and in the woods, propping a book on his knees and squinting into the sun. He thought of only one thing, that they would return and that there would be dancing and other amusements in the dining room, as the fish merchant had promised. He did nothing else but look forward to it with the sort of anxiously sweet anticipation he hadn't once felt in all these long lifeless years. At one point that day, thanks to some chain of associations, he briefly recalled a distant acquaintance, the writer Adalbert, who had known what he wanted and had taken refuge in a coffeehouse to escape the spring air. And he shrugged his shoulders at the memory . . .

Both dinner and the small evening supper were served earlier than usual, the latter in the parlor, since preparations for the dance were already underway in the dining room itself. In this festive way the normal order of things was disrupted. Then, after it had gotten dark and Tonio Kröger had returned to his room, there was activity once more on the road and in the lobby. The day guests were returning from their excursion; in fact, new visitors were arriving by bicycle and carriage from the direction of Elsinore, and downstairs one could
already hear a violin being tuned and a clarinet running through its nasal-toned exercises . . .

From all indications it was going to be a splendid ball.

The small orchestra now struck up a march: though muted, the music with its steady tempo drifted upstairs. Dancing was commenced with a polonaise. Tonio Kröger sat quietly for a while and listened. But as soon as the march rhythm gave way to a waltz, he got up and slipped silently from his room.

From the hallway on which it was located, a second flight of stairs led to the side entrance of the hotel where, without passing through any of the ground-floor rooms, one could reach the glass veranda. This was the route he took, quietly and surreptitiously, as if traveling down forbidden paths, feeling his way carefully through the darkness, irresistibly attracted by the unthinking, divinely swaying rhythm of the music, whose tones already sounded loud and distinct in his ears.

The veranda was empty and unlit, but the glass door was open to the dining room, where the two large paraffin lamps with the polished mirrors cast a bright glare. He crept forward on tiptoe, and his skin prickled with furtive thrill at standing there in the dark observing the people as they danced in the light. He glanced all around frantically, his greedy eyes searching out the two of them . . .

Although the ball was only a half an hour underway, it was already in full swing. The ice had been broken, no doubt, and the guests' communal enthusiasm whipped up, even before they arrived, by a whole day spent, carefree and happy, in one another's company. In the parlor, which Tonio Kröger was able to survey whenever he ventured forward a little, several older gentlemen had taken their drinks and cigarettes and had gotten up a game of cards. Other men sat with their wives on upholstered chairs in front and along the dining-room walls and watched the dancing. They rested their hands on outspread knees and puffed out their cheeks in well-being, while their female counterparts stared with folded
arms into the whirling mass of young people, their bonnets high on their angled heads. A platform had been set up along one of the side walls, and on it the musicians were giving their best. There was even a trumpet, which sounded undeniably hesitant and wary, as though the instrument were afraid of its own constantly breaking and cracking voice . . . Couples were swaying and spinning, circling each other, while others promenaded through the room, arm in arm. The company wasn't formally attired, but rather dressed for a summer Sunday outing in the country: the gentlemen in suits of rustic cut obviously reserved for weekends, the young ladies in bright, thin dresses with wildflower garlands on their bodices. There were also a few children present, dancing amongst themselves in their own way even when the music stopped. A long-legged fellow in a sparrow-tailed evening jacket—some provincial bigwig with a monocle and sun-bleached hair, a junior postmaster or something similar, not unlike a stock comic figure from a Danish novel come to life—seemed to be the master of ceremonies and the king of the ball. Assiduous, perspiring and wholeheartedly on the job, he was everywhere at once. He scurried with an excess of industry throughout the room with the most elaborate of walks—putting his weight first on the toes, then on the balls of the feet, which were encased in polished military half-boots with pointed tips and which he set down one outside the other in crisscross pattern. He waved his arms in the air, issued orders, called for music and clapped his hands, with the ribbons of a large, colorful sash fluttering in his wake. It had been pinned to his shoulder as a sign of his special office, and he often turned his head to gaze at it lovingly.