Buddenbrooks (32 page)

ID

CHAPTER II

CHRISTIAN BUDDENBROOK, proprietor of the firm of H. C. F. Purmeister and Company of Hamburg, came into his brother's living-room, holding in his hand his modish grey hat and his walking-stick with the nun's bust. Tom and Gerda sat reading together. It was half past nine on the evening of the christening day. "Good evening," said Christian. "Oh, Thomas, I must speak with you at once.--Please excuse me, Gerda.--It is ur-gent, Thomas." They went into the dark dining-room, where the Consul lighted a gas-jet on the wall, and looked at his brother. He expected nothing good. Except for the first greeting, he had had no opportunity to speak with Christian, but he had looked at him, during the service, and noted that he seemed unusually serious, and even more restless than common: in the course of Pastor Pringsheim's discourse he had left the room for several minutes. Thomas had not written him since the day in Hamburg when he had paid over into his brother's hands an advance of 1D,ODD marks current on his inheritance, to settle his indebtedness. "Just go on as you are going," he had said, "and you'll soon run through all your money. As far as I am concerned, I hope you will cross my path very little in future. You have put my friendship to too hard a test in these three years." Why was he here now? Some-thing must be driving him. "Well?" asked the Consul. "I'm done," Christian said. He let himself down sidewise on one of the high-backed chairs around the dining-taLle, and held his hat and stick between his thin knees. "May I ask what it is you are done with, and what brings you to me?" said the Consul. He remained standing. "I'm done," repeated Christian, shaking his head from side to side with frightful earnestness and letting his little round eyes stray restlessly back and forth. He was now thirty-three years old, but he looked much older. His reddish-blond hair was grown so thin that nearly all the cranium was bare. His cheeks were sunken, the cheek-bones protruded sharply, and between them, naked, flesh less, and gaunt, stood the huge hooked nose. "If it were only this--!" he went on, and ran his hand down the whole of his left side, very close, but not touching it. "It isn't a pain, you know--it is a misery, a continuous, in-definite ache. Dr. Drb'gemuller in Hamburg tells me that my nerves on this side are all too short. Imagine, on my whole left side, my nerves aren't long enough! Sometimes I think I shall surely have a stroke here, on this side, a permanent paralysis. You have no idea. I never go to sleep properly. My heart doesn't beat, and I start up suddenly, in a perfectly terrible fright. That happens not once but ten times before I get to sleep. I don't know if you know what it is. I'll tell you about it more precisely. It is--" "Not now," the Consul said coldly. "Am I to understand that you have come here to tell me this? I suppose not." "No, Thomas. If it were only that--but it is not that--alone. It is the business. I can't go on with it." "Your affairs are in confusion again?" The Consul did not start, he did not raise his voice. He asked the question quite calmly, and looked sidewise et his brother, with a cold, weary glance. "No, Thomas. For to tell you the truth--it is all the same now--I never really was in order, even with the ten thousand, as you know yourself. They only saved me from putting up the shutters at once. The thing is--I had more losses at once, in coffee--and with the failure in Antwerp--That's the truth. So then I didn't do any more business; I just sat still. But one has to live--so now there are notes and other debts--five thousand thaler. You don't know the hole I'm in. And on top of everything else, this agony--" "Oh, so you just sat still, did you?" cried the Consul, be-side himself. His self-control was gone now. "You let the wagon stick in the mud and went off to enjoy yourself! You think I don't know the kind of life you've been living--theatres and circus and clubs--and women--" "You mean Aline. Yes, Thomas, you have very little under-standing for that sort of thing, and it's my misfortune, per-haps, that I have so much. You are right when you say it has cost me too much; and it will cost me a goodish bit more, for--I'll tell you something, just here between two brothers--the third child, the little girl, six months old, she is my child." "You fool, you!" "Don't say that, Thomas. You should be just, even if you are angry, to her and to--why shouldn't it be my child? And as for Aline, she isn't in the least worthless, and you ought not to say she is. She is not at all promiscuous; she broke with Consul Holm on my account, and he has much more money than I have. That's how decent she is. No, Thomas, you simply can't understand what a splendid creature she is--and healthy--she is as healthy--!" He repeated the word, and held up one hand before his face with the fingers crooked, in the same gesture as when he used to tell about "Maria" and the depravity of London. "You should see her teeth when she laughs. I've never found any other teeth to compare with them, not in Valparaiso, or London, or anywhere else in the world. I'll never forget the evening I first met her, in the oyster-room, at Uhlich's. She was living with Consul Holm then. Well, I told her a story or so, and was a bit friendly; and when I went home with her afterwards--well, Thomas, that's a different sort of feeling from the one you have when you do a good stroke of business! But you don't like to hear about such things--I can see that already--and anyhow, it's over with. I'm saying good-bye to her, though I shall keep 13 in touch \vith her on account of the child. I'll pay up every-thing I owe in Hamburg, and shut up shop. I can't go on. I've talked with Mother, and she is willing to give me the five thousand thaler to start with, so I can put things in order; and I hope you will agree to it, for it is much better to say quite simply that Christian Buddenbrook is winding up his business and going abroad, than for me to make a failure. You think so too, don't you? I intend to go to London again, Thomas, and take a position. It isn't good for me to be in-dependent--I can see that more and more. The responsibility--whereas in a situation one just goes home quite care-free, at the end of the day. And I liked living in London. Do you object?" During this exposition, the Consul had turned his back on his brother, and stood with his hands in his pockets, describing figures on the floor with his foot. "Very good, go to London," he said, shortly, and without turning more than half-way toward his brother, he passed into the living-room. But Christian followed him. He went up to Gerda, who sat there alone, reading, and put out his hand. "Good night, Gerda. Well, Geida, I'm off for London. Yes, it's remarkable how one gets tossed about hither and yon. Now it's again into the unknown, into a great city, you know, where one meets an adventure at every third step, and sees so much of life. Strange--do you know the feeling? One gets it here--sort of in the pit of the stomach--it's very odd."

