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Gerda would be sure to shrug her shoulders and say with a pitying
smile, “How can you, my friend? A thing like that, without any
musical value whatever!”
He hated this “musical value.” It was a phrase which had no
meaning for him save a certain chilling arrogance. It drove him on,
in Hanno’s presence, to self-assertion. More than once he
remonstrated angrily, “This constant harping on musical values, my
dear, strikes me as rather tasteless and opinionated.” To which she
rejoined: “Thomas, once for all, you will never understand anything
about music as an art, and, intelligent as you are, you will never see
that it is more than an after-dinner pleasure and a feast for the ears.
In every other field you have a perception of the banal—in music
not. But it is the test of musical comprehension. What pleases you in
music? A sort of insipid optimism, which, if you met with it in
literature, would make you throw down the book with an angry or
sarcastic comment. Easy gratification of each unformed wish, prompt
satisfaction before the will is even roused—that is what pretty music
is like—and it is like nothing else in the world. It is mere flabby
idealism.”
He understood her; that is, he understood what she said. But he
could not follow her: could not comprehend why melodies which
touched or stirred him were cheap and worthless, while
compositions which left him cold and bewildered possessed the
highest musical value. He stood before a temple from whose
threshold Gerda sternly waved him back—and he watched while she
and the child vanished within.
He betrayed none of his grief over this estrangement, though the
gulf seemed to widen between him and his little son. The idea of
suing for his child’s favour seemed frightful to him. During the day
he had small time to spare; at meals he treated him with a friendly
cordiality that had at times a tonic severity. “Well, comrade,” he
would say, giving him a tap or two on the back of the head and
seating himself opposite his wife, “well, and how are you? Studying?
And playing the piano, eh? Good! But not too much piano, else you
won’t want to do your task, and then you won’t go up at Easter.” Not
a muscle betrayed the anxious suspense with which he waited to see
how Hanno took his greeting and what his reply would be. Nothing
revealed his painful inward shrinking when the child merely gave him
a shy glance of the gold-brown, shadowy eyes—a glance that did not
even reach his father’s face—and bent again over his plate.
It was monstrous for him to brood over this childish clumsiness. It
was his fatherly duty to occupy himself a little with the child: so,
while the plates were changed, he would examine him and try to
stimulate his sense for facts. How many inhabitants were there in
the town? What streets led from the Trave to the upper town? What
were the names of the granaries that belonged to the firm? Out with
it, now; speak up! But Hanno was silent. Not with any idea of
wounding or annoying his father! But these inhabitants, these
streets and granaries, which were normally a matter of complete
indifference to him, became positively hateful when they were made
the subject of an examination. However lively he was beforehand,
however gaily he had laughed and talked with his father, his mood
would go down to zero at the first symptom of an examination, and
his resistance would collapse entirely. His eyes would cloud over, his
mouth take on a despondent droop, and he would be possessed by
a feeling of profound regret at the thoughtlessness of Papa, who
surely knew that such tests came to nothing and only spoiled the
whole meal time for everybody! With eyes swimming in tears he
looked down at his plate. Ida would nudge him and whisper to him:
the streets, the granaries. Oh, that was all useless, perfectly useless.
She did not understand. He did know the names—at least some of
them. It would have been easy to do what Papa asked—if only he
were not possessed and prevented by an overpowering sadness! A
severe word from his father and a tap with the fork against the knife
rest brought him to himself with a start. He cast a glance at his
mother and Ida and tried to speak. But the first syllables were
already drowned in sobs. “That’s enough,” shouted the Senator,
angrily. “Keep still—you needn’t tell me! You can sit there dumb and
silly all the rest of your life!” And the meal would be finished in
uncomfortable silence.
When the Senator felt troubled about Hanno’s passionate
preoccupation with his music, it was this dreaminess, this weeping,
this total lack of freshness and energy, that he fixed upon.
All his life the boy had been delicate. His teeth had been particularly
bad, and had been the cause of many painful illnesses and
difficulties. It had nearly cost him his life to cut his first set; the
gums showed a constant tendency to inflammation, and there were
abscesses, which Mamsell Jungmann used to open with a needle at
the proper time. Now his second teeth were beginning to come in,
and the suffering was even greater. He had almost more pain than
he could bear, and he spent many sleepless, feverish nights. His
teeth, when they came, were as white and beautiful as his mother’s;
but they were soft and brittle, and crowded each other out of shape
when they came in; so that little Hanno was obliged, for the
correction of all these evils, to make the acquaintance early in life of
a very dreadful man—no less than Herr Brecht, the dentist, in Mill
Street.
Even this man’s name was significant: it suggested the frightful
sensation in Hanno’s jaw when the roots of a tooth were pulled,
lifted, and wrenched out; the sound of it made Hanno’s heart
contract, just as it did when he cowered in an easy-chair in Herr
Brecht’s waiting-room, with the faithful Jungmann sitting opposite,
and looked at the pictures in a magazine, while he breathed in the
sharp-smelling air of the room and waited for the dentist to open the
door of the operating-room, with his polite and horrible “Won’t you
come in, please?”
This operating-room possessed one strange attraction, a gorgeous
parrot with venomous little eyes, which sat in a brass cage in the
corner and was called, for unknown reasons, Josephus. He used to
say “Sit down; one moment, please,” in a voice like an old fish-
wife’s; and though the hideous circumstances made this sound like
mockery, yet Hanno felt for the bird a curious mixture of fear and
affection. Imagine—a parrot, a big, bright-coloured bird, that could
talk and was called Josephus! He was like something out of an
enchanted forest; like Grimm’s fairy tales, which Ida read aloud to
him. And when Herr Brecht opened the door, his invitation was
repeated by Josephus in such a way that somehow Hanno was
laughing when he went into the operating-room and sat down in the
queer big chair by the window, next the treadle machine.
Herr Brecht looked a good deal like Josephus. His nose was of the
same shape, above his grizzled moustaches. The bad thing about
him was that he was nervous, and dreaded the tortures he was
obliged to inflict. “We must proceed to extraction, Fräulein,” he
would say, growing pale. Hanno himself was in a pale cold sweat,
with staring eyes, incapable of protesting or running away; in short,
in much the same condition as a condemned criminal. He saw Herr
Brecht, with the forceps in his sleeve, bend over him, and noticed
that little beads were standing out on his bald brow, and that his
mouth was twisted. When it was all over, and Hanno, pale and
trembling, spat blood into the blue basin at his side, Herr Brecht too
had to sit down, and wipe his forehead and take a drink of water.
They assured little Johann that this man would do him good and
save him suffering in the end. But when Hanno weighed his present
pains against the positive good that had accrued from them, he felt
that the former far outweighed the latter; and he regarded these
visits to Mill Street as so much unnecessary torture. They removed
four beautiful white molars which had just come in, to make room
for the wisdom teeth expected later: this required four weeks of
visits, in order not to subject the boy to too great a strain. It was a
fearful time!—a long drawn-out martyrdom, in which dread of the
next visit began before the last one, with its attendant exhaustion,
was fairly over. When the last tooth was drawn, Hanno was quite
worn out, and was ill in bed for a week.
