II
Blonde Inge, Ingeborg Holm, the daughter of Dr. Holm who lived near the market, there where the Gothic well stood high, complex, and pointed—she it was whom Tonio Kröger loved when he was sixteen years old.
How did it happen? He had seen her thousands of times; yet one evening he saw her in a certain light, saw how, while talking with a girl friend, she laughingly tossed her head to one side with a kind of insolence, touched the back of her head with a not especially slender, not especially delicate girlish hand, so that the white gauze sleeve slipped back from her elbow, heard how she stressed a word, an unimportant word, in a certain way, which gave a warm resonance to her voice—and a thrill went through him, much stronger than he used to feel at times when he looked at Hans Hansen, in those days when he was a little stupid boy.
On this evening he carried away her image, with the thick blond plait, the narrow laughing blue eyes, and the delicate hint of freckles above the bridge of her nose. He could not go to sleep, because he heard the resonance in her voice; he tried softly to imitate the stress with which she had spoken the unimportant word, and he was horrified at the result. Experience taught him that this was love. He well knew that love would bring him much pain, distress, and humiliation, that it would, further, disturb his peace and fill the heart with melodies without allowing a person enough respite to round things out and calmly mould them into something solid; yet he accepted it with joy, yielded to it completely, nourished it wholeheartedly, for he knew that it makes rich and vital, and he yearned to be rich and vital, instead of rounding things out at his leisure.
This conquest of Tonio by the cheerful Inge Holm took place in the spacious salon of the Frau Consul Husteede, whose turn it was this evening to give the dancing-lesson. For it was a private course, and only members of the leading families took part, gathering in their parents’ houses consecutively in order to receive instruction in dancing and decorum. But expressly for this purpose dancing-master Knaak came here once a week from Hamburg.
François Knaak was his name, and what a man he was! “J’ai l’honneur de me vous représenter,” he said. “Mon nom est Knaak. … And you don’t say this while bowing, but not until you are standing erect again—in a subdued tone, and yet clear. You are not always in a situation where you must introduce yourself in French, but if you can do it correctly and faultlessly in this language, then you won’t slip when it comes to German.” How wonderfully the black silk frock-coat clung to his fat hips! His trousers fell in soft folds down over his patent-leather shoes, which were ornamented with broad satin rosettes; and his brown eyes looked around with a resigned happiness upon their own beauty.
Everyone was awed by his wealth of sureness and propriety. He walked—and no one walked like him, elastic, undulating, swaying, royal—up to the mistress of the house, bowed, and waited for her hand to be extended to him. He received it, spoke his thanks softly, stepped back jauntily, turned on his left foot, speedily lifted the right with its compressed tip from the floor, and stepped away with shaking hips. …
You went backwards, and out through the door amid bowings if you were taking leave of company; you never pulled up a chair by grabbing it by one leg and sliding it along the floor, but you carried it lightly by the back and set it down noiselessly. You didn’t stand around with your hands folded across your stomach and your tongue stuck in one corner of your mouth; but if you did so, then Herr Knaak had a way of doing it after you, so that you would detest this position for the rest of your life.
That was decorum! But as to the dance, Herr Knaak was even more masterly here, if possible. In the spacious salon the gas flame burned in the chandelier, and the candles on the mantelpiece. The floor was strewn with talcum, and the students stood about in a silent semicircle. But beyond the portieres, in the adjoining room, the mothers and aunts were sitting on plush chairs and observing Herr Knaak through their lorgnettes, how he bent over, holding each lapel of his frock-coat with two fingers, and demonstrated the successive steps in the mazurka with quivering legs. But if he intended to dumbfound his public completely, he would suddenly and without provocation leap from the floor, spin his legs around in the air with bewildering swiftness, and fairly twinkle with same, whereupon with a thump which was subdued but yet shook everything in its firmness, he returned to this earth. …
“What an incredible ass!” Tonio thought deep down to himself. But he saw plainly that Inge Holm, cheerful Inge, often followed Herr Knaak’s movements with an unconscious smile, and this was not the only reason why all this marvellously piloted fleshiness wrung from him something like astonishment. How peacefully, how well beyond confusion, Herr Knaak’s eyes looked at things! They did not penetrate to those depths where things became complicated and sad; they knew nothing except that they were brown and beautiful. But for that reason his bearing was so proud! Yes, a person must be stupid to be able to
