increased, he became distracted. In his affliction, he felt that it was
impossible to leave, and just as impossible to turn back. The conflict
was intense as he entered the station. It was very late; there was not a
moment to lose if he was to catch the train. He wanted to, and he did
not want to. But time was pressing; it drove him on. He hurried to get
his ticket, and looked about in the tumult of the hall for the officer
on duty here from the hotel. The man appeared and announced that the
large trunk had been transferred. Transferred already? Yes, thank
you--to Como. To Como? And in the midst of hasty running back and forth,
angry questions and confused answers, it came to light that the trunk
had already been sent with other foreign baggage from the express office
of the Hotel Excelsior in a completely wrong direction.
Aschenbach had difficulty in preserving the expression which was
required under these circumstances. He was almost convulsed with an
adventurous delight, an unbelievable hilarity. The employee rushed off
to see if it were still possible to stop the trunk, and as was to be
expected he returned with nothing accomplished. Aschenbach declared that
he did not want to travel without his trunk, but had decided to go back
and wait at the beach hotel for its return. Was the company's motorboat
still at the station? The man assured him that it was lying at the door.
With Italian volubility he persuaded the clerk at the ticket window to
redeem the cancelled ticket, he swore that they would act speedily, that
no time or money would be spared in recovering the trunk promptly,
and--so the strange thing happened that, twenty minutes after his
arrival at the station, the traveller found himself again on the Grand
Canal, returning to the Lido.
Here was an adventure, wonderful, abashing, and comically dreamlike
beyond belief: places which he had just bid farewell to for ever in the
most abject misery--yet he had been turned and driven back by fate, and
was seeing them again in the same hour! The spray from the bow, washing
between gondolas and steamers with an absurd agility, shot the speedy
little craft ahead to its goal, while the one passenger was hiding the
nervousness and ebullience of a truant boy under the mask of resigned
anger. From time to time he shook with laughter at this mishap which, as
he told himself, could not have turned out better for a child of
destiny. There were explanations to be given, expressions of
astonishment to be faced--and then, he told himself, everything would be
all right; then a misfortune would be avoided, a grave error rectified.
And all that he had thought he was leaving behind him would be open to
him again, there at his disposal. . . . And to cap it all, was the
rapidity of the ride deceiving him, or was the wind really coming from
the sea?
The waves beat against the walls of the narrow canal which runs through
the island to the Hotel Excelsior. An automobile omnibus was awaiting
his return there, and took him above the rippling sea straight to the
beach hotel. The little manager with moustache and long-tailed frock
coat came down the stairs to meet him.
He ingratiatingly regretted the episode, spoke of it as highly painful
to him and the establishment, but firmly approved of Aschenbach's
decision to wait here for the baggage. Of course his room had been given
up, but there was another one, just as good, which he could occupy
immediately. "_Pas de chance, Monsieur_," the Swiss elevator boy smiled
as they were ascending. And so the fugitive was established again, in a
room almost identical to the other in its location and furnishings.
Tired out by the confusion of this strange forenoon, he distributed the
contents of his hand-bag about the room and dropped into an arm-chair by
the open window. The sea had become a pale green, the air seemed thinner
and purer; the beach, with its cabins and boats, seemed to have colour,
although the sky was still grey. Aschenbach looked out, his hands folded
in his lap; he was content to be back, but shook his head disapprovingly
at his irresolution, his failure to know his own mind. He sat here for
the better part of an hour, resting and dreaming vaguely. About noon he
saw Tadzio in a striped linen suit with a red tie, coming back from the
sea across the private beach and along the boardwalk to the hotel.
Aschenbach recognized him from this altitude before he had actually set
eyes on him; he was about to think some such words as "Well, Tadzio,
there you are again!" but at the same moment he felt this careless
greeting go dumb before the truth in his heart. He felt the exhilaration
of his blood, a conflict of pain and pleasure, and he realized that it
was Tadzio who had made it so difficult for him to leave.
He sat very still, entirely unobserved from this height, and looked
within himself. His features were alert, his eyebrows raised, and an
attentive, keenly inquisitive smile distended his mouth. Then he raised
his head; lifted both hands, which had hung relaxed over the arms of the
chair, and in a slow twisting movement turned the palms downward--as
though to suggest an opening and spreading outward of his arms. It was a
spontaneous act of welcome, of calm acceptance.
IV
Day after day now the naked god with the hot cheeks drove his
fire-breathing quadriga across the expanses of the sky, and his yellow
locks fluttered in the assault of the east wind. A white silk sheen
stretched over the slowly simmering Ponto. The sand glowed. Beneath the
quaking silver blue of the ether rust-coloured canvasses were spread in
front of the beach bathing houses, and the afternoons were spent in the
sharply demarcated spots of shade which they cast. But it was also
delightful in the evening, when the vegetation in the park had the smell
of balsam, and the stars were working through their courses above, and
the soft persistent murmur of the sea came up enchantingly through the
night. Such evenings contained the cheering promise that more sunny days
of casual idleness would follow, dotted with countless closely
interspersed possibilities of well-timed accidents.
The guest who was detained here by such an accommodating mishap did not
consider the return of his property as sufficient grounds for another
departure. He suffered some inconvenience for two days, and had to
appear for meals in the large dining-room in his travelling clothes.
When the strayed luggage was finally deposited in his room again, he
unpacked completely and filled the closet and drawers with his
belongings; he had decided to remain here indefinitely, content now that
he could pass the hours on the beach in a silk suit and appear for
dinner at his little table again in appropriate evening dress.
The comfortable rhythm of this life had already cast its spell over him;
he was soon enticed by the ease, the mild splendour, of his programme.
Indeed, what a place to be in, when the usual allurement of living in
watering places on southern shores was coupled with the immediate
nearness of the most wonderful of all cities! Aschenbach was not a lover
of pleasure. Whenever that was some call for him to take a holiday, to
indulge himself, to have a good time--and this was especially true at an
earlier age--restlessness and repugnance soon drove him back to his
rigorous toil, the faithful sober efforts of his daily routine. Except
that this place was bewitching him, relaxing his will, making him happy.
In the mornings, under the shelter of his bathing house, letting his
eyes roam dreamily in the blue of the southern sea; or on a warm night
as he leaned back against the cushions of the gondola carrying him under
the broad starry sky home to the Lido from the Piazza di San Marco after
long hours of idleness--and the brilliant lights, the melting notes of
the serenade were being left behind--he often recalled his place in the
mountains, the scene of his battles in the summer, where the clouds blew
low across his garden, and terrifying storms put out the lamps at night,
and the crows which he fed were swinging in the tops of the pine trees.
Then everything seemed just right to him, as though he were lifted into
the Elysian fields, on the borders of the earth, where man enjoys the
easiest life, where there is no snow or winter, nor storms and pouring
rains, but where Oceanus continually sends forth gentle cooling breezes,
and the days pass in a blessed inactivity, without work, without effort,
devoted wholly to the sun and to the feast days of the sun.
Aschenbach saw the boy Tadzio frequently, almost constantly. Owing to
the limited range of territory and the regularity of their lives, the
beauty was near him at short intervals throughout the day. He saw him,
met him, everywhere: in the lower rooms of the hotel, on the cooling
water trips to the city and back, in the arcades of the square, and at
times when he was especially lucky ran across him on the streets. But
principally, and with the most gratifying regularity, the forenoon on
the beach allowed him to admire and study this rare spectacle at his
leisure. Yes, it was this guaranty of happiness, this daily recurrence
of good fortune, which made his stay here so precious, and gave him such
pleasure in the constant procession of sunny days.
He was up as early as he used to be when under the driving pressure of
work, and was on the beach before most people, when the sun was still
mild and the sea lay blinding white in the dreaminess of morning. He
spoke amiably to the guard of the private beach, and also spoke
familiarly to the barefoot, white-bearded old man who had prepared his
place for him, stretching the brown canopy and bringing the furniture of
the cabin out on the platform. Then he took his seat. There would now be
three or four hours in which the sun mounted and gained terrific
strength, the sea a deeper and deeper blue, and he might look at Tadzio.
He saw him approaching from the left, along the edge of the sea; he saw
him as he stepped out backwards from among the cabins; or he would
suddenly find, with a shock of pleasure, that he had missed his coming,
that he was already here in the blue and white bathing suit which was
his only garment now while on the beach, that he had already commenced
his usual activities in the sun and the sand--a pleasantly trifling,
idle, and unstable manner of living, a mixture of rest and play. Tadzio
would saunter about, wade, dig, catch things, lie down, go for a swim,
all the while being kept under surveillance by the women on the platform
who made his name ring out in their falsetto voices: "Tadziu! Tadziu!"
