Buddenbrooks (58 page)

CHAPTER III

CASES of typhoid fever take the following course. The patient feels depressed and moody--a condition which grows rapidly worse until it amounts to acute despondency. At the same time he is overpowered by physical weariness, not only of the muscles and sinews, but also of the organic functions, in particular of the digestion--so that the stomach refuses food. There is a great desire for sleep, but even in conditions of extreme fatigue the sleep is restless and super-ficial and not refreshing. There is pain in the head, the brain feels dull and confused, and there are spells of giddi-ness. An indefinite ache is felt in all the bones. There is blood from the nose now and then, without apparent cause.--This is the onset. Then comes a violent chill which seizes the whole body and makes the teeth chatter; the fever sets in, and is im-mediately at its height. Little red spots appear on the breast and abdomen, about the size of a lentil. They go away when pressed by the finger, but return at once. The pulse is un-steady; there are about a hundred pulsations to the minute. The temperature goes up to 1D4�. Thus passes the first week. In the second week the patient is free from pain in the head and limbs; but the giddiness is distinctly worse, and there is so much humming in the ears that he is practically deaf. The facial expression becomes dull, the mouth stands open, the eyes are without life. The consciousness is blurred, desire for sleep takes entire possession of the patient, and he often sinks, not into actual sleep, but into a leaden lethargy. At other intervals there are the loud and excited ravings of delirium. The patient's helplessness is complete, 351 and his uncleanliness becomes repulsive. His gums, teeth, and tongue are covered with a blackish deposit which makes his breath foul. He lies motionless on his back, with dis-tended abdomen. He has sunk down in the bed, with his knees wide apart. Pulse and breathing are rapid, jerky, superficial and laboured; the pulse is fluttering, and gallops one hundred and twenty to the minute. The eyelids are half closed, the cheeks are no longer glowing, but have as-sumed a bluish colour. The red spots on breast and ab-domen are more numerous. The temperature reaches 105.8�. In the third week the weakness is at its height. The patient raves no longer: who can say whether his spirit is sunk in empty night or whether it lingers, remote from the flesh, in far, deep, quiet dreams, of which he gives no sound and no sign? He lies in total insensibility. This is the crisis of the disease. In individual cases the diagnosis is sometimes rendered more difficult; as, for example, when the early symptoms--depression, weariness, lack of appetite, headache and un-quiet sleep--are nearly all present while the patient is still going about in his usual health; when they are scarcely noticeable as anything out of the common, even if they are suddenly and definitely increased. But a clever doctor, of real scientific acumen--like, for example, Dr. Langhals, the good-looking Dr. Langhals with the small, hairy hands--will still be in a position to call the case by its right name; and the appearance of the red spots on the chest and abdomen will be conclusive evidence that his diagnosis was correct. He will know what measures to take and what remedies to apply. He will arrange for a large, well-aired room, the temperature of which must not be higher than 70�. He will insist on absolute cleanliness, and by means of frequent shifting and changes of linen will keep the patient free from bed-sores--if possible; in some cases it is not possible. He will have the mouth frequently cleansed with moist linen rags. As for treatment, preparations of iodine, potash, quinine, and antipyrin are indicated--with a diet as light and nourishing as possible, for the patient's stomach and bowels are profoundly attacked by the disease. He will treat the con-suming fever by means of frequent batJis, into -which the patient will often be put every three hours, day and night, cooling them gradually from the foot end of the tub, and always, after each bath, administering something stimulating, like brandy or champagne. But all these remedies he uses entirely at random, in the hope that they may be of some use in the case; ignorant whether any one of them will have the slightest effect. For there is one thing which he does not know at all; with respect to one fact, he labours in complete darkness. Up to the third week, up to the very crisis of the disease, he cannot pos-sibly tell whether this illness, which he calls typhoid, is an unfortunate accident, the disagreeable consequence of an in-fection which might perhaps have been avoided, and which can be combated with the resources of medical science; or whether it is, quite simply, a form of dissolution, the garment, as it were, of death. And then, whether death choose to assume this form or another is all the same--against him there is no remedy. Cases of typhoid take the following course: When the fever is at its height, life calls to the patient: calls out to him as he wanders in his distant dream, and summons him m no uncertain voice. The harsh, imperious call reaches the spirit on that remote path that leads into the shadows, the coolness and peace. He hears the call of life, the clear, fresh, mocking summons to return to that distant scene which he has already left so far behind him, and already forgotten. Ami there may well up in him something like a feeling of shame for a neglected duty; a sense of renewed energy, courage, and hope; he may recognize a bond existing still between him and that stirring, colourful, callous existence which he thought he had left so far behind him. Then, how-ever far he may have wandered on his distant path, he will 353 turn back--and live. But if he shudders when he hears life's voice, if the memory of that vanished scene and the sound of that lusty summons make him shake his head, make him put out his hand to ward it off as he flies forward in the way of escape that has opened to him--then it is clear that the patient will die.