This trouble with his teeth affected not only his spirits but also the
functioning of all his other organs. What he could not chew he did
not digest, and there came attacks of gastric fever, accompanied by
fitful heart action, according as the heart was either weakened or
too strongly stimulated. And there were spells of giddiness, while the
pavor nocturnus, that strange affliction beloved of Dr. Grabow,
continued unabated. Hardly a night passed that little Johann did not
start up in bed, wringing his hands with every mark of unbearable
anguish, and crying out piteously for help, as though some one were
trying to choke him or some other awful thing were happening. In
the morning he had forgotten it all. Dr. Grabow’s treatment consisted
of giving fruit-juice before the child went to bed; which had
absolutely no effect.
The physical arrests and the pains which Hanno suffered made him
old for his age; he was what is called precocious; and though this
was not very obvious, being restrained in him, as it were, by his own
unconscious good taste, still it expressed itself at times in the form
of a melancholy superiority. “How are you, Hanno?” somebody would
ask: his grandmother or one of the Broad Street Buddenbrooks. A
little resigned curl of the lip, or a shrug of the shoulders in their blue
sailor suit, would be the only answer.
“Do you like to go to school?”
“No,” answered Hanno, with quiet candour—he did not consider it
worth while to try to tell a lie in such cases.
“No? But one has to learn writing, reading, arithmetic—”
“And so on,” said little Johann.
No, he did not like going to school—the old monastic school with its
cloisters and vaulted classrooms. He was hampered by his illnesses,
and often absent-minded, for his thoughts would linger among his
harmonic combinations, or upon the still unravelled marvel of some
piece which he had heard his mother and Herr Pfühl playing; and all
this did not help him on in the sciences. These lower classes were
taught by assistant masters and seminarists, for whom he
entertained mingled feelings: a dread of possible future punishments
and a secret contempt for their social inferiority, their spiritual
limitations, and their physical unkemptness. Herr Tietge, a little grey
man in a greasy black coat, who had taught in the school even in
the time of the deceased Marcellus Stengel; who squinted
abominably and sought to remedy this defect by wearing glasses as
thick and round as a ship’s port-holes—Herr Tietge told little Johann
how quick and industrious his father had been at figures. Herr Tietge
had severe fits of coughing, and spat all over the floor of his
platform.
Hanno had, among his schoolmates, no intimates save one. But this
single bond was very close, even from his earliest school days. His
friend was a child of aristocratic birth but neglected appearance, a
certain Count Mölln, whose first name was Kai.
Kai was a lad of about Hanno’s height, dressed not in a sailor suit,
but in shabby clothes of uncertain colour, with here and there a
button missing, and a great patch in the seat. His arms were too
long for the sleeves of his coat, and his hands seemed impregnated
with dust and earth to a permanent grey colour; but they were
unusually narrow and elegant, with long fingers and tapering nails.
His head was to match: neglected, uncombed, and none too clean,
but endowed by nature with all the marks of pure and noble birth.
The carelessly parted hair, reddish-blond in colour, waved back from
a white brow, and a pair of light-blue eyes gleamed bright and keen
from beneath. The cheek-bones were slightly prominent: while the
nose, with its delicate nostrils and slightly aquiline curve, and the
mouth, with its short upper lip, were already quite unmistakable and
characteristic.
Hanno Buddenbrook had seen the little count once or twice, even
before they met at school, when he took his walks with Ida
northward from the Castle Gate. Some distance outside the town,
nearly as far as the first outlying village, lay a small farm, a tiny,
almost valueless property without even a name. The passer-by got
the impression of a dunghill, a quantity of chickens, a dog-hut, and a
wretched, kennel-like building with a sloping red roof. This was the
manor-house, and therein dwelt Kai’s father, Count Eberhard Mölln.
He was an eccentric, hardly ever seen by anybody, busy on his
dunghill with his dogs, his chickens, and his vegetable-patch: a large
man in top-boots, with a green frieze jacket. He had a bald head and
a huge grey beard like the tail of a turnip; he carried a riding-whip in
his hand, though he had no horse to his name, and wore a monocle
stuck into his eye under the bushy eyebrow. Except him and his son,
there was no Count Mölln in all the length and breadth of the land
any more: the various branches of a once rich, proud, and powerful
family had gradually withered off, until now there was only an aunt,
with whom Kai’s father was not on terms. She wrote romances for
the family story-papers, under a dashing pseudonym. The story was
told of Count Eberhard that when he first withdrew to his little farm,
he devised a means of protecting himself from the importunities of
peddlers, beggars, and busy-bodies. He put up a sign which read:
“Here lives Count Mölln. He wants nothing, buys nothing, and gives
nothing away.” When the sign had served its purpose, he removed it.
Motherless—for the Countess had died when her child was born, and
the housework was done by an elderly female—little Kai grew up like
a wild animal, among the dogs and chickens; and here Hanno
Buddenbrook had looked at him shyly from a distance, as he leaped
like a rabbit among the cabbages, romped with the dogs, and
frightened the fowls by turning somersaults.
They met again in the schoolroom, where Hanno probably felt again
his first alarm at the little Count’s unkempt exterior. But not for long.
A sure instinct had led him to pay no heed to the outward
negligence; had shown him instead the white brow, the delicate
mouth, the finely shaped blue eyes, which looked with a sort of
resentful hostility into his own; and Hanno felt sympathy for this one
alone among all his fellows. But he would never, by himself, have
taken the first steps; he was too timid for that. Without the ruthless
impetuosity of little Kai they might have remained strangers, after
all. The passionate rapidity of his approach even frightened Hanno,
at first. The neglected little count sued for the favour of the quiet,
elegantly dressed Hanno with a fiery, aggressive masculinity
impossible to resist. Kai could not, it is true, help Hanno with his
lessons. His untamed spirits were as hostile to the “tables” as was
little Buddenbrook’s dreamy abstractedness. But he gave him
everything he had: glass bullets, wooden tops, even a broken lead
pistol which was his dearest treasure. During the recess he told him
about his home and the puppies and chickens, and walked with him
at midday as far as he dared, though Ida Jungmann, with a packet
of sandwiches, was always waiting for her fledgling at the school
gate. It was from Ida that Kai heard little Buddenbrook’s nickname;
he took it up, and never called him henceforth by anything else.
One day he demanded that Hanno, instead of going to the Mill-wall,
should take a walk with him to his father’s house to see the baby
guinea-pigs. Fräulein Jungmann finally yielded to the teasing of the
two children. They strolled out to the noble domain, viewed the
dunghill, the vegetables, the fowls, dogs, and guinea-pigs, and even
went into the house, where in a long low room on the ground floor,
Count Eberhard sat in defiant isolation, reading at a clumsy table. He
asked crossly what they wanted.
