Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

by Thomas Mann

  “Good heavens, Christian,” Tony cried. “You’re being ridiculous—your hands feel satisfied.”

  “Yes, really! You don’t know the feeling? I mean …” And he grew quite agitated trying to express himself, to explain. “You close your fist, you know, and your hand’s not especially strong, because you’re weary from work. But it’s not damp, either, it doesn’t irritate you. It feels good and comfortable. It’s a feeling of self-satisfaction. You can sit there quite still without being bored.”

  No one said anything. Until Thomas commented quite indifferently, to hide his distaste, “It seems to me that one doesn’t work in order to …” But he broke off; he was not going to repeat Christian’s remarks. “At least, I have other goals in mind,” he added.

  Christian, however, whose eyes were wandering again, ignored this, because he was already lost in thought, and very soon he began to tell a tale of murder and passion that he had himself witnessed in Valparaiso. “But then the fellow pulls out a knife, and …” For some inexplicable reason Thomas did not greet these stories, of which Christian had a great many, with applause—although Madame Grünlich found them delightfully amusing, while her mother, Clara, and Klothilde pulled back in horror, and Mamselle Jungmann and Erika simply sat there listening with their mouths open. Thomas’s usual reaction was to interject cool, ironic comments, giving the clear impression that he thought Christian was exaggerating and showing off—which was certainly not the case, although he did tell his tales with colorful verve. Could it be that Thomas did not like the idea that his younger brother had traveled and seen more than he? Or was he disgusted by his brother’s glorification of disorder and exotic violence in these blood-and-thunder stories? Certainly Christian was not in the least bothered by his brother’s disapproval of them; he was all too preoccupied with his descriptions to notice whether they were a success or failure with the others—and after he finished his eyes would roam about the room in absent-minded reverie.

  And if over time the relationship between the two Buddenbrooks did not turn out all that well, Christian was not the one to whom it would have occurred to feel or show any sort of malice toward his brother, to presume to judge him, or even to form a critical opinion about him. In his silent matter-of-factness, he left no doubt that he recognized his elder brother’s superiority, his greater expertise, competence, and respectability. But it was just such unbounded, nonchalant, peaceable subordination that annoyed Thomas, because on any given occasion Christian was so blithely docile that it appeared as if he set no value whatever in superiority, competence, seriousness, or respectability.

  He seemed not even to notice that the head of the firm increasingly responded to him with silent animosity—for which he had his reasons. Unfortunately Christian’s zeal for commerce began to dwindle after his first week on the job, and even more decisively after his second. This manifested itself in his preparations for work—reading the paper, smoking his after-breakfast cigarette, drinking his cognac—which at first had looked like a refined and artfully prolonged anticipation of the tasks ahead, but which now took more and more time and finally stretched out over the entire morning. And then, as a matter of course, Christian began to disregard the constraint of office hours, to appear later and later each morning, puffing on his after-breakfast cigarette, before finally starting his preparations for work; he would then go to the Club for his midday meal and not return until rather late, sometimes not before evening, sometimes not at all.

  The Club, whose members were primarily unmarried businessmen, occupied a few private rooms on the second floor of a wine restaurant—a place where one could take one’s meals and gather informally for harmless, and often not so harmless, amusements—including roulette. Even several somewhat debonair family men, like Consul Kröger and of course Peter Döhlmann, were members; and Police Chief Cremer was always “Johnny-on-the-spot.” That was Dr. Geiseke’s phrase—Andreas Gieseke, the son of the fire chief and Christian’s old schoolchum, who had set up a law practice in town and with whom the younger Buddenbrook quickly struck up a renewed friendship, despite Andreas’s reputation as a rather wild suitier.

