Buddenbrooks (48 page)

too, he signified his desire to go. He climbed into the carriage beside his father, and sal silent by his side in the reception-rooms, watching his easy, tactful, assured, and carefully graduated manner toward their ho'Us. He heard District Commander Colonel Herr von Rinnlingen tell his father how greatly he appreciated the honour of his visit, and saw how his father, in reply, put on an air of amiable depreciation and laid his arm an instant across the Colonel's shoulders. In another place the same remark was made, and he received it with quiet seriousness, and in a third with an ironically exaggerated compliment in return. All this with a floridity of speech and gesture which he ob-viously liked to produce for the admiration of his son, and from which he promised himself the most edifying results. But the little boy saw more than he should have seen; the shy, gold-brown, blue-shadowy eyes observed too well. He saw not only the unerring charm which his father exer-cised upon everybody: he saw as well, with strange and 23 D anguished penetration, how cruelly hard it was upon him. He saw how his father, paler and more silent after each visit, would lean back in his corner of the carriage with closed eyes and reddened eyelids; he realized with a sort of horror that on the threshold of the next house a mask would glide over his face, a galvanized activity take hold of the weary frame. Thus the visits, the social intercourse with one's kind, instead of giving little Johann, quite simply, the idea that one has prartiral interests in common with one's fellow men, which one looks after oneself, expecting others to do the same, appeared to him like an end in themselves; instead of straightforward and single-minded participation in the common business, he saw his father perform an artificial and complicated part, by dint of a fearful effort and an exaggerated, consuming virtuosity. And when he thought that some day he should be expected to perform the same part, under the gaze of the whole community, Hanno shut his eyes and shivered with rebellion and disgust. Ah, that was not the effect Thomas Buddenbrook looked for from the influence of his own personality upon his son's! What he had hoped to do was to stimulate self-confidence in the boy, and a sense of the practical side of life. This was what he had in mind--and nothing else. "You seem to enjoy good living, my boy, " said he, when Hanno asked f or, a second portion of the sweet or a half-cup of coffee after dinner. "Well, then, you must become a merchant and earn a lot of money. Should you like to do that?" Little Johann said he would. Sometimes when the family were invited to dinner, Aunt Antonie or Uncle Christian would begin to tease Aunt Clothilde and imitate her meek, drawling accents. Then little Johann, stimulated by the heavy red wine which they gave him, would ape his elders and make some remarks to Aunt Clothilde in the same vein. And then how Thomas Buddenbrook would laugh! He would give a loud, hearty, jovial roar, like a man put in high spirits by some un-231 BUDDENBRO DKS expected piece of good luck, and join in on his son's side against poor Aunt Clothilde, though for his own part he had long since given up these witticisms at the expense of his poor relative. It was so easy, so safe, to tease poor, limited, modest, lean and hungry Clothilde, that, harmless though it was, he felt it rather beneath him. But he wished he did not, for it was the same story over again: too many considerations, too many scruples. Why must he be for ever opposing these scruples against the hard, practical affairs of life? Why could he never learn that it was possible to grasp a situation, to see around it, as it were, and still to turn it to one's own ad-vantage without any feeling of shame? For precisely this, he said to himself, is the essence of a capacity for practical life! And thus, how happy, how delighted, how hopeful he felt whenever he saw even the least small sign in little Johann of a capacity for practical life!

