Death in Venice and Other Tales Read online

  When he awoke, he found his room suffused with bright sunshine. In confusion and haste, he figured out where he was, got up and opened the curtains. The already somewhat pale blue of the late-summer sky was streaked by thin, wind-stretched wisps of cloud, but nonetheless the sun was shining over his hometown.

  He took more care getting ready than usual, washing up and shaving quite meticulously, trying to look fresh and neat, as though paying a visit to a well-bred, proper household where it was imperative to make a tidy, irreproachable impression, and as he rummaged around getting dressed, he listened to the anxious beating of his heart.

  How bright it was outside! He would have felt more at ease if yesterday’s dusk had still lain upon the street; now he would have to walk in broad daylight under the eyes of the people. Would he run into old acquaintances, would they stop him on the street and ask questions, would he have to tell them how he had spent the past thirteen years? No, thank God, no one knew him anymore, and anyone who did remember wouldn’t recognize him, for he really had changed a great deal in the meantime. He examined himself carefully in the mirror and suddenly felt safer behind his mask, behind the prematurely overworked face that looked older than its years . . . He ordered breakfast and then went out, went out under the appraising eyes of the porter and the elegant gentleman in black, through the lobby, between the two lions and into the open air.

  Where was he going? He hardly knew. It was the same as yesterday. No sooner did he find himself surrounded by this curiously dignified, ancient amalgamation of gables, spires, arcades and fountains, no sooner did he feel the wind blowing in his face again, that strong wind which carried with it a delicately sharp aroma from distant dreams, than a veil and tissue of fog seemed to befall his senses . . . The muscles in his face relaxed, and with suddenly calm eyes, he observed people and things. Maybe over there, on that corner, he would finally wake up . . .

  Where was he going? It seemed to him that the direction he took had something to do with his sad, strangely rueful dreams of the night before . . . He entered the main square, passed through the curved arches of the town hall, where butchers with bloody hands weighed their wares, into the marketplace proper, where the tall, Gothic fountain with its many spires was located. There he stopped in front of a house—a plain, narrow house like many others, with an openwork bell gable—and stood lost in thought at the sight of it. He read the nameplate beside the door and let his eyes rest a short while on each of the windows. Then he slowly turned away and went on.

  Where was he going? Toward home. But first he made a detour, strolling out past the city gate, because he had time. He walked along Mühlenwall and Holstenwall, holding on firmly to his hat against the wind that rustled and creaked among the trees. Then, not far from the train station, he forsook the levees to watch a train puff by in unceremonious haste and idly counted the number of cars, his eyes following the man who sat atop the very last one. Arriving at Lindenplatz, he stopped before one of the handsome villas, peered for a long while into the yard and up at the windows and finally hit upon the idea of swinging the iron gate back and forth on its hinges so that it squeaked. For a moment he stared at his hand, which was cold and covered with rust, then went on his way, proceeding through the squat old city gate along the ships’ landing and up the steep, drafty little street to his family’s house.

  There it stood, surrounded on all sides by the neighboring ones, over which its great gable towered, as gray and somber as it had been for three centuries, and Tonio Kröger read the pious maxim carved in half-obliterated letters over the entrance. Then he took a deep breath and walked in.

  His heart was pounding anxiously, for as he passed the doors on the ground floor, he could imagine his father, in a bookkeeper’s jacket, with a pen behind his ear, emerging, stopping him and strictly demanding an explanation for his extravagant way of life—a demand that he would only have seconded. But he made it past these doors unmolested. One in front of him, which kept out the drafts, wasn’t truly shut, only pushed closed. This he found objectionable, yet he also had the sensation, common in certain shallow dream states, of all impediments giving way of their own accord, allowing one to press forward unhindered, abetted by some fabulous string of luck . . . The large, square stonework in the front hallway echoed with his footsteps. Opposite the kitchen, where all was still, several unusual, crudely fashioned but neatly stained wooden cubicles still protruded as in the old days a considerable distance up the wall: the maids’ quarters, accessible from the floor only by a kind of exposed ladder. The large cabinets and the carved chest that had stood on this spot were no longer here . . . The son of the house climbed the massive staircase, steadying himself with his hand on the whitewashed wood of the openwork railing, raising it with one step, then letting it gently drop with the next, as if bashfully testing to see whether his former intimacy with the solid old banister could be reestablished . . . He paused, however, on the landing in front of the entrance to the mezzanine. On the door was a white sign with black letters reading “Public Library.”