Then he would come running to them with a look of eagerness, to tell
them what he had seen, what he had experienced, or to show them what he
had found or caught: mussels, sea-horses, jelly-fish, and crabs that ran
sideways. Aschenbach did not understand a word he said, and though it
might have been the most ordinary thing in the world, it was a vague
harmony in his ear. So the foreignness of the boy's speech turned it
into music, a wanton sun poured its prodigal splendour down over him,
and his figure was always set off against the background of an intense
sea-blue.
This piquant body was so freely exhibited that his eyes soon knew every
line and posture. He was continually rediscovering with new pleasure all
this familiar beauty, and his astonishment at its delicate appeal to his
senses was unending. The boy was called to greet a guest who was paying
his respects to the ladies at the bathing house. He came running,
running wet perhaps out of the water, tossed back his curls, and as he
held out his hand, resting on one leg and raising his other foot on the
toes, the set of his body was delightful; it had a charming expectancy
about it, a well-meaning shyness, a winsomeness which showed his
aristocratic training. . . . He lay stretched full length, his bath
towel slung across his shoulders, his delicately chiselled arm supported
in the sand, his chin in his palm; the boy called Jaschu was squatting
near him and making up to him--and nothing could be more enchanting than
the smile of his eyes and lips when the leader glanced up at his
inferior, his servant. . . . He stood on the edge of the sea, alone,
apart from his people, quite near to Aschenbach--erect, his hands locked
across the back of his neck, he swayed slowly on the balls of his feet,
looked dreamily into the blueness of sea and sky, while tiny waves
rolled up and bathed his feet. His honey-coloured hair clung in rings
about his neck and temples. The sun made the down on his back glitter;
the fine etching of the ribs, the symmetry of the chest, were emphasized
by the tightness of the suit across the buttocks. His arm-pits were
still as smooth as those of a statue; the hollows of his knees
glistened, and their bluish veins made his body seem built of some
clearer stuff. What rigour, what precision of thought, were expressed in
this erect, youthfully perfect body! Yet the pure and strenuous will
which, darkly at work, could bring such godlike sculpture to the
light--was not he, the artist, familiar with this? Did it not operate in
him too when he, under the press of frugal passions, would free from the
marble mass of speech some slender form which he had seen in the mind
and which he put before his fellows as a statue and a mirror of
intellectual beauty?
Statue and mirror! His eyes took in the noble form there bordered with
blue; and with a rush of enthusiasm he felt that in this spectacle he
was catching the beautiful itself, form as the thought of God, the one
pure perfection which lives in the mind, and which, in this symbol and
likeness, had been placed here quietly and simply as an object of
devotion. That was drunkenness; and eagerly, without thinking, the aging
artist welcomed it. His mind was in travail; all that he had learned,
dropped back into flux; his understanding threw up age-old thoughts
which he had inherited with youth though they had never before lived
with their own fire. Is it not written that the sun diverts our
attention from intellectual to sensual things? Reason and understanding,
it is said, become so numbed and enchanted that the soul forgets
everything out of delight with its immediate circumstances, and in
astonishment becomes attached to the most beautiful object shined on by
the sun; indeed, only with the aid of a body is it capable then of
raising itself to higher considerations. To be sure, Amor did as the
instructors of mathematics who show backward children tangible
representations of the pure forms--similarly the god, in order to make
the spiritual visible for us, readily utilized the form and colour of
man's youth, and as a reminder he adorned these with the reflected
splendour of beauty which, when we behold it, makes us flare up in pain
and hope.
His enthusiasm suggested these things, put him in the mood for them. And
from the noise of the sea and the lustre of the sun he wove himself a
charming picture. Here was the old plane-tree, not far from the walls of
Athens--a holy, shadowy place filled with the smell of _agnus castus_
blossoms and decorated with ornaments and images sacred to Achelous and
the Nymphs. Clear and pure, the brook at the foot of the spreading tree
fell across the smooth pebbles; the cicadas were fiddling. But on the
grass, which was like a pillow gently sloping to the head, two people
were stretched out, in hiding from the heat of the day: an older man and
a youth, one ugly and one beautiful, wisdom next to loveliness. And amid
gallantries and skilfully engaging banter, Socrates was instructing
Phaedrus in matters of desire and virtue. He spoke to him of the hot
terror which the initiate suffer when their eyes light on an image of
the eternal beauty; spoke of the greed of the impious and the wicked who
cannot think beauty when they see its likeness, and who are incapable of
reverence; spoke of the holy distress which befalls the noble-minded
when a godlike countenance, a perfect body, appears before them; they
tremble and grow distracted, and hardly dare to raise their eyes, and
they honour the man who possesses this beauty, yes, if they were not
afraid of being thought downright madmen they would sacrifice to the
beloved as to the image of a god. For beauty, my Phaedrus, beauty alone
is both lovely and visible at once; it is, mark me, the only form of the
spiritual which we can receive through the senses. Else what would
become of us if the divine, if reason and virtue and truth, should
appear to us through the senses? Should we not perish and be consumed
with love, as Semele once was with Zeus? Thus, beauty is the sensitive
man's access to the spirit--but only a road, a means simply, little
Phaedrus. . . . And then this crafty suitor made the neatest remark of
all; it was this, that the lover is more divine than the beloved, since
the god is in the one, but not in the other--perhaps the most delicate,
the most derisive thought which has ever been framed, and the one from
which spring all the cunning and the profoundest pleasures of desire.
Writers are happiest with an idea which can become all emotion, and an
emotion all idea. Just such a pulsating idea, such a precise emotion,
belonged to the lonely man at this moment, was at his call. Nature, it
ran, shivers with ecstasy when the spirit bows in homage before beauty.
Suddenly he wanted to write. Eros loves idleness, they say, and he is
suited only to idleness. But at this point in the crisis the affliction
became a stimulus towards productivity. The incentive hardly mattered. A
request, an agitation for an open statement on a certain large burning
issue of culture and taste, was going about the intellectual world, and
had finally caught up with the traveller here. He was familiar with the
subject, it had touched his own experience; and suddenly he felt an
irresistible desire to display it in the light of his own version. And
he even went so far as to prefer working in Tadzio's presence, taking
the scope of the boy as a standard for his writing, making his style
follow the lines of this body which seemed godlike to him, and carrying
his beauty over into the spiritual just as the eagle once carried the
Trojan stag up into the ether. Never had his joy in words been more
sweet. He had never been so aware that Eros is in the word as during
those perilously precious hours when, at his crude table under the
canopy, facing the idol and listening to the music of his voice, he
followed Tadzio's beauty in the forming of his little tract, a page and
a half of choice prose which was soon to excite the admiration of many
through its clarity, its poise, and the vigorous curve of its emotion.
Certainly it is better for people to know only the beautiful product as
finished, and not in its conception, its conditions of origin. For
knowledge of the sources from which the artist derives his inspiration
would often confuse and alienate, and in this way detract from the
effects of his mastery. Strange hours! Strangely enervating efforts!
Rare creative intercourse between the spirit and a body! When Aschenbach
put away his work and started back from the beach be felt exhausted, or
in dispersion even; and it was as though his conscience were complaining
after some transgression.
The following morning, as he was about to leave the hotel, he looked off
from the steps and noticed that Tadzio, who was alone and was already on
his way towards the sea, was just approaching the private beach. He was
half tempted by the simple notion of seizing this opportunity to strike
up a casual friendly acquaintanceship with the boy who had been the
unconscious source of so much agitation and upheaval; he wanted to
address him, and enjoy the answering look in his eyes. The boy was
sauntering along, he could be overtaken; and Aschenbach quickened his
pace. He reached him on the boardwalk behind the bathing houses; was
about to lay a hand on his head and shoulders; and some word or other,
an amiable phrase in French, was on the tip of his tongue. But he felt
that his heart, due also perhaps to his rapid stride, was beating like a
hammer; and he was so short of breath that his voice would have been
tight and trembling. He hesitated, he tried to get himself under
control. Suddenly he became afraid that he had been walking too long so
close behind the boy. He was afraid of arousing curiosity and causing
him to look back questioningly. He made one more spurt, failed,
surrendered, and passed with bowed head.
