Death in Venice and Other Stories by Thomas Mann

treated me differently than usual, either me or our child, when we arrived, that’s just the crowning touch to your contemptible audacity. She may not have kissed the little one, but that was for safety’s sake. Recently the theory has been advanced that it’s not the trachea but the lungs, and you can never tell in that case . . . although it’s yet to be proven, that it is the lungs, and you, with your ‘she’s dying, dear sir,’ you’re an ass!”
    Here Mr. Klöterjahn tried to bring his breathing under control. He had worked himself into a rage, repeatedly stabbing the air with his right index finger and punching most violently at the manuscript in his left hand. A terrible redness of face had spread between his blond English-style whiskers, and swollen veins ran across his protruding forehead like angry lightning bolts.
    â€œYou hate me,” he went on, “and would despise me if I weren’t the stronger of us . . . Yes, I am that, damn it all. I’ve got heart, heart in the right place, while yours is no doubt in your pants, and I would wipe the floor with you and your ‘imagination and words,’ you treacherous imbecile, if it weren’t forbidden by law. But that doesn’t mean, dear fellow, that I am simply going to swallow your insults lying down, and when I show my lawyerback home that part about my ‘vulgar name,’ we’ll see if you know what’s hit you. I have a good name, sir, and I’ve earned it. I leave you to ask yourself whether anyone would give you a plugged nickel for yours, you rotten little interloper! Legal means are the only recourse against you! You’re a menace to society! You cloud people’s minds! . . . Though don’t imagine that you’ve succeeded this time, you insidious upstart! I’m not going to let myself be pushed aside by someone like you. I’ve got heart . . .”
    Mr. Klöterjahn had now really lost control of his temper. He was shouting, saying repeatedly that he had heart . . .
    â€œ ‘They were singing.’ Period. They weren’t singing at all! They were knitting! What’s more, they were talking, as far I could tell, about a recipe for potato pancakes, and if I show my father-in-law what you write about ‘decline’ and ‘dissolution,’ he’ll lodge his own complaint against you, you can bank on that! . . . ‘Did you see the scene, did you see it?’ Of course I saw it, but I fail to understand why I should have held my breath and run away. I don’t just steal a glance when I meet women. I look them in the face, and if I like them and they want me, I take them for my own. I’ve got h . . .”
    Someone knocked—knocked nine or ten times in very rapid succession on the front door, raising an urgent, frightened little commotion that cut off Mr. Klöterjahn’s tirade. A voice, completely beside itself, stumbling with panic, said in great haste:
    â€œMr. Klöterjahn, Mr. Klöterjahn, oh, is Mr. Klöterjahn there?”
    â€œDon’t come in,” said Mr. Klöterjahn brusquely . . . “What is it? I’m busy here.”
    â€œMr. Klöterjahn,” said the trembling, faltering voice. “You must come . . . the doctors are there too . . . oh it’s so terribly sad . . .”
    He reached the door in a single step and tore it open. Mrs. Spatz, the magistrate’s wife, was standing outside. She held her handkerchief to her mouth, and two sets of large, elongated tears rolled down into it.
    â€œMr. Klöterjahn,” she blurted out, “. . . it’s so terribly sad . . . She coughed up so much blood, it was terrible . . . she lay there very still in her bed and hummed some music, and then it came, dear God, such an incredible amount . . .”
    â€œIs