by Thomas Mann
“Yes, Tom,” Christian said, a little morosely, running his hand across his head again. “That’s true; you’ve put it quite accurately. That’s the difference between us, you see. You enjoy watching a play, too, and you once told me, just between us, that you had your little affairs, and there was a time when you preferred reading novels and poems and such. But you’ve always known how to reconcile that with regular work and a purpose in life. That’s what I lack, you see. I get totally used up by the other things, all the junk, you see, and have nothing left for the respectable part of life. I don’t know if you know the feeling, but …”
“So, then, you do understand!” Thomas shouted, stopping in his tracks and crossing his arms on his chest. “You admit it to your own shame, and yet you go on in the same old way. Are you a dog, Christian? Good God in heaven, a man has his pride! One doesn’t go on living a life that one wouldn’t even think of defending. But that’s what you do. That’s who you are. It’s enough for you just to perceive something and understand it and describe it. No, my patience is at an end, Christian.” And the consul took a step backward, lifting his arms violently so that they stood straight out at his sides. “It’s at an end, I tell you. You draw your salary and never come to the office—although that’s not what exasperates me. Go ahead and piddle your life away, just as you’ve done so far. But you compromise us, all of us, no matter where you are, where you go. You’re an abscess, an unhealthy growth on the body of our family. You’re a scandal to the whole town, and if this house were mine I would turn you out, I would show you the door!” he shouted, gesturing wildly across the garden, the courtyard, the large entryway. He could no longer contain himself—it was an explosion of all the rage he had stored up inside him.
“What is the matter with you, Thomas!” Christian said, now seized by a fit of anger himself—which looked rather odd on him. He stood there in a pose not unusual for bowlegged people, bent in a kind of question mark, his head, belly, and knees shoved forward, and his round, deep-set eyes, as large now as he could make them, had a flush around the edges that spread down to his cheekbones—just like his father’s when he was angry. “How dare you speak like that to me,” he said. “What have I ever done to you? I’ll go, all on my own, you don’t need to throw me out. Shame, shame!” he added as a heartfelt reproach and accompanied the words with a quick snapping movement of one hand, as if he were catching a fly.
Strangely enough, Thomas did not react with a more violent outburst, but silently lowered his head and started slowly back on the path around the garden. It seemed to have satisfied him, to have actually done him good, finally to have made his brother angry, to have at last enabled him to react vigorously and raise some protest.
“Believe me,” he said quietly, his hands crossed behind his back again, “when I say this conversation has been painful for me, Christian, but it had to happen sometime. There is something awful about such scenes within a family, but we had to have it out once and for all. And now we can discuss these matters quite calmly, my boy. You’re not happy in your present position, I see, right?”
“No, I’m not, Tom. You’re right there. You see, at the start I was really quite content, and I do have things better here than I would in a strange office. But what I lack is independence, I think. I always envy you when I see you sitting there and working, and it really isn’t work for you. You don’t work because you have to—you’re in charge, you’re the boss, and you let others do your work for you. You make your calculations and supervise things and are quite free. That’s something very different.”
“Fine, Christian. Couldn’t you have told me that before now? Naturally you’re free to go on your own and be more independent. You know that Father set aside a part of both our inheritances, fifty thousand marks courant apiece, for immediate use, and that of course I’d be ready to pay you your share on the spur of the moment for any reasonably sound investment. There are quite enough solid though financially straitened firms in Hamburg, or wherever, that could use a new flow of capital and would take you on as a partner. So let’s give the matter some thought, each on his own, and speak to Mother, too, when the right moment comes. I have work to do now; and you might spend a few days taking care of the English correspondence.”
“What do you think, for example, of H. C. F. Burmeester & Co. in Hamburg?” he asked as they walked across the entrance hall. “Import and export. I know the man. I’m sure he’d grab at the chance.”
THIS HAPPENED in 1857, at the end of May. In early June Christian departed for Hamburg by way of Büchen—a heavy loss for the Club, the theater, the Tivoli, and for conviviality in general. All the suitiers, Andreas Gieseke and Peter Döhlmann among them, said goodbye to him at the train station, brought him flowers and even cigars, and laughed till their sides split—recalling, no doubt, all the stories that Christian had ever told them. Finally Andreas Gieseke, attorney-at-law, pinned a corsage made of gold paper to Christian’s overcoat. This particular medal of honor came from a house down near the docks, an inn that hung a red lamp above the door each evening and was known for its easy sociability and the good times to be had there. It was awarded to Krischan Buddenbrook for distinguished service on the field of battle.
