Buddenbrooks (22 page)

CHAPTER II

IN the beginning of February, 1856, after eight years' ab-sence, Christian Buddenbrook returned to the home of his fathers. He arrived in the post-coach from Hamburg, wearing a yellow suit with a pattern of large checks, that had a distinctly exotic look. He brought the bill of a swordfish and a great sugar-cane, and received the embraces of his mother with a half-embarrassed, half absent air. He wore the same air when, on the next afternoon after his arrival, the family went to the cemetery outside the Castle Gate to lay a wreath on the grave. They stood together on the snowy path in front of the large tablet on which were the names of those resting there, surrounding the family arms cut in the stone. Before them was the upright marble cross that stood at the edge of the bare little churchyard grove. They were all there except Clothilde, who was at Thankless, nursing her ailing father. Tony laid the wreath on the tablet, where her father's name stood on the stone in fresh gold letters: then, despite the snow, she knelt down by the grave to pray. Her black veil played about her, and her full skirt lay spread out in picturesque folds. God alone knew hew much grief and religious emotion--and, on the other hand, how much of a pretty woman's self-conscious pleasure--there was in the bowed at-titude. Thomas was not in the mood to think about it. But Christian looked sidewise at his sister with a mixture of mockery and misgiving, as if to say: "Can you really carry that off? Shan't you feel silly when you ^et up? How un-comfortable!" Tony caught this look as she rose, but she was not in the least put out. She tossed her head back, arranged 259 her veil and skirt, and turned with dignified assurance to go; whereupon Christian was obviously relieved. The deceased Consul's fanatical love of Cod and of the Saviour had been an emotion foreign to his forebears, who never cherished other than the normal, every-day sentiments proper to good citizens. The two living Buddenbrooks had in their turn their own idiosyncrasies. One of these appeared to be a nervous distaste for the expression of feeling. Thomas had certainly felt the death of his father with painful acute-ness, much as his grandfather had felt the loss of his. But he could not sink on his knees by his grave. He had never, like his sister Tony, flung himself across the table sobbing like a child; and he shrank from hearing the heart-broken words in which Madame Gr�, from roast to dessert, loved to celebrate the character and person of her dead father. Such outbursts he met with composed silence or a reserved nod. And yet, when nobody had mentioned or was thinking of the dead, it would be just then that his eyes would fill with slow tears, although his facial expression remained un-changed. It was different with Christian. He unfortunately did not succeed in preserving his composure at the nai've and childish outpourings of his sister. He bent over his plate, turned his head away, and looked as though he wanted to sink through the floor; and several times he interrupted her with a low, tormented "Good Cod, Tony!" his large nose screwed into countless tiny wrinkles. In fact, he showed disquiet and embarrassment whenever the conversation turned to the dead. It seemed as though he feared and avoided not only the indelicate expression of deep and solemn feeling, but even the feeling itself. No one had seen him shed a tear over the death of his father; and his long absence alone hardly explained this fact. A more remarkable thing, however, was that he took his sister Tony aside again and again to hear in vivid detail the events BUDDENBROOK5 of that fatal afternoon; for Madame Griinlkh had a gift of lively narration. "He looked yellow?" he asked for the fifth time. "What was it the girl shrieked when she came running in to you? He looked quite yellow, and died without saying another word? What did the girl say? What sort of sound was it he made?" Then he would be silent--silent a long time--while his small deep-set eyes travelled round the room in thought. "Horrible," he said suddenly, and a visible shudder ran over him as he got up. He would walk up and down with the same unquiet and brooding eyes. Madame Gr� felt astonished to see that her brother, who for some unknown reason was so embarrassed when she bewailed her father aloud, liked to reproduce with a sort of dreadful relish the dying efforts to speak which he had inquired about in detail of Lina the maid-servant. Christian had certainly not grown better looking. He was lean and pallid. The skin was stretched over his skull very tightly; his large nose, with a distinct hump, stuck out flesh-less and sharp between his cheek-bones, and his hair was al-ready noticeably scantier. His neck was too thin and long and his lean legs decidedly bowed. His London period seemed to have made a lasting impression upon him. In Valparaiso, too, he had mostly associated with Englishmen; and his whole appearance had something English about it which somehow seemed rather appropriate. It was partly the comfortable cut and durable wool material of his clothing, the broad, solid elegance of his boots, his crotchety expression, and the way in which his red-blond moustache drooped over his mouth. Even his hands had an English look: they were a dull porous white from the hot climate, with round, clean, short-trimmed nails. "Tell me," he said, abruptly, "do you know that feeling--it is hard to describe--when