  Public library? Tonio Kröger thought, musing that neither literature nor the public had any place here. He knocked on the door . . . A voice said, “Come in,” and Tonio Kröger obeyed. Tense and grim, he looked into the room and saw a most unbecoming transformation.

  The mezzanine extended through three rooms, whose connecting doors all stood open. The walls were covered almost up to the ceiling with identically bound volumes arranged on dark shelves in long rows. In each one of the rooms, behind a kind of shop counter, sat a miserable-looking person, writing. The furthest two merely turned their heads toward Tonio Kröger, but the first hastily stood up, braced himself with both hands on the counter, craned his neck, pursed his lips, raised his eyebrows and took in the visitor with eagerly blinking eyes . . .

  “Pardon me,” said Tonio Kröger, not taking his eyes off the many books. “I’m a stranger on a tour of the city. So this is the public library? Would it be allowed to take a quick look at your collection?”

  “With pleasure!” said the librarian, blinking even more rapidly . . . “Certainly, it’s open to everyone. Do you just want to have a look around . . . Do you require a catalogue?”

  “No, thank you,” answered Tonio Kröger. “I’ll get my bearings soon enough.” With that he began to walk slowly along the walls, pretending to study the titles on the spines of the books. Finally he took down a volume, opened it and sat down by the window.

  This had been the morning room. This was where they had eaten breakfast every day, not in the large dining room upstairs with the white statues of gods emerging sharply from the blue-background wallpaper . . . The next room had served as a bedroom. His father’s mother had died there, struggling to the bitter end despite her age, for she was a pleasure-loving lady of the world who clung to life. That was where his father too had breathed his last, that tall, correct, somewhat melancholy and pensive gentleman with the wildflower in his buttonhole . . . Tonio had sat at the foot of his deathbed, his eyes burning with tears, genuinely and completely overcome by an inarticulate but powerful emotion, overcome with love and anguish. His mother had also knelt down by the bed, his beautiful, fiery mother, and had broken out in passionate weeping, only to go off not long thereafter with that Mediterranean musician into the wild blue yonder . . . And the third room there in the back, the smaller one, now likewise full of books guarded by some miserable-looking person, had for many years been his own. There was where he had returned after school, after one of those walks like just now. Against that wall, the desk had stood in whose drawer he had stored his first, heartfelt, hapless attempts at poetry . . . The walnut tree . . . A stab of melancholy ran through him. He glanced off to the side out the window. The garden lay in a state of neglect, but the old walnut tree still stood where it always had, creaking ponderously and rustling in the wind. And Tonio Kröger allowed his eyes to wander back to the book he was holding in his hands, an outstanding l
iterary work he already knew quite well. He glanced down at the black lines and groups of sentences, followed the artful rhythm of the words for a while as they swelled with vivid passion toward epiphany and effect, then likewise successfully receded . . .

  “Yes, that’s nicely done,” he said, laying aside the literary work and turning around. He saw that the librarian was still standing there blinking his eyes, partly from eagerness to be of service, partly from speculative mistrust.

  “I see you have an excellent collection,” said Tonio Kröger. “I already feel I have an overview. I’m much obliged. Adieu.” With that he went toward the door, but his departure was hesitant, and he clearly sensed that the librarian, made uneasy by his visit, would continue to stand there blinking for some minutes to come.

