Death In Venice (7 page)

artistic temperament! Who can grasp the deep, instinctual fusion of discipline and dissipation on which it rests! For the inability to desire salutary sobriety is tantamount to dissipation. Aschenbach was no longer inclined to self-criticism: taste, the state of mind that came with his years, self-respect, maturity, and a late-won simplicity made him reluctant to analyze motives and determine whether the failure to carry out his intention was due to conscience or to laxity and weakness. He was confused: he feared that someone, if only the bathing attendant, had witnessed his haste and his defeat, and very much feared looking ridiculous. Then again, he made fun of himself for his comically exalted fear. "Daunted," he thought, "daunted like a gamecock drooping its wings in battle. This is surely the god who at the sight of something desirable so breaks our spirit, so utterly dashes our sense of pride against the ground..." It was enjoyable, waxing thus rhapsodic, and he was far too arrogant to fear an emotion. He had ceased keeping track of the time he allotted himself for leisure and gave no thought whatever to going home. He had had ample funds transferred here. His sole concern was that the Polish family would leave, but he learned surreptitiously, by inquiring casually of the hotel barber, that their arrival had barely predated his own. The sun was tanning his face and hands, the bracing salt air was making him more susceptible to emotion, and whereas he had been in the habit of applying any fortification afforded him by sleep, nourishment, or nature immediately to his work, he now allowed the daily invigoration coming from sun, leisure, and sea breezes to dissipate in magnanimously improvident euphoria and sentiment. He slept fitfully, the delightfully uniform days separated by brief, agreeably restless nights. True, he would retire early, because at nine, when Tadzio disappeared from the scene the day seemed over to him, but at the first hint of dawn he would be awakened by a sweet panic, his heart would recall its adventure, and, finding it impossible to remain in bed, he would rise and, lightly clad against the morning chill, await the sunrise at the open window. This wondrous event would fill his soul, exalted yet from sleep, with great awe. Sky, earth, and sea still lay in the ghostly, glassy pallor of dawn; a fading star still hovered in the insubstantial heights. But a wind would waft in, a sprightly herald from abodes inaccessible to man, to say that Eos was rising from her husband's side, and then came that first sweet blush of the remotest stretches of sky and sea, presaging the Creation's reappearance to the senses. It was the goddess approaching, the seductress of youths, who had carried off Cleitus and Cephalus and, defying the envy of all Olympus, enjoyed the love of the beautiful Orion. At the edge of the world there was a strewing of roses, an ineffably beautiful shining and flowering, there were childlike clouds, transfigured, translucent, floating like attending amoretti in the rosy-blue haze, and a crimson radiance fell upon the sea, its rolling waves seeming to drive it forward, and golden spears flashed from below to the heavenly heights, the gleam turning to fire, soundlessly, the glow and heat and blazing flames billowing skyward with godlike potency, as the sacred steeds of her brother rose with grappling hooves over the planet. Illumined by the god's splendor, Aschenbach, alone and awake, would shut his eyes and let his eyelids be kissed by the aura. Emotions from the past, early, delightful dolors of the heart swallowed up by the strict discipline of his life were now reappearing in the strangest of permutations-he recognized them with a perplexed and puzzled smile. He mused, he dreamed, his lips slowly shaping a name, and, still smiling, his face uplifted, his hands folded in his lap, he would doze off again in his armchair. Not only did the day begin with fiery festivities, however: it remained curiously feverish, metamorphosed by myth. Whence did it come, what was its source, the sudden breath of air that played so gently and tellingly about his temples and ears like an afflatus from on high? Clouds fleecy white dotted the sky like the gods' Own flocks out to pasture. A stiffer wind came up, and Poseidon's steeds reared and shot forward: his bulls, too, the bulls of the blue-curled god, bellowed and charged, their horns lowered. Waves gamboled high like frisky goats amidst the rocks on the beach farther off A world sacredly deformed and imbued with the spirit of Pan surrounded the spellbound observer, and his heart dreamed soothing fables. At times, as the sun sank behind Venice, he would sit on a bench in the park watching Tadzio, clad in white and with a bright-colored sash, play ball on the rolled gravel court, but seeing Hyacinth who, loved