Death in Venice and Other Tales Read online

  “You saw it, this deathly beauty, looked upon it that you might lust for it. No reverence, no awe moved your heart in the presence of such holiness. It wasn’t enough to look. You needed to possess, consume, defile . . . And how well you chose! You are a gourmand, sir, a plebeian gourmand, a peasant with taste.

  “Please rest assured that I intend you no offense whatsoever. What I’m saying is not an insult, but the formula, the basic psychological formula of your simple, aesthetically quite uninteresting personality. I only write of it because I feel compelled to enlighten you a bit as to your pursuits and pastimes, because it is my never-ceasing vocation on earth to call things by their true names, to let them speak, to illuminate what remains unconscious. The world is full of what I call ‘the unconscious type’: I simply can’t bear the thought of all these unconscious types! I can’t bear the thought of all this dull, ignorant, unconsidered living and doing, this world of irritating naiveté all around me! I am driven by a torturously irresistible urge to comment on all human life around me—as far as it lies within my power—to articulate it and make it conscious, be the end result positive or negative, consolation and relief, or pain.

  “You, as I said before, sir, are a plebeian gourmand, a peasant with taste. Although you are actually quite crude of constitution, typical of primitive development, your wealth and settled life have led to a sudden, historically reversed, barbaric corruption of the nervous system, resulting in a certain lecherous refinement of the appetites. It’s entirely likely that the muscles in your throat began to smack, as at the sight of some delicious soup or rare dish, when you decided to make Gabriele Eckhof your wife . . .

  “And in the end you succeed in misdirecting her half-dormant will, you lead her out of the overgrown garden into life and its ugliness, you give her your vulgar name and transform her into spouse, housewife and mother. You demean the weary, reserved beauty of death, which can only flourish in sublime obsolescence, making it serve common everyday life and that ridiculously clumsy and contemptible idol called ‘nature,’ without an inkling of the profound vileness of what you’ve undertaken stirring in your peasant conscience.

  “And again, what happens? The girl with the eyes that are like fearful dreams bears you a child; she gives to this little life, a mere continuation of the crude existence of the man who begot it, all the blood and vitality she possesses, then dies! She’s dying, sir! And if, despite everything, she passes away in something other than baseness, if in her final hour she has lifted herself from the depths of her degradation and dies proudly and joyously, beneath a final deathly kiss of beauty, it has been my doing. Yours, meanwhile, has been to pass the time with chambermaids in deserted corridors.

  “Your child, however, Gabriele Eckhof’s son, grows, flourishes and lives on in triumph. Probably he will lead his father’s life and become a solid citizen, doing business, paying taxes, eating well. Perhaps he will become a general or a politician, an ignorant and reliable pillar of the nation, in any case a philistine, normally functioning creature, ruthless and confident, strong and stupid.

  “I must confess, sir, that I hate you, you and your child, as I hate life itself, this vulgar, ridiculous yet triumphant life you represent, the eternal antithesis and enemy of beauty. It would be wrong to say that I despise you. I can’t. I’m too honest. Of the two of us, you are the stronger. I have only one thing to use against you in our battle, the sublime weapon of the weak, their tool for revenge: imagination and words. Today I have used this weapon. For this letter—here too I must be honest, sir—is nothing but an act of revenge. And if one single word in it is sharp, shining and beautiful enough to affect you, to make you feel an alien force, to shake the foundations of your robust equanimity for even one moment, I shall rejoice.

  Detlev Spinell.”

  And Mr. Spinell enclosed this missive in an envelope and affixed postage, then furnished it with an ornately written address and had it posted.

  11

  Mr. Klöterjahn rapped on the door to Mr. Spinell’s room. In his hand he was holding a large sheet of paper covered with neat handwriting, and he had the look of a man determined to proceed forcefully. The postman had done his duty, the letter had gone on its way, making the strange journey from Einfried to Einfried, and had arrived in the hands of its addressee. It was four o’clock in the afternoon.

  When Mr. Klöterjahn entered the room, Mr. Spinell was seated on his sofa reading his own novel, the book with the inscrutable drawing on the cover. He stood up with a surprised, inquisitive look as he recognized his visitor, blushing noticeably.

