Buddenbrooks (56 page)

no apparent reason they were dethroned, cast out, rejected, and others elevated to their place. The mistakes of these favourites would be passed over with neat, careful corrections, so that their work retained a respectable appearance, no matter how bad it was; whereas he would attack the other copy-books with heavy, ruthless pen, and fairly flood them with red ink, so that their appearance was shocking indeed. And as he never troubled to count the mistakes, but distributed bad marks in proportion to the red ink he had expended, his favourites always emerged with great credit from these exercises. He was not even aware of the rank injustice of this conduct. And if anybody had ever had the temerity to call his attention to it, that person would have been for ever deprived of even the chance of be-coming a favourite and being called by his first name. There was nobody who was willing to let slip the chance. Now Dr. Mantelsack crossed his legs, still standing, and began to turn over the leaves of his notebook. Hanno Buddenbrook wrung his hands under the desk. B, the letter B, came next. Now he would hear his name, he would get up, he would not know a line, and there would be a row, a loud, frightful catastrophe--no matter how good a mood Dr. Mantelsack might be in. The seconds dragged out, each a martrydom. "Buddenbrook"--Now he would say "Bud-denbrook." "Edgar," said Dr. Mantelsack, closing his note-book with his finger in it. He sat down, as if all were in the best of order. What? Who? Edgar? That was Liiders, the fat Liiders boy over there by the window. Letter L, which was not next at all! No! Was it possible? Dr. Mantelsack's mood was so good that he simply selected one of his favourites, without troubling in the least about whose turn it was. Liiders stood up. He had a face like a pug dog, and dull brown eyes. He had an advantageous seat, and could easily have read it off, but he was too lazy. He felt too secure in his paradise, and answered simply, "I had a headache yester-day, and couldn't study." "Dh, so you are leaving me in the lurch, Edgar," said Dr. Mantelsack with tender reproach. "You cannot say the lines on the Golden Age? What a shocking pity, my friend! You had a headache? It seems to me you should have told me before the lesson began, instead of waiting till I called you up. Didn't you have a headache just lately, Edgar? You should do something for them, for otherwise there is danger of your not passing. Timm, will you take his place?" 327 L�sat down. At this moment he was the object of uni-versal hatred. It was plain that the master's mood had al-tered for the worse, and that Liiders, perhaps in the very next lesson, would be called by his last name. Timm stood up in one of the back seats. He was a blond country-looking lad with a light-brown jacket and short, broad fingers. He held his mouth open in a funnel shape, and hastily found the place, looking straight ahrad the while with the most idiotic expression. Then he put down his head and began to read, in long-drawn-out, monotonous, hesitating accents, like a child with a first lesson-book: "Aurea prima sola est (Etas!" It was plain that Dr. Mantels auk was calling up quite at random, without reference to the alphabet. And thus it was no longer so imminently likely that Hanno would be called on, though this might happen through unlucky chance. He exchanged a joyful glance with Kai and began to relax some-what. But now Timm's reading was interrupted. Whether Dr. Mantelsack could not hear him, or whether he stood in need of exercise, is not to be known. But he left his platform and walked slowly down through the room. He paused near Timm, with his book in his hand; Timm meanwhile had suc-ceeded in getting his own book out of sight, but was now entirely helpless. His funnel-shaped mouth emitted a gasp, he looked at the Ordinarius with honest, troubled blue eyes, and could not fetch out another syllable. "Well, Timm," said Dr. Mantelsack. "Can't you get on?" Timm clutched his brow, rolled up his eyes, sighed winrtilv, and