Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

by Thomas Mann

  Other visitors arrived—the old Krögers, the Ladies Buddenbrook from Breite Strasse, old Herr Marcus. Even poor Klothilde came, stood there gaunt and ash-gray beside the bed, and folded her hands in their worsted gloves; at last, with a face betraying no emotion, she said in her drawling, whining voice, “Tony, Gerda, you mustn’t think I’m coldhearted just because I’m not crying. I have no tears left.” And they all believed every word—she was so hopeless, dusty, and withered.

  Finally they left the room to make way for an old woman, a disagreeable creature, who kept rubbing her toothless gums together and had come to help Sister Leandra wash and dress the body.

  IT WAS