by Thomas Mann
“So he looked yellow?” he asked for the fifth time. “What did the maid scream when she burst in on you? His face was all yellow, you say? And he wasn’t able to say anything before he died? What did the maid say? He could only just go ‘Uh! Uh!’?” He fell silent, said nothing for a long time, and, lost in thought, let his little, round, deep-set eyes travel rapidly around the room. “Horrible,” he said, visibly shuddering as he stood up. And then he paced back and forth, his eyes growing more and more restless and brooding—while Tony sat there puzzled that her brother, who for some incomprehensible reason seemed mortified at any mention of her grief over her father’s death, could repeat over and over with a kind of dreadful intensity the man’s final death cries, which he had taken great trouble to learn from Lina their maid.
Christian had certainly not grown any handsomer. He was gaunt and pale. His skin was stretched tight across his skull, his large, fleshless nose with its distinct hump protruded sharply between his cheekbones, and his hair had thinned quite noticeably. His neck was thin and too long, and his skinny legs were conspicuously bowed. His stay in London seemed to have influenced him the most, and since he had associated mainly with Englishmen in Valparaiso, his whole look was English somehow—and it suited him rather well. You could see it in the comfortable cut and durable wool of his suits, in the broad, solid style of his boots, and in the way his bushy reddish blond mustache drooped over his mouth, giving him a somewhat sour expression. His hands, with their round, clean, closely clipped nails, had turned the dull, porous white that hot climates can cause—and even they, for some inexplicable reason, looked English.
“Tell me,” he said out of the blue, “have you ever had that feeling? It’s hard to describe—you’re trying to swallow something that’s hard and it goes down the wrong way and it hurts all the way down your back?” And as he spoke, his nose was all tense little wrinkles again.
“Yes,” Tony said, “that’s perfectly normal. You take a drink of water.”
“Really?” he asked, dissatisfied. “No, I don’t think we mean the same thing.” And a serious look shifted uneasily back and forth across his face.
But he was the first person in the house to put aside mourning and suggest life be a bit freer again. He had not forgotten his knack for imitating the late Marcellus Stengel, and could talk in that voice for hours. One day at dinner, he asked about the local theater, whether the company was any good and what was playing.
“I don’t know,” Tom said, with exaggerated indifference in his voice, trying not to be impatient. “I don’t worry about such things these days.”
But Christian completely missed the point and began talking about the theater. “I can’t tell you how I love the theater. The mere mention of the word ‘theater’ makes me happy. I don’t know whether you know the feeling? I could sit there silently for hours, just gazing at the closed curtain. It makes me feel like I did as a child when we would come in here for our Christmas presents. Or the sound of the orchestra tuning up. I could go to the theater just to hear that. And I especially love the love scenes. Some of the heroines have a way of holding their lover’s head between their hands like this.… Actors in general, really. I spent a lot of time with actors in London, and in Valparaiso, too. At first, I was proud as Punch just to be able to talk with them in completely everyday kinds of settings. I pay attention to their every gesture on the stage. It’s very interesting. An actor says his final line, turns around very calmly, and walks off very slowly, and sure of himself, not the least bit self-conscious, even though he knows that the eyes of the entire audience are on his back. How can they do that? I used to think constantly of what it must be like to be backstage. But now I’m really quite at home there, let me tell you. Just imagine, one evening at an operetta—it was in London—the curtain went up when I was still out on the stage. I was talking with Fräulein Wasserklosett; actually her name was Miss Waterhouse, a very pretty girl. Well, and then—suddenly—there’s the audience in front of me. My God, I don’t know how I got off that stage.”
Madame Grünlich was more or less the only person at the table to laugh; but Christian went right on talking, his eyes wandering here and there. He talked about English café-concert singers, told them about a woman in a powdered wig who banged the floor with a long staff and sang a song titled “That’s Maria!” “Because Maria, you see, Maria’s a scandalous girl, the worst of ’em all. If somebody’s done something naughty, that’s Maria. Maria’s the worst of the lot, you see, Maria’s simply depraved.” And he spoke the final word in a dreadful voice, wrinkling up his nose and raising his right hand with his fingers cramped in horror.