  “Good afternoon,” said Mr. Klöterjahn. “Excuse me for disturbing you when you’re busy. But may I ask whether you wrote this?” He held up the large sheet of paper in his left hand and slapped it with the back of his right so that it rustled loudly. Then he immediately stuck his right hand in the pocket of his comfortably wide-cut trousers, tilted his head to one side and opened his mouth to listen, as some people do.

  Strangely, Mr. Spinell smiled; it was an obliging smile, a little puzzled, half-apologetic. Then he put his hand to his forehead as if to think things over and said:

  “Ah, correct . . . yes . . . I took the liberty . . .”

  The situation was this: on that particular day he had given in to his true nature and slept until around noon. Consequently he was suffering from a bad conscience and a light head, feeling jumpy, little capable of self-defense. Added to this was the hint of spring in the air that filled him with exhaustion and despair. All of which must be mentioned as an explanation for why he acted so haplessly during the whole scene to follow.

  “So! Aha! That’s nice!” said Mr. Klöterjahn at the settlement of this formality, pressing his chin into his chest, raising his eyebrows, stretching out his arms and intimating with a number of similar gestures that he was going to come mercilessly to the point. He was so pleased with himself that he took things a little too far; what followed afterward didn’t entirely measure up to the elaborate threat carried by his pantomime preparation. Nonetheless, Mr. Spinell had grown extremely pale.

  “That’s nice!” repeated Mr. Klöterjahn. “Then allow me to answer your letter face to face, dear fellow, since I find it idiotic to write long letters to someone you can talk to at any time . . .”

  “Well now . . . idiotic . . .” Mr. Spinell said, smiling apologetically, almost meekly . . .

  “Idiotic!” repeated Mr. Klöterjahn, shaking his head vigorously to show how unassailably sure he was of his position. “And I wouldn’t dignify this scrap of paper with a single word . . . to be frank, I wouldn’t use it as bread wrap, if it hadn’t cleared up certain things I hadn’t previously understood, certain changes . . . In any case, these don’t concern you. They are beside the point. I’m a busy man and have better things to worry about than your ineffable visions . . .”

  “ ‘Indelible visions’ is what I wrote,” said Mr. Spinell, straightening up. It was the only moment during this whole scene when he displayed a modicum of dignity.

  “Indelible . . . ineffable . . . !” countered Mr. Klöterjahn, staring at the manuscript. “Your handwriting is pathetic, dear fellow. I wouldn’t have you in my office. At first glance it seems clear enough, but when you look at it in the light, you see it’s full of gaps and wavering. But that’s your problem, one which doesn’t concern me. I have come to tell that you are first of all a fool—hopefully you’re aware of this already. And secondly, you are a genuine coward—I doubt I need to give you any great proof of that either. My wife once wrote me that when you meet women you never stare them straight in the eye but just sneak a look in order to take away a mere glimpse of beauty—out of fear for what the truth might hold. Unfortunately she stopped mentioning you in her later letters or I would know more stories about you. But that sums you up pretty well. Every third word of yours is ‘beauty,’ but at bottom you’re just a fearful old biddy, cowering and jealous—hence, no doubt,
your insolent comment about ‘deserted corridors,’ which was obviously supposed to cut me to the quick. In reality, it only made me laugh. Made me laugh it did! Does that now clear things up for you? Have I ‘enlightened you a bit’ about your . . . your ‘pursuits and pastimes,’ you miserable fool? Although it’s not my ‘incessant vocation.’ Hah! Hah!” . . .

  “ ‘Never-ceasing’ was what I wrote,” said Mr. Spinell, but he gave up immediately. He stood there, helplessly dressed down like a great big miserable gray-haired schoolboy.