4
THE BELL RANG in the vestibule, and as was her habit of late, Frau Grünlich appeared on the landing to peer down over the white-enameled banister at the entry hall below. But no sooner had the door been opened than she abruptly leaned over farther still, then jerked back and, pressing her handkerchief to her mouth with one hand and gathering up her skirts with the other, sped back upstairs in a kind of low crouch. She met Mamselle Jungmann on the stairs to the third floor and whispered something to her in a strained voice. In terrified delight, Ida replied in Polish. It sounded like My boshy kock hanna!
Madame Buddenbrook happened to be sitting in the landscape room, crocheting with two large wooden needles—a shawl, a blanket, or something of that sort. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.
The maid suddenly came waddling down the columned hall, rapped at the glass door, and presented Elisabeth with a calling card. She took it, adjusted her glasses, which she wore when doing her needlework, and read. Then she looked back up at the maid’s flushed face, read it again, and looked at the maid’s face again. Finally she asked in a gentle but firm voice. “What is this, my dear? What does this mean?”
For the printing on the card read: “X. Noppe & Co.” But both X. Noppe and the ampersand had been crossed out, leaving only the “Co.”
“Well, madam,” the maid said, “there’s a gen’leman here, but he don’t speak German, though he talks a blue streak.”
“Ask the gentleman to come up,” Elisabeth said, realizing now that it was “Co.” who wished to be received. The maid left. Almost immediately the glass door opened again to admit a stocky figure that held back for a moment in the shadows at the far end of the room and in a kind of drawl said something that sounded like “ ’t’s ’n honor.”
“Good morning,” Madame Buddenbrook said. “Won’t you please come in?” And, propping herself with one hand on a sofa cushion, she rose slightly, since she was not yet sure whether manners required that she stand up.
“Hope y’ don’ mind …” the gentleman replied in a lilting drawl, and, bowing politely, he took two steps forward, came to another stop, and looked about as if searching for something—perhaps a place to sit or somewhere to put down his hat and cane, because he still had both with him, the latter topped by a curved, clawlike handle of deerhorn that measured a good foot and a half.
He was a man of about forty, portly, with short arms and legs. His brown loden coat was unbuttoned, revealing a bright, flowered vest that covered the gentle vault of his stomach and across which hung a gold watch chain with an entire bouquet of charms, a glittering collection of silver, coral, bone, and deerhorn trinkets. His trousers were an indefinite grayish green—and too short; they were apparently made of some strange stiff fabric, because the cuffs fel
l in unpleated circles around the short shafts of his broad boots. A pale blond, sparse mustache that hung like fringe over his mouth, a perfectly round head, a stump of a nose, and thinning, badly cut hair combined to make him look somewhat like a walrus. Between his chin and lower lip, the stranger wore a bristly goatee, which, in contrast to his drooping mustache, tipped slightly upward. His cheeks were so extraordinarily fat and puffy that they squeezed his eyes into two very narrow pale blue slits with lots of wrinkles at the corners. All this gave his pudgy face an expression that was a mixture of ferocity and simple, clumsy, touching bonhomie. His chin dropped in a straight line to join his narrow white necktie—the goiterous neck could never have endured a stiff high collar. The lower half of his face, cheeks and nose, the back of his head, the nape of his neck—it all merged like a pile of little shapeless pillows. The puffiness and swelling had stretched the skin on his face so tight that it was chapped and red in some places—just below the earlobes and at both sides of his nose, for instance. The gentleman held his cane in one short, white, fat hand, in the other his green Tyrolean hat trimmed with a chamois tuft.
Madame Buddenbrook had removed her glasses, but was still propped against the sofa cushion in a half-standing position. “How may I help you?” she asked politely but firmly.
In one decisive gesture, the gentleman laid his hat and cane on the lid of the harmonium; he rubbed his now unencumbered hands contentedly, gazing at Madame Buddenbrook with bright, puffy, but guileless eyes. He said, “Beg pardon, ma’am, for that callin’ card there. Jist didn’t have ’nother one handy. My name is Permaneder, Alois Permaneder, from Munich. You maybe heard my name mentioned, ma’am, by your daughter.”