"Too late!" he thought immediately. Too late! Yet was it too late? This
step which he had just been on the verge of taking would very possibly
have put things on a sound, free and easy basis, and would have restored
him to wholesome soberness. But the fact was that Aschenbach did not
want soberness: his intoxication was too precious. Who can explain the
stamp and the nature of the artist! Who can understand this deep
instinctive welding of discipline and licence? For to be unable to want
wholesome soberness, is licence. Aschenbach was no longer given to
self-criticism. His tastes, the mental caliber of his years, his
self-respect, ripeness, and a belated simplicity made him unwilling to
dismember his motives and to debate whether his impulses were the result
of conscientiousness or of dissolution and weakness. He was embarrassed,
as he feared that someone or other, if only the guard on the beach, must
have observed his pursuit and defeat. He was very much afraid of the
ridiculous. Further, he joked with himself about his comically pious
distress. "Downed," he thought, "downed like a rooster, with his wings
hanging miserably in the battle. It really is a god who can, at one
sight of his loveliness, break our courage this way and force down our
pride so thoroughly. . . ." He toyed and skirmished with his emotions,
and was far too haughty to be afraid of them.
He had already ceased thinking about the time when the vacation period
which he had fixed for himself would expire; the thought of going home
never even suggested itself. He had sent for an ample supply of money.
His only concern was with the possible departure of the Polish family;
by a casual questioning of the hotel barber he had contrived to learn
that these people had come here only a short time before his own
arrival. The sun browned his face and hands, the invigorating salt
breezes made him feel fresher. Once he had been in the habit of
expending on his work every bit of nourishment which food, sleep, or
nature could provide him; and similarly now he was generous and
uneconomical, letting pass off as elation and emotion all the daily
strengthening derived from sun, idleness, and sea air.
His sleep was fitful; the preciously uniform days were separated by
short nights of happy unrest. He did retire early, for at nine o'clock,
when Tadzio had disappeared from the scene, the day seemed over. But at
the first grey of dawn he was awakened by a gently insistent shock; he
suddenly remembered his adventure, he could no longer remain in bed; he
arose, and clad lightly against the chill of morning, he sat down by the
open window to await the rising of the sun. Revived by his sleep, he
watched this miraculous event with reverence. Sky, earth, and sea still
lay in glassy, ghost-like twilight; a dying star still floated in the
emptiness of space But a breeze started up, a winged message from
habitations beyond reach, telling that Eos was rising from beside her
husband. And that first sweet reddening in the farthest stretches of sky
and sea took place by which the sentiency of creation is announced. The
goddess was approaching, the seductress of youth who stole Cleitus and
Cephalus, and despite the envy of all the Olympians enjoyed the love of
handsome Orion. A strewing of roses began there on the edge of the
world, an unutterably pure glowing and blooming. Childish clouds,
lighted and shined through, floated like busy little Cupids in the rosy,
bluish mist. Purple fell upon the sea, which seemed to be simmering, and
washing the colour towards him. Golden spears shot up into the sky from
behind. The splendour caught fire, silently, and with godlike power an
intense flame of licking tongues broke out--and with rattling hoofs the
brother's sacred chargers mounted the horizon. Lighted by the god's
brilliance, he sat there, keeping watch alone. He closed his eyes,
letting this glory play against the lids. Past emotions, precious early
afflictions and yearnings which had been stifled by his rigorous
programme of living, were now returning in such strange new forms. With
an embarrassed, astonished smile, he recognized them. He was thinking,
dreaming; slowly his lips formed a name. And still smiling, with his
face turned upwards, hands folded in his lap, he fell asleep again in
his chair.
But the day which began with such fiery solemnity underwent a strange
mythical transformation. Where did the breeze originate which suddenly
began playing so gently and insinuatingly, like some whispered
suggestion, about his ears and temples? Little white choppy clouds stood
in the sky in scattered clumps, like the pasturing herds of the gods. A
stronger wind arose, and the steeds of Poseidon came prancing up, and
along with them the steers which belonged to the blue-locked god,
bellowing and lowering their horns as they ran. Yet among the detritus
of the more distant beach waves were hopping forward like agile goats.
He was caught in the enchantment of a sacredly distorted world full of
Panic life--and he dreamed delicate legends. Often, when the sun was
sinking behind Venice, he would sit on a bench in the park observing
Tadzio who was dressed in a white suit with a coloured sash and was
playing ball on the smooth gravel--and it was Hyacinth that he seemed to
be watching. Hyacinth who was to die because two gods loved him. Yes, he
felt Zephyr's aching jealousy of the rival who forgot the oracle, the
bow, and the lyre, in order to play for ever with this beauty. He saw
the discus, guided by a pitiless envy, strike the lovely head; he too,
growing pale, caught the drooping body--and the flower, sprung from this
sweet blood, bore the inscription of his unending grief.
Nothing is more unusual and strained than the relationship between
people who know each other only with their eyes, who meet daily, even
hourly, and yet are compelled, by force of custom or their own caprices,
to say no word or make no move of acknowledgement, but to maintain the
appearance of an aloof unconcern. There is a restlessness and a
surcharged curiosity existing between them, the hysteria of an
unsatisfied, unnaturally repressed desire for acquaintanceship and
intercourse; and especially there is a kind of tense respect. For one
person loves and honours another so long as he cannot judge him, and
desire is an evidence of incomplete knowledge.
Some kind of familiarity had necessarily to form itself between
Aschenbach and young Tadzio; and it gave the elderly man keen pleasure
to see that his sympathies and interests were not left completely
unanswered. For example, when the boy appeared on the beach in the
morning and was going towards his family's bathing house, what had
induced him never to use the boardwalk on the far side of it any more,
but to stroll along the front path, through the sand, past Aschenbach's
habitual place, and often unnecessarily close to him, almost touching
his table, or his chair even? Did the attraction, the fascination of an
overpowering emotion have such an effect upon the frail unthinking
object of it? Aschenbach watched daily for Tadzio to approach; and
sometimes he acted as though he were occupied when this event was taking
place, and he let the boy pass unobserved. But at other times he would
look up, and their glances met. They were both in deep earnest when this
occurred. Nothing in the elderly man's cultivated and dignified
expression betrayed any inner movement; but there was a searching look
in Tadzio's eyes, a thoughtful questioning--he began to falter, looked
down, then looked up again charmingly, and when he had passed something
in his bearing seemed to indicate that it was only his breeding which
kept him from turning around.
Once, however, one evening, things turned out differently. The Polish
children and their governess had been missing at dinner in the large
hall; Aschenbach had noted this uneasily. After the meal, disturbed by
their absence, Aschenbach was walking in evening dress and straw hat in
front of the hotel at the foot of the terrace, when suddenly he saw the
nunlike sisters appear in the light of the arc-lamp, accompanied by
their governess and with Tadzio a few steps behind. Evidently they were
coming from the steamer pier after having dined for some reason in the
city. It must have been cool on the water; Tadzio was wearing a dark
blue sailor overcoat with gold buttons, and on his head he had a cap to
match. The sun and sea air had not browned him; his skin still had the
same yellow marble colour as at first. It even seemed paler to-day than
usual, whether from the coolness or from the blanching moonlight of the
lamps. His regular eyebrows showed up more sharply, the darkness of his
eyes was deeper. It is hard to say how beautiful he was; and Aschenbach
was distressed, as he had often been before, by the thought that words
can only evaluate sensuous beauty, but not re-give it.
He had not been prepared for this rich spectacle; it came unhoped for.
He had no time to entrench himself behind an expression of repose and
dignity. Pleasure, surprise, admiration must have shown on his face as
his eyes met those of the boy--and at this moment it happened that
Tadzio smiled, smiled to him, eloquently, familiarly, charmingly,
without concealment; and during the smile his lips slowly opened. It was
the smile of Narcissus bent over the reflecting water, that deep,
fascinated, magnetic smile with which he stretches out his arms to the
image of his own beauty--a smile distorted ever so little, distorted at
the hopelessness of his efforts to kiss the pure lips of the shadow. It
was coquettish, inquisitive, and slightly tortured. It was infatuated,
and infatuating.
He had received this smile, and he hurried away as though he carried a
fatal gift. He was so broken up that he was compelled to escape the
light of the terrace and the front garden; he hastily hunted out the
darkness of the park in the rear. Strangely indignant and tender
admonitions wrung themselves out of him: "You dare not smile like that!
Listen, no one dare smile like that to another!" He threw himself down
on a bench; in a frenzy he breathed the night smell of the vegetation.
And leaning back, his arms loose, overwhelmed, with frequent
chills running through him, he whispered the fixed formula of
desire--impossible in this case, absurd, abject, ridiculous, and yet
holy, even in this case venerable: "I love you!"
