Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

by Thomas Mann

  She was, as noted, in the best of moods, and every Thursday—when the party around the table included her brother and his wife, the Ladies Buddenbrook from Breite Strasse, Consul Kröger, Klothilde, and Sesame Weichbrodt with little Erika—she provided picturesque descriptions of Munich: the beer, the steamed dumplings, the artist who had wanted to paint her portrait, and the court carriages, which had made the greatest impression on her. She would also mention Herr Permaneder in passing, and if Pfiffi Buddenbrook or one of the others made some remark to the effect that such a journey was quite pleasant, of course, but that apparently it had resulted in nothing of practical consequence, Frau Grünlich would pass this over with unutterable dignity, laying her head back and yet somehow managing to tuck her chin against her chest.

  It had become her custom, by the way, that whenever the vestibule bell echoed through the large entrance hall, she would hurry out to the landing to see who was coming. What could possibly be the point of that? Probably the only person who knew was Ida Jungmann, Tony’s governess and confidante over the years, who every now and then would say something like, “You’ll see, Tony, my child, he’ll come. He surely doesn’t want to look like a blatherskite.”

  The other members of the family had reason to be grateful to Antonie for her high spirits now that she was home again; the mood in the house had definitely been in need of improvement, particularly since the relationship between the head of the firm and his younger brother had not grown better over time, but, sadly, much worse. Their mother, Madame Buddenbrook, had anxiously followed this course of events, and it was all she could do just to mediate between the two. Christian responded with distracted silence to her suggestions that he be more regular about appearing in the office, and he greeted his brother’s admonitions with pensive gravity and uneasy embarrassment, letting them pass over him without argument—and for a few days he would apply himself somewhat more zealously to the English correspondence. More and more, however, the older brother felt growing within him an irritable contempt for the younger, which was not diminished by the fact that, if he occasionally expressed such feelings, Christian offered no resistance, but simply let his eyes wander aimlessly and wistfully about.

  The stress of business and the state of his own nerves made it impossible for Tom to listen with sympathy or even composure to Christian’s detailed descriptions of the ever-changing symptoms of his illness; and in talking to his mother or sister he would angrily call it “the silly upshot of a case of disgusting self-absorption.”

  The ache, the vague ache in Christian’s left leg, had eased over time—after the application of various topical medications. But he still often had difficulty swallowing when eating, and of late this phenomenon had been accompanied by a temporary shortness of breath, an asthmatic condition, which for several weeks Christian believed to be consumption, the nature and symptoms of which he painfully attempted—with much wrinkling of his nose—to describe in minute detail for his family. Dr. Grabow was called in for consultation. He determined that both heart and lungs were working quite vigorously, but that the occasional shortness of breath could be traced to a sluggishness in certain muscles, and prescribed both the use of a fan to ease respiration and a greenish powder that one first ignited in order to breathe its fumes. Christian used the fan in the office as well, and when his brother objected to this, he replied that in Valparaiso every office-worker had had a fan because of the heat—“Johnny Thunderstorm … good God!” But then, one day, after a long session of serious and restive squirming in his office chair, he pulled his powder from his pocket and, upon lighting it, produced such potent, foul-smelling fumes that several people in the office began to cough and even Herr Marcus turned quite pale—and then came a dreadful argument, a public outburst, a scandal, which would have immediately led to a total break had not Madame Buddenbrook once more managed to smooth things over, appealing to reason and setting things right again.

