The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xix Part 31

Upstairs in the great rooms beyond the colonnade there were strangers living, he could see; for the head of the stairs was shut off by a gla.s.s door which had not formerly been there, and some name-plate or other was on it. He went away, down the stairs and over the echoing hall, and left his father's house. In one corner of a restaurant he consumed a heavy, hearty meal, his thoughts ever turned inward, and then he returned to the hotel.

"I am through," he said to the elegant gentleman in black. "I leave this afternoon." And he sent for his bill, also the carriage that was to take him to the harbor, to the steamer for Copenhagen. Then he went up to his room and sat down at the table, sat quietly erect, resting his cheek on his hand and looking at the table with unseeing eyes.

Later on he paid his bill and got his effects ready. At the designated time the carriage was announced, and Tonio Kroger went down-stairs in readiness to go.

Below, at the foot of the stairs, the elegant gentleman in black was waiting for him.

"Your pardon," he said, thrusting back either cuff into its sleeve with the little finger ... "Excuse me, sir, that we must still claim a minute of your time. Mr. Seehaase, the owner of the hotel, begs for a very brief conversation with you. A mere formality ... He is back yonder ... Will you have the goodness to go with me ... It is _only_ Mr. Seehaase, the owner of the hotel."

And he led Tonio Kroger with gestures of invitation toward the back part of the vestibule. There the owner of the hotel was indeed standing. Tonio Kroger knew him by sight from his youth. He was short, fat, and bow-legged. His cropped side-whiskers had grown white; but he still wore a Tuxedo of wide cut and in addition a small green-embroidered velvet cap. Nor was he alone. Near him, at a small writing-desk fastened to the wall, stood a helmeted policeman, whose gloved right hand rested on a curiously bescribbled piece of paper that lay before him on the desk, and whose honest soldier-face looked at Tonio Kroger as if he expected that the latter must sink into the ground at sight of him.

Tonio Kroger looked from one to the other and applied himself to waiting.

"You come from Munich?" asked the policeman at last with a good-natured and ponderous voice.

Tonio Kroger a.s.sented.

"You are traveling to Copenhagen?"

"Yes, I am on the way to a Danish seash.o.r.e resort."

"Seash.o.r.e?--Well, you must show your papers," said the policeman, uttering the last word with particular satisfaction.

"Papers ..." He had no papers. He drew out his pocketbook and looked into it; but besides some bills there was nothing in it but the proof-sheets of a story, which he had intended to correct at his journey's end. He was not fond of dealings with officials and had never had a pa.s.sport filled out ...

"I am sorry," he said, "but I have no papers with me."

"Oh," said the policeman ... "None at all?--What is your name?"

Tonio Kroger answered him.

"Is that true?" said the policeman, straightening up and suddenly opening his nostrils as far as he could ...

"Quite true," answered Tonio Kroger.

"And what are you?"

Tonio Kroger swallowed and named his calling with firm voice.--Mr.

Seehaase raised his head and looked curiously up into his face.

"Hm," said the policeman. "And you claim not to be identical with an individial named----" He said "individial" and then spelled from the curiously bescribbled piece of paper a most puzzling and romantic name, which seemed to have been freakishly composed of the sounds of various languages and which Tonio Kroger had forgotten the next moment.

"--Who," he continued, "of unknown parentage and uncertain competence, is being sought by the Munich police on account of various swindles and other crimes, and is probably trying to flee to Denmark?"

"I do more than claim," said Tonio Kroger, making a nervous movement with his shoulders.--This created a certain impression.

"What? Oh yes, quite so," said the officer. "But that you shouldn't be able to show any papers at all."

Now Mr. Seehaase interposed conciliatingly.

"The whole thing is only a formality," he said, "nothing more. You must reflect that the official is only doing his duty. If you can identify yourself in any way ... Any doc.u.ment ..."

All were silent. Should he put an end to the affair by making himself known, by revealing to Mr. Seehaase that he was no swindler of uncertain competence, by birth no gipsy in a green wagon, but the son of Consul Kroger, of the Kroger family? No, he had no desire for that.

And did not these men of the civic order really have a little right on their side? To a certain extent he was quite in agreement with them ...

He shrugged his shoulders and remained silent.

"What is that you have there?" asked the officer. "There in that portfoly?"

"Here? Nothing. Proof-sheets," answered Tonio Kroger.

"Proof-sheets? How so? Let me see a minute."

And Tonio Kroger handed them over to him. The policeman spread them out on the desk and began to read them. Mr. Seehaase also stepped closer and partic.i.p.ated in the reading. Tonio Kroger looked over their shoulders to see where they were reading. It was a good pa.s.sage, a point and effect which he had worked out superbly. He was content with himself.

"You see," he said. "There stands my name. I wrote this, and now it is being published, you understand."

