Buddenbrooks (26 page)

3D9

CHAPTER II

AT the end of April Frau Gr� returned home. Another epoch was behind her, and the old existence began again--attending the daily devotions and the Jerusalem evenings and hearing Lea Cerhardt read aloud. Yet she was obviously in a gay and hopeful mood. Her brother, the Consul, fetched her from the station--she had come from Buchen--and drove her through the Holsten Gate into the town. He could not resist paying her the old compliment--how, next to Clothilde, she was the prettiest one in the family; and she answered: "Oh, Tom, I hate you! To make fun of an old lady like that--" But he was right, nevertheless: Madame Griinlirh kept her good looks remarkably. You looked at the thick ash-blonde hair, rolled at the sides, drawn back above the little ears, and fastened on the top of the head with a broad tortoise-shell comb; at the soft expression of her grey-blue eyes, her pretty upper lip, the fine oval and delicate colour of her face--and you thought of three-and-twenty, perhaps; never of thirty. She wore elegant hanging gold earrings, which, in a some-what different form, her grandmother had worn before her. A loose bodice of soft dark silk, with satin rc-vcrs and flat lace epaulettes, gave her pretty bosom an enchanting look of softness and fulness. She was in the best of tempers. On Thursday, when Consul Buddenbrook and the ladies from Broad Street, Consul Kriiger, Clothilde, Sesemi Wiechbrodt and Erica came to tea, she talked vividly about Munich. The beer, the noodles, the artist who wanted to paint her, and the court coaches had made the greatest impressions. She mentioned Herr Permaneder in passing; and Pfiffi Buddenbrook let fall a word or two to the effect that such a journey might be very agreeable, but did not seem to have any practical results. Frau Gr� passed this by with dignity, though she put back her head and tucked in her chin. She fell into the habit now, whenever the vesti-bule bell rang thrcugh the entry, of hurrying to the landing to see who had come. What might that mean? Probably only Ida Jungmann, Tony's governess and year-long confi-dante, knew that. Ida would say, "Tony, my child, you will see: he'll rome." The family was grateful to the returned traveller for her cheering presence; for the atmosphere of the house sadly needed brightening. The relations between the head of the firm and his younger brother had not improved. Indeed, they had grown sadly worse. Their Mother, the Frau Consul, followed with anxious misgivings the course of events and had enough to do to mediate between the two. Her hints to visit the office more regularly were received in absent silence by Christian. He met his brother's remonstrances with a mor-tified air, making no defence, and for a few days would apply himself with somewhat more zeal to the English correspond-ence. But there developed more and more in the elder an ir-ritated contempt for the younger brother, not decreased by the fact that Christian received his occasional rebukes without seeming offence, only looking at him with the usual absent disquiet in his eyes. Tom's irritable activity and the condition of his nerves would not let him listen sympathetically or even patiently to Christian's detailed accounts of his increasing symptoms. To his mother or sister, he referred to them with disgust as "the silly phenomena of an obstinate introspection." The ache, the indefinite ache in Christian's left leg, had yielded by now to treatment; but the trouble in swallowing came on often at table, and there was lately a difficulty in breathing, an asthmatic trouble, which Christian thought for several weeks was consumption, He explained its nature and 311 activity at length tD his family, his nose wrinkled up the while. Dr. Grabow was called in. He said the hrart and lungs were operating soundly, but the occasional difficulty in breathing was due to muscular sluggishness, and ordered first the use of a fan and secondly that of a green powder which one burned, inhaling the smoke. Christian used the fan in the office, and to a remonstrance on the part of the chief an-swered that in Valparaiso every man in the office was pro-vided with a fan on account of the heat: ' 'Johnny Thunder-storm--good God!" But one day, after he had been wiiggling about on his chair for some time, nervous and restless, he took his powder out of his pocket and made such a strong and violent-smelling reek in the room that some of the men began to cough violently, and Herr Marrus grew quite pale. There was an open explosion, a scandal, a dreadful talking-to which would have led to a break at once, but lhat the Frau Consul once more covered everything all up, reasoned them out of it, and set things going again. But this was not all. The life Christian led outside the house, mainly wilh his old schoolmate Lawyer Gieseke, was observed by the Consul with disgust. He was no prig, no