Death in Venice and Other Stories (25 page)

He spent two hours in his room that afternoon before taking the
vaporetto
across the foul-smelling Lagoon to Venice. He disembarked at San Marco, drank a cup of tea on the Piazza, then set off on a stroll through the streets, as he had done whenever he was there before. However, it was this routine walk that completely changed his mood and his plans.

A repulsive humidity pervaded the narrow streets. The air was so thick that the smells from apartments, shops, food stands—the stench of oil and sprayed perfume among other things—collected in great hovering clouds. Cigarette smoke lingered, taking forever to disperse. The push and shove of people in such tight quarters did not amuse the strolling tourist. On the contrary, he found it merely oppressive. The further Aschenbach went on, the more he was plagued, indeed overcome by that atrocious condition of simultaneous nervousness and exhaustion which can arise from the combination of salt air and the sirocco. He broke out in an embarrassing sweat. His vision blurred, his chest constricted, he felt feverish and a vein began to throb in his head. He fled the crowded streets of the shopping district, crossing over bridges into the alleyways of the poorer quarters, where beggars molested him, and the foul canal vapors made breathing difficult. Resting on the edge of a fountain in a quiet square, one of those forgotten and
seemingly accursed localities in the interior of Venice, he wiped the sweat from his brow and realized that he would have to travel on.

Twice, and now definitively, it had been demonstrated that this city could be quite harmful to him in this weather. Obstinately sticking it out seemed irrational—there was no guarantee the wind would shift. A quick decision was required. To go home so soon was out of the question. Neither his summer nor his winter quarters stood ready to receive him. But there were other beaches on the sea, and elsewhere they came without the harmful additives of the Lagoon and its febrile vapors. He remembered the name of a small seaside spa not far from Trieste that had been recommended to him. Why not go there? Yes, indeed, without delay, while the repeated change of locale still made sense. He told himself his mind was made up and rose to his feet. At the next stop, he hired a gondola to ferry him through the gloomy labyrinth of canals back toward the Piazza San Marco. It took him under ornate marble balconies flanked by sculpted lions, around corners of slimy stone walls and past mournful facades of
pallazi
topped by giant advertising signs that were reflected in the rippling bilge water. He had difficulty reaching his destination, for the gondolier was in league with various lace factories and glassworks and kept trying to drop him off to see and buy things. Thus, whenever the bizarre excursion through Venice began to cast a magic spell, the cutthroat commercialism of this sunken queen of cities did its irritating best to restore his senses to sobriety.

Back in the hotel before dinner, he notified the office that unforeseen circumstances had forced his departure early the next morning. Regret was expressed; his bill was settled. He ate, then spent the lukewarm evening on the back terrace reading periodicals in a rocking chair. Before going to bed, he finished packing for his departure.

Nervous at the prospect of another change of location, he didn't sleep all that well. In the morning, when he opened his windows, the skies were still overcast, but
the air did seem a bit fresher. And regret, too, had already set in. Was it not a hasty and premature step to announce his departure, the result of the exceptional circumstance of feeling a bit ill? If only he had held off and not given up so quickly, waited to see whether he might not have acclimated himself to the Venetian air, or whether the weather itself might not have changed, he could right now be looking forward to another morning on the beach like yesterday, instead of having to hustle and bustle around. Too late. Now he had no choice but to carry on wanting what he had wanted the day before. He got dressed and went down at eight to the ground floor for breakfast.

On his arrival the buffet room was entirely empty, although a few people did straggle in while he sat waiting for his order. Sipping his tea, he watched as the Polish girls turned up together with their governess. Severe and morning fresh with their bloodshot eyes, they walked over to their corner table by the window. Immediately afterward the porter approached, cap in hand, to remind him that it was time to leave. The car was waiting to take him and other departing guests to the Hotel Excelsior, where a motorboat would convey them to the train station via a private company canal. Time was of the essence. — Aschenbach, however, did not think it was so at all. Over an hour remained until his train was scheduled to depart. He was irritated by this old hotel trick for getting rid of guests early and told the porter he wished to eat his breakfast in peace. The man hesitated, then withdrew, only to reappear five minutes later. The car wouldn't wait any longer. Then let it go, Aschenbach responded with exasperation, and send my bags along with it—he himself would take the
vaporetto
when it was time. Would they please let him worry about his own departure? The hotel employee bowed. Aschenbach, glad to have fended off such bothersome reminders, lingered over breakfast and even had the waiter bring him a newspaper. It was quite late when he finally did get up. As it so happened, that was the very moment Tadzio entered through the glass door.