CHAPTER III

THE extended summer trip which had once been customary with the Buddenbrooks had now been given up for some years. Indeed, when the Frau Senator, in the previous spring, had wished to make her old father in Amsterdam a visit and play a few duets with him, the Senator had given his consent rather curtly. But it had become the rule for Cerda, little Juhann, and Fraulein Jungmann to spend the holidays at the Kurhouse, in Travemiinde, for the sake of Hanno's health. Summer holidays at the seashore! Did anybody really understand the joy of that? After the dragging monotony and worry of the endless school terms came four weeks of peaceful, care free seclusion, full of the good smell of sea-weed and the whispering of the gentle surf. Four weeks! At the beginning it seemed endless; you could not believe that it would end; it was almost indelicate to suggest such a thing! Little Juhann could not comprehend the crudity of a master who could say: "After the holidays we shall take lip our work at--" this or that point! After the holidays! He appeared to be already rejoicing in the thought, this strange man in the shiny worsted suit! After the holidays! What a thought! And how far, far off in the grey distance lay everything that was on the other side of the holidays, on the other side of those four weeks! The inspection of the school report, with its record of examinations well or badly got through, would be at last over, and the journey in the overcrowded carriage. Hanno would wake the first morning in his room at the Kurhouse, in one of the Swiss cottages that were united by a small gallery to the main building and the pastry-shop. He would have a 233 BUDDENBR D OKS vague feeling of happiness that mounted in his brain and made his heart contract. He would open his eyes and look with eager pleasure at the old-fashioned furniture of the cleanly little room. A moment of dazed and sleepy bliss: then he wo'uld be conscious that he was in Travemiinde--for four immeasurable weeks in Travemiinde. He did not stir, He lay on his back in the narrow yellow wooden bed, the linen of which was extremely thin and soft with age. He even shut his Eyes again and felt his chest rising in deep, slow breaths of happy anticipation. The room lay in yellow daylight that came in thrnugii the striped blind. Everything was still--Mamma and Ida Jungmann were asleep. Nothing was to be heard but a measured, peaceful sound which meant that the boy was raking the gravelled paths of the Kurgarden below, and the buzzing of a fly that had got between the blind and the window and was storming the pane--you could see his shadow shooting about in long zigzag lines. Peace! Only the sound of the rake and the dull buzzing noise. This gently animated quiet filled little Johann with a priceless sensation: the feeling of quiet, well-cared-for, elegant repose which was the atmosphere of the resort, and which he loved better than any-thing else. Thank God, none of the shiny worsted coats who were the chosen representatives of grammar and the rule of three on this earth was in the least likely to come here--for here it was rather exclusive and expensive. An access of joy made him spring up and run barefoot to the window. He put up the blind and unfastened the white-painted hook of the window; and as he opened it the fly escaped and flew away over the flower-beds and the gravelled paths. The music pavilion, standing in a half-circle of beech-trees opposite the main building, was still empty and quiet. The Leuchenfield, which took its name from the lighthouse that stood on it, somewhere off to the right, stretched its extent of short sparse grass under the pale sky, to a point where the grass passed into a growth of tall, coarse water- plants; and then came the sand, with its rows of little wooden huts and tall wicker beach-chairs looking out to the sea. It lay there, the sea, in peaceful morning light, striped blue and green; and a steamer came in from Copenhagen, between the two red buoys that marked its course, and one did not need ID know whether it was the Naiad or the Friederike Overdieck. Hanno Buddenbrook drew in a deep, quiet, bliss-ful breath of the spicy air from the sea and greeted her tenderly, with a loving, speechless, grateful look. Then the day began, the first of those paltry twenty-eight days, which seemed in the beginning like an eternity of bliss, and which flew by with such desperate haste after the first two or three. They breakfasted on the balcony or under the great chestnut tree near the children's playground, where the swing hung. Everything--the smell of the freshly washed table-cloth when the waiter shook it out, the tissue paper serviettes, the unaccustomed bread, the eggs they ate out of little metal cups, with ordinary spoons instead of bone ones like those at home--all this, and everything, enchanted little Johann. And all that followed was so easy and care-free--such a wonderfully idle and protected life. There was the