The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xix Part 30

"Nor do you need to.--Do you expect an answer?"

"Have you any?"

"I should think I had.--I have listened closely to you, Tonio, from beginning to end, and I will give you the answer which fits everything you have said this afternoon, and which is the solution of the problem that has disquieted you so. Well, then! The solution is this, that you, just as you sit there, are simply an ordinary man."

"Am I?" he asked, collapsing a little.

"That is a cruel blow, isn't it? It must be. And therefore I will soften my sentence a little, for I can do so. You are an ordinary man astray, Tonio Kroger,--an erring commoner."

--Silence. Then he stood up resolutely and reached for hat and cane.

"I thank you, Lisaveta Ivanovna; now I can go home in peace. _I am finished._"

V

Toward autumn Tonio Kroger said to Lisaveta Ivanovna,

"Yes, I am going away now, Lisaveta; I must take an airing, and I am going off, going to take to the open."

"Well, how is it, Little Father, will it be your royal pleasure to return to Italy?"

"Good gracious, go on with your Italy, Lisaveta! Italy is indifferent to me to the point of contempt. It is a long time since I imagined I belonged there. Art, eh? Velvety blue sky, fiery wine, and sweet sensuality ... In short, I don't like it. I resign. The whole _bellezza_ makes me nervous. Nor I don't like all these frightfully lively human beings down there with their black animal eyes. None of the Romance peoples have any conscience in their eyes.... No, now I am going up to Denmark for a while."

"To Denmark?"

"Yes. And I promise myself benefit from it. Chance kept me from ever going there, close as I was to the boundary all through my youth, and yet I have always known and loved the place. I suppose I must have this affection for the north from my father, for my mother was really fonder of the _bellezza_, that is, provided she didn't find everything utterly immaterial. But take the books that are written up there, those deep, pure, humorous books, Lisaveta--to me there is nothing like them and I love them. Take the Scandinavian meals, those incomparable meals that you can only stand in a strong salt air (I don't know whether I can stand them at all any more), and that I'm a little familiar with from my own home, for that's just the way we eat at home. Or just simply take the names, the personal names that adorn the people up there, and that we also had in large numbers at home, take a name like Ingeborg,--a harp-chord of the most immaculate poesy. And then the sea--they have the Baltic up there! ... In short, I am going up there, Lisaveta. I wish to see the Baltic again, hear these names again, read those books on the spot; and I wish to stand on the terrace of Kronborg, where the ghost appeared to Hamlet and brought distress and death upon the poor, n.o.ble young man ..."

"How are you going to go, Tonio, if I may ask? By what route!"

"The usual one," he said with a shrug of the shoulders and a visible blush. "Yes, I shall touch upon my--my point of departure, Lisaveta, after the lapse of thirteen years, and that may be rather comic."

Lisaveta smiled.

"That is what I wanted to hear, Tonio Kroger. And so, go with G.o.d. And don't fail to write to me, too, do you hear? I promise myself an eventful letter from your trip to--Denmark."

VI

And Tonio Kroger journeyed northward. He traveled comfortably (for he was wont to say that any one who has so much more distress of soul than other people may justly claim a little external comfort), and he did not rest until the towers of the cramped city which had been his starting-point rose before him in the gray air. There he made a brief, strange sojourn ...

A dreary afternoon was already turning into evening as the train pulled into the narrow, smoke-blackened, queerly familiar train-shed; under the dirty gla.s.s roof the thick smoke still gathered into roundish clumps and floated back and forth in long ragged ribbons, just as when Tonio Kroger rode away with nothing but mockery in his heart.--He attended to his baggage, ordered it brought to the hotel, and left the station.

Those were the black, immoderately broad and high two-horse cabs of the city, standing outside in a row. He did not take one; he merely looked at them as he looked at everything: the narrow gables and pointed turrets that greeted him across the nearest roofs, the fair-haired, idly awkward people round about him, with their broad yet rapid speech--and a nervous laughter rose up in him that was secretly allied to sobbing.--He went on foot, quite slowly, with the incessant pressure of the moist wind on his face, over the bridge on whose bal.u.s.trade mythological figures stood, and then along the harbor for some distance.

Good heavens, how tiny and crooked the whole place seemed! Had these narrow gable-fringed streets risen to the town in such comical steepness through all those years? The smoke-stacks and masts of the ships swayed gently in the breeze and in the twilight on the murky river. Should he go up yonder street, the one on which stood the house that he had in mind? No, tomorrow. He was so sleepy now. His head was heavy from the journey, and slow, nebulous thoughts crossed his mind.

