Death In Venice Read Online Free PDF Page B

Aschenbach as he watched him and his interplay with his friends. Did they not know, could they not see that he was old, that he had no right to be wearing their foppish, gaudy clothes, no right to be carrying on as if he were one of them? They seemed to be used to him and take him for granted, tolerating his presence and treating him as an equal, returning his pokes in the ribs without malice. How could they? Aschenbach laid his hand on his forehead and shut his eyes: they felt hot for want of sleep. He had the impression that something was not quite normal, that a dreamlike disaffection, a warping of the world into something alien was about to take hold and that by covering his face for a spell and then taking a fresh look at things he might stave it off just then, however, he felt a floating sensation and, looking up panic-stricken, realized that the heavy, dingy bulk of the ship was slowly casting off from the stone jetty. As the engine shifted forward and back, the strip of filthy, shimmering water between the jetty and the ship's hull increased inch by inch, and after some clumsy maneuvering the steamer aimed its bowsprit at the open sea. Aschenbach crossed to the starboard side, where the hunchback had set up a deck chair for him and a steward in a stained frock coat inquired whether he could do anything for him. The sky was gray, the wind humid. Harbor and islands left behind, all land soon disappeared from sight in the haze. Flakes of coal dust, bloated with moisture, settled on the swabbed deck, which refused to dry. Before an hour was up, a sailcloth awning was spread out: it had started to rain. Wrapped in his coat, a book in his lap, the traveler took his ease, the hours slipping by unnoticed. The rain had ceased; the awning been taken down. The hori- zon was now visible in its entirety. The vast disk of the barren sea stretched out beneath the turbid dome of the sky. But in empty, unarticulated space our senses lose the capacity to articulate time as well, and we sink into the immeasurable. Strange, shadowy figures-the superannuated dandy, the goateed purser from deep in the hold-passed through his quiescent mind with vague gestures and jumbled dreamlike utterances, and he fell asleep. At noon he was urged to partake of a collation below in the dining salon, which was nothing so much as a corridor lined with cabin doors and where at the other end of the long table-he sat at its head-the shop assistants, the old man included, had been tippling with the jovial captain since ten o'clock. The meal was wretched, and he finished it off quickly: he felt the need for fresh air, for a look at the sky. Surely it would clear over Venice Not that he thought it would not, for the city had always received him in all its glory. Yet both sky and sea remained turbid and leaden, a misty rain falling from time to time, and he resigned himself to finding a different Venice by sea from the one he was accustomed to find when taking an overland route. He stood at the foremast, gazing into the distance, watching for land. He thought of the pensive yet ardent poet for whom the cupolas and bell towers of his dreams had once risen from these waves, repeated to himself the words he had fashioned out of reverence, joy, and mourning into measured song, and, readily stirred by a sentiment already shaped, probed his earnest, weary heart to see whether a new ardor and upheaval, a belated adventure of the emotions might yet await the idle traveler. Then, to the right, the flat coastline hove in sight, the sea came alive with fishing boats, and the island with its swimming baths appeared. The steamer put the island on its port side and glided at reduced speed through the narrow channel that bore its name, coming to a halt in the lagoon opposite some colorfully dilapidated dwellings, there to await the launch of the health authorities. It took the launch an hour to appear. The ship had arrived, yet it had not. There was no hurry, yet the pas-