Death in Venice and Other Stories

by Thomas Mann

  He sweeps along the strand, dashing its entire length, far and wide, and everywhere he goes, disdainfully relaxed ducks, their beaks under their wings, take flight before him. Thus he does indeed sweep this stretch of sand and stir up an amusing cloud of dust. With a splash, though, the ducks glide back down to the water, in whose safety they rock back and forth and spin round; or, alternately, they fly away with outstretched beaks above Baushan’s head, while he runs along the bank measuring his honorable legs against their wings.

  He’s overjoyed and grateful as long as they fly and provide him with the opportunity for a grand old race up and down the river, whereas they, in turn, are familiar with his desires and can exploit them, if that seems advisable. Once I saw a mother duck with her brood—although it was spring and the river was empty of fowl, she had stayed behind, watching over her little ones, who weren’t yet able to migrate—in a slimy puddle left over from the last flood in a hollow of the otherwise dry river bed. Baushan stumbled across them there—I watched the scene from the path above. He jumped into the puddle and started barking as though wild, which sent the duck family scurrying. Naturally he did no harm, but he did throw an immeasurable scare into its members so that the ducklings fled in every direction, flapping their stumpy wings. The mother was then seized by that maternal heroism which blinds her kind to all risk, inspires it to defend the brood against even the fiercest enemy and often succeeds with a preternatural, trancelike display of courage in chasing off the intimidated adversary. With outspread wings and hideously gaping beak, she counterattacked, flying at Baushan’s face, throwing herself heroically upon him again and again, hissing all the while. But though the perverse spectacle of such fanaticism indeed caused her enemy to retreat, dumbfounded, she was never able to make him withdraw once and for all. He kept on barking and advancing anew, so the mother duck changed tactics and tried guile where bravery had failed. Perhaps she was acquainted with Baushan from before and knew his weaknesses, his childish susceptibilities. In any case, she abandoned her offspring—or rather, she gave the impression of abandoning them. She fled to create a diversion, flying off over the river, “driven” by Baushan (as he probably thought, though he was actually being led by his own hyperactive nose). She flew first with, then against the current, farther and farther, while Baushan raced down below in leaps and bounds, until finally both dog and duck had traveled so far from the puddle with the ducklings that I lost sight of them. Only later did the fool find his way back, absolutely frantic and breathless, to me. But the previously besieged puddle, by the time we passed it again, was deserted . . .

  That was what the mother duck did, and Baushan counted himself grateful to her for it. Normally, he hates ducks with their bourgeois complacency who refuse to play along with the hunt, who simply slip from the riverbank into the water whenever he comes storming up and sit rocking back and forth in disdainful safety directly before his nose, unperturbed by his mighty voice and, unlike the nervous gulls, not fooled by his pantomime running starts. We stand side by side on the rocky riverside, Baushan and I. Two steps before us the duck bobs up and down in the insolent security of the waves, its beak pressed to its breast with affected dignity, reasonable and sober, utterly indifferent to Baushan’s enraged voice assaulting its ears. It paddles against the current, more or less holding its position, but nonetheless drifting downstream little by little. One meter off to the side is whitewater, one of those lovely frothing eddies, toward which it turns its smugly uplifted tail. Baushan braces his front paws against the rocks and barks, and I bark inwardly with him, for I can’t help but share to an extent his hatred toward such insolent rationality and wish the ducks ill. Concentrate on our barking, I think, and not on the cataract, so that you get sucked down into the whirlpool. We’ll see then how you deal with a truly humiliating and dangerous situation. But this malicious hope, too, remains unfulfilled, for the very second it reaches the brink of the cataract, the impertinent creature flies a short distance into the air, flutters a few yards upstream and glides back down.

  When I think of our irritation with the ducks in such situations, I always remember one adventure in particular, which I would like to relate in conclusion to this report. It was an occasion of undeniable satisfaction for my companion and me. However, it also raised a delicate, disruptive and perplexing issue; indeed it even led to a temporary chill in my relationship with Baushan, and if I had been able to see it coming, I would certainly have avoided the spot where it awaited us.