by two gods, was doomed to death. He could fairly feel Zephyr's painful envy of his rival, who neglected his oracle, bow, and zither the better to sport with the beautiful youth; he could see the discus, flung out of cruel jealousy, striking the exquisite head; he, too, turned pale as he caught the buckled body, and the flower which sprang from that sweet blood bore the imprint of his undying plaint... There is nothing more curious or delicate than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who encounter and observe each other dailynay, hourly-yet are constrained by convention or personal caprice to keep up the pretense of being strangers, indifferent, avoiding a nod or word. There is a feeling of malaise and overwrought curiosity, the hysteria of an unsatisfied, unnaturally stifled need for mutual knowledge and communication, and above all a sort of strained esteem. For a man loves and respects his fellow man only insofar as he is unable to assess him, and longing is a product of insufficient knowledge. Some kind of relationship and acquaintance was bound to dvelop between Aschenbach and young Tadzio, and the older man was thrilled to discover that his interest and attention did not go wholly unreciprocated. For example, what induced the beautiflul boy, when appearing on the beach each morning, to shun the boardwalk behind the cabanas and saunter through the sand in front of them past Aschenbach's residence-sometimes coming needlessly close to him, all but grazing his table or chair-on the way to the family cabana? Was this the result of the attraction, the fascination of a superior emotion on a tender and thoughtless object? Aschenbach looked forward daily to Tadzio's entrance and at times pretended to be busy when it occurred and let the boy pass seemingly unnoticed. But at other times he looked up and their eyes would meet. They were both as grave as could be on such occasions. Nothing in the cultivated and dignified mien of the older man betrayed any agitation, yet there was a query a pensive question in Tadzio's eyes, a hesitation in his gait, and he looked down, then sweetly up again, and when he had passed, something in his bearing intimated that only good breeding kept him from looking back. Once, however, one evening, something different happened. The Polish boy and his sisters together with their governess had failed to come to dinner in the main dining room, as Aschenbach noted with alarm. After the meal, worried about their absence, he was pacing in evening dress and a straw hat in front of the hotel at the foot of the terrace when all at once he spied the nunlike sisters with their companion and, four steps behind them, Tadzio, emerging into the light of the arc lamps. They were obviously on their way from the vaporetto landing, having dined in the city for some reason. It must have been cool on the water: Tadzio was wearing a navy blue pea jacket with gold buttons and a matching cap. Sunshine and sea air did not tan him, and his skin had the same yellowish marble hue as at the outset, but today he looked paler than usual, whether because of the cool air or the bleaching effect of the lamps' lunar light. His symmetrical eyebrows stood out more sharply; his eyes were a deep, dark shade. He was more beautiful than words can convey, and Aschenbach felt acutely, as he had often felt before, that language can only praise physical beauty, not reproduce it. He wa unprepared for the precious apparition: it had come unexpectedly, and he had not had time to put on a calm, dignified expression. Joy, surprise, and admiration may thus have shown openly in his face when his eyes met those of the boy who had disappeared, and at that instant it happened: Tadzio smiled, smiled at him, with an effusive, intimate, charming, unabashed smile, his lips opening slowly. It was the smile of Narcissus bending over the water mirror, the deep, enchanted, protracted smile with which he stretched out his arms to the reflection of his own beauty, an ever so slightly contorted smile-contorted by the hopelessness of his endeavor to kiss the lovely lips of his shadow-and coquettish, inquisitive and mildly pained, beguiled and beguiling. The recipient of this smile hurried off with it as if it were a fatal gift. He was so shaken that he felt compelled to flee the light of the terrace and front garden and hastily sought the obscurity of the rear grounds. Oddly indignant and tender admonitions welled up inside him: "You mustn't smile like that! One mustn't smile like that at anyone, do you hear?" He flung himself on a bench, frantically inhaling the plants' nocturnal fragrance. Then, leaning back, arms dangling, overwhelmed and shuddering repeatedly, he whispered the standard formula of longing-impossible here, absurd, perverse, ridiculous and sacred nonetheless, yes, still venerable even here: "I love you!"

