Buddenbrooks (53 page)

CHAPTER VIII

FRAU PERMANEDEH mounted the main staircase, holding up her gown in front of her with one hand and with the other pressing her muff to her cheek. She tripped and stumbled more than she walked; her cheeks were flushed, her capote sat crooked on her head, and little beads stood on her upper lip.... Though she met no one, she talked continually as she hurried up, in whispers out of which now and then a word rose clear and audible and emphasized her fpar. "It's nothing," she said. "It doesn't mean anything. God wouldn't let anything happen. He knows -what he's doing, I'm very sure of that.... Oh, my God, I'll pray every day--" She prattled senselessly in her fear, as she rushed up to the second storey and down the corridor. "Gerda! Gerda! What is it?" Frau Permaneder cried. "What has happened? What does it mean? They said he fell--unconscious? How is he?--God won't let the worst happen, I know. Tell me, for pity's sake!" But the reply did not come at once. She only felt how Gerda's whole form was shaken. Then she heard a whisper at her shoulder. "How he looked," she heard, "when they brought him! His whole life long, he never let any one see even a speck of dust on him.--Oh, it is insulting it is vile for the end to have come like that!" Subdued voices came out to them. The dressing-room door opened, and Ida Jungmann stood in the doorway in a white apron, a basin in her hands. Her eyes were red. She looked at Frau Permaneder and made way, her head bent. Her chin was trembling. The high flowered curtains stirred in the draught as Tony, followed by her sister-in-law, entered the chamber. The smell of carbolic, ether, and other drugs met them. In the wide mahogany bed, under the red down coverlet, lay Thomas Buddenbrook, on his back, undressed and clad in an em-broidered nightshirt. His half-open eyes were rolled up; his lips were moving under the disordered moustaches, and babbling, gurgling sounds came out. Young Dr. Langhala was bending over him, changing a bloody bandage for a fresh one, which he dipped into a basin at the bedside. Then he listened at the patient's chest and felt his pulse. On the bed-clothes at the foot of the bed sat little Johann, clutching his sailor's knot and listening broodingly to the sounds behind him, which his father was making. The Sen-ator's bemired clothing hung over a chair. Frau Permaneder cowered down at the bedside, seized one of her brother's hands---it was cold and heavy--and stared wildly into his face. She began to understand that, whether God knew what he was doing or not, he was at all events bent on "the worst"! "Tom!" she clamoured, "do you know me? How are you? You aren't going to leave us? You won't go away from us? Oh, it cant be!" Nothing answered her, that could be called an answer. She looked imploringly up at Dr. Langhals. He stood there with his beautiful eyes cast down; and his manner, not with-out a certain self-satisfaction, expressed the will of God. Ida Jungmann came back into the room, to make herself useful if she could. Old Dr. Grabow appeared in person, 283 BUDDENBR DDKS looked at the patient with his long, mild face, shook his head, pressed all their hands, and then stood as Dr. Langhals stood. The news had gone like the wind through the whole town. The vestibule door rang constantly, and inquiries after the Senator's condition came up into the sick-chamber. It was unchanged--unchanged. Every one received the same answer. The two physicians were in favour of sending for a sister of charity--at least for the night. They sent for Sister Leandra, and she came. There was no trace of surprise or alarm in her face as she entered. Again she laid aside her leather bag, her outer hood and cloak, and again she set to work in her gentle way. Liltle Johann sat hour after hour on the bed-clothes, watching everything and listening to the gurgling noises. He was to have gone to an arithmetic lesson; but he understood perfectly that what was happening here was something over which the worsted-coats had no jurisdiction. He thought of his lessons only for a moment, and with scorn. He wept, sometimes, when Frau Permaneder came up and pressed him to her; but mostly he sat dry-eyed, with a shrinking, brooding gaze, and his breath came irregularly and cautiously, as if he expected any moment to smell that strange and yet familiar smell. Toward four o'clock Frau Permaneder took a sudden re-solve. She asked Dr. Langhals to come with her into the next room; and there she folded her arms and laid back her head, with the chin dropped. "Herr Doctor," she said, "there is one thing you can do, and I beg you to do it. Tell me the truth. I am a woman steeled by adversity; I have learned to bear the truth. You may depend upon me. Please tell me plainly: Will my brother be alive to-morrow?" Dr. Langhals turned his beautiful eyes aside, looked at his fingernails, and spoke of our human powerlessness, and the impossibility of knowing whether Frau Permaneder's brother would out'ive the night, or whether he would be called away the next minute. "Then I know what I have to do," said she; went out of the room; and sent for Pastor Pringsheim. Pastor Pringsheim appeared, without his vestments or neck-ruff, in a long black gown. He swept Sister Leandra with an icy stare, and seated himself in the chair which they placed for him by the bedside. He asked the patient to recognize and hear him. Then, as this appeal was unsuc-cessful, he addressed' himself at once to God and prayed in carefully modulated tones, with his Frankish pronunciation, with emphasis now solemn