by Thomas Mann
“It was only a harmless question!” In her dismay, Tony stopped eating for a moment. “ ‘Putting on airs’—how could anyone say that? I really would like to know. Lord, I’m such a silly goose, you see. I was always Sesame Weichbrodt’s laziest student. It just seems to me that you know so much.…”—But a voice inside her said: Putting on airs? One finds oneself among strangers, shows oneself from one’s best side, chooses one’s words, and tries to please—that’s quite normal.
“Well, then, they are more or less the same,” he said, flattered. “Certain nutrients, you see …”
And as Tony went on eating her breakfast and young Schwarzkopf smoked his pipe, their small-talk turned to Sesame Weichbrodt, Tony’s years at the boarding school, her friends Gerda Arnoldsen, who had returned to Amsterdam, and Armgard von Schilling, whose white farmhouse you could see here from the beach, at least if the weather was clear.
When she finished eating, Tony dabbed her mouth with her napkin and asked, pointing to the newspaper, “Anything new there?”
Young Schwarzkopf laughed and shook his head in mock sympathy. “No, no. How could there be anything new there? This local Advertiser is a pitiful rag, really.”
“Oh? But Papa and Mama have always had it delivered.”
“Yes, well,” he said with a blush, “I read it, too, as you can see, simply because there’s nothing else. But that Consul Such-and-such, wholesaler of whatever, is planning to celebrate his silver anniversary is not exactly earthshaking news. Yes, yes—you laugh. But you should read other papers sometime, the Königsberg News or the Rhine Gazette. You’d find something quite different in them. Whatever the King of Prussia may say.”
“And what does he say?”
“Yes, well … but, no, unfortunately I cannot repeat that to a lady.” And he blushed again. “He has spoken rather ungraciously about that part of the press,” he continued with a forced ironic smile that, for a moment at least, touched Tony to the quick. “They don’t speak all too highly of the government, you see, of the nobility, the clergy, and the Junkers. And they’re very clever at leading the censors around by the nose.”
“Well, and what about you, don’t you speak highly of the nobility?”
“Me?” he asked in embarrassment.
Tony stood up. “Well, let’s talk about that some other time. How would it be if I took a walk on the beach? You see, the sky is almost all blue now. It won’t rain anymore today. I can’t wait to jump into the ocean again. Would you like to walk down with me?”
7
SHE HAD DONNED her large straw hat and put up her parasol, because it was uncomfortably hot despite the sea breeze. Wearing his gray felt hat and carrying his book, young Schwarzkopf strode along beside her, and from time to time he threw a sidelong glance her way. They walked along Front Row, and strolled through the spa gardens, the gravel paths and rose beds still and shadeless in the hot sun. The band shell, hidden behind evergreens, stood silent beside the pump room, and across the way was the pastry shop and the two Swiss-style lodges separated by a long central building. It was eleven-thirty now; all the hotel guests must already have gone to the beach.
They crossed the children’s playground with its benches and large set of swings, passed close by the bathhouse with hot springs, and then moved slowly across the Leuchtenfeld flats. The sun brooded over the grass, sending up the hot, spicy odor of clover and weeds, while buzzing blue flies sped through the air or simply hovered there. The sea roared in a muffled monotone, and little whitecaps sparkled now and then in the distance.
“What is that you’re reading?” Tony asked.
The young man took the book in both hands and ruffled the pages from back to front with his thumb.
“Oh, nothing for you, Fräulein Buddenbrook. It’s all blood and guts and misery. Look, this is about edema of the lungs—what people call ‘catarrh.’ And what happens is, the pockets of the lungs fill up with a kind of watery fluid, which is highly dangerous, common in cases of pneumonia. If it gets very bad, the patient can’t breathe, and then simply dies. And it’s all described in a very cool and superior way.”
“Oh, phooey! But I suppose if one wants to be a doctor … Just you wait, I’ll see to it that you become our family doctor when Grabow retires someday.”
“Ha! And what are you reading, Fräulein Buddenbrook, if I might ask?”
