Postscript from a beach

Professor Aschenbach has sore feet. It has been a hot and humid day and they have become swollen in the much-too-tight sandals. It would have been possible to take a short walk down the to the beach and let the soft waves wash over the red marks the sandals have left on the skin. On the other hand there would have been people down there, offering beadwork and coconuts for sale, pleading and insisting. Not that Aschenbach dislikes people or is shy of conversations with strangers, but today is a hot and humid day and everything feels so heavy and vague. And so she has put her beach towel on one of the sunbeds on the hotel premises that overlook the beach and then the sea which is some forty meters away. She lies down on the sunbed that is under the shade of tall palm trees, without bothering to take her dress of, not even the sandals, and stretches her arms and legs. A body crucified by humidity and heat. She lies down and looks up and sees palm tree leaves moving softly. No coconuts up there, not even small ones. They are removed by a gardener every other day so that they don’t fall on the tourists.