and now abrupt, while waves of fanaticism and sanctimony followed each other across his face. He pronounced his r in a sleek and oily way peculiar to himself alone, and little Johann received an ir-resistible impression that he had just been eating rolls and coffee. He said that he and the family there present no longer importuned Cod for the life of this dear and beloved suf-ferer, for they saw plainly that it was God's will to take him lo Himself. They only begged Him for the mercy of a gentle death. And then he recited, appropriately and with effect, two of the prayers customary on such occasions. Then he got up. He pressed Gerda Buddenbrook's hand, and Frau Permaneder's, and held little Johann's head for a moment be-tween both his Hands, regarding the drooping eyelashes with an expression of the most fervent pity. He saluted Ida Jungmann, stared again at Sister Leandra, and took his leave. Dr, Langhals had gone home for a little. When he came back there had been no change. He spoke with the nurse, and went again. Dr. Grabow came once more, to see that everything was being done. Thomas Buddenbrook went on babbling and gurgling, with his eyes rolled up. Twilight was falling. There was a pale winter glow at sunset, and it shone through the window upon the soiled clothing lying across the chair .285 At five o'clock Frau Permaneder let herself be carried away by her feelings, and committed an indiscretion. She suddenly began to sing, in her -throaty voice, her hands folded before her. "Come, Lord," she sang, quite loud, and they all listened without stirring. "Come, Lord, receive hig failing breath; Strengthen his hands and feet, and lead him unto death." But in the devoutness of her prayer, she thought only of the words as they welled up from her heart, and forgot that she did not know the whole stanza; after the third line she was left hanging in the air, and had to make up for her abrupt end by the increased dignity of her manner. Everybody shivered with embarrassment. Little Johann coughed so hard that the coughs sounded like sobs. And then, in the sudden pause, there was no sound but the agonizing gurgles of Thomas Buddenbrook. It was a relief when the servant announced that there was something to eat in the next room. But they had only be-gun, sitting in Gerda's bedroom, to take a little soup, when Sister Leandra appeared in the doorway and quietly beckoned. The Senator was dying. He hiccoughed gently two or three times, was silent, and ceased to move his lips. That was the only change. His eyes had been quite dead before. Dr. Langhals, who was on the spot a few minutes later, put the black stethoscope to the heart, listened, and, after this scientific test, said "Yes, it is over." Ana Sister Leandra, with the forefinger of her gentle white hand, softly closed the eyes of the dead. Then Frau Permaneder flung herself down on her knees by the bed, pressed her face into the coverlet, and wept aloud, surrendering herself utterly and without restraint to one of those refreshing bursts of feeling which her happy nature had always at its command. Her face still streamed with tears, but she was soothed and comforted and entirely herself as she rose to her feet and began straightway to occupy her mind with the announcements of the death--an enormous number of elegant cards, which must be ordered at once. Christian appeared. He had heard the news of the Sen-ator's stroke in the club, which he had left at once. But he was so afraid of seeing some awful sight that he went instead for a long walk outside the walls, and was not to be found. Now, however, he came in, and on the threshold heard of his brother's death. "It isn't possible," he said, and limped up the stairs, his eyes rolling wildly. He stood at the bedside between his sister and his sister-in-law; with his bald head, his sunken cheeks, his drooping moustaches, and his huge beaked nose, he stood there on his bertt legs, looking a little like an interrogation-point, and gazed with his little round deep eyes into his brother's face, as it lay so silent, so cold, so detached and inaccessible. The corners of Thomas's mouth were drawn down in an expres-sion almost scornful. Here he lay, at whom once Christiari had flung the reproach that he was too heartless to iveep at H brother's death. He was dead now himself: he had simply withdrawn, silent, elegant, and irreproachable, into the here-after. He had, as so often in his life, left it to others to feel put in the wrong. No matter now, whether he had been right or wrong in his cold and scornful indifference toward his brother's afflictions, the "misery," the nodding man, the spirit bottle, the open window. None of that mattered now; for death, with arbitrary and incomprehensible partiality, had singled him out, and taken him up, and given him an awe-some dignity and importance. And yet Death had rejected Christian, had held him off, and would not have him at any price--would only keep on making game of him and mocking him with all these tricks and antics whirh nobody took se-riously. Never in his life had Thomas Buddenbrook so im-287 pressed his brother as at this hour. Success is so definite, so conclusive! Death alone can make others respect our sufferings; and through dea/th the most pitiable sufferings acquire dignity. "You have won--I give in," Christian thought. He knelt on one knee, with a sudden awkward gesture, and kissed the cold hand on the coverlet. Thpn he stepped back and moved about the room, his eyes darting bark and forth. Other visitors came--the old Krogers, the Misses Buddcn-bronk. old Herr Marcus. Poor