said with a dazed smile: "I get all mixed up, Herr Doctor, when you stand so close to me." Dr. Mantelsack smiled too. He smiled in a very flattered way and said "Well, pull yourself together and get on." And he strolled back to his plate. And Timm pulled -himself together. He drew out and opened his book again, all the time apparently wrestling to recover his self-control and staring about the room. Then he dropped his head and was himself again. "Very good," said the master, when he had finished. "It is clear that you have studied to some purpose. But yuu sacrifice the rhythm too much, Timm. You seem to under-stand the elisions; yet you have not been really reading hexam-eters at all. I have an impression as if you had learned the whole thing by heart, like prose. But, as I say, you have been diligent, you have done your best--and whoever does his best--; you may sit down." Timm sat down, proud and beaming, and Dr. Mantelsack gave him a good mark in his book. And the extraordinary thing was that at this moment not only the master, but also Timm himself and all his classmates, sincerely felt that Timm was a good industrious pupil who had fully deserved the mark he got. Hanno Buddenbrook, even, thought the same, though something within him revolted against the thought. He listened with strained attention to the next name. "Mumme," said Dr. Mantelsack. "Again: aurea prima--" Mumme! Well! Thank Heaven! Hanno was now in probable safety. The lines would hardly be asked for a third time, and in the sight-reading the letter B had just been called up. Mumme got up. He was tall and pale, with trembling hands and extraordinarily large round glasses. He had trouble with his eyes, and was so short-sighted that he could not possibly read standing up from a book on the desk before him. He had to learn, and he had learned. But to-day he had not expected to be called up; he was, besides, pain-fully ungifled; and he stuck after the first few words. Dr. Mantelsack helped him, he helped him again in a sharper tone, and for the third time with intense irritation. But when Mumme came to a final stop, the Ordinarius was mastered by indignation. "This is entirely insufficient, Mumme. Sit down. You 329 cut a disgraceful figure, let me tell you, sir. A cretin! Stu-pid and lazy both--it is really too much." Mum me was overwhelmed. He looked the child of calam-ity, and at this moment everybody in the room despised him. A sort of disgust, almost like nausea, mounted again in Hanno Buddenbrook's throat; but at the same time he ob-served with horrid clarity all that was going forward. Dr. Mantelsack made a mark of sinister meaning after Mumme's name, and then looked through his notebook with frowning brows. He went over, in his disgust, to the order of the day, and looked to see whose turn it really was. There was no doubt that this was the case: and just as Hanno was over-powered by this knowledge, he heard his name--as if in a bad dream. "Buddenbrook!" Dr. Mantelsack had said "Buddenbrook." The scale was in the air again. Hanno could not believe his senses. There was a buzzing in his ears. He sat still. "Herr Buddenbrook!" said Dr. Mantelsack, and stared at him sharply through his glasses with his prominent sapphire-blue eyes. "Will you have the goodness?" Very well, then. It was to be. It had to come. It had come differently from his expectations, but still, here it was, and he was none the less lost. But he was calm. Would it be a very big row? He rose in his place and was about to utter some forlorn and absurd excuse to the effect that he had "forgotten" to study the lines, when he became aware that the boy ahead of him was offering him his open book. This boy, Hans Hermann Kilian, was a small brown lad with oily hair and broad shoulders. He had set his heart on becoming an officer, and was s� possessed by an ideal of comradeship that he would not leave in the lurch even little Buddenbrook, whom he did not like. He pointed with his finger to the place. Hanno gazed down upDn it and began to read. With trembling voice, his face working, he