Ida Jungmann could not be brought to repeat the visit. She insisted
that, if the two children wished to be together, Kai could visit Hanno
instead. So for the first time, with honest admiration, but no trace of
shyness, Kai entered Hanno’s beautiful home. After that he went
often. Soon nothing but the deep winter snows prevented him from
making the long way back again for the sake of a few hours with his
friend.
They sat in the large play-room in the second storey and did their
lessons together. There were long sums that covered both sides of
the slate with additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions,
and had to come out to zero in the end; otherwise there was a
mistake, and they must hunt and hunt till they had found the little
beast and exterminated him. Then they had to study grammar, and
learn the rules of comparison, and write down very neat, tidy
examples underneath. Thus: “Horn is transparent, glass is more
transparent, light is most transparent.” They took their exercise-
books and conned sentences like the following: “I received a letter,
saying that he felt aggrieved because he believed that you had
deceived him.” The fell intent of this sentence, so full of pitfalls, was
that you should write ei where you ought to write ie, and
contrariwise. They had, in fact, done that very thing, and now it
must be corrected. But when all was finished they might put their
books aside and sit on the window-ledge while Ida read to them.
The good soul read about Cinderella, about the prince who could not
shiver and shake, about Rumpelstiltskin, about Rapunzel and the
Frog Prince—in her deep, patient voice, her eyes half-shut, for she
knew the stories by heart, she had read them so often. She wet her
finger and turned the page automatically.
But after a while Kai, who possessed the constant craving to do
something himself, to have some effect on his surroundings, would
close the book and begin to tell stories himself. It was a good idea,
for they knew all the printed ones, and Ida needed a rest
sometimes, too. Kai’s stories were short and simple at first, but they
expanded and grew bolder and more complicated with time. The
interesting thing about them was that they never stood quite in the
air, but were based upon a reality which he presented in a new and
mysterious light. Hanno particularly liked the one about the wicked
enchanter who tortured all human beings by his malignant art; who
had captured a beautiful prince named Josephus and turned him into
a green-and-red parrot, which he kept in a gilded cage. But in a far
distant land the chosen hero was growing up, who should one day
fearlessly advance at the head of an invincible army of dogs,
chickens, and guinea-pigs and slay the base enchanter with a single
sword-thrust, and deliver all the world—in particular, Hanno
Buddenbrook—from his clutches. Then Josephus would be restored
to his proper form and return to his kingdom, in which Kai and
Hanno would be appointed to high offices.
Senator Buddenbrook saw the two friends together now and then,
as he passed the door of the play-room. He had nothing against the
intimacy, for it was clear that the two lads did each other good.
Hanno gentled, tamed, and ennobled Kai, who loved him tenderly,
admired his white hands, and, for his sake, let Ida Jungmann wash
his own with soap and a nail-brush. And if Hanno could absorb some
of his friend’s wild energy and spirits, it would be welcome, for the
Senator realized keenly the constant feminine influence that
surrounded the boy, and knew that it was not the best means for
developing his manly qualities.
The faithful devotion of the good Ida could not be repaid with gold.
She had been in the family now for more than thirty years. She had
cared for the previous generations with self-abnegation; but Hanno
she carried in her arms, lapped him in tender care, and loved him to
idolatry. She had a naïve, unshakable belief in his privileged station
in life, which sometimes went to the length of absurdity. In whatever
touched him she showed a surprising, even an unpleasant effrontery.
Suppose, for instance, she took him with her to buy cakes at the
pastry-shop: she would poke among the sweets on the counter and
select a piece for Hanno, which she would coolly hand him without
paying for it—the man should feel himself honoured, indeed! And
before a crowded show-window she would ask the people in front, in
her west-Prussian dialect, pleasantly enough, but with decision, to
make a place for her charge. He was so uncommon in her eyes that
she felt there was hardly another child in the world worthy to touch
him. In little Kai’s case, the mutual preference of the two children
had been too strong for her. Possibly she was a little taken by his
name, too. But if other children came up to them on the Mill-wall, as
she sat with Hanno on a bench, Fräulein Jungmann would get up
almost at once, make some excuse or other—it was late, or there
was a draught—and take her charge away. The pretexts she gave to
little Johann would have led him to believe that all his
contemporaries were either scrofulous of full of “evil humours,” and
that he himself was a solitary exception; which did not tend to
increase his already deficient confidence and ease of manner.
Senator Buddenbrook did not know all the details; but he saw
enough to convince him that his son’s development was not taking
the desired course. If he could only take his upbringing in his own
hands, and mould his spirit by daily and hourly contact! But he had
not the time. He perceived the lamentable failure of his occasional
efforts: he knew they only strained the relations between father and
son. In his mind was a picture which he longed to reproduce: it was
a picture of Hanno’s great-grandfather, whom he himself had known
as a boy: a clear-sighted man, jovial, simple, sturdy, humorous—why
could not little Johann grow up like that? If only he could suppress
or forbid the music, which was surely not good for the lad’s physical
development, absorbed his powers, and took his mind from the
practical affairs of life! That dreamy nature—did it not almost, at
times, border on irresponsibility?
One day, some three quarters of an hour before dinner, Hanno had
gone down alone to the first storey. He had practised for a long time
on the piano, and now was idling about in the living-room. He half
lay, half sat, on the chaise-longue, tying and untying his sailor’s
knot, and his eyes, roving aimlessly about, caught sight of an open
portfolio on his mother’s nut-wood writing-table. It was the leather
case with the family papers. He rested his elbow on the sofa-
cushion, and his chin in his hand, and looked at the things for a
while from a distance. Papa must have had them out after second
breakfast, and left them there because he was not finished with
them. Some of the papers were sticking in the portfolio, some loose
sheets lying outside were weighted with a metal ruler, and the large
gilt-edged notebook with the motley paper lay there open.
Hanno slipped idly down from the sofa and went to the writing-table.
The book was open at the Buddenbrook family tree, set forth in the
hand of his various forbears, including his father; complete, with
rubrics, parentheses, and plainly marked dates. Kneeling with one
knee on the desk-chair, leaning his head with its soft waves of brown
hair on the palm of his hand, Hanno looked at the manuscript
sidewise, carelessly critical, a little contemptuous, and supremely
indifferent, letting his free hand toy with Mamma’s gold-and-ebony
pen. His eyes roved all over these names, masculine and feminine,
some of them in queer old-fashioned writing with great flourishes,
written in faded yellow or thick black ink, to which little grains of
sand were sticking. At the very bottom, in Papa’s small, neat
handwriting that ran so fast over the page, he read his own name,
under that of his parents: Justus, Johann, Kaspar, born April 15,
1861. He liked looking at it. He straightened up a little, and took the
ruler and pen, still rather idly; let his eye travel once more over the
whole genealogical host; then, with absent care, mechanically and
dreamily, he made with the gold pen a beautiful, clean double line
diagonally across the entire page, the upper one heavier than the
lower, just as he had been taught to embellish the page of his
arithmetic book. He looked at his work with his head on one side,
and then moved away.