  It happened quite far downstream, beyond the ferry house, where the riverside wilderness meets the upper path. We were walking, I in full march, Baushan trotting along lopsidedly a little bit ahead. Having already tormented a hare that day—or if you want, having already been tormented by a hare—and having flushed out three or four pheasant, he was now sticking relatively close so as not to neglect his master entirely. A small group of ducks, necks outstretched, flew in wedge formation above the river, too high and too near the other bank to qualify as possible game. They flew along in our direction, paying us no mind, not even noticing our presence, and only now and then did either of us cast a deliberately indifferent glance up at them.

  Then it happened. Suddenly, on the equally steep opposite riverbank, a man emerged from the brush and struck a pose that made both Baushan and me halt and close ranks, our eyes upon him the entire time. It was a fine enough figure of a man, somewhat rough on the exterior, with a droopy mustache, square gaiters and a loden hat slanted over his forehead. His billowy trousers were probably of that coarse material known as Manchester velvet, and his matching jacket boasted various leather belts and straps, for he wore a knapsack and carried a rifle slung over his shoulder. Better yet, he had carried it slung over his shoulder, since no sooner did he appear on the scene than he took his weapon in his hands and, with his cheek pressed flat against the butt, aimed it sideways up at the sky. With one square-gaitered leg in front of the other, the gun barrel resting in the hollow of his outstretched left hand, his left elbow drawn in underneath, his right elbow, right hand on the trigger, splayed sideways, and his face angled boldly toward the sky, he took aim. There was something decidedly operatic about the man’s sudden appearance there above the river scree, towering against the natural backdrop of the brush, the river and the open sky. Yet we could only admire this picturesque image for a second—for from across the water came the dull crack of the gunshot that I had awaited with bated breath, so that I flinched when it occurred. At the same time a tiny flame shot up, pale in the light of day, followed by a puff of smoke. The man took one giant operatic step forward, his chest and face arched toward the sky, his right fist firmly gripping the strap of the rifle, while up above, where both his and our eyes were trained, brief aerial pandemonium broke out. The group of ducks scattered, there was a wild flapping like that of loose sails in a gusty wind and an attempt at gliding, then suddenly a form coalesced, the victim’s body, plummeting like a rock into the water near the opposite bank.

  But that was only half of it. Here I must interrupt my account to train the living gaze of my memory upon Baushan. Many familiar sayings—perennial currency for great events—leap to mind as possible descriptions for his behavior. I might say, for instance, that he’d been hit by lightning. Yet that strikes a false chord and leaves me dissatisfied. Great words, being worn out, do a poor job of expressing the extraordinary. This is better accomplished by using ordinary words to the uttermost extent of their meaning. Therefore let me just say that at the rifle shot, the attendant context and everything that followed, Baushan stopped short. It was typical for him to do so whenever something unusual occurred, that I knew. Only this time the arrest of motion was intensified ad infinitum. He did a veritable double take that propelled his whole body a step backward, shook him from right to left and jerked his head into his chest with such force that it was practically torn from his shoulders on the rebound. It was like a cry from deep within: “What? What? What was that? Wait one minute
! What was that all about?” His eyes and ears took everything in with the sort of indignation caused by great amazement, yet despite the novelty of it all, everything was already present somehow, just as it always had been. Indeed, gripped by uncertainty, jerking in great spasms to the right and to the left, halfway around his own axis, he could well have been trying to examine himself from behind, asking all the while: “What am I? Who am I? Is that me?” The moment the duck hit the water, Baushan sprang forward to the edge of the embankment as though about to jump down to the riverbank and plunge in. But then he remembered the current, checked this impulse and, ashamed, resumed the role of mere spectator.