“Assez, Christian,” Madame Buddenbrook said. “This doesn’t interest us in the least.”
But Christian’s eyes drifted absent-mindedly past her, and he probably would have stopped even had she not objected. His little, round, deep-set eyes were roaming restlessly about the room, and he seemed to have sunk into a deep, uneasy reverie, thinking of Maria and her depravity.
Suddenly he said, “You know, it’s strange—sometimes I feel like I can’t swallow. No, now don’t laugh. I’m being quite serious. The thought occurs to me that I can’t swallow, and then I really can’t. What I’ve eaten is clear at the back of my mouth, but these muscles here, along the neck—they just won’t work. They won’t obey my will, you see. Or, better, the fact is: I can’t bring myself to actually will it.”
Quite beside herself now, Tony cried, “Good heavens, Christian, what silly nonsense. You can’t make up your mind whether to swallow. No, you’re just being ridiculous. What are you talking about?”
Thomas said nothing. But his mother said, “It’s your nerves, Christian. It was high time you came home. The climate out there would surely have made you ill.”
After dinner he sat down at the little harmonium in the dining room and imitated a concert pianist. He pretended to throw his hair back, rubbed his hands, looking first at the floor and then at the ceiling. And now, without working the bellows—he couldn’t play at all and was totally unmusical, like most Buddenbrooks—he bent down eagerly and began soundlessly to belabor the bass register, executing insane passages; he threw his head back, stared at the ceiling, and banged at the keyboard energetically and triumphantly with both hands. Even Clara burst into laughter. The imitation was convincing, full of passion and subterfuge, irresistibly comic, with a touch of the eccentric burlesque that the English and Americans do so well—yet never for a moment unpleasant, because Christian was enjoying himself much too much.
“I’ve always been a great concertgoer,” he said. “I love to watch how the performers handle their instruments. Yes, it must be absolutely wonderful to be an artist.”
He started all over again—and then suddenly broke off. He turned serious, abruptly, surprisingly, as if a mask had fallen from his face. He stood up, ran his hand through his sparse hair, moved to another chair, and there he sat, silent, foul-humored, with edgy eyes and a look on his face as if he were listening to some mysterious sound.
“You know, I find Christian somewhat odd at times,” Madame Grünlich said one evening when she was alone with her brother Thomas. “What’s he really saying? He goes into such strange detail about things, it seems to me. How should I put it? He sees things from a very peculiar angle, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” Tom said, “I know exactly what you mean, Tony. Christian is terribly indiscreet—it’s hard to put it in words. He lacks what one could call balance, personal balance. On the one hand, he is incapable of keeping his composure when other people are tactless and naïve. He is no match for them, doesn’t understand how to gloss over things, and completely loses self-control. But, on the other hand, it’s the way he loses self-control—suddenly starts chatting away, blurting out to all the world the most unpleasant and intimate things. It sometimes borders on the uncanny. It’s almost like someone delirious with fever, isn’t it? They fantasize in exactly the same way, regardless of the consequences. Oh, it i
s merely a matter of Christian’s worrying too much about himself, about what is going on inside him. He has a regular mania sometimes for dragging up the most insignificant things from deep within him and talking about them—things that a reasonable man doesn’t even think about, doesn’t want to know about, for the very simple reason that he is too embarrassed to share them with anyone else. There’s something so shameless about that sort of unrestrained talk, Tony. You see, someone else might say that he loves the theater, too; but he would do it with a different emphasis, offhandedly, more modestly, in fact. But Christian proclaims it in a tone of voice that says: ‘Isn’t my obsession with the theater something terribly strange and interesting?’ He struggles to find the right words, he acts as if he were wrestling with himself to express something unusually obscure or supremely refined.
