by Thomas Mann
How bright it was outside! He would have liked better a twilight air like yesterday’s, instead of passing through the streets in the broad sunlight, under everybody’s eye. Would he meet people he knew, be stopped and questioned and have to submit to be asked how he had spent the last thirteen years? No, thank goodness, he was known to nobody here; even if anybody remembered him, it was unlikely he would be recognized—for certainly he had changed in the meantime! He surveyed himself in the glass and felt a sudden sense of security behind his mask, behind his work-worn face, that was older than his years…. He sent for breakfast, and after that he went out; he passed under the disdainful eye of the porter and the gentleman in black, through the vestibule and between the two lions, and so into the street.
Where was he going? He scarcely knew. It was the same as yesterday. Hardly was he in the midst of this long-familiar scene, this stately conglomeration of gables, turrets, arcades, and fountains, hardly did he feel once more the wind in his face, that strong current wafting a faint and pungent aroma from far-off dreams, when the same mistiness laid itself like a veil about his senses…. The muscles of his face relaxed, and he looked at men and things with a look grown suddenly calm. Perhaps right there, on that street corner, he might wake up after all….
Where was he going? It seemed to him the direction he took had a connection with his sad and strangely rueful dreams of the night…. He went to Market Square, under the vaulted arches of the Rathaus, where the butchers were weighing out their wares red-handed, where the tall old Gothic fountain stood with its manifold spires. He paused in front of a house, a plain narrow building, like many another, with a fretted baroque gable; stood there lost in contemplation. He read the plate on the door, his eyes rested a little while on each of the windows. Then slowly he turned away.
Where did he go? Towards home. But he took a roundabout way outside the walls—for he had plenty of time. He went over the Millwall and over the Holstenwall, clutching his hat, for the wind was rushing and moaning through the trees. He left the wall near the station, where he saw a train puffing busily past, idly counted the coaches, and looked after the man who sat perched upon the last. In the Lindenplatz he stopped at one of the pretty villas, peered long into the garden and up at the windows, lastly conceived the idea of swinging the gate to and fro upon its hinges till it creaked. Then he looked awhile at his moist, rust-stained hand and went on, went through the squat old gate, along the harbour, and up the steep, windy street to his parents’ house.
It stood aloof from its neighbors, its gable towering above them; grey and sombre, as it had stood these three hundred years; and Tonio Kröger read the pious, half-illegible motto above the entrance. Then he drew a long breath and went in.
His heart gave a throb of fear, lest his father might come out of one of the doors on the ground floor, in his office coat, with the pen behind his ear, and take him to task for his excesses. He would have found the reproach quite in order; but he got past unchidden. The inner door was ajar, which appeared to him reprehensible though at the same time he felt as one does in certain broken dreams, where obstacles melt away of themselves, and one presses onward in marvellous favour with fortune. The wide entry, paved with great square flags, echoed to his tread. Opposite the silent kitchen was the curious projecting structure, of rough boards, but cleanly varnished, that had been the servants’ quarters. It was quite high up and could only be reached by a sort of ladder from the entry. But the great cupboards and carven presses were gone. The son of the house climbed the majestic staircase, with his hand on the white-enamelled, fret-work balustrade. At each step he lifted his hand, and put it down again with the next as though testing whether he could call back his ancient familiarity with the stout old railing…. But at the landing of the entresol he stopped. For on the entrance door was a white plate; and on it in black letters he read: “Public Library.”
“Public Library?” thought Tonio Kröger. What were either literature or the public doing here? He knocked … heard a “come in,” and obeying it with gloomy suspense gazed upon a scene of most unhappy alteration.
The storey was three rooms deep, and all the doors stood open. The walls were covered nearly all the way up with long rows of books in uniform bindings, standing in dark-coloured bookcases. In each room a poor creature of a man sat writing behind a sort of counter. The farthest two just turned their heads, but the nearest got up in haste and, leaning with both hands on the table, stuck out his head, pursed his lips, lifted his brows, and looked at the visitor with eagerly blinking eyes.