forenoon on the beach, while the Kurhouss band gave its morning pro-gramme; the lying and resting at the foot of the beach-chair, the delicious, dreamy play with the soft sand that did not make you dirty, while you let your eyes rove idly and lose themselves in the green and blue infinity beyond. There was the air that swept in from that infinity--strong, free, wild, gently sighing and deliciously scented; it seemed to enfold you round, to veil your hearing and make you pleasantly giddy, and blessedly submerge all consciousness of time and space. And the bathing here was a different affair altogether from that in Herr Asmussen's establishment. There was no duck-weed here, and the light green water foamed away in crystalline clearness when you stirred it up. Instead of a slimy wooden floor there was soft sand to caress 235 BUDDENBRO DKS the foot--and Consul Hogenstrbm's sons were far away, in Norway or the Tyrol. The Consul loved to make an ex-tended journey in the holidays, and--why shouldn't he? A walk followed, to warm oneself up, along the beach to Sea-gull Rock or Ocean Temple, a little lunch by the beach-chair; then the time came to go up to one's room for an hour's rest, before making a toilette for the table-d'hote. The table-d'hote was very gay, for this was a good season at the baths, and the great dining-room was filled with acquaintances of the Buddenbrooks, Hamburg families, and even some Russians and English people. A black-clad gentleman sat at a tiny table and served the soup out of a silver tureen. There were four courses, and the food tasted nicer and more seasoned than that at home, and many people drank champagne. These were the single gentlemen who did not allow their business to keep them chained in town all the week, and who got up some little games of roulette after dinner: Consul Peter Db'hlmann, who had left his daughter at home, and told such extremely funny stories that the ladies from Hamburg laughed till their sides ached and they begged him for mercy; Senator Dr. Cremer, the old Superintendent of Police; Uncle Christian, and his friend Dr. Gieseke, who was also without his family, and paid everything for Uncle Christ-ian. After dinner, the grown-ups drank coffee under the awnings of the pastry-shop, and the band played, and Hanno sat on a chair close to the steps of the pavilion and listened unwearied. He was settled for the afternoon. There was a shootingrgallery in the Kurgarden, and at the right of the Swiss cottage were the stables, with horses and donkeys, and -the cows whose foaming, fragrant milk one drank warm every evening. One could go walking in the little town or along the front; one could go out to the Prival in a boat and look for amber on the beach, or play croquet in the children's playground, or listen to Ida Jungmann reading aloud, sitting on a bench on the wooded hillside where hung the great bell for the table-d'hote. But best of all was it to go back to the beach and sit in the twilight on the end of the breakwater, with your face turned to the open horizon. Great ships passed by, and you signalled them with your handkerchief; and you listened to the little waves slapping softly against the stones; and the whole space about you was filled with a soft and mighty sighing. It spoke so benignly to little Johann! it bade him close his eyes, it told him that all was well. But just then Ida would say, "Come, little Hanno. It's supper-time. We must go. If you were to sit here and go to sleep, you'd die." How calm his heart felt, how evenly it beat, after a visit to the sea! Then he had his supper in his room--for his mother ate later, down in the glass verandah--and drank milk or malt extract, and lay down in his little bed, between the soft old linen sheets, and almost at once sleep overcame him, and he slept, to the subdued rhythm of the evening con-cert and the regular pulsations of his quiet heart. On Sunday the Senator appeared, with the other gentle-men who had stopped in town during the week, and remained until Monday morning. Ices and champagne were served at the table-d'hote, and there were donkey-rides and sailing-parties out to the open sea. Still, little Johann did not care much for these Sundays. The peaceful isolation of the bathing-place was broken in upon. A crowd of townsfolk--good middle-class trippers, Ida Jungmann called them--populated the Kurgarden and crowded the beach, drank coffee and listened to the music. Hanno would have liked to stay in his room uritil these kill-joys in their Sunday clothes went away again. No, he was glad when everything returned to its regular course on Monday--and he felt relieved to feel his father's eyes no more upon him. Two weeks had passed; and Hanno said to himself, and to every one who would listen to him, that there was still as much time left as the whole of the Michaelmas holidays amounted to. It consoled him to say this, but after all it was a specious consolation, for the crest of the holidays had been reached, and