read of the Golden Age, when truth and justice flourished of their own free will, with- out laws or compulsions. "Punishment and fear did not exist," he said, in Latin. "No threats were graven upon the bronze tablets, nor did those who came to petition fear the countenance of the judges...." He read in fear and trembling, read with design badly and disjointedly, purposely omitted some of the elisions that were marked with pencil in Kilian's book, made mistakes in the lines, progressed with apparent difficulty, and constantly expected the master to discover the fraud and pounce upon him. The guilty satisfaction of seeing the open book in front of him gave him a pricking sensation in his skin; but at the same time he had such a feeling, of disgust that he intentionally deceived as badly as possible, simply to make the deceit seem less vulgar to himself. He came to the end, and a pause ensued, during which he did not dare look up. He felt convinced that Dr, Mantelsack had seen all, and his lips were perfectly white. But at length the master sighed and said: "Oh, Buddenbrook! Si tacuisses! You will permit me the classical thou, for this once. Do you know what you have done? You have conducted yourself like a vandal, a barbarian. You are a humourist, Buddenbrook; I can see that by your face. If I ask myself whether you have been coughing or whether you have been reciting this noble verse, I should incline to the former. Timm showed small feeling for rhythm, but compared to you he is a genius, a rhapsodist! Sit down, unhappy wretch! You have studied the lines, I cannot deny it, and I am constrained to give you a good mark. You have probably done your best. But tell me--have I not been told that you are musical, that you play the piano? How is it possible? Well, very well, sit down. You have worked hard--that must suffice." He put a good mark down in his book, and Hanno Budden-brook took his seat. He felt as Timm, the rhapsodist had felt before him--that he really deserved the praise which Dr. Mantelsack gave him. Yes, at the moment he was of the opinion that he was, if rather a dull, yet an industrious 331 pupil, who had come off with honour, comparatively speaking. He was conscious that all his schoolmates, not excepting1 Hans Hermann Kilian, had the same view. Yet he felt at the same lime somewhat nauseated. Pale, trembling, too ex-hausted to think about what had happened, he closed his eyes and sank back in lethargy. Dr. Mantelsack, however, went on with the lesson. He came to the verses that were to have been prepared for to-day, and called up Petersen. Petersen rose, fresh, lively, sanguine, in a stout attitude, ready for the fray. Yet to-day, even to-day, was destined to see his fall. Yes, the lesson hour was not to pass without a. catastrophe far worse than that which had befallen the hapless, short-sighted Mumme. Petersen translated, glancing now and then at the other page of his book, which should have had nothing on it. He did it quite cleverly: he acted as though something there dis-tracted him--a speck of dust, perhaps, which he brushed wilh his hand or tried to blow away. And yet--there followed the catastrophe. Dr. Mantelsack made a sudden violent movement, which was responded to on Petersen's part by a similar movement. And in the same moment the master left his seat, dashed headlong down from his platform, and approached Petersen with long, impetuous strides. "You have a crib in your book," he said as he name up. "A crib--I--no," stammpred Petersen. He was a charm- ing lad, with a great wave of blond hair on his forehead and lovely blue eyes which now flickered in a frightened way. "You have no crib in your book?" "A crib, Herr Doctor? No, really, I haven't. You are mistaken. You are accusing me falsely." Petersen betrayed! himself by the unnatural correctness of his language, which he used in order to intimidate the master. "I am not de-ceiving you," he repeated, in the greatness of his need. "I have always been honourable, my whole life long." But Dr. Mantelsack was all too certain of the painful fact.

