Death in Venice and Other Stories (22 page)

It was an aged vessel flying an Italian flag, decrepit, sooty and grim. No sooner was Aschenbach on board, than an unwashed, smirkingly polite hunchback of a deckhand ushered him into a claustrophobic, artificially lit compartment in the ship's interior. There a goateed man sat behind a table with a face like that of an old-fashioned circus impresario, his hat slanted down over his brow, the tail end of a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. He was checking passengers' identification and writing out tickets with the gesticulating flair of a
salesman. “Venice!” he said, parroting Aschenbach's request and jabbing his pen into the thickening dregs of a sharply tilted inkwell. “First class to Venice! You're all taken care of, sir.” He scratched out a few giant letters, scattered blue sand from a box upon them, shook the paper out over a clay bowl, folded it in his bony yellow fingers and resumed writing. “A well-chosen destination!” he chattered while doing so. “Ah Venice! A lovely city! A city no cultured person can resist, be it for its history or its present-day charms!” There was something hypnotic and distracting about the slickness and rapidity of his movements and the accompanying empty phrases, almost as though he were worried that the traveler might have second thoughts about Venice. He hastily took Aschenbach's money and, with the dexterity of a croupier, tossed the change on the stained cloth covering the table. “Enjoy yourself, sir,” he said with a theatrical bow. “It's a privilege serving you . . . Next!” he called out, immediately raising one arm as if doing the briskest of business, although there was no one else who needed to be served. Aschenbach went back up on deck.

One arm on the handrail, he stared at the idle quayside crowd dawdling around to watch the ship's departure and at the other passengers on board. Those traveling second class, men and women, crouched on the foredeck, using crates and packed bundles for seats. His company on the upper deck was a group of young people, evidently clerks from Pola, who had decided on the spur of the moment to take a day trip to Italy. They were attracting considerable attention to themselves and their little excursion, jabbering, laughing, fatuously enjoying their own exaggerated gestures and leaning over the rail to shout glib taunts at busy, briefcase-toting colleagues who walked down along the harbor street and who shook their walking sticks back at the celebrants above. One fellow in particular, all done up in a bright yellow summer suit of extravagant cut, a red tie and a boldly cocked Panama hat, screeched louder than all the others in his merriment. Yet no sooner had Aschenbach gotten a somewhat closer look at him than he realized with horror that this
youngster was a fake. He was old—no doubt about it—for wrinkles surrounded his eyes and mouth. The dull flush on his cheeks was mere rouge, the brown hair under his colorfully woven straw hat a wig, his neck a gnarl of sinews, his affectatious mustache and imperial a dye-job, the toothy yellow grin whenever he laughed a cheap set of dentures, and his hands, signet rings on both index fingers, those of a geriatric. Unnerved, Aschenbach watched him moving in the company of these young friends. Didn't they know he was old? Didn't they notice the deceit of his wearing the same foppish, festive attire they did, of his pretending to be one of them? As a matter of course, out of habit, so it seemed, they tolerated him among the group, treating him as an equal and responding without disgust when he playfully elbowed them in the ribs. How was this possible? Aschenbach put his hand upon his forehead and shut his eyes, which burned from lack of sleep. He felt as though not everything were getting off to exactly its usual start, as though a dreamlike strangeness were beginning to expand and engulf the world, a bizarre metamorphosis to which a stop might be put if he could briefly shade his eyes, then take another look around. At that moment, however, a sensation of swimming began and he glanced up in unthinking panic, only to discover the ship's grim hulk moving slowly away from the stone wall of the harbor. Inch by inch, as the engine alternated between forward and reverse, the slick of oily water between the quay and the side of the ship widened, and after some clumsy maneuvering, the steamer turned its prow toward the open sea. Aschenbach walked over to the starboard, where the hunchback had unfolded a deck chair for him and a steward in a stained jacket asked if there was anything he required.

The sky was gray, the wind damp. The harbor and the islands were quickly left behind, and soon all land was lost to view in the fog. Heavy flecks of coal ash, soaked with mist, fell on the freshly scrubbed deck, which seemed as if it would never dry off. An hour into the trip, it was already necessary to unfold a canopy, for it had started to rain.