from now on they were going downhill--237 So quickly, so frightfully quickly, that he would have liked to cling to every moment, not to let it escape; to lengthen every breath he drew of the sea-air; to taste every second of his joy. But the time went on, relentless: in rain and sun, sea- wind and land-wind, long spells of brooding warmth and endless noisy storms that could not gel away out to sea and went on for ever so long, There were days on which the north-east wind filled the bay with dark green floods, covered the beach with seaweed, mussels, and jelly-fish, and threatened the bathing-huts. The turbid, heavy sea wah covered far and wide with foam. The mighty waves came on in awful, awe- inspiring calm, and the under side of each was a sharp metallic green; then they crashed with an ear-splitting roar, hissing and thundering along the sand. Thure were other days when the west wind drove back the sea fur a long distance, exposing a gently rolling beach and naked sand- banks everywhere, while the rain came down in tormils. Heaven, earth, and sea flowed into each other, and the driving ivind carried the rain against the pane^, su that not drops but rivers flowed down, and made them impossible to free through. Then Hanno stayed in the salon of thr KuihuusK and played on the little piano that was used to play waltzes and schotlisches for the balls and was not so good for improvising on as the piano at home: still one could some- times get amusing effects out of its muffled and clacking keys. And there were still nlhrr days, dreamy, blue, wind- less, broodingly warm, when the blue flies buzzed in the sun above the Leuchtenfield, and the sea lay silrni and like a mirror, without sir or breath. When there were only three days left Hanno said to himself, and to everybody else, that the time remaining was just 02 long as a Whitsuntide holiday; but, incontestable as this reckoning was, it did not convince even himself. He knew now tbaf the man in the worsted coat was right, and that thev would, in very truth, begin again where they had left off, and go on to this and that. The laden carriage stood before the door. The day had come. Early in the morning Hanno had said good-bye to sea and strand. Now he said it to the waiters as they received their fees, to the music pavilion, the rose-beds, and the whole long summer as well. And amid the bows of the hotel servants the carriage drove oif. They passed the avenue that led ID the little town, and rolled along thp front. Ida Jungmann sat, white-haired, bright-eyed, and angular, opposite Hanno on the back seat, and he squeezed his head into the corner and looked past her out of the window. The morning sky was overcast; the Trave was full of little waves that hurried before the wind. Now and then rain-drops spattered the pane. At the farther end of the front, people sat before their house doors and mended nets; barefoot children ran past, and stared in-quisitively at the occupants of the carriage. They did not need ID go away! As they left the last houses behind, Hanno bent forward once more to look after the lighthouse; then he leaned back and closed his eyes. "We'll come back again next year, darling," Ida Jungmann said in her grave, soothing voice. It needed only that to make Hanno's chin tremble and the tears run down beneath his long dark lashes. His face and hands were brown from the sea air. But if his stay at the baths had been intended to harden him, to give him more resistance, more energy, more endurance, then it had failed of its purpose; and Hanno himself was aware of this lamentable fact. These four weeks of sheltered peace and adoration of the sea had not hardened him: they had made him softer than ever, more dreamy and more sensi-tive. He would be no better able to endure the rigours of Herr Tietge's class. The thought of the rules and history dates which he had to get by heart had not lost its power to 23!) make him shudder; he knew the feeling too well, and how he would fling them away in desperation and go to bed, and suffer next day the torments of the unprepared. And he would be exactly as much afraid of catastrophes at the recitation hour, of his enemies the Hagenstrbms, and of his father's injunctions not to be faint-hearted whatever else he was. But he felt cheered a little by the fresh morning drive through flooded country roads, amid the twitterings of birds. He thought of seeing Kai again, and Herr Pfiihl; of his music lessons, the piano and his harmonium. And as the morrow was Sunday, a whole day still intervened between him and the first lesson-hour. He could feel a few grains of sand from the beach, still inside his buttoned boot--how lovely! He would ask old Grobleben to leave them there. Lei it all begin again--the worsted-coats, the Hagenslroms, and the rest. He had what he had. When the waves of tribulation went over him once more he would think of the sea and of the Kurgarden, and of the sound made by the little waves, coming hither out