BUDDENBRO DKS

"Give me your book," he said coldly. Petersen clung to his book; he raised it up in both hands and went on protesting. He stammered, his tongue grew thick. "Believe me, Herr Doctor. There is nothing in the book--I have no crib--I have not deceived you--I have al-ways been honourable--" "Give me your book," repeated the master, stamping hia foot. Then Petersen collapsed, and his face grew grey. "Very well," said he, and delivered up his book. "Here it is. Yes, there is a crib in it. You can see for yourself; there it is. But I haven't used it," he suddenly shrieked, quite at random. Dr. Mantelsack ignored this idiotic lie, which was rooted in despair. He drew out the crib, looked at it with an ex-pression of extreme disgust, as if it were a piece of decaying offal, thrust it into his pocket, and threw the volume of Ovid contemptuously back on Petersen's desk. "Give me the class register," he said in a hollow voice. Adolf Todtenhaupt dutifully fetched it, and Petersen re-ceived a mark for dishonesty which effectually demolished his chances of being sent up at Easter. "You are the shame of the class," said Dr. Mantelsark. Petersen sat down. He was condemned. His neighbour avoided contact with him. Every one looked at him with a mixture of pity, aversion, and disgust. He had fallen, utterly and completely, because he had been found out. There was but one opinion as to Petersen, and that was that he was, in very truth, the shame of the class. They recognized and ac-cepted his fall, as they had the rise of Timm and Budden-brook and the unhappy Mumme's mischance. And Petersen did too. Thus most of this class of twenty-five youhg folk, being of sound and strong constitution, armed and prepared to wage the battle of life as it is, took things just as they found them, and did not at this moment feel any oifence or uneasiness .333 Everything seemed to them to be quite in order. But one pair of eyes, little Johann's, which stared gloomily at a point on Hans Hermann Kilian's broad bark, were filled, in their blue-shadowed depths, with abhorrence, fear, and revulsion. The lesson went on. Dr. Mantelsack called on somebody, anybody--he had lost all desire to test any one. And after Adolf Todtenhaupt, another pupil, who was but moderately prepared, and did not even know what "patula, Jovis arbore" meant, had been railed on, Buddenbrook had to say it. He said it in a low voice, without looking up, because Dr. Mantelsack asked him, and he received a nod of the head for the answer. And now that the performance of the pupils was over, the lesson had lost all interest. Dr. Mantplsark had our of the best scholars read at his own sueet will, and listened just ah little as the twenty-four others, who began to get ready for the next class. This one was finished, in effect. No one could be marked on it, nor his interest or industry judged. And the bell would soon ring. It did ring. It rang for Hanno,, and he had received a nod of approbation. Thus it was. "Well!" said Kai to Hanno, as they walked down the Gothic corridor with their classmates, to go to the chemistry class, "what do you say now about the brow of Caesar? You had wonderful luck!" "I feel sick, Kai," said little Johann, "I don't like that kind of luck. It makes me sick." Kai knew he would have felt the same in Hanno's place. The chemistry hall was a vaulted chamber like an amphi-theatre with benches rising in tiers, a long table for the ex-periments, and two glass cases of phials. The air in the class-room had grown very hot and heavy again; but here it was saturated with an odour of sulphuretted hydrogen from a just-completed experiment, and smellcd abominable. Kai flung up the window and then stole Adolf Todtenhaupt's copy-book and began in great haste to copy down the lesson for the day. Hanno and several others did the same. This occupied the entire pause till the bell rang, and Dr. Marotzke came in. This was the "deep one," as Kai and Hanno called him. He was a medium-sized dark man with a very yellow skin, two large lumps on his brow, a stiff smeary beard, and hair of the same kind. He always looked unwashed and unkempt, but his appearance probably belied him. He taught the natural siicnces, but his own field was mathematics, in which subject he had the reputation of being an original thinker. He liked to hold forth on the subject of metaphysical passages from the Bible; and when in a. good-natured or discursive mood, he would entertain the boys of the first and second forms with marvellous interpretations of mysterious passages. He was, besides all this, a reserve officer, and very enthusiastic over the service. As an official who was also in the army, he stood very well with Director Wulicke. He set more store by discipline than any of the other masters: he would reveiw the ranks of sturdy youngsters with a professional eye, and he insisted on short, brisk answers to questions. This mixture of mysticism and severity was not, on the whole, attractive. The