you swallow something hard, the 261 BUDDENBR DDKS wrong way, and it hurts all the way down your spine?" Hia whole nose wrinkled as he spoke. "Yes," said Tony; "that is quite common. You take a drink of water--" "Oh," he said in a dissatisfied tone. "No, I don't think we mean the same thing." And a restless look floated across his face. He was the first one in the house to shake off his mourning and re-assume a natural attitude. He had not lost the art of imitating the deceased Marcellus Stengel, and he often spoke for hours in his voice. At the table he asked about the thea-tre--if there were a good company and what they were giving. "I don't know," said Tom, with a tone that was exagger-atedly indifferent, in order not to seem irritated. "I haven't noticed lately." But Christian missed this altogether and went on to talk about the theatre. "I am too happy for words in the theatre. Even the word 'theatre' makes me feel happy. I don't know whether any of you have that feeling. I could sit for hours and just look at the curtain. I feel as I used ID when I was a child and we went in to the Christmas party her?. Even the sound of the orchestra beforehand! I would go if only to hear that and nothing more. I like the love scenes best. Some of the heroines have such a fetching way of taking their lovers' heads between their hands. But the actors--in London and Valparaiso I have known a lot of actors. At fiist I was very proud to pet to know them in ordinary life. In the theatre I watched their every movement. It is fascinating. One of them says his last speech and turns around quietly and goes deliberately, without the least embarrassment, to the door, although he knows that the eyes of the whole audience are on his back. How can he do that? I used to be con-tinually thinking about going behind the scenes. But now I am pretty much at home there, I must say. Imagine: once, in an operetta--it was in London--the curtain went up one eve-ning when I was on the stage! I was talking with Miss Waler- house, a very pretty girl. Well, suddenly there was the whole audience! Good Lord, I don't know how I got off the stage." Madame Gr� was the only one who laughed, to speak of, in the circle round the table. But Christian went on, his eyes wandering back and forth. He talked about English cafe-chantant singers; about an actress who came on in pow-dered wig, and knocked with a long cane on the ground and sang a song called: "That's Maria." "Maria, you know--Maria is the most scandalous of the lot, When somebody does something perfectly shocking, why--'that's Maria'--the bad lot, you know--utterly depraved!" He said this last with a frighlful expression and raised his right hand with the fingers formed into a ring. "Assez,. Christian,". said the Frau Consul. "That does not interest us in the least." But Christian's gaze flickered absently over her head; he would probably have stopped without her suggestion, for he seemed to be sunk in a profound, disquieting dream of Maria and her depravity, while his little round deep eyes wandered back and forth. Suddenly he said: "Strange--sometimes I can't swallow. Dh, it's no joke. I find it very serious. It enters my head that perhaps I can't swallow, and then all of a sudden I can't. The food is already swallowed, but the muscles--right here--they simply refuse. It isn't a question of will-power. Or rather, the thing is, I don't dare really will it." Tony cried out, quite beside herself: "Christian! Good Lord, what nonsense! You don't dare to make up your mind to swallow! What are you talking about? You are absurd!" Thomas was silent. But the Frau Consul said: "That is nerves, Christian. Yes, it was high time you came home; the climate over there would have killed you In the end." After the meal Christian sat down.at the little harmonium that stood in the dining-room and imitated a piano virtuoso. He pretended to toss back his hair, rubbed his hands, and looked around the room; then, without a sound, without 263 touching the bellows--for he could not play in the least, and was entirely unmusical, like all the Buddenbrooks--he bent quite over and began to belabour the bass, played unbeliev-able passages, threw himself back, looked in ecstasy at the ceiling, and banged the key-board in a triumphant finale. Even Clara burst out laughing. The illusion was convincing; full of assurance and charlatanry and irresistible comicality of the burlesque, eccentric English-American kind; so certain of its own effect that the result was not in the least unpleasant. "I have gone a great deal to concerts," he said. "I like to watch how the people behave with their instruments. It is really beautiful to be an artist." Then he began to play again, but broke off suddenly and became serious, as though a mask had fallen over his features. He got up, ran his hand through his scanty hair, moved away, and stood silent, obviously fallen into a bad mood, with un-quiet eyes and an expression as though he were listening to some kind of uncanny noise. "Sometimes I find Christian a little strange," said Madame Griinliuh to her brother Thomas,. one evening, when they were alone. "He talks so, somehow. He goes so unnaturally into detail, seems to me--or what shall I say? He looks at things in such a strange way; don't you think so?" "Yes," said Tom, "I understand what you mean very well, Tony. Christian is very incautious--undignified--it is diffi-cult to express what I mean. Something is lacking in him--what people