CHAPTER IV

"IT is not right, it is not right, Gerda," said old Fraulein Weichbrodt, perhaps for the hundredth time. Her voice was full of reproach and distress. ' She had a sofa place to-day in the circle that sat round the centre-table in the drawing-room of her former pupil. Gerda Buddenbrook, Frau Permaneder, her daughter Erica, poor Clothilde, and the three Misses Buddenbrook made up the group. The green cap-strings still fell down upon the old lady's childish shoulders; but she had grown so tiny, with her seventy-five years of life, that she could scarcely raise her elbow high enough to gestic-ulate above the surface of the table. "No, it is not right, and so I tell you, Gerda," she repeated. She spoke with such 'warmth that her voice trembled. "I have one foot in the grave, my time is short--and you can think of leaving me--of leaving us all--for ever! If it were just a visit to Amsterdam that you were thinking of--but to leave us for ever--!" She shook her bird-like old head vig-orously, and her brown eyes were clouded with her distress. "It is true, you'have lost a great deal--" "No, she has not lost a great deal, she has lost everything," said Frau Permaneder. "We must not be selfish, Therese. Gerda wishes to go, and she is going--that is all. She came with Thomas, one-and-twenty years ago; and we all loved her, though she very likely didn't like any of us.--No, you didn't, Gerda; don't deny it!--But Thomas is no more--and nothing is any more. What are we to her? Nothing. We feel it very much, we cannot help feeling it; but yet I say, go, with God's blessing, Gerda, and thanks for not going before, when Thomas died." 355 3UDDENBRODKS It was an autumn evening, after supper. Little Johann [Justus, Johann, Kaspar) had been lying for nearly six months, equipped 'with the blessing of Pastor Pringsheim, out there at the edge of the little grove, beneath the sand-stone cross, beneath the family arms. The rain rustled the half-leafless trees in the avenue, and sometimes gusts of wind drove it against the window-panes. All eight ladies were dressed in black. The little family had gathered to take leave of Gerda Buddenbrook, who was about to leave the town and return to Amsterdam, to play duets once more with her old father. No duties now restrained her. Frau Permaneder could no longer oppose her decision. She said it was right, she knew it must be so; but in her heart she mourned over her sister-in-law's departure. If the Senator's widow had remained in the town, and kept her station and her place in society, and left her property where it was, there would still have remained a little prestige to the family name. But let that be as it must, Frau Antonie was determined to hold her head high while she lived and there were people to look at her. Had not her grandfather driven with four horses all over the country? Despite the stormy life that lay behind her, and despite her weak digestion, she did not look her fifty years. Her skin was a little faded and downy, and a few hairs grew on her upper lip--the pretty upper lip of Tony Buddenbrook. But there was not a white hair in the smooth coiffure beneath the mourning cap. Poor Clothilde bore up under the departure of her rela-tive, as one must bear up under the afflictions of this life. She took it with patience and tranquillity. She had done wonders at the supper table, and now she sat among the others, lean and grey as of yore, and her words were drawling and friendly. Erica Weinschenk, now thirty-one years old, was likewise not one to excite herself unduly over her aunt's departure. She had lived through worse things, and had early learned resignation. Submission was her strongest characteristic: one read it in her weary light-blue eyes--the eyes of Bendix Griinlidh--and heard it in the tones of her patient, sometimes plaintive voice. The three Misses Buddenbrook, Uncle Gotthold's daughters, wore their old affronted and critical air; Friederike and Henriette, the eldest, had grown leaner and more angular with the years; while Pfiffi, the youngest, now