CHAPTER III

JAMES MDLLENDDRPF, the oldest of the merchant senators, died in a grotesque and horrible way. The instinct of self-preservation became very weak in this diabetic old man; and in the last years of his life he fell a victim to a passion for cakes and pastries. Dr. Grabow, as the Mollendorpf family physician, had protested energetically, and the distressed rel-atives employed gentle constraint to keep the head of the family from rommitting suicide with sweet bake-stuffs. But the old Senator, mental wreck as he was, rented a room some-where, in some convenient street, like Little Groping Alley, or Angelswick, or Behind-the-Wall--a little hole of a room, whither he would secretly betake himself to consume sweets. And there they found his lifeless body, the mouth still full of half-masticated cake, the crumbs upon his coat and upon the wretched table. A mortal stroke had supervened, and put a stop to slow dissolution. The horrid details of the death were kept as much as pos-sible from the family, but they flew about the town, and were discussed at length on the Bourse, in the club, and at the Harmony, in all the business offices, in the Assembly of Bur-gesses--likewise at all the balls, dinners, and evening parties, for the death occurred in February of the year '62, and the season was in full swing. Even the Frau Consul's friends talked about it, on the Jerusalem evenings, in the pauses of Lea Gerhardt's reading aloud; the little Sunday-school chil-dren discussed it in awesome whispers as they crossed the Bud-denbrook entry; and Herr Stuht, in Bell-Founders' Street, went into ample detail over it with his wife, who moved in the highest circles .15 But interest could not long remain concentrated upon the past. And even with the first rumour of the old man's death, the great question had at once sprung up: who was to succeed him? What suspense, what subterranean activity! A stranger, in-tent on the sights of the mediaeval town, would have noticed nothing; but beneath the surface there was unimaginable bustle and commotion, as one firm and unassailable honest conviction after another was exploded; and slowly, slowly the while, divergent views approached each other! Passions are stirred, Ambition and Vanity wrestle together in silence. Dead and buried hopes spring once more to life--and again are blasted. Did Kurz, the merchant, in Bakers' Alley, who gets three or four votes at every election, will sit quaking at home on the fatal day, and listen to the shouting, but he will not be elected this time either. He will continue to take his walks abroad, displaying outwardly his usual mingling of civic pride and self-satisfaction: but he will bear down with him into the grave the secret chagrin of never having been elected Senator. James Mbllcndorpf's death was discussed at the Budden-brook Thursday dinner-table; and Frau Permaneder, after the proper expressions of sympathy, began to let her tongue play upon her upper lip and look across artfully at her brother. The Buddenbrook ladies marked the look. They exchanged piercing glances, and with one accord shut their eyes and their lips tightly together. The Consul had, for a second, responded to the sly smile his sister gave him, and then given the talk another turn. He knew that the thought which Tony hugged to her breast in secret was being spoken in the street. Names were suggested and rejected, others came up and were sifted out. Henning Kurz in Bakers' Alley wag too old. They needed new blood. Consul Huneus, the lumber dealer, whose millions would have weighted the scale heavily in his favour, was constitutionally ineligible, as his brother already sat in the Senate. Consul Eduard Kistenmaker, the wine dealer, and Consul Hermann Hagenstrom were names that kept their places on the list. But from the very first was heard the name of Thomas Buddenbrook; and as election day ap-proached, it grew constantly plainer that he and Hermann HagenstriJrn were the favoured candidates. Hermann Hagenstrom had his admirers and hangers-on-- there was no doubt of that. His zeal in public affairs, the spectacular rise of the firm of Strunck and Hagenstrom, the showy house the Consul kept, the luxurious life he led, the pates-de-f oie-gras he ate for breakfast--all these could not fail to make an impression. This large, rather over-stout man with the short, full, reddish beard and the snub nose coming dawn flat on his upper lip, this man whose grandfather nobody knew, not even himself, and whose father had made himself socially impossible by a rich but doubtful marriage; this man had become a brother-in-law of the Huneus' and the Mbllen- dorpfs, had ranged his name alongside those of the five or six reigning families in the town, and was undeniably a remark- able and a respected figure. The novel and therewith the at- tractive element in his personality--that which singled him out for a leading position in the eyes of many--was its liberal and tolerant strain. His light, large way of making money and spending it again differed fundamentally from the patient, persistent toil and the inherited principles of his fellow mer- chants. This man stood on his own feet, free from the fetters of tradition and ancestral piety; and all the old ways were for- eign to him. His house was not one of the ancient patrician mansions, built with senseless waste of space, in tall white gal- leries mounting above a stone-paved ground floor. His home on Sand Street, the southern extension of Broad Street, was a modern dwelling, not conforming to any set style of archi- tecture, with a simple painted facade, but