call equilibrium, mental poise. On the one hand, he does not know how to keep his countenance when other people make naive or tactless remarks--he does not under-stand how to cover it up, and he just loses his self-possession altogether. But the same thing happens when he begins to be garrulous himself, in the unpleasant way he has, and tells his most intimate thoughts. It gives one such an uncanny feeling--it ia just the way people speak in a fever, isn't it? Self-control and personal reserve are both lacking in the same way. Oh, the thing is quite simple: Christian busies himself too much with himself, with what goes on in his own insides. Sometimes he has a regular mania for bringing out the deepest and the pettiest of these experiences--things a reasonable man does not trouble himself about or even want to know about, for the simple reason that he would not like to tell them to any one else. There is such a lack of modesty in so much communicativeness. You see, Tony, anybody, except Christian, may say that he loves the theatre. But he would say it in a different tone, more en passant, more modestly, in short. Christian says it in a tone that says: 'Is not my passion for the stage something very marvellous and interesting?' He struggles, he behaves as if he were really wrestling to express something supremely delicate and difficult." "I'll tell you," he went on after a pause, throwing his cig-arette through the wrought-iron lattice into the stove: "I have thought a great deal about this curious and useless self-prroccupation, because I had once an inclination to it myself. But I observed that it made me unsteady, hare-brained, and in-capable--and control, equilibrium, is, at least for me, the im-portant thing. There will always be men who are Justified in this interest in themselves, this detailed observation of their own emotions; poets who can express with clarity and beauty their privileged inner life, and thereby enrich the emotional world of other people. But the likes of us are simple mer-chants, my child; our self-observations are decidedly inconsid-erable. We can sometimes go so far as to say that the sound of orchestra instruments gives us unspeakable pleasure, and that we sometimes do not dare try to swallow--but it would be much better, deuce take it, if we sat down and accomplished something, as our fathers did before us." "Yes, Tom, you express my views exactly. When I think of the airs those Hagenstroms put on--oh, Heavens, what truck! Mother doesn't like the words I use, but I find they are the only right ones. Do you suppose they think they are the only good family in town? I have to laugh, you know; I really do." 265 CHAPTER III THE head of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook had measured his brother on his arrival with a long, scrutinizing gaze. He had given him passing and unobtrusive observation during several days; and then, though he did not allow any sign of his opinion to appear upon his calm and discreet face, his curi-osity was satisfied, his mind made up. He talked with him in the family circle in a casual tone on casual subjects and enjoyed himself like the others when Christian gave a per-formance. A week later he said to him: "Well, shall we work together, young man? So far as I know, you consent to Mamma's wish, do you not? As you know, Marcus has become my partner, in proportion to the quota he has paid in. I should think that, as my brother, you could ostensibly take the place he had--that of confidential clerk. What your work would be--I do not know how much mercantile experi-ence you have really had. You have been loafing a bit, so far--am I right? Well, in any case, the English correspond-ence will suit you. But I must beg one thing of you, my dear chap. In your position as brother of the head of the house, you will actually have a superior position to the others; but I do not need to tell you that you will impress them far more by behaving like their equal and doing your duty, than you will by making
use of privileges and taking liberties. Are you willing to keep office hours and observe appearances?" And then he made a proposal in respect of salary, which Christian accepted without consideration, with an embarrassed and inattentive face that betrayed very little love of gain and a great zeal to settle the matter quickly. Next day Thomas led him into the office; and Christian's labours for the old firm began. The business had taken its uninterrupted and solid course after the Consul's death. But soon after Thomas Bud den-brook seized the reins, a fresher and more enterprising spirit began to be noticeable in the management. Risks were taken now and then. The credit of the house, formerly a conception, a theory, a luxury, was consciously strained and utilized. The gentlemen on 'Change nodded at each other. "Buddcnbrook wants to make money with both hands," they said. They thought it was a good thing that Thomas had to carry the upright Friederich Wilhelm Marcus along with him, like a ball and chain on his foot. Herr Marcus' influence was the conservative force in the business. He stroked his mous-tache with his two fingers, punctiliously arranged his writing materials and glass. of water on his desk, looked at everything on botli sides and top and bottom; and, five or six times in the day, would go out through the courtyard into the wash-kitchen and hold his head under the tap to refresh himself. "They complement each other," said the heads of the