  Christian—or Krischan, as he usually was called, for good or ill—knew them all as friends or acquaintances from the old days—most of them had been students of the late Marcellus Stengel—and he was received with open arms, for, although neither the merchants nor the professionals considered him a great intellect, they recognized his amusing social gifts. And, indeed, he gave his best performanees there, told his very best stories. He did his concert-pianist imitation at the Club’s piano, he parodied English and American actors and opera singers, and, in his inoffensive and always entertaining way, he obliged them with stories about his affairs with women all over the world. No doubt about it, Christian Buddenbrook was a suitier. He told of amorous adventures he had had on ships, on trains, in Sankt Pauli, in Whitechapel, in the jungle. He charmed and captivated them with stories that flowed in an effortless stream, spoken in a slightly plaintive, languid voice and delivered in the harmlessly risqué fashion of an English comedian. He told a story about a dog that had been sent in a box from Valparaiso to San Francisco, and was mangy to boot. God only knew what the point of the anecdote was, but it was incredibly funny when he told it. And while everyone around him was convulsed with laughter, there he would sit—a man with a large hooked nose, a scrawny and overlong neck, and thinning reddish-blond hair—and, as a restless and inexplicably serious look spread over his face, he would cross one skinny, bowed leg over the other and let his little, round, deep-set eyes pensively scan the room. It almost seemed as if they were laughing at his expense, laughing at him. But that never occurred to Krischan.

  At home, his favorite stories were about his office in Valparaiso, about the extreme heat that was the rule there, and about a young fellow from London named Johnny Thunderstorm, a gentleman of leisure, whom he had “never seen do a lick of work, goddamn if I did,” but who nevertheless had been a very clever businessman. “Good God,” he said, “you wouldn’t believe the heat. Well, the boss would come into the office, and there we were, all eight of us, lying around like flies and smoking cigarettes to keep the mosquitoes away at least. Good God, ‘Well, gentlemen?’ said the boss. ‘You’re not working today?’ ‘No, sir,’ Johnny Thunderstorm said. ‘As you can see, sir.’ And then we’d all blow cigarette smoke in his face. Good God!”

  “Why do you constantly use the expression ‘Good God’?” Thomas asked in annoyance. But that was not really what upset him. He felt as if Christian only told this story with such relish because it gave him an opportunity to scorn and ridicule work.

  At which point their mother discreetly changed the subject.

  “There are so many ugly things in this world,” Elisabeth Buddenbrook, née Kröger, thought to herself. “Even brothers can hate or despise each other; that does happen, as awful as it may sound. But no one ever speaks of it. They gloss over it. It’s best to know nothing about it.”

  4

  IT HAPPENED one sad night in May—Uncle Gotthold, Consul Gotthold Buddenbrook, age sixty, was taken with a heart attack and died an agonizing death in the arms of his wife, née Stüwing.

  The son of poor Madame Josephine, who had come up short in life when compared with his more powerful latter-day siblings, born of Madame Antoinette, had long since made peace with his fate, and in his later years, especially after his nephew had transferred the Dutch consulate to him, had eaten his cough drops from their tin box without bearing any grudges whatever. It was the ladies, rather, who with a kind of general and diffuse hostility tenderly nursed and cultivated the old family feud—not so much his kindly and obtuse wife as his three spinster daughters, who could not look at Elisabeth, or Antonie, or Thomas without a little spark of spite flaring in their eyes.

  On Thursdays, the traditional “children’s day,” they would all gather at the stroke of four in the large house on Meng Strasse to have a late dinner and to spend the evening together.
Sometimes even Justus Kröger and his family would appear, or Sesame Weichbrodt with her uneducated sister. And on those occasions the Ladies Buddenbrook from Breite Strasse would bring the conversation around to Tony’s bygone marriage in the hope of egging Madame Grünlich into using some strong language, while they hastily exchanged pointed glances. Or they would make general remarks about how undignified and vain it was to dye one’s hair, or inquire all too sympathetically about how Jakob Kröger, Elisabeth’s nephew, was doing. And they made jokes at the expense of poor innocent, patient Klothilde, the only person who truly had reason to feel inferior to them—and the jokes were certainly not as harmless as the ones to which the penniless, hungry woman was subjected daily by Tom or Tony, and to which she responded with her usual methodical, perplexed good humor. They sneered at Clara’s rigidity and bigotry; they quickly discovered that Thomas was not on the best terms with Christian and that, thank God, they didn’t have to pay any attention to Christian because he was a buffoon, a ridiculous man. As for Thomas himself, they could not find any weak points in the man, and he always regarded them with an indulgent indifference that implied, “I understand you, and I feel sorry for you.” And so they treated him with a respect tinged with venom. But they could not help remarking that little Erika, so pink and pampered, was far behind in her growth, alarmingly so. And, to cap it all, Pfiffi, with a little jiggle and drops of moisture at the corners of her mouth, would comment on the child’s extraordinary resemblance to that swindler Grünlich.

