Often during the thirteen years, when his digestion had troubled him, he had dreamed that he was home again in the old echoing house on the steep street, that his father was there too and was hard at him on account of his degenerate manner of living—all of which he had always found quite reasonable. And now this neighbourhood was in no way different from one of those tough, deceiving dream fabrics in which we ask ourselves whether this is delusion or reality, and finally feel compelled to decide definitely for the latter only to awaken in the end. … He went through the draughty, almost deserted streets, held his head bent against the wind, and walked like a somnambulist in the direction of the hotel, the first in the city, where he was to pass the night. A bowlegged man, carrying a pole with a little flame at one end, was walking with a rolling sailor’s stride in front of him and lighting the gas lamps.
What was the matter with him? What was all this which, beneath the ashes of his weariness, without breaking in a clear flame, glowed so sombrely and painfully? Silent, silent, and no word! No speech! He would gladly have gone on this way for a long while, in the wind through these twilit, dreamily familiar streets. But everything huddled so narrow and close; one soon reached his destination.
In the upper city there were arc lamps, and they were already lit. There was the hotel, and those were the two black lions which lay in front of it and which he had been afraid of as a child. They were still looking at each other, with an expression as though they were going to sneeze. But they seemed to be much smaller than formerly. Tonio Kröger entered between them.
Since he came on foot, he was received without much ceremony. He was met by the porter and an elegant gentleman in black who did the honours and was always shooting his cuffs back into his sleeves with his little fingers; they eyed him critically and appraisingly from head to foot, visibly struggling to form some idea of him socially, to place him in the bourgeois hierarchy and assign him some notch in their respect. Yet they did not come to any satisfactory conclusion, so that they finally decided on a moderate politeness for him. A waiter, a mild man with whiskers as blond as bread, a swallowtail coat shiny with age, and rosettes on his noiseless shoes, led him up two flights into a clean, old-fashioned room. Beyond the window, in the twilight, he saw spread out the picturesque and medieval view of courts, gables, and the bizarre pile of the church near which the hotel was located. Tonio Kröger stood awhile before this window; then he sat down with folded arms on the expansive sofa, knitted his brows, and whistled to himself.
A light was brought, and his baggage arrived. At the same time the waiter laid the register on the table, and Tonio Kröger, with his head bent sideways, put down something on it which looked like his name, vocation, and residence. Then he ordered a light supper, and continued looking out into the open from his sofa corner. When his meal stood in front of him, he left it for a while untouched, finally took a few bites, and walked up and down the room for another hour, occasionally stopping and closing his eyes. Then he undressed slowly, and went to bed. He had a long sleep, with confused and strangely wistful dreams.
When he awoke, he saw his room filled with bright daylight. He was bewildered, and thought hurriedly where he was; and he arose to open the curtains. The slightly pale late-summer blue of the sky was streaked with strips of cloud torn by the wind; but the sun was shining on his native city.
He gave even more care to his toilet than usual, washed and shaved himself with extra thoroughness, and made himself as fresh and clean as though he were preparing for a visit to some good, correct house where he was supposed to make a tidy blameless impression. And during the operations of dressing he listened to the anxious beating of his heart.
How bright it was out there! He should have felt better if, like yesterday, the streets had lain in twilight. But now he should have to go through the clear sunlight under people’s eyes. Would he run across acquaintances, be stopped, questioned, and have to account for how he had spent these thirteen years? No, thank God, no one knew him any longer; and whoever remembered him would not recognize him, for he had really changed a little in the meantime. He observed himself attentively in the mirror, and suddenly he felt safer behind his mask, behind this face of his which showed the signs of early strain and looked older than his years. … He had breakfast brought in, and then went out, beneath the deprecatory glances of the porter and the elegant gentleman in black, through the vestibule, and between the two lions, out into the open.
Where was he going? He hardly knew. It was like yesterday. It was not so much that he saw himself surrounded again by this wonderfully dignified and old, familiar juxtaposition of gables, towers, arcades, wells; not so much that he felt again in his face the pressure of the wind, the strong wind which brought with it a sharp delicate fragrance from disstant dreams; as that his senses seemed obscured as by a veil, a blanket of fog … The muscles of his face relaxed; and he observed people and things more quietly. Yet perhaps, there on