After dinner the Senator called him up and surveyed him with his
eyebrows drawn together.
“What is this? Where did it come from? Did you do it?”
Hanno had to think a minute, whether he really had done it; and
then he answered “Yes.”
“What for? What is the matter with you? Answer me! What
possessed you, to do such a mischievous thing?” cried the Senator,
and struck Hanno’s cheek lightly with the rolled-up notebook.
And little Johann stammered, retreating, with his hand to his cheek,
“I thought—I thought—there was nothing else coming.”
 CHAPTER VIII
Nowadays, when the family gathered at table on Thursdays, under
the calmly smiling gaze of the immortals on the walls, they had a
new and serious theme. It called out on the faces of the female
Buddenbrooks, at least the Broad Street ones, an expression of cold
restraint. But it highly excited Frau Permaneder, as her manner and
gestures betrayed. She tossed back her head, stretched out her
arms before her, or flung them above her head as she talked; and
her voice showed by turns anger and dismay, passionate opposition
and deep feeling. She would pass over from the particular to the
general, and talk in her throaty voice about wicked people,
interrupting herself with the little cough that was due to poor
digestion. Or she would utter little trumpetings of disgust: Teary
Trietschke, Grünlich, Permaneder! A new name had now been added
to these, and she pronounced it in a tone of indescribable scorn and
hatred: “The District Attorney!”
But when Director Hugo Weinschenk entered—late, as usual, for he
was overwhelmed with work; balancing his two fists and weaving
about more than ever at the waist of his frock-coat—and sat down at
table, his lower lip hanging down with its impudent expression under
his moustaches, then the conversation would come to a full stop,
and heavy silence would brood over the table until the Senator came
to the rescue by asking the Director how his affair was going on—as
if it were an ordinary business dealing.
Hugo Weinschenk would answer that things were going very well,
very well indeed, they could not go otherwise; and then he would
blithely change the subject. He was much more sprightly than he
used to be; there was a certain lack of restraint in his roving eye,
and he would ask ever so many times about Gerda Buddenbrook’s
fiddle without getting any reply. He talked freely and gaily—only it
was a pity his flow of spirits prevented him from guarding his
tongue; for he now and then told anecdotes which were not at all
suited to the company. One, in particular, was about a wet-nurse
who prejudiced the health of her charge by the fact that she
suffered from flatulence. Too late, or not at all, he remarked that his
wife was flushing rosy red, that Thomas, the Frau Consul and Gerda
were sitting like statues, and the Misses Buddenbrook exchanging
glances that were fairly boring holes in each other. Even Riekchen
Severin was looking insulted at the bottom of the table, and old
Consul Kröger was the single one of the company who gave even a
subdued snort.
What was the trouble with Director Weinschenk? This industrious,
solid citizen with the rough exterior and no social graces, who
devoted himself with an obstinate sense of duty to his work alone—
this man was supposed to have been guilty, not once but repeatedly,
of a serious fault: he was accused of, he had been indicted for,
performing a business manœuvre which was not only questionable,
but directly dishonest and criminal. There would be a trial, the
outcome of which was not easy to guess. What was he accused of?
It was this: certain fires of considerable extent had taken place in
different localities, which would have cost his company large sums of
money. Director Weinschenk was accused of having received private
information of such accidents through his agents, and then, in
wrongful possession of this information, of having transferred the
back insurance to another firm, thus saving his own the loss. The
matter was now in the hands of the State Attorney, Dr. Moritz
Hagenström.
“Thomas,” said the Frau Consul in private to her son, “please explain
it to me. I do not understand. What do you make of the affair?”
“Why, my dear Mother,” he answered, “what is there to say? It does
not look as though things were quite as they should be—
unfortunately. It seems unlikely to me that Weinschenk is as guilty
as people think. In the modern style of doing business, there is a
thing they call usance. And usance—well, imagine a sort of
manœuvre, not exactly open and above-board, something that looks
dishonest to the man in the street, yet perhaps quite customary and
taken for granted in the business world: that is usance. The
boundary line between usance and actual dishonesty is extremely
hard to draw. Well—if Weinschenk has done anything he shouldn’t,
he has probably done no more than a good many of his colleagues
who will not get caught. But—I don’t see much chance of his being
cleared. Perhaps in a larger city he might be, but here everything
depends on cliques and personal motives. He should have borne that
in mind in selecting his lawyer. It is true that we have no really
eminent lawyer in the whole town, nobody with superior oratorical
talent, who knows all the ropes and is versed in dubious
transactions. All our jurists hang together; they have family
connections, in many cases; they eat together; they work together,
and they are accustomed to considering each other. In my opinion, it
would have been clever to take a town lawyer. But what did
Weinschenk do? He thought it necessary—and this in itself makes his
innocence look doubtful—to get a lawyer from Berlin, a Dr. Breslauer,
who is a regular rake, an accomplished orator and up to all the tricks
of the trade. He has the reputation of having got so-and-so many
dishonest bankrupts off scot-free. He will conduct this affair with the
same cleverness—for a consideration. But will it do any good? I can
see already that our town lawyers will band together to fight him
tooth and nail, and that Dr. Hagenström’s hearers will already be
prepossessed in his favour. As for the witnesses: well, Weinschenk’s
own staff won’t be any too friendly to him, I’m afraid. What we
indulgently call his rough exterior—he would call it that, himself, too
—has not made him many friends. In short, Mother, I am looking
forward to trouble. It will be a pity for Erica, if it turns out badly; but
I feel most for Tony. You see, she is quite right in saying that
Hagenström is glad of the chance. The thing concerns all of us, and
the disgrace will fall on us too; for Weinschenk belongs to the family
and eats at our table. As far as I am concerned, I can manage. I
know what I have to do: in public, I shall act as if I had nothing
whatever to do with the affair. I will not go to the trial—although I
am sorry not to, for Breslauer is sure to be interesting. And in
general I must behave with complete indifference, to protect myself
from the imputation of wanting to use my influence. But Tony? I
don’t like to think what a sad business a conviction will be for her.
She protests vehemently against envious intrigues and calumniators
and all that; but what really moves her is her anxiety lest, after all
her other troubles, she may see her daughter’s honourable position
lost as well. It is the last blow. She will protest her belief in
Weinschenk’s innocence the more loudly the more she is forced to
doubt it. Well, he may be innocent, after all. We can only wait and
see, Mother, and be very tactful with him and Tony and Erica. But
I’m afraid—”
It was under these circumstances that the Christmas feast drew
near, to which little Hanno was counting the days, with a beating
heart and the help of a calendar manufactured by Ida Jungmann,
with a Christmas tree on the last leaf.