  I looked on uneasily. Once the duck had fallen from the sky, I was of the opinion that we’d seen enough and should now move on. He, however, had settled down on his haunches, ears pricked, facing the other bank, and to my question “Shall we be on our way, Baushan?” he barely turned his head in response—not unlike someone answering in a peremptory tone, “Please leave me in peace”—and kept on watching. Thus I resigned myself, crossed my legs, leaned against my walking stick and watched as things unfolded.

  The duck—one of those that always bobbed up and down before our noses in insolent safety—was floating face down in the water, a shipwreck whose front could no longer be distinguished from its tail. The river is calmer down here, its drop less drastic than further upstream. Nonetheless the dead bird was immediately seized, spun round and carried off by the current. If the man had something more practical in mind than just killing his mark for sport, he had to make haste. That he did, without losing a moment, so that everything transpired with the greatest speed. Hardly had the duck broken the water’s surface before he came storming down the embankment, jumping, stumbling and almost falling. He held his rifle outstretched in his arms, and once again the scene had all the romance of an opera, with him springing down over the ornamental-seeming backdrop of the river scree like some thief or clever smuggler of melodrama. He struck out a bit to the left, cleverly, for the duck threatened to float away before he could catch it. And stretching out the butt of his rifle and leaning forward with his feet in the water, he actually succeeded in putting a stop to its drift and bringing it under control. Carefully and with considerable difficulty, he managed to nudge it tugboatlike against the rocks and up onto land.

  That was the end of the business, and the man could once more breathe easily. He laid his weapon down beside him on the bank, took his knapsack from his shoulders, stuffed his kill inside, strapped it on again and, happy with the additional weight, climbed peacefully back up the scree toward the brush, using his rifle as a walking stick.

  Well, he’s got something for tomorrow’s grill, I thought with a mixture of approval and resentment. “Come, Baushan! Let’s go now. It’s all over.”

  Baushan got up. But after turning completely around, he sat back down again and continued to stare at the opposite bank, even though the man had already made his exit and disappeared through the bushes. I wasn’t about to call him twice. He knew where we lived, and he could sit there for hours gawking after the show was over and there was nothing more to see, if that was what he wanted. It was a long way home, and I for one meant to get going and put it behind me. With that he followed.

  He clung to my heels for the whole uncomfortable walk home, not once giving chase. Instead of running ahead at an angle as was his wont whenever he wasn’t rummaging around and tracking some scent, he trotted to my rear and put on the kind of face I couldn’t help noticing when I happened to glance back. I might well have let that go: it’s not so easy to get to me. On the contrary, I was much more inclined to laugh and shrug the whole thing off. But every forty or fifty steps he yawned. That was what enraged me. It was that unabashedly rude, jaw-unhinging yawn of boredom, with the guttural squeak that clearly expressed the following sentiment: “A fine master I have! A fraud, this master! A pathetic excuse for a master!” I can never hear this sound without taking it personally, but this time it was enough to shake the very foundations of our friendship.

  “Go on then!” I said. “Go! Go and join your master over there with the blunderbuss. He seems not to be in possession of a dog, and maybe he can use you in his sporting endeavors. He’s just some common fellow in Manchester, not a gentleman, but in your eyes he probably is a gentleman, just the sort to be your master. So I sincerely advise you to go follow him, since he seems to have set ideas nagging at your flea-bitten head. Not that you could tell the difference.”