fifty-three years old, was much too little and fat. Old Frau Consul Kroger, Uncle Justus' widow, had been asked too, but she was rather ailing--or perhaps she had no suitable gown to put on: one couldn't tell which. They talked about Gerda's journey and the train she was to take; about the sale of the villa and its furnishings, which Herr Gosch had undertaken. For Gerda was taking nothing with her--she was going away as she had come. Then Frau Permaneder began to talk about life. She was very serious and made observations upon the past and the future--though of the future there was in truth almost nothing to be said. "When I am dead," she declared, "Erica may move away if she likes. But as for me, I cannot live anywhere else; and so long as I am on earth, we will come together here, we who are left. Once a week you will come to dinner with me--and we will read the family papers." She put her hand on the portfolio that -lay before her on the table. "Yes, Gerda, I will take them over, and be glad to have them. Well, that is sJttled. Do you hear, Tilda? Though it might exactly as well be you who should invite us, for you are just as well off as (we are now. Yes--so it goes. I've struggled against fate, and done my best, and you have just sat there and waited for everything to come round. But you are a goose, you know, all the same--please don't mind if I say so--"."Oh, Tony," Clothilde said, smiling. "I am sorry I cannot say good-bye to Christian," said Gerda, and the talk turned aside to that subject. There was 357 fcUDDENBRODKS small prospect of his ever coming out of the institution in which he was confined, although he was probably not too bad to go about in freedom. But the present state of things was very agreeable for his wife. She was, Frau Permaneder as-serted, in league with the doctor; and Christian would, in all piobability, end his days where he was. There was a pause. They touched delicately and with hesi-tation upon recent events, and when one of them let fall little Johann's name, it was still in the room, except for the sound of the rain, which fell faster than before. This silence lay like a heavy secret over the events of Hanno's last illness. It must have been a frightful onslaught. They did not look in each other's eyes as they talked; their voices were hushed, and their words were broken. But they spoke of one last episode--the visit of the little ragged count who had almost forced his way to Hanno's bedside. Hanno had smiled when he heard his voice, though he hardly knew any one; and Kai had kissed his hands again and again. "He kissed his hands?" asked the Buddenbrcok ladies. "Yes, over and over." They all thought for a while of this strange thing, and then suddenly Frau Permaneder burst into tears. "I loved him so much," she sobbed. "You don't any of you know how much--more than any of you--yes. forgive me, Gerda--you are his mother.--Dh, he was an angel." "He is an angel, now," corrected Sesemi. " � "Hanno, little Hanno," went on Frau Permaneder, the tears flowing down over her soft faded cheeks. "Tom, Father, Grandfather, and all the rest! Where are they? We shall see them no more. Oh, it is so sad, so hard!" "There -will be a reunion," said Friederike Buddenbrook. She folded her hands in her lap, cast down her eyes, and put her nose in the air. "Yes--they say so.--Oh, there are times, Friederike, when that is no consolation, God forgive me! When one begins to doubt--doubt justice and goodness--and everything. Life crushes so much in us, it destroys so many of our beliefs--! A reunion--if that were so--" But now Sesemi Weichbrodt stood up, as tall as ever she could. She stood on tip-toe, rapped on the table; the cap shook on her old head. "It is so!" she said, with her whole strength; and looked at them all with a challenge in her eyes. She stood there, a victor in the good fight which all her life she had waged against the assaults of Reason: hump-barked, tiny, quivering with the strength of her convictions, a little prophetess, admonishing and inspired.

The End