The signs of festivity increased. Ever since the first Sunday in Advent
a great gaily coloured picture of a certain Ruprecht had been
hanging on the wall in grandmama’s dining-room. And one morning
Hanno found his covers and the rug beside his bed sprinkled with
gold tinsel. A few days later, as Papa was lying with his newspaper
on the living-room sofa, and Hanno was reading “The Witch of
Endor” out of Gerock’s “Palm Leaves,” an “old man” was announced.
This had happened every year since Hanno was a baby—and yet
was always a surprise. They asked him in, this “old man,” and he
came shuffling along in a big coat with the fur side out, sprinkled
with bits of cotton-wool and tinsel. He wore a fur cap, and his face
had black smudges on it, and his beard was long and white. The
beard and the big, bushy eyebrows were also sprinkled with tinsel.
He explained—as he did every year—in a harsh voice, that this sack
(on his left shoulder) was for good children, who said their prayers
(it contained apples and gilded nuts); but that this sack (on his right
shoulder) was for naughty children. The “old man” was, of course,
Ruprecht; perhaps not actually the real Ruprecht—it might even be
Wenzel the barber, dressed up in Papa’s coat turned fur side out—
but it was as much Ruprecht as possible. Hanno, greatly impressed,
said Our Father for him, as he had last year—both times interrupting
himself now and again with a little nervous sob—and was permitted
to put his hand into the sack for good children, which the “old man”
forgot to take away.
The holidays came, and there was not much trouble over the report,
which had to be presented for Papa to read, even at Christmas-time.
The great dining-room was closed and mysterious, and there were
marzipan and gingerbread to eat—and in the streets, Christmas had
already come. Snow fell, the weather was frosty, and on the sharp
clear air were borne the notes of the barrel-organ, for the Italians,
with their velvet jackets and their black moustaches, had arrived for
the Christmas feast. The shop-windows were gay with toys and
goodies; the booths for the Christmas fair had been erected in the
market-place; and wherever you went you breathed in the fresh,
spicy odour of the Christmas trees set out for sale.
The evening of the twenty-third came at last, and with it the
present-giving in the house in Fishers’ Lane. This was attended by
the family only—it was a sort of dress rehearsal for the Christmas
Eve party given by the Frau Consul in Meng Street. She clung to the
old customs, and reserved the twenty-fourth for a celebration to
which the whole family group was bidden; which, accordingly, in the
late afternoon, assembled in the landscape-room.
The old lady, flushed of cheek, and with feverish eyes, arrayed in a
heavy black-and-grey striped silk that gave out a faint scent of
patchouli, received her guests as they entered, and embraced them
silently, her gold bracelets tinkling. She was strangely excited this
evening— “Why, Mother, you’re fairly trembling,” the Senator said
when he came in with Gerda and Hanno. “Everything will go off very
easily.” But she only whispered, kissing all three of them, “For Jesus
Christ’s sake—and my blessed Jean’s.”
Indeed, the whole consecrated programme instituted by the
deceased Consul had to be carried out to the smallest detail; and the
poor lady fluttered about, driven by her sense of responsibility for
the fitting accomplishment of the evening’s performance, which must
be pervaded with a deep and fervent joy. She went restlessly back
and forth, from the pillared hall where the choir-boys from St. Mary’s
were already assembled, to the dining-room, where Riekchen
Severin was putting the finishing touches to the tree and the table-
full of presents, to the corridor full of shrinking old people—the
“poor” who were to share in the presents—and back into the
landscape-room, where she rebuked every unnecessary word or
sound with one of her mild sidelong glances. It was so still that the
sound of a distant hand-organ, faint and clear like a toy music-box,
came across to them through the snowy streets. Some twenty
persons or more were sitting or standing about in the room; yet it
was stiller than a church—so still that, as the Senator cautiously
whispered to Uncle Justus, it reminded one more of a funeral!
There was really no danger that the solemnity of the feast would be
rudely broken in upon by youthful high spirits. A glance showed that
almost all the persons in the room were arrived at an age when the
forms of expression are already long ago fixed. Senator Thomas
Buddenbrook, whose pallor gave the lie to his alert, energetic,
humorous expression; Gerda, his wife, leaning back in her chair, the
gleaming, blue-ringed eyes in her pale face gazing fixedly at the
crystal prisms in the chandelier; his sister, Frau Permaneder; his
cousin, Jürgen Kröger, a quiet, neatly-dressed official; Friederike,
Henriette, and Pfiffi, the first two more long and lean, the third
smaller and plumper than ever, but all three wearing their
stereotyped expression, their sharp, spiteful smile at everything and
everybody, as though they were perpetually saying “Really—it seems
incredible!” Lastly, there was poor, ashen-grey Clothilde, whose
thoughts were probably fixed upon the coming meal.—Every one of
these persons was past forty. The hostess herself, her brother Justus
and his wife, and little Therese Weichbrodt were all well past sixty;
while old Frau Consul Buddenbrook, Uncle Gotthold’s widow, born
Stüwing, as well as Madame Kethelsen, now, alas almost entirely
deaf, were already in the seventies.
Erica Weinschenk was the only person present in the bloom of
youth; she was much younger than her husband, whose cropped,
greying head stood out against the idyllic landscape behind him.
When her eyes—the light-blue eyes of Herr Grünlich—rested upon
him, you could see how her full bosom rose and fell without a
sound, and how she was beset with anxious, bewildered thoughts
about usance and book-keeping, witnesses, prosecuting attorneys,
defence, and judges. Thoughts like these, un-Christmaslike though
they were, troubled everybody in the room. They all felt uncanny at
the presence in their midst of a member of the family who was
actually accused of an offence against the law, the civic weal, and
business probity, and who would probably be visited by shame and
imprisonment. Here was a Christmas family party at the
Buddenbrooks’—with an accused man in the circle! Frau
Permaneder’s dignity became majestic, and the smile of the Misses
Buddenbrook more and more pointed.
And what of the children, the scant posterity upon whom rested the
family hopes? Were they conscious too of the slightly uncanny
atmosphere? The state of mind of the little Elisabeth could not be
fathomed. She sat on her bonne’s lap in a frock trimmed by Frau
Permaneder with satin bows, folded her small hands into fists,
sucked her tongue, and stared straight ahead of her. Now and then
she would utter a brief sound, like a grunt, and the nurse would rock
her a little on her arm. But Hanno sat still on his footstool at his
mother’s knee and stared up, like her, into the chandelier.