“Do you know Hoffmann?” Tony asked in return.
“The fellow with the choirmaster and the golden pot? Yes, that’s very pretty stuff. But, you know, it’s probably more for the ladies. Men have other things to read nowadays.”
“And now I have to ask you something,” Tony said, after they had taken a few more steps—she had decided she must. “And that is, just what is your first name, really? I haven’t been able to catch it any time it’s been mentioned … and it’s making me downright nervous. I’ve been racking my brains.…”
“You’ve been racking your brains about it?”
“Yes, and now don’t make it any worse than it already is. It’s probably not proper for me to ask, but I am curious, of course. Although I don’t suppose there’s any reason I’d ever need to know it.”
“Well, my name is Morten,” he said, and blushed redder than ever.
“Morten? That’s a pretty name.”
“What? Pretty?”
“Yes, for heaven’s sake. It’s certainly prettier than if your name was Jack or Joe. There’s something special about it, something exotic.”
“You’re a romantic, Mademoiselle Buddenbrook. You’ve been reading too much Hoffmann. Well, it’s actually very simple. My grandfather was half Norwegian, and his name was Morten. And I was christened after him. That’s the whole story.”
Tony carefully waded up through the tall, sharp rushes bordering the exposed beach. And now the row of wooden beach pavilions, with their little round roofs lay before them, and beyond that, closer to the water, the wicker beach chairs with families encamped around them in the warm sand: ladies with pince-nez tinted blue and library books; gentlemen in light-colored suits, lazily drawing figures in the sand with their walking sticks; tanned children under immense straw hats—shoveling, tumbling, digging for water, baking pies in wooden plates, burrowing tunnels, wading up to their naked knees in the low surf, sailing little ships. The large wooden swimming pier jutted out into the water on their right.
“We’re heading straight for the Möllendorpf pavilion,” Tony said. “Let’s turn off a little.”
“Certainly—but you probably want to join your fine friends. I’ll just go sit on those stones back there.”
“Join them? Yes, yes, I suppose I will have to say hello. But I really haven’t the least desire to, I assure you. I came here to get away, to find some peace.”
“To get away? From whom?
“Why—from …”
“Fräulein Buddenbrook, there’s one more thing I have to ask you … but later, when we have more time and an opportunity presents itself. But now allow me to say adieu and go sit there on those stones.”
“Don’t you want me to introduce you, Herr Schwarzkopf?” Tony asked pointedly.
“No, oh no …” Morten hastily replied. “Thanks so much. I don’t think I’d fit in very well, you see. I’ll just go sit back there on those stones.”
And while Morten Schwarzkopf moved away to the right, in the direction of the swimming pier and some boulders lapped by the surf, Tony walked ahead toward a rather large group of people that had gathered around the Möllendorpfs’ pavilion and that included Möllendorpfs, Hagenströms, Kistenmakers, and Fritsches. Except for Consul Fritsche from Hamburg, who owned all this, and Peter Döhlmann, the suitier, there were only women and children—this was a workday, and most of the men were in their offices in town. Consul Fritsche, an older gentleman with a distinguished clean-shaven face, was standing up in the pavilion, busily directing a telescope at a sailboat visible in the distance. Sporting a broad-brimmed straw hat and a round-cut nautical beard, Peter D
öhlmann was chatting with the ladies, who were either lying on plaid blankets or sitting on little canvas stools. These included: Frau Möllendorpf, née Langhals, who was toying with a long-handled lorgnette, her gray hair flying in all directions; Frau Hagenström, plus Julie, who had never grown all that much, but already wore diamond earrings like her mother; Frau Kistenmaker and her daughters; and Frau Fritsche, a small wrinkle-faced lady, who wore a bonnet and was in charge of the spa’s entertainments. Sunburned and exhausted, she was forever worrying about sailing excursions, raffles, children’s parties, and galas. The woman who read aloud for them sat off at some distance. The children were playing in the water.
