by Thomas Mann
“Oh, Tom,” she replied. “What is there for me to do? My life is behind me now.…”
“Nonsense, Tony. You and your talk of life. But we’ve been rather bored, I take it?”
“Yes, Tom, I’m bored something awful. Sometimes I could weep with boredom. I’ve enjoyed decorating your house for you, and don’t think I’m not glad you’re back. But I’m not happy at home. God strike me if that’s a sin. I’m in my early thirties now, but I’m not yet so old that my dearest friends should be the last Himmelsbürger or the ladies Gerhardt or one of mother’s men in black who devour widows’ houses. I don’t trust them, Tom. They’re wolves in sheep’s clothing, a generation of vipers. We’re all weak human beings with sinful hearts, and if they want to look down on me as a miserable worldly woman, why, I’ll just laugh in their faces. I’ve always been of the opinion that all men are equal, and that we don’t need any middlemen between us and our God. You know my political principles, too. I want each citizen to stand in direct relation to the state.”
“So you’re feeling a little lonely, is that it?” Thomas asked to bring her back to the point. “But, now, listen here, you have Erika, don’t you?”
“Yes, Tom, and I love that child with all my heart, although there was a certain person who claimed I am not fond of children. But, you see … I’m being frank with you, I’m a straightforward woman who says what she feels in her heart, and I have no use for a lot of pretty words.”
“Which is very pretty of you, Tony.”
“To be brief—the sad thing is that the child reminds me all too much of Grünlich. Even the Buddenbrooks from Breite Strasse say that she looks very much like him. And, then, whenever she’s standing right there in front of me, I’m forced to think: You’re an old woman with a grown daughter, and your life is behind you. For a few years you stood in the thick of things, but now you’ll live to be seventy or eighty, sitting here listening to Lea Gerhardt read to you. The thought makes me so sad, Tom, that I can feel it as a pressure right here, just sitting in my throat. Because I still feel young, you know, and I want so much to get back into the thick of life. And besides, it’s not only that I’m uncomfortable at home, but in town, too. You can’t suppose I’ve been struck blind and can’t see how things stand. I’m not a silly goose anymore and I’ve got eyes in my head. I’m a divorced woman, and it’s only too clear that they make sure I feel it. Believe me, Tom, it still lies heavy on my heart that I have left such a stain on our name, even if it was no fault of my own. Do what you will, you can earn lots of money, become the most important man in town—people will always say, ‘Yes. But did you know his sister is divorced?’ Julie Möllendorpf, née Hagenström, never greets me. Well, she really is a goose! But it’s the same with all the families. And yet, Tom, I simply can’t stop hoping to make up for it all someday. I am still young. And still rather pretty, am I not? Mama can’t give me all that much, but it’s still a nice tidy sum of money. What if I were to marry again? To be frank, Tom, it’s my most fervent wish. Then everything would be set right again, the stain would be washed away. O Lord, if I could only make a match that would be a credit to our name and set myself up on my own again. Do you think it’s entirely out of the question?”
“By no means, Tony. Oh, not at all. I’ve never stopped assuming you would. But it seems to me that the most necessary thing is for you to get away for a bit—you need a little change of scenery.”
“That’s it!” she said eagerly. “And now I must tell you a story.”
Very pleased with his own suggestion, Thomas leaned back in his chair. He was already smoking his second cigarette. Dusk had begun to fall.
“Well, then, while you were gone I almost accepted a position—a position as a social companion in Liverpool. Would that have shocked you? But all the same, a little questionable, right? Yes, yes, it would probably have been undignified. But it was my most ardent wish just to get away. But the whole thing fell apart. I sent Mrs. Whatever my photograph and she had to dispense with my services—I was too pretty. There was a grown son in the house. ‘You are too pretty,’ she wrote. I’ve never been more amused in all my life.”
And they both laughed very heartily.
