Death in Venice and Other Stories (7 page)

“That was Mrs. Höhlenrauch, the pastor's wife,” he said.

“Yes, poor Mrs. Höhlenrauch.” Then she turned some pages and played the end of the entire composition, the
Liebestod
, Isolde's final song.

How pallid and clear her lips were! How deep the shadows had grown in the corners of her eyes! Above the brow, in the transparent skin of her forehead, that little pale blue vein emerged, strained and unsettling, with ever increasing prominence. Under her busy hands the incomparable crescendo arose, interrupted by that almost ruthless, sudden pianissimo, which is like a yanking of ground from under the feet, a drowning in sublime lust. The effusion of a massive release and resolution erupted and was repeated insatiably, a deafening thunder of satisfaction beyond dimension, retreating, then regrouping like a wave, seeming about to breathe its last before interweaving the
Sehnsuchtsmotiv
one last time into the orchestration. Then it exhaled, died, faded, drifted away. Profound silence.

Both of them listened, pricked their ears and listened.

“Those are bells,” she said.

“It's the sleighs,” he said. “I'm going.”

He stood up and walked across the room. At the rear door he stopped and turned around, shifting his weight
restlessly for a moment from one foot to the other. And then, lo and behold, fifteen or twenty paces from her, he sank to his knees, sank silently to his knees. His long black coat spread out on the floor around him. He held his hands folded over his mouth, and his shoulders twitched.

She sat there, her hands in her lap, leaning forward away from the piano, gazing at him. A vague smile of distress lay upon her face, and her eyes peered pensively, so intently into the gloom that they succumbed to their tendency to wander.

In the distance the jingling of sleigh bells, the crack of whips and the confusion of human voices drew nearer.

9

The sleigh ride, which long remained a topic of conversation for all, had taken place on February the 26th. On the 27th, a day of thaw, when everything softened and began to drip, splash and flow, Mr. Klöterjahn's wife felt splendid. On the 28th she coughed up a little blood . . . oh, nothing serious, but it was blood. At the same time she felt weaker than ever before and had to remain in bed.

Dr. Leander gave her an examination, his face remaining stone cold throughout the entire procedure. Then he ordered exactly what was prescribed by science: little bits of ice, morphine and complete rest. Moreover, on the following day, citing his excessive workload, he gave up responsibility for her case and transferred it to Dr. Müller, who in his gentle way dutifully and contractually took over her care. He was a quiet, pale, insignificant, melancholy man whose unassuming and thankless ministrations were directed at the quite nearly recovered and the terminally ill.

The opinion he expressed above all was that the Klöterjahn couple had been separated for too long. It was highly advisable that, if his booming business would allow, Mr. Klöterjahn should pay another visit to
Einfried. He could be written, perhaps a short telegram could be sent . . . And it would certainly bolster the young mother's spirits and strength, if he brought little Anton along—not to mention that it would be extraordinarily interesting for the doctors to make healthy little Anton's acquaintance.

And behold, Mr. Klöterjahn appeared. He had received Dr. Müller's short telegram and had come down from the Baltic coast. He got out of his carriage and ordered some coffee and buttered rolls, looking quite annoyed.

“Sir,” he said. “What's going on? Why have I been summoned to my wife's side?”

“Because I felt it would be advisable,” Dr. Müller answered, “for you to be near your good wife at present.”

“Advisable . . . Advisable . . . But is it necessary? I'm thinking of the expense, sir. Times are tough, and trains cost a lot. Couldn't this day's traveling have been avoided? I wouldn't say a word if it were the lungs; but since, thank God, it's only the trachea . . .”

“Mr. Klöterjahn,” said Dr. Müller gently, “first of all the trachea is a very important organ . . .” He said “first of all” by mistake, despite the fact that no “second of all” was to follow.

Arriving along with Mr. Klöterjahn at Einfried, despite expense, was a curvaceous thing dressed entirely in red, tartan and gold, and it was she who carried in her arms Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., healthy little Anton. Yes, he was here, and there was no denying that he was indeed the absolute picture of health. Rosy and white, dressed in clean fresh clothes, fat and fragrant, he weighed heavily on the bare red arm of his gold-braided nanny, devouring great quantities of milk and diced meat, howling and indulging his every instinct.

From the window in his room the writer Spinell had witnessed the arrival of the baby Klöterjahn. With a strange, veiled, but nonetheless sharp look, he had stared at the infant as the latter was brought from the carriage to the clinic and had maintained his position for a long time afterward with no change of expression.

