Short Fiction

know about love? Wrong, all wrong, he knows a lot. He has a wide and powerful understanding of its workings, and it pays to listen to his advice. But let’s leave Cipolla out, cut him out altogether and think only of Silvestra, your peerless Silvestra! What! Is she to give any young gamecock the preference, so that he can laugh while you cry? To prefer him to a chap like you, so full of feeling and so sympathetic? Not very likely, is it? It is impossible⁠—we know better, Cipolla and she. If I were to put myself in her place and choose between the two of you, a tarry lout like that⁠—a codfish, a sea-urchin⁠—and a Mario, a knight of the serviette, who moves among gentlefolk and hands round refreshments with an air⁠—my word, but my heart would speak in no uncertain tones⁠—it knows to whom I gave it long ago. It is time that he should see and understand, my chosen one! It is time that you see me and recognize me, Mario, my beloved! Tell me, who am I?”

It was grisly, the way the betrayer made himself irresistible, wreathed and coquetted with his crooked shoulder, languished with the puffy eyes, and showed his splintered teeth in a sickly smile. And alas, at his beguiling words, what was come of our Mario? It is hard for me to tell, hard as it was for me to see; for here was nothing less than an utter abandonment of the inmost soul, a public exposure of timid and deluded passion and rapture. He put his hands across his mouth, his shoulders rose and fell with his pantings. He could not, it was plain, trust his eyes and ears for joy, and the one thing he forgot was precisely that he could not trust them. “Silvestra!” he breathed, from the very depths of his vanquished heart.

“Kiss me!” said the hunchback. “Trust me, I love thee. Kiss me here.” And with the tip of his index finger, hand, arm, and little finger outspread, he pointed to his cheek, near the mouth. And Mario bent and kissed him.

It had grown very still in the room. That was a monstrous moment, grotesque and thrilling, the moment of Mario’s bliss. In that evil span of time, crowded with a sense of the illusiveness of all joy, one sound became audible, and that not quite at once, but on the instant of the melancholy and ribald meeting between Mario’s lips and the repulsive flesh which thrust itself forward for his caress. It was the sound of a laugh, from the giovanotto on our left. It broke into the dramatic suspense of the moment, coarse, mocking, and yet⁠—or I must have been grossly mistaken⁠—with an undertone of compassion for the poor bewildered, victimized creature. It had a faint ring of that “Poveretto” which Cipolla had declared was wasted on the wrong person, when he claimed the pity for his own.

The laugh still rang in the air when the recipient of the caress gave his whip a little swish, low down, close to his chair-leg, and Mario started up and flung himself back. He stood in that posture staring, his hands one over the other on those desecrated lips. Then he beat his temples with his clenched fists, over and over; turned and staggered down the steps, while the audience applauded, and Cipolla sat there with his hands in his lap, his shoulders shaking. Once below, and even while in full retreat, Mario hurled himself round with legs flung wide apart; one arm flew up, and two flat shattering detonations crashed through applause and laughter.

There was instant silence. Even the dancers came to a full stop and stared about, struck dumb. Cipolla bounded from his seat. He stood with his arms spread out, slanting as though to ward everybody off, as though next moment he would cry out: “Stop! Keep back! Silence! What was that?” Then, in that instant, he sank back in his seat, his head rolling on his chest; in the next he had fallen sideways to the floor, where he lay motionless, a huddled heap of clothing, with limbs awry.

The commotion was indescribable. Ladies hid their faces, shuddering, on the breasts of their escorts. There were shouts for a doctor, for the police. People flung themselves on Mario in a mob, to disarm him, to take away the weapon that hung from his fingers⁠—that small, dull-metal, scarcely pistol-shaped tool with hardly any barrel⁠—in how strange and unexpected a direction had fate levelled it!

And now⁠—now finally, at last⁠—we took the children and led them towards the exit, past the pair of carabinieri just entering. Was that the end, they wanted to know, that they might go in peace? Yes, we assured them, that was the end. An end of horror, a fatal end. And yet a liberation⁠—for I could not, and I cannot, but find it so!

Colophon

Short Fiction
was compiled from short stories and novellas published between 1896 and 1930 by
Thomas Mann.
They were translated from German between 1923 and 1930 by
Kenneth Burke, Herman George Scheffauer, and H. T. Lowe-Porter.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Robin Whittleton and An Anonymous Volunteer,
and is based on transcriptions from
various sources
and on digital scans from
various sources.

The cover page is adapted from
Die Quelle,
a painting completed in 1913 by
Ludwig von Hofmann.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
September 9, 2026, 4:48 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-mann/short-fiction/various-translators.

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