Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

by Thomas Mann

  He did not finish. Tony had jumped up, had even taken a few steps backward, and, with her damp lace handkerchief still trailing in her hand, she cried, “Good! Enough! Never!”

  She looked almost heroic. The word “firm” had hit its mark. It was highly likely that it was a more decisive factor than her dislike of Herr Grünlich.

  “You shall not do it, Papa!” she went on, quite beside herself. “Do you want to go bankrupt, too? Enough! Never!”

  At that moment the door to the hallway opened a little hesitantly, and Herr Grünlich entered.

  And the manner in which Johann Buddenbrook stood up now, said: “That’s settled.”

  8

  HERR GRÜNLICH’S FACE was splotched with red, but he was impeccably dressed. He wore a dignified black pleated coat and pea-colored trousers, much like those he had worn for his first visit to Meng Strasse. He stood there in a limp pose, his eyes directed to the floor, and in a faint, languid voice he said, “Father …”

  The consul bowed coldly and set his necktie to rights with a few energetic tugs.

  “Thank you for coming,” Herr Grünlich added.

  “It was my duty, my friend,” the consul replied. “But I fear it will be the only thing I can do for you.”

  His son-in-law threw him a quick glance, and his pose went even limper.

  “I hear,” the consul continued, “that your banker, Herr Kesselmeyer, is waiting for us. Which room have you chosen for our discussion? I am at your disposal.”

  “Please be kind enough to follow me,” Herr Grünlich murmured.

  Consul Buddenbrook kissed his daughter on the brow and said, “Go up to your child, Antonie.” With Herr Grünlich skittering now ahead, now behind him and then pulling back the portieres, he strode across the dining room and into the sitting room.

  Herr Kesselmeyer was standing at the window, and as he turned around the salt-and-pepper down on his skull first rose and then gently fell back in place.

  “Herr Kesselmeyer … Consul Buddenbrook, my father-in-law,” Herr Grünlich said with meek gravity. The consul’s face was rigid.

  Herr Kesselmeyer bowed, his arms dangling at his sides, both canines fixed against his upper lip; then he said, “Your servant, Consul Buddenbrook. I take sincere pleasure in having the opportunity to meet you.”

  “Please excuse us for having made you wait, Kesselmeyer,” Herr Grünlich said. He was equally courteous to them both.

  “Shall we get down to business?” the consul remarked, turning from one to the other.

  Their host hastened to respond, “Gentlemen, please …”

  As they moved into the smoking room, Herr Kesselmeyer remarked cheerfully, “You had a pleasant journey, I hope, Consul Buddenbrook? Aha, rain? Yes, a bad time of year, a dreary, dirty time of the year. If only we had a bit of frost, a bit of snow. But no—just rain and filth. Quite, quite disgusting.”

  “What an odd man,” the consul thought.

  In the middle of the little room, papered in a dark floral pattern, there stood a sturdy rectangular table, covered with green baize. The rain was picking up outside. It was so dark that Herr Grünlich quickly lit the three candles that stood in a silver candelabrum on the table, whose green surface was covered with bluish business correspondence stamped with the names of various firms and stacks of other papers, some torn and soiled, with visible dates and signatures. There was also a thick ledger, a sand-holder, and a pewter inkstand, studded with nicely sharpened quills and pencils.

  Herr Grünlich did the honors with the silent, tactful, reticent gestures of someone directing guests at a funeral. “Dear Father, please, take the armchair,” he said gently. “Herr Kesselmeyer, would you be so kind as to sit here?”

  At last everything was in order. The banker sat across from his host, while the consul presided from his armchair at the long side of the table; the back of his chair rested against the door to the hallway.

  Herr Kesselmeyer bent forward, let his lower lip hang free, disentangled a pince-nez from his vest, and, wrinkling his nose and opening his mouth wide, set it in place. First he scratched his close-cropped beard—the sound alone could make a person nervous—then set his hands on his knees, nodded toward the papers, and remarked cheerfully, “Aha, so here’s the whole mess.”

  “You will permit me, won’t you, to take a closer look at the state of your affairs?” the consul said, reaching for the ledger.