From then on he avoided crossing paths with Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., as best he could.

10

Mr. Spinell sat in his room and “worked.”

It was a room like all the others at Einfried: old-fashioned, simple and elegant. Its massive chest of drawers was mounted with metal lions' heads; its high wall mirror consisted not of a single smooth surface, but numerous little square pieces held together by lead; and its blue-painted stone floor, into which the stiff legs of the furnishings extended in the form of transparent shadows, had been left uncarpeted. A large desk stood next to the window, in front of which the novelist had drawn a yellow curtain, probably for the sake of turning inward.

In the yellowish twilight he was bent over the surface of his secretary writing—working on one of those many letters he had posted every week, letters to which, humorously enough, he usually received no answer. A large, thick sheet of paper was stretched out in front of him, in whose upper left-hand corner, under an intricate sketch of a landscape, the name Detlev Spinell was written in the latest newfangled lettering. He was in the process of covering it with his small, carefully formed, exceedingly legible hand.

“Sir,” stood written there. “I am addressing the following lines to you because I cannot help it, because what I have to say fills me, fills me to the brim with anguished trembling, because the words come flooding with such force that I would choke on them, if I weren't allowed to unburden myself in this letter . . .”

To tell the truth, the bit about “flooding” simply wasn't the case, and God only knows what had inspired Mr. Spinell to write it. Words certainly didn't seem to come flooding into his head. For a man whose livelihood was writing, he was pathetically slow off the mark—no one could have watched him without becoming
convinced that an author is a person to whom writing comes more difficult than to everyone else.

For fifteen minutes at a time he would sit pinching one of the strange downy hairs on his cheek between his fingertips, twirling it round as he stared off into empty space, making not a line's progress. Then he would write out a couple of decorous words before once again faltering. On the other hand, it must be admitted that what finally emerged did seem polished and dynamic, though in terms of content it was bizarre, dubious, often even incomprehensible.

“It has become,” the letter went on, “an inescapable need of mine to make you see what I see—this indelible vision that I've had before my eyes for weeks now—to make you view it through my eyes, illuminated by the same words that illuminate it for my inner eye. I'm accustomed to following this impulse, which compels me, in unforgettably and scorchingly well-placed words, to transform personal experiences into those of the world. Thus hear me out.

“I only want to put into words what was and what is. I will simply tell a story—a very short, unspeakably scandalous story—without commentary, without making accusations or passing judgment, just expressing things in my own way. It is Gabriele Eckhof's story, sir, the woman whom you call your own. Take heed! It was your experience, but it is my words that will first allow you truly to appreciate its,
her
significance.

“Do you remember the garden, sir, the old, overgrown garden behind the gray patrician house? Green moss thrived in the fissures of the weather-beaten walls around this dreamy wilderness. Do you remember the fountain in the center? Purple lilies drooped over that crumbling disk, and its white stream babbled mysteriously as it splashed down upon the cracked stonework. A summer's day was almost at an end.

“Seven innocent girls sat in a circle around that fountain; and yet only in the hair of the seventh, the leader, the one, did the setting sun seem to weave a shimmering
emblem of supremacy. Her eyes were like fearful dreams, and yet there was a smile on her flawless lips . . .

“They were singing. Their slim faces were lifted toward the fountain's stream, toward that point in its weary yet noble cycle where it begins its descent, and their soft clear voices hovered around its nimble dance. Perhaps their tender hands were folded upon their knees as they sang . . .

“Can you recall the scene, sir? Did you see it? You did not. Your eyes were not made for it, just as your ears weren't made to take in the chaste sweetness of that melody. Had you seen it, you wouldn't have dared breathe, you would have stopped your heart from beating. You would have had to flee, return to life, to your life, and guard for the rest of your earthly days what you witnessed as a sacrosanct, inviolable relic in your soul. But what did you do?

“This scene was an ending, sir. Did you have to come along and destroy it, in order to give the story a continuation of vulgarity and unsightly suffering? It was a moving and peaceful apotheosis, bathed in the transfiguring twilight of decline, dissolution and extinction. An ancient family, already too weary and too noble for action and life, stands at the end of its days, and its last utterances are musical sounds, a couple of notes from a violin, full of that wise melancholy which signals readiness for death . . . Did you see those eyes, tear-stained from those notes? It may be that the souls of the six playmates belonged to life; that of their sisterly queen, however, belonged to beauty and to death.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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