Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

by Thomas Mann

  Oh, that was not the effect that Thomas Buddenbrook had hoped the influence of his personality would have on his son. His thoughts were focused, rather, on awakening in him an easy nonchalance, a kind of ruthlessness, and a simple sense for the practical things in life.

  “Looks as if you’re living well, my boy,” he said whenever Hanno asked for seconds on dessert or half a cup of coffee after his meal. “You’ll have to become a hardworking merchant and earn a lot of money. Do you want to do that?” And little Johann would answer, “Yes.”

  Now and then, when the family was gathered around the table and Aunt Antonie or Uncle Christian would fall back into their old habit of making fun of poor Aunt Klothilde and begin speaking with her in her own drawling, meek, amiable fashion, it sometimes happened that Hanno, feeling the effects of the heavy red wine reserved for special occasions, would adopt that tone of voice himself for a moment and make some teasing remark of his own to Aunt Klothilde. And then Thomas Buddenbrook would laugh—a loud, heartfelt, encouraging, almost grateful laugh, like a man surprised by some very amusing stroke of good luck; he would even egg Johann on and join in the teasing—when in fact, for years now, he had protested against taking that tone with their poor cousin. It was so cheap, so safe, to assert one’s superiority over humble, dull, skinny, and eternally hungry Klothilde, and despite the general harmlessness of it all, the whole idea seemed rather mean-spirited. But he fought against that feeling, too, just as he had to fight desperately against his own scruples in the practical affairs of everyday life—when a situation would arise and once again he could not comprehend, simply could not get over, the fact that, although he understood the ramifications, was able to see through to the heart of the matter, he still had to use the situation for his own purposes without any sense of shame. But to use a situation without any sense of shame, he told himself, that is what it means to be fit for real life.

  Ah, how glad, how happy, delighted, and hopeful he felt at any little sign Johann might display that he was fit for real life.

  3

  OVER THE YEARS, the Buddenbrooks had grown accustomed to not traveling any distance during the summer, and even the previous spring, when Gerda had expressed a wish to visit her father in Amsterdam and play a few duets with him again after so many years, her husband had been rather curt in giving his consent. Granted, Gerda, little Johann, and Fräulein Jungmann spent their entire summer vacation at the hotel in Travemünde every year, but that custom had endured primarily for the sake of Hanno’s health.

  Summer vacation at the shore! Could anyone, anywhere, know what happiness that was? After the sludgy, excruciating monotony of countless days in school—four long weeks of peaceful, carefree solitude, filled with the smell of seaweed and the murmur of the gentle surf. Four weeks, a period that was so immeasurably vast at the start that you couldn’t believe it would ever end, and merely to mention the possibility would have been rude, even blasphemous. Johann could never understand how, at the end of the school term, any teacher could bring himself to say something like: “And we shall pick up here after summer vacation and then move on to this or that.…” After summer vacation! He actually seemed to be looking forward to it, that incomprehensible man in his shiny worsted suit. After summer vacation—even to think such a thing! When it was all so marvelously remote, lost in the gray distance far beyond those four weeks.

  He had presented his report card the day before and survived that more or less, and then had come the ride in the carriage packed high with luggage. They were staying in one of the two Swiss-style lodges that were joined by a long, narrow central building and formed a straight line with the façades of the pastry shop and the pump room. And now he awoke on the very first morning! What had awakened him with a start was a vague sense of joy, which suddenly went to his head and gave his heart a tug. He opened his eyes and let his eager, elated gaze take in the old-fashioned furniture and the tidy little room. A second of drowsy, blissful confusion—and then he realized that he was in Travemünde, would be in Travemünde for four infinite weeks. He did not stir; he lay quietly on his back in the narrow, yellow frame bed, its sheets exceptionally thin and soft from long use; now and then he closed his eyes briefly and felt joy and excitement quiver in his chest as he took long, deep breaths.

  The room lay bathed in yellowish daylight pouring in now through the striped blind, but all around him everything was still silent—Ida Jungmann and Mama were both still asleep. All he could hear was the even, sedate sound of a laborer raking the gravel down below in the garden, and the buzzing of a fly trapped between the blind and the window and keeping up a steady assault against the windowpane. As it darted about, you could watch its shadow tracing zigzag lines on the striped canvas. Silence—and the lonely sounds of a rake and a monotone buzz. And the gently animated calm suddenly filled little Johann with a delicious awareness of the quiet, well-tended, elegant seclusion of this resort, which he loved more than anything else. No, thank God, here were no shiny worsted suits, worn by earthly incarnations of grammar and ratios—not a one, because it was all rather expensive here.

  In a burst of joy he sprang from his bed and ran to the window in his bare feet. He pulled up the blind, loosened the white-enameled hook, and opened the casement, watching the fly as it sped off across the gravel paths and rose beds of the garden. Facing the hotel buildings and set within a semicircle of boxwoods, the band shell stood quiet and empty. The Leuchtenfeld flats, which got their name from the lighthouse that rose up somewhere off to the right, stretched out far before him under the bright white sky, until the short grass, interspersed with patches of bare earth, gave way to taller shore vegetation and then to the sandy beach, where he could make out rows of little private wooden pavilions and wicker beach chairs facing the open sea. There it lay in the peaceful morning light, the sea—smooth and ruffled streaks of bottle-green and blue—and a steamer moved between rows of red barrels that marked the channel. It was on its way home from Copenhagen, and you didn’t need to know whether it was the Naiad or the Friederike Oeverdieck. And in that moment of quiet bliss, Hanno Buddenbrook took another deep breath of the spicy air sent by the sea, and he greeted the sea tenderly with his eyes—a silent, grateful greeting full of love.

  And now the day began, the first of those paltry twenty-eight days, which at first seemed like an eternity of bliss, but dwindled away so dreadfully fast once the first few were gone. They had breakfast on the balcony or under the tall chestnut tree over by the children’s playground with its large swing—and Johann was enchanted by all of it: the scent that rose from the hastily laundered tablecloth as a waiter spread it out before them, the tissue-paper napkins, the unfamiliar bread, the fact that they ate their eggs from metal eggcups, and with everyday teaspoons instead of the bone-handled ones they used at home.