  But suddenly Herr Grünlich reached across the table, protecting the ledger with both hands—threaded with strong blue veins and visibly trembling—and cried in an agitated voice, “One moment, one moment, please, Father. Do let me make a few introductory remarks. Yes, you shall have your look at the state of my affairs, nothing can escape your eyes. But believe me when I say it will be a look into the affairs of an unfortunate, not a guilty, man. You see in me a man, Father, who has struggled tirelessly against fate, but who has at last been struck down. And with that in mind …”

  “We shall see, my friend, we shall see,” the consul said with obvious impatience; and Herr Grünlich pulled his hands back and let destiny take its course.

  Long, dreadful minutes passed in silence. The three gentlemen sat huddled in the flickering candlelight, hemmed in by four dark walls. There was no perceptible movement except the rustle of papers under the consul’s hand. The only other sound was the rain falling outside.

  Herr Kesselmeyer had thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his vest, and while the rest of his fingers played the piano on his shoulders, he gazed with unutterable amusement at the other two men. Herr Grünlich did not lean back in his chair, but kept his hands on the table and stared gloomily straight ahead, although now and then his eyes shifted for a nervous sidelong glance at his father-in-law. The consul paged through the ledger, following the columns of numbers with a fingernail; he compared entries and jotted down little, indecipherable numbers with a pencil. His weary face reflected his dismay at the state of affairs revealed by this “closer look.” Finally he laid his left hand on Herr Grünlich’s sleeve and said in shock, “You poor man.”

  “Father—” Herr Grünlich blurted out. Two large tears rolled down the pitiful man’s cheeks and into his golden muttonchops. Herr Kesselmeyer followed the course of these two drops with intense interest; he even raised himself up a little to stare openmouthed directly into Grünlich’s face. Consul Buddenbrook was deeply moved. Softened by the misfortune he had himself encountered, he felt compassion carrying him away; but he quickly mastered his emotions.

  “How is it possible?” he said with a despondent shake of his head. “Within just a few years.”

  “Child’s play!” Herr Kesselmeyer responded cheerfully. “A man can go to the dogs in high style in four years. One need only think of how jauntily the Westfahl Brothers were skipping about not long ago.”

  The consul stared at him, blinking—but he neither saw nor heard him. He had told them nothing of the real thoughts gnawing away inside him. Bewildered and suspicious, he asked himself why, why had all this happened just now? B. Grünlich’s present misfortune could just as easily have overcome him two or three years before—that was evident at first glance. But he had enjoyed inexhaustible credit: banks had provided him with capital, again and again he had received the endorsements of solid firms like those of Senator Bock and Consul Goudstikker, his promissory notes had been treated as if they were cash. And then had come a collapse on all sides, a total withdrawal of trust as if by prearrangement, everyone joining in the attack on B. Grünlich with complete and ruthless disregard for even common business courtesy. But why now, now, now?—And the head of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook knew quite well what he meant by “now.” He would have been very naïve not to have known that the reputation of his own firm necessarily enhanced his son-in-law’s prospects, once the engagement to Antonie was announced. But had Grünlich’s credit really depended so completely, so blatantly, so exclusively on his own? Had Grünlich in fact been a nobody? But what about the inquiries the
consul had made, the books he had examined? However matters stood, he was firmer than ever in his resolve not to lift a finger to help. It seemed they were all sadly mistaken. So B. Grünlich had known how to create the illusion that Johann Buddenbrook stood behind him, had he? That was a dreadful misconception, and apparently widely held, and he would have to put a stop to it once and for all. And this Kesselmeyer was in for a surprise, too. Did that buffoon have no conscience at all? It was plain as day from the way he had kept extending more and more credit to Grünlich—long after he had become insolvent and at ever more bloodthirsty rates of interest—that he had shamelessly speculated on the probability that he, Johann Buddenbrook, would not let his daughter’s husband be ruined.

  “Be that as it may,” he said curtly, “let us come to the point. If I were to render expert opinion as a businessman, I regret that I would have to say these are the ledgers of an unfortunate man, true, but of a very guilty man as well.”

  “Father—” Herr Grünlich stammered.

