FullReads

"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 Kröger 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 Kröger with a vague and evasive gesture.

"But you are right," said the young man; "God knows you are right about melancholy. I am almost always melancholy, but especially on such evenings as dis, when de stars are in de sky. " And again he propped up his chin on thumb and forefinger.

He undoubtedly writes verses, thought Tonio Kröger, merchant’s verses full of deeply honest feeling …

The evening wore on, and the wind had now become so violent that it interfered with conversation. So they resolved to sleep a little, and wished each other good night.

Tonio Kröger stretched himself out on the narrow bunk in his cabin, but he found no rest. The strong wind and its pungent aroma had agitated him strangely, and his heart was restless as if in anxious expectation of something sweet. And the shock to the ship which resulted when it slid down a steep wave-slope and the screw raced convulsively out of water, caused him severe nausea. He dressed again completely and mounted into the open air.

Clouds were racing past the moon. The sea was dancing. There were no round and uniform waves coming on in order, but as far as one could see, in the pale and flickering light, the sea was torn up, lashed and stirred into fragments; its flamelike, gigantic tongues licked and leaped into the air, beside foam-filled abysses it cast up jagged and improbable forms, and seemed with the force of monstrous arms to hurl the spume in mad playfulness to invisible heights. The ship had a toilsome journey; crashing, rolling, and groaning it worked its way through the commotion, and now and again one could hear the polar bear and the tiger, who had suffered from the high sea, roaring in the hold. A man in an oilskin cape, the hood drawn over his head, and a lantern buckled about his body, was walking spread-legged up and down the deck, balancing with difficulty. But there at the stern, bending low over the rail, stood the young man from Hamburg, taking it very hard indeed. "Good heavens," he said in a hollow and faltering voice, as he became aware of Tonio Kröger, "just see de tumult of de elements, sir. " But then he was interrupted and turned hastily away.

Tonio Kröger held on to some taut cable and looked out into all this uncontrollable exuberance. An exultation winged its way upward within him, and it seemed to him powerful enough to drown out both tempest and flood. A song to the sea, inspired by love, rang out within him. Wild comrade of my youth’s delight, once more our spirits now unite … But then the poem was at an end. It was not completed, was not rounded off, not welded calmly into a unified whole. His heart was alive …

Long he stood thus; then he stretched out on a bench near the deck-cabin and looked up at the sky in which the stars were flickering. He even slumbered a little. And when the cold spray flew into his face, it seemed in his half wakeful state like a caress.