Page:German Classics of The 19h and 20th C. Vol.19.djvu/316

 through the verandah and down on to the shore again, where he had already spent long morning hours.

Sometimes it was quiet and summerlike there. The sea would rest lazily and smoothly, in blue, bottle-green, and reddish streaks, with silvery, glittering reflections playing over it, while the seaweed dried into hay in the sunshine, and the jelly-fish lay there and evaporated. It smelled a little of decay and also of the pitch of the fishing-boat against which Tonio Kroger leaned his back as he sat on the sand, turning so as to have the open horizon and not the Swedish coast before his eyes; but the light breath of the sea floated pure and fresh over everything.

And gray, stormy days came. The waves bowed their heads like steers lowering their horns to butt, and rushed furiously against the strand, which was flooded to a great height and covered with shining sea-grass, shells, and driftwood. Between the long lines of wave-crests the pale green, foam-flecked troughs extended under the lowering sky; but yonder where the sun hung behind the clouds, a whitish velvet sheen lay on the waters.

Tonio Kröger stood enveloped by wind and clamor, lost in this eternal, ponderous, deafening roar that he loved so much. If he turned and went away, on a sudden it seemed quite still and warm about him. But at his back, he knew, was the sea; it called him, enticed him, spoke to him. And he would smile.

He would go inland through the solitude along meadow paths, and soon birch woods would receive him, extending far over the rolling country. He would sit down in the moss and lean against a tree from which he could see a patch of ocean between the trunks. At times the wind would carry to him the noise of the surf, like distant boards falling on each other. The caw of crows above the tree-tops, hoarse, desolate, forlorn &hellip; He had a book on his knees, but he read not a line in it. He was enjoying a deep oblivion, a floating in perfect freedom over space and time; and only occasionally did it seem as if some pain quivered