Wrapped in an overcoat, with a book in his lap, the traveler relaxed, not noticing the hours that passed. It had stopped raining, and the canvas awning was folded back up. The horizon was absolute and infinite. Under the gloomy dome of the sky an eerily immense surface of desolate sea stretched in every direction. When space is empty and undivided, we have no measure of time either and begin to lose ourselves in the sheer infinity. Strange shadowy figures, the old fop and the goateed man from the ship's interior, passed through the resting Aschenbach's mind, indistinctly gesturing and speaking some scrambled dream language. He fell asleep.

At noon he was required to assemble below with the others in the ship's mess, a mere corridor to which one gained access via connecting doors from the sleeping berths. There he ate at the head of a long table, directly across from the clerks, old fop included, who had since ten o'clock been drinking toasts with the gregarious ship's captain. The meal was wretched, and he finished it quickly. The open air beckoned. He wanted to check the sky: perhaps it was clearing over Venice.

He hadn't even considered the possibility of it being otherwise, since the city had always greeted him in full splendor. But today the sky and the sea remained gloomy and leaden, misty rain fell intermittently, and he found himself approaching a different Venice by sea than he had ever encountered on land. He stood by the foremast, gazing expectantly into the distance, trying to spot the coastline. He thought of that melancholy, overexcitable poet, whose vividly dreamt domes and church bells had long ago arisen from these waters, and he silently recited several of the carefully metered verses into which reverence, joy and sadness had so long ago been wrought. Being easily moved by passion already thus sculpted, he checked his grave, exhausted heart to see if some new enthusiasm and excitability, some late emotional adventure, might be in store for an idle traveler like himself.

There, to his right, the flat coastline began to emerge, fishing boats dotted the sea, and the island resort
appeared. The steamer passed it on the left, sailing at reduced speed into the narrow port of the same name. Then it came to a full stop in the Lagoon in front of some picturesque ramshackle structures to await the quarantine authorities' skiff.

An hour passed before it appeared. They had arrived and yet not arrived. There was no reason to hurry, yet they felt driven by impatience. The young clerks from Pola had had their usual patriotism excited by the bugle calls carrying across the water from the vicinity of the public gardens and had come up on deck. There, bolstered by
asti spumante
, they cheered on the
bersaglieri
exercising on the opposite shore. It was repulsive to observe the effect upon the aged fop of falsely kept company with youth. His old head had not stood the wine as those younger and hardier ones had, and he found himself in a lamentable state of drunkenness. Bleary-eyed, his cigarette trembling between his fingers, he swayed as he stood, struggling to maintain his balance against the back-and-forth pull of intoxication. He dared not take a step for fear of falling down, yet he still behaved with appalling presumption, grabbing at all who passed, babbling, winking, giggling, raising a wrinkled index finger and signet ring with each inane jest, his tongue flicking at the corners of his mouth all the while in a disgustingly suggestive manner. Aschenbach scowled at him and once again felt dazed, as if the world were subtly but relentlessly beginning to warp toward the bizarre and fragmentary. It was a feeling that external circumstances prevented him from pursuing, for at that very moment the engine resumed its pounding, and the ship, having stopped so short of its ultimate destination, started once more up the San Marco Canal.

Thus he saw it again, that most awe-inspiring port, that dazzling arrangement of fantastic architecture with which the Republic has perennially greeted the reverent eyes of approaching seafarers: the easy majesty of the Palace of the Doges, the Bridge of Sighs, the pillars of the lion and saint by the Lagoon, the magnificent projected arm of the magical San Marco Basilica, the view
beyond the gateway to the city and the giant clock. And he realized as he took this all in that arriving in Venice by land via the train station was like entering a palace through one of the back doors, that this most unlikely of cities should only be approached by ship, over high sea, as he was now doing.

