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The Infant Prodigy
by Thomas Mann （1875-1955）

The infant prodigy entered. The hall became quiet.

It became quiet and then the audience began to clap, because
somewhere at the side a leader of mobs, a born organizer, clapped
first. The audience had heard nothing yet, but they applauded: for a
mighty publicity organization had heralded the prodigy and people
were already hypnotized, whether they knew it or not.

The prodigy came from behind a splendid screen embroidered with
Empire garlands and great conventionalized flowers, and climbed up
nimbly the steps to the platform, diving into the applause as into a
bath; a little chilly and shivering, but yet as though into a
friendly element. He advanced to the edge of the platform and smiled
as though he were about to be photographed; he made a shy, charming
gesture of greeting, like a little girl.

He was dressed entirely in white silk, which the audience found
enchanting. The little white jacket was fancifully cut, with a sash
underneath it, and even his shoes were made of white silk. But
against the white socks his bare little legs stood out quite brown;
for he was a Greek boy.

He was called Bibi Saccellaphylaccas. And such indeed was his name.
No one knew what Bibi was the pet name for, nobody but the
impresario, and he regarded it as a trade secret. Bibi had smooth
black hair reaching to his shoulders; it was parted on the side and
fastened back from the narrow domed forehead by a little silk bow.
His was the most harmless childish countenance in the world, with an
unfinished nose and guileless mouth. The area beneath his pitch-
black mouselike eyes was already a little tired, and visibly lined.
He looked as though he were nine years old but was really eight and
given out for seven. It was hard to tell whether to believe this or
not. Probably everybody knew better and still believed it, as
happens about so many things. The average man thinks that a little
falseness goes with beauty. Where should we get any excitement out
of our daily life if we were not willing to pretend a bit? And the
average man is quite right, in his average brains!

The prodigy kept on bowing until the applause died down, then he
went up to the grand piano, and the audience cast a last look at its
programmes. First came a Marche solonnelle, then a Rêverie, and then
Le Hibou et les moineaux—all by Bibi Saccellaphylaccas. The whole
programme was by him, they were all his compositions. He could not
score them, of course, but he had them all in his extraordinary
little head and they possessed real artistic significance, or so it
said, seriously and objectively, in the programme. The programme
sounded as though the impresario had wrested these concessions from
his critical nature after a hard struggle.

The prodigy sat down upon the revolving stool and felt with his feet
for the pedals, which were raised by means of a clever device so
that Bibi could reach them. It was Bibi’s own piano, he took it
everywhere with him. It rested upon wooden trestles and its polish
was somewhat marred by the constant transportation— but all that
only made things more interesting.

Bibi put his silk-shod feet on the pedals; then he made an artful
little face, looked straight ahead of him, and lifted his right
hand. It was a brown, childish little hand; but the wrist was strong
and unlike a child’s, with well-developed bones.

Bibi made his face for the audience because he was aware that he had
to entertain them a little. But he had his own private enjoyment in
the thing too, an enjoyment which he could never convey to anybody.
It was that prickling delight, that secret shudder of bliss, which
ran through him every time he sat at an open piano—it would always
be with him. And here was the keyboard again, these seven black and
white octaves, among which he had so often lost himself in abysmal
and thrilling adventures—and yet it always looked as clean and
untouched as a newly washed blackboard. This was the realm of music
that lay before him. It lay spread out like an inviting ocean, where
he might plunge in and blissfully swim, where he might let himself
be borne and carried away, where he might go under in night and
storm, yet keep the mastery: control, ordain—he held his right hand
poised in the air.

A breathless stillness reigned in the room—the tense moment before
the first note came ... How would it begin? It began so. And Bibi,
with his index finger, fetched the first note out of the piano, a
quite unexpectedly powerful first note in the middle register, like
a trumpet blast. Others followed, an introduction developed—the
audience relaxed.