copy-books were shown, and Dr. Marotzke went around and touched each one with his finger. Some of the pupils who had not done theirs at all, put down other books or turned this one back to an old lesson; but he never noticed. Then the lesson began, and the twenty-five boys had to dis-play their industry and interest with respect to boric acid, and chlorine, and sttrontium, as in the previous period they had displayed it with respect to Dvid. Hans Hermann Kilian was commended because he knew that Baso or barytes, was the metal most commonly used in counterfeiting, tie was the best in the class, anyhow, because of his desire to be an officer. Kai and Hanno knew nothing at all, and fared very badly in Dr. Marotzke's notebook. And when the tests, recitation, and marking were over, th& interest in chemistry was about exhausted too. Dr. Marotzke began to make a few experiments; there were a few pops, a few coloured gases; but that was only to fill out the hour. He-335 dictated the next lesson; and then the third period, too, was a thing of the past. Everybody was in good spirits now--even Petersen, despite the blow he had received. For the next hour was likely to be a jolly one. Not a soul felt any qualms before it, and it even promised occasion for entertainment and mischief. This was English, with Candidate Modersohn, a young philologian who had been for a few weeks on trial in the faculty--or, as Kai, Count Molln, put it, he was filling a limited engagement with the company. There was little prospect, however, of his being re-engaged. His classes were much too entertaining. Some of the form remained in the chemistry hall, others went up to the classroom; nobody needed to go down and freeze in the courtyard, because Herr Modersohn was in charge up in the corridors1, and he never dared send any one down. Moreover, there were preparations to be made for his reception. The room did not become in the least quieter when it rang for the fourth hour. Everybody chattered and laughed and prepared to see some fun. Count Molln, his head in his hands, went on reading Roderick Usher. Hanno was au-dience. Some of the boys imitated the voices of animals; there was the shrill crowing of a cock; and Wasservogel, in the back row, grunted like a pig without anybody's being able to see that the noise came from his inside. On the black-board was a huge chalk drawing, a caricature, with squinting eyes, drawn by Timm the rhapsodist. And when Herr Moder-sohn entered he could not shut the door, even with the most violent efforts, because there was a thick fir-cone in the crack; Adolf Todtenhaupt had to take it away. Candidate Modersohn was an undersized, insignificant looking man. His face was always contorted with a sour, peevish expression, and he walked with one shoulder thrust forward. He was frightfully self-conscious, blinked, drew in his breath, and kept opening his mouth as if he wanted to say something if he could only think of it. Three steps from the door he trod on a cracker of such exceptional quality that it made a noise like dynamite. He jumped violently; then, in these straits, he smiled exactly as though nothing had hap-pened and took his place before the middle row of benches, stooping sideways, in his customary attitude, and resting one palm on the desk in front of him. But this posture of his was familiar to everybody; somebody had put some ink on the right spot, and Herr Modersohn's small clumsy hand got all inky. He acted as though he had not noticed, laid his wet blaik hand on his back, blinked, and said in a soft, weak voice: "The order in the classroom leaves something to be desired." Hanno Buddenbrook loved him in that moment, sat quite still, and looked up into his worried, helpless face. But Was-servogel grunted louder than ever, and a handful of peas went rattling against the window and bounced back into the room. "It's hailing," somebody said, quite loudly. Herr Moder-sohn appeared to believe this, for he went without more ado to the platform and asked for the register. He needed it to call the names from, for, though he had been teaching the class for five or six weeks, he hardly knew any of them by name. "Feddermann," he said, "will you please recite the poem?" "Absent," shouted a chorus of voices. And there sat Fed-dermann, large as life, in his place, shooting peas with great skill and accuracy. Herr Modersohn blinked again and selected a new name, "Wasservogel," he said. "Dead," shouted Petersen, attacked by a grim humour. And the chorus, grunting, crowing, and with shouts of derision, asseverated that Wasservogel was dead. Herr Modersohn blinked afresh. He looked about him, drew down his mouth, and put his finger on another name in the register. "Perlemann," he said, without much confidence .337 "Unfortunately, gone mad," uttered Kai, Count Molln, with great clarity and precision. And this also was confirmed by the chorus amid an ever-increasing tumult. Then Heir Modersohn stood up and shouted in to the