Christian was missing—where was he? At the last minute they
noticed his absence. The Frau Consul’s characteristic gesture, from
the corner of her mouth up to her temple, as though putting back a
refractory hair, became frequent and feverish. She gave an order to
Mamsell Severin, and the spinster went out through the hall, past
the choir-boys and the “poor” and down the corridor to Christian’s
room, where she knocked on the door.
Christian appeared straightway; he limped casually into the
landscape-room, rubbing his bald brow. “Good gracious, children,”
he said, “I nearly forgot the party!”
“You nearly forgot—” his mother repeated, and stiffened.
“Yes, I really forgot it was Christmas. I was reading a book of travel,
about South America.—Dear me, I’ve seen such a lot of
Christmases!” he added, and was about to launch out upon a
description of a Christmas in a fifth-rate variety theatre in London—
when all at once the church-like hush of the room began to work
upon him, and he moved on tip-toe to his place, wrinkling up his
nose.
“Rejoice, O Daughter of Zion!” sang the choir-boys. They had
previously been indulging in such audible practical jokes that the
Senator had to get up and stand in the doorway to inspire respect.
But now they sang beautifully. The clear treble, sustained by the
deeper voices, soared up in pure, exultant, glorifying tones, bearing
all hearts along with them: softening the smiles of the spinsters,
making the old folk look in upon themselves and back upon the past;
easing the hearts of those still in the midst of life’s tribulations, and
helping them to forget for a little while.
Hanno unclasped his hands from about his knees. He looked very
pale, and cold, played with the fringe of his stool, and twisted his
tongue about among his teeth. He had to draw a deep breath every
little while, for his heart contracted with a joy almost painful at the
exquisite bell-like purity of the chorale. The white folding doors were
still tightly closed, but the spicy poignant odour drifted through the
cracks and whetted one’s appetite for the wonder within. Each year
with throbbing pulses he awaited this vision of ineffable, unearthly
splendour. What would there be for him, in there? What he had
wished for, of course; there was always that—unless he had been
persuaded out of it beforehand. The theatre, then, the long-desired
toy theatre, would spring at him as the door opened, and show him
the way to his place. This was the suggestion which had stood
heavily underlined at the top of his list, ever since he had seen
Fidelio; indeed, since then, it had been almost his single thought.
He had been taken to the opera as compensation for a particularly
painful visit to Herr Brecht; sitting beside his mother, in the dress
circle, he had followed breathless a performance of Fidelio, and since
that time he had heard nothing, seen nothing, thought of nothing
but opera, and a passion for the theatre filled him and almost kept
him sleepless. He looked enviously at people like Uncle Christian,
who was known as a regular frequenter and might go every night if
he liked: Consul Döhlmann, Gosch the broker—how could they
endure the joy of seeing it every night? He himself would ask no
more than to look once a week into the hall, before the
performance: hear the voices of the instruments being tuned, and
gaze for a while at the curtain! For he loved it all, the seats, the
musicians, the drop-curtain—even the smell of gas.
Would his theatre be large? What sort of curtain would it have? A
tiny hole must be cut in it at once—there was a peep-hole in the
curtain at the theatre. Had Grandmamma, or rather had Mamsell
Severin—for Grandmamma could not see to everything herself—
been able to find all the necessary scenery for Fidelio? He
determined to shut himself up to-morrow and give a performance all
by himself, and already in fancy he heard his little figures singing:
for he was approaching the theatre by way of his music.
“Exult, Jerusalem!” finished the choir; and their voices, following one
another in fugue form, united joyously in the last syllable. The clear
accord died away; deep silence reigned in the pillared hall and the
landscape-room. The elders looked down, oppressed by the pause;
only Director Weinschenk’s eyes roved boldly about, and Frau
Permaneder coughed her dry cough, which she could not suppress.
Now the Frau Consul moved slowly to the table and sat among her
family. She turned up the lamp and took in her hands the great Bible
with its edges of faded gold-leaf. She stuck her glasses on her nose,
unfastened the two great leather hasps of the book, opened it to the
place where there was a bookmark, took a sip of eau sucrée, and
began to read, from the yellowed page with the large print, the
Christmas chapter.
She read the old familiar words with a simple, heart-felt accent that
sounded clear and moving in the pious hush. “‘And to men good
will,’” she finished, and from the pillared hall came a trio of voices:
“Holy night, peaceful night!” The family in the landscape-room joined
in. They did so cautiously, for most of them were unmusical, as a
tone now and then betrayed. But that in no wise impaired the effect
of the old hymn. Frau Permaneder sang with trembling lips; it
sounded sweetest and most touching to the heart of her who had a
troubled life behind her, and looked back upon it in the brief peace
of this holy hour. Madame Kethelsen wept softly, but comprehended
nothing.
Now the Frau Consul rose. She grasped the hands of her grandson
Johann and her granddaughter Elisabeth, and proceeded through
the room. The elders of the family fell in behind, and the younger
brought up the rear; the servants and poor joined in from the hall;
and so they marched, singing with one accord “Oh, Evergreen”—
Uncle Christian sang “Oh, Everblue,” and made the children laugh by
lifting up his legs like a jumping-jack—through the wide-open, lofty
folding doors, and straight into Paradise.
The whole great room was filled with the fragrance of slightly singed
evergreen twigs and glowing with light from countless tiny flames.
The sky-blue hangings with the white figures on them added to the
brilliance. There stood the mighty tree, between the dark-red
window-curtains, towering nearly to the ceiling, decorated with silver
tinsel and large white lilies, with a shining angel at the top and the
manger at the foot. Its candles twinkled in the general flood of light
like far-off stars. And a row of tiny trees, also full of stars and hung
with comfits, stood on the long white table, laden with presents, that
stretched from the window to the door. All the gas-brackets on the
wall were lighted too, and thick candles burned in all four of the
gilded candelabra in the corners of the room. Large objects, too
large to stand upon the table, were arranged upon the floor, and two
smaller tables, likewise adorned with tiny trees and covered with
gifts for the servants and the poor, stood on either side of the door.
Dazzled by the light and the unfamiliar look of the room, they
marched once around it, singing, filed past the manger where lay
the little wax figure of the Christ-child, and then moved to their
places and stood silent.
Hanno was quite dazed. His fevered glance had soon sought out the
theatre, which, as it stood there upon the table, seemed larger and
grander than anything he had dared to dream of. But his place had
been changed—it was now opposite to where he had stood last year,
and this made him doubtful whether the theatre was really his. And
on the floor beneath it was something else, a large, mysterious
something, which had surely not been on his list; a piece of
furniture, that looked like a commode—could it be meant for him?
“Come here, my dear child,” said the Frau Consul, “and look at this.”
She lifted the lid. “I know you like to play chorals. Herr Pfühl will
show you how. You must tread all the time, sometimes more and
sometimes less; and then, not lift up the hands, but change the
fingers so, peu à peu.”