FIVE

During the fourth week of his stay at the Lido, Gustav von Aschenbach observed some peculiar developments taking place in the world around him. First of all, it struck him that even as the season advanced, the number of guests at his hotel was falling rather than rising and, in particular, the use of German around him had so ebbed and waned that the only sounds reaching his ear at meals and on the beach were foreign. Then one day while conversing with the barber, whom he now patronized frequently, he gleaned a rather unsettling piece of news. Having mentioned a German family that had just departed after a short stay, he added in his chatty unctuous manner, "But you are staying on, sir. You have no fear of the disease." Aschenbach looked at him. "The disease?" The prattler did not reply, acted busy, disregarded the question, and when it was put to him with more urgency he claimed to know nothing and attempted with embarrassed eloquence to change the subject. That was at noon. A few hours later, the dead calm and burning sun notwithstanding, Aschenbach went into Venice, driven by a mania to follow the Polish boy and his sisters, whom he had seen set off for the vaporetto landing with their companion. He did not find his idol at San Marco. However, while taking tea at his little round wrought-iron table on the shady side of the square, he suddenly whiffed an unusual aroma in the air, an aroma he now felt he had been inhaling for days without being conscious of it, a cloying medicinal smell redolent of squalor and sores and dubious hygiene. He sniffed again and after some thought identified it, then finished his tea and left the square at the end opposite the basilica. In that cramped space the smell grew stronger. The street corners were plastered with printed notices warning the population on behalf of the city fathers against eating oysters and mussels and using canal water because of certain gastric disorders that were only to be expected given the weather conditions. The euphemistic nature of the ordinance was clear. Groups of people clustered silently on bridges and in squares, the foreigner among them, sniffing and brooding. He went up to a shopkeeper leaning against the doorway of his arch amidst strings of coral and trinkets of imitation amethyst and asked what he knew about the disagreeable odor. The man looked him up and down with heavy eyes and promptly roused himself "A precautionary measure, sir!" he answered, gesticulating. "A police injunction one can only condone. The atmosphere is oppressive; the sirocco is bad for the health. In short, you understand. Perhaps they are being overly cautious..." Aschenbach thanked him and went on. On the vaporetto taking him over to the Lido he now caught a smell of germicide. Back at the hotel, he headed straight for the newspaper table in the lobby and made a survey of what was available He found nothing in the foreign-language papers. Those in his own language reported rumors, cited fluctuating figures, reproduced official denials, and questioned their veracity. That explained the departure of the German and Austrian element. Nationals of other countries evidently knew nothing, suspected nothing, and were not yet concerned. "Nothing is to be said about it!" thought Aschenbach anxiously, tossing the papers back on the table. "It is to be hushed up!" Yet at the same time his heart swelled with delight over the adventure the outside world was about to embark upon. For passion, like crime, is antithetical to the smooth operation and prosperity of day-to-day existence, and can only welcome every loosening of the fabric of society, every upheaval and disaster in the world, since it can vaguely hope to profit thereby And so Aschenbach felt a morose satisfaction at the officially concealed goingson in the dirty alleyways of Venice, that nasty secret which had merged with his own innermost secret and which he, too, was so intent on keeping: he was in love and concerned only that Tadzio might leave, and he realized not without horror that in the event he would not know what to make of his life. He had not been content of late to leave the possibility of seeing and being near the beautiful boy to chance or daily routine; he had pursued him, tracked him down. On Sundays, for instance, the Poles never came to the beach. Having surmised that they would be attending mass at San Marco, he would hurry there and, entering the golden dusk of the sanctuary from the square's torrid heat, locate the boy he had so missed, his head bowed at worship over a prie-dieu. He would then stand at the back on the cracked mosaic floor amidst a host of people kneeling, murmuring, and crossing themselves, the massive splendor of the oriental temple weighing opulently on his senses. At the front the heavily bedizened priest walked to and fro, officiating and chanting, the incense billowing up and clouding the feeble flames of the altar tapers, and the sweet and stuffy sacrificial odor