  He had no desire to press any further. He had been home. He could see that strangers now lived in the large rooms upstairs behind the columned hall, for the landing was closed off by a glass door that had not been there before, with some name printed on the attached sign. He turned away, went down the stairs, passed through the echoing main hall and left his boyhood home. Alone with his thoughts in the corner of a restaurant, he ate a heavy, rich meal and then returned to his hotel.

  “I’m finished here,” he said to the elegant gentleman in black. “I’m leaving this afternoon.” He ordered his bill, as well as a cab to bring him to the landing where the steamer was to sail for Copenhagen. He then returned to his room and sat down at the table, sat silent and stiff, resting his chin on his hand, gazing with unseeing eyes at the tabletop. Later he settled his bill and packed his things. At the appointed hour his cab was announced, and Tonio Kröger, ready to depart, descended the staircase.

  On the ground floor, at the foot of the stairs, the elegant gentleman in black was waiting for him.

  “Forgive the interruption!” he said, his little fingers poking his cuffs back into their sleeves . . . “Pardon me, sir, but I must take up a minute of your time. Mr. Seehaase—the owner of the hotel—has asked to have a word or two with you. A formality . . . He’s back there . . . Would you please be so good as to follow me . . . It’s just Mr. Seehaase, the owner of the hotel.”

  And with a number of encouraging gestures, he led Tonio to the rear of the lobby. There indeed stood Mr. Seehaase—Tonio Kröger recognized him from the old days. He was short, fat and bowlegged. His closely cropped whiskers had turned white, but as always he wore a wide-cut frock coat and a little velvet cap embroidered with green. What’s more, he wasn’t alone. Next to him, behind a small lectern attached to the wall, stood a helmeted policeman, his gloved right hand resting before him on a document covered with various notations, his honest soldier’s face peering at Tonio Kröger as if he expected the traveler to sink into the ground under his stare.

  Tonio Kröger glanced from one to the other and decided to wait for them to begin conversation.

  “You come from Munich?” the policeman finally asked in an amiable, if coarse, voice.

  Tonio Kröger reaffirmed this.

  “You’re on your way to Copenhagen?”

  “Yes, I’m taking my vacation at a resort on the Danish coast.”

  “Coast?—Yes, well, you must have some identification you can produce,” said the policeman, pronouncing the word with special satisfaction.

  “Identification . . .” He had no identification. He took out his billfold and looked through it, but there was nothing inside except some banknotes and the proofs of a short story he had planned to check over once he’d reached his ultimate goal. He disliked all contact with postmasters and had never been issued a passport . . .

  “I’m very sorry,” he said, “but I don’t have any identification with me.”

  “Is that so?” said the policeman . . . “None at all?—What’s your name?”

  Tonio Kröger answered him.

  “Is that your real name?” asked the policeman, who straightened up and suddenly flared his nostrils as wide as he could . . .

  “Certainly,” answered Tonio Kröger.

  “What are you then?”

  Tonio Kröger swallowed and stated his occupation in a firm voice. — Mr. Seehaase raised his head and looked up at him with curiosity.

  “Hm!” said the policeman. “So you claim that you are not the same person as a certain indivigial named—” He pronounced the word “indivigial,” spelling out from the document with the various notations a bewilderingly exotic name, which seemed to be an experimental syllabic compound of various national languages and which Tonio Kröger would have been hard pressed to reconstruct a second later. “—an indivigial,” the policeman continued, “of unknown origin and no fixed address who is sought by the Munich police in connection with a number of frauds and other offenses and is believed to have taken flight for Denmark?”

  “I don’t just claim it,” said Tonio Kröger with a nervous motion of his shoulders. — That made a definite impression.

  “What? Oh yes, I see, sure!” said the policeman. “But you can’t produce anything to confirm it!”

  Attempting to disarm the situation, Mr. Seehaase interposed.