It was a harmonium—a pretty little thing of polished brown wood,
with metal handles at the sides, gay bellows worked with a treadle,
and a neat revolving stool. Hanno struck a chord. A soft organ tone
released itself and made the others look up from their presents. He
hugged his grandmother, who pressed him tenderly to her, and then
left him to receive the thanks of her other guests.
He turned to his theatre. The harmonium was an overpowering
dream—which just now he had no time to indulge. There was a
superfluity of joy; and he lost sight of single gifts in trying to see and
notice everything at once. Ah, here was the prompter’s box, a shell-
shaped one, and a beautiful red and gold curtain rolled up and down
behind it. The stage was set for the last act of Fidelio. The poor
prisoners stood with folded hands. Don Pizarro, in enormous puffed
sleeves, was striking a permanent and awesome attitude, and the
minister, in black velvet, approached from behind with hasty strides,
to turn all to happiness. It was just as in the theatre, only almost
more beautiful. The Jubilee chorus, the finale, echoed in Hanno’s
ears, and he sat down at the harmonium to play a fragment which
stuck in his memory. But he got up again, almost at once, to take up
the book he had wished for, a mythology, in a red binding with a
gold Pallas Athene on the cover. He ate some of the sweetmeats
from his plate full of marzipan, gingerbread, and other goodies,
looked through various small articles like writing utensils and school-
bag—and for the moment forgot everything else, to examine a
penholder with a tiny glass bulb on it: when you held this up to your
eye, you saw, like magic, a broad Swiss landscape.
Mamsell Severin and the maid passed tea and biscuits; and while
Hanno dipped and ate, he had time to look about. Every one stood
talking and laughing; they all showed each other their presents and
admired the presents of others. Objects of porcelain, silver, gold,
nickel, wood, silk, cloth, and every other conceivable material lay on
the table. Huge loaves of decorated gingerbread, alternating with
loaves of marzipan, stood in long rows, still moist and fresh. All the
presents made by Frau Permaneder were decorated with huge satin
bows.
Now and then some one came up to little Johann, put an arm across
his shoulders, and looked at his presents with the overdone, cynical
admiration which people manufacture for the treasures of children.
Uncle Christian was the only person who did not display this grown-
up arrogance. He sauntered over to his nephew’s place, with a
diamond ring on his finger, a present from his mother; and his
pleasure in the toy theatre was as unaffected as Hanno’s own.
“By George, that’s fine,” he said, letting the curtain up and down,
and stepping back for a view of the scenery. “Did you ask for it? Oh,
so you did ask for it!” he suddenly said after a pause, during which
his eyes had roved about the room as though he were full of unquiet
thoughts. “Why did you ask for it? What made you think of it? Have
you been in the theatre? Fidelio, eh? Yes, they give that well. And
you want to imitate it, do you? Do opera yourself, eh? Did it make
such an impression on you? Listen, son—take my advice: don’t think
too much about such things—theatre, and that sort of thing. It’s no
good. Believe your old uncle. I’ve always spent too much time on
them, and that is why I haven’t come to much good. I’ve made
great mistakes, you know.”
Thus he held forth to his nephew, while Hanno looked up at him
curiously. He paused, and his bony, emaciated face cleared up as he
regarded the little theatre. Then he suddenly moved forward one of
the figures on the stage, and sang, in a cracked and hollow tremolo,
“Ha, what terrible transgression!” He sat down on the piano-stool,
which he shoved up in front of the theatre, and began to give a
performance, singing all the rôles and the accompaniment as well,
and gesticulating furiously. The family gathered at his back, laughed,
nodded their heads, and enjoyed it immensely. As for Hanno, his
pleasure was profound. Christian broke off, after a while, very
abruptly. His face clouded, he rubbed his hand over his skull and
down his left side, and turned to his audience with his nose wrinkled
and his face quite drawn.
“There it is again,” he said. “I never have a little fun without having
to pay for it. It is not an ordinary pain, you know, it is a misery,
down all this left side, because the nerves are too short.”
But his relatives took his complaints as little seriously as they had his
entertainment. They hardly answered him, but indifferently
dispersed, leaving Christian sitting before the little theatre in silence.
He blinked rapidly for a bit and then got up.
“No, child,” said he, stroking Hanno’s head: “amuse yourself with it,
but not too much, you know: don’t neglect your work for it, do you
hear? I have made a great many mistakes.—I think I’ll go over to
the club for a while,” he said to the elders. “They are celebrating
there to-day, too. Good-bye for the present.” And he went off across
the hall, on his stiff, crooked legs.
They had all eaten the midday meal earlier than usual to-day, and
been hungry for the tea and biscuits. But they had scarcely finished
when great crystal bowls were handed round full of a yellow, grainy
substance which turned out to be almond cream. It was a mixture of
eggs, ground almonds, and rose-water, tasting perfectly delicious;
but if you ate even a tiny spoonful too much, the result was an
attack of indigestion. However, the company was not restrained by
fear of consequences—even though Frau Consul begged them to
“leave a little corner for supper.” Clothilde, in particular, performed
miracles with the almond cream, and lapped it up like so much
porridge, with heart-felt gratitude. There was also wine jelly in
glasses, and English plum-cake. Gradually they all moved over to the
landscape-room, where they sat with their plates round the table.
Hanno remained alone in the dining-room. Little Elisabeth
Weinschenk had already been taken home; but he was to stop up
for supper, for the first time in his life. The servants and the poor
folk had had their presents and gone; Ida Jungmann was chattering
with Riekchen Severin in the hall—although generally, as a
governess, she preserved a proper distance between herself and the
Frau Consul’s maid.—The lights of the great tree were burnt down
and extinguished, the manger was in darkness. But a few candles
still burned on the small trees, and now and then a twig came within
reach of the flame and crackled up, increasing the pungent smell in
the room. Every breath of air that stirred the trees stirred the pieces
of tinsel too, and made them give out a delicate metallic whisper. It
was still enough to hear the hand-organ again, sounding through the
frosty air from a distant street.
Hanno abandoned himself to the enjoyment of the Christmas sounds
and smells. He propped his head on his hand and read in his
mythology book, munching mechanically the while, because that
was proper to the day: marzipan, sweetmeats, almond cream, and
plum-cake; until the chest-oppression caused by an over-loaded
stomach mingled with the sweet excitation of the evening and gave
him a feeling of pensive felicity. He read about the struggles of Zeus
before he arrived at the headship of the gods; and every now and
then he listened into the other room, where they were going at
length into the future of poor Aunt Clothilde.
Clothilde, on this evening, was far and away the happiest of them
all. A smile lighted up her colourless face as she received
congratulations and teasing from all sides; her voice even broke now
and then out of joyful emotion. She had at last been made a
member of the Order of St. John. The Senator had succeeded by
subterranean methods in getting her admitted, not without some
private grumblings about nepotism, on the part of certain
gentlemen. Now the family all discussed the excellent institution,
which was similar to the homes in Mecklenburg, Dobberthien, and
Ribnitz, for ladies from noble families. The object of these
establishments was the suitable care of portionless women from old
and worthy families. Poor Clothilde was now assured of a small but
certain income, which would increase with the years, and finally,
when she had succeeded to the highest class, would secure her a
decent home in the cloister itself.