seemed to mingle with another: the odor of the diseased city. But through the haze and flicker Aschenbach would see the beautiful boy turn his head, seek him out, and sight him. Then, as the crowd poured through the opened portals into the radiant square teeming with pigeons, the beguiled traveler would lurk in the vestibule, hiding, lying in ambush. He would watch the Poles go out of the church, watch the siblings take ceremonious leave of their mother, who then set off for home in the direction of the Piazzetta. Having ascertained that the boy, his nunlike sisters, and their governess would turn right and proceed through the clock tower gateway into the Merceria, he gave them a head start and then followed them, followed them furtively on their stroll through Venice. He had to stop when they tarried, duck into food stalls and courtyards when they doubled back; he would lose them, pursue them, hot and exhausted, over bridges and along filthy culs-de-sac, and endure moments of mortal shame when seeing them suddenly come towards him in a narrow passageway from which there was no escape. Yet it cannot be said he was suffering: he was drunk in both head and heart, and his steps followed the dictates of the demon whose delight it is to trample human reason and dignity underfoot. At some point Tadzio and his entourage would take a gondola, and Aschenbach, concealed by a portico or fountain while they boarded, would follow suit once they had put off from shore. He would instruct the oarsman in an urgent undertone to shadow the gondola just rounding the corner, but unobtrusively and at a distance, promising him a handsome gratuity, and he shuddered when the man assured him, in the same tone and with a pander's roguish solicitude, that he would be well served, well and properly. Thus would he rock and glide along, reclining on soft, black cushions, behind the other black, beaked craft, to which he was chained by his infatuation. At times it disappeared from view and he grew anxious and distressed. But his guide, as if well versed in such commissions, always managed to bring the coveted object back in sight by some clever maneuver-a shortcut or fleet crisscross. The air was still and noxious; the sun burned intensely through the haze, which colored the sky a slate gray. Gurgling water lapped against wood and stone. The gondolier's call-half warning, half greeting-was answered from afar, from the silence of the labyrinth, by some curious accord. Clusters of blossoms-white and purple, redolent of almonds-hung down over crumbling walls from the small gardens overhead. Moorish window frames stood out in the murk. The marble steps of a church descended into the water, where a beggar, in affirmation of his indigence, squatted with his hat out and showed the whites of his eyes as if he were blind. An antique dealer posted outside his lair beckoned the passerby ingratiatingly in the hope of fleecing him. Such was Venice, the wheedling, shady beauty, a city half fairy tale, half tourist trap, in whose foul air the arts had once flourished luxuriantly and which had inspired musicians with undulating, lullingly licentious harmonies. The adventurer felt his eyes drinking in its voluptuousness, his ears being wooed by its melodies; he recalled, too, that the city was diseased and was concealing it out of cupidity, and the look with which he peered out after the gondola floating ahead of him grew more wanton. Thus the addled traveler could no longer think or care about anything but pursuing unrelentingly the object that had so inflamed him, dreaming of him in his absence, and, as is the lover's wont, speaking tender words to his mere shadow. Loneliness, the foreign environment, and the joy of a belated and profound exhilaration prompted him, persuaded him to indulge without shame or remorse in the most distasteful behavior, as when returning from Venice late one evening he had paused at the beautiful boys door on the second floor of the hotel and pressed his forehead against the hinge in drunken rapture, unable to tear himself away even at the risk of being discovered and caught. Yet he still had moments of pause and near lucidity. Where is this taking me? he would think then with alarm. Where is this taking me? Like any man whose natural gifts aroused an aristocratic interest in his ancestry, he habitually called to mind his forebears during his periods of achievement and success, assuring himself of their approval, gratification, and ineluctable esteem. He thought of them again here and now-enmeshed as he was in so illicit an experience, involved in such exotic extravagances of emotion-thought of their imposing fortitude, their upstanding manliness of character and gave a dour smile. What would they say? But what for that matter would they have said about his life as a whole, a life diverging from theirs to the point of degeneracy, lived under the spell of art, a life about which he himself, in line with the bourgeois disposition