V
During his fourth week at the Lido, Gustav von Aschenbach made several
sinister observations touching on the world about him. First, it seemed
to him that as the season progressed the number of guests at the hotel
was diminishing rather than increasing; and German especially seemed to
be dropping away, so that finally he heard nothing but foreign sounds at
table and on the beach. Then one day in conversation with the barber,
whom he visited often, he caught a word which startled him. The man had
mentioned a German family that left soon after their arrival; he added
glibly and flatteringly, "But you are staying, sir. You have no fear of
the plague." Aschenbach looked at him. "The plague?" he repeated. The
gossiper was silent, made out as though busy with other things, ignored
the question. When it was put more insistently, he declared that he knew
nothing, and with embarrassing volubility he tried to change the
subject.
That was about noon. In the afternoon there was a calm, and Aschenbach
rode to Venice under an intense sun. For he was driven by a mania to
follow the Polish children whom he had seen with their governess taking
the road to the steamer pier. He did not find the idol at San Marco. But
while sitting over his tea at his little round iron table on the shady
side of the square, he suddenly detected a peculiar odour in the air
which, it seemed to him now, he had noticed for days without being
consciously aware of it. The smell was sweetish and drug-like,
suggesting sickness, and wounds, and a suspicious cleanliness. He tested
and examined it thoughtfully, finished his luncheon, and left the square
on the side opposite the church. The smell was stronger where the street
narrowed. On the corners printed posters were hung, giving municipal
warnings against certain diseases of the gastric system liable to occur
at this season, against the eating of oysters and clams, and also
against the water of the canals. The euphemistic nature of the
announcement was palpable. Groups of people had collected in silence on
the bridges and squares; and the foreigner stood among them, scenting
and investigating.
At a little shop he inquired about the fatal smell, asking the
proprietor, who was leaning against his door surrounded by coral chains
and imitation amethyst jewellery. The man measured him with heavy eyes,
and brightened up hastily. "A matter of precaution, sir!" he answered
with a gesture. "A regulation of the police which must be taken for what
it is worth. This weather is oppressive, the sirocco is not good for the
health. In short, you understand--an exaggerated prudence perhaps."
Aschenbach thanked him and went on. Also on the steamer back to the Lido
he caught the smell of the disinfectant.
Returning to the hotel, he went immediately to the periodical stand in
the lobby and ran through the papers. He found nothing in the foreign
language press. The domestic press spoke of rumours, produced hazy
statistics, repeated official denials and questioned their truthfulness.
This explained the departure of the German and Austrian guests.
Obviously, the subjects of the other nations knew nothing, suspected
nothing, were not yet uneasy. "To keep it quiet!" Aschenbach thought
angrily, as he threw the papers back on the table. "To keep that quiet!"
But at the same moment he was filled with satisfaction over the
adventure that was to befall the world about him. For passion, like
crime, is not suited to the secure daily rounds of order and well-being;
and every slackening in the bourgeois structure, every disorder and
affliction of the world, must be held welcome, since they bring with
them a vague promise of advantage. So Aschenbach felt a dark contentment
with what was taking place, under cover of the authorities, in the dirty
alleys of Venice. This wicked secret of the city was welded with his own
secret, and he too was involved in keeping it hidden. For in his
infatuation he cared about nothing but the possibility of Tadzio's
leaving, and he realized with something like terror that he would not
know how to go on living if this occurred.
Lately he had not been relying simply on good luck and the daily routine
for his chances to be near the boy and look at him. He pursued him,
stalked him. On Sundays, for instance, the Poles never appeared on the
beach. He guessed that they must be attending mass at San Marco. He
hurried there; and stepping from the heat of the square into the golden
twilight of the church, he found the boy he was hunting, bowed over a
_prie-dieu_, praying. Then he stood in the background, on the cracked
mosaic floor, with people on all sides kneeling, murmuring, and making
the sign of the cross. And the compact grandeur of this oriental temple
weighed heavily on his senses. In front, the richly ornamented priest
was conducting the office, moving about and singing; incense poured
forth, clouding the weak little flame of the candle on the altar--and
with the sweet, stuffy sacrificial odour another seemed to commingle
faintly: the smell of the infested city. But through the smoke and the
sparkle Aschenbach saw how the boy there in front turned his head,
hunted him out, and looked at him.
When the crowd was streaming out through the opened portals into the
brilliant square with its swarms of pigeons, the lover hid in the
vestibule; he kept under cover, he lay in wait. He saw the Poles quit
the church, saw how the children took ceremonious leave of their mother,
and how she turned towards the Piazzetta on her way home. He made sure
that the boy, the nunlike sisters, and the governess took the road to
the right through the gateway of the dock tower and into the Merceria.
And after giving them a slight start, he followed, followed them
furtively on their walk through Venice. He had to stand still when they
stopped, had to take flight in shops and courts to let them pass when
they turned back. He lost them; hot and exhausted, he hunted them over
bridges and down dirty blind-alleys--and he underwent minutes of deadly
agony when suddenly he saw them coming towards him in a narrow passage
where escape was impossible. Yet it could not be said that he suffered.
He was drunk, and his steps followed the promptings of the demon who
delights in treading human reason and dignity under foot.
In one place Tadzio and his companions took a gondola; and shortly after
they had pushed off from the shore, Aschenbach, who had hidden behind
some structure, a well, while they were climbing in, now did the same.
He spoke in a hurried undertone as he directed the rower, with the
promise of a generous tip, to follow unnoticed and at a distance that
gondola which was just rounding the corner. And he thrilled when the
man, with the roguish willingness of an accomplice, assured him in the
same tone that his wishes would be carried out, carried out faithfully.
Leaning back against the soft black cushions, he rocked and glided
towards the other black-beaked craft where his passion was drawing him.
At times it escaped; then he felt worried and uneasy. But his pilot, as
though skilled in such commissions, was always able through sly
manoeuvres, speedy diagonals and shortcuts, to bring the quest into view
again. The air was quiet and smelly, the sun burned down strong through
the slate-coloured mist. Water slapped against the wood and stone. The
call of the gondolier, half warning, half greeting, was answered with a
strange obedience far away in the silence of the labyrinth. White and
purple umbels with the scent of almonds hung down from little elevated
gardens over crumbling walls. Arabian window-casings were outlined
through the murkiness. The marble steps of a church descended into the
water; a beggar squatted there, protesting his misery, holding out his
hat, and showing the whites of his eyes as though he were blind. An
antiquarian in front of his den fawned on the passer-by and invited him
to stop in the hopes of swindling him. That was Venice, the flatteringly
and suspiciously beautiful--this city, half legend, half snare for
strangers; in its foul air art once flourished gluttonously, and had
suggested to its musicians seductive notes which cradle and lull. The
adventurer felt as though his eyes were taking in this same luxury, as
though his ears were being won by just such melodies. He recalled too
that the city was diseased and was concealing this through greed--and he
peered more eagerly after the retreating gondola.
Thus, in his infatuation, he wanted simply to pursue uninterrupted the
object that aroused him, to dream of it when it was not there, and,
after the fashion of lovers, to speak softly to its mere outline.
Loneliness, strangeness, and the joy of a deep belated intoxication
encouraged him and prompted him to accept even the remotest things
without reserve or shame--with the result that as he returned late in
the evening from Venice, he stopped on the second floor of the hotel
before the door of the boy's room, laid his head in utter drunkenness
against the hinge of the door, and for a long time could not drag
himself away despite the danger of being caught and embarrassed in such
a mad situation.
Yet there were still moments of relief when he came partly to his
senses. "Where to!" he would think, alarmed. "Where to!" Like every man
whose natural abilities stimulate an aristocratic interest in his
ancestry, he was accustomed to think of his forbears in connexion with
the accomplishments and successes of his life, to assure himself of
their approval, their satisfaction, their undeniable respect. He thought
of them now, entangled as he was in such an illicit experience, caught
in such exotic transgressions. He thought of their characteristic
rigidity of principle, their scrupulous masculinity--and he smiled
dejectedly. What would they say? But then, what would they have said to
his whole life, which was almost degenerate in its departure from
theirs, this life under the bane of art--a life against which he himself
had once issued such youthful mockeries out of loyalty to his fathers,
but which at bottom had been so much like theirs! He too had served, he
too had been a soldier and a warrior like many of them--for art was a
war, a destructive battle, and one was not equal to it for long these
days. A life of self-conquest and of in-spite-ofs, a rigid, sober, and
unyielding life which he had formed into the symbol of a delicate and
timely heroism. He might well call it masculine, or brave; and it almost
seemed as though the Eros mastering him were somehow peculiarly adapted
and inclined to such a life. Had not this Eros stood in high repute
among the bravest of peoples; was it not true that precisely through
bravery he had flourished in their cities? Numerous war heroes of
antiquity had willingly borne his yoke, for nothing was deemed a
disgrace which the god imposed; and acts which would have been rebuked
as the sign of cowardice if they had been done for other
purposes--prostrations, oaths, entreaties, abjectness--such things did
not bring shame upon the lover, but rather he reaped praise for them.