  Having gone that far, I continued: “We won’t ask for his hunting license. It might well cause trouble if one day someone catches you two at your respectable sport, but that’s your business and I repeat, I mean my advice sincerely. You, a hunter! Of all the hares I let you chase, did you ever bring one back for my kitchen? It’s not my fault you don’t know how to double and end up plowing the ground with your nose like a fool precisely when you need to be clever! Or a pheasant—that would be no less welcome in these lean days! And you yawn! Go, I tell you. Go follow your master with the square gaiters. Go and see whether he’s the man to stroke your neck and make you laugh—I bet he hardly knows how to laugh, and if so, only at coarse jokes! If you think he will submit you to medical observation, whenever you decide to have occult hemorrhages, or that his dog will be pronounced tense and anemic, then go follow him! Maybe you overestimate the regard such a master would have for you. There are things for which such rifle-toting types have a fine sense of distinction and a sharp eye. Just so there’s no misunderstanding: I mean inborn qualities and flaws, ticklish matters of genealogy and pedigree, which not everyone has the compassion and humanity to overlook. I hope I’ve made myself clear. So the first time you fall out with your exciting new master, and he reproaches you with your beard and calls you all sorts of ugly names, I hope you think about me and what I’ve said today . . .”

  Such were the cutting words I addressed to Baushan on the way home as he slunk along behind me. And though I only spoke them silently to myself, so as not to be overly dramatic, I’m convinced that he understood exactly what I meant and was able to follow my line of thinking. The long and short of it was that we were profoundly at odds, and when we arrived home, I deliberately let the front gate fall into its latch before he could slip through, making him jump up and climb over it. Without even a glance back, I went into the house, and when I heard him whimper at the scrape on his belly, I just shrugged my shoulders in spite. —

  However, that was a long time, more than six months, ago, and the whole thing passed just like the clinic incident. Time and forgetting have covered it over, and our lives go on atop their swampy ground, which is the ground of all life. Baushan, after a few days’ moping, regained his innocent enthusiasm for hunting mice, pheasants, hares and aquatic fowl and anxiously awaits our next walk as soon as we return home from the previous one. On my front-door landing, I always glance back at him one last time. This is his signal to take the steps in two great leaps and stand upright with his front paws against the door, so that I can give him a farewell pat on the shoulder. “’Til tomorrow, Baushan,” I tell him, “assuming I don’t have to go out into the world.” And then I hasten to slip out of my hobnailed boots, for supper is on the table.

  Afterword

  Thomas Mann was born on June 6, 1875, in Lübeck, North Germany. He was the second of five children; his parents were Senator Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann and his wife, Julia, née da Silva-Bruhns. His mother had been born in Brazil of a German father and a Brazilian mother but moved to Germany at the age of seven after the death of the mother. She was an exotic woman, of artistic (and especially musical) gifts; her husband was a prosperous merchant and an important figure in the government of the city-state of Lübeck. (It is worth noting that mixed parentage of one kind or another recurs as a theme in Thomas Mann’s work—one thinks particularly of “Tonio Kröger” and Death in Venice.) His father died when Thomas was sixteen, having in his will decreed the liquidation
of the family business; and he did so, it seems, without bitterness, because he realized that the two elder sons (Heinrich and Thomas) who would have been expected to take over the business were committed to a literary career.

  The family then moved to Munich, and South Germany was to remain Thomas Mann’s home for the next thirty years or so. In 1896–98 he was in Italy; and–intriguingly it was there, in a world very different from his birthplace, that he began work on Buddenbrooks, which appeared in 1901. It is a superb novel that chronicles the decline of a family from the 1830’s to the 1870’s in what is recognizably (although the town is never named) Lübeck. Many of the foreground concerns of the novel—the emergence of reflectivity and artistic sensibility in a high-bourgeois, patrician family—are close to the circumstances of Thomas Mann’s own early years. But the novel is no mere autobiography writ large, for the psychological, sociological, and economic changes at work in the Buddenbrook family are symptomatic of general historico-cultural processes and patterns. It was not to be the only time in his career that Mann’s concentration on seemingly personal matters—his own struggles and self-doubts—proved to be amazingly and complexly representative of larger concerns. Buddenbrooks was followed swiftly by “Tonio Kröger” and “Tristan.” By 1905, when he married Katja Pringsheim, the daughter of a Jewish professor of mathematics in Munich, Thomas Mann was, though young, a firmly established writer.