“I beg pardon,” said Tonio Kröger without turning his eyes from the book-shelves. “I am a stranger here, seeing the sights. So this is your Public Library? May I examine your collection a little?”
“Certainly, with pleasure,” said the official, blinking still more violently. “It is open to everybody…. Pray look about you. Should you care for a catalogue?”
“No, thanks,” answered Tonio Kroger, “I shall soon find my way about.” And he began to move slowly along the walls, with the appearance of studying the rows of books. After a while he took down a volume, opened it, and posted himself at the window.
This was the breakfast-room. They had eaten here in the morning instead of in the big dining-room upstairs, with its white statues of gods and goddesses standing out against the blue walls…. Beyond there had been a bedroom, where his father’s mother had died—only after a long struggle, old as she was, for she had been of a pleasure-loving nature and clung to life. And his father too had drawn his last breath in the same room; that tall, correct, slightly melancholy and pensive gentleman with the wild flower in his buttonhole…. Tonio had sat at the foot of his death-bed, quite given over to unutterable feelings of love and grief. His mother had knelt at the bedside, his lovely, fiery mother, dissolved in hot tears, and after that she had withdrawn with her artist into the far blue south…. And beyond still, the small third room, likewise full of books and presided over by a shabby man—that had been for years on end his own. Thither he had come after school and a walk—like today’s; against that wall his table had stood with the drawer where he had kept his first clumsy, heartfelt attempts at verse…. The walnut tree … a pang went through him. He gave a sidewise glance out at the window. The garden lay desolate, but there stood the old walnut tree where it used to stand, groaning and creaking heavily in the wind. And Tonio Kroger let his gaze fall upon the book he had in his hands, an excellent piece of work, and very familiar. He followed the black lines of print, the paragraphs, the flow of words that flowed with so much art, mounting in the ardour of creation to a certain climax and effect and then as artfully breaking off.
“Yes, that was well done,” he said; put back the book and turned away. Then he saw that the functionary still stood bolt-upright, blinking with a mingled expression of zeal and misgiving. “A capital collection, I see,” said Tonio Kroger. “I have already quite a good idea of it. Much obliged to you. Goodbye.” He went out; but it was a poor exit, and he felt sure the official would stand there perturbed and blinking for several minutes.
He felt no desire for further researches. He had been home. Strangers were living upstairs in the large rooms behind the pillared hall; the top of the stairs was shut off by a glass door which used not to be there, and on the door was a plate. He went away, down the steps, across the echoing corridor, and left his parental home. He sought a restaurant, sat down in a corner, and brooded over a heavy, greasy meal. Then he returned to his hotel.
“I am leaving,” he said to the fine gentleman in black. “This afternoon.” And he asked for his bill, and for a carriage to take him down to the harbour where he should take the boat for Copenhagen. Then he went up to his room and sat there stiff and still, with his cheek on his hand, looking down on the table before him with absent eyes. Later he paid his bill and packed his things. At the appointed hour the carriage was announced and Tonio Kroger went down in travel array.
At th
e foot of the stairs the gentleman in black was waiting.
“Beg pardon,” he said, shoving back his cuffs with his little fingers…. “Beg pardon, but we must detain you just a moment. Herr Seehaase, the proprietor, would like to exchange two words with you. A matter of form…. He is back there…. If you will have the goodness to step this way…. It is only Herr Seehaase, the proprietor.”
And he ushered Tonio Kröger into the background of the vestibule…. There, in fact, stood Herr Seehaase. Tonio Kröger recognized him from old time. He was small, fat, and bowlegged. His shaven side-whisker was white, but he wore the same old low-cut dress coat and little velvet cap embroidered in green. He was not alone. Beside him, at a little high desk fastened into the wall, stood a policeman in a helmet, his gloved right hand resting on a document in coloured inks; he turned towards Tonio Kroger with his honest, soldierly face as though he expected Tonio to sink into the earth at his glance.