“But now something else has come along,” Tony continued. “I’ve received an invitation, an invitation to visit Eva Ewers in Munich. Oh yes, by the way, her name is Eva Niederpaur now, and her husband is a brewery director. Well, she has asked me to come for a visit, and I’m thinking of taking advantage of the offer very soon. Or course, Erika couldn’t come along. I’d place her in Sesame Weichbrodt’s boarding school. She’d be looked after very nicely there. Would you have any objections?”
“None at all. In any case, what you need are some new surroundings.”
“Yes, that’s it precisely!” she said with gratitude. “But, now, what about you, Tom? I’ve been talking about nothing but myself. What a selfish woman I am. So tell me all. Good Lord, how happy you must be!”
“Yes I am, Tony,” he said emphatically. There was a short pause. He first exhaled and let the smoke drift across the table, then continued, “First of all, I’m very happy to be married and to have set up a household of my own. You know me—I would have made a very bad bachelor. That sort of life smacks of loneliness and indolence, and I have my own ambitions, as you well know. I don’t believe I’ve reached the endpoint of my career, either in business or, if I may make light of it, in politics. But a man first wins the world’s trust as master of his own house, as a family man. And yet, Tony, it all hung by the merest thread. I am a bit choosy. For a long time I didn’t think it possible I would ever find the right woman. But one look at Gerda decided me. I saw at once that she was the only one, she and no one else. Although I know that a lot of people here in town are upset with me about my choice. She’s a wonderful creature—there are very few like her on earth. I’ll grant, she’s very different from you, Tony. You’re not as complex, you’re more natural. Madame Antonie is simply more vivacious,” he went on, suddenly striking a lighter tone. “And Gerda has her share of high spirits, too—she surely proves that when she plays her violin. But she can be a little cold sometimes. In short, she can’t be measured by ordinary standards. She’s an artist by nature—a unique, puzzling, ravishing creature.”
“Yes, yes, she is,” Tony said. She had been giving serious attention to what her brother was saying. Evening had fallen, and no one had thought to light a lamp.
The door to the hallway opened, and a tall, erect figure stood before them, surrounded by twilight and dressed in a pleated, flowing robe of snow-white piqué. Heavy chestnut hair framed the white face, and bluish shadows brooded in the corners of the brown, close-set eyes.
It was Gerda, the mother of future Buddenbrooks.
PART SIX
1
THOMAS BUDDENBROOK almost always ate an early breakfast alone in the pretty dining room. His wife usually left her bedroom only later in the day, because most mornings she suffered from a migraine headache, or was generally indisposed. The consul then left at once for Meng Strasse, where the firm’s offices were still located, ate a second, late breakfast with his mother, Christian, and Ida Jungmann, and did not see Gerda until four in the afternoon, at dinner.
The commotion of daily business kept the ground floor of the old house bustling with life; but the upper floors of the large house on Meng Strasse were now quite deserted and lonely. Little Erika had been enrolled as a boarding student at Mademoiselle Weichbrodt’s school; poor Klothilde had moved her four or five pieces of furniture to an inexpensive room in the home of Frau Dr. Krauseminz, a high-school teacher’s widow; even Anton the butler had left the house, to work at the younger Buddenbrooks’, where he was needed; and if Christian was at the Club, four o’clock found Madame Buddenbrook and Mamselle Jungmann sitting all by themselves at the round table, which, without a single extra leaf, now looked quite lost among all the gods in the large dining room.