The engine stopped, gondolas pulled alongside them, the gangway was let down, customs officials came on board and performed their duties, and at long last they were able to begin disembarking. Aschenbach let it be known he wished to hire a gondola to take him and his luggage to the landing of those small steam boats, or
vaporetti
, which shuttle between the city and the Lido, for he intended to take a room there on the ocean. His plans meet with approval, and someone shouts down to the water, where a number of gondoliers are quarrelling in dialect. Still, he is blocked from disembarking, blocked by his own luggage, which is being half dragged, half carried down the ladderlike gangway. Consequently, for some minutes, he finds himself unable to avoid the intimacies of the horrific old fop, who has been moved by some obscure drunken impulse to pay his courtesies to this complete stranger. “We hope you have a most pleasant stay,” he bleats, bowing and scraping. “We trust you won't forget us!
Au revoir
,
excusez
, and
bon jour
, your Excellency!” Drooling, the old fop shuts his eyes and licks at the corners of his mouth, and the dyed imperial on his age-worn lower lip jerks upward. “Our best,” he babbles on, slurring his words and raising two fingertips to his mouth. “Give our best to your sweetheart, the sweetest, prettiest little sweetheart of them all.” Suddenly his upper denture falls out of his jaw onto his lower lip. At that point Aschenbach was able to escape. “Your sweetheart, your tender little sweetheart.” He could still hear the old man's vapid, alcohol-impaired cooing over his shoulder as he climbed down the gangway, clinging tightly to the ropes.

Who among us would not have to suppress a momentary shudder, a second of unspoken anxious dread, upon first stepping or first restepping after years into a
Venetian gondola? Unchanged since the days of yore and of that special black possessed by no other earthly objects save coffins, this extraordinary means of conveyance calls to mind furtive criminal adventures undertaken on soggy nights. Still more, it evokes death itself, the bier, the solemn rites and the final silent voyage. Has it been duly noted that the typical seating arrangement in such a gondola—its polish coffin and its upholstery matte black—is the softest, plushest, most sleep-inducing armchair in the entire world? This thought impressed itself upon Aschenbach as he settled back at the gondolier's feet, facing his bags, which had been tidily arranged in the prow. The gondoliers were still quarrelling in their coarse, incomprehensible dialect, making hostile gestures all the while. The characteristic stillness of the watery city, however, seemed to envelop, disembody and scatter their voices over the tides. It was hot here in the harbor. Feeling the warm breath of the sirocco, leaning back into the cushions and floating atop that soft and forgiving element, the traveler closed his eyes to savor a moment of self-indulgence, as unfamiliar as it was sweet. This trip will not last long, he thought. If only it could last forever! Gently rocked by the water, he sensed himself gliding away from the crowd and the confusion of the voices.

How quiet it was growing around him! Nothing could be heard except the soft splash of the oar, the dull slap of the waves against the prow—which stuck up from the water, stiff, black and spiked like a halberd—and a third sound as well, a murmuring, a muttering: the hissing of the gondolier through his teeth. He was talking to himself in spasmodic phrases muted by his laboring arms. Aschenbach opened his eyes and was rather startled to find the Lagoon growing wider and the boat heading out toward the open sea. It seemed he couldn't relax too much; some attention was required to ensure that his requests were indeed carried out.

“See here, to the
vaporetto
landing,” he said over his shoulder. The muttering ceased, but he received no answer.

“To the
vaporetto
landing, I said!” he reiterated, turning fully around and staring up into the face of the gondolier, who towered behind him imposingly against the pale sky on his raised plank. The man cut an unforgiving, even brutal figure. He was dressed in sailor's blues, with a yellow sash for a belt and a fraying straw hat of no particular style cocked insolently on his head. His face, with its curled blond mustache under a faintly upturned nose, made him look very un-Italian. Though comparatively slight of stature, so that he might have been considered ill-suited for his career, he rowed with great energy, putting his whole body into every stroke. Once or twice, the exertion made him grimace, exposing his white teeth. Wrinkling his reddish eyebrows, he peered over his passenger's head into the distance and answered in a firm, almost rude tone:

“You go to the Lido.”

Aschenbach responded:

“Yes indeed. But I only hired the gondola to take me over to San Marco. I wish to take the
vaporetto
.”

“You cannot take the
vaporetto
, sir.”