In the last few years Kistenmaker & Sons had been prospering, and had begun to replace C. F. Köppen as the fashionable firm from which to buy wine. The two sons, Eduard and Stephan, were old enough to work in their father’s office. Consul Döhlmann displayed none of the fine manners that were the mark of a man like Justus, for instance; he was an ordinary suitier, who made a specialty of being amiably down-to-earth and who permitted himself extraordinary social liberties because he knew that the ladies in particular regarded him as a character and enjoyed his loud, easygoing audacity. At a banquet given by the Buddenbrooks one evening, when the next course was much too long in coming and the hostess was beginning to show her embarrassment and the guests were growing ill-humored, he put everyone at ease again by roaring across the table in booming Plattdeutsch, “Hope it ain’t me they’re waitin’ for, Frau Buddenbrook!”
And in that same gruff, reverberating voice he was now telling dubious anecdotes, spiced with dialect idioms. Frau Möllendorpf was beside herself with laughter and kept crying in exhaustion, “Good Lord, Herr Döhlmann, stop that this minute!”
Tony was received coldly by the Hagenströms, but all the others greeted her with great cordiality. Even Consul Fritsche came hurrying down the steps of the pavilion—he hoped that at least next year the Buddenbrooks would return to help swell the population of his spa.
“Your servant, as always, mamselle,” Consul Döhlmann said, employing his most refined enunciation, because he knew that Fräulein Buddenbrook did not particularly care for his manners.
“Mademoiselle Buddenbrook!”
“You did come.”
“How delightful.”
“And when did you arrive?”
“And what an inchanting dress!”—It was the rage to say “inchanting.”
“And where are you staying?”
“With the Schwarzkopfs?”
“The harbor pilot?”
“How original.”
“Yes, it’s simply dradfully original.”—It was the rage to say “dradfully.”
“You’re staying in town?” Consul Fritsche, the owner of the spa, repeated his question, without letting it be known that his feelings were hurt.
“So we’ll not have the pleasure of your company at the next gala?” his wife asked.
“Oh, you’re staying in Travemünde for only a short while?” another lady responded.
“Don’t you think, my dear, that the Buddenbrooks are just a bit too exclusive?” Frau Hagenström asked in a very low voice of Frau Möllendorpf.
“And you’ve not had your swim yet?” someone inquired. “Which of our young ladies hasn’t been swimming yet today? Marie, Julie, Louise? But of course your friends will join you, Fräulein Antonie.”
Several young women emerged out of the group, ready for a swim with Tony. And there was no talking Peter Döhlmann out of accompanying the ladies along the beach.
“Heavens, do you remember how we used to walk to school together?” Tony asked Julie Hagenström.
“Y-yes. And you were always doing something naughty,” Julie said with an indulgent smile.
They walked toward the pier, taking the boardwalk laid well above the waterline; and as they passed the boulders where Morten Schwarzkopf was sitting reading, Tony quickly nodded to him several times from a distance.
Someone asked, “Who was that you were nodding to?”
“Oh, that’s young Schwarzkopf,” Tony said. “He escorted me down to the beach.”
“The harbor pilot’s son?” Julie Hagenström asked, her bright black eyes sending a sharp glance over to where Morten was sitting and watching the elegant swimming party, his face betraying a certain melancholy.
But in a loud voice Tony said, “What a shame that August Möllendorpf isn’t here. Afternoons on the beach must be awfully boring.”
8
AND SO BEGAN Tony Buddenbrook’s summer vacation—a few lovely weeks, more pleasant and amusing than any she had ever spent in Travemünde. A weight had been lifted from her, and she blossomed—her words and gestures were as carefree and saucy as ever. The consul came to Travemünde with Tom and Christian every Sunday, and he was pleased with what he saw. They would dine at the table d’hôte, sit under the awnings of the pastry shop, drinking coffee and listening to open-air concerts, or watch the festive crowd of people like Justus Kröger and Peter Döhlmann play roulette in the grand salon. The consul never gambled.
Tony swam, sunned, ate bratwurst with ginger gravy, and took long walks with Morten—down the beach road to the next town, along the shore to the Temple of the Sea with its panorama of the coastline, or up the path to the little woods on the hill behind the spa hotel, where the big dinner bell was hung. Or they rowed across the Trave to Priwall, where they looked for amber.