spoil-sport. He knew very well that his native town, this port and trading city, where men walked the streets proud of their irreproachable reputation as business men, was by no means of spotless morality. They made up to themselves for the tedious hours spent in their offices, by dinners with heavy wines and heavy dishes--and by other things. But the broad mantle of civic respectability concealed this side of their life. Thomas Buddenbrook's first law was to preserve "the dehors"; wherein he showed himself not so different from his fellow burghers. Lawyer Gieseke was a member of the professional class, whose habits of life were much like those of the mer-chants. That he was also a "good fellow," anybody could see who looked at him. But, like the other easy men of pleasure in the community, he knew how to avoid trouble by wearing the proper expression and saying the proper thing. And in political and professional matters, he had a reputation of ir-reproachable respectability. His betrothal to Fraulein Huneus had just been announced; whereby he married a considerable dowry and a place in the best society. He was active in civic affairs, and he had his eye on a seat in the Council--even, ultimately, on the seat of old Burgomaster Overdieck. But his friend Christian Buddenbrook--the same who could go calmly up to Mile. Meyer-de-la-Grange, present her his bouquet, and say, "Dh, Fraulein, how beautifully you act!"--Christian had been developed by character and circumstances into a free-liver of the naive and untrammelcd type. In af-fairs of the heart, as in all others, he was disinclined to goverii his feelings or to practise discretion for the sake of preserving his dignity. The whole town had laughed over his affair with an obscure actress at the summer theatre. Frau Stuht in Bell Founders' Street--the same who moved in the best society--told everybody who would listen how Chris had been seen again walking by daylight in the open street with the person from the Tivoli. Even that did not actually offend people. There was too much candid cynicism in the community to permit a display of serious moral disapproval. Christian Buddenbrook, like Consul Peter Db'hlmann--whose declining business put him into somewhat the same artless class--was a popular enter-tainer and indispensable to gentlemen's companions. But neither was taken seriously. In important matters they simply did not count. It was a significant fact that the whole town, the Bourse, the docks, the club, and the street called them by theii first names--Peter and Chris. And enemies, like the Hagenstrbms, laughed not only at Chris's stories and jokes, but at Chris himself, too. He thought little or nothing of this. If he noticed it, it passed out of his mind again after a momentary disquiet. But his brother the Consul knew it. Thomas knew that Christian afforded a point of attack to the enemies of the family--and there were already too many such points. The connection 313 B U D D E N B R 0 0 K S with the Overdiecks was distant and would be quite worthless 'after the Burgomaster's death. The Krbgers played no role now; they lived retired, after the misfortunes with their son. The marriage of the deceased uncle Gotthold was always un-pleasant. The Consul's sister was a divorced wife, even if one did not quite give up hope of her re-marrying. And his brother was a laughing-stock in the town, a man with whose clownishness industrious men amused their leisure and then laughed good-naturedly or maliciously. He contracted debts, too, and at the end of the quarter, when he had no more money, would quite openly let Dr. Gieseke pay for him--which was a direct reflection on the firm. Thomas's contemp-tuous ill will, which Christian bore with quiet indifference, expressed itself in all the trifling situations that Dome up be-tween members of a family. If the conversation turned upon the Buddenbrook family history, Christian might be in the mood to speak with serious love and admiration of his native town and of his ancestors. It sat rather oddly on him, to be sure, and the Consul could not stand it: he would cut short the conversation with some cold remark. He despised his brother so much that he could not even permit him to love where he did. If Christian had uttered the same sentiments in the dialect of Marcellus Stengel, Tom could have borne it better. He had read a book, a historical work, which had made such a strong impression on him that he spoke about it and praised it in the family. Christian would by himself never have found out the book; but he was impressionable and accessible to every influence; so he also read it, found it wonderful, and described his reactions with all possible de-tail. That book was spoiled for Thomas for ever. He spoke of it with cold and critical detachment. He pretended hardly to have read it. He completely gave it over to his brother, to admire all by himself.

