walked, lost in thought.
The flowerbeds were still covered, the trees and bushes were still bare. But the snow was gone, and the roads showed only here and there any traces of moisture. The broad park with its grottoes, arbours, and little pavilions lay in an excellently coloured afternoon light, with strong shadows and a full, yellow sun; and the black branches of the trees stood out in sharp, delicate outline against the bright sky.
It was about the time when the sun increases in size, when the formless mass of brilliance becomes a noticeably sinking disk, a milder, broader flame which the eye can bear. Herr Spinell did not see the sun. His path was so situated that the sun was hidden from him. He was walking with lowered head, humming a little bit of music to himself, just a few bars, one figure mounting plaintively and uneasily, the yearning-motif. … But suddenly, with a jerk, one short, convulsive intake of breath, he stopped dead, and his wide-open eyes stared out from under heavily wrinkled brows with an expression of horror and defence.
The road had made a turn; now it led in the direction of the sinking sun. It was pierced by two slender strips of cloud with golden edges. It stood out large and oblique in the sky, setting the tops of the trees on fire and pouring its reddish-yellow light across the park. And in the midst of this golden illumination, with the powerful halo of the sun’s disk just above, a plump somebody, dressed in red, gold, and plaid, was standing prominently in the road; her right hand was resting on a large hip, while with her left hand she was moving slowly back and forth a gracefully formed baby-carriage. But in this carriage the child was sitting, Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., Gabriele Eckhof’s bouncing son.
He was dressed in a white padded coat and a large white hat; he was chubby-cheeked, and sat magnificently among his pillows. His eyes met those of Herr Spinell gleefully and unerringly. The novelist wanted to retreat. If he had been a man, he would have possessed the strength to pass by this unexpected sight with its flood of sunshine, and continue his walk. But just then, monstrously enough, Anton Klöterjahn began to laugh and rejoice. He screeched in unexplained delight. It almost seemed uncanny.
God only knows just what started him—whether it was the black form in front of him which threw him into such wild merriment, or whether some excess of animal well-being had come over him. In one hand he was holding a bone teething-ring and in the other a tin popgun. He extended both of these objects hilariously out into the sunlight, shook them and banged them together as though he were trying to shoo someone away with scorn. His eyes were almost closed with pleasure, and his mouth was so yawningly agape that his rosy gums, every bit of them, were visible. Also, he threw his head about, meanwhile exulting.
Then Herr Spinell turned his back and got away from there. Followed by the jubilations of the little Klöterjahn, holding his arms in a certain cautious and stiffly gracile manner, he walked over the gravel with the vehement, yet hesitating steps of one who seeks to hide the fact that he is—inwardly—on the run.
Tonio Kröger
I
It was hardly more than a wretched pretext of a sun that stood over the huddled city, milky and pale behind layers of clouds. The streets with their gabled houses were damp and windy; and often a kind of soft hail fell, not snow, and not ice.
School was out. Hordes of liberated children were streaming across the paved court out through the iron gate, separating and hurrying off to right and left. Big students held their books pressed with dignity high up against the left shoulder, while with their right arm they steered against the wind towards dinner. The smaller ones dropped into a cheerful trot which made the slush splash about them and set the accoutrements of knowledge to clattering in their sealskin satchels. But occasionally there would be a general pious-eyed doffing of caps before the Odin’s-hat and the Jupiter’s-beard of a gravely advancing professor.
“So you finally came, Hans?” said Tonio Kröger. He had been waiting on the viaduct for a long while; smiling, he approached his friend, who was coming through the gate in conversation with other companions and was just about to go along with them …
“What’s that?” he asked, and looked at Tonio. “Yes, that is so! Let’s walk a bit now.”
Tonio was silent, and his eyes grew sad. Hans had forgotten; it hadn’t occurred to him again until now that they were going to take a little walk together this noontime. And he himself had almost lived in the expectancy of this ever since they had agreed on it.
“Yes, goodbye, you!” Hans Hansen said to his comrades. “I’ll go a little ways with Kröger then,”—and the two turned to the left, while the others shuffled off to the right.
Hans and Tonio had time for a walk after school because they both came from homes where lunch was not served until four o’clock. Their fathers were prominent wholesale merchants who held public offices in the city. For several generations the Hansens had owned the extensive lumber yards down by the river where powerful saws hissed and screeched as they cut into the logs. But Tonio was the son of the Consul Kröger, whose sacks of vegetables with the broad black imprint of the firm could be seen driven through the streets day after day; and the large old house of his forefathers was the most magnificent one in the whole city. … On account of their many acquaintances, the friends had to keep doffing their caps continually, and by many people the two fourteen-year-old boys were even spoken to first.
Both had their schoolbags slung over their shoulders; and both were well and comfortably dressed:
