Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

by Thomas Mann

  Suddenly he shot the consul an unusually swift glance and said, “All the same, ’tain’t bad as it sounds, neighbor. It’s a durn fine li’l business. We make a smart piece of money with the brewery that Neiderpaur’s director of. It was jist a li’l deal, but we gave him a bitta credit and some cash money, too—at four p’cent—so he could expand his plant. And now they’re doin’ right good themselves and we sell ’em our hops and have a nice little income from the int’rest besides—’tain’t bad at all,” Herr Permaneder concluded; and, declining either cigarette or cigar, he asked if he could smoke his pipe. He pulled it out, a long horn-bowled affair, and from a cloud of smoke he went on talking to the consul about business, which soon led to politics and Bavaria’s relations with Prussia, to King Max and Emperor Napoleon—all of it spiced here and there with Herr Permaneder’s totally obscure idioms. Whenever the conversation lagged, he would for no apparent reason emit hefty sighs and say things like: “ ’t’s a hard pull!” or “Ain’t that somethin’.”

  Mamselle Jungmann was so astounded that she forgot to chew what she had in her mouth. She was struck speechless and her shiny brown eyes stared at their guest; as was her habit, she held her knife and fork very erect on the table, waving them slightly back and forth. These rooms had never heard such sounds, never been filled with such pipe fumes—such slovenly, easygoing, formless manners were alien to them. After first making anxious inquiries about the trials that such a small evangelical congregation must necessarily endure amid all those papists, Madame Buddenbrook fell back into amiable incomprehension, and as the meal progressed Tony appeared to grow increasingly pensive and restless. The consul, however, was enjoying himself immensely; he persuaded his mother to have a second bottle of red wine brought up and extended a warm invitation for Herr Permaneder to pay a visit to Breite Strasse—his wife would be simply delighted to have him.

  Three hours after his arrival, the hops dealer began to make preparations for departure—he knocked the ashes from his pipe, emptied his glass, declared something or other to be a “pain in th’ ol’,” and rose from the table. “ ’t’s been an honor, good lady. You take care, now, Frau Grünlich. You take care of yourself, too, Herr Buddenbrook.” Ida Jungmann winced and visibly blanched at that. “And a good day to you, missy.” He had called her “missy.”

  Madame Buddenbrook and her son now exchanged glances. Herr Permaneder had announced his intention of returning to the modest inn down on the Trave where he had left his things.

  “My daughter’s friend and her husband are so far away in Munich,” the old woman said, approaching Herr Permaneder, “that we will probably not have an opportunity to repay them for their hospitality soon. But, dear sir, it would please us greatly if you would stay with us as long as you’re in town. You would be more than welcome here with us.”

  She held her hand out to him, and—lo and behold—Herr Permaneder accepted without a second thought. As quickly and eagerly as he had accepted her invitation to breakfast, he now agreed to this proposal and kissed the hands of both ladies—and what an odd figure he made. He collected his hat and cane from the landscape room and promised once again to have his bags brought here at once and to return at four o’clock after taking care of that bit of business.

  With the consul in the lead, he descended the stairs now; but as they stood in the vestibule he turned and, shaking his head with quiet fervor, said, “No offense, neighbor, but your sister is one sweet customer. You take care, now.” And, still shaking his head, he departed.

  The consul felt an irresistible need to go back upstairs and see about the ladies. Ida Jungmann was already scurrying around the house somewhere gathering linens and getting one of the guest rooms on the corridor ready.

  But Elisabeth was still at the breakfast table, her pale eyes fixed on a spot on the ceiling, her white fingers softly drumming the tablecloth. Tony was seated at the window, arms crossed; she looked neither to the right nor to the left, but stared straight ahead with a dignified, even stern air. Silence reigned.

  “Well?” Thomas asked, standing in the door and taking a cigarette from his case with the troika on the lid. His shoulders bobbed with suppressed laughter.

  “A pleasant man,” Elisabeth responded innocuously.

  “I quite agree,” the consul said and turned quickly now—in a quite gallant but humorous way—to Tony, as if humbly asking her opinion. She said nothing. She stared sternly straight ahead.

  “But it seems to me he should swear a little less,” Elisabeth went on in some distress. “If I understood correctly, he referred frequently to hell and to a most indelicate pain.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing, Mother, he doesn’t mean anything by that.”

  “And perhaps a bit too nonchalant in his manners, Tom, don’t you think?”

  “O Lord, that’s just the way people are in the south,” the consul said, slowly exhaling smoke into the room and smiling at his mother. He also stole a glance at Tony, which his mother did not notice.

  “You’ll come to supper with Gerda, won’t you, Tom? As a favor to me?”

  “Gladly, Mother, I’d be delighted. To be honest, I expect to be frequently delighted by our visitor, don’t you? He’s certainly different from your pastors.”

  “To each his own, Tom.”

  “No argument there. I must go. Oh, by the way,” he said, his hand on the doorknob, “you’ve made quite an impression on him, Tony. No doubt of it. Do you know what he called you just now downstairs? ‘One sweet customer’—his very words.”

  But now Frau Grünlich turned around to him and said in a loud voice, “Fine, Tom, so you’ve told me. And I assume he didn’t ask you not to. Though I’m not sure if it’s proper for you to come bearing tales. But this much I do know, and I want to make it quite clear—what counts in life is not how things are expressed or pronounced, but what the heart feels and intends. And if you want to mock Herr Permaneder’s dialect or if you think he’s ridiculous …”

  “What? But, Tony, it would never enter my mind. Why are you so upset?”

  “Assez,” Madame Buddenbrook exclaimed, and threw her son an earnest, imploring glance that said, “Go easy on her.”

  “Now, don’t be angry, Tony,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to tease you. So, I’ll be off now, and I’ll give orders for one of the warehouse lads to bring those bags here. Till later, then.”

  5

  HERR PERMANEDER moved into Meng Strasse and dined the following day with Thomas Buddenbrook and his wife; the next day, a Thursday, he became acquainted with Justus Kröger and his wife, with the Ladies Buddenbrook from Breite Strasse, who found him dradfully funny—they said “dradfully”—and with Sesame Weichbrodt, who was rather stern with him, as well as with poor Klothilde and little Erika, whom he gave a sack of “horehound,” by which he meant candy.

  He was a man of inexhaustible good cheer, despite his gloomy sighs, which meant nothing in particular and appeared to arise more from an excess of creature comfort. He had his pipe, his curious dialect, and his capacity for lingering on long after meals were over, always finding the most comfortable position possible to smoke, drink, and chat. And although he brought a totally new and strange tone to the quiet life of the old house, and although his whole being seemed somewhat out of sync, as it were, with its atmosphere, he disturbed none of its customary ways. He was faithful in attending morning and evening services, even asked permission to visit Madame Buddenbrook’s Sunday school one morning, and went so far as to appear for a moment on a Jerusalem Evening so that he might be introduced to the ladies—though he withdrew in bewilderment when Lea Gerhardt began to read aloud.

  His presence was quickly known all over town, and in the grand houses people were curious about the Buddenbrooks’ Bavarian guest; but since Herr Permaneder had no connections with either those families or the men on the exchange, and since it was rather late in the season and most people were getting ready to go to the shore, the consul refrained from introducing him to society. Bu
t at every possible opportunity he devoted himself energetically to his guest. Despite all his business and civic duties, he took time to show him the medieval sights of the town—the churches, the gates, the wells, the market, the town hall, the Seaman’s Guild—and to keep him well entertained at all times, even introducing him to his closest friends on the exchange. And when his mother took the occasion one day to thank him for sacrificing his time, he dryly remarked, “Yes, Mother, the things one must do.”

  Madame Buddenbrook offered no response at all to this, did not even smile or lower her eyes. She merely let her gaze drift away and asked a question about a totally different subject.

  Her warm cordiality toward Herr Permaneder never varied—but the same could not be said of Tony’s treatment of him. Within three or four days of his arrival, he had casually let it be known that he had concluded his business with the local brewery, and yet a good week and a half had passed since then. The hops dealer had attended two “children’s days” now, and on both of those Thursdays, whenever Herr Permaneder said or did something, Frau Grünlich would cast a quick skittish glance around the circle of her family—at Uncle Justus, her Buddenbrook cousins, and Thomas—and then she would blush and sit there stiffly, not saying a word. Once she even left the room.

  BOTH WINDOWS of Frau Grünlich’s bedroom on the third floor were open, and the green blinds were stirring in the warm gentle wind of a clear June night. On the nightstand beside her four-poster, several burning wicks floated in a glass half filled with water and then topped with a layer of oil; they cast an even, dim light across the large silent room and along the high-backed upholstered armchairs protected by slipcovers of gray canvas. Frau Grünlich was in bed. Her pretty head was sunk in the soft pillows trimmed with lace, and her hands lay folded on the quilt. But so many thoughts filled her mind that her eyes could not close and, instead, slowly followed the movements of a large insect with a long abdomen that kept circling the bright glass with a million soundless beatings of its wings. On the wall beside the bed, between two old etchings of the medieval town, was a framed motto that read: “Commit thy ways unto the Lord.” But is that any comfort when you are lying open-eyed at midnight and, alone and without advice from anyone, you must answer yes or no, must decide the one question that will determine the rest of your life—and not just your life alone?

  Everything was very still—except for the ticking of the clock on the wall and an occasional cough from Mamselle Jungmann’s room, which was separated from Tony’s only by heavy portieres. There was still light in her room. The faithful Prussian woman was sitting erect at an extension table, directly under the hanging lamp, darning stockings for little Erika—whose deep, peaceful breathing was audible as well, because Sesame Weichbrodt’s students were on vacation and she was home for the summer.

  Frau Grünlich sat up a little with a sigh and propped her head in her hand.

  “Ida?” she asked in a low voice, “are you still darning?”

  “Yes, yes, Tony, my child,” came Ida’s voice. “Go to sleep now, you have to be up early in the morning and you need your rest.”

  “All right, Ida. And you’ll wake me at six?”

  “Six-thirty will be early enough. The carriage is to be here at eight. Go back to sleep so that you’ll be fresh and pretty.”

  “Oh, I haven’t slept a wink yet.”

  “Now, now, Tony, that’s not being a good girl. You don’t want to arrive in Schwartau all worn out, do you? Take seven sips of water, lie on your right side, and count to a thousand.”

  “Oh, Ida, please come in here for a little. I can’t sleep, I tell you. I’ve so much to think about that my head aches. Would you come check, I think I’m running a fever, and then my stomach’s back to its old tricks; or it’s anemia, maybe, because the veins at my temples are quite swollen and throbbing so hard it hurts. They’re full of blood, which of course does not rule out that there may be too little blood in my head.”

  She heard a chair being pushed back, and Ida Jungmann’s bony, robust form, clad in a simple, unfashionable brown dress, emerged from between the portieres.

  “My, my, Tony—fever, you say? Let me feel, my child. I’ll fix a little compress.”

  And, moving to the dresser in her long, firm, somewhat manly strides, she took out a handkerchief and dipped it in the washbasin; returning to the bed, she laid it carefully on Tony’s forehead and smoothed it out a couple of times with both hands.

  “Thank you, Ida, that helps. Oh, please sit here on the edge of my bed for a while, my good old Ida. You see, I keep thinking about tomorrow. What should I do? It all just keeps spinning around in my head.”

  Ida sat down next to her, picked up her needle and the darning egg with the stocking stretched over it, and, with her head bent low, the smooth gray hair pulled back tight, and following her stitches with unwearying shiny brown eyes, said, “Do you think he’ll ask tomorrow?”

  “Of course, Ida. There’s no doubt of it. He won’t pass this chance by. Remember how it was with Clara? It was an excursion just like this. I could avoid it, you see. I could spend my time with the others and not even let him get near. But then it would all be over. He’s leaving the day after tomorrow, he told me so, and he can’t possibly stay on if nothing comes of this tomorrow. It has to be decided tomorrow. But what should I say, Ida, when he asks? You’ve never been married and so you don’t really know about life, but you’re a truthful woman with common sense, and you’re forty-two now. Can’t you give me some advice? I need it so badly.”

  Ida Jungmann let her darning fall to her lap. “Yes, yes, Tony, I’ve thought a lot about it myself. But what I think is that it’s well-nigh”—Ida still used words like “well-nigh”—“past time for advising, my child. He can’t possibly be leaving now without first speaking to you and your mama, and if you didn’t want him, you should’ve sent him on his way afore this.”

