Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

by Thomas Mann

  And the senator concurred in part. He agreed that the outbreak of war had meant a great improvement in the export of Russian grain, mentioning that oats in particular had been imported on a grand scale for delivery to the army. But the profits had been distributed very unevenly.

  The doctors left, and Senator Buddenbrook turned around to go back to his mother’s sickroom. He thought about what Grabow had said—there had been so much that he had left unsaid. One felt as if he were avoiding saying anything definite. The only specific thing that had been said was “pneumonia”—and there was little comfort in the fact that Dr. Langhals had chosen the scientific term. Pneumonia at his mother’s age—the fact that there were two doctors in attendance was in itself disquieting. Grabow had managed it all quite casually, almost without his noticing. He was thinking, Grabow had said, of retiring sooner or later, and since his intention was for young Langhals to take over his practice, he enjoyed bringing him along on cases now and then, by way of introduction.

  The senator entered the half-darkened bedroom with energy in his step and a cheerful expression on his face. He was so used to hiding his cares and fatigue behind a look of lofty self-assurance that, as he opened the door, the mask slipped over his face almost by itself, with only the least act of will on his part.

  The curtains of the four-poster were pulled back, and Frau Permaneder was sitting on the bed, holding her mother’s hand. She lay propped up on her pillows, her head turned toward the door, and she searched the senator’s face with her pale blue eyes. It was a sidelong glance, full of both composure and instinctive, tense urgency—almost as if she were lying in ambush for him. Apart from her pallor and a feverish red spot on each cheek, there was no trace of exhaustion or infirmity in her face. The old woman was quite alert, more alert than those around her—she was, after all, the party most directly concerned. She did not trust this illness, and was most definitely not inclined to lie back in her bed and idly let matters take their course.

  “What did they say, Thomas?” she asked in such a brisk, decisive voice that she at once began to cough violently, and although she first tried to quell it by holding her lips tight, the cough burst from her and forced her to press a hand against her right side.

  “They said,” the senator replied, patting her hand until the coughing fit was over, “they said that our dear mother would be back on her feet again in a few days. But that you can’t get up yet, as you well know, because this silly cough has affected your lungs a bit. It’s not exactly an infection of the lung,” he added when he noticed her eyes gazing at him with greater urgency, “although that wouldn’t be all that terrible—there are much worse things. And so, your lungs are somewhat irritated—they both agree on that, and they’re probably right. Where is Severin?”

  “She’s gone to the apothecary,” Frau Permaneder said.

  “You see, she’s off running errands again, and you look as if you are going to fall asleep any moment, Tony. No, things can’t go on like this. Even if it’s only for a few days—we have to bring in a nurse, don’t you both think so, too? Wait a moment—why don’t I inquire whether the mother superior of the Gray Sisters has someone free at the moment?”

  “Thomas,” Elisabeth Buddenbrook said, more gingerly now, to avoid unleashing another coughing fit, “please believe me—you only offend people by constantly supporting the Catholics rather than assisting the Black Sisters of the Protestants. You’ve arranged things so that they have advantages the others do not. I assure you that only recently Pastor Pringsheim was complaining about it in no uncertain terms.”

  “Yes, but that will do him no good. I am convinced that the Gray Sisters are more loyal, more devoted, and more self-sacrificing than those nurses in black. Those Protestants are just not the thing. They all want to get married at the first opportunity. In short, they are more worldly and egotistic, more common. The Gray Sisters are more self-effacing—indeed, they stand much closer to heaven. And they are to be preferred now, precisely because they owe me a debt of gratitude. What would we have done without Sister Leandra when Hanno had seizures while he was teething? I only hope that she is available.”

  And Sister Leandra came. She quietly laid aside her little handbag, her cape, and her gray cap, which she wore over her white one, and went to work, full of gentle and friendly words, her rosary dangling from her belt and clicking softly as she moved about. Day and night, she looked after the sick old woman, who was spoiled and not always patient; and then, almost in embarrassment at the human frailty to which she herself was subject, she withdrew silently when her replacement arrived, went home for a bit of rest, and soon returned.

