Free Death In Venice by Thomas Mann

dancing their round, the soft sighs of the night-shrouded sea rising up, casting spells on the soul. Evenings like these bore the joyful promise of a new sunny day of loosely ordered leisure and ornamented with countless and closely packed prospects of pleasant encounters. The guest detained by so obliging a mishap was far from regarding the recovery of his property as grounds for a new departure. For two days he had had to make do without a few necessities and show up for meals in the main dining room in his traveling clothes. \Vhen the errant item was finally deposited in his room, he unpacked completely and filled the wardrobes and drawers with his belongings, resolved to remain for an as yet unspecified period and pleased to be able to spend his beach hours in a silk suit and appear again for dinner at his table in proper evening attire. The soothing regularity of this existence quickly cast a spell over him: he was charmed by the soft, resplendent benignancy of it all. What a place indeed, combining as it did the appeal of a refined southern seaside resort with a strange, wondrous city in intimate proximity' Aschenbach did not care for pleasure. Whenever and wherever he was called upon to let his hair down, take things easy, enjoy himself, he soonespecially in his younger years-felt restless and ill at ease and could not wait to return to his noble travail, the sober sanctuary of his daily routine. It was the only place that could enchant him, relax his will, make him happy. There were times when in the morning, gazing dreamily at the blue of the southern sea from under the awning of his cabana, or on a halcyon night, reclining on the cushion of the gondola taking him home to the Lido from Saint Mark's Square beneath the vast, starry firmament-the colorful lights, the mellifluous strains of the serenade fading into the distance-he would recall his house in the mountains, scene of his summer labors, where clouds drifted low through the garden, violent storms blew out the evening house lights, and the ravens, which he fed, soared to the tops of the spruces Then he would feel he had indeed been whisked off to the land of Elysium, to the ends of the earth, where man is granted a life of ease, where there is no snow nor yet winter, no tempest, no pouring rain, but only the cool gentle breath released by Oceanus, and the days flow past in blissful idleness, effortless, free of strife, and consecrated solely to the sun and its feasts Aschenbach saw much of the boy Tadzio, saw him almost continually, the narrow confines arid common activities making it only natural that the beautiful creature should be close to him throughout the day with only brief interruptions. He saw him, met him everywhere: in the downstairs rooms of the hotel, on the refreshing boat rides into town and back, in the splendor of the square itself, and at various odd times and places dependent on the whims of chance. Chiefly, however, and with a most felicitous regularity, it was mornings on the beach that afforded him extended opportunities for the study and reverence of the fair vision. Yes, it was the daily assurance of good fortune, the periodic recurrence of favorable circumstances that so filled him with contentment and joie de vivre, that made the place so precious to him and strung each sunny day so obligingly to the others. He would rise early-as was his wont when under the unrelenting pressure of his work-and was one of the first on the beach, when the sun was still mild and the sea a dazzling white, still dreaming. He would greet the gate attendant amiably and nod another friendly greeting to the barefoot graybeard who readied his place for himpulled out the brown awning and moved the furniture out of the cabana-whereupon he settled in. He then had three or four hours during which the sun climbed to its zenith and grew to a frightening intensity, during which the sea turned a deeper and deeper blue, and during which he codd watch Tadzio. He would