Tonio Kroger looked at the two and confined himself to waiting.
“You came from Munich?” the policeman asked at length in a heavy, good-natured voice.
Tonio Kroger said he had.
“You are going to Copenhagen?”
“Yes, I am on the way to a Danish seashore resort.”
“Seashore resort? Well, you must produce your papers,” said the policeman. He uttered the last word with great satisfaction.
“Papers … ?” He had no papers. He drew out his pocketbook and looked into it; but aside from notes there was nothing there but some proof-sheets of a story which he had taken along to finish reading. He hated relations with officials and had never got himself a passport….
“I am sorry,” he said, “but I don’t travel with papers.”
“Ah!” said the policeman. “And what might be your name?”
Tonio replied.
“Is that a fact?” asked the policeman, suddenly erect, and expanding his nostrils as wide as he could….
“Yes, that is a fact,” answered Tonio Kroger.
“And what are you, anyhow?”
Tonio Kroger gulped and gave the name of his trade in a firm voice. Herr Seehaase lifted his head and looked him curiously in the face.
“H’m,” said the policeman. “And you give out that you are not identical with an individdle named”—he said “individdle” and then, referring to his document in coloured inks, spelled out an involved, fantastic name which mingled all the sounds of all the races—Tonio Kröger forgot it next minute—“of unknown parentage and unspecified means,” he went on, “wanted by the Munich police for various shady transactions, and probably in flight towards Denmark?”
“Yes, I give out all that, and more,” said Tonio Kroger, wriggling his shoulders. The gesture made a certain impression.
“What? Oh, yes, of course,” said the policeman. “You say you can’t show any papers—”
Herr Seehaase threw himself into the breach.
“It is only a formality,” he said pacifically, “nothing else. You must bear in mind the official is only doing his duty. If you could only identify yourself somehow—some document …”
They were all silent. Should he make an end of the business, by revealing to Herr Seehaase that he was no swindler without specified means, no gypsy in a green wagon, but the son of the late Consul Kröger, a member of the Kröger family? No, he felt no desire to do that. After all, were not these guardians of civic order within their right? He even agreed with them—up to a point. He shrugged his shoulders and kept quiet.
“What have you got, then?” asked the policeman. “In your portfoly, I mean?”
“Here? Nothing. Just a proof-sheet,” answered Tonio Kröger.
“Proof-sheet? What’s that? Let’s see it.”
And Tonio Kröger handed over his work. The policeman spread it out on the shelf and began reading. Herr Seehaase drew up and shared it with him. Tonio Kröger looked over their shoulders to see what they read. It was a good moment, a little effect he had worked out to a perfection. He had a sense of self-satisfaction.
“You see,” he said, “there is my name. I wrote it, and it is going to be published, you understand.”
“All right, that will answer,” said Herr Seehaase with decision, gathered up the sheets and gave them back. “That will have to answer, Petersen,” he repeated crisply, shutting his eyes and shaking his head as though to see and hear no more. “We must not keep the gentleman any longer. The carriage is waiting. I implore you to pardon the little inconvenience, sir. The officer has only done his duty, but I told him at once he was on the wrong track….”
“Indeed!” thought Tonio Kröger.
The officer seemed still to have his doubts; he muttered something else about individdle and document. But Herr Seehaase, overflowing with regrets, led his guest through the vestibule, accompanied him past the two lions to the carriage, and himself, with many respectful bows, closed the door upon him. And then the funny, high, wide old cab rolled and rattled and bumped down the steep, narrow street to the quay.
And such was the manner of Tonio Kröger’s visit to his ancestral home.
Night fell and the moon swam up with silver gleam as Tonio Kröger’s boat reached the open sea. He stood at the prow wrapped in his cloak against a mounting wind, and looked beneath into the dark going and coming of the waves as they hovered and swayed and came on, to meet with a clap and shoot erratically away in a bright gush of foam.