  “Never-ceasing . . . incessant . . . You’re a despicable coward, let me say that to your face. Every day you see me at the dinner table. You say ‘hello’ and smile, you pass things to me and smile, you wish me bon appetit and smile. And then one day you attack me with this piece of paper full of idiotic insults. Hah, sure, you have courage on paper. And as if this ridiculous letter were the only thing! You’ve conspired against me, conspired against me behind my back, I see that very clearly indeed . . . although you shouldn’t imagine it’s done you any good! If you were even vaguely hoping to give my wife ideas, you’re on the wrong track, my dear sir. She’s too reasonable a person for that! And if you even think that she treated me differently than usual, either me or our child, when we arrived, that’s just the crowning touch to your contemptible audacity. She may not have kissed the little one, but that was for safety’s sake. Recently the theory has been advanced that it’s not the trachea but the lungs, and you can never tell in that case . . . although it’s yet to be proven, that it is the lungs, and you, with your ‘she’s dying, dear sir,’ you’re an ass!”

  Here Mr. Klöterjahn tried to bring his breathing under control. He had worked himself into a rage, repeatedly stabbing the air with his right index finger and punching most violently at the manuscript in his left hand. A terrible redness of face had spread between his blond English-style whiskers, and swollen veins ran across his protruding forehead like angry lightning bolts.

  “You hate me,” he went on, “and would despise me if I weren’t the stronger of us . . . Yes, I am that, damn it all. I’ve got heart, heart in the right place, while yours is no doubt in your pants, and I would wipe the floor with you and your ‘imagination and words,’ you treacherous imbecile, if it weren’t forbidden by law. But that doesn’t mean, dear fellow, that I am simply going to swallow your insults lying down, and when I show my lawyer back home that part about my ‘vulgar name,’ we’ll see if you know what’s hit you. I have a good name, sir, and I’ve earned it. I leave you to ask yourself whether anyone would give you a plugged nickel for yours, you rotten little interloper! Legal means are the only recourse against you! You’re a menace to society! You cloud people’s minds! . . . Though don’t imagine that you’ve succeeded this time, you insidious upstart! I’m not going to let myself be pushed aside by someone like you. I’ve got heart . . .”

  Mr. Klöterjahn had now really lost control of his temper. He was shouting, saying repeatedly that he had heart . . .

  “ ‘They were singing.’ Period. They weren’t singing at all! They were knitting! What’s more, they were talking, as far I could tell, about a recipe for potato pancakes, and if I show my father-in-law what you write about ‘decline’ and ‘dissolution,’ he’ll lodge his own complaint against you, you can bank on that! . . . ‘Did you see the scene, did you see it?’ Of course I saw it, but I fail to understand why I should have held my breath and run away. I don’t just steal a glance when I meet women. I look them in the face, and if I like them and they want me, I take them for my own. I’ve got h . . .”

  Someone knocked—knocked nine or ten times in very rapid succession on the front door, raising an urgent, frightened little commotion that cut off Mr. Klöterjahn’s tirade. A voice, completely beside itself, stumbling with panic, said in great haste:

  “Mr. Klöterjahn, Mr. Klöterjahn, oh, is Mr. Klöterjahn there?”

  “Don’t come in,” said Mr. Klöterjahn brusquely . . . “What is it? I’m busy here.”

  “Mr. Klöterjahn,” said the trembling, faltering voice. “You must come . . . the doctors are there too . . . oh it’s so terribly sad . . .”

  He reached the door in a single step and tore it open. Mrs. Spatz, the magistrate’s wife, was standing outside. She held her handkerchief to her mouth, and two sets of large, elongated tears rolled down into it.

  “Mr. Klöterjahn,” she blurted out, “. . . it’s so terribly sad . . . She coughed up so much blood, it was terrible . . . she lay there very still in her bed and hummed some music, and then it came, dear God, such an incredible amount . . .”

  “Is she dead?” shouted Mr. Klöterjahn . . . He grabbed the magistrate’s wife by the arm and shook her back and forth upon the threshold. “No, it can’t be true, is she? Not yet, she can still see me . . . ? Cough up a little blood again, did she? From the lungs, was it? All right, I see now, it probably was the lungs . . . Gabriele!”

  He cried out with tears in his eyes, and you could see a warm, good, humane, honest emotion spread over him. “Yes, I’m coming.” he said, and with long strides he dragged the magistrate’s wife out of the room and down the hall. From a remote part of the corridor you could still hear his voice, quickly growing more and more distant: “It can’t be true. Is she? . . . From the lungs, was it?”