  But now they stood in tears beside their mother around their father’s deathbed, and although it seemed to them that even his death was somehow the fault of their relatives, a message was sent to Meng Strasse.

  It was the middle of the night when the bell above the front door echoed across the large entrance hall, and since Christian had come home late and was not feeling well, Thomas set out alone in the spring rain.

  He arrived just in time to see the old gentleman’s last twitches and convulsions, and then he stood there for a long while beside the deathbed, his hands folded, gazing down at the short figure visible under the sheets, and he stared at the dead face with its soft features and white whiskers.

  “You never had things very good, Uncle Gotthold,” he thought. “You learned too late to make concessions, to make allowances. But they are necessary. If I had been like you, I would have married my shop girl years ago. But one must keep up appearances. And did you ever really want things to be any other way? You were stubborn, though, and probably thought that there was something idealistic in being stubborn. You had too little momentum and imagination, too little of the idealism that enables a man to cherish, to nurture, to defend something as abstract as a business with an old family name—and to bring it honor and power and glory. That requires a quiet enthusiasm that is sweeter and more pleasant, more gratifying than any secret love. You lost your sense of poetry, although you were brave to love and marry against your father’s wishes. You had no ambition, Uncle Gotthold. Our family name is an ordinary name, I’ll grant you, and one nurtures it by helping a grain business flourish, and by making oneself powerful, respected, and loved in a little corner of the world. Did you think: ‘I’ll marry my Stüwing because I love her, and hang the practical considerations—those are nothing but petty, philistine details’? Oh, but we’ve all traveled about and learned enough to know only too well that the limits set to our ambitions are narrow and pathetic—when viewed from the outside or from on high. But everything in this world is comparative, Uncle Gotthold. Didn’t you know that one can be a great man in a small town? That a man can be a Caesar in an old commercial city on the Baltic? That takes a little imagination, I’ll grant, a little idealism—and that’s what you lacked, whatever you may have believed about yourself.”

  And Thomas Buddenbrook turned away. He walked to the window and, with his hands behind his back and a little smile on his intelligent face, he looked out at the dimly lit Gothic façade of the town hall shrouded in the rain.

  IT LAY in the nature of things that the office and title of the Royal Dutch Consulate, which Thomas might have claimed for himself at the death of his father, now in fact devolved upon him. And, to Tony’s boundless satisfaction, the curved coat-of-arms, with its lions, crest, and crown, hung once again on the gable of the house on Meng Strasse, right under the motto Dominus providebit.

  In June that year, shortly after all this had been settled, the young consul set out on a business trip to Amsterdam, unsure how long he would be gone.

  5

  DEATHS TEND TO TURN eyes and hearts toward heaven, and no one was surprised now to hear from the lips of Madame Buddenbrook a few very pious phrases that would not have been expected of her before the demise of her husband.

  But it soon turned out that this was not a temporary phenomenon, and it quickly become known around town that the consul’s wife, who as she had grown older had shown some sympathy for her late husband’s spiritual inclinations in the last years of his life, now intended to honor his memory by making his religious views totally her own. She strove to fill the spacious house with the same spirit that had inspired the deceased: a gentle Christian gravity that did not exclude a refined gladness of heart. The morning and evening services continued in expanded form. The family gathered in the dining room, while the servants stood in the columned hall, and Elisabeth or Clara read a passage from the large family Bible with its huge, funny letters; then a few verses were sung from the hymnal, accompanied by Madame Buddenbrook on the harmonium. The Bible passage was often replaced by a reading from a book of sermons or from one of the edifying, black-bound, gilt-edged volumes of which there were many in the house, with titles like The Jewel Box, Psaltery, Holy Hours, Morning Chimes, The Pilgrim’s Staff, and whose unrelenting tender affection for the sweet Baby Jesus tended to be somewhat cloying.

