Death in Venice and Other Stories (31 page)

Several days later Gustav von Aschenbach, feeling sick, left the beach hotel later than usual in the morning. He had been forced to battle against definite, if only semiphysical, attacks of nausea, which were accompanied by an acute mounting anxiety, a feeling of hopelessness and futility impossible to pinpoint either to the world at large or to his own personal life. In the lobby he noticed a great many bags standing ready for departure. He asked a doorman who was traveling on and received as an answer the aristocratic Polish family name he had secretly been expecting. He took in the information without a flinch of his sunken features, curtly raising his chin as people do to acknowledge learning something they didn't need to know, and added: “When?” The answer came: “After lunch.” He nodded and walked down to the sea.

There, shop had been closed up. On the wide shallows separating the beach from the first stretch of sandbar, rippling shudders of water ran back out to sea. An autumnal, out-of-favor atmosphere seemed to have descended over this once so colorful and crowded, but now almost deserted resort, whose sand was no longer kept
clean. A camera, apparently abandoned, stood on its tripod at the edge of the sea, its draped black cloth flapping in the breeze, which was cooler than before.

Tadzio, along with three or four remaining playmates, was running around to the right in front of his family's hut. Aschenbach sat in a chair approximately halfway between the sea and the row of huts with a blanket over his knees and watched Tadzio one more time. The game was unsupervised (the women were apparently preparing for departure), seemed to have no rules and quickly got out of control. The strapping lad with the belted jumpsuit and the black pomaded hair called “Yashu,” enraged by some blinding sand thrown in his face, challenged Tadzio to a wrestling match. This soon ended with the beautiful but weaker combatant being pinned. Nevertheless, as though in this final hour the servile vassal had been transformed into a terrible brute who now sought revenge for his long subordination, the victorious “Yashu” refused to stop attacking his vanquished foe and instead kept one knee on his back, pressing his face into the sand. Tadzio, who was already out of breath from the fight, was near suffocation. His efforts to shake off the weight on top of him were convulsive, ceasing entirely for moments at a time, to return as mere twitching. Horrified, Aschenbach wanted to leap to the rescue, but just then the bully finally released his victim. Very pale, Tadzio got halfway up and sat motionless for several minutes, leaning on one arm, his hair mussed and his eyes glowering. Then he took to his feet and walked slowly off. His name was called, at first playfully, then apologetically and urgently, but he turned a deaf ear. The dark-haired boy, no doubt overcome with immediate regret at having gone too far, ran after him and tried to patch things up. A shoulder motioned for him to stay back. Tadzio walked diagonally down to the water. He was barefoot and wore his striped linen outfit with the red bow.

At the water's edge he paused, head down, to draw some shapes in the sand with his toes, then continued out into the shallows, which even at their deepest didn't come up over his knee, leisurely making his way through
them until he reached the sandbar. There he stood for a moment, his face turned toward the open sea, before walking slowly leftward over the long strip of narrow exposed land. Cut off from the beach by the wide stretch of water, cut off from his playmates by his own proud moodiness, he paced back and forth, an utterly isolated and disconnected figure with disheveled hair out there in the sea and the wind, against a backdrop of hazy infinity. Once more he paused to gaze into the distance. And suddenly, as if remembering something or following some other such impulse, he rotated his upper body, one hand on his hip, in an elegant twist from his basic position and looked back over his shoulder toward shore. There on the beach, the watching Aschenbach sat as he had sat once before, when those twilight gray eyes had first glanced back over that fateful threshold and met his own. His head, resting on the beach chair, had slowly turned to follow the boy's movements as he paced in the distance. Now it lifted level with the boy's gaze, before suddenly slumping down over his chest. His eyes rolled and his face took on the slack, sunken expression of deep slumber. It seemed to him, however, as if the pale and lovely shepherd of souls out there smiled at him, beckoning, as if he took his hand from his hip and pointed, indeed himself glided ahead, into the looming immensity, full of promise and portent. And as he had so often before, Aschenbach got up to follow.

Minutes passed before help arrived for the man slumped over sideways in his chair. He was brought to his room. And that very same day a respectfully shaken world received the news of his death.