“I want to tell you something,” he continued after a pause, during which he tossed his cigarette through the wrought-iron grate into the stove. “I have occasionally given some thought to that sort of useless curiosity and preoccupation with one’s self—because I tended to be that way myself at one time. But I realized that it left me unstable, erratic, out of control. And for me the important thing is control and balance. There will always be people for whom this sort of interest in oneself, this probing observation of one’s own sensibilities, is appropriate—poets, for instance, who are capable of expressing the inner life, which they prize so much, with assurance and beauty, thereby enriching the emotional life of other people. But we are just simple merchants, my dear; our self-observations are dreadfully petty. At the very best, all we are capable of saying is that we take some special delight in hearing the orchestra tune up, or that we sometimes can’t bring ourselves to swallow. But what we should do, damn it, is to sit ourselves down and accomplish something, just as our forebears did.”
“Yes, Tom, that’s exactly how I see it, too. When I think of how these Hagenströms are prospering. Good heavens, what dregs—that’s what they are. Mother doesn’t like me to use the word, but it’s the only one that fits. Do they think, maybe, that there are no longer any other elegant families in town except them? Ha! That makes me laugh, you know. It really makes me laugh.”
3
THE HEAD OF THE FIRM of Johann Buddenbrook had measured his brother with a long, probing look on his arrival, had watched him in passing during the next few days, quite unobtrusively. And with that, although his conclusions could not be read from his calm and discreet expression, his curiosity had apparently been satisfied, his mind made up. He spoke to him in a casual way about casual matters as a member of the family, and he enjoyed himself as much as the others whenever Christian gave a performance.
Eight days later, he said to him, “And so we’ll be working together, my boy, right? As far as I know, you’re in agreement with Mama’s wish, aren’t you? Well, as you know, Marcus is my partner now, with a percentage share in the business matching the amount of capital he put in. It seems to me that as my brother you should assume more or less the position of chief clerk that he held before, at least in a representative sense, for appearance’s sake. As far as the actual work goes, I’m not sure how much progress you’ve made in your knowledge of commercial matters. It seems to me you’ve been loafing a bit thus far, am I right? In any case, taking care of our correspondence in English would probably be most to your liking. But I must ask one thing of you, my friend. In your position as the brother of the owner, you will of course have a privileged place among the other employees. But I need not tell you, need I, that you will impress them much more by behaving as an equal and energetically doing your duty, than by making use of your prerogatives and taking liberties. Which means keeping office hours and keeping up appearances, all right?”
And then he made a suggestion as to the matter of salary, which Christian accepted without giving it a thought, much less haggling over it—the absent-minded chagrin on his face revealed very little greed and a great desire to settle the issue quickly. The next day Thomas introduced him in the office, and Christian’s professional life with the firm began.
The business had continued on its solid course, uninterrupted by the consul’s death. But it soon became clear that, once the reins had passed into Thomas Buddenbrook’s hands, a fresher, more inventive, more enterprising spirit pervaded the firm. Now and then a little risk was taken, now and then the firm’s credit, which had been merely a theoretical luxury under the old regime, was put to work and made the most of. The gentlemen on the exchange nodded to one another and said, “Buddenbrook is out to make money, and how!” But they thought it was a very good idea that Thomas also had to drag trusthworthy Friedrich Wilhelm Marcus behind him like a ball and chain. Herr Marcus’s influence provided the crucial element of restraint in all their dealings. He would carefully stroke his mustache with two fingers, compulsively rearrange his writing utensils and the glass of water that always stood on his desk, examine each issue from several sides, always with a wool-gathering look on his face; and he also had the habit of crossing the courtyard to the scullery, five or six times a day during office hours—where he would hold his head under the tap to refresh himself.
“Those two complement one another,” the heads of the larger firms would say—Consul Huneus to Consul Kistenmaker, for instance; and the same opinion was repeated by the dock and warehouse workers or other humbler citizens. The whole town, in fact, took an interest in how young Buddenbrook would “tackle the job.” Even Herr Stuht on Glockengiesser Strasse told his wife, who always moved in the best circles, “Lemme tell you, those two com’lement each other real good.”