  But that was not the only problem. The consul was also disgusted by the life that Christian led outside the house, usually in the company of his old schoolchum Andreas Gieseke the lawyer. Thomas was not a prig or a spoilsport. He could recall only too well the sins of his own youth. He knew that his hometown, this town of ships and commerce, where highly respectable businessmen with incomparably principled faces strode along the sidewalks tapping their walking sticks, was no cradle of stainless morality. People compensated for long days spent sitting on office stools with more than just rich wines and rich foods. But a heavy cloak of rectitude hid such compensations—and if Consul Buddenbrook’s first law was “Keep up appearances,” in that respect he completely shared the creed of his fellow citizens. Andreas Gieseke was one of the “professionals” who had adapted themselves nicely to the comfortable existence of the “merchants”—and a notorious suitier, which was obvious just from looking at him. But, like the other pleasure-loving bons vivants, he understood how to put on the right face, to avoid public offense, and to maintain a reputation for absolute reliability in matters political and professional. His engagement to Fräulein Huneus had just been made public, and that meant that he would be marrying into the first rank of society—and would receive a considerable dowry. He showed a marked interest in civic affairs; indeed, he was so active that people said he had his eye on a particular seat in the town hall and that one day he would in fact sit in old Mayor Oeverdieck’s chair.

  Christian Buddenbrook, however, his friend, the same lad who had once resolutely marched up to Mademoiselle Meyer–de la Grange, handed her his bouquet, and said, “Your acting is simply beautiful, Fräulein”—Christian was by nature a much too naïve and reckless suitier, and, indeed, his long years of wandering had made of him a man as little inclined to curb his feelings as to employ discretion or maintain his dignity. The whole town was highly amused, for example, by his affair with a girl working as an extra for the summer theater, and Frau Stuht from Glockengiesser Strasse, the woman who moved in the best social circles, told any of the ladies who might wish to hear that Krischan had been seen again on the street with that girl from the Tivoli, in broad daylight.

  Not that people held that against him—they were much too plodding and skeptical to show any signs of serious moral outrage. Christian Buddenbrook and perhaps Consul Peter Döhlmann—whose business was now languishing beyond repair and thus allowed him to proceed in much the same harmless fashion—both had a talent to amuse that was much prized, indeed indispensable, at all-male gatherings. But they were certainly not to be taken seriously; they did not count in matters of importance. It was significant that throughout the town—at the Club, on the exchange, on the docks—they were known by their first names: Krischan and Peter; and spiteful people, like the Hagenströms, felt no compunction about laughing, not at Krischan’s tales and jokes, but at Krischan himself.

  He paid no attention to it, or in his usual fashion he would shrug it off after a curiously anxious moment of thinking things over. His brother the consul, however, knew—he knew that Christian offered the family’s adversaries an easy target, and that this was one target too many. Their relation to the Oeverdiecks was a distant one and would be quite useless after the mayor’s death. The Krögers no longer played any role at all; they lived in seclusion and continued to have dreadful troubles with their son. Late Uncle Gotthold’s bad marriage remained an embarrassment. The consul’s sister was a divorced woman, even if one need not give up all hope that she might marry again. And his brother was considered a ridiculous fool. Busy men whiled away their leisure hours over his buffoonery, laughed at him—out of pity or scorn. He ran up far too many debts; and when he was out of money before the end of each quarter, he quite flagrantly let Andreas Gieseke pay his bills—a direct slap in the firm’s face.

  The fierce contempt in which Thomas held his brother—and the wistful indifference with which Christian bore it—found expression in all those trivial moments of life that can only manifest themselves among people thrown together in families. If, for example
, conversation turned to the history of the Buddenbrooks, Christian could become wrapped up in a mood of high seriousness—which ill became him—and speak with love and admiration of his hometown and his forebears. The consul would immediately cut him off with an icy remark. He could not stand it. He despised his brother so much that he would not allow him to love the things he loved. He would have much preferred to hear Christian speak of them in his Marcellus Stengel voice. Thomas had read a book, some historical work, that had made a strong impression on him, and he praised it in stirring words. Christian was impressionable and easily influenced, always depending on others for his views; he would never have found such a book on his own. But he read it now, and, having been primed and made receptive by Tom’s praise of it, he found it quite splendid himself, describing his reactions as precisely as possible. And from that moment the book was spoiled for Tom. He spoke of it with cold disregard. He pretended he had barely looked at it. He left it to his brother to admire it all by himself.