  12

  Mr. Spinell remained standing on the exact spot where he had stood throughout Mr. Klöterjahn’s so abruptly terminated visit, staring at the open door. Finally he took a couple of steps forward and listened into the distance. But all was quiet, so he shut the door and returned to his room.

  For a while, he observed his reflection in the mirror. After that he went to his desk, took out a small flask and a glass from a drawer and drank a brandy, something for which no one could have blamed him. Then he stretched out on the sofa and shut his eyes.

  The upper window latch was open. Outside in Einfried’s garden, birds chirped, and the whole of spring was expressed subtly and profoundly in this delicate, bold little noise. Once, Mr. Spinell said out loud: “incessant calling . . .” Then he shook his head side to side and drew air between his teeth as though suffering from an exposed nerve.

  He found it impossible to calm down and collect himself. People simply weren’t made to endure such crudities as this just now! — After a bit of soul searching, which would lead too far from the subject to analyze, Mr. Spinell decided to get up and move about some, to take a short walk outdoors. He picked up his hat and left the room.

  As he stepped out of the house into the mild fragrant air, he turned his head and slowly scanned up the side of the building until he reached one of the windows, a window with drawn curtains. He stared at it for quite some time, his eyes serious, fixed and dark. Then he put his hands behind his back and walked along the gravel path. He walked, lost in thought.

  The flowerbeds were still covered with matting, and the trees and bushes were still bare, but the snow was gone, and the paths revealed only the occasional damp patch. The spacious garden with its grottos, arbors and little pavilions was bathed in the marvelously colored afternoon sunlight, and the dark tree branches stood out sharply and delicately defined against the bright sky.

  It was around the hour when the sun takes on form, when that shapeless mass of light becomes a visible sinking disc whose richer and milder glow admits the human gaze. Mr. Spinell did not see the sun; where the path led him, it remained hidden and obscure. He walked, head down, humming a bit of music, a short run of notes, a timidly and plaintively ascending phrase, the Sehnsuchtsmotiv . . . Then suddenly, with a start—a short, convulsive gasp—he halted as if chained to the spot. From under their sharply knitted brows, an expression of horrified aversion on his face, his staring eyes peered straight ahead . . .

  The path had wound round; it was now heading into the setting sun. Streaked by two narrow, illuminated bands of clouds with gilded edges, it loomed large and oblique in the sky, setting the
tips of the trees aglow and bathing the garden in its yellowish red rays. And standing tall on the path, in the middle of this golden transfiguration, with the burning sphere’s mighty halo at her head, was a curvaceous thing dressed entirely in red, gold and tartan. She braced her right hand against her hip and rocked an elegantly designed baby carriage back and forth. And inside this baby carriage sat Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., sat Gabriele Eckhof’s bouncing baby son!

  There he sat on his cushions, clad in a white jacket of yarn and an oversized white hat, chubby-cheeked, magnificent and robust, so that his eyes, cheery and unabashed, met those of Mr. Spinell. The novelist was about to gather himself. He was a grown man. He had the strength to walk past this unexpected apparition, resplendent in sunshine, and continue on his way. But then something horrific happened: Anton Klöterjahn began to laugh and cry out in jubilation, shrieking with inexplicable joy. It was unnerving.

  God knows what had set him off. Perhaps it was the dark figure opposite that had brought on this mood of wild hilarity, or maybe some fit of animalistic well-being had seized him. He held a teething ring of bone in one hand and a tin rattle in the other. These he exultantly thrust up into the sunshine, shaking them and banging them together, as if contemptuously shooing someone away. His eyes were almost shut with glee, and his mouth gaped so wide that the whole of his rosy gums was visible. He even tossed his head back and forth in exultation.

  At that, Mr. Spinell did an about-face and hurried off. He walked, pursued by the little Klöterjahn’s jubilation, along the gravel path, his arms set in a certain tentative, rigidly graceful posture, forcibly hesitating with every step, like someone trying to disguise the fact that, internally, he is running away.