  “That is not a form of address I take any pleasure in hearing,” the consul replied quickly and harshly. “Your claims against Herr Grünlich, sir,” he continued, turning momentarily to the banker, “total sixty thousand marks.”

  “Together with unpaid interest it comes to 68,755 marks and 15 shillings,” Herr Kesselmeyer replied amiably.

  “Indeed. And you are not prepared under any circumstances to grant an extension?”

  Herr Kesselmeyer simply broke into laughter. He laughed with his mouth open, in good-natured spasms, without any trace of mockery, all the while gazing straight at the consul, as if urging him to join in as well.

  Johann Buddenbrook’s small, deep-set eyes darkened, and a sudden flush around the edges spread down to his cheekbones. He had asked merely for form’s sake, knowing quite well that an extension by this one creditor would make no significant difference in any case. But he was indignant at the shameful way the man had refused. With one sweeping gesture, he shoved aside all the papers in front of him, laid his pencil on the table with a flick of the wrist, and said, “Then I hereby state that I am unwilling to have anything further to do with this matter.”

  “Aha!” Herr Kesselmeyer cried, waving his hands in the air. “That’s what I call straight talk, spoken with dignity. The consul wants to settle things quite simply. No long-winded speeches. Short and sweet.”

  Johann Buddenbrook did not even look at him, but turned calmly to Herr Grünlich and said, “I cannot help you, my friend. Things will have to take their course. I do not see myself in a position to alter that. Pull yourself together and seek comfort and strength in God. I must consider our discussion at an end.”

  Surprisingly, Herr Kesselmeyer’s expression turned quite serious, and the effect was very odd; but then he nodded encouragingly to Herr Grünlich, who sat there immobilized, except that he was wringing his long hands so violently that the knuckles cracked.

  “Father … Consul Buddenbrook,” he said in a quavering voice, “surely you do not, you cannot, want me to end in ruin and misery. Listen to me. The total deficit comes to 120,000. You can save me. You are a rich man. You may regard the sum, if you wish, as a final settlement, as your daughter’s inheritance, as an interest-bearing loan. I will work. You know that I am industrious and inventive.”

  “I have spoken my final word,” the consul said.

  “If I may be so bold—is it because you cannot pay?” Herr Kesselmeyer asked, wrinkling up his nose and staring through his pince-nez. “If I might make a suggestion, Consul Buddenbrook, this would be an excellent opportunity to prove the strength of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook.”

  “You would do well, sir, to leave any concern about my firm’s reputation to me. I have no need to throw my money in the nearest ditch to prove the firm’s solvency.”

  “Surely not, surely not! Aha—ditch, now that’s quite funny. But do you not think, Herr Buddenbrook, that your son-in-law’s bankruptcy might not mistakenly tend to put your own situation in a bad light?”

  “I can only urge upon you once again that my reputation in the business world is my own concern,” the consul said.

  Herr Grünlich stared helplessly at his banker and then began again: “Father, I beg you, consider what it is you’re doing. Are we speaking here of me alone? Oh, it may well be that I, I, shall be ruined. But your daughter, my wife, whom I love so much, whom to win I battled long and hard … and our child, our own innocent child—shall they be ruined as well? No, Father, I could not bear it. I would kill myself. Yes, with this very hand, I would kill myself. And may heaven then declare you innocent of any guilt.”

  Johann Buddenbrook leaned back in his armchair—he was pale and his heart was pounding. For the second time the storm of this man’s emotions rushed over him, and there certainly seemed something genuine about the way he expressed them; it was the same awful threat he had heard that day when he told Herr Grünlich about the letter his daughter had sent from Travemünde, and once again a shudder passed through him—like any man of his generation, he felt a fanatical reverence for all human emotions that stood at odds with his sober and practical outlook as a man of business. But the attack lasted no longer than a second. “A hundred and twenty thousand marks,” he repeated to himself. And then, calmly and firmly, he said aloud, “Antonie is my daughter. I will see to it that she does not suffer through no fault of her own.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Herr Grünlich asked, slowly stiffening.

  “You will learn soon enough,” the consul replied. “For now, I have nothing further to add.” And with that he stood up, squared his chair back into its place, and turned toward the door.