  3

  CONSUL BUDDENBROOK was returning to Meng Strasse from the Harmony, a gentlemen’s reading club, where he had spent an hour after second breakfast. He crossed the rear of the property, striding quickly alongside the garden and down the paved passageway that cut between two overgrown walls and connected the back and front courtyards; he walked through the back entry way and called into the kitchen, asking if his brother were at home—they should let him know when he came in. Then he marched through the office, where at the mere sight of him people at their desks bent down deeper over their account books, and into his private office; he laid his hat and cane aside, pulled on his working coat, and sat down at his desk by the window, across from Herr Marcus. Two deep furrows were visible between his pale eyebrows. The yellow mouthpiece of a Russian cigarette he had already finished wandered nervously from one corner of his mouth to the other. He reached for paper and pen with such an abrupt jerk that Herr Marcus cautiously stroked his mustache with two fingers and slowly shifted his eyes to examine his partner’s face; the younger workers looked at each other with raised eyebrows. The boss was angry.

  After a half-hour in which there was no audible sound except the scratching of pens and the prudent coughs of Herr Marcus, the consul looked across the green windowsill and spotted Christian walking toward the office. He was smoking—he had just finished breakfast and a quick game at the Club. His hat was cocked a little low and he was swinging his yellow walking stick, the one from “out there,” with the carved ebony bust of a nun on the knob. He was obviously in good health and the best of moods. He was humming some melody or other as he came into the office, said, “Morning, gentlemen,” although it was a lovely spring afternoon, and added as he strode to his seat, “Have to get a bit of work done.”

  But the consul stood up and as he walked past he said, without looking at Christian, “Ah—a couple of words with you, my friend.”

  Christian followed him. They walked rather rapidly through the outer room. Thomas had crossed his hands behind his back, and involuntarily Christian did the same and turned his head toward his brother, so that his large nose, its bony hook set squarely between his hollow cheeks, jutted out above his drooping reddish-blond English mustache. As they moved across the courtyard, Thomas said, “I’ll ask you to accompany me while I take some air in the garden, my friend.”

  “Fine,” Christian replied. And then came a long silence, during which they followed the outside path, passing the rococo façade of the “Portal” and skirting the garden, which was just coming into bloom.

  Finally the consul took a quick breath and said in a loud voice, “I am terribly angry—on your account.”

  “My account?”

  “Yes. Someone at the Harmony told me about a remark you made yesterday evening at the Club—a remark so out of place, so indescribably tactless that I cannot find words for it. And the fiasco was soon complete—you were given the most dreadful dressing-down on the spot. Do you care to recall the incident?”

  “Oh, now I know what you mean. Who told you all this?”

  “What does that matter? Döhlmann. And, of course, he told me in a voice so loud that people who perhaps hadn’t heard about it yet could gloat over it, too.”

  “Yes, Tom, I must tell you, I felt quite embarrassed for Hagenström.”

  “You felt … That’s really too much. Now, listen to me!” the consul shouted, stretching both hands before him, palms up, and he tilted his head to one side, giving it a demonstrative and excited shake. “There you are surrounded by both business and professional men, where everyone can hear you, and you say, ‘Seen in the light of day, actually, every businessman is a swindler’—you, who are a businessman yourself, a part of a firm that strives with might and main for absolute integrity, for a spotless reputation.”

  “Good heavens, Thomas, it was a joke. Although, actually …” Christian started to add, wrinkling up his nose and thrusting his head forward at a little angle. And, holding this pose, he walked a few more steps.

  “A joke! A joke!” the consul shouted. “I think I can take a joke—but you saw for yourself how your joke was taken. ‘Well, I for one think very highly of my profession.’ That was Hermann Hagenström’s answer. And there you sat—a man who has wasted his life away, who has rio respect for his own profession.”