In this way his infatuation determined the course of his thoughts, in
this way he tried to uphold himself, to preserve his respect. But at the
same time, selfish and calculating, he turned his attention to the
unclean transactions here in Venice, this adventure of the outer world
which conspired darkly with his own and which fed his passion with vague
lawless hopes.
Bent on getting reliable news of the condition and progress of the
pestilence, he ransacked the local papers in the city cafés, as they
had been missing from the reading table of the hotel lobby for several
days now. Statements alternated with disavowals. The number of the sick
and dead was supposed to reach twenty, forty, or even a hundred and
more--and immediately afterwards every instance of the plague would be
either flatly denied or attributed to completely isolated cases which
had crept in from the outside. There were scattered admonitions,
protests against the dangerous conduct of foreign authorities. Certainty
was impossible. Nevertheless the lone man felt especially entitled to
participate in the secret; and although he was excluded, he derived a
grotesque satisfaction from putting embarrassing questions to those who
did know, and as they were pledged to silence, forcing them into
deliberate lies. One day at breakfast in the large dining-hall he
entered into a conversation with the manager, that softly-treading
little man in the French frock coat who was moving amiably and
solicitously about among the diners and had stopped at Aschenbach's
table for a few passing words. Just why, the guest asked negligently and
casually, had disinfectants become so prevalent in Venice recently? "It
has to do," was the evasive answer, "with a police regulation, and is
intended to prevent any inconveniences or disturbances to the public
health which might result from the exceptionally warm and threatening
weather." . . . "The police are to be congratulated," Aschenbach
answered; and after the exchange of a few remarks on the weather, the
manager left.
Yet that same day, in the evening, after dinner, it happened that a
little band of strolling singers from the city gave a performance in the
front garden of the hotel. Two men and two women, they stood by the iron
post of an arc-lamp and turned their whitened faces up towards the large
terrace where the guests were enjoying this folk-recital over their
coffee and cooling drinks. The hotel personnel, bell boys, waiters, and
clerks from the office, could be seen listening by the doors of the
vestibule. The Russian family, eager and precise in their amusements,
had had wicker chairs placed in the garden in order to be nearer the
performers; and they were sitting here in an appreciative semi-circle.
Behind the ladies and gentlemen, in her turban-like kerchief, stood the
old slave.
Mandolin, guitar, harmonica, and a squeaky violin were responding to the
touch of the virtuoso beggars. Instrumental numbers alternated with
songs, as when the younger of the women, with a sharp trembling voice,
joined with the sweetly falsetto tenor in a languishing love duet. But
the real talent and leader of the group was undoubtedly the other of the
two men, the one with the guitar. He was a kind of _buffo_ baritone,
with not much of a voice, although he did have a gift for pantomime, and
a remarkable comic energy. Often, with his large instrument under his
arm, he would leave the rest of the group and, still acting, would
intrude on the platform, where his antics were rewarded with encouraging
laughter. Especially the Russians in their seats down front seemed to be
enchanted with so much southern mobility, and their applause incited him
to let himself out more and more boldly and assertively.
Aschenbach sat on the balustrade, cooling his lips now and then with a
mixture of pomegranate juice and soda which glowed ruby red in his glass
in front of him. His nerves took in the miserable notes, the vulgar
crooning melodies; for passion lames the sense of discrimination, and
surrenders in all seriousness to appeals which, in sober moments, are
either humorously allowed for or rejected with annoyance. At the clown's
antics his features had twisted into a set painful smile. He sat there
relaxed, although inwardly he was intensely awake; for six paces from
him Tadzio was leaning against the stone hand-rail.
In the white belted coat which he often wore at meal times, he was
standing in a position of spontaneous and inborn gracefulness, his left
forearm on the railing, feet crossed, the right hand on a supporting
hip; and he looked down at the street-singers with an expression which
was hardly a smile, but only an aloof curiosity, a polite amiability.
Often he would stand erect and, expanding his chest, would draw the
white smock down under his leather belt with a beautiful gesture. And
then too, the aging man observed with a tumult of fright and triumph how
he would often turn his head over the left shoulder in the direction of
his admirer, carefully and hesitatingly, or even with abruptness as
though to attack by surprise. He did not meet Aschenbach's eyes, for a
mean precaution compelled the transgressor to keep from staring at him:
in the background of the terrace the women who guarded Tadzio were
sitting, and things had reached a point where the lover had to fear that
he might be noticed and suspected. Yes, he had often observed with a
kind of numbness how, when Tadzio was near him, on the beach, in the
hotel lobby, in the Piazza San Marco, they called him back, they were
set on keeping him at a distance--and this wounded him frightfully,
causing his pride unknown tortures which his conscience would not permit
him to evade.
Meanwhile the guitar-player had begun a solo to his own accompaniment,
a street-ballad popular throughout Italy. It had several strophes, and
the entire company joined each time in the refrain, all singing and
playing, while he managed to give a plastic and dramatic twist to the
performance. Of slight build, with thin and impoverished features, he
stood on the gravel, apart from his companions, in an attitude of
insolent bravado, his shabby felt hat on the back of his head so that a
bunch of his red hair jutted out from under the brim. And to the
thrumming of the strings he flung his jokes up at the terrace in a
penetrating recitative; while the veins were swelling on his forehead
from the exertion of his performance. He did not seem of Venetian stock,
but rather of the race of Neapolitan comedians, half pimp, half
entertainer, brutal and audacious, dangerous and amusing. His song was
stupid enough so far as the words went; but in his mouth, by his
gestures, the movements of his body, his way of blinking significantly
and letting the tongue play across his lips, it acquired something
ambiguous, something vaguely repulsive. In addition to the customary
civilian dress, he was wearing a sport shirt; and his skinny neck
protruded above the soft collar, baring a noticeably large and active
Adam's-apple. He was pale and snub-nosed. It was hard to fix an age to
his beardless features, which seemed furrowed with grimaces and
depravity; and the two wrinkles standing arrogantly, harshly, almost
savagely between his reddish eyebrows were strangely suited to the smirk
on his mobile lips. Yet what really prompted the lonely man to pay him
keen attention was the observation that the questionable figure seemed
also to provide its own questionable atmosphere. For each time they came
to the refrain the singer, amid buffoonery and familiar handshakes,
began a grotesque circular march which brought him immediately beneath
Aschenbach's place; and each time this happened there blew up to the
terrace from his clothes and body a strong carbolic smell.
After the song was ended, he began collecting money. He started with the
Russians, who were evidently willing to spend, and then came up the
stairs. Up here he showed himself just as humble as he had been bold
during the performance. Cringing and bowing, he stole about among the
tables, and a smile of obsequious cunning exposed his strong teeth,
while the two wrinkles still stood ominously between his red eyebrows.
This singular character collecting money to live on--they eyed him with
a curiosity and a kind of repugnance, they tossed coins into his felt
hat with the tips of their fingers, and were careful not to touch him.
The elimination of the physical distance between the comedian and the
audience, no matter how great the enjoyment may have been, always causes
a certain uneasiness. He felt it, and tried to excuse it by grovelling.
He came up to Aschenbach, and along with him the smell, which no one
else seemed concerned about.
"Listen!" the recluse said in an undertone, almost mechanically. "They
are disinfecting Venice. Why?" The jester answered hoarsely, "On account
of the police. That is a precaution, sir, with such heat, and the
sirocco. The sirocco is oppressive. It is not good for the health." He
spoke as though astonished that any one could ask such things, and
demonstrated with his open hand how oppressive the sirocco was. "Then
there is no plague in Venice?" Aschenbach asked quietly, between his
teeth. The clown's muscular features fell into a grimace of comical
embarrassment. "A plague? What kind of plague? Perhaps our police are a
plague? You like to joke! A plague! Of all things! A precautionary
measure, you understand! A police regulation against the effects of the
oppressive weather." He gesticulated. "Very well," Aschenbach said
several times curtly and quietly; and he quickly dropped an unduly large
coin into the hat. Then with his eyes he signalled the man to leave. He
obeyed, smirking and bowing. But he had not reached the stairs before
two hotel employees threw themselves upon him, and with their faces
close to his began a whispered cross-examination. He shrugged his
shoulders; he gave assurances, he swore that he had kept quiet--that was
evident. He was released, and he returned to the garden; then after a
short conference with his companions, he stepped out once more for a
final song of thanks and leave-taking.