great houses to each other; Consul Heneus said it to Consul Kisten-maker. The small families echoed them; and the dockyard and warehouse hands repeated the same opinion. The whole town was interested in the way young Buddenbrook would "take hold." Herr Stuht in Bell Founders' Street would say to his-wife, who knew the best families: "They balance each other, you see." But the personality of the business was plainly the younger partner. He knew how to handle the personnel, the ship-captains, the heads in the warehouse offices, the drivers and the yard hands. He could speak their language with ease and yet keep a distance between himself and them. But when Herr Marcus spoke in dialect to some faithful servant it sounded so outlandish that his partner would simply begin to laugh, and the whole office would dissolve in merriment. Thomas Buddenbrook's desire to protect and increase the 267 prestige of the old firm made him love to be present in the daily struggle for success. He well knew that his assured and elegant bearing, his tact and winning manners were re-sponsible for a great deal of good trade, "A business man cannot be a bureaucrat," he said ID Stephan Kistenmaker, of Kistenmaker and Sons, his former school-fellow. He had remained the oracle of this old playmate, who listened to his every word in order to give it out later as his own. "It takes personality--that is my view. I don't think any great success is to be had from the office alone--at least, I shouldn't care for it. I always want to direct the course of things on the spot, with a look, a word, a gesture--to govern it with the immediate influence of my will and my talent--my luck, as you call it. But, unfortunately, personal contact is going out of fashion. The times move on, but it seems to me they leave the best behind. Relations are easier and easier; the connections better and better; the risk gets smaller--but the profits do too. Yes, the old people were better off. My grandfather, for example--he drove in a four-horse coach to Southern Germany, as commissary to the Prussian army--an old man in pumps, with his head powdered. And there he played his charms and his talents and made an astonishing amount of money, Kistenmaker. Oh, I'm afraid the merchant's life will get duller and duller as time goes on." It was feelings like these that made him relish most the trade he came by through his own personal efforts. Some-times, entirely by accident, perhaps on a walk with the family, he would go into a mill for a chat with the miller, who would feel himself much honoured by the visit; and quite en passant, in the best of moods, he would conclude a good bargain. His partner was incapable of that sort of thing. As for Christian, he seemed at first to devote himself to his task with real zest and enjoyment, and to feel exceptionally well and contented. For several days he ate with appetite, smoked his short pipe, and squared his shoulders in the English jacket, giving expression to his sense of ease and well-being. In the morning he went to the office at about the same time as Thomas, and sat opposite his brother and Herr Marcus in a revolving arm-chair like theirs. First he read the paper, while he comfortably smoked his morning cigarette. Then he would fetch out an old cognac from his bottom desk drawer, stretch out his arms in order to feel himself free to move, say "Well!" and go to work good-naturrdly, his tongue roving about among his teeth. His English letters were extraordinarily able and effective, for he wrote English as he spoke it, simply and fluently, without effort. He gave expression to his mood in his own way in the family circle. "Business is really a fine, gratifying calling," he said. "Respectable, satisfying, industrious, comfortable. I was really born to it--fact! And as a member of the house!--well, I've never felt so good before. You come fresh into the office in the morning, and look through the paper, smoke, think about this and that, take some cognac, and then go to work. Comes midday; you eat with your family, take a rest, then to work again. You write, on smooth, good busi-ness paper, with a good pen, rule, paper-knife, stamp--everything first-class and all in order. You keep at it, get things done one after the other, and finish up. To-morrow is another day. When you go home to supper, you feel thoroughly satisfied--satisfied in every limb. Even your hands--" "Heavens, Christian," cried Tony. "What rubbish! How can your hands feel satisfied?" "Why, yes, of course--can't you understand that? I mean--" he made a painstaking effort to express and ex-plain. "You can shut your fist, you see. You don't make a violent effort, of course, because you are tired from your work. But it nn't flabby; it doesn't make yon feel irritable .269 You have a sense of satisfaction in it; you feel easy and comfortable--you can sit quite still without feeling bored." Every one was silent. Then Thomas said in a casual tone, so as not to show that he disagreed: "It seems to me that one doesn't work for the sake of--" He broke off and did not continue. "At least, I have different reasons," he added after a minute. But Christian did not hear. His eyes roamed about, sunk in thought; and he soon began to tell a story of Valparaiso, a tale of assault and murder of which he had personal knowledge. 