  “You’re right there, Ida; but I couldn’t do that, because it simply has to be, that’s all. The whole time I kept thinking, I can still pull back, it’s not too late. And now here I lie in agony.”

  “Do you like him, Tony? Now, be honest.”

  “Yes, Ida. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. He’s not handsome, but that’s of no consequence in this life, and he’s good to the bone, incapable of doing anything mean, believe me. When I think of Grünlich—Oh God! He was always saying how industrious and inventive he was, and cloaked his villainy in the most cunning ways. But Permaneder’s not like that, you see. He is, I would say, too comfortable a man for that, he takes life too easy—which is, however, a fault in its own way, too. Because he’ll certainly never be a millionaire, and he tends to just let things take their course, I think—he’ll always just keep muddlin’ through, as they say down south. But they are all like that down there, and that’s what I wanted to say, Ida, that’s the main thing. Because in Munich, when he was among people just like him, who talked like him and acted like him, I really loved him, thought he was so nice and natural and easygoing. And I noticed at once that the feeling was mutual—although that may have had something to do with his thinking I’m a rich woman, much richer, I’m afraid, than I really am. Because Mother can’t give me much of a dowry, as you know. But that won’t matter to him, I’m sure of that. He’s not the sort of man who is out for a lot of money. But enough of that. What was I saying, Ida?”

  “In Munich, Tony—but what about here?”

  “Yes, here, Ida. You already know what I’m going to say. He’s torn completely out of his own world, and comes here, where everyone is so different, so much more rigid and ambitious and dignified, so to speak. I’m often embarrassed for him here—yes, I’ll admit it openly to you, Ida. I’m a truthful woman and I’m embarrassed for him, although that’s perhaps sinful of me. You see, several times in conversation he merely said “don’t” when he should have said “doesn’t.” People do that down south, Ida, it happens, even among educated people when they’re feeling at their ease—and it doesn�
��t hurt anyone, doesn’t bother anyone, it just happens and no one’s surprised. But here Mother glances at him out of the corner of her eye, and Tom raises his eyebrow, and Uncle Justus flinches and almost splutters, the way Krögers do when they laugh, and Pfiffi Buddenbrook gives her mother or Friederike or Henriette a look, and then I’m so ashamed that I’d just as soon leave the room, and can’t even imagine I could ever marry him.”

  “Now, now, Tony. You’ll be living with him in Munich.”

  “You’re right, Ida. But first comes the engagement, and there’ll be parties, and I ask you, if I’m going to be ashamed the whole time in front of my own family and the Kistenmakers and the Möllendorpfs and the rest of them, because he’s not all that elegant—Oh, Grünlich was much more elegant, but he was black internally, as Herr Stengel always used to say. Ida, my head is spinning. Could you please freshen my compress?”

  Taking the cold compress with a sigh, she began again: “When all is said and done, it simply has to be. Because the point is, has always been, that I need to marry again and stop dawdling around here as a divorced woman. Oh, Ida, I’ve been thinking about the past so much of late, back when Grünlich first appeared and the scenes he made—it was scandalous, Ida. And Travemünde, too, the Schwarzkopfs,” she said slowly, and her eyes rested dreamily for a while on the spot where Erika’s stocking had been darned. “And then the engagement and our house in Eimsbüttel—it was elegant, Ida. When I think of my dressing gowns. I’ll never have it like that again, not with Permaneder—but life has a way of making us more modest, you know. And then Dr. Klaassen, and my baby, and Kesselmeyer the banker. And then came the end—it was horrible, you have no idea how horrible. And once you’ve had such ghastly experiences in life … But Permaneder won’t get involved in nasty things like that. It’s the last thing I would expect of him, and we can rely on him when it comes to business, too. Because I really believe that he and Noppe have done very well for themselves with the Niederpaurs’ brewery. And once I am his wife, Ida, you’ll see. I’ll make sure that he’s more ambitious, puts out some effort and gets ahead, and is a credit to me and to all of us—that is his duty, after all, if he’s going to marry a Buddenbrook.”