On his way over to his family's table, the boy crossed the departing Aschenbach's path. He modestly lowered his eyes before the man with the gray hair and the lofty brow, only to raise them again immediately, gentle and wide, in signature charming manner toward the observer's own. Then he was past. Adieu, Tadzio! Aschenbach thought. I saw you briefly. And with his lips, contrary to habit, literally forming and mouthing words for his thoughts, he added: “Bless you, dear boy.”—He then commenced his departure, doling out gratuities, seeing himself escorted out by the small, soft-spoken manager in the French frock coat, leaving the hotel as he had come, on foot, followed by a servant carrying his hand luggage, retracing his steps across the island along that white-blossomed avenue toward the
vaporetto
landing. He arrives there, he takes his seat—and what followed was the journey of a grief-stricken man, a journey of sorrow, through the very depths of regret.

It was the familiar trip across the Lagoon, past the Piazza San Marco and up the Grand Canal. Aschenbach sat on the curved bench in the bow, his elbow on the rail, shading his eyes with his hand. The public gardens were quickly left behind. The Piazetta again opened up in all its princely grace and was abandoned. Then came the great flight of
palazzi,
and, as the canal snaked around in the opposite direction, the splendidly spanned marble arch of the Rialto appeared. The traveling Aschenbach took everything in, and his heart was torn. The air in the city, the slightly rotten smell of sea and swamp, which he had been in such a hurry to flee—he now inhaled it with deep, bittersweet breaths. Was it possible for him not to have known, not to have considered how much this all meant to him? What this morning had been a partial regret, a slight doubt as to the wisdom of his actions, now became wound, physical pain, an anguish of the soul so bitter that his eyes repeatedly welled over with tears. He told himself he could not possibly have anticipated this pain. As far as he was aware what he found so trying, indeed at times utterly unbearable, was the thought of never again seeing Venice, the thought that this time, it
was good-bye for good. Having twice been shown that the city made him sick, having again been forced to flee it headlong, it would have to be regarded from now on as off limits, as a place that was beyond his capacities and that it would be senseless to revisit. Indeed, he realized that, if he left now, shame and bitter pride would surely keep him from ever seeing this beloved city again, where he had twice failed physically. This conflict between the inclinations of the soul and the capabilities of the flesh suddenly seemed so profound and weighty—the prospect of physical defeat so humiliating, so crucial to avoid at all cost—that the aging Aschenbach could no longer comprehend his easy capitulation of yesterday, when, without any significant struggle, he had decided simply to give up and accept the consequences.

Meanwhile, the
vaporetto
approaches the train station, and pain and helplessness intensify to the point of bewilderment. Departure seems impossible, turning back equally so. The poor tortured man enters the station utterly torn in this way. It is quite late. He has not a moment to lose if he wants to catch his train. He wants to and yet doesn't want to. But the clock beckons, drives him forward. He hurriedly buys his ticket and peers into the tumult of the great hall for the hotel representative, who is supposed to be stationed here. The man appears and reports that his large suitcase has already been checked through. Already checked through? Yes, with pleasure, sir—checked through to Como. To Como? And it turns out in the ensuing rapid-fire exchange of angry questions and embarrassed answers that, no sooner had his suitcase arrived in the luggage office of the Hotel Excelsior, than it was forwarded, along with some other outside baggage, in the entirely wrong direction.

Aschenbach had difficulty maintaining the only sort of facial expression that made sense under such circumstances. An adventurous joy, a glee transcending belief, suddenly seized his heart from deep within, almost convulsively. The hotel employee rushed off to see if he could re-collect the errant suitcase and returned, as expected, empty-handed. At that, Aschenbach declared
himself unwilling to travel on without his luggage and stated his decision to go back to the beach hotel to await its reappearance. Was the company motorboat still at the train station? The man assured him it was waiting right outside. With typical Italian eloquence he persuaded the counter attendant to refund the price of Aschenbach's ticket, pledging all the while that telegrams would be sent and no effort spared to get the suitcase back very soon. Thus the unlikely happened, and the traveler, twenty minutes after arriving at the train station, found himself once more upon the Grand Canal, heading back to the Lido.