  And the rest of the day was so free and had no real schedule, a wonderful lazy and coddled life of ease that passed serenely and without a care. It started with mornings on the beach, while the band played its early program up above them—just lying and resting at the foot of the wicker chair, playing quiet, dreamy games with the soft sand that didn’t even get you dirty, letting your gaze drift easily and painlessly across the endless green and blue, from which came a gentle swishing sound bearing a strong, fresh, and aromatic breeze that wrapped itself around your ears and made you deliciously dizzy, a kind of muted numbness that silently, peacefully dissolved every constraint, so that you lost all sense of time and space. And then a swim, which was much more enjoyable here than at Herr Asmussen’s—there wasn’t any goose grass here, only pale green, crystal-clear water that foamed when you splashed it, and instead of slimy wooden planks there was gently rilled sand under your feet, and Consul Hagenström’s boys were far, far away, in Norway or Tyrolia. The consul loved to take his family on long trips in the summer—and there was no reason he shouldn’t, was there? A walk along the beach to warm up, out to Seagull Rock or the Temple of the Sea, and then you sat in your wicker chai
r and had a snack—until the time came for you to go back to the room and take a little nap before dinner. Dinner was fun, the resort blossomed with people—all the families who were friends of the Buddenbrooks, and others from Hamburg, even some from England and Russia; they filled the hotel’s great dining hall, and a man dressed in black stood at a special little table and served the soup from a shiny silver tureen. There were four courses, each tastier, spicier, or at least somehow more festive than at home, and when you looked down the long table some people were drinking champagne. Sometimes single gentlemen came from town, men who didn’t let their business keep them chained to their desks all week; they amused themselves and liked to watch the roulette wheel spin after dinner: Consul Peter Döhlmann, for instance, who always left his daughter at home and could tell such loud, outrageous stories in Plattdeutsch that the ladies from Hamburg laughed till their sides ached and begged for mercy; or Senator Cremer, the chief of police; or Uncle Christian and his old schoolchum Senator Gieseke, who also came without his family and paid all Christian Buddenbrook’s bills. Later, while the adults drank their coffee and enjoyed the music from under the pastry-shop awnings, Hanno would sit on a chair at the base of the band-shell steps and listen—and could never get enough. And there were things to do in the late afternoon, too. There was a shooting gallery on the hotel grounds, and off to the right of the Swiss-style lodges were stalls with horses, donkeys, and cows, and you could drink the warm, foamy, fragrant milk as an evening snack. You could go for a walk, into the village, along Front Row; and from there you could take a boat across to Priwall, where you could find amber on the beach; or you could join in a game of croquet on the playground or sit on a bench under the trees up on the hill just behind the hotel—that was where the large dinner bell was—and have Ida Jungmann read aloud to you. But the best idea, always, was to go back to the beach and sit out at the end of the rampart in the twilight, your face to the open horizon, and wave a handkerchief to the ships gliding by and listen to the little waves splashing against the boulders. The whole world all around was filled with that mild and marvelous swishing sound, which spoke to little Johann in a kindly voice and persuaded him to close his eyes in contentment. But then Ida Jungmann said, “Come on, Hanno, we have to go. Time for supper. You’ll catch your death if you fall asleep out here.” And when he came back from the sea, his heartbeat was so calm, untroubled, and regular. After he had eaten and drunk his milk or malted beer up in the room, and his mother had left to join the other guests for supper out on the hotel’s glassed-in veranda, he slipped between those old, thin sheets and, to the soft, strong pumping of his contented heart and the muted rhythms of the evening concert, sank into sleep, without fear or fever.

  On Sunday, like a good many other gentlemen who were kept in town on business during the week, the senator joined his family and stayed until Monday morning. But although there was ice cream and champagne at dinner, although there were donkey rides and sailing parties on the open sea, little Johann was not very fond of Sundays. The peace and seclusion of the resort was disrupted. A lot of people from town, who didn’t really belong here—“middle-class day-trippers” was Ida Jungmann’s patronizing term—crowded the beach and the grounds, to swim, listen to music, and drink coffee; and Hanno would have preferred to shut himself up in his room and wait for all these intruders in their Sunday best to be washed away again. No, he was glad when Monday put everything back on the old track, and he no longer felt his father’s eyes, absent six days of the week, studying him, scrutinizing him critically all day Sunday—and, oh, how he felt them resting on him.

  Fourteen days had passed, and Hanno told himself and anyone else who would listen that there was still plenty of time left, as much time as the holidays at Michaelmas. But that was deceptive comfort, because his vacation had reached its peak and now it was all downhill, speeding toward its end, racing so awfully fast that he wanted to hold tight to each hour and not let it pass, to take in each breath of sea air more slowly so that not a second of joy would be wasted.

  But time passed, in the relentless change of sunny and rainy days, of on-shore and off-shore winds, of still, brooding heat and noisy thunderstorms that could not move out over the water and seemed to go on and on. There were days when wind from the northeast would fill the bay with a blackish green flood tide that covered the beach with seaweed, mussels, and jellyfish and threatened the pavilions. The dark, tossing sea was dotted everywhere with foam. Great waves rolled toward the shore with inexorable, appalling, silent power, pitched forward majestically, the swells shining like dark green metal, and plunged raucously with a hiss, a crack, and a boom onto the sand. There were other days when the west wind blew the sea back, exposing vast areas of the daintily rilled sandy floor and leaving naked sandbanks everywhere; and rain fell in sheets, melting heaven, earth, and sea into one another, while gusts of wind picked up the rain and drove it against the windows until drops became streams that ran down the panes, making it impossible to see out. Then Hanno would usually spend the day at the upright piano in the lobby, and although it had been battered somewhat by all the waltzes and schottisches played at balls, and he couldn’t play the same rich improvisations as at home on his grand piano, it had a muted, gurgling tone that allowed him to achieve some very amusing effects. And there were the other days, too—dreamy, blue, perfectly calm, and sweltering, when the blue flies buzzed in the sun above the Leuchtenfeld flats and the sea lay silent and inert like a mirror, without a hint of a breeze. And, with three days to go, Hanno told himself and everyone else that there was still plenty of time left, as much time as the holidays at Pentecost. His arithmetic was impeccable, but even he didn’t believe it, and his heart had long since come to the conclusion that the man in the shiny worsted suit was right after all, that four weeks did come to an end, and that you picked up again where you had left off and moved on to this or that.