The concert was held in the palatial hall of a fashionable first-
class hotel. The walls were covered with mirrors framed in gilded
arabesques, between frescoes of the rosy and fleshly school.
Ornamental columns supported a ceiling that displayed a whole
universe of electric bulbs, in clusters darting a brilliance far
brighter than day and filling the whole space with thin, vibrating
golden light. Not a seat was unoccupied, people were standing in the
side aisles and at the back. The front seats cost twelve marks; for
the impresario believed that anything worth having was worth paying
for. And they were occupied by the best society, for it was in the
upper classes, of course, that the greatest enthusiasm was felt.
There were even some children, with their legs hanging down demurely
from their chairs and their shining eyes staring at their gifted
little white-clad contemporary.

Down in front on the left side sat the prodigy’s mother, an
extremely obese woman with a powdered double chin and a feather on
her head. Beside her was the impresario, a man of oriental
appearance with large gold buttons on his conspicuous cuffs. The
princess was in the middle of the front row—a wrinkled, shrivelled
little old princess but still a patron of the arts, especially
everything full of sensibility. She sat in a deep, velvet
upholstered armchair, and a Persian carpet was spread before her
feet. She held her hands folded over her grey striped-silk breast,
put her head on one side, and presented a picture of elegant
composure as she sat looking up at the performing prodigy. Next to
her sat her lady-in-waiting, in a green striped silk gown. Being
only a lady-in-waiting she had to sit up very straight in her chair.

Bibi ended in a grand climax. With what power this wee manikin
belaboured the keyboard! The audience could scarcely trust its ears.
The march theme, an infectious, swinging tune, broke out once more,
fully harmonized, bold and showy; with every note Bibi flung himself
back from the waist as though he were marching in a triumphal
procession. He ended fortissimo, bent over, slipped sideways off the
stool, and stood with a smile awaiting the applause.

And the applause burst forth, unanimously, enthusiastically; the
child made his demure little maidenly curtsy and people in the front
seat thought: ”Look what slim little hips he has! Clap, clap!
Hurrah, bravo, little chap. Saccophylax or whatever your name is!
Wait, let me take off my gloves—what a little devil of a chap he
is!”

Bibi had to come out three times from behind the screen before they
would stop. Some latecomers entered the hall and moved about looking
for seats. Then the concert continued. Bibi’s Rêverie murmured its
number, consisting almost entirely of arpeggios, above which a bar
of melody rose now and then, weak-winged. Then came Le Hibou et les
moineaux. This piece was brilliantly successful, it made a strong
impression; it was an effective childhood fantasy, remarkably well
envisaged. The bass represented the owl, sitting morosely rolling
his filmy eyes; while in the treble the impudent, half-frightened
sparrows chirped. Bibi received an ovation when he finished, he was
ca1led out four times. A hotel page with shiny buttons carried up
three great laurel wreaths onto the stage and proffered them from
one side while Bibi nodded and expressed his thanks. Even the
princess shared in the applause, daintily and noiselessly pressing
her palms together.

Ah, the knowing little creature understood how to make people clap!
He stopped behind the screen, they had to wait for him; lingered a
little on the steps of the platform, admired the long streamers on
the wreaths—although actually such things bored him stiff by now.
He bowed with the utmost charm, he gave the audience plenty of time
to rave itself out, because applause is valuable and must not be cut
short. ”Le Hibou is my drawing card,” he thought—this expression he
had learned from the impresario. ”Now I will play the fantasy, it is
a lot better than Le Hibou, of course, especially the C-sharp
passage. But you idiots dote on the Hibou, though it is the first
and the silliest thing I wrote.” He continued to bow and smile.

Next came a Méditation and then an Étude—the programme was quite
comprehensive. The Méditation was very like the Rêverie—which was
nothing against it—and the Étude displayed all of Bibi’s
virtuosity, which naturally fell a little short of his
inventiveness. And then the Fantaisie. This was his favourite; he
varied it a little each time, giving himself free rein and sometimes
surprising even himself, on good evenings, by his own inventiveness.