  Elisabeth Buddenbrook demanded constant attention at her bedside. The worse her condition grew, the more she devoted all her thoughts, the whole of her interest, to her illness, which she regarded with fear and blatant, naïve hatred. Once a lady of the world, a woman with a quiet, natural, and enduring love of living well, of life itself, she had filled her last years with piety and acts of charity. And why? Was it more than just respect for her late husband, perhaps? Was it an unconscious desire to reconcile heaven to her robust vitality and, despite her tenacious attachment to life, to convince God to grant her a gentle death? But she could not die gently. Notwithstanding a good many painful experiences in life, her body was unbent and her eye was still clear. She loved good meals, loved to dress in fine, elegant clothes; she preferred not to notice or to gloss over any unpleasantness that might exist or happen around her, and complacently shared in the widespread prestige that her eldest son had secured. This illness, this inflammation of the lungs, had invaded her proud, upright body without her soul’s having had any chance to prepare itself for illness’s work of destruction—to prepare her by undermining life, by estranging her from it, or at least from the conditions under which she had received it, and by awakening in her the sweet longing for its end, for other conditions or for peace. No, old Madame Buddenbrook was well aware that, regardless of the Christian course her life had taken in the last years, she was not truly ready to die, and she was filled with terror that this could be her final illness, that at the last moment and all by itself, with ghastly speed and great physical torment, it could shatter her resistance and force her to surrender herself.

  She prayed a great deal; but she spent even more of her conscious hours watching over her condition, feeling her pulse, measuring her fever, fighting off her cough. But her pulse was not good; her fever might go down, only to rise higher still, propelling her from chills into hectic delirium; her cough grew worse, and with each coughing fit there was more bloody mucus and a sharper pain deep inside; her shortness of breath alarmed her. And all because it was no longer just one lobe of her right lung, but her whole right lung that was infected; indeed, if the doctors were not badly mistaken, the left side showed distinct signs of a process that Dr. Langhals—while gazing at his fingernails—called “hepatization” and about which Dr. Grabow preferred to say nothing whatever. The fever gnawed away at her unrelentingly. Her digestion began to fail. With stubborn slowness, her energies continued to wane.

  She watched them wane; and whenever she felt up to it, she eagerly took the concentrated nourishment she was offered, was stricter than her nurses about the dosages and times of her medication, and was so caught up in it all that she spoke with hardly anyone but the doctors—or at least showed genuine interest only when conversing with them. Visitors had been allowed to see her at first—old friends, members of her Jerusalem Evenings, women from the best social circles, and pastors’ wives—and she received them apathetically or with absent-minded cordiality and quickly sent them on their way. The members of her family were hurt by the indifference with which the old woman greeted them, displaying a kind of disregard for them that said: “You can’t really help me.” It was the same even with little Hanno, who was allowed in one afternoon when she was doing better—she gave him a quick pat on the cheek and then turned away. It was as if she wanted to tell them, “Children, yo
u’re all dear people, but I, I may very well be dying!” She received the two doctors, however, with lively interest and warmth and conferred with them at length.

  One day the ancient Gerhardt twins appeared, the old ladies who were descendants of Paul Gerhardt. They arrived wearing mantillas and large platterlike hats and carrying bags of groceries for their visits among the poor—one could hardly prevent them from visiting their sick friend. They were left alone with her, and God knows what they said to her while they sat beside her bed. But when they departed, their faces and eyes were clearer, milder, and more blissfully enigmatic than before; and inside the room Elisabeth lay quite still, with their look in her eyes, their expression on her face. She was quite peaceful, more peaceful than ever before; her breath was gentle and slow, and she visibly grew weaker from moment to moment. Frau Permaneder, who muttered one of her strong words as she watched the Ladies Gerhardt leave, immediately sent for the doctors. But no sooner had the two gentlemen reached the door than Elisabeth underwent a startling change. She awoke, began to stir, almost sat up. The mere sight of these two physicians, who had been hastily informed of the state of affairs, brought her back to earth with a bound. She stretched out her hands, both hands, to them and said, “How glad I am to see you gentlemen. Things are going so well that before the day is out …”

  But, in fact, the day had finally come when there was no denying that she had pneumonia in both lungs.