CHAPTER III

CONSUL BUDDENBRDDK came from the'"Harmony"--a reading-c-lub for men, where he had spent the hour after second break-fast--hark into Meng Street. He crossed the yard from be-hind, entered the side of the garden by the passage which ran between vine-covered walls and connected the back and front courtyards, and railed into the kitchen to ask if his brother were at home. They should let him know when he came in. Then he passed through the office (where the men at the desks bent more closely over their work) into the private room; he laid aside his hat and stick, put on his working coat, and sat down in his place by the window, opposite Herr Mar-cus. Between his pale eyebrows were two deep wrinkles. The yellow end of a Russian cigarette roamed from one corner of his mouth to the other. The movements with which he took up paper and writing materials were so short and jerky that Herr Marcus ran his two fingers up and down his beard and gave his colleague a long, scrutinizing look. The younger men glanced at him with raised eyebrows. The Head was angry. After half an hour, during which nothing was heard but the scratching of pens and the sound of Herr Marcus discreetly clearing his throat, the Consul looked over the green half-blind and saw Christian coming down the street. He was smoking. He came from the club, where he had eaten and also played a bit. He wore his hat a little awry on his head, and swung his yellow stick, whirh had come from "over there" and had the bust of a nun for a handle. He was ob-viously in good health and the best of tempers. He came hum-ming into the office, said "Good morning, gentlemen," al-315 though it was a bright spring afternoon, and took his place tr "do a bit of work." But the Consul got up and, passing him. said without looking at him, "Oh, may I have a few words with you?" Christian followed him. They walked rather rapidly through the entry. Thomas held his hands behind his back, and Christian involuntarily did the same, turning his big bony hooked nose toward his brother. The red-blond moustache drooped, English fashion, over his mouth. While they went across the court, Thomas said: "We will walk a few steps up and down the garden, my friend." "Good," answered Christian. Then there was a long silence again, while they turned to the left and walked, by the out-side way, past the rococo "portal" right round the garden, where the buds were beginning to swell. Finally the Consul said in a loud voice, with a long breath, "I have just been very angry, on account of your behaviour." "My--?" "Yes. I heard in the 'Harmony' about a remark of yours that you dropped in the club last evening. It was so obnox-ious, so incredibly tactless, that I can find no words--the stupidity called down a sharp snub on you at once. Do you care to recall what it was?" "I know now what you mean. Who told you that?" "What has that to do with it? Dijhlmann.--In a voice loud enough so that all the people who did not already know the story could laugh at the joke." "Well, Tom, I must say I was ashamed of Hagenstrbm." "You were ashamed--you, were--! Listen to me," shouted the Consul, stretching out both hands in front of him and shaking them in excitement. "In a company consisting of business as well as professional men, you make the remark, for everybody to hear, that, when one really considers it, every business man is a swindler--you, a business man yourself, belonging to a firm that strains every nerve and muscle to preserve its perfect integrity and spotless reputation!" "Good heavens, Thomas, it was a joke!--although, BUDDENBRDOKS really--" Christian hesitated, wrinkling his nose and stooping a little. In this position he took a few steps. "A joke!" shouted the Consul. "I think I can understand a joke, but you see how your joke was understood. Tor my part, I have the greatest respect for my calling.' That was what Hermann Hagenstrom answered you. And there you sat, a good-for-nothing, with no respect for yours--" "Tom, you don't know what you are talking about. I as-sure you he spoiled the whole joke. After everybody laughed, as if they agreed with me, there sat this Hagenstrom and brought out with ridiculous solemnity, Tor my part--' Stu-pid fool! I was really ashamed for him. I thought about it a long time in bed last night, and I had a quite remarkable feeling--you know how it feels--�" "Stop chattering, stop chattering, I beg you," interrupted the Consul. He trembled with disgust in his whole body. "I agree--I agree with you that his answer was not in the right key, and that it was tasteless. But that is just the kind of people you pick out to say such things to!--if it is neces-sary to say them at all--and so you lay yourself open to an insolent snub like that. Hagenstrom took the opening to--give not only you but us a slap. Do you understand what 'for my part' meant? It meant: 'You may have such ideas going about in your brother's office, Herr Buddenbrook.' That's what it meant, you idiot." "Idiot--?" said Christian. He looked disturbed and em-barrassed. "And finally, you belong not to yourself alone; I'm sup-posed to be indifferent when you make yourself personally ridiculous--and when don't you make yourself personally ri-diculous?" Thomas cried. He was pale, and the blue veins stood out on his narrow temples, from which the hair went back in two bays. One of his light eyebrows was raised; even the long, stiff pointed ends of his moustache looked angry as he threw his words down at Christian's feet on the gravel with quick side wise gestures. "You make yourself 317 a laughing-stock with your love affairs, your harlequinades, your diseases and your remedies." Christian shook his head vehemently and put up a warning finger. "As far as that goes, Tom, you don't understand very well, you know. The thing is--every one must attend to his own conscience, so to speak. I don't know if you under-stand that.