He sat and played, so little, so white and shining, against the
great black grand piano, elect and alone, above that confused sea of
faces, above the heavy, insensitive mass soul, upon which he was
labouring to work with his individual, differentiated soul. His lock
of soft black hair with the white silk bow had fallen over his
forehead, his trained and bony little wrists pounded away, the
muscles stood out visibly on his brown childish cheeks.

Sitting there he sometimes had moments of oblivion and solitude,
when the gaze of his strange little mouselike eyes with the big
rings beneath them would lose itself and stare through the painted
stage into space that was peopled with strange vague life. Then out
of the corner of his eye he would give a quick look back into the
hall and be once more with his audience.

”Joy and pain, the heights and the depths—that is my Fantaisie,” he
thought lovingly. ”Listen, here is the C-sharp passage.” He lingered
over the approach, wondering if they would notice anything. But no,
of course not, how should they? And he cast his eyes up prettily at
the ceiling so that at least they might have something to look at.

All these people sat there in their regular rows, looking at the
prodigy and thinking all sorts of things in their regular brains. An
old gentleman with a white beard, a seal ring on his finger and a
bulbous swelling on his bald spot, a growth if you like, was
thinking to himself: ”Really, one ought to be ashamed.” He had never
got any further than ”Ah, thou dearest Augustin” on the piano, and
here he sat now, a grey old man, looking on while this little hop-o’-
my-thumb performed miracles. Yes, yes, it is a gift of God, we must
remember that. God grants His gifts, or He withholds them, and there
is no shame in being an ordinary man. Like with the Christ Child.—
Before a child one may kneel without feeling ashamed. Strange that
thoughts like these should be so satisfying—he would even say so
sweet, if it was not too silly for a tough old man like him to use
the word. That was how he felt, anyhow.

Art . . . the businessman with the parrot-nose was thinking. ”Yes,
it adds something cheerful to life, a little good white silk and a
little tumty-ti-ti-tum. Really he does not play so badly. Fully
fifty seats, twelve marks apiece, that makes six hundred marks—and
everything else besides. Take off the rent of the hall, the lighting
and the programmes, you must have fully a thousand marks profit.
That is worth while.”

That was Chopin he was playing, thought the piano teacher, a lady
with a pointed nose; she was of an age when the understanding
sharpens as the hopes decay. ”But not very original—I will say that
afterwards, it sounds well. And his hand position is entirely
amateur. One must be able to lay a coin on the back of the hand—I
would use a ruler on him.”

Then there was a young girl, at that self-conscious and chlorotic
time of life when the most ineffable ideas come into the mind. She
was thinking to herself: ”What is it he is playing? It is expressive
of passion, yet he is a child. If he kissed me it would be as though
my little brother kissed me—no kiss at all. Is there such a thing
as passion all by itself, without any earthly object, a sort of
child’s-play passion? What nonsense! If I were to say such things
aloud they would just be at me with some more cod-liver oil. Such is
life.”

An officer was leaning against a column. He looked on at Bibi’s
success and thought: ”Yes, you are something and I am something,
each in his own way.” So he clapped his heels together and paid to
the prodigy the respect which he felt to be due to all the powers
that be.

Then there was a critic, and elderly man in a shiny black coat and
turned-up trousers splashed with mud. He sat in his free seat and
thought: ””Look at him, this young beggar of a Bibi. As an
individual he has still to develop, but as a type he is already
quite complete, the artist par excellence. He has in himself all the
artist’s exaltation and his utter worthlessness, his charlatanry and
his sacred fire, his burning contempt and his secret raptures. Of
course I can’t write all that, it is too good. Of course, I should
have been an artist myself if I had not seen through the whole
business so clearly.”