  “Yes, my dear Senator,” Dr. Grabow said, taking Thomas Buddenbrook’s hands in his, “we could not prevent it, it is now on both sides, and that is always precarious—you know that as well as I. One must call a spade a spade. Whether the patient is twenty or seventy years old, it is in every case a matter that one must take seriously, and if you were to ask me again today whether you should write your brother, Christian, or perhaps send him a little telegram, I would not advise against it, I would hesitate to discourage you. How is he doing, by the by? An amusing man—I’ve always been fond of him. For God’s sake, however, don’t go drawing any exaggerated conclusions from what I’ve said, my dear Senator. It’s not as if there were any immediate danger—oh, how foolish of me to even put it that way. But under the circumstances, you know, one must always keep an eye out for some totally unanticipated turn of events. We have been exceptionally pleased with your good mother as a patient, really. She assists us so bravely, she never lets us down. No, as a patient she is unrivaled, and that’s not a mere compliment. And so let us hope, my dear Senator, let us hope. Let us always hope for the best.”

  But there comes a moment when the hope of relatives is somehow artificial and dishonest. Some major change occurs in the patient, some alternation in his or her demeanor quite alien to the person we have known in life. Certain odd words come from her mouth, for which we know no reply, which cut off any retreat, as it were, which are themselves a covenant with death. She may be the dearest person on earth, but after all that has happened we can no longer wish for her to rise and walk. And if she should, it would somehow be as horrifying as if she had crawled out of her coffin.

  Ghastly signs that dissolution had begun were now apparent, but the bodily organs still functioned under the direction of a tenacious will. Weeks had passed now since Elisabeth Buddenbrook had taken to her bed with a catarrh, and several bedsores had developed that would not heal and looked truly odious. She no longer slept—at first because of pain, coughing fits, and shortness of breath, but later because she resisted sleep and fought to stay awake. She slipped into a fevered stupor for only a few minutes at a time, but even when fully conscious she would speak aloud to people long since dead. One afternoon, as twilight fell, she suddenly said in a loud, anxious, but passionate voice, “Yes, my dear Jean, I’m coming.” There had been something so strikingly immediate about her reply that they almost believed they had heard the voice of the late consul calling her.

  Christian came home from Hamburg, where he had been on business, or so he said; but he stayed in the sickroom for only a short time. Passing his hand across his brow, his eyes wandering about the room, he said, “This is awful. This is really awful. I can’t stand it any longer.”

  Pastor Pringsheim appeared as well, and after casting a cold glance at Sister Leandra, he prayed at Elisabeth’s bedside in a lovely modulated voice.

  And then came a brief improvement: a flickering of life, a deceptive return of energy, an ebbing of the fever, a cessation of pain, a few clear and hopeful words that brought tears of joy to the eyes of those around her bed.

  “Children, we aren’t going to lose her—you’ll see, we aren’t going to lose her,” Thomas Buddenbrook said. “She’ll be with us at Christmas, and we won’t let her get so excited this year.”

  But the next night, shortly after Gerda and her husband had gone to bed, Frau Permaneder sent word from Meng Strasse that their mother was struggling with death. A cold rain was falling, and with each gust of wind it rattled against the windowpanes.

  Both doctors were already on hand when the senator and his wife entered the room, which was illumined by the light of two branched candlesticks on the table. Christian, too, had been roused from his bed upstairs and was sitting off to one side, his back turned to the four-poster, his head buried in his hands. They were waiting for the old woman’s brother, Consul Justus Kröger, who had been sent for as well. Sobbing softly, Frau Permaneder and Erika Weinschenk stood at the foot of the bed. There was nothing for Sister Leandra and Mamselle Severin to do now, and they gazed forlornly into the dying woman’s face.