of those forefathers, had made mocking pronouncements as a young man, yet which basically so resembled their own! He too had served; he too, like so many of them, had been soldier and warrior, for art was war, a grueling struggle that people these days were not up to for long. A life of self-domination, of "despites," a grim, dogged, abstemious life he had shaped into the emblem of a frail heroism for the times-might he not call it manly, might he not call it brave? Besides, he had the feeling that the eros which had taken possession of him was in a way singularly appropriate and suited to such a life. Had it not been held in particular esteem amongst the bravest of nations? Indeed, was it not said to have flourished in their cities as a consequence of bravery? Countless warrior heroes in older times had willingly borne its yoke, for no action imposed by a god could be deemed humiliating, and actions that might otherwise have been condemned as signs of cowardice -genuflections, oaths, importunate supplications, and servile behavior-such actions were accounted no shame to a lover but rather earned him praise. Thus did the man's infatuation determine his way of thinking; thus did he seek to defend himself and preserve his dignity. Yet at the same time he kept paying willful, obstinate attention to the unsavory events in the depths of Venice, the adventure of the outer world that merged darkly with the adventure of his heart and fed his passion with vague, illicit hopes. Obsessed with the need to obtain new and reliable information on the status and progress of the disease, he riffled through the German papers in the caf�s, the ones on the hotel newspaper table having disappeared for several days. They were all assertions and retractions: they would report twenty, forty, even a hundred or more deaths and instances of the disease, after which the existence of an epidemic was if not flatly denied then reduced to totally isolated cases introduced from outside. There was also a scattering of admonitions and protests against the dangerous game being played by the Italian authorities. Certainty was out of the question. And yet the solitary traveler felt he had a special claim on the secret and, though excluded, took a bizarre pleasure in approaching insiders with insidious questions and forcing them, pledged as they were to silence, to tell outright lies. One day at breakfast in the main dining room he confronted the manager, the light-footed little man in the French frock coat who would circulate among the diners, greeting them and ensuring that things were as they should be, and had stopped at Aschenbach's table for a few words. Why is it, the guest asked casually, as if by the by, why in the world have they been disinfecting Venice all this time? "It is a police precaution," answered the hypocrite, "an official measure designed to forestall any situation injurious to the public health that might arise as a result of the sultry and unseasonably warm weather." "The police are to be commended," Aschenbach replied, and after a brief exchange of meteorological observations the manager excused himself On that very day, in the evening, after dinner, it so happened that a small group of street singers from the city gave a performance in the front garden. The two men and two women stood by the iron post of an arc lamp, lifting their faces, white in the glare, to the large terrace, where the guests sat ready, over coffee and cold drinks, to submit to the exhibition of local color. The hotel staff-lift attendants, waiters, and office clerkshad come out to listen at the doors to the lobby. The Russian family, eager to enjoy everything to the hilt, had had wicker chairs moved down into the garden so as to be closer to the performers and sat there contentedly in a semicircle, their aged slave standing behind them in her turbanlike kerchief. Mandolin, guitar, accordion, and squeaky fiddle soon came to life under the fingers of the beggar virtuosi. Instrumental pieces alternated with vocal numbers, one of which featured the younger of the women with her harsh rasp of a voice and the tenor's sugary falsetto in a passionate love duet. But the true talent and leader of the ensemble was unequivocally the other man-the one with the guitar and a kind of baritone-buffo characterwho, though he had no voice to speak of, was a gifted mime and possessed of remarkable comic energy. He often broke away from the group, his large instrument in tow, and made his way forward, where his high jinks were rewarded with laughter and encouragement. The Russians in their front-row seats took particular pleasure in so much southern vivacity and exhorted him, clapping and cheering, to ever bolder and brasher antics. Aschenbach sat at the balustrade, occasionally cooling his lips with the mixture of grenadine and soda water sparkling ruby red before him in the glass. His nerves took in the vulgar tootle and soulful melodies with avidity, for passion dulls