  Herr Grünlich sat there silent, stiff, bewildered—his mouth twitched from side to side, but he was unable to wrench a single word from it. But with this final and conclusive action by the consul, Herr Kesselmeyer’s good cheer returned—indeed, it grew more intense and dreadful, until it burst all bounds. His pince-nez fell from his nose, which lurched upward between his eyes, and his tiny mouth, distorted by those two lonely yellow canines, threatened to rip apart. His little red hands rowed in the air, the down on his skull fluttered; and, framed by his white, close-cropped beard, his whole face, twisted and deformed by this excess of mirth, turned vermilion.

  “Aa-hah!” he cried, his voice cracking. “I find all this really quite, quite funny! But you really should reconsider, Herr Buddenbrook, before tossing such a charming, such a priceless specimen of a son-in-law into the ditch. Such industry and invention will not be found a second time on God’s good, wide earth. Aha! Once before, only four years ago, with the knife already at our throat, with the rope around our neck—suddenly the floor of the exchange was filled with shouts announcing an engagement to Mademoiselle Buddenbrook, before it had ever occurred. My respect! No, no, my deepest, deepest respect.”

  “Kesselmeyer,” Herr Grünlich screeched, his hands clutching the air as if he were fending off a ghost; then he ran to a corner of the room, sat down on a chair, and buried his face in his hands, bending over so deep that the tips of his muttonchops lay across his thighs. Several times he even pulled his knees up in a crouch.

  “And how did we manage that?” Herr Kesselmeyer continued. “How did we actually go about snapping up both the daughter and the eighty thousand marks? Oho! It can be arranged—even if one has no more than a pennyworth of industry and invention, it can be arranged. If Papa is to come to the rescue, one presents him with very pretty books—charming, tidy books with everything in tiptop order. Except, of course, that they don’t quite correspond to crude reality. Because in crude reality, three-quarters of that dowry is already promissory notes.”

  The consul stood at the door, pale as death, the knob in his hand. Shivers of horror ran down his back. Was he really trapped in this little dimly lit room with a swindler and a vicious ape gone mad?

  “Sir, I abhor your words,” he managed to say, still rather unsure of himself. “I abhor your insane slander all the more be
cause it is directed at me as well—and I did not thoughtlessly lead my daughter into this misfortune. I made serious inquiries about my son-in-law. The rest was God’s will.”

  Determined not to hear any more, he turned and opened the door.

  But Herr Kesselmeyer shouted after him, “Aha? Inquiries? And of whom? Of Bock? Goudstikker? Petersen? Massmann & Timm? They were all in on it. They were all in up to their ears. They were only too glad to see a marriage that would provide them some security.”

  The consul slammed the door behind him.

  9

  DORA, the not entirely honest cook, was busy in the dining room.

  “Ask Madame Grünlich to come down,” the consul ordered.

  “Get ready to leave, my child,” he said when Tony appeared. He walked across into the salon with her. “Get ready as quickly as you can and see to it that Erika is ready to travel, too. We are going into the city. We shall spend the night at an inn and then leave for home tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Papa,” Tony said. Her face was flushed; she looked bewildered, distraught. Not knowing what sort of preparations she should make, she let her hands flutter about uselessly at her waist—she truly could not grasp the reality of what was happening to her.

  “What should I take with me, Papa?” she asked with nervous excitement. “Everything? All my clothes? Or just one or two trunks? Is Grünlich really bankrupt? O God! But I can take my jewelry, can’t I? Papa, the maids will have to be discharged. I can’t pay them. Grünlich was supposed to give me my housekeeping money today or tomorrow.”

  “Let it be, my child. All those things will be handled here. Take only what you absolutely need. One trunk—a small one. We will send for your things. Step lively, do you hear? We have …”

  At that moment the portieres were thrown open wide and Herr Grünlich entered the salon. With tripping steps, his arms widespread, his head tilted to one side in the pose of a man who wishes to say, “Here I am! Slay me if you will!,” he flew to his wife and sank on both knees in front of her. He was pitiful to look at. His tawny golden muttonchops were disheveled, his coat was all wrinkled, his necktie askew, his collar stood open, and little drops of sweat stood out on his brow.