  Christian did not often attend services. Thomas seized an opportunity one day to raise a cautious objection to the practice, half in jest, but was rebuffed with gentle dignity. And as for Madame Grünlich, her behavior, unfortunately, was not always quite correct. A visiting preacher happened to be a guest in the Buddenbrook household one morning when a solemn, devout, and heartfelt tune was struck up to which they were required to sing the following words:

  I am a lowly scavenger,

  A crippled, limping sinner,

  Foul, rancid sin I did prefer,

  And gorged it down for dinner.

  O Lord, please cast a bone of grace

  Before this dog so lowly;

  This bestial sinner first abase,

  To rise then clean and holy.

  And Frau Grünlich was so overcome with spasms of contrition that she tossed her hymnal aside and left the room.

  But Madame Buddenbrook demanded much more of herself than of her children. She founded a Sunday school, for example. On Sunday mornings, the doorbell on Meng Strasse was rung only by little grammar-school girls—by Stina Voss, who lived near the wall; or Mika Stuht, from Glockengiesser Strasse; and Fika Snut, from down by the river, or on Kleine Gröpel Grube, or on Engelswisch—it all depended. Their towheads tamed by water and comb, they paraded through the large entrance hall and into the brightly lit garden room, which had not been used as an office for some time and was now fitted out with benches facing a little table on which was placed a glass of sugar-water and behind which sat Madame Buddenbrook, née Kröger, in a dress of heavy black satin, her white, genteel face framed by an even whiter lace cap, who proceeded to catechize them for an hour.

  She also founded her “Jerusalem Evenings”—which Clara and Klothilde were required to attend, as was Tony, whether she wished to or not. Once a week about twenty ladies, who were of an age when it is time to look around for a good spot in heaven, sat at the extended table in the dining room; and by the light of lamps and candles they drank tea or “bishop’s punch,” ate delicate sandwiches and pudding, read hymns and sermons to one another, and did needlework that would be sold at a bazaar at year’s en
d, the profits from which would be sent to Jerusalem for missionary purposes.

  This pious fellowship was made up primarily of ladies from Madame Buddenbrook’s social circle, including Mesdames Langhals, Möllendorpf, and Kistenmaker, although some older ladies, whose views were more secular and profane, like Madame Köppen, made fun of their friend Bethsy. Other members were the wives of the town’s several preachers, the widow of Gotthold Buddenbrook, née Stüwing, and Sesame Weichbrodt accompanied by her uneducated sister. There is neither rank nor privilege before Christ, however, and so other, more humble oddities also took part—for example, a small, wrinkled creature, her riches consisting entirely of piety and crochet patterns, who lived in the Holy Ghost Hospital and was named Himmelsbürger. She was the last of her line, “the last Himmelsbürger,” she would say dolefully, running her needle up under her bonnet to give her head a scratch.

  Two other members were even more remarkable—a pair of twins, two quaint old maids dressed in very faded frocks and shepherdess hats from the last century, who wandered about town, hand in hand, doing good deeds. Their name was Gerhardt and they claimed to be direct descendants of Paul Gerhardt. It was said that they were not destitute by any means, but that they gave everything to the poor and lived in great poverty. “My dears,” Madame Buddenbrook remarked, feeling somewhat ashamed of them, “God reads our hearts, but your clothes are less than suitable—one must have some regard for one’s appearance.” But, filled with all the indulgent affection and sympathetic superiority that the lowly feel for the great who are in search of salvation, they would simply kiss the brow of their elegant friend—who could not renounce her status in this world. They were not stupid women at all; and shining softly in their little, ugly, shriveled parrot faces were enigmatic brown eyes that gazed at the world with a strange, gentle look of wisdom. Their hearts were full of marvelous and mysterious knowledge. They knew that in our last hours all our loved ones who have gone before come to gather us to them with hymns and blessings. They spoke the word “Lord” with the pristine ease of the first Christians, who with their own ears had heard the Master say, “Yet a little while and ye shall see me.” They had the strangest theories about premonitions and the inner light, about how thoughts could wander through the world and be transferred from person to person—and, indeed, one of them, Lea, was deaf and yet always knew immediately what people were saying.