hub-bub: "Buddenbrook, you will do me a hundred lines imposition. If you laugh again, I shall be obliged to mark you." Then he sat down again. It was true that Hanno had laughed. He had been seized by a quiet but violent spasm of laughter, and went on because he could not stop. He had found Kai's joke so good--the "unfortunately" had especially appealed to him. But he became quiet when Herr Modersohn attacked him, and sat looking solemnly into the Candidate's face. He observed at that moment every detail of the man's appearance: saw every pathetic little hair in his scanty beard, which showed the skin through it; saw his brown, empty, disconsolate eyes; saw that he had on what appeared to be two pairs of cuffs, because the sleeves of his shirt came down so long; saw the whole pathetic, inadequate figure he made. He saw more: he saw into the man's inner self. Hanno Budden* brook was almost the only pupil whom Herr Modersohn knew by name, and he availed himself of the knowledge to call him constantly to order, give him impositions, and tyrannize over him. He had distinguished Buddenbrook from the others simply because of his quieter behaviour--and of this he took advantage to make him feel his authority, an authority he did not dare exert upon the real offenders. Hanno looked at him and reflected that Herr Moderaohn's lack of fine feeling made it almost impossible even to pity him! "I don't bully you," he addressed the Candidate, in his thoughts: "I don't share in the general tormenting like the others--and how do you repay me? But so it is, and so will it be, always and everywhere," he thought; and fear, and that sensation almost amounting to physical nausea, rose again in him. "And the most dreadful thing is that I can't help seeing through you with such dis-gusting clearness!" At last Herr Modersohn found some one who was neither dead nor crazy, and who would take it upon himself to repeat the English verse. This was a poem called "The Monkey," a poor childish composition, required to be committed to mem-ory by these growing lads whose thoughts were already mostly bent on business, on the sea, on the coming conflicts of actual life. "Monkey, little, merry fellow, Thou art nature's punuhinellu..." There were endless verses--Kassbaum read them, quite simply, out of his book. Nobody needed to trouble himself about what Herr Modersohn thought. The noise grew worse and worse, the feet shuffled and scraped on the dusty floor, the coi'k crowed, the pig grunted, peas filled the air. The five-and-twenty were drunk with disorder. And the unregulated instincts of their years awoke. They drew obscene pictures on pieces of paper, passed them about, and laughed at them greedily. All at once everything was still. The pupil who was then reciting interrupted himself; even Herr Modersohn got up and listened. They heard something charming: a pure, bell-like sound, coming from the bottom of the room and flowing sweetly, sensuously, with indescribably tender effect, on the sudden silence. It was a music-box which somebody had brought, playing "Du, du, liegst mir am Herzeri" in the middle of the English lesson. But precisely at that moment when the little melody died away, something frightful ensued. It broke like a sudden storm over the heads of the class, unexpected, cruel, overwhelming, paralyzing. Without anybody's having knocked, the door opened wide with a great shove, and a presence came in, high and huge, growled, and stood with a single stride in front of the benches. It was the Lord G-od. Herr Modersohn grew ashy pale and dragged down the chair from the platform, dusting it with his handkerchief. The pupils had sprung up like one man. They pressed their arms to their sides, stood on their tip-toes, bent their heads, and bit their tongues in the fervour of their devotion. The deepest silence reigned. Somebody gasped with the effort he made--then all was still again. Director Wulicke measured the saluting columns for a while with his eye. He lifted his arm with its dirty funnel-shaped cuff, and let it fall with the fingers spread out, as if he were attacking a keyboard. "Sit down," he said in his double-bass voice. The pupils sank back into their seats. Herr Modersohn pulled up the chair with trembling hands, and the Director sat down beside the dais. "Please proceed," he said. That was all, but it sounded as frightful as if the words he uttered had been "Now we shall see, and woe to him who--" The reason for his coming was clear, Herr Modersohn was to give evidence of his ability to teach, to show what the lower second had learned in the six or seven hours he had been with them. It was a question of Herr Modersohn's existence and future. The Candidate was a sorry figure as he stood on the platform and called again on somebody to recite "The Mon-key." Up to now it had been only the pupils who were ex-amined, but now it was the master as well. Alas, it went badly on both sides! Herr Director Wulicke's appearance was entirely