one's sense of discrimination and yields in all seriousness to charms that sobriety would treat as a joke or reject with indignation. The sight of the prancing jester had twisted his features into a fixed, almost painful grimace. He sat on, indifferent, while inwardly he was thoroughly engrossed: a mere six paces away Tadzio was leaning on the stone parapet. There he stood in the belted white suit he sometimes donned for dinner, inexorably, innately gracefulhis left forearm on the parapet, his feet crossed, his right hand on his hip-looking down at the minstrels with an expression that was not so much a smile as an indication of aloof curiosity, of courteous acknowledgment. From time to time he drew himself up and, puffing out his chest, pulled the white blouse down through the leather belt with an elegant tug of both hands. But there were also times when-as the aging traveler noted triumphantly, his mind reeling, yet terrified as well-he turned his head over his left shoulder-now wavering and cautious, now fast and impetuous, as if to catch him off guard-to the place where his admirer was seated. Aschenbach did not meet Tadzio's eye, because a humiliating anxiety compelled the rrant lover to put an apprehensive curb on his glances. The women guarding Tadzio were seated at the rear of the terrace, and things had now reached the point where the lover needed to be concerned about standing out or arousing suspicion. Yes, several times now-on the beach, in the hotel lobby, in the Piazza San Marco-he had noted with a kind of numbness that they called Tadzjo back when he came near him, that they were intent on keeping him at a distance, and he could only acknowledge it as a terrible insult which racked his pride in hitherto unknown torment, yet which his conscience could not gainsay. In the meantime the guitarist had begun a solo to his own accompaniment, a multistanzaed ditty then the rage all over Italy, to which he brought a vivid, dramatic flair, and each time the refrain came round, the rest of the company chimed in with their voices and aggregate instruments. His build frail, his face gaunt and emaciated, a shabby felt hat pushed back over his neck and a shock of red hair gushing out from under the brim, he stood there on the gravel, apart from the others, in a pose of brazen bravado and, still strumming the strings, hurled his quips up to the terrace in a vigorous parlando, the veins bulging in his forehead from the strain. He seemed less the Venetian type than of the race of Neapolitan comedians: half pimp, half performer, brutal and brash, dangerous and entertaining. The lyrics of the song were merely silly, but in his rendition-what with the facial expressions and body movements he used, his suggestive winks, and the way he licked the corners of his mouth lasciviously-they became ambiguous, vaguely obscene. Protruding from the soft collar of his open shirt, which clashed with his otherwise formal attire, was a scrawny neck with a conspicuously large and naked-looking Adam's apple. His pallid snub-nosed face, its beardless features giving no indication of his age, seemed lined with grimaces and vice, and the two furrows stretching defiantly, imperiously, almost savagely between his reddish brows contrasted oddly with the grin on his mobile mouth. What made the solitary traveler focus all his attention on him, however, was the realization that the suspicious character seemed to bring his own suspicious atmosphere with him: each time the refrain recurred, the singer set off on a grotesque march, making faces and waving, his path taking him directly under Aschenbach's seat, and each time he made his round a strong smell of carbolic acid wafted its way up to the terrace from his clothes and body. Once the ditty was over, he started collecting money. He began with the Russians-who, as all could see, gave willingly-and proceeded up the steps. He was as humble on the terrace as he had been saucy during the performance. Bowing and scraping, he skulked from table to table, a smile of arch servility baring his strong teeth, though the two furrows were still there, intimidating, between the red eyebrows. The guests observed the exotic creature with curiosity and a certain distaste as he took in his livelihood: they tossed coins into his hat with the tips of their fingers, careful not to touch it. Eliminating the physical distance between performer and genteel audience, pleasurable as it may be, always produces a certain discomfort. He sensed it and groveled his amends. He went up to Aschenbach, he and his odor, which no one else appeared to mind. "Tell me," said the solitary traveler in an almost mechanical undertone. "Venice is being disinfected. Why?" "It's the police," the joker answered hoarsely, "the rules, sir. It's the heat and the sirocco. The sirocco is oppressive. It's bad for the health... ".... He spoke as if surprised one could pose such a question, and demonstrated the sirocco's pressure with the