H
E
C
OMES
A
ROUND
THE
C
ORNER

W
henever spring lives up to its lovely reputation, and the twittering of the birds has—thanks to my having ended the previous day at a proper juncture—sufficed to awaken me in time, I quite enjoy a half-an-hour stroll before breakfast. Not bothering with my hat, I start along the suburban lane by my house, sometimes continuing into the parks further out, in order to catch a few breaths of fresh morning air and to savor for a bit—before I'm spirited away by my work—the joys of the sheer earliness of hour. On my front steps I let out a whistle consisting of two notes, tonic and lower fourth, as in the beginning melody of the second movement of Schubert's
Unfinished Symphony
. It is a signal, something like a two-syllable name set to music. The very next instant, as I continue toward the front gate, a sound can be heard in the distance, barely audible at first but quickly growing closer and more distinct, a delicate tinkling of the sort produced by a license medallion hitting the metal clasp of a dog collar. Glancing back, I see Baushan coming at full speed round the rear corner of the house straight for me, as though planning to run me over. His lower lip is retracted slightly in exertion, exposing two or three front teeth that gleam white and majestic in the early morning sun.

He comes from his house, there on the ground under the elevated veranda in the backyard, where, before my two-syllable whistle brought him so vividly to life, he
was most probably taking a short nap after a night of varied activity. His house is equipped with a curtain made of coarse material and is strewn, which explains why one or two pieces of straw are to be found in Baushan's somewhat sleep-tousled fur and sometimes in his paws. The sight always reminds me of a very accurately realized production of Schiller's
The Robbers
I once saw, in which the old Count Moor climbed down from his tower of starvation with a piece of straw sticking up from between two of his poor toes. I wheel instinctively away from my attacker and adopt a posture of defense, for his seeming intent—to undercut my feet and make me fall—never fails to deceive. At the last second, though, just before the crash, he's always able to put on the brakes and bring himself round with a great display of both physical and mental self-control. Then, without a sound (for he makes only sparing use of his rich, expressive voice), he commences a bewilderingly intricate salutary dance in circles around me. It consists of stamps, aerial leaps in which he curls up and then releases his coiled body like a spring, uncontrolled wags of not only the appointed expressive instrument for this sort of thing—his tail—but his whole body from the ribs down, and revolutions around his own axis. For some strange reason he endeavors to hide all these maneuvers from me by switching sides every time I turn to watch. No sooner do I bend down and extend a hand, though, than he leaps to my side, where he stands with his shoulder pressed against my shin. Leaning diagonally against me, he stands there as motionless as a pillar, his strong paws braced against the ground, his face turned up toward mine, staring upside down and from below into my eyes. And his utter immobility, as I pat his shoulder blades and mutter a few words of praise, radiates the same intense concentration and passion as his previous frenzy.

He's a short-haired German pointer, at least insofar as one isn't too severe or strict with this classification. One has to take it with a grain of salt, since on close inspection and if one goes by the book, Baushan isn't
really a pointer at all. In the first place he's probably a bit too small: he falls, let's be clear about this, somewhat
below
average height for a game dog. Likewise, his front legs aren't straight but have a slight outward bow, which also deviates somewhat from the purebred ideal. His hint of dewlap—i.e., the wrinkled skin around the neck that can give such a regal appearance—looks quite good on him. It, too, however, would be regarded as a flaw by unforgiving breeders, for with a true pointer, I'm told, the skin around the neck should stretch smoothly over the throat. Baushan's color is quite handsome. His fur is basically reddish brown with black stripes, yet there's also a lot of white mixed in. The latter especially predominates on his chest, his paws and his belly, while the entirety of his pug nose looks as if it had been dipped in black. Atop his broad head, as well as on his cool drooping ears, the black combines with the auburn in a lovely, velvetesque pattern, and he has a white cowlick, or knot, or tuft, that weaves itself together on his chest and that projects out horizontally like the spike on an antique breastplate. The cowlick is one of his best features. Nonetheless, the somewhat random splendor of his fur color would likewise probably be deemed “invalid” by anyone who emphasizes breeding conventions over personal idiosyncrasy, for the classic pointer may be monochrome or variously spotted, but never striped. The definitive indication, however, that Baushan cannot be classified according to some rigid paradigm is the hair that hangs from the corners of his mouth and the underside of his muzzle, which one could, with at least a semblance of justification, call a Van Dyck, and which on first glance, both from a distance and closer up, is reminiscent of a pinscher or a schnauzer.