  “Yes, Tom, but what does one say then? I assure you that the whole mood was shot to hell. People were laughing as if they agreed with me. And there sits Hagenström, all dreadfully serious, and says, ‘Well, I for one …’ What a stupid fellow. I was truly embarrassed for him. I thought long and hard about it lying in bed last night, and it gave me such a strange feeling. I don’t know whether you know it, it’s …”

  “Stop babbling, I beg you, stop babbling,” the consul interrupted. His whole body trembled with anger. “I will admit, yes, I will admit that his answer perhaps did not fit the mood, that it was in bad taste. But one seeks out the proper audience for. saying something like that—if it really must be said. But you don’t lay yourself open to such an insolent dressing-down. Hagenström used the opportunity to get back, not at you, but at us, us. Surely you realize what he meant with his ‘I for one,’ don’t you? He meant: ‘Apparently you come by such notions in your brother’s office, Herr Buddenbrook.’ That’s what he meant, you ass!”

  “Well, ‘ass’ is a bit …” Christian said with a chagrined, anxious look on his face.

  “In the final analysis, you do not belong just to yourself alone,” the consul continued. “But I assure you it is a matter of total indifference to me if you personally make a ridiculous fool of yourself. And when don’t you make a fool of yourself?” he shouted. He was white, and blue veins were clearly visible on his narrow temples, from which his hair fell back in two waves. He had lifted one pale eyebrow, and even the stiffened, long ends of his mustache showed his anger; and as he spoke he flung his words with dismissive gestures on the gravel path at Christian’s feet. “And you are making a fool of yourself with your little love affairs, with your buffoonery, with your sicknesses, with your remedies for your sicknesses.”

  “Oh, Thomas,” Christian said, shaking his head very seriously and lifting an index finger rather ungracefully, “as far as that goes, that’s something you can’t really understand. The thing is—a man has to come to terms with his own conscience, so to speak. I don’t know if you know the feeling. Grabow prescribed a salve for the muscles here on my neck. Fine. And if I don’t use it, forget to use it, I feel quite lost and helpless and get all nervous and anxious and unsure of myself, and when I’m in that state I can’t swallow. But if I use it, then I feel I’ve done my duty and that everything is in order; my conscience is clear, and I feel calm and content, and swallowing is absolutely effortless. I don’t think that the salve itself does it, you see. But the main thing, you understand, is that one idea can only be canceled by an opposing idea. I don’t know if you know the feeling.…”

  “Oh yes, yes!” the consul shouted and held his hea
d in both hands for a moment. “Go ahead and do it! Do what you must, but don’t talk about it. Don’t babble on about it. Leave other people in peace with your disgusting sensibilities. You make a fool of yourself from morning till night with your indecent babblings. But let me tell you this, I’ll repeat once more: I could not care less if you personally make a fool of yourself; but I forbid you, do you hear me, I forbid you ever to compromise the firm in the manner in which you did yesterday evening.”

  Christian offered no response to this, except that he slowly ran his hand through his thinning reddish-blond hair and his face turned serious and anxious, his eyes drifting about absent-mindedly, seeing nothing. He was doubtless still preoccupied with what he himself had last said. There was a long pause.

  Thomas stalked away in silent desperation. “All businessmen are swindlers, you say,” he began again. “Fine. Are you tired of your job? Do you regret having become a businessman? You once convinced Father to allow you to …”

  “Yes, Tom,” Christian said pensively, “but I would have much preferred to study. It must be very nice at a university, you know. You go to classes when you feel like it, quite voluntarily, you sit down and listen just like in the theater.”

  “Like in the theater. Oh, you belong in a café chantant, as the comedian. I’m not joking, I’m in dead earnest. I am quite convinced that that’s your secret goal in life,” the consul asserted. And Christian certainly did not contradict him—just looked wistfully about.

  “And you have the audacity to make such a remark, when you haven’t the vaguest, not the vaguest idea of what work is. Because you fill up your days with the theater and strolling about and buffooneries, creating a whole series of feelings and sensitivities and conditions to keep yourself occupied, to observe and nurse them, so that you can shamelessly babble on about them.”