He said all this very loudly in his gnarled dialect, crudely accenting some syllables, suddenly eliding others—but with a confidential gleam in his narrow eyes, which said, “We’ll get along all right.”
Elisabeth had now stood up, and she walked toward him with her hands outstretched, her head tilted to one side. “Herr Permaneder. Is it really you? But of course my daughter told us about you. I know how very much you contributed to making her stay in Munich so pleasant and enjoyable. And now you find yourself here in our town?”
“Yup, ’nuff t’ floor y’!” Herr Permaneder said, sitting down in the armchair to which Elisabeth had directed him with a polite gesture; feeling at home now, he began to rub his short, fat thighs with both hands.
“I beg your pardon?” Elisabeth said.
“Yup, ’nuff t’ floor y’!” Herr Permaneder replied and stopped rubbing his knees.
“How nice,” Madame Buddenbrook said, leaning back and putting her hands in her lap in feigned satisfaction—she had not understood one word.
Realizing this, however, Herr Permaneder bent forward and, drawing—God knows why—circles in the air, he said with all his might and main, “What I said was, you must be durn surprised, ma’am.”
“Yes, yes, my dear Herr Permaneder, that’s true,” she replied amiably; and now that these matters were taken care of, a pause ensued.
But Herr Permaneder felt constrained to fill this pause with a groaning sigh, to which he added, “A pain ’n th’ ol’!”
“Hmm, beg your pardon?” Madame Buddenbrook said, her pale eyes drifting off a little to one side.
“A pain ’n th’ ol’!” Herr Permaneder said, in his loudest, roughest voice.
“How nice,” Elisabeth said, smoothing things over; and that took care of that subject.
“Might I ask,” she continued, “what has brought you here to us, sir? It’s quite a distance from Munich.”
“A li’l deal,” Herr Permaneder said, twisting his short hand back and forth in the air. “Jist a tiny li’l deal, ma’am, with the Walkmühle Brewery.”
“Oh, right, you are in hops, Herr Permaneder. Noppe & Co., is that right? I can assure you that I’ve heard many good things about your firm from my son the consul,” Madame Buddenbrook said politely.
But Herr Permaneder brushed this aside. “ ’tain’t nothin’ worth mentionin’. Main thing is, I been hank’rin’ to pay my respects to you, lovely lady, and to see Frau Grünlich again. That’s reason ’nuff to set out on such a long haul.”
“Why, thank you,” Madame Buddenbrook said cordially, stretching out a hand to him again, the palm turned upward as far as possible. “But now we should tell my daughter of your arrival,” she added, standing up and walking toward the braided bell rope.
“ ’sindeed. Hell’s bells, ’m lookin’ for ’ard to that,” Herr Permaneder shouted, turning his whole easy chair around to face the door.
Elisabeth told the maid, “Please tell Madame Grünlich to come down, my dear.” Then she came back to the sofa—and Herr Permaneder turned his chair around again.
“ ’m lookin’ for’ard to that,” he reiterated absent-mindedly, while examining the wallpaper, the furniture, and the large inkwell of Sèvres porcelain on the secretary. Then he repeated several times, “Pain in ol’. Reg’lar pain in th’ ol’,” rubbing his knee and sighing heavily for no apparent reason. This more or less occupied the time until Frau Grünlich appeared.
She had definitely spruced up a little—had put on a light-colored blouse and fixed her hair nicely. Her face was fresher and prettier than ever. The tip of her tongue played mischievously in the corner of her mouth.
“Why, Frau Grünlich! Why, howdy do! How y’ been gettin’ on all this while? What y’ been doin’ with yourself up in these parts? Jesus, ’m jist plum tickled. D’you ever think back on our li’l ol’ Munich and our mountains? Yessir, we had ourselves some high time, wouldn’t y’ say? Hell’s bells! So here we are again. Now who woulda thought!”
And Tony was just as effusive in her greetings, too; she pulled a chair over and started chatting with him about her weeks in Munich. The conversation flowed now without any problem, and Madame Buddenbrook followed it intently, nodding her encouragement to Herr Permaneder; each time she succeeded in translating some idiom or phrase into standard German, she would lean back against the sofa in satisfaction.