It was a rousing song which the recluse never recalled having heard
before, a "big number" in incomprehensible dialect, with a laugh refrain
in which the troupe joined regularly at the tops of their voices. At
this point both the words and the accompaniment of the instruments
stopped, with nothing left but a laugh which was somehow arranged
rhythmically although very naturally done--and the soloist especially
showed great talent in giving it a most deceptive vitality. At the
renewal of his professional distance from the audience he had recovered
all his boldness again, and the artificial laugh that he directed up
towards the terrace was derisive. Even before the end of the articulate
portion of the strophe, he seemed to struggle against an irresistible
tickling. He gulped, his voice trembled, he pressed his hand over his
mouth, he contorted his shoulders; and at the proper moment the
ungovernable laugh broke out of him, burst into such real cackles that
it was infectious and communicated itself to the audience, so that on
the terrace also an unfounded hilarity, living off itself alone, started
up. But this seemed to double the singer's exuberance. He bent his
knees, he slapped his thighs, he nearly split himself; he no longer
laughed, he shrieked. He pointed up with his finger, as though nothing
were more comic than the laughing guests there, and finally everyone in
the garden and on the verandah was laughing, even to the waiters, bell
boys, and house-servants in the doorways.
Aschenbach was no longer resting in his chair; he sat upright, as if
attempting to defend himself, or to escape. But the laughter, the whiffs
of the hospital smell, and the boy's nearness combined to put him into a
trance that held his mind and his senses hopelessly captive. In the
general movement and distraction he ventured to glance across at Tadzio,
and as he did so he dared observe that the boy, in reply to his glance,
was equally serious, much as though he had modelled his conduct and
expression after those of one man, and the prevalent mood had no effect
on him since this one man was not part of it. This portentous childish
obedience had something so disarming and overpowering about it that the
grey-haired man could hardly restrain himself from burying his face in
his hands. It had also seemed to him that Tadzio's occasional stretching
and quick breathing indicated a complaint, a congestion, of the lungs.
"He is sickly, he will probably not grow old," he thought repeatedly
with that positiveness which is often a peculiar relief to desire and
passion. And along with pure solitude he had a feeling of rakish
gratification.
Meanwhile the Venetians had ended and were leaving. Applause accompanied
them, and their leader did not miss the opportunity to cover his retreat
with further jests. His bows, the kisses he blew, were laughed at--and
so he doubled them. When his companions were already gone, he acted as
though he had hurt himself by backing into a lamp-post, and he crept
through the gate seemingly crippled with pain. Then he suddenly threw
off the mask of comic hard luck, stood upright, hurried away jauntily,
stuck out his tongue insolently at the guests on the terrace, and
slipped into the darkness. The company was breaking up; Tadzio had been
missing from the balustrade for some time. But, to the displeasure of
the waiters, the lonely man sat for a long while over the remains of his
pomegranate drink. Night advanced. Time was crumbling. In the house of
his parents many years back there had been an hour glass--of a sudden he
saw the fragile and expressive instrument again, as though it were
standing in front of him. Fine and noiseless the rust-red sand was
running through the glass neck; and since it was getting low in the
upper half, a speedy little vortex had been formed there.
As early as the following day, in the afternoon, he had made new
progress in his obstinate baiting of the people he met--and this time he
had all possible success. He walked from the Piazza of St. Mark's into
the English travelling bureau located there; and after changing some
money at the cash desk, he put on the expression of a distrustful
foreigner and launched his fatal question at the attendant clerk. He was
a Britisher; he wore a woollen suit, and was still young, with close-set
eyes, and had that characteristic stolid reliability which is so
peculiarly and strikingly appealing in the tricky, nimble-witted South.
He began, "No reason for alarm, sir. A regulation without any serious
significance. Such measures are often taken to anticipate the unhealthy
effects of the heat and the sirocco . . ." But as he raised his blue
eyes, he met the stare of the foreigner, a tired and somewhat unhappy
stare focussed on his lips with a touch of scorn. Then the Englishman
blushed. "At least," he continued in an emotional undertone, "that is
the official explanation which people here are content to accept. I will
admit that there is something more behind it." And then in his frank and
leisurely manner he told the truth.
For several years now Indian cholera had shown a heightened tendency to
spread and migrate. Hatched in the warm swamps of the Ganges delta,
rising with the noxious breath of that luxuriant, unfit primitive world
and island wilderness which is shunned by humans and where the tiger
crouches in the bamboo thickets, the plague had raged continuously and
with unusual strength in Hindustan, had reached eastwards to China,
westwards to Afghanistan and Persia, and following the chief caravan
routes, had carried its terrors to Astrachan, and even to Moscow. But
while Europe was trembling lest the spectre continue its advance from
there across the country, it had been transported over the sea by Syrian
merchantmen, and had turned up almost simultaneously in several
Mediterranean ports, had raised its head in Toulon and Malaga, had
showed its mask several times in Palermo and Naples, and seemed
permanently entrenched through Calabria and Apulia. The north of the
peninsula had been spared. Yet in the middle of this May in Venice the
frightful vibrions were found on one and the same day in the blackish
wasted bodies of a cabin boy and a woman who sold greengroceries. The
cases were kept secret. But within a week there were ten, twenty, thirty
more, and in various sections. A man from the Austrian provinces who had
made a pleasure trip to Venice for a few days, returned to his home town
and died with unmistakable symptoms--and that is how the first reports
of the pestilence in the lagoon city got into the German newspapers. The
Venetian authorities answered that the city's health conditions had
never been better, and took the most necessary preventive measures. But
probably the food supply had been infected. Denied and glossed over,
death was eating its way along the narrow streets, and its dissemination
was especially favoured by the premature summer heat which made the
water of the canals lukewarm. Yes, it seemed as though the plague had
got renewed strength, as though the tenacity and fruitfulness of its
stimuli had doubled. Cases of recovery were rare. Out of a hundred
attacks, eighty were fatal, and in the most horrible manner. For the
plague moved with utter savagery, and often showed that most dangerous
form, which is called "the drying." Water from the blood vessels
collected in pockets, and the blood was unable to carry this off. Within
a few hours the victim was parched, his blood became as thick as glue,
and he stifled amid cramps and hoarse groans. Lucky for him if, as
sometimes happened, the attack took the form of a light discomfiture
followed by a profound coma from which he seldom or never awakened. At
the beginning of June the pesthouse of the Ospedale Civico had quietly
filled; there was not much room left in the two orphan asylums, and a
frightfully active commerce was kept up between the wharf of the
Fondamenta Nuove and San Michele, the burial island. But there was the
fear of a general drop in prosperity. The recently opened art exhibit in
the public gardens was to be considered, along with the heavy losses
which in case of panic or unfavourable rumours, would threaten business,
the hotels, the entire elaborate system for exploiting foreigners--and
as these considerations evidently carried more weight than love of truth
or respect for international agreements, the city authorities upheld
obstinately their policy of silence and denial. The chief health officer
had resigned from his post in indignation, and been promptly replaced by
a more tractable personality. The people knew this; and the corruption
of their superiors, together with the predominating insecurity, the
exceptional condition into which the prevalence of death had plunged the
city, induced a certain demoralization of the lower classes, encouraging
shady and anti-social impulses which manifested themselves in licence,
profligacy, and a rising crime wave. Contrary to custom, many drunkards
were seen in the evenings; it was said that at night nasty mobs made the
streets unsafe. Burglaries and even murders became frequent, for it had
already been proved on two occasions that persons who had presumably
fallen victim to the plague had in reality been dispatched with poison
by their own relatives. And professional debauchery assumed abnormal and
obtrusive proportions such as had never been known here before, and to
an extent which is usually found only in the southern parts of the
country and in the Orient.
The Englishman pronounced the final verdict on these facts. "You would
do well," he concluded, "to leave to-day rather than to-morrow. It
cannot be much more than a couple of days before a quarantine zone is
declared." "Thank you," Aschenbach said, and left the office.
