Death in Venice and Other Tales

by Thomas Mann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER FOUR

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

  The guest so conveniently detained by mishap was not at all inclined to see the restoration of his possessions as a reason for resuming his departure. For two long days, he had endured no small privation and had been forced to wear his traveling clothes to meals in the large dining room. So when his misdirected baggage was finally deposited back in his room, he unpacked completely, filling the closet and bureau with his things, set for now on an unrestricted stay, content to be able again to pass the hours on the beach in his silk suit and appear for dinner at his small table in appropriate evening attire.

  The comfortably constant rhythm of this existence had put him under its spell, and he was quickly captivated by the soft luxurious ease of his newfound way of life. And what a place it is that combines the charms of a cultivated Southern European seaside resort with the constant proximity of such a strange and wonderful city! Aschenbach was no great fun lover. Whenever and wherever it was necessary to stop working, recover his peace of mind and take a few days off, restlessness and dissatisfaction would soon compel him to resume his noble toil and devoutly austere daily routine. This had been especially true of him as a young man. Venice alone had enchanted him, relaxed his ambition and made him feel happy. There were times when he thought back: in the morning, as he sat before his hut in the shadow of the awning dreaming off into the blue of the southern sea, or on mild nights under the great starry sky, as he leaned back into the cushions of the gondola ferrying him home after a long evening on the Piazza, the bright lights and fluid melodies of serenades receding behind him. He thought back to his country house in the mountains, the site of his annual summer battles. He remembered the low drifting of the clouds over the yard, the power outages in the house after violent evening thunderstorms and the flight of the ravens he fed into the tops of the pines. And it seemed to him in such moments that he had been transported to Elysium, to the very end of the earth, where mortal men were blessed with lives of utmost ease, where, instead of snow and winter, storms and pounding rain, Oceanus forever blew his gentle cooling breath and the days trickled away in blissful indolence, effortlessly, without struggle, entirely given over to the sun and its rituals.

  Aschenbach saw the boy Tadzio frequently, almost constantly. A small radius of activity and commonly assigned routines preordained that, with only brief interruptions, the beautiful boy would be in his vicinity throughout the day. He saw, indeed met him everywhere: downstairs in the hotel, on the refreshing boat rides to the city and back, amidst the splendor of the Piazza, and often high and low and in between if he was lucky. Above all, however, it was mornings on the beach that provided him with regular opportunity to appreciate and study the fair vision. Indeed, it was exactly this happy arrangement—the daily recreation of such favorable circumstances—that filled Aschenbach with joyful satisfaction and caused him to savor his stay as it stretched on and on so pleasantly, one sunny day after the next.

  He would get up early, as though still driven by his compulsive work habits, and arrive at the beach before most of the others, when the sun was still mild and the sea dazzlingly white in morning dreams. He would amiably greet the attendant at the gate and would also exchange familiar hellos with the barefoot old-timer, who always had his spot well-prepared—brown awning unfurled, beach furniture removed and set up on deck—before settling into his chair. The next three or four hours would then be his, hours in which the sun climbed in the sky and took on a terrible intensity, in which the ocean turned a deeper and deeper blue and in which he was permitted to watch Tadzio.

  He would see him approaching from the left along the edge of the sea. He would suddenly spy his back emerging from between the huts or sometimes he would discover, not without joyous alarm, that he had missed the boy’s arrival, that he was already there and had already resumed, in the blue-and-white-striped swimsuit that had become his exclusive beach attire, his usual sun-and-sand activities—that delightfully trivial, idly restless life of play and relaxation, one long span of strolling, wading, digging, chasing, lying and swimming, watched over and summoned by the women on the deck, who kept shouting his name “Tadziu! Tadziu!” in falsetto and to whom he came running, gesturing with excitement, to tell of his adventures and show his various finds and catches: mussels, tiny sea horses, jellyfish, sideways scuttling crabs. Aschenbach didn’t understand a single word of what he said, but however commonplace it might have been, the sounds were a lovely warm blur in his ear. The impenetrability of the foreign tongue turned the boy’s speech to music, an irrepressible sun bathed him in luxuriant glow and the sublimely deep view of the sea provided a constant backdrop and background against which he appeared.

  Soon the observant Aschenbach knew every line and pose of this so superior, uninhibited body, joyously welcoming each feature of its already familiar beauty anew and knowing no end for either his admiration or the gentle desire of his senses. A voice might summon the boy to greet a guest waiting upon the women at their hut. He would run by, perhaps wet from the sea, tossing his locks, and as he shook hands, he would rotate his body in a most charming way, in one graceful taut twist—one leg bearing his full weight, the other extending its toes—embarrassed at being so adorable, anxious to fulfill his aristocratic duty and please the visitor. Or he might lie outstretched, a beach towel wrapped around his chest, his finely sculpted arm braced in the sand, his hand cupping his chin. The one called “Yashu” would squat to the side, doting on him, and nothing could have been more enchanting than the chosen one, with a smile in his eyes and on his lips, looking up at his vassal, his servant. Or he might stand there at the edge of the sea, alone, away from his family, quite near Aschenbach, tall, slowly rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, his hands clasped behind his neck, dreaming off into the blue, while tiny in-rolling waves bathed his toes.
His honey-colored hair curled in ringlets around his temples and neck, the down on his upper spine gleamed in the sun, the fine contours of his ribs and his even chest emerged through the thin wrapping around his torso, his armpits ran smooth as a statue’s, the hollows of his knees glistened and, thanks to their bluish veins, his entire body appeared to be made of some more translucent material. What discipline, what precision of thought was expressed in this youthful body, stretched out in all its perfection! The strength and purity of that will, whose obscure activity had succeeded in realizing this divine sculpture—did not he, as artist, know it through and through? Was it not also at work within him, as he chipped away, full of sober passion, at the marble block of language to release that sleek form glimpsed in his imagination, which he then presented to his fellow man as a model and mirror of sublime beauty?

  A model and mirror! His eyes took in the exquisite figure there at the edge of the blue, and in his mounting rapture he was convinced that, with this sight, he had apprehended beauty itself, form as divine thought, the one true, absolute perfection which resides in the realm of the sublime and whose representation and reflection in human form had been placed here, light and fair, to be worshipped. Such was his intoxication, and the aging artist invited it upon himself heedlessly, even greedily. His imagination went into labor, his learning came to a boil and his memory dredged up ancient thoughts that had been preserved since childhood but had never before been animated with any fire of their own. Was it not written somewhere that exposure to the sun turns the attention from intellectual to sensory perception? Accordingly, it numbs, indeed bewitches, reason and memory in such a way that the soul, overwhelmed by happiness, entirely forgets its actual state and clings in dumbstruck awe to that which is most beautiful amidst whatever is illuminated. In fact, it is only with the help of a bodily presence that the over-exposed soul can succeed in elevating itself to a higher level of contemplation. The god Amor, forsooth, was like those mathematicians who introduce slow pupils to abstract shapes via specific images. In order that we might know the sublime, he gladly availed himself of the form and hue of human youth, embellishing them with the reflected light of beauty into a kind of mnemonic device, the sight of which literally inflames us with anguish and hope.