'Then the fellow ripped out his knife--" For some reason Thomas never applauded these tales. Christian was full of them, and Madame Criinlich found them vastly entertaining. The Frau Consul, Clara, and Clothilde sat aghast, and Mams ell Jungmann and Erica listened with their mouths open. Thomas used to make cool sarcastic comments and act as if he thought Christian was exaggerating or hoaxing--which was certainly not the case. He narrated with colour and vividness. Perhaps Thomas found unpleasant the reflection that his younger brother had been about and seen more of the world than he! Or were his feelings of repulsion due to the glorification of disorder, the exotic violence of these knife- and revolver-tales? Chris-tian certainly did not trouble himself over his brother's failure to appreciate his stories. He was always too much absorbed in his narrative to notice its success or lack of success with his audience, and when he had finished he would look pensively or absently about the room. But if in time the relations between the two brothers came to be not of the best, Christian was not the one who thought of showing or feeling any animosity against his brother. He silently took for granted the pre-eminence of his elder, his superior capacity, earnestness, and respectability. But pre-cisely this casual, indiscriminate acknowledgment irritated Thomas, for it had the appearance of setting no value upon superior capacity, earnestness, or respectability. Christian appeared not to notice the growing dislike of the head of the firm. Thomas's feelings were indeed quite justi-fiable; for unfortunately Christian's zeal for business visibly decreased, even after the first week, though more after the second. His little preparations for work, which, in the be-ginning, wore the air of a prolonged and refined anticipation: the reading of the paper, the after-breakfast cigarette, the cognac, began to take more and more time, and finally used up the whole morning. It gradually came about that Chris-tian freed himself largely from the constraint of office hours. He appeared later and later with his breakfast cigarette to begin his preparations for work; he went at midday to eat at the Club, and came back late or not at all. This Club, to which mostly unmarried business men be-longed, occupied comfortable rooms in the first story of a restaurant, where one could eat and meet in unrestrained and sometimes not altogether harmless conversation--for there was a roulette table. Even some of the more light-minded fathers of families, like Justus Kroger and, of course, Peter Dohlmann, were members, and police senator Crema was here "the first man at the hose." That was the expression of Dr. Gieseke--Andreas Gieseke, the son of the Fire Com-missioner and Christian's old schoolmate. He had settled as a lawyer in the town, and Christian renewed the friendship with him, though he ranked as rather a wild fellow. Chris-tian--or, as he was called everywhere, Chris--had known them all more or less in the old days, for nearly all of them had been pupils of Marcellus Stengel. They received him into the Club with open arms; for, while neither business men nor scholars found him a genius, they recognized his amusing social gifts. It was here that he gave his best perform-ances and told his best stories. He did the virtuoso at the club piano and imitated English and transatlantic actors and opera singers. But the best things he did were stories of his affairs with women, related in the most harmless and entertaining way imaginable--adventures that had befallen him on shipboard, on trains, in St. Paul's, in White chapel, 271 BUDDENBRD DKS in the virgin forest. There was no doubt that Christian's weakness was for women. He narrated with a fluency and power that entranced his listeners, in an exhaustless stream, with his somewhat plaintive, drawling voice, burlesque and innocent, like an English humourist. He told a story about a dog that had been sent in a satchel from Valparaiso to San Francisco and was mangy to boot. Goodness knew what was the point of the anecdote--in his mouth it was indescrib-ably comic. And while everybody about him writhed with laughter, unable to leave off, he himself sat there cross-legged, a strange, uneasy seriousness in his face with its great hooked nose, his thin, long neck, his sparse light-red hair and little round deep-set eyes. It almost seemed as if the laugh were at his expense, as if they were laughing at him. But that never occurred to him. At home his favourite tales were about his office in Val-paraiso. He told of the extreme heat there, and about a young Londoner, named Johnny Thunderstorm, a ne'er-do-well, an extraordinary chap, whom he had "never seen do a stroke of work, God damn me," and who yet was a remark-able business man. "Good God, the heat!" he said. "Well, the chief came into the office--there we all lay, eight of us, like flips, and smoked cigarettes to keep the mosquitoes away. Good God! Well, the chief said: 'You are not working, gentlemen?' 'No, sir,' says Johnny Thunderstorm, 'as you see, sir!' And we all blew our cigarette-smoke in his face. Good God!" "Why do you keep saying 'good God'?" asked Thomas ir-ritably. But his irritation was at bottom because he felt thut Christian told this story with particular relish just be-cause it gave him a chance to sneer at honest work., The Mother would discreetly change the subject. There were many hateful things in the world, thought the Frau Consul, born Kroger. Brothers could despise and dislike each other, dreadful as it sounded; but one didn't mention such things. They had to be covered up and ignored.