  The carriage, packed high with luggage, halted in front of the hotel—the day had come. Hanno had said goodbye to the sea and the beach early that morning; he now said goodbye to the waiters, who accepted their tips, to the band shell, to the rose beds, and to summer itself. And then, while the hotel staff bowed to them, the carriage pulled away.

  They moved down the tree-lined road that led to the village and past Front Row. Across from Hanno on the back seat sat Ida Jungmann, bright-eyed, white-haired, and raw-boned, but he tucked his head into one corner of the carriage and looked out the window, ignoring her. The morning sky was overcast with white clouds, the Trave broken by little waves scurrying before the wind. Now and then little drops pricked at the windowpane. At the entrance to Front Row people were sitting on their stoops and mending nets; barefoot children came running up, curious to have a peek into the carriage. They would be staying here.

  Once the carriage had left the last houses behind, Hanno bent forward to have a final look at the lighthouse; then he leaned back and closed his eyes. “We’ll be back next year, Hanno,” Ida Jungmann said in a deep, consoling voice; but that bit of consolation was all he needed, and his chin began to quiver and tears welled up under his long eyelashes.

  His face and hands were brown from the sea air, but if their intention in sending him to the shore was to make him stronger, fresher, more energetic and robust, then they had failed miserably—and he was fully aware of that disheartening fact. Four weeks of sheltered tranquillity and quiet worship of the sea had left him even softer, dreamier, more spoiled and sensitive than before, and even less capable of summoning his courage when faced with Herr Tietge’s ratios. And he was sure that he would lose all heart when confronted with memorizing historical dates and grammatical rules, that in desperation he would nonchalantly toss his books aside and fall asleep in the hope of escaping his fears of the next morning’s classes, the catastrophes, the Hagenström bullies, and the demands his father made of him.

  But then this morning’s ride lifted his spirits a little. The carriage followed the puddled ruts of the country road, and b
irds were chirping everywhere. He thought about Kai and seeing him again, and about Herr Pfühl and his music lessons, about his grand piano and harmonium. And anyway, tomorrow was Sunday, and the first day of school, the day after tomorrow, was always quite harmless. Ah, he could still feel a little sand from the beach in his high-buttoned shoes—he would ask Grobleben to leave it in there, forever. So let it start all over again: the men in their worsted suits, the Hagenströms, and all the rest. He had what he had. When it all came raining down on him, he would remember the sea and the hotel gardens, and just the brief thought of the sound that the little waves made in the still of the evening—coming from far away, from some remote distance wrapped in mysterious slumber to splash against the rampart—would comfort him, put him out of reach of all life’s hardships.

  Then came the ferry, then Israelsdorfer Allee, then Jerusalem Hill, Castle Yard. The carriage passed through the Burg Gate, on its right the towering walls of the prison, where Uncle Weinschenk was; it rolled down Burg Strasse and crossed the Koberg, left Breite Strasse behind, and, with brakes set, started down the steep slope of Fischer Grube. There was the red façade with its bay and the white caryatides; and as they walked out of the noon warmth of the street into the cool of the paved entrance, the senator came out to greet them from his office, his pen still in his hand.