An unbelievably strange, humbling adventure! An absurd interlude from a dream! To stand again before the very stations from which you have just parted forever, in the deepest of sorrow! To stand there less than an hour later, because fate has turned you round and sent you back! Dodging gondola and
vaporetti
in a series of amusingly nimble back-and-forth tacks, the eager little boat proceeded toward its destination, spray before its bow, its lone passenger concealing the anxious exuberance of a truant schoolboy under a mask of irritated resignation. Now and then, his sides still shook with laughter at his mishap, which, as he told himself, couldn't have come at a more opportune time. Explanations would have to be given, surprised looks endured—but then, as he told himself, everything would be put right, a disaster averted, a serious mistake rectified, and all that he thought he had left behind would open up once more before him, to be had at his leisure. What's more, did the speed of the motorboat deceive him, or was the wind now, to top it all off, indeed really blowing in from the sea?

The ship's wake broke against the concrete walls of that narrow canal which cuts across the island to the Hotel Excelsior. A motorbus was waiting there above the rippling ocean water to take the returning guest directly back to the beach hotel. The small manager with the mustache and the frock coat and tails came down the front steps to greet him.

In soft-spoken sycophantic words he expressed his
regret over the incident, calling it extremely embarrassing both for himself and his establishment, although he emphatically endorsed Aschenbach's decision to remain there to await his luggage. His room had admittedly been given away, but another, just as good, was at his immediate disposal.
“Pas de chance, monsieur,”
said the Swiss elevator boy with a smile as they were swept upstairs. Thus the refugee was reinstalled in the hotel, in a room whose location and furnishings were almost identical to his earlier one.

He distributed the contents of his hand luggage about the room and then sank, exhausted and numb from the whirlwind of activity on this extraordinary morning, into an easy chair near the window. The sea had taken on a pale green tint, the air seemed fresher and less thick, and the beach with its huts and boats looked more colorful, even though the sky was still gray. Aschenbach gazed out, his hands folded in his lap, content to be there once more, shaking his head at having been so fickle, at not having known what he really wanted. Thus he sat for at least an hour, resting and daydreaming, undisturbed by any real thoughts. Around noon he caught sight of Tadzio in the striped linen outfit with the red breast-knot, emerging from the sea, exiting the beach, then coming up the boardwalk back to the hotel. From his elevated vantage point, Aschenbach recognized him at once, before the boy had actually become fully visible, and was about to think something like: why, Tadzio, there you are again, too! But in that very instant he felt the flippant greeting die on his lips, sinking down before the truth in his heart. He felt the quickening of his blood, the joy and pain within his soul, and he realized that Tadzio was the reason it had been so difficult to leave.

He sat quite still, quite out of sight, high on his perch, and scrutinized what was going on inside him. His features came alive, he raised his brows and an alert smile of intellectual curiosity crossed his lips. Then he raised his head and, with his arms hanging limply from the armrests of his chair, began to describe a slow upward
circular motion, simultaneously extending his palms, as though to suggest that those arms might fully open and spread. It was a gesture of eager welcoming, of calm acceptance.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

Every day now, the bare-skinned, fiery-cheeked god piloted his heat-breathing chariot across the sky's expanse, his golden locks waving in the simultaneously storming east wind. Silky white radiance hung over the slow swells of the
pontos
. The sand was glowing hot. Before the changing huts, rust-colored canvas awnings were unfurled beneath the silvery glimmering blue of the ether, and the morning hours were passed in the sharply defined patches of shade they provided. Exquisite, too, was the night, when the park flora gave off soothing fragrances, the stars above danced in lines and the softly insistent murmur of the darkened sea conjured over the soul. Each evening contained the joyful promise of another sunny day of easily disposed leisure, a day made more attractive still by sweet fortune's dense and infinite assortment of possibilities.