Then the prodigy stopped playing and a perfect storm arose in the
hall. He had to come out again and again from behind his screen. The
man with the shiny buttons carried up more wreaths: four laurel
wreaths, a lyre made of violets, a bouquet of roses. He had not arms
enough to convey all these tributes, the impresario himself mounted
the stage to help him. He hung a laurel wreath round Bibi’s neck, he
tenderly stroked the black hair—and suddenly as though overcome he
bent down and gave the prodigy a kiss, a resounding kiss, square on
the mouth. And then the storm became a hurricane. That kiss ran
through the room like an electric shock, it went direct to people’s
marrow and made them shiver down their backs. They were carried away
by a helpless compulsion of sheer noise. Loud shouts mingled with
the hysterical clapping of hands. Some of Bibi’s commonplace little
friends down there waved their handkerchiefs. But the critic
thought: ”Of course that kiss had to come—it’s a good old gag. Yes,
good Lord, if only one did not see through everything quite so
clearly—”

And so the concert drew to a close. It began at half past seven and
finished at half past eight. The platform was laden with wreaths and
two little pots of flowers stood on the lamp stands of the piano.
Bibi played as his last number his Rhapsodie grecque, which turned
into the Greek national hymn at the end. His fellow-countrymen in
the audience would gladly have sung it with him if the company had
not been so august. They made up for it with a powerful noise and
hullabaloo, a hot-blooded national demonstration. And the aging
critic was thinking: ”Yes, the hymn had to come too. They have to
exploit every vein—publicity cannot afford to neglect any means to
its end. I think I’ll criticize that as inartistic. But perhaps I am
wrong, perhaps that is the most artistic thing of all. What is the
artist? A jack-in-the-box. Criticism is on a higher plane. But I
can’t say that.” And away he went in his muddy trousers.

After being called out nine or ten times the prodigy did not come
any more from behind the screen but went to his mother and the
impresario down in the hall. The audience stood about among the
chairs and applauded and pressed forward to see Bibi close at hand.
Some of them wanted to see the princess too. Two dense circles
formed, one round the prodigy, the other round the princess, and you
could actually not tell which of them was receiving more homage. But
the court lady was commanded to go over to Bibi; she smoothed down
his silk jacket a bit to make it look suitable for a court function,
led him by the arm to the princess, and solemnly indicated to him
that he was to kiss the royal hand. ”How do you do it, child?” asked
the princess. ”Does it come into your head of itself when you sit
down?” ”Oui, madame,” answered Bibi. To himself he thought: ”Oh,
what a stupid old princess!” Then he turned round shyly and
uncourtierlike and went back to his family.

Outside in the cloak room there was a crowd. People held up their
numbers and received with open arms furs, shawls, and galoshes.
Somewhere among her acquaintances the piano teacher stood making her
critique. ”He is not very original,” she said audibly and looked
about her.

In front of one of the great mirrors an elegant young lady was being
arrayed in her evening cloak and fur shoes by her brothers, two
lieutenants. She was exquisitely beautiful, with her steel-blue eyes
and her clean-cut, well-bred face. A really noble dame. When she was
ready she stood waiting for her brothers. ”Don’t stand so long in
front of the glass, Adolf,” she said softly to one of them, who
could not tear himself away from the sight of his simple, good-
looking young features. But Lieutenant Adolf thinks: What cheek! He
would button his overcoat in front of the glass, just the same. Then
they went out on the street where the arc lights gleamed cloudily
through the white mist. Lieutenant Adolf struck up a little nigger
dance on the frozen snow to keep warm, with his hands in his
slanting overcoat pockets and his collar turned up.

A girl with untidy hair and swinging arms, accompanied by a gloomy-
faced youth, came out just behind them. A child! she thought. A
charming child. But in there he was an awe-inspiring . . . and aloud
in a toneless voice she said: ”We are all infant prodigies, we
artists.”

”Well, bless my soul!” thought the old gentleman who had never got
further than Augustin on the piano, and whose boil was now concealed
by a top hat. ”What does all that mean? She sounds very oracular.”
But the gloomy youth understood. He nodded his head slowly.

Then they were silent and the untidy-haired girl gazed after the
brothers and sister. She rather despised them, but she looked after
them until they had turned the corner.