Pointer or pinscher—he's a fine, handsome animal, standing stiff and slanted against my knee, looking up at me with the profoundest devotion! His eye is particularly handsome, gentle and wise, if also perhaps a bit distended and glassy. Its iris is reddish brown, the same color as his fur, although, owing to the considerable dilation of the mirror black pupil, it actually only makes
up a thin ring, drops of which seep out into and float upon the surrounding white of his eyeball. The expression on his face—that of carefully considered middle-class common sense—affirms the masculinity of his life ethos, which his body in turn manifests physically. His arched chest, with its ribs powerfully outlined against his smooth, supple skin, his inwardly drawn hips, his nerve-veined legs, his rugged but well-formed feet . . . they all bespeak steadfastness and robust integrity, peasant stock and hunting blood. Both the hunter and the game dog predominate in Baushan, and this, if you ask me, qualifies him as a pointer, even if he doesn't owe his existence to some act of snobbish incest. That may well be the gist of the otherwise so confusing, logically disjointed words I address to him while I pat his shoulder.

He stands and stares, ears pricked to the tone of my voice, searching for accents of unmitigated approval, with which I try to speckle my speech. Then, suddenly, jerking his neck forward and quickly opening and closing his jaws, he snaps up at my face as though trying to bite off my nose. This is a pantomime apparently intended to answer my friendly words, and it often makes me recoil, laughing, as Baushan knows it will. It's a kind of make-believe kiss, half-tender, half-teasing, a signature maneuver of his ever since he was a puppy and one that I never observed in any of his predecessors. In any case he immediately apologizes with tail-wags, brief bows and an expression of embarrassed glee at the small liberty he's taken. After this we proceed through the front gate out into the open.

A roaring like that of the sea surrounds us, for my house sits practically on the river, where the strong current kicks up froth as it rushes over the flat terraces of its bed. The only things separating my house from the water are the poplar-lined lane, a fenced-in stretch of grass planted with young maples and an elevated path bordered by aspens—bizarre willow-emulating giants—whose white, seed-bearing down snows in the entire neighborhood every year in early June. Upriver, toward the city, military engineers are busy building a floating
bridge. The thumping of their heavy boots on the planks and the bosses' shouted commands carry downstream. From the opposite bank come sounds of industry, for over there, a bit downstream from where I live, there is a locomotive factory with the expanded industrial grounds customary these days and tall windows shining out into the darkness the whole night through. Brand-new, freshly painted machines get test-driven back and forth, once in a while a steam whistle howls, and muffled thuds of indeterminate origin occasionally shake the air. Rows of chimneys exhale columns of smoke, which is usually driven off by a felicitous wind over the woodlands and has a hard time making its way across the river. Such it is that in the suburban, semirural isolation of this area the sounds of solipsistic nature combine with those of human activity, with the bright-eyed freshness of the morning hour above them all.

It may well be seven-thirty, standard time, when I set out—thus in real time it is six-thirty. Walking with my arms behind my back through the mild sunshine, I proceed down the lane, which is hatched by long shadows from the poplars. Although the river isn't visible from here, I can hear its broad, regular current. The wind whispers gently in the trees, the chirping, piping, twittering and sorrowful warbling of songbirds permeate the air, and in the damp blue skies an airplane—a stiff mechanical bird with an ever so slightly oscillating drone—appears from the east, following its autonomous route far above land and river. Meanwhile Baushan delights my eye with a series of nimble, fully outstretched jumps over the short fence bordering the grassy area to our left. Over and back he goes. He does this because he knows I find it pleasing, for I have often encouraged him by clapping my hands and tapping on the fence, showering him with praise whenever he does as I wish. Even now, he still trots over after almost every jump to hear me say what a clever and elegant hurdler he is, after which he snaps at my face and beslobbers my protectively raised arm. At the same time, however, these exercises also serve as a kind of morning routine of gymnastic hygiene that
he puts himself through in order to smooth his sleep-tousled fur and rid it of the offending pieces of straw that make him resemble old Count Moor.