Herr Permaneder had to explain again for Frau Antonie his reasons for being in town, but he obviously set such little store by his “deal” that it appeared he was here for no purpose whatever. All the same, he inquired with great interest about her younger sister and two brothers, expressing loud regrets that both Clara and Christian were not home, because he had “been lookin’ for ’ard mightily to meetin’ the whole durn fam’ly.”
He was quite vague about the length of his stay in town. But then Madame Buddenbrook remarked, “I’m expecting my son for late breakfast any moment now, Herr Permaneder. Would you care to give us the pleasure of your company and join us in a little bite?” And he accepted the invitation before she even finished—so readily, in fact, that he appeared to have been waiting for it.
The consul arrived. Having found no one in the breakfast room, he entered in haste, still wearing his office coat and looking a little weary and overworked—he wanted to remind them that it was time for a quick snack. But, lifting his head now, he was all attention. One look at their exotic guest with his outlandish watch chain and his loden jacket and the chamois-tufted hat on the harmonium, one mention of a name he had often heard on Tony’s lips, and one quick sidelong glance at his sister—and he turned on all his charm to greet Herr Permaneder. He did not even sit down, but immediately joined them to go down to the mezzanine, where Mamselle Jungmann had set the table and started the samovar humming—a genuine samovar, a gift from Pastor Tiburtius and his wife.
“Y’all got things right nice here,” Herr Permaneder said as he sat down, gazing out over the selection of cold delicacies on the table. Now and then, at least in the plural, he addressed them with familiar pronouns—but his face was all innocence.
“The beer’s not exactly Hofbräu, Herr Permaneder, but it’s better than our local brew, at any rate,” the consul said, pouring him some of the foaming brown porter he normally drank at this time of day.
“Thanks heaps, neighbor,” Herr Permaneder said, chewing away, not even noticing the shocked look on Mamselle Jungmann’s face. He was obviously only sipping at his porter, and so Madame Buddenbrook had a bottle of red wine brought in—which visibly cheered him up; and he began again to chat with Frau Grünlich. His paunch forced him to sit at some distance from the table with his legs spread wide, and most of the time he dangled one stout white hand at the end of its short arm over the back of his chair. The expression on his walrus face said that he was very much at home, almost annoyingly so. He had laid his round head to one side, and his guileless eyes sparkled in their little slits as he listened to everything Frau Grünlich said.
Since he had no experience with northern German cuisine, Tony daintily filleted his herring for him, all the while gladly sharing her observations about life in general. “O Lord, how sad it is, Herr Permaneder, that all the good and beautiful things in life pass by so quickly,” she said, referring to her stay in Munich, and for a moment she put down her knife and fork and gazed pensively at the ceiling. Now and then she also made quaint, and totally untalented, attempts at speaking the dialect of Bavaria.
While they were eating, there was a knock at the door, and an apprentice from the office delivered a telegram. The consul read it, slowly twirling one tip of his long mustache in his fingers, and although he was plainly preoccupied with the message he was reading, he asked in a most casual tone, “And how is business, Herr Permaneder?” Then he turned to the apprentice and said, “That will do.” And the young fellow disappeared.
“Lordy, neighbor,” Herr Permaneder replied, turning now to the consul with the awkwardness of a man who has a thick, stiff neck and dangling his other arm over the back of his chair, “ ’tain’t much to write home ’bout, jist a lotta hard work. Now y’ take Munich”—from the way he pronounced the name of his hometown, one could only guess what he meant—“Munich ain’t no town for business. Folks want their peace ’n’ a mugga beer. And y’ certainly wouldn’t read no telegram while you’re eatin’, sure as hell wouldn’t. You got another kinda gittup ’n’ go up this way, damn if y’ don’t. Thanks heaps, I’ll have ’nother glass. Pain in th’ ol’! My partner, Noppe, ’s always wantin’ to move to Nuremberg, ’cause they got a stock exchange up there ’n’ some business smarts. But I ain’t gonna leave good ol’ Munich. Damned if I am. Pain in ol’! Y’ see, we got comp’tition galore, galore! And our export trade’s enough t’ make a grown man cry. They say they’ll be plantin’ hops in Russia here shortly.”