Clothilde, lean and ashen, stood by the bed; her face was apathetic, and she folded her hands in their -worsted gloves. "You must not think, Tony and Cerda," said she, and her voice dragged very much, "that I've no feeling because I don't weep. The truth is, I have no more tears." And as she stood there, incredibly dry and withered, it was evident that she spoke the truth. Then they all left the room to make way for an elderly female, an unpleasant old creature with a toothless, mumbling jaw, who had come to help Sister Leandra wash and clrps? the corpse. Gercla Buddenbrook, Frau Permaneder, [Christian, and little Johann sat under the big gas-lamp around the centre-table in the living-room, and worked industriously until far on into the evening. They were addressing envelopes and making a list of people who ought to receive announcements. Now and then somebody thought of another name. Hanno had to help, too; his handwriting was plain, and there" was need of haste. It was still in the house and in the street. The gas-lamp made a soft hissing noise; somebody murmured a name; the papers rustled. Sometimes they looked at each other and rememberrd what had happened. Frau Pprmanrrler scratched busily. But regularly once every five minutes she would put down her pen, lift her clasped hands up In her mouth, and break out in lamentations. "I can't realize it!" she would cry--meaning that she was gradually beginning to realize. "It is the end of everything," she burst out another time, in sheer despair, and flung her arms around her sister-in-law's neck with loud weeping. After each outburst she was strengthened, and took up her work again. With Christian it was as with poor Clothilde. He had not shed a tear--which fact rather mortified him. It was true, too, that his constant preoccupation with his own condition had 'used him up emotionally and made him insensitive. Now and then he would start up, rub his hand over his bald brow, and murmur, "Yes, it's frightfully sad." He said it to him-self, with strong self-reproach, and did his best to make his eyes water. Suddenly something happened to startle them all: little Johann began to laugh. He was copying a list of names, and had found one with such a funny sound that he could not resist it. He said it aloud and snorted through his nose, bent over, sobbed, and could not control himself. The grown people looked at him in bewildered, incredulity; and his mother sent him up to bed.

CHAPTER IX

SENATOR BUDDENBRDDK had died of a bad tooth. So it was said in the town. But goodness, people don't die of a bad tooth! He had had a toothache; Herr Brecht had broken off the crown; and thereupon the Senator had simply fallen ill the street. Was ever the like heard? But however it had happened, that was no longer tha point. What had next to be done was to send wreaths--large, expensive wreaths which would do the givers credit and be mentioned in the paper: wreaths which showed that they came from people with sympathetic hearts and long purses. They were sent. They poured in from all siaes, from organizations, from families and individuals: laurel wreaths, wreaths of heavily-scented flowers, silver wreaths, wreaths with black bows or bows with the colours of the City on them, or dedications printed in heavy black type or gilt lettering. And palms--simply quantities of palms. The flower-shops did an enormous business, not least among them being Iwersen's, opposite the Buddenbrook mansion. Frau Iwersen rang many times in the day at the vestibule door, and handed in arrangements in all shapes and styles, from Senator This or That, or Consul So-and-So, from office staffs and civil servants. On one of these visits she asked if she might go up and see the Senator a minute. Yes, of course, she was told; and she followed Frau Permaneder up the main staircase, gazing silently at its magnificence. She went up heavily, for she was, as usual, expecting. Her looks had grown a little common with the years; but the narrow black, eyes and the Malay cheek-bones had not lost their charm. One could still see that she must once have been exceedingly pretty. She was admitted into the salon, where Thomas Buddenbrook lay upon his bier. He lay in the centre of the large, light room, the furniture of which had been removed, amid the white silk linings of his coffin, dressed in white silk, shrouded in white silk, in a thick and stupefying mingling of odours from the tube-roses, violets, roses, and other flowers with which he was surrounded. At his head, in a half-circle of silver cande-labra, stood the pedestal draped in mourning, supporting the marble copy of Thorwaldsen's Christ. The wreaths, gar-lands, baskets, and bunches stood or lay along the walls, on the floor, and on the coverlet. Palms stood around the bier and dropped over the feet of the dead. The skin of his face was abraded in spots, and the nose was bruised. But his hair was dressed with the tongs, as in life, and his moustache, too, had been drawn through the tongs for the last time by old Herr Wenzel, and stuck out stiff and straight beyond his white cheeks. His head was turned a little to one side, and -an ivory cross was stuck between the folded hands. Frau Iwersen remained near the door, and looked thence, blinking, over to the bier. Only when Frau Permaneder, in deep black, with a cold in her head from much weeping, came from the living-room through the portieres and invited Frau Iwersen to come nearer, did she dare to venture a little farther forward on the parquetry floor. She stood with her hands folded across her prominent abdomen, and