--Crabow has ordered me a salve for the throat muscles. Well--if I don't use it, if I neglect it, I am quite lost and helpless, I am restless and uncertain and worried and upset, and I can't swallow. But if I have been using it, I feel that I have done my duty, I have a good conscience, I am quiet and calm and can swallow famously. The salve does not do it, you know, but the thing is that an idea like that, you understand, can only be destroyed by another idea, an opposite one. I don't know whether you understand me--" "Oh, yes--oh, yes!" cried the Consul, holding his head for a moment with both hands. "Do it, do it, but don't talk about it--don't gabble about it. Leave other people alone with your horrible nuances. You make yourself ridiculous with your absurd chatter from morning to night. I must tell you, and I repeat it, I am not interested in how much you make a fool of yourself personally. But I forbid your com-promising the firm in the way you did yesterday evening." Christian did not answer, except to run his hand slowly over his sparse red-brown locks, while his eyes roamed un-steadily and absently, and unrest sat upon his fare. Un-doubtedly he was still busy with the idea which he had just been expressing. There was a pause. Thomas stalked along with the calm-ness of despair. "All business men are swindlers, you say," he began afresh. "Good. Are you tired of it? Are you sorry you are a business man? You once got permission from Father--" "Why, Tom," said Christian reflectively, "I would really rather study. It must be nice to be in the university. One attends when one likes, at one's own free will, sits down and listens, as in the theatre--" "As in the theatre! Yes, I think your right place is that of a comedian in a cafe chantant. I am not joking. I am per-fectly convinced that is your secret ideal." Christian did not deny it; he merely gazed aimlessly about. "And you have the cheek to make such a remark--when you haven't the slightest notion of work, and spend your days storing up a lot of feelings and sensations and episodes you hear in the theatre and when you are loafing about, God knows where; you take these and pet them and study them and chatter about them shamelessly!" "Yes, Tom," said Christian. He was a little depressed, and rubbed his hand again over his head. "That is true: you have expressed it quite correctly. That is the difference between us. You enjoy the theatre yourself; and you had your little affairs too, once on a time, between ourselves! And there was a time when you preferred novels and poetry and all that. But you have always known how to reconcile it with regular work and a serious life. I haven't that. I am quite used up with the other; I have nothing left over for the regular life--I don't know whether you understand--" "Oh, so you see that?" cried Thomas, standing still and folding his arms on his breast. "You humbly admit that, and still you go on the same old way? Are you a dog, Chris-tian? A man has some pride, by God! One doesn't live a life that one may not know how lo defend oneself. But so you are. That is your character. If you can only see a thing and understand and describe it--. No, my patience is at an end, Christian." And the Consul took a quick backward step and made a gesture with his arms straight out. "It is at an end, I tell you.--You draw your pay, and stay away from the office. That isn't what irritates me. Go and trifle your life away, as you have been doing, if you choose. But you compromise us, all of us, wherever you are. You are a growth, a fester, on the body of our family. You are a dis-319 grace to us here in this town, and if this house were mine. I'd show you the door!" he screamed, making a wild sweeping gesture over the garden, the court, and the whole property. He had no more control of himself. A long-stored-up well of hatred poured itself out. "What is the matter with you, Thomas?" said Christian. He was seized with unaccustomed anger, standing there in a position common to bow-legged people, like a questionmark, with head, stomach, and knees all prominent. His little deep eves were wide open and surrounded by red rims down to the cheek-bones, as his Father's used to be in anger. "How are you speaking to me? What have I done to you? I'll go, without being thrown out. Shame on you!" he added with downright reproach, accompanying the word with a short, snapping motion in front of him, as if he were catching a fly. Strange to say, Thomas did not meet this outburst by more anger. He bent his head and slowly took his way around the garden. It seemed to quiet him, actually to do him good to have made his brother angry at last--to have pushed him finally to the energy of a protest. "Believe me," he said quietly, putting his hands behind his back again, "this conversation is truly painful to me. Put it had to take place. Such scenes in the family are frightful, but we must speak out once for all. Let us talk the thing over quietly, young one. You do not like your present position, it seems?" "No, Tom; you are right about that. You see, at first I was very well satisfied. I know I'm better off here than in a stranger's business. But what I want is the independence, I think. I have always envied you when I saw you sit there and work, for it is really no work at all for you. You work not because you must, but as master and head, and let others work for you, and you have the control, make your calculations, and are free. It is quite different." "Good, Christian. Why couldn't you have said that before? You can make yourself free, or freer, if you like. You know Father left you as well as me an immediate inheritance of fifty thousand marks current; and I am ready at any moment to pay out this sum for a reasonable and sound purpose. In Hamburg, or anywhere else you like, there are plenty of safe but limited firms where they could use an increase of capital, and where you could enter as a partner. Let us think the matter over quietly, each by himself, and also speak to Mother at a good opportunity. I must get to work, and you could for the present go on with the English correspondence." As they crossed the entry, he added, "What do you say, for in-stance, to H. C. F. Burmeester and Company in Hamburg? Import and export. I know the man. I am certain he would snap at it." That was in the end of May of the year 1857. At the be-ginning of June Christian travelled via Buchen to Hamburg--a heavy loss to the club, the theatre, the Tivoli, and the lib-eral livers of the town. All the "good fellows," among them Dr. Gieseke and Peter Dbhlmann, took leave of him at the station, and brought him flowers and cigars, and laughed to split their sides--recalling, no doubt, all the stories Christian had told them. And Lawyer Gieseke, amidst general applause, fastened to Christian's overcoat a great favour made out of gold paper. This favour came from a sort of inn in the neighbourhood of the port, a place of free and easy resort where a red lantern burned above the door at night, and it was always very lively. The favour was awarded to the de-parting Chris Buddenbrook for his distinguished services.