It's good to take a morning stroll, your mind rejuvenated, your spirit cleansed after a night of bathing in sleep, of imbibing Lethe's waters. Brimming with confidence, you can look forward to the coming day even as you revel in the luxury of putting off its official start, master of an uncommon, unoccupied and unmolested period between dreams and daytime, which is your reward for having been sensible in your ways. The illusion of a steady, simple, undistracted existence of inwardly directed contemplation, the illusion that your time belongs to you alone, brings great happiness, for man tends to assume that his state of mind at any given moment (be it that of good cheer or anxiety, peace or passion) is his true, natural and permanent one. He immediately transforms every happy feeling of
ex tempore
into his golden rule and inviolable practice, whereas in reality he is condemned to live by improvisation and, in terms of life ethos, from hand to mouth. Breathing in the morning air, you can truly believe in your own sovereign virtuousness, even though by now you should—and in fact do—know that the world has its nets ready and waits to catch you. Tomorrow, in all probability, it will be nine o'clock by the time you find your way out of bed, having first found your way
in
there—flushed and foggy-headed, excited and amused—at two the previous morning . . . Be that as it may. For now you're still a man of sobriety, an early riser, the legitimate master of that young huntsman springing once more over his short fence, overjoyed that today you seem to want to spend time with him, not with the world at your back.

We usually walk about five minutes down the lane until it turns into an ungroomed gravel wasteland along the riverbank. This we then leave behind as we make our way down a broad, as yet undeveloped street of finer gravel, which is replete, as is the lane, with a bicycle path. This street veers off to the right between two low-lying parcels of woodland toward the slope forming the
eastern border of our riverbank locale and the end of the world, as Baushan knows it. We cross another still-to-be-developed street running open between the woods and field. It, however, is hemmed in by apartment houses further along toward the city and the streetcar station. A path of downward-sloping gravel then takes us to a nicely laid plot of land, much like a sanitarium garden in appearance. It's deserted at this hour. So, too, is the entire surrounding area, its park benches squatting alongside curved paths that often widen into circular flowerbeds and well-groomed play areas. Groups of lovely old trees—elms, beeches, lindens and silver willows with drooping crowns and trunks barely visible above the grass—stand arranged on expansive lawns as though in a park. I thoroughly enjoy these carefully groomed grounds and couldn't roam with any greater contentment in them if they were my own personal property. Nothing has been neglected. The gravel paths that gently descend the surrounding grass hillsides have even been fitted with cement gutters. Moreover, there are charming, expansive views through the greenery, distant points of closure being provided in both directions by the architecture of the in-looking villas at either end of the park.

Here I indulge in a short stroll along the paths, while Baushan covers every inch of grass with crisscross gallops and leaning turns, overjoyed at so much level space. Or sometimes he pursues—barking with a mixture of disappointment and delight—a bird that, whether spellbound by fear or determined to tease him, flits away barely in front of his jaws. If I sit down on a bench, though, he immediately sprints to my side to take up position atop my foot, for one of the iron laws of his existence is that he may only run around as long as I too am in motion. As soon as I am seated, he also must come to rest. There's no obvious reason for this rule, but Baushan sticks to it nonetheless.

It's a strange feeling, intimate and comical, to have Baushan sitting on my foot, warming it with the feverish heat of his body. Good cheer and collegiality stir within me, as they almost always do in his presence and
company. There's something rather peasantlike about the way he sits, shoulder blades turned outward and paws facing in unevenly. His body seems smaller and fatter in this position than it really is, and to great comic effect, the knot of white fur on his chest is thrust out even further. The dignified rigidity of his head and neck, however, compensates for his lack of postural elegance in the extreme attentiveness it expresses . . . Neither of us makes a sound, and, with the rush of the river thoroughly muffled by the time it gets here, everything is quite still. Every furtive little noise around us seems significant and alerts our senses: the brief rustle of a lizard, the song of a bird, the burrowing of a mole in the earth. Baushan pricks his ears—at least to the extent that their droopy musculature permits it. He cocks his head to train his hearing, and his wet black nostrils remain in constant motion, sniffing out the slightest scents.