looked about her with her narrow black eyes: at the plants, the candelabra, the bows and the wreaths, the white silk, and Thomas Bud-denbrook's face. It would be hard to describe the expres-sion on the pale, blurred features of the pregnant woman. Finally she said "Yes--" sobbed just once, a brief confused sound, and turned away. Frau Permaneder loved these visits. She never stirred from the house, but superintended with tireless zeal the homage that pressed about the earthly husk of her departed brother. She read the newspaper articles aloud many times 291 in her throaty voice: those same newspapers which at the time of the jubilee had paid tribute to her brother's merits, now mourned the irreparable loss of his personality. She stood at Gerda's side to receive the visits of condolence in the living-room and there was no end of these; their name was legion. She held conferences with various people about the funeral, which must of course be conducted in the most re-fined manner. She arranged farewells: she had the office staff come in a body to bid their chief good-bye. The workmen from the granaries came too. They shuffled their huge feet along the parquetry floor, drew down the corners of their mouths to show their respect, and emanated an odour of chewing tobacco, spirits, and physical exertion. They looked at the dead lying in his splendid state, twirled their caps, first admired and then grew restive, until at length one of them found courage to go, and the whole troop followed shuffling on his heels. Frau Permaneder was enchanted. She asserted that some of them had tears running down into their beards. This simply was not the fact; but she saw it, and it made her happy. The day of the funeral dawned. The metal casket was hermetically sealed and covered with flowers, the candles burned in their silver holders, the house filled with people, and, surrounded by mourners from near and far, Pastor Pringsheim stood at the head of the coffin in upright majesty, his impressive head resting upon his ruff as on a dish. A high-shouldered functionary, a brisk intermediate some-thing between a waiter and a major-domo, had in charge the outward ordering of the solemnity. He ran with the softest speed down the staircase and called in a penetrating whisper across the entry, which was filled to overflowing with tax-commissioners in uniform and grain-porters in blouses, knee-breeches, and tall hats: "The rooms are full, but there is a little room left in the corridor." Then everything was hushed. Pastor Pringsheini began to speak. He filled the whole house with the rolling periods BUDDENBROOK5 of his exquisitely modulated, sonorous voice. He stood there near the figure of Thorwaldsen's Christ and wrung his hands before his face or spread them out in blessing; while below in the street, before the house door, beneath a white wintry sky, stood the hearse drawn by four black horses, with the other carriages in a long row behind it. A company of soldiers with grounded arms stood in two rows opposite the house door, with Lieutenant von Throta at their head. He held his drawn sword on his arm and looked up at the bow-window with his brilliant eyes. Many people were craning their necks from windows nearby or standing on the pavements to look. At length there was a stir in the vestibule, the lieutenant's muffled word of command sounded, the soldiers presented arms with a rattle of weapons, Herr von Throta let his sword sink, and the coffin appeared. It swayed cautiously forth of the house door, borne by the four men in black cloaks and cocked hats, and a gust of perfume came with it, wafted over the heads of bystanders. The breeze ruffled the black plumes on top of the hearse, tossed the manes of the horses standing in line down to the river, and dishevelled the mourning hat-scarves of the coachmen and grooms. Enormous single flakes of snow drifted down from the sky in long slanting curves. The horses attached to the hearse, all in black trappings so that only their restless rolling eyeballs could be seen, now slowly got in motion. The hearse moved off, led by the four black servants. The company of soldiers fell in be-hind, arid one after another the coaches followed on. Christian Buddenbrook and the pastor got into the first; little Johann sat in the second, with a well-fed Hamburg relative. And slowly, slowly, with mournful long-drawn pomp, Thomas Buddrnbrook's funeral train wound away, while the flags at half-mast on all the houses flapped before the wind. The office staff and the grain-porters followed on foot. The casket, with the mourners behind, followed the well-293 known cemetery paths, past crosses and statues and chapels and bare weep ing-willows, to the Buddenbrook family lot, where the military guard of honour already stood, and pre-sented arms again. A funeral march sounded in subdued and solemn strains from behind the shrubbery. Once more the heavy gravestone, with the family arms in relief, had been moved to one side; and once more the gentle-men of the town stood there, on the edge of the little grove, beside the abyss walled in with masonry into which Thomas Buddenbrook was now lowered to join his fathers. They stood there with bent heads, these worthy and well-to-do citizens: prominent among them were the Senators, in white gloves and cravats. Beyond them was the throng of officials, clerks, grain-porters, and warehouse labourers. The music stopped. Pastor Pringsheim spoke. While his voice, raised in blessing, still lingered on the air, everybody pressed round to shake hands with the brother and son of the deceased.