The square lay sunless and stifling. Unsuspecting foreigners sat in
front of the cafés, or stood among the pigeons in front of the church
and watched the swarms of birds flapping their wings, crowding one
another, and pecking at grains of corn offered them in open palms. The
recluse was feverishly excited, triumphant in his possession of the
truth. But it had left him with a bad taste in his mouth, and a weird
horror in his heart. As he walked up and down the flagstones of the
gorgeous court he was weighing an action which would meet the situation
and would absolve him. This evening after dinner he could approach the
woman with the pearls and make her a speech; he had figured it out word
for word: "Permit a foreigner, madam, to give you some useful advice, a
warning, which is being withheld from you through self-interest. Leave
immediately with Tadzio and your daughters! Venice is full of the
plague." Then he could lay a farewell hand on the head of this tool of a
mocking divinity, turn away, and flee this morass. But he felt at the
same time that he was very far from seriously desiring such a move. He
would retract it, would disengage himself from it. . . . But when we are
distracted we loathe most the thought of retracing our steps. He
recalled a white building, ornamented with inscriptions which glistened
in the evening and in whose transparent mysticism his mind's eye had
lost itself--and then that strange wanderer's form which had awakened in
the aging man the roving hankerings of youth after the foreign and the
remote. And the thought of return, the thought of prudence and
soberness, effort, mastery, disgusted him to such an extent that his
face was distorted with an expression of physical nausea. "It must be
kept silent!" he whispered heavily. And: "I will keep silent!" The
consciousness of his share in the facts and the guilt intoxicated him,
much as a little wine intoxicates a tired brain. The picture of the
diseased and neglected city hovering desolately before him aroused vague
hopes beyond the bounds of reason, but with an egregious sweetness. What
was the scant happiness he had dreamed of a moment ago, compared with
these expectations? What were art and virtue worth to him, over against
the advantages of chaos? He kept silent, and remained in Venice.
This same night he had a frightful dream, if one can designate as a
dream a bodily and mental experience which occurred to him in the
deepest sleep, completely independent of him, and with a physical
realness, although he never saw himself present or moving about among
the incidents; but their stage rather was his soul itself, and they
broke in from without, trampling down his resistance--a profound and
spiritual resistance--by sheer force; and when they had passed through,
they left his substance, the culture of his lifetime, crushed and
annihilated behind them.
It began with anguish, anguish and desire, and a frightened curiosity as
to what was coming. It was night, and his senses were on the watch. From
far off a grumble, an uproar, was approaching, a jumble of noises.
Clanking, blaring, and dull thunder, with shrill shouts and a definite
whine in a long drawn out u-sound--all this was sweetly, ominously
interspersed and dominated by the deep cooing of wickedly persistent
flutes which charmed the bowels in a shamelessly penetrative manner. But
he knew one word; it was veiled, and yet would name what was
approaching: "The foreign god!" Vaporous fire began to glow; then he
recognized mountains like those about his summer house. And in the
scattered light, from high up in the woods, among tree trunks and
crumbling moss-grown rocks--people, beasts, a throng, a raging mob
plunged twisting and whirling downwards, and made the hill swarm with
bodies, flames, tumult, and a riotous round dance. Women, tripped by
over-long fur draperies which hung from their waists, were holding up
tambourines and beating on them, their groaning heads flung back. Others
swung sparking firebrands and bare daggers, or wore hissing snakes about
the middle of their bodies, or shrieking held their breasts in their two
hands. Men with horns on their foreheads, shaggy-haired, girded with
hides, bent back their necks and raised their arms and thighs, clashed
brass cymbals and beat furiously at kettledrums, while smooth boys
prodded he-goats with wreathed sticks, climbing on their horns and
falling off with shouts when they bounded. And the bacchantes wailed the
word with the soft consonants and the drawn out u-sound, at once sweet
and savage, like nothing ever heard before. In one place it rang out as
though piped into the air by stags, and it was echoed in another by many
voices, in wild triumph--with it they incited one another to dance and
to fling out their arms and legs, and it was never silent. But
everything was pierced and dominated by the deep coaxing flute. He who
was fighting against this experience--did it not coax him too with its
shameless penetration, into the feast and the excesses of the extreme
sacrifice? His repugnance, his fear, were keen--he was honourably set on
defending himself to the very last against the barbarian, the foe to
intellectual poise and dignity. But the noise, the howling, multiplied
by the resonant walls of the hills, grew, took the upper hand, swelled
to a fury of rapture. Odours oppressed the senses, the pungent smell of
the bucks, the scent of moist bodies, and a waft of stagnant water, with
another smell, something familiar, the smell of wounds and prevalent
disease. At the beating of the drum his heart fluttered, his head was
spinning, he was caught in a frenzy, in a blinding deafening
lewdness--and he yearned to join the ranks of the god. The obscene
symbol, huge, wooden, was uncovered and raised up; then they howled the
magic word with more abandon. Foaming at the mouth, they raged, teased
one another with ruttish gestures and caressing hands; laughing and
groaning, they stuck the goads into one another's flesh and licked the
blood from their limbs. But the dreamer now was with them, in them, and
he belonged to the foreign god. Yes, they were he himself, as they
hurled themselves biting and tearing upon the animals, got entangled in
steaming rags, and fell in promiscuous unions on the torn moss, in
sacrifice to their god. And his soul tasted the unchastity and fury of
decay.
When he awakened from the affliction of this dream he was unnerved,
shattered, and hopelessly under the power of the demon. He no longer
avoided the inquisitive glances of other people; he did not care if he
was exciting their suspicions. And as a matter of fact they were
fleeing, travelling elsewhere. Numerous bathing houses stood empty, the
occupants of the dining-hall became more and more scattered, and in the
city now one rarely saw a foreigner. The truth seemed to have leaked
out; the panic, despite the reticence of those whose interests were
involved, seemed no longer avoidable. But the woman with the pearls
remained with her family, either because the rumours had not yet reached
her, or because she was too proud and fearless to heed them. Tadzio
remained. And to Aschenbach, in his infatuation, it seemed at times as
though flight and death might remove all the disturbing elements of life
around them, and he stay here alone with the boy. Yes, by the sea in the
forenoon when his eyes rested heavily, irresponsibly, unwaveringly on
the thing he coveted, or when, as the day was ending, he followed
shamelessly after him through streets where the hideous death lurked in
secret--at such times the atrocious seemed to him rich in possibilities,
and laws of morality had dropped away.
Like any lover, he wanted to please; and he felt a bitter anguish lest
it might not be possible. He added bright youthful details to his dress,
he put on jewels, and used perfumes. During the day he often spent much
time over his toilet, and came to the table strikingly dressed, excited,
and in suspense. In the light of the sweet youthfulness which had done
this to him, he detested his aging body. The sight of his grey hair, his
sharp features, plunged him into shame and hopelessness. It induced him
to attempt rejuvenating his body and appearance. He often visited the
hotel barber.
Beneath the barber's apron, leaning back in the chair under the
gossiper's expert hands, he winced to observe his reflection in the
mirror.
"Grey," he said, making a wry face.
"A little," the man answered. "Due entirely to a slight neglect, an
indifference to outward things, which is conceivable in people of
importance, but it is not exactly praiseworthy. And all the less so
since such persons are above prejudice in matters of nature or art. If
the moral objections of certain people to the art of cosmetics were to
be logically extended to the care of the teeth, they would give no
slight offence. And after all, we are just as old as we feel, and under
some circumstances grey hair would actually stand for more of an untruth
than the despised correction. In your case, sir, you are entitled to the
natural colour of your hair. Will you permit me simply to return what
belongs to you?"
"How is that?" Aschenbach asked.
Then the orator washed his client's hair with two kinds of water, one
clear and one dark, and it was as black as in youth. Following this, he
curled it with irons into soft waves, stepped back, and eyed his work.
"All that is left now," he said, "would be to freshen up the skin a
little."
And like someone who cannot finish, cannot satisfy himself, he passed
with quickening energy from one manipulation to another. Aschenbach
rested comfortably, incapable of resistance, or rather his hopes aroused
by what was taking place. In the glass he saw his brows arch more evenly
and decisively. His eyes became longer; their brilliance was heightened
by a light touching-up of the lids. A little lower, where the skin had
been a leatherish brown, he saw a delicate crimson tint grow beneath a
deft application of colour. His lips, bloodless a little while past,
became full, and as red as raspberries. The furrows in the cheeks and
about the mouth, the wrinkles of the eyes, disappeared beneath lotions
and cream. With a knocking heart he beheld a blossoming youth. Finally
the beauty specialist declared himself content, after the manner of such
people, by obsequiously thanking the man he had been serving. "A
trifling assistance," he said, as he applied one parting touch. "Now the
gentleman can fall in love unhesitatingly." He walked away, fascinated;
he was happy as in a dream, timid and bewildered. His necktie was red,
his broad-brimmed straw hat was trimmed with a variegated band.