But there was no doubt whatever that the “personality” of the business was the younger of the two partners. That was evident, if from nothing else, from his skill in dealing with their employees, with the ship captains, the supervisors in the warehouses, the wagon drivers and warehouse hands. He could speak quite naturally with them in their Plattdeutsch, and still maintain an unapproachable distance. But if Herr Marcus asked some honest laborer, “Catch my drift?,” it sounded so preposterous that his partner, who sat across the desk from him, would simply start laughing—a sign for the whole office to join in the mirth.
Filled with a desire to preserve and enhance the luster of the firm in a manner commensurate with its proud old name, Thomas Buddenbrook loved to throw himself into the daily battle, because he knew quite well that he owed many a profitable deal to his self-assurance and elegance, his winning charm, and his polished tact in conversations.
“A businessman cannot be a bureaucrat,” he told his former schoolchum Stephen Kistenmaker—of Kistenmaker & Sons—who was still Tom’s friend, though hardly his match intellectually, and listened to his every word in order to pass it on as his own opinion. “It takes personality, and that’s my specialty. I don’t think great things can ever be accomplished from behind a desk—at least none that would give me any pleasure. Calculations from behind a desk don’t lead to success. I need to see how things are going with my own eyes, direct them with a gesture, a spoken word, to control them on the spot by dint of my own will, my talent, my luck or whatever you want to call it. Sad to say, that kind of personal involvement by the businessman is going out of fashion. Time marches on, but she leaves the best behind, it seems to me. Markets are easier and easier to open up, we get our price quotes faster and faster. The risks grow less and less—and so do the profits. Yes, it was different in the old days. My grandfather, for instance, a fine old gentleman in a powdered wig and pumps, rode in a coach-and-four to southern Germany as a contractor for the Prussian army. And he turned his charm on everyone, put all his arts to work, and made an incredible profit, Kistenmaker. Ah, I almost fear that as time goes on the businessman’s life will become more and more banal.”
Those were his sentiments, and for just that reason he loved the kind of business that sometimes came his way when he was out for a walk with his family, for instance, and he would drop by a mill for a casual chat with the miller, who felt quite h
onored by the visit, and en passant concluded a profitable deal with him. That sort of thing was quite foreign to his partner.
As for Christian, he appeared at first to throw himself into his work with zest and pleasure; indeed, he seemed to take increasing satisfaction in it; for several days he ate with a good appetite and had a way of smoking his stubby pipe and squaring his shoulders inside his English jacket that expressed just how comfortable and satisfied he felt. He would go down to the office at about the same time as Thomas and take his seat beside Herr Marcus and catercorner from his brother—in the same kind of adjustable armchair the two partners used. First he read the Advertiser and contentedly finished smoking his morning cigarette. Then he pulled a bottle of old cognac from his lower desk drawer, stretched his arms to give himself a little more elbowroom, said, “Well, now,” and went to work in the best of moods, while his tongue wandered here and there among his teeth. His English correspondence was exceptionally polished and effective, for he wrote English just as he spoke it—it rolled along in an effortless, simple, unconstrained, nonchalant stream.
And, as was his habit, he verbalized his good mood for the rest of the family. “The businessman’s calling is indeed a fine, a truly gratifying one,” he said. “Solid, satisfying, dynamic, comfortable. I was surely born for it! And now that I’m a member of the firm, you know—well, to be brief, I feel better than I ever have before. You go to the office fresh each morning, read the paper, have a smoke, think of this and that and how good life is, drink a cognac, and do a bit of work. Then comes the noon break, you dine with your family, relax—and it’s back to work. You write your letters on the firm’s fine, smooth, immaculate stationery, with a good pen, you have first-rate equipment—a ruler, a letter opener, rubber stamps—all as it should be. And then you diligently deal with matters, one after another, until you finally pack your things away. There’s always tomorrow. And when you come upstairs for supper you feel thoroughly satisfied with yourself, every muscle in your body is satisfied. Even your hands feel satisfied.”