Death In Venice by Thomas Mann Read Free Book Online

his fee-still rankled in the traveler's mind. Though neither difficult to explain rationally nor even thoughtProvoking, they were utterly outlandish-or so he found them-and unsettling precisely because of this paradox For the moment, however, he greeted the sea with his eyes, delighted that Venice was so near and easy of access, and at length he turned, washed his face, gave the chambermaid instructions for seeing to his comfort, and had himself conveyed by the green-clad Swiss lift attendant to the ground floor. He took his tea on the seaside terrace, then went down and walked a good distance along the promenade in the direction of the Hotel Excelsior. Upon his return he thought it time to change for dinner. He did so in his usual slow and deliberate manner, for he was accustomed to work while attending to his toilet, yet he reached the lobby a bit too early, finding a goodly number of the guests, strangers to one another, feigning mutual indifference as they waited together for the meal. He picked up a newspaper from the table, settled into a leather armchair, and cast an eye over the company, which differed favorably from that of his previous hotel. A broad, tolerant, all-encompassing horizon opened before him. Sounds of the major languages mingled in muted tones. Internationally recognized evening dress, that uniform of civilization, made of the diversity a semblance of homogeneous decency. He saw the dry, long face of an American, a large Russian clan, English ladies, and German children with French nurses. The Slav element seemed to prevail. Polish was being spoken in his immediate vicinity. It came from a group of young people of various ages seated around a wicker table under the supervision of a governess or female companion: three girls, between the ages of fifteen and seventeen from the looks of them, and long-haired boy of about fourteen. Aschenbach noted with astonishment that the boy was of a consummate beauty: his face-pale and charmingly reticent, ringed by honey-colored hair, with a straight nose, lovely mouth, and an expression of gravity sweet and divinerecalled Greek statuary of the noblest period, yet its purest formal perfection notwithstanding it conveyed a unique personal charm such that whoever might gaze upon it would believe he had never beheld anything so accomplished, be it in nature or in art. Also striking were the clear and fundamental differences in the approach to child rearing that appeared to govern the dress and general behavior of the siblings. The attire of the three girls, the eldest of whom could be considered grown up, Was austere and chaste to the point of defacement: their identical habitlike slate-colored, knee-length dresses, sober and deliberately unbecoming in cut and brightened only by white turndown collars, suppressed and nullified any grace they might have had. Their hair, plastered down smoothly over their heads, made their faces as vacant and inexpressive as a nun's. Surely a mother was at work here, and one who had no intention of applying to the boy the strict pedagogical principles she deemed appropriate to the girls. In his life, softness and tenderness clearly held sway. His fair hair had been spared the shears: as in Boy with Thorn it curled down over his forehead and ears and still lower onto his neck. The English sailor's suit-with its puffy sleeves narrowing to tight circles around the dainty wrists of the still childlike but slender hands and its braiding, bows, and embroideries -gave his delicate figure a rich and pampered appearance. He sat half facing his observer with one black patent leather shoe in front of the other, an elbow propped on the arm of his wicker chair, and a cheek resting against the closed hand in an attitude of nonchalant propriety and completely devoid of the all but servile rigidity to which his female siblings seemed accustomed. Was he ailing? His complexion stood out white as ivory against the darker gold of the surrounding curls. Or was