Death in Venice and Other Stories Read Free Page B

have run back home, in streets where he’s unknown and rarely attracts a second glance, his behavior doesn’t alter significantly. He continues to glance around in fear and scurry along his way, huddled, as though he felt a thousand scornful stares upon him, and when he does timorously and hesitantly lift his gaze from the ground, one notices something strange. He’s unable to
look
with any steadiness or determination at other people or even at inanimate objects. As strange as this may sound, he seems to lack that natural sovereignty of sensory perception that allows the individual to gaze out upon external phenomena. He seems to feel a sense of inferiority toward any and all such outside presence, and his aimlessly wandering eyes can’t help but grovel before man and thing . . .
    How to explain this person, who is so constantly alone and seems so extraordinarily sad? His decisively bourgeois attire, along with his genteel habit ofdelicately rubbing his chin, would indicate that he rejects any affiliation with the class of society in whose midst he lives. God only knows what hardships he has had to endure. From his face, it looks as though life itself had reared back in contemptuous laughter and punched him with all its might . . . On the other hand, it’s quite possible that he’s never suffered any such blows of fate, that he’s simply unequal to the task of being a man. The tortured submissiveness and vacuity of his appearance convey the disagreeable impression that nature has denied him the strength, equilibrium and spine necessary to exist with his head held upright.
    Having completed his huddled walk on his black cane to the center of town, he will make his way home to
Grauer Weg
to be received by the howling children. He’ll climb up the musty stairs to his room, which is poorly furnished and void of decoration, the only object of any value or beauty being the sturdy Empire commode with the heavy metal handles. In front of his lone window, whose view is abruptly cut off by the gray wall of the neighboring house, there is a flowerpot full of soil in which nothing at all grows. Nonetheless Tobias Mindernickel will occasionally go over and examine it, sniffing at the barren soil. — Off to the side is a dark little sleeping alcove. — Back in his room, Tobias will lay his hat and cane atop the table, sit down upon his dusty-smelling sofa with its green upholstery, put his hand to his chin and stare with raised eyebrows at the ground in front of him. This would seem to be his sole purpose on earth.
    As far as Mindernickel’s character is concerned, it’s difficult to say, although the following incident appears to speak in his favor. One day, as the odd little man left the house with the usual gang of children trailing behind him, laughing and shouting out insults, a boy of about ten tripped over another’s foot and fell so hard on the cobblestones that he bloodied his nose and cut his forehead. He lay there in tears. Tobias immediately turned, hurried back to the fallen child, crouched down and began to comfort him in a mild, quavering voice. “You poor boy,” he said. “Have you hurt yourself? Why,you’re bleeding! Just look at the blood running down his forehead! How miserable you look lying there! Of course when it hurts so, the poor child starts crying! How I feel for you! It was your own fault, but let me bandage your head with my handkerchief . . . So, there we are! Now let’s pull ourselves together and stand on our feet . . .” And having spoken these words of consolation and indeed made a bandage from his very own handkerchief, he gently lifted the boy and continued on. At that particular moment, however, he seemed utterly transformed in both posture and expression. He walked firm and upright, taking deep breaths, his chest swelling under his tight-fitting overcoat. His eyes were wide and had begun to