Free Death In Venice by Thomas Mann Page A

see him coming, from the left, along the shore, see him emerge from between cabanas, or he might suddenly realize-not without a pleasant shockthat he had missed his arrival, that he was already there, already in the blue-and-white bathing costume that was now his sole beach attire, and that he had resumed his customary sun-and-sand activities-the charmingly frivolous, idly bustling existence that with its ambling, wading, digging, grabbing, lolling, and swimming was both play and rest-overseen by the women on the platform calling "Tadziu! Tadziu!" to him in their highpitched voices, and he would run up to them, gesturing animatedly, and tell them what he had been doing, show them what he had found or caught: mussels, sea horses, jellyfish, crabs that go sideways. Aschenbach understood not a word of what he said, yet humdrum as it might be it was mellifluent harmony to his ear. Thus the foreignness of the boy's speech transformed it into music, the exuberant sun poured its copious rays over him, and the sea and its sublime depths provided a constant foil and backdrop for his presence. Soon the observer knew every line and pose of that body so noble, so freely exposed, joyfully welcoming anew each already familiar aspect of his beauty, and his wonderment and delicate sensual delight knew no bounds. Summoned to greet a guest paying his respects to the ladies at the cabana, the boy would run up out of the water-dripping wet perhaps, tossing back his curls-hold out his hand and-one foot planted on the ground, the other on tiptoe-execute a charming twist and turn of the body, gracefully restless, graciously diffident, and obliging from a sense of noblesse oblige. He would lie full length with his towel wrapped round his chest, a delicately chiseled arm resting in the sand, a hand cupping the chin, while the boy addressed as Jasiu squatted at his side, playing up to him, and there could be nothing more tantalizing than the smiling eyes and lips of the chosen one looking up at his inferior, his servant. He would stand at the edge of the sea, alone, removed from his family, quite near Aschenbach, erect, his hands clasped behind his neck, slowly rocking on the balls of his feet, staring out into the blue in reverie, while little waves rolled up and bathed his toes. The honey-colored hair fell gracefully in ringlets at the temples and the back of the neck, the sun glimmered in the down of the upper spine, the fine delineation of the ribs and symmetry of the chest stood out through the torso's scanty cover, the armpits were still as smooth as a statue's, the hollows of the knees glistened, and their bluish veins made the body look translucent. What discipline, what precision of thought was conveyed by that tall, youthfully perfect physique! Yet the austere and pure will laboring in obscurity to bring the godlike statue to light-was it not known to him, familiar to him as an artist? Was it not at work in him when, chiseling with sober passion at the marble block of language, he released the slender form he had beheld in his mind and would present to the world as an effigy and mirror of spiritual beauty? Effigy and mirror! His eyes embraced the noble figure standing there at the edge of the blue, and in a rush of ecstasy he believed that his eyes gazed upon beauty itself, form as divine thought, the sole and pure perfection that dwells in the mind and whose human likeness and representation, lithe and lovely, was here displayed for veneration. This was intoxication, and the aging artist welcomed it unquestioningly, indeed, avidly. His mind was in a whirl, his cultural convictions in ferment; his memory cast up ancient thoughts passed on to him in his youth though never yet animated by his own fire. Was it not common knowledge that the sun diverts our attention from the intellectual to the sensual? It benumbs and bewitches both reason and memory such that the soul in its elation quite forgets its true nature and clings with rapt delight to