furnished inside with every luxury and planned with the cleverest economy of space. Recently, on the occasion of one of his large evening parties, he had invited a prirna donna from the government theatre, to sing after dinner to his guests--among them hih witty, art-loving brother--and had paid her an enormous fee for her services. Hermann Hagenstrbm was not the man to vote in the Assembly for the application of large sums of money to preserve and restore the town's mediaeval monuments. But it was a fact that he was the first, absolutely the first man in town to light his house and his offices with gas. Yes, if Consul Hagenstrom could be said to represent any tradition whatever, it was the free, progressive, tolerant, unpreju-diced habit of thought which he had inherited from his father, old Hinrich--and on this was based all the admiration people undoubtedly felt for him. Thomas Buddenbrook's prestige was of a different kind. People honoured in him not only his own personality, but the personalities of his father, grandfather, and great-grand-father as well: quite apart from his own business and public achievement, he was the representative of a hundred years of honourable tradition. And the easy, charming way, indeed, with which he carried the family standard made no small part of his success. What distinguished him, even among his pro-fessional fellow citizens, was an unusual degree of formal culture, which, wherever he went, aroused both wonder and respect in about equal degrees. On Thursdays at the Buddenbrooks', the coming election received only brief and passing comment in the presence of the Consul. Whenever it was mentioned, the old Frau Consul discreetly averted her light eyes. But Frau Permaneder, now and then, could not refrain from displaying her astonishing knowledge of the Constitution. She had gone very thoroughly into the decrees touching the election of a member of the Senate, precisely as once she thorouphlv informed herself on the laws governing divorce. She talked about voting cham-bers, ballots, and electors, she weighed all the possible eventualities, she could recite verbatim and glibly the oath taken by the voters. She spoke of the "free and frank dis-cussion" which the Constitution ordains must be held over each name upon the list of candidates, and vivaciously wished she might be present when Hermann Hagenstrom's character was being pulled to pieces! A moment later she leaned over and began to count the prune-pits on her brother's dessert-plate: tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor--finishing triumphantly with "senator" when she came to the last pit. But after dinner she could not hold in any longer. She took her brother's arm and drew him into the bow-window. "Oh, Tom! Tom! Suppose you are really elected--if our coat-of-arms is put up in the Senate-chamber at the Town Hall I shall just die of joy, I know I shall. I shall fall dead at the news--you'll see!" "Now, Tony dear! Have a little self-control, a little dignity, I beg of you. You are not usually lacking in dig-nity. Am I going around like Henning Kurz? We amount to something even without the 'Senator.' And I hope you won't die, whichever way it turns out!" And the agitations, the consultations, the struggles of opinion took their course. Consul Peter Dbhlman, the rake with a business now entirely ruined, which existed only in name, and the twenty-seven-year-old daughter whose in-heritance he was eating up, played his part by attending two dinners, one given by Thomas Buddenbrook and the other by Herman Hagenstrbm, and both times addressing his host, in his loud, resounding voice, as "Senator." But Siegismund Gosch, old Gosch the broker, went about like a raging lion, and engaged to throttle anybody, out of hand, who wasn't minded to vote for Consul Buddenbrook. "Consul Buddenbrook, gentlemen--ah, there's a man for you! I stood at his father's side in the '48, when, with a word, he tamed the unleashed fury of the mob. His father, and his father's father before him, would have been Senator were there any justice on this earth!" But at bottom it was not so much Consul Buddenbrook himself whose personality fired Gosch's soul to its innermost depths. It was rather the young Frau Consul, Gerda Arnoldsen. Not that the broker had ever exchanged a word 19 with her. He did not belong to her circle of wealthy merchant families, nor sit at their, tables, nor pay visits to them. But, as we have seen, Gerda Buddenbrook had but tu arrive in the town to be singled out by the roving fancy of the sinister broker, ever on the look-out for the unusual. With unerring instinct he divined that this figure was cal- culated to add content to his unsatisfied existence, and he made himself the slave of one who had scarcely ever heard his name. Since then he encompassed in his reveries this nervous, exceedingly reserved lady, to whom he had not even been presented: he lifted his Jesuit hat to her, on the street, to her great surprise, and treated her to a pantomime of cringing treachery, gloating over her the while in his thoughts as a tiger might over his trainer. This dull existence would afford him no chance of committing atrocities for this woman's sake--ah, if it only would, with what devilish indifference would he answer for them! Its stupid conventions prevented him from raising her, by deeds of blood and horror, to an imperial throne!--And thus, nothing was left but for him to go to the Town Hall and cast his vote in favour of her furiously respected husband--and, per- haps, one day, to dedicate to her his forthcoming transition of Lope de Vega.