Morten was an entertaining escort, although he could be a little heated and dogmatic in his views. He never failed to have some stern and righteous opinion on every topic, even if he blushed when he gave it. With angry, awkward gestures, he would declare all members of the nobility to be wretched idiots, and that grieved Tony, and she scolded him for it. But she was very proud of how openly he confided to her thoughts that he concealed from his parents.
One day he said, “There’s something else I must tell you: I have a complete skeleton in my room in Göttingen. You know, all the human bones, more or less held together with wire. Well, I’ve dressed my skeleton in an old police uniform. Ha! Isn’t that magnificent? But for God’s sake, don’t tell my father!”
Tony did of course spend some time with her friends from town on the beach or in the hotel garden, and she was taken along on sailing parties or invited to this gala or that. And then Morten would go sit “on the stones.” Since that very first day, those stones had become a fixed phrase for them: “to sit on the stones” meant “to be lonely and bored.”
One rainy day—the ocean was hidden in all directions by a veil of gray drizzle that merged with the low-hanging sky and made the beach soggy and the paths a sea of puddles—Tony said, “We’ll both have to sit on the stones today, either on the porch or in the parlor. I have no choice but to listen to you play some of your student songs, Morten, though I find them awfully boring.”
“Yes,” Morten said, “let’s take a seat. But, you know, when you’re along, they’re not stones at all.” He didn’t say such things when his father was present, by the way; his mother was allowed to hear them, though.
“What now?” the harbor pilot asked, when Tony and Morten both got up from lunch as if they were about to go off somewhere together. “Just where are you young folks headed?”
“Well, I was going to escort Fräulein Antonie to the Temple of the Sea.”
“Oh, you were, were you? Tell me, my son, might it not be a better plan if you’d go up to your room and memorize your nerve system? By the time you get back to Göttingen you’ll have forgotten everything.”
But Frau Schwarzkopf said in her mild way, “Good heavens, Diederich, why shouldn’t he go along? Let him be. He’s on vacation. Can’t he enjoy our visitor with the rest of us?”—And so they went for their walk.
They strolled along the beach, right next to the water, where it is easy to walk because the sand is smooth and hard after high tide, where little ordinary white shells are scattered about, and the other kind, too—larger and longer, irides
cent—and here and there you find wet yellow-green seaweed with berries like hollow balls that pop when you squeeze them, and jellyfish, the simple translucent kind, and the reddish yellow poisonous ones that sting you on the legs when you’re swimming.
“Do you want to know just how stupid I used to be?” Tony asked. “I wanted some of those pretty, colored stars that jellyfish have inside. So I wrapped a whole bunch of jellyfish in my handkerchief and laid them out neatly in the sun on the balcony, so that they’d dry up. And then only the stars would be left. Right … And when I went back to look, there was just a big wet spot that smelled like rotting seaweed.”
They walked, and the long waves rolled and murmured rhythmically beside them; the fresh salty wind blew free and unobstructed in their faces, wrapped itself around their ears, and made them feel slightly numb and deliciously dizzy. They walked along in that wide, peaceful, whispering hush of the sea that gives every sound, near or far, some mysterious importance.
On their left were broken cliffs of clay, with boulders that kept jutting out at new angles, hiding the curve of the shoreline. At one point the beach turned rocky, and they climbed up into the woods to reach the path that led to the Temple of the Sea—a round pavilion of logs and planks, its interior full of carved inscriptions, initials, hearts, and poems. Tony and Morten sat down on a wooden bench at the back of one of the little niches that faced the sea and had the same woody smell as the changing cabins at the pier.
It was very still and solemn up here at this time of the afternoon. A few birds were chattering and the gentle sough of the trees blended with that of the sea, which lay spread out far below—the rigging of a ship visible in the distance. Protected from the wind that had played about their ears until now, they were suddenly caught up in the mood of pensive silence.
Tony wanted to know: “Is it coming or going?”