Little Hanno stopped awhile with the grown-ups, but soon strayed
back to the dining-room, which displayed a new charm now that the
brilliant light did not fairly dazzle one with its splendours. It was an
extraordinary pleasure to roam about there, as if on a half-darkened
stage after the performance, and see a little behind the scenes. He
touched the lilies on the big fir-tree, with their golden stamens;
handled the tiny figures of people and animals in the manger, found
the candles that lighted the transparency for the star of Bethlehem
over the stable; lifted up the long cloth that covered the present-
table, and saw quantities of wrapping-paper and pasteboard boxes
stacked beneath.
The conversation in the landscape-room was growing less and less
agreeable. Inevitably, irresistibly, it had arrived at the one dismal
theme which had been in everybody’s mind, but which they had thus
far avoided, as a tribute to the festal evening. Hugo Weinschenk
himself dilated upon it, with a wild levity of manner and gesture. He
explained certain details of the procedure—the examination of
witnesses had now been interrupted by the Christmas recess—
condemned the very obvious bias of the President, Dr. Philander, and
poured scorn on the attitude which the Public Prosecutor, Dr.
Hagenström, thought it proper to assume toward himself and the
witnesses for the defence. Breslauer had succeeded in drawing the
sting of several of his most slanderous remarks; and he had assured
the Director that, for the present, there need be no fear of a
conviction. The Senator threw in a question now and then, out of
courtesy; and Frau Permaneder, sitting on the sofa with elevated
shoulders, would utter fearful imprecations against Dr. Moritz
Hagenström. But the others were silent: so profoundly silent that the
Director at length fell silent too. For little Hanno, over in the dining-
room, the time sped by on angels’ wings; but in the landscape-room
there reigned an oppressive silence, which dragged on till Christian
came back from the club, where he had celebrated Christmas with
the bachelors and good fellows.
The cold stump of a cigar hung between his lips, and his haggard
cheeks were flushed. He came through the dining-room and said, as
he entered the landscape-room, “Well, children, the tree was simply
gorgeous. Weinschenk, we ought to have had Breslauer come to see
it. He has never seen anything like it, I am sure.”
He encountered one of his mother’s quiet, reproachful side-glances,
and returned it with an easy, unembarrassed questioning look. At
nine o’clock the party sat down to supper.
It was laid, as always on these occasions, in the pillared hall. The
Frau Consul recited the ancient grace with sincere conviction:
“Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,
And bless the bread thou gavest us”
—to which, as usual on the holy evening, she added a brief prayer,
the substance of which was an admonition to remember those who,
on this blessed night, did not fare so well as the Buddenbrook family.
This accomplished, they all sat down with good consciences to a
lengthy repast, beginning with carp and butter sauce and old Rhine
wine.
The Senator put two fish-scales into his pocket, to help him save
money during the coming year. Christian, however, ruefully remarked
that he hadn’t much faith in the prescription; and Consul Kröger had
no need of it. His pittance had long since been invested securely,
beyond the reach of fluctuations in the exchange. The old man sat
as far away as possible from his wife, to whom he hardly ever spoke
nowadays. She persisted in sending money to Jacob, who was still
roaming about, nobody knew where, unless his mother did. Uncle
Justus scowled forbiddingly when the conversation, with the advent
of the second course, turned upon the absent members of the
family, and he saw the foolish mother wipe her eyes. They spoke of
the Frankfort Buddenbrooks and the Duchamps in Hamburg, and of
Pastor Tibertius in Riga, too, without any ill-will. And the Senator
and his sister touched glasses in silence to the health of Messrs
Grünlich and Permaneder—for, after all, did they not in a sense
belong to the family too?
The turkey, stuffed with chestnuts, raisins, and apples, was
universally praised. They compared it with other years, and decided
that this one was the largest for a long time. With the turkey came
roast potatoes and two kinds of compote, and each dish held
enough to satisfy the appetite of a family all by itself. The old red
wine came from the firm of Möllendorpf.
Little Johann sat between his parents and choked down with
difficulty a small piece of white meat with stuffing. He could not
begin to compete with Aunt Tilda, and he felt tired and out of sorts.
But it was a great thing none the less to be dining with the grown-
ups, and to have one of the beautiful little rolls with poppy-seed in
his elaborately folded serviette, and three wine-glasses in front of his
place. He usually drank out of the little gold mug which Uncle Justus
gave him. But when the red, white, and brown meringues appeared,
and Uncle Justus poured some oily, yellow Greek wine into the
smallest of the three glasses, his appetite revived. He ate a whole
red ice, then half a white one, then a little piece of the chocolate, his
teeth hurting horribly all the while. Then he sipped his sweet wine
gingerly and listened to Uncle Christian, who had begun to talk.
He told about the Christmas celebration at the club, which had been
very jolly, it seemed. “Good God!” he said, just as if he were about
to relate the story of Johnny Thunderstorm, “those fellows drank
Swedish punch just like water.”
“Ugh!” said the Frau Consul shortly, and cast down her eyes.
But he paid no heed. His eyes began to wander—and thought and
memory became so vivid that they flickered like shadows across his
haggard face.
“Do any of you know,” he asked, “how it feels to drink too much
Swedish punch? I don’t mean getting drunk: I mean the feeling you
have the next day—the after-effects. They are very queer and
unpleasant; yes, queer and unpleasant at the same time.”
“Reason enough for describing them,” said the Senator.
“Assez, Christian. That does not interest us in the least,” said the
Frau Consul. But he paid no attention. It was his peculiarity that at
such times nothing made any impression on him. He was silent
awhile, and then it seemed that the thing which moved him was ripe
for speech.
“You go about feeling ghastly,” he said, turning to his brother and
wrinkling up his nose. “Headache, and upset stomach—oh, well, you
have that with other things, too. But you feel filthy”—here he rubbed
his hands together, his face entirely distorted. “You wash your
hands, but it does no good; they feel dirty and clammy, and there is
grease under the nails. You take a bath: no good, your whole body
is sticky and unclean. You itch all over, and you feel disgusted with
yourself. Do you know the feeling, Thomas? you do know it, don’t
you?”
“Yes, yes,” said the Senator, making a gesture of repulsion with his
hand. But Christian’s extraordinary tactlessness had so increased
with the years that he never perceived how unpleasant he was
making himself to the company, nor how out of place his
conversation was in these surroundings and on this evening. He
continued to describe the evil effects of too much Swedish punch;
and when he felt that he had exhausted the subject, he gradually
subsided.