flat of his hand. "So there is no disease in Venice?" Aschenbach asked very softly between his teeth. The jester's muscular features settled into a grimace of comic helplessness. "Disease? Of what sort? Is the sirocco a disease? Or our police-are they a disease? You must be joking! A disease? How can you say such a thing? A preventative measure, can't you see? A police order to combat the effects of the oppressive weather conditions " he gesticulated. "Very well," said Aschenbach, softly and tersely again, quickly dropping an unduly large coin into the hat. He then dismissed the man with his eyes. The man obeyed, grinning and bowing. But no sooner had he reached the steps than two hotel employees pounced upon him and started cross-examining him in whispers, their face hard against his. He shrugged, reassuring them, swearing he had been discreet. Couldn't they tell? Released, he went back to the garden and, after a brief consultation with his comrades under the arc lamp, stepped forward once more and sang a song of gratitude and farewell. It was a song the solitary traveler could not recall having heard before, a brash popular number in an unintelligible dialect and with a refrain of laughter blared out at regular intervals by all four. Words and accompaniment both would then cease, giving way to a rhythmic laughter, patterned in its way, yet very natural-sounding, and made to seem especially lifelike by the talent of the soloist. The artistic distance between him and the distinguished guests having now been reestablished, all his impudence returned, and the artificial laughter he shamelessly aimed up at the terrace was a laughter of mockery. Each time he came to the end of the words in a stanza, he seemed to be battling against an uncontrollable urge: he would choke, his voice would falter, he would press his hand to his mouth and hunch his shoulders till at just the proper moment an unbridled laugh would break, burst, bellow out of him and with such verisimilitude that it had a contagious effect on the audience, causing an objectless, self-perpetuating hilarity to take hold on the terrace as well. This seemed only to redouble the singer's exuberance. He bent his knees, slapped his thighs, clutched his sides, he nearly exploded, shrieking now rather than laughing; he pointed to the terrace, as if there were nothing more amusing than the people laughing up there, and before long everyone was laughing, everyone in the garden and on the verandah, including the waiters, lift attendants, and porters in the doorways. Aschenbach was no longer reclining in his chair; he sat upright as if to ward off an attack or take flight. But the laughter, the hospital odor wafting up to him, and the proximity of the beautiful boy coalesced in a trancelike spell that, indissoluble and inexorable, held his head, his mind in thrall. In the general commotion and confusion he ventured a glance in Tadzio's direction and, as he did so, noticed that when returning the glance the boy was equally grave, as if he were modeling his conduct and facial expression on Aschenbach's and the general mood had no hold upon him because Aschenbach remained aloof from it. There was something at once disarming and overwhelming in this telling, childlike obedience; it was all the elderly man could do to keep from burying his face in his hands. He also had the feeling that Tadzio's tendency to pull himself up and take deep breaths was the sign of a constricted chest. "He is sickly and has probably not long to live," he thought with the objectivity that strangely enough breaks free on occasion from intoxication and longing, and his heart swelled with pure concern and a concomitant profligate satisfaction. Meanwhile, the Venetians had finished their performance and were making their retreat. They were accompanied by applause, and their leader did not fail to enhance his exit with a few pranks. His low bows and the kisses he blew provoked such laughter that he redoubled his efforts. Even after his comrades were outside, he pretended to have injured himself by running backwards into a lamppost, and staggered to the gate doubled up as if in agony. There at last he tore off the mask of the comic underdog, stood up straight, indeed, sprang lithely to attention, then stuck his tongue out brazenly at the guests on the terrace and slipped off into the darkness. The guests dispersed and Tadzio had long since abandoned the balustrade, yet to the displeasure of the waiters the solitary traveler sat on at his table with the remainder of the grenadine. Night proceeded; time dissolved. There had been an hourglass in his parents' house many years before, and all at once he could see the fragile yet momentous little device as if it were standing before him. The rust-colored sand would run soundless and fine through the narrow glass neck, and when the upper bulb was nearly empty a small raging whirlpool would form there. In the afternoon of the very next day the ever obstinate