With the death of Johann Buddenbrook, normal soc
ial life had also died on Meng Strasse, and apart from the visit of an occasional clergyman Elisabeth entertained no guests other than the members of her family, who gathered on Thursday evenings. Her son, however, and his wife already had their first dinner party behind them, with tables set in both the dining and sitting rooms, with cook, footmen, and wine from Kistenmaker’s—an affair that began at five in the evening, with odors and sounds still lingering when the clock struck eleven. All the Langhalses, Hagenströms, Huneuses, Kistenmakers, Oeverdiecks, and Möllendorpfs—whether business or professional men, couples or suitiers—had attended the party, which concluded with whist and several earfuls of music and was praised in the highest terms on the exchange for a good week afterward. And it was more than evident that the consul’s young wife knew how to entertain in style. That same evening, as they stood alone in the sitting room by the dim light of candles burning low now among furniture shoved this way and that—and enveloped in the sweet, heavy, thick odor of fine foods, perfumes, wines, coffee, cigars, and flowers that had adorned both the ladies and the tables—the consul squeezed her hands and said, “Well done, Gerda. We certainly have nothing to be ashamed of. This sort of thing is important. I have no great desire to throw a ball and have young people leaping around in here—there’s not room enough, anyway. But the more staid and settled folks should eat well at our table. A dinner like this costs a little more, but it’s money well invested.”
“You’re right,” she replied, arranging the laces at her bodice, beneath which her breasts shimmered like marble. “I definitely prefer dinners to balls myself. A dinner has such an extraordinarily soothing effect. I had been playing my violin this afternoon and was feeling a bit odd. But now my brain is so numb that I could be struck by lightning and not bat an eyelash.”
WHEN THE consul sat down beside his mother for late breakfast at about eleven-thirty the next morning, she read the following letter to him:
Munich, 2 April 1857
Marienplatz 5
My dear Mama,
I beg your pardon, I’m truly ashamed for not having written yet, even though I’ve been here for eight days now; my time has been taken up with all the things there are to see here—but more of that later. First I must ask how my dear family is doing—you and Tom and Gerda and Erika and Christian and Thilda and Ida. That’s the most important thing.
Oh, what all haven’t I seen in these last few days. There is the Pinakothek and the Glyptothek and the Hofbräuhaus and the Court Theater and the churches and so many other things. I shall have to tell you about them when I see you, otherwise I’ll write my fingers to the bone. We’ve also taken a carriage ride through the Isar Valley, and for tomorrow we are planning an excursion to Lake Würm. There seems to be no end to it. Eva is very sweet to me, and Herr Niederpaur, the brewery director, is an easygoing man. We live on a very pretty square in the middle of town, with a well in the middle, just like on the marketplace at home, and our house is very close to the town hall. I’ve never seen such a house. It’s all painted in bright colors, from top to bottom—with St. George slaying the dragon and old Bavarian princes in long robes and carrying shields and swords. Just imagine!
Yes, I am quite taken by Munich. The air here is said to be good for the nerves, and my digestion is doing quite nicely at the moment. I am really enjoying drinking lots of beer, especially since the water here is not all that healthy. There are too few vegetables and they use too much flour—in the sauces, for example, which are deplorable. The people here haven’t the vaguest what a good loin of veal is, because the butchers hack everything into pathetic little pieces. And I miss fish very much. And it really is purest madness, these everlasting pickles and potato salad, all washed down with beer—the sounds that come from my stomach!
In fact, one first has to get used to a great many things, as you may well imagine—it’s a foreign country, after all. There are the unfamiliar coins, and the problem of making yourself understood with common people—with the servants, for instance, because I speak too fast for them and they just speak gibberish. And then there’s Catholicism; I hate it, simply have no use for it, as you know.
The consul began to laugh at this, leaning back against the sofa with a piece of bread and herb cheese in his hand.
“Yes, Tom, you may well laugh,” his mother said, giving the tablecloth several raps with her middle finger. “But I am very pleased that she holds to the faith of her fathers and detests such unevangelical gimcrackery. I know that you discovered a certain sympathy for the papish church while you were in France and Italy, but that is not a matter of religion with you, Tom, it’s something else, and I know what it is. We should be forbearing, I know, but making a game or hobby out of such things is reprehensible, and I pray God that as the years go by He may give both you and Gerda—whose faith I know is not exactly of the firmest—the seriousness necessary in such things. You will forgive your mother such remarks, I’m sure.”
