“I have to go to town,” Jimmerthal said, “and see about something. But I will go along a little piece with you two. That must be fruit candy you have there? Yes, thanks, I’ll take some. Tomorrow we have another lesson, Hans.” The riding-lesson was meant.
“Great!” Hans said. “Do you know, I am getting leather leggings now, because I just got the high mark in drill.”
“You don’t have any riding-lessons, do you, Kröger?” Jimmerthal asked, and his eyes were nothing but two white slits.
“No,” Tonio answered hesitatingly.
“You should ask your father,” Hans Hansen observed, “to let you take lessons too, Kröger.”
“Yes,” Tonio said, hastily and indifferently. For a moment he felt a lump in his throat, because Hans had called him by his last name. And Hans seemed to feel this, for he said in explanation:
“I call you Kröger because your first name is so crazy. You won’t mind, will you? but I can’t stand it. … That is really no name at all. Still, you can’t help yourself any!”
“No, you have that name mainly because it sounds foreign and is unusual,” Jimmerthal said, and acted as though he had intended to make everything all right.
Tonio’s mouth twitched. He pulled himself together and said:
“Yes, it is a stupid name; God knows I’d rather be called Heinrich or Wilhelm, you can be sure of that. But it comes from the fact that I was named after one of my mother’s brothers who is called Tonio; for my mother comes from down south.”
Then he was silent and let the two of them discuss horses and harness. Hans had taken Jimmerthal by the arm and talked with a fluent sympathy which could never have been aroused in him for Don Carlos. … From time to time Tonio felt his nose prickling with the desire to cry. Also he had difficulty in keeping his chin under control, for it continually threatened to tremble.
Hans could not stand his name—what was to be done? He himself was called Hans, and Jimmerthal was called Erwin; good, they were commonly known names which nobody resented. But “Tonio” was something foreign and unusual. Yes, in every way there was always something unusual about him, whether he wanted it or not—and he was alone and shut out from the regular and the ordinary, although he was certainly no gipsy in the green wagon, but a son of Consul Kröger, from the Kröger family. … But why did Hans call him Tonio so long as they were alone, if, when a third person came up, he began to be ashamed of him? At times he was near him and won over to him, that was true. “Just how does he betray him, Tonio?” he had asked, and taken him by the arm. But when Jimmerthal had arrived, he had breathed easier nevertheless, had abandoned him and had gone out of his road to complain about his foreign Christian name. How sad it was to have to see through all this! … At bottom Hans Hansen cared for him a bit when they were alone; he knew it. But when a third person came, then he was ashamed of him and threw him over. And he was alone again. He thought of King Philip. The king had cried.
“Oh, Lord!” Erwin Jimmerthal said. “But now I must really go back to town. Goodbye, you two, and thanks for the fruit candy!” Then he leaped to a bench standing by the road, ran along it with his bowed legs, and went trotting away.
“Jimmerthal is not bad!” Hans said emphatically. He had a pampered and self-conscious way of announcing his sympathies and dislikes by passing judgment like a sovereign. … And then he continued talking about the riding-lesson because he was already started. And it wasn’t so far now to the Hansens’ home. The road across the walls did not require so much time. They held on to their caps and bent their heads before the strong damp wind which moaned and whistled in the bare branches of the trees. And Hans Hansen talked, while Tonio simply put in now and then an artificial “Oh” and “Yes, yes,” without any pleasure in the fact that in the excitement of his conversation Hans had taken his arm again; for that was simply an apparent intimacy, without significance.
Then they left the wall near the railroad station, watched a train puffing by in clumsy hastiness, counted the cars for a pastime, and waved at the man who was sitting in the rear of the very last one, muffled up in his fur coat. And on the Lindenplatz, in front of the wholesaler Hansen’s villa, they stopped; and Hans demonstrated minutely how amusing it is to hang on the garden gate and swing back and forth on the hinges until they creaked. And then he said that he must leave.
“Yes, I have to go in,” he said. “Goodbye, Tonio. The next time I’ll go home with you for sure.”
“Goodbye, Hans,” Tonio said. “It was nice to go for a walk.”
Their hands which pressed each other were all wet and rusty from the garden gate. But when Hans looked into Tonio’s eyes, something like remorse showed in his pretty face.
“Anyhow, I’ll read Don Carlos soon,” he said hurriedly. “That about the king in the cabinet must be great!” Then he put his schoolbag under his arm and ran through the front garden. Before disappearing in the house, he nodded back once more.
And Tonio Kröger went away from there winged and transfigured. The wind bore him along from behind; but that was not the only reason that he left so lightly.
Hans would read Don Carlos, and they would have something in common, which neither Jimmerthal nor anyone else could discuss with them! How well they understood each other! Who could tell—perhaps he could even bring him to the point of writing verses? … No, no, he didn’t want that! Hans should not become like Tonio, but remain