  “The whole thing is just a formality,” he said, “nothing more! You must realize that the officer is just doing his duty. If you could only prove somehow that you are who you say. A single piece of identification . . .”

  No one said a word. Should he put an end to the matter by introducing himself, by revealing to Mr. Seehaase that he was not some con artist with no known address, not some gypsy in a green wagon by birth, but the son of Consul Kröger, of the Kröger family. No, he had no desire to do that. And weren’t they right in a way, these representatives of bourgeois law and order? In one sense he completely agreed with them . . . He shrugged and said nothing.

  “What do you have there then?” asked the policeman. “There in the portfoolio?”

  “Here? Nothing. Just a proof,” answered Tonio Kröger.

  “Proof? Huh? Let me see.”

  And Tonio Kröger handed him his work. The policeman spread it out on the surface of the desk and began to read through it. Mr. Seehaase walked over and joined him in this activity. Tonio Kröger looked over their shoulders to see where they were in the story. It was a good passage, one he had successfully worked through, a moment of real epiphany and literary effect. He felt satisfied with himself.

  “Look,” he said. “There’s my name. I wrote this, and now it’s going to be published, you understand?”

  “Well, that’s good enough!” said Mr. Seehaase emphatically, scooping up the pages, folding them and giving them back. “That must be good enough, Petersen!” he repeated curtly as he surreptitiously shut his eyes and shook his head to close the issue. “We must not cause the gentleman any further delay. His cab is waiting. Please forgive this little interruption, sir. The officer was just doing his duty, though I told him right off that he was on the wrong track . . .”

  Is that so? thought Tonio Kröger.

  The policeman didn’t seem fully satisfied; he objected, saying something about “indivigial” and “identification.” But with repeated expressions of regret Mr. Seehaase led his guest back through the lobby, escorted him through the two lions to his cab and insisted with profuse displays of respect on personally closing the door behind him. And then the ridiculously disproportionate brougham cab began to roll, shaking, rattling and raising a din, down the steep narrow streets to the landing . . .

  Thus ended Tonio Kröger’s odd visit to his hometown.

  7

  Night had fallen with a swimming silvery glow, and the moon was on the rise as Tonio Kröger’s ship gained open sea. He stood at the bow, wrapped in his overcoat against the gathering wind, and stared down into the dark drifting and rolling of the smooth muscular bodies below, as they circled one another, slapped together, then sprang back in unexpected directions with a sudden glimmer of froth . . .

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bsp; He was suffused with swaying, silent bliss. He had been somewhat dejected at the thought of being mistaken for a con man in his own hometown—although in one sense he could only second the thought. But later, on board, he had watched the cargo being loaded, just as he and his father had done when he was a boy, had heard the men shouting out in a mix of Danish and Lowland German dialects while filling the ship’s deep hold and had also seen them lowering down, along with the usual bales and crates, two thick-barred cages containing a polar bear and a king tiger, which had no doubt been shipped up from Hamburg, to be forwarded on to some Danish zoo. This had taken his mind off his sadness. By the time the ship had begun to glide downstream along the flat embankments, he had forgotten his interrogation by Officer Petersen, and everything that had come before—the sweet, sad, regretful dreams of the previous night, his walk, the sight of the walnut tree—once again grew strong within his soul. And in the distance, now that the banks were opening up, he recognized the beach where as a boy he had been permitted to listen in on the sea’s summer dreams, saw the shine of the lighthouse and the lamps of the resort in which he had stayed with his parents . . . The Baltic Sea! He bent his head against the strong salt wind that blew in free and unobstructed, that whipped around his ears and produced a gentle vertigo, a vague numbness, which submerged the memory of everything bad—pain and confusion, desire and ambition—in lethargic bliss. And amidst the whistling, slapping, frothing and sighing all around him, he thought he could make out the rustling and creaking of the old walnut tree, the squeaking of a garden gate . . . It was getting darker and darker.