"Well, that is sufficient," said Mr. Seehaase determinedly, and lie gathered up the sheets, folded them, and returned them. "That must suffice, Peterson," he repeated brusquely, furtively closing his eyes and shaking his head as a sign to desist. "We must not detain the gentleman longer. The carriage is waiting. I earnestly beg you to excuse the little inconvenience, sir. The official has of course only done his duty, but I told him at once that he was on the wrong scent ..."

Did you? thought Tonio Kroger.

The officer did not seem to agree entirely; he made some objection about "individial" and "papers." But Mr. Seehaase led his guest back through the vestibule amid repeated expressions of regret, escorted him out between the two lions to his carriage, and closed the carriage door himself with attestations of his esteem. And then the ridiculously broad and high cab rolled down the steep streets to the harbor, rocking, rattling, and rumbling ...

This was Tonio Kroger's strange sojourn in his native city.

VII

Night was falling, and the moon was already rising bathed in silvery light, when Tonio Kroger's ship reached the open sea. He stood by the bowsprit, his mantle shielding him from the steadily freshening breeze, and looked down into the dark roving and surging of the strong, smooth wave-bodies below him, as they rocked about each other, met each other with a splash, separated with a rush in unexpected directions, or suddenly flashed white with foam ...

A swaying, quietly rapturous mood came over him. He had of course been a little depressed because they had wanted to arrest him at home as a swindler--although to a certain extent he had found it quite proper.

But then after going aboard he had watched, as he and his father had sometimes done, the loading of the cargo with which the deep hold of the boat was filled, amid cries of mingled Low German and Danish, and seen them let down not merely bales and boxes, but also a polar bear and a royal tiger in heavily barred cages, doubtless coming from Hamburg and destined for some Danish menagerie; and this had diverted him. Then while the boat was gliding along the river between flat banks he had completely forgotten officer Peterson's interrogatory; and all that had gone before, his sweet, sad, and regretful dreams during the night, the walk he had taken, the sight of the walnut-tree,--these had again become powerful in his soul. And now that the sea opened out he saw from afar the sh.o.r.e on which as a boy he had been privileged to listen to the summer dreams of the sea; saw the gleam of the light-house and the lights of the seash.o.r.e hotel where he had stayed with his parents ... The Baltic! He leaned his head against the strong salt breeze that came to him free and unchecked, enveloped his ears, and produced in him a gentle vertigo, a slight stupefaction, in which the recollection of all evil, of torment and erring ways, of great plans and arduous labors, became lazily and blissfully submerged. And in the roaring, splashing, foaming, and groaning round about him he fancied he heard the rustling and creaking of the old walnut-tree, and the screeching of a garden gate ... It grew darker and darker.

"De stars, my gracious, just look at de stars," suddenly remarked in a ponderous sing-song a voice that seemed to come from inside a barrel.

He knew the voice. It belonged to a reddish-blond, simply dressed man with reddened eyelids and a clammy look, as if he had just taken a bath. At supper in the cabin he had been Tonio Kroger's neighbor and with hesitant and modest motions he had taken unto himself astonishing quant.i.ties of lobster-omelette. Now he was leaning against the rail beside his new acquaintance and looking up at the sky, holding his chin with thumb and forefinger. Without doubt he was in one of those extraordinary and solemnly contemplative moods in which the barriers between men fall away, in which the heart opens even to strangers, and the mouth utters things which would otherwise close it in modesty ...

"Look, sir, just look at de stars. Dere dey stand and twinkle, upon my word de whole sky is full of dem. And now let me ask you, when we look up and reflect dat many of dem are supposed to be a hundred times bigger dan de eart', how do we feel? We men have invented de telegraph and de telephone, and so many achievements of modern life, yes, dat we have. But when we look up dere, den we have to recognize and understand dat after all we're only vermin, miserable vermin and not'ing else--am I right or wrong, sir? Yes, we are vermin," he answered himself, and nodded up at the firmament, humble and crushed.

Ouch ... no, he has no literature in him, thought Tonio Kroger. And forthwith something that he had recently been reading occurred to him, an article by a famous French author on cosmological and psychological philosophy; it had been very elegant chatter.

He gave the young man something like an answer to his deep-felt remark, and they continued to talk, leaning over the rail and looking out into the restlessly illuminated, agitated evening. It turned out that the traveling companion was a young merchant from Hamburg, who was using his vacation for this pleasure trip ...

"Go and take a little trip," he was saying, "to Copenhagen wit de _Dampfoot_, I tought, and so here I am, and so far it's very nice. But dose lobster-omelettes, you know, dat wasn't de ting, you'll see, for it's going to be a stormy night, de captain said so himself, and wit such an indigestible supper in your stomach dat's no joke ..."

Tonio Kroger listened to all this complaisant folly with a secretly friendly feeling.

"Yes," he said, "they eat far too much up here anyway. That makes them lazy and melancholy."

"Melancholy?" repeated the young man, looking at him in consternation ... "I suppose you are a stranger here?" he suddenly inquired ...

"Oh yes, I come from far away," answered Tonio Kroger with a vague and evasive gesture.