“Atop the well”—she went on reading—“which I can see from my window, is a madonna, and sometimes they crown her with wreaths, and then the common people kneel down with their rosaries and pray, which really looks quite pretty, but it is written: Enter into thy closet. You often see monks on the streets here, and they look quite distinguished. But just imagine, Mama, yesterday, on Theatiner Strasse, some high dignitary of the church rode past me in his carriage, he might have been the archbishop, an older man—well, the man leered at me from his carriage window as if he were a lieutenant of the guard. You know, Mother, that I don’t set great store by your friends the missionaries and pastors, but Teary Trieschke is certainly nothing compared with that lecherous prince of the church.”
“Shame, shame!” Elisabeth interjected in outrage.
“That’s Tony all over,” the consul said.
“What do you mean, Tom?”
“Why, you don’t suppose she provoked him a little, just to test him? I know my Tony. And she was immensely amused by that ‘leer’—which was probably all the old gentleman intended.”
Madame Buddenbrook did not respond, but went on reading:
The day before yesterday, the Niederpaurs had a dinner party, which was absolutely lovely, although I couldn’t always follow the conversation and I found the tone rather équivoque at times. There was even a tenor from the Court Opera, who sang some songs, and a young artist who begged me to let him do my portrait, which I declined, however, because I did not think it proper. I enjoyed myself best with Herr Permaneder—would you ever have thought someone could have a name like that? He’s a hops merchant, a pleasant, amusing man, a bachelor in his best years. I sat beside him at dinner and stayed close to him the rest of the evening, since he was the only Protestant at the party, for, although he is a solid citizen of Munich, his family comes from Nuremberg. He assured me that he knew our firm’s name quite well, and you can imagine, Tom, how pleased I was by the respectful way he said it. He also asked about us in some detail, how many brothers and sisters I had and such. He wanted to know about Erika and even about Grünlich. He visits the Niederpaurs on occasion, and I believe he’ll be joining us on our trip to Lake Würm tomorrow.
And now adieu, dear Mama, I cannot write any more. If God grants me life and health, as you always say, I shall stay here another three or four weeks, and then I can tell you all about Munich when I’m home, because I really don’t know where to start in a letter. But I like it here very much, that much I can say, except that one would have to train a cook to make proper sauces. You see, I am an old woman whose life is behind her and have nothing more to expect on this earth, but if God grants Erika life and health and she should ever marry someone here, I would have no objection, I must say.
At this point the consul stopped eating again and lay back against the sofa, laughing.
“She is priceless, Mother! There’s no one like her for playing the hypocrite. I’m simply mad about her, because she’s simply incapable of disguising her true feelings, doesn’t come within a thousand miles o
f it.”
“Yes, Tom,” Elisabeth said, “but she is a good child and deserves all sorts of good things.” Then she read the rest of the letter.
2
AT THE END OF APRIL, Frau Grünlich settled in at home again, and although she had once more left some portion of life behind her, and although the old routine began again and she had to attend services and listen to Lea Gerhardt read aloud on Jerusalem Evenings, she was apparently in a happy and hopeful mood.
Her brother the consul picked her up at the train station—she had come by way of Büchen—and the moment they drove into town through the Holsten Gate he could not resist complimenting her by saying that she was still the fairest in the family, except for Klothilde. To which she responded, “O Lord, Tom, I hate you—mocking an old lady like that.”
But there was truth to it, nonetheless. Much to her advantage, Madame Grünlich had kept her looks, and to look at her—with her full head of ash-blond hair set in little cushioned waves at each side of the part, then combed back over her small ears and gathered at the top with a tortoiseshell comb; with the softness that still lingered in her gray-blue eyes; with her pretty upper lip, the perfect oval and delicate complexion of her face—one would have guessed her to be, not thirty, but twenty-three. She wore very elegant, dangling gold earrings, which, in a slightly different form, her grandmother had worn before her. A loose-fitting bodice of soft dark silk, with satin lapels and shoulders trimmed in lace, made her breast look enchantingly soft.