At times, during these thirteen years, when his stomach was out of order, he had dreamed that he was again at home in the echoing old house on the slanting street, and that his father was there again too, chiding him severely because of his degenerate mode of life,--which censure he regularly regarded as quite proper. And this present moment now had nothing to distinguish it from one of those illusory and unrending dream-fabrics, in which one may ask himself whether this be hallucination or reality, and of necessity and with deep conviction declare for the latter, only to wake up after all ... He walked through the spa.r.s.ely peopled, draughty streets, lowering his head against the wind, and moved like a somnambulist in the direction of the hotel, the best in the city, where he intended to spend the night. A bow-legged man, carrying a pole surmounted by a flame, walked along before him with a rocking sailor's gait, lighting the gas-lamps.

How _did_ he feel? What was all this that glowed so darkly and painfully under the ashes of his weariness, without becoming a clear flame? Hush, hush, and not a word! No words! Fain would he have spent a long time walking thus in the wind through the dim, dreamily familiar streets. But everything was so cramped and so close together. It took no time to reach one's goal.

In the upper city there were arc-lights and they were just beginning to glow. There was the hotel, and there were the two black lions before it that had frightened him so as a child. They still looked at each other just as if they were about to sneeze; but they seemed to have grown much smaller since that day.--Tonio Kroger pa.s.sed between them.

As he came on foot, he was received without much ceremony. The porter and a very elegant gentleman in black who received the guests, and who was forever thrusting either cuff back into its sleeve with his little finger, surveyed him searchingly and critically from his crown to his boots in the visible effort to make something of a social diagnosis of him, to determine his civil and religious cla.s.sification, and to a.s.sign to him some definite place in their esteem, without, however, being able to reach a satisfying result; wherefore they resolved upon a moderate politeness. A waiter, a mild-mannered creature with light blond strips of side-whiskers, a dress-coat shiny with age-, and rosettes on his noiseless shoes, led him up two flights to a room furnished neatly and patriarchally, whose window opened up in the twilight a picturesque and medieval prospect of courts, gables, and the bizarre ma.s.ses of the church near which the hotel stood. Tonio Kroger stood awhile at this window; then he seated himself with folded arms on the rambling sofa, drew his eyebrows together, and whistled to himself.

Lights were brought, and his baggage came. At the same time the mild-mannered waiter laid the registry blank on the table, and Tonio Kroger dashed off on it with head on one side something that looked like name, station, and birth-place. Hereupon he ordered something for supper, and continued to look into s.p.a.ce from his sofa-corner. When the food stood before him, he left it untouched for a long time, but finally took a few bites and then walked up and down his room for an hour, standing still from time to time and shutting his eyes. Then he undressed with sluggish movements and went to bed. He slept long, amid confused dreams full of strange yearning.--

When he awoke, he saw his room filled with bright daylight. In perplexed haste he bethought himself where he was, and got up to open the curtains. The late summer blue of the sky, already a trifle pale, was traversed by thin cloud strips, ragged out by the wind; but the sun was shining above his native city.

He took more pains than usual with his toilet, washed and shaved with great care, and made himself as fresh and neat as if he were planning to make a call in some aristocratic, highly proper house, where it was necessary to make a smart and irreproachable impression; and during the manipulations of dressing he listened to the alarmed throbbing of his heart.

How bright it was outside. He would have felt more comfortable if there had been twilight in the streets, as when he came; but now he was to walk through the bright sunshine under the people's eyes. Would he hit upon acquaintances, he stopped and questioned, and have to give an account of how he had spent these thirteen years? No, thank the Lord, no one would know him any more, and those who remembered him would not recognize him, for he had really altered a little in the meantime. He regarded himself attentively in the mirror, and suddenly felt more secure behind his mask, behind his prematurely work-lined face, which was older than his years ... He sent for breakfast and then went out, out through the vestibule past the appraising glances of the porter and the elegant gentleman in black, out into the open between the two lions.

Whither was he going! He hardly knew. It was like yesterday. Scarcely did he again see himself surrounded by this queerly venerable and eternally familiar mixture of gables, turrets, arcades, and fountains, scarcely did he again feel on his face the pressure of the wind, the strong wind that brought with it a delicate and pungent aroma from far-away dreams, than something like a veil, a fabric of fog, enveloped his senses ... The muscles of his face relaxed; and with quieted eyes he contemplated men and things. Perhaps he would awake none the less on that street corner yonder ...

Whither was he going? It seemed to him as if the direction he took had some connection with his sad and strangely penitent dreams by night ...

To the market he went, through the vaulted arches of the city hall, where butchers weighed their wares with blood-stained hands, and to the market-place, where the high, pointed, and variegated Gothic fountain stood. There he stood still before a house, a narrow, simple house, like many others, with an openwork gable of curving lines, and became lost in contemplation of it. He read the name-plate on the door, and let his eyes rest a while on each window. Then he turned slowly away.

Whither was he going? Homeward. But he chose a roundabout way, taking a walk out beyond the gate, for there was plenty of time. He went across the Mill Rampart and the Holsten Rampart, holding his hat firmly against the wind that creaked and groaned in the trees. Then he forsook the park strip along the ramparts not far from the station, watched a train puff by in clumsy haste, counted the cars to pa.s.s the time, and looked after the man who sat perched high on the last one. But he came to a stop on the square with the lindens before one of the pretty villas that stood there, looked long into the garden and up at the windows, and finally took a notion to swing the garden-gate back and forth and make the hinges screech. Then he contemplated for a time his hand, which had become cold and rusty, and went on, through the old square-built gate, along the harbor, and up the steep, draughty, and wet Gable Street to the house of his parents.