  Elisabeth Buddenbrook lay on her back, propped up on several pillows, and both her quivering hands—those beautiful hands with pale blue veins, which were so thin, so emaciated now—were in constant motion, hastily, impulsively stroking the quilt. Under a white nightcap, her head never stopped shifting from side to side, with the dreadful rhythm of a metronome. Her lips appeared to have collapsed inward, and her mouth kept opening and closing as she gasped for each tormented breath; her sunken eyes strayed about in search of help, resting now and then on one of those around her with an appalling look of envy—they were up and dressed, they could breathe, life was theirs, and yet all they could do was offer one last sacrifice of love: to fix their eyes on her and watch. The night wore on without any change in her condition.

  “How long can it go on like this?” Thomas Buddenbrook asked softly and pulled Dr. Grabow to the back of the room. Dr. Langhals was just giving his patient an injection. Holding her handkerchief to her mouth, Frau Permaneder joined them.

  “Quite difficult to say, my dear Senator,” Dr. Grabow replied. “Your mother may find release in the next five minutes, or this may go on for hours yet. I cannot say. What we have here is choking catarrh, a form of edema.”

  “I know,” Frau Permaneder said, nodding into her handkerchief as tears streamed down her cheeks. “It often happens with pneumonia. A kind of watery fluid has collected in the pockets of the lungs, and if it gets very bad, you can’t breathe anymore. Yes, I know.”

  His hands folded in front of him, the senator looked across to the four-poster. “She must be suffering so terribly,” he whispered.

  “No!” Dr. Grabow said, just as softly, but with incredible authority, determination in every wrinkle of his long, mild face. “You are mistaken, my friend, you are mistaken. The conscious mind is very clouded. Those are primarily reflex motions that you see there. Please, believe me.”

  And Thomas replied, “I hope to God they are!” But any child could have seen from his mother’s eyes that she was totally conscious and aware of everything.

  They sat back down. Consul Kröger had arrived as well, and he sat at her bedside now with reddened eyes, bending down over his cane.

  The dying woman’s movements increased. Her whole body, from her crown to the sole of her feet, was apparently overcome by terrible restlessness, by unspeakable panic and agony, by an inescapable sense of abandonment and hopelessness without end. She tossed her head and wheezed, and her eyes—her poor ple
ading, lamenting, searching eyes—seemed to break under the strain, and then they would close; or they would grow so large that the little veins on the eyeball were distended and bloodshot. But oblivion would not come.

  It was shortly after three in the morning—Christian stood up. “I cannot take this any longer,” he said, and, supporting himself on pieces of furniture that stood between him and the door, he limped out of the room. Both Erika Weinschenk and Mamselle Severin, apparently lulled by the monotone groans of pain, had fallen asleep in their chairs, their faces rosy with the flush of slumber.

  Around four, it grew worse. They propped the old woman up and wiped the sweat from her brow. It looked as if she would stop breathing altogether, and her panic increased. “Something to help me sleep,” she managed to say. “Sleep.” But the last thing they wanted to do was give her something to make her sleep.

  Suddenly, just as she had done once before, she began to answer someone or something that the others could not hear. “Yes, Jean, it won’t be long now!” And right afterward, “Yes, my dear Clara, I’m coming.”

  And then the struggle began anew. Was it a struggle with death? No, she was wrestling now with life to gain death. “I want to,” she gasped, “but I can’t. Something to help me sleep. Have mercy, gentlemen, give me something so I can sleep.”

  At the words “have mercy,” Frau Permaneder sobbed loudly and Thomas groaned softly, clutching his head with one hand for a moment. But the doctors knew their duty. For the sake of the family, they were required under all circumstances to preserve this life as long as possible, and a narcotic would have meant the immediate loss of all resistance, the surrender of life. Doctors were not placed on this earth to bring death, but to preserve life at any price. And there were certain religious and moral reasons as well—they had heard all about them at the university, although they might not be able to recall them precisely at the moment. And so, instead, they stimulated her heart with various drugs and induced vomiting several times, which brought some momentary relief.