traveler took another step in his investigation of the outside world, and this time with the utmost success: he went into the British travel agency located just off Saint Mark's Square and, after changing some money at the cash desk, assumed the expression of a suspicious foreigner and asked his awkward question of the clerk who had waited on him. The clerk was an Englishman in a tweed suit, still young, with hair parted down the middle, close-set eyes, and that sober trustworthiness so alien to and unusual in the spry and roguish South. "No cause for alarm, sir," he began. "A routine measure, nothing serious. They often issue such orders to forestall the deleterious effects of the heat and the sirocco..." when his blue eyes met the stranger's weary, somewhat mournful gaze directed at his lips with mild contempt, the Englishman blushed. "That," he went on in a low voice and with a certain animation, "is the official explanation, which one finds it expedient to accept here. But I can tell you that there is more to it than meets the eye." And then in his honest, genial way he told Aschenbach the truth. For several years now Indian cholera had displayed a growing tendency to spread and migrate. Emanating from the humid marshes of the Ganges Delta, rising with the mephitic exhalations of that lush, uninhabitable, primordial island jungle shunned by man, where tigers crouch in bamboo thickets, the epidemic had long raged with unwonted virulence through Hindustan, then moved eastward to China, westward to Afghanistan and Persia, and, following the main caravan routes, borne its horrors as far as Astrakhan and even Moscow. But while Europe quaked at the thought of the specter invading from there by land, it had been transported by sea in the ships of Syrian merchants and shown up in several Mediterranean ports simultaneously: it had raised its head in Toulon and M�laga, donned its mask repeatedly in Palermo and Naples, and seemed to have taken up permanent residence throughout Calabria and Apulia. The northern part of the peninsula had been spared. Then in mid-May of this year, on one and the same day, the dread vibrios had been discovered in the blackened, wasted corpses of a ship's boy and a grocer woman in Venice. The cases were kept secret. Within a week, however, there were ten of them, then twenty, thirty, and in different districts to boot. A man from a provincial town in Austria, returning home from a few days' holiday in Venice, died with unmistakable symptoms, and the first rumors of an outbreak in the city on the lagoon made their way into the German press. The Venetian authorities issued a statement to the effect that health conditions had never been better, then took the most essential precautions against the disease. But some food must have been contaminated-vegetables, meat, or milk-because, denied or concealed as it was, death ate a path through the narrow streets, and the premature summer heat, which had warmed the water in the canals, was particularly conducive to its spread. The epidemic even seemed to be undergoing a revitalization; the tenacity and fertility of its pathogens appeared to have redoubled. Recovery was rare: eighty out of a hundred of those infected died, and died a horrible death, because the disease would strike with the utmost ferocity, often taking its most dangerous form, the "dry" form, as it was called. In such cases the body was unable to expel the massive amounts of water secreted by the blood vessels, and within a few hours the patient would shrivel up and choke-convulsed and groaning hoarsely-on his own blood, now thick as pitch. He was fortunate if, as occasionally happened, after a slight indisposition he fell into a deep coma, from which he seldom if ever awoke. By early June the isolation wards of the Ospedale Civile had quietly begun to fill up; room in the two orphanages became scarce, and there was an eerily brisk traffic between the quay of the Fondamente Nuove and San Michele, the cemetery island. But fear of the overall damage that would be done-concern over the recently opened art exhibition in the Public Gardens and the tremendous losses with which the hotels, the shops, the entire, multifaceted tourist trade would be threatened in case of panic and loss of confidence-proved stronger in the city than the love of truth and respect for international covenants: it made the authorities stick stubbornly to their policy of secrecy and denial. The chief medical officer of Venice, a man of outstanding merit, had resigned from his post in high dudgeon and been quietly replaced by a more pliable individual. The populace knew all this, and corruption in high places together with the prevailing insecurity and the state of emergency into which death stalking the streets had plunged the city led to a certain degeneracy among the lower classes, the encouragement of dark, antisocial impulses that made itself felt in self-indulgence, debauchery, and growing criminality.