He was lulled in a mood of still enchantment. The episode at the hotel, their wanting to arrest him for a swindler in his own home, had cast him down a little, even although he found it quite in order—in a certain way. But after he came on board he had watched, as he used to do as a boy with his father, the lading of goods into the deep bowels of the boat, amid shouts of mingled Danish and Plattdeutsch; not only boxes and bales, but also a Bengal tiger and a polar bear were lowered in cages with stout iron bars. They had probably come from Hamburg and were destined for a Danish menagerie. He had enjoyed these distractions. And as the boat glided along between flat riverbanks he quite forgot Officer Petersen’s inquisition; while all the rest—his sweet, sad, rueful dreams of the night before, the walk he had taken, the walnut tree—had welled up again in his soul. The sea opened out and he saw in the distance the beach where he as a lad had been let to listen to the ocean’s summer dreams; saw the flashing of the lighthouse tower and the lights of the Kurhaus where he and his parents had lived…. The Baltic! He bent his head to the strong salt wind; it came sweeping on, it enfolded him, made him faintly giddy and a little deaf; and in that mild confusion of the senses all memory of evil, of anguish and error, effort and exertion of the will, sank away into joyous oblivion and were gone. The roaring, foaming, flapping, and slapping all about him came to his ears like the groan and rustle of an old walnut tree, the creaking of a garden gate…. More and more the darkness came on.
“The stars! Oh, by Lord, look at the stars!” a voice suddenly said, with a heavy singsong accent that seemed to come out of the inside of a tun. He recognized it. It belonged to a young man with red-blond hair who had been Tonio Kröger’s neighbour at dinner in the salon. His dress was very simple, his eyes were red, and he had the moist and chilly look of a person who has just bathed. With nervous and self-conscious movements he had taken unto himself an astonishing quantity of lobster omelet. Now he leaned on the rail beside Tonio Kröger and looked up at the skies, holding his chin between thumb and forefinger. Beyond a doubt he was in one of those rare and festal and edifying moods that cause the barriers between man and man to fall; when the heart opens even to the stranger, and the mouth utters that which otherwise it would blush to speak…
“Look, by dear sir, just look at the stars. There they stahd and glitter; by goodness, the whole sky is full of theb! And I ask you, when you stahd ahd look up at theb, ahd realize that bany of theb are a huddred tibes larger thad the earth, how does it bake you feel? Yes, we have idvehted
the telegraph and the telephode and all the triuphs of our bodern tibes. But whed we look up there, after all we have to recogdize and uhderstad that we are worbs, biserable worbs, ahd dothing else. Ab I right, sir, or ab I wrog? Yes, we are worbs,” he answered himself, and nodded meekly and abjectly in the direction of the firmament.
“Ah, no, he has no literature in his belly,” thought Tonio Kroger. And he recalled something he had lately read, an essay by a famous French writer on cosmological and psychological philosophies, a very delightful causerie
He made some sort of reply to the young man’s feeling remarks, and they went on talking, leaning over the rail, and looking into the night with its movement and fitful lights. The young man, it seemed, was a Hamburg merchant on his holiday.
“Y’ought to travel to Copedhagen on the boat, thigks I, and so here I ab, and so far it’s been fide. But they shouldn’t have given us the lobster obelet, sir, for it’s going to be storby—the captain said so hibself—and that’s do joke with indigestible food like that in your stobach….”
Tonio Kröger listened to all this engaging artlessness and was privately drawn to it.
“Yes,” he said, “all the food up here is too heavy. It makes one lazy and melancholy.”
“Belancholy?” repeated the young man, and looked at him, taken aback. Then he asked, suddenly: “You are a stradger up here, sir?”
“Yes, I come from a long way off,” answered Tonio Kröger vaguely, waving his arm.
“But you’re right,” said the youth; “Lord kdows you are right about the belancholy. I am dearly always belancholy, but specially on evedings like this when there are stars in the sky.” And he supported his chin again with his thumb and forefinger.