Closed in by the neighboring houses which its gable overtopped, it stood there gray and forbidding as for these three hundred years past, and Tonio Kroger read the pious legend that was above the door in half effaced letters. Then he drew a deep breath and went in.

His heart beat fearfully, for he half expected his father might issue from one of the doors on the ground floor past which he was walking, his father in office coat and with a pen behind his ear, who would stop him and sternly call him to account for his extravagant life,--which censure he would have found quite proper. But he got past the doors unmolested. The storm door was not shut, but only pulled to, which he considered censurable, while at the same time he felt as in certain light dreams, when hindrances vanish of themselves before us and we press forward unchecked, favored by wonderful good fortune ... The s.p.a.cious hall, paved with large square slabs of stone, echoed to his tread. Opposite the kitchen, where all was still, the strange, clumsy, but neatly varnished part.i.tion-rooms jutted out from the wall at a considerable height; these were the servants' rooms, which could only be reached by a sort of open staircase from the hall floor. But the great wardrobes and the carved chest that used to stand here were gone ... The son of the house set foot upon the mighty staircase and rested his hand upon the white enameled, fretwork banister, lifting it, however, at each step and then gently dropping it again at the next one, as if he were timidly trying to see whether his former familiarity with this respectable old banister could be restored ... On the first landing, before the entrance to the so-called "intermediate story," he stood still. A white door-plate was fastened to the door, and on it could be read in black letters: People's Library.

People's Library? thought Tonio Kroger, for it seemed to him that neither the people nor literature had any business here. He knocked on the door, heard "Come in," and obeyed. With gloomy curiosity he looked in upon a most unseemly alteration.

The apartment was three rooms deep, and the connecting doors were open.

The walls were covered almost to the top with books in uniform bindings, which stood in long rows on dark shelves. In each room a needy looking individual sat writing behind a sort of counter. Two of them merely turned their heads toward Tonio Kroger, but the first one stood up hastily, rested both hands on the table before him, thrust his head forward, pursed his lips, drew up his eyebrows, and looked at the visitor with rapidly winking eyes ...

"Excuse me," said Tonio Kroger, without turning his eyes from the many books. "I am a stranger here, and am taking a look at the city. So this is the People's Library? Would you permit me to look into the collection a little?"

"Willingly," said the official, winking still more vehemently ...

"Certainly, that is every one's privilege. Please look around ...

Should you care for a catalogue?"

"Thank you," said Tonio Kroger, "I can easily find my bearings." And he began to walk slowly along the walls, pretending to be reading the t.i.tles on the backs of the books. Finally he took out a volume, opened it, and went to the window with it.

This had been the breakfast room. Here they had breakfasted, not upstairs in the great dining-room, where white G.o.ds stood out on the blue wall-paper ... That room had served as a bed-chamber. His father's mother had died there in bitter anguish, old as she was, for she was a pleasure-loving woman of the world and clung to life. And later his father too had breathed his last sigh there, the tall, correct, somewhat melancholy and meditative gentleman with the wild-flower in his b.u.t.ton-hole ... Tonio had sat with hot eyes at the foot of his death-bed, sincerely and completely given over to a strong, mute feeling, one of love and pain. And his mother too had knelt by the bed, his beautiful, pa.s.sionate mother, quite dissolved in hot tears; whereupon she had strayed off to far-away lands with the southern artist ... But back there, that smaller third room, now also completely filled with books over which a needy-looking individual kept watch, had been his own for many years. Thither he had returned after school, or after such a walk as he had just taken; against that wall his table had stood, in whose drawer he had treasured his first intimate and clumsy verses ... The walnut-tree ... A piercing sadness quivered through him.

He looked sidewise through the window. The garden lay waste, but the old walnut-tree stood in its place, heavily creaking and rustling in the wind. And Tonio Kroger let his eyes rove back upon the book he held in his hands, a distinguished poetic work that he knew well. He looked down upon these black lines and sentence-groups, followed for a s.p.a.ce the skilful flow of the text, watching it rise in creative pa.s.sion to a fine point and effect and then break off with equal effect ...

Yes, that is good work, he said, and put the volume back and turned away. Then he saw that the official was still standing, winking his eyes with an expression of mingled zeal and pensive distrust.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARCO.]

"An excellent collection, I see," said Tonio Kroger. "I have already gained a general idea of it. I am much indebted to you. Good day." With that he went out of the door; but it was a doubtful exit, and he clearly felt that the official, full of disquiet at this visit, would keep on standing and winking for a quarter of an hour.

He felt no inclination to penetrate farther. He had been at home.