A tepid storm wind had risen. It was raining sparsely and at intervals,
but the air was damp, thick, and filled with the smell of things
rotting. All around him he heard a fluttering, pattering, and swishing;
and under the fever of his cosmetics it seemed to him as though evil
wind-spirits were haunting the place, impure sea birds which rooted and
gnawed at the food of the condemned and befouled it with their
droppings. For the sultriness destroyed his appetite, and the fancy
suggested itself that the foods were poisoned with contaminating
substances. Tracking the boy one afternoon, Aschenbach had plunged deep
into the tangled centre of the diseased city. He was becoming uncertain
of where he was, since the alleys, waterways, bridges, and little
squares of the labyrinth were all so much alike, and he was no longer
even sure of directions. He was absorbed with the problem of keeping the
pursued figure in sight. And, driven to disgraceful subterfuges,
flattening himself against walls, hiding behind the backs of other
people, for a long time he did not notice the weariness, the exhaustion,
with which emotion and the continual suspense had taxed his mind and his
body. Tadzio walked behind his companions. He always allowed the
governess and the nunlike sisters to precede him in the narrow places;
and loitering behind alone, he would turn his head occasionally to look
over his shoulder and make sure by a glance of his peculiarly dark-grey
eyes that his admirer was following. He saw him, and did not betray him.
Drunk with the knowledge of this, lured forward by those eyes, led
meekly by his passion, the lover stole after his unseemly hope--but
finally he was cheated and lost sight of him. The Poles had crossed a
short arching bridge; the height of the curve hid them from the pursuer,
and when he himself had arrived there he no longer saw them. He hunted
for them vainly in three directions, straight ahead and to either side
along the narrow dirty wharf. In the end he was so tired and unnerved
that he had to give up the search.
His head was on fire, his body was covered with a sticky sweat, his
knees trembled. He could no longer endure the thirst that was torturing
him, and he looked around for some immediate relief. From a little
vegetable store he bought some fruit--strawberries, soft and overly
ripe--and he ate them as he walked. A very charming, forsaken little
square opened up before him. He recognized it; here he had made his
frustrated plans for flight weeks ago. He let himself sink down on the
steps of the cistern in the middle of the square, and laid his head
against the stone cylinder. It was quiet; grass was growing up through
the pavement; refuse was scattered about. Among the weather-beaten,
unusually tall houses surrounding him there was one like a palace, with
little lion-covered balconies, and Gothic windows with blank emptiness
behind them. On the ground floor of another house was a drug store. Warm
gusts of wind occasionally carried the smell of carbolic acid.
He sat there, he, the master, the artist of dignity, the author of The
Wretch, a work which had, in such accurate symbols, renounced
vagabondage and the depths of misery, had denied all sympathy with the
engulfed, and had cast out the outcast; the man who had arrived and,
victor over his own knowledge, had outgrown all irony and acclimatized
himself to the obligations of public confidence; whose reputation was
official, whose name had been knighted, and on whose style boys were
urged to pattern themselves--he sat there. His eyelids were shut; only
now and then a mocking uneasy side-glance slipped out from beneath them.
And his loose lips, set off by the cosmetics, formed isolated words of
the strange dream-logic created by his half-slumbering brain.
"For beauty, Phaedrus, mark me, beauty alone is both divine and visible
at once; and thus it is the road of the sensuous; it is, little
Phaedrus, the road of the artist to the spiritual. But do you now
believe, my dear, that they can ever attain wisdom and true human
dignity for whom the road to the spiritual leads through the senses? Or
do you believe rather (I leave the choice to you) that this is a
pleasant but perilous road, a really wrong and sinful road, which
necessarily leads astray? For you must know that we poets cannot take
the road of beauty without having Eros join us and set himself up as our
leader. Indeed, we may even be heroes after our fashion, and hardened
warriors, though we be like women, for passion is our exaltation, and
our desire must remain love--that is our pleasure and our disgrace. You
now see, do you not, that we poets cannot be wise and dignified? That we
necessarily go astray, necessarily remain lascivious, and adventurers in
emotion? The mastery of our style is all lies and foolishness, our
renown and honour are a farce, the confidence of the masses in us is
highly ridiculous, and the training of the public and of youth through
art is a precarious undertaking which should be forbidden. For how
indeed could he be a fit instructor who is born with a natural leaning
towards the precipice? We might well disavow it and reach after dignity,
but wherever we turn it attracts us. Let us, say, renounce the
dissolvent of knowledge, since knowledge, Phaedrus, has no dignity or
strength. It is aware, it understands and pardons, but without reserve
and form. It feels sympathy with the precipice, it is the precipice.
This then we abandon with firmness, and from now on our efforts matter
only by their yield of beauty, or in other words, simplicity, greatness,
and new rigour, form, and a second type of openness. But form and
openness, Phaedrus, lead to intoxication and to desire, lead the noble
perhaps into sinister revels of emotion which his own beautiful rigour
rejects as infamous, lead to the precipice, yes they too lead to the
precipice. They lead us poets there, I say, since we cannot force
ourselves, since we can merely let ourselves out And now I am going,
Phaedrus. You stay here; and when you no longer see me, then you go
too."
A few days later, as Gustav von Aschenbach was not feeling well, he left
the beach hotel at a later hour in the morning than usual. He had to
fight against certain attacks of vertigo which were only partially
physical and were accompanied by a pronounced malaise, a feeling of
bafflement and hopelessness--while he was not certain whether this had
to do with conditions outside him or with his own nature. In the lobby
he noticed a large pile of luggage ready for shipment; he asked the
door-keeper who it was that was leaving, and heard in answer the Polish
title which he had learned secretly. He accepted this without any
alteration of his sunken features, with that curt elevation of the head
by which one acknowledges something he does not need to know. Then he
asked, "When?" The answer was, "After lunch." He nodded, and went to the
beach.
It was not very inviting. Rippling patches of rain retreated across the
wide flat water separating the beach from the first long sand-bank. An
air of autumn, of things past their prime, seemed to lie over the
pleasure spot which had once been so alive with colour and was now
almost abandoned. The sand was no longer kept clean. A camera, seemingly
without an owner, stood on its tripod by the edge of the sea; and a
black cloth thrown over it was flapping noisily in the wind.
Tadzio, with the three or four companions still left, was moving about
to the right in front of his family's cabin. And midway between the sea
and the row of bathing houses, lying back in his chair with a robe over
his knees, Aschenbach looked at him once more. The game, which was not
being supervised since the women were probably occupied with
preparations for the journey, seemed to have no rules, and it was
degenerating. The stocky boy with the sleek black hair who was called
Jaschu had been angered and blinded by sand flung in his face. He forced
Tadzio into a wrestling match which quickly ended in the fall of the
beauty, who was weaker. But as though in the hour of parting the servile
feelings of the inferior had turned to merciless brutality and were
trying to get vengeance for a long period of slavery, the victor did not
let go of the boy underneath, but knelt on his back and pressed his face
so persistently into the sand that Tadzio, already breathless from the
struggle, was in danger of strangling. His attempts to shake off the
weight were fitful; for moments they stopped entirely and were resumed
again as mere twitchings. Enraged, Aschenbach was about to spring to the
rescue, when the torturer finally released his victim. Tadzio, very
pale, raised himself halfway and sat motionless for several minutes,
resting on one arm, with rumpled hair and glowering eyes. Then he stood
up completely, and moved slowly away. They called him, cheerfully at
first, then anxiously and imploringly; he did not listen. The swarthy
boy, who seemed to regret his excesses immediately afterwards, caught up
with him and tried to placate him. A movement of the shoulder put him at
his distance. Tadzio went down obliquely to the water. He was barefoot,
and wore his striped linen suit with the red bow.
He lingered on the edge of the water with his head down, drawing figures
in the wet sand with one toe; then he went into the shallows, which did
not cover his knees in the deepest place, crossed them leisurely, and
arrived at the sand-bank. He stood there a moment, his face turned to
the open sea; soon after, he began stepping slowly to the left along the
narrow stretch of exposed ground. Separated from the mainland by the
expanse of water, separated from his companions by a proud moodiness, he
moved along, a strongly isolated and unrelated figure with fluttering
hair--placed out there in the sea, the wind, against the vague mists. He
stopped once more to look around. And suddenly, as though at some
recollection, some impulse, with one hand on his hip he turned the upper
part of his body in a beautiful twist which began from the base--and he
looked over his shoulder towards the shore. The watcher sat there, as he
had sat once before when for the first time these twilight-grey eyes had
turned at the doorway and met his own. His head, against the back of the
chair, had slowly followed the movements of the boy walking yonder. Now,
simultaneously with this glance it rose and sank on his breast, so that
his eyes looked out from underneath, while his face took on the loose,
inwardly relaxed expression of deep sleep. But it seemed to him as
though the pale and lovely lure out there were smiling to him, nodding
to him; as though, removing his hand from his hip, he were signalling to
come out, were vaguely guiding towards egregious promises. And, as often
before, he stood up to follow him.
Some minutes passed before any one hurried to the aid of the man who had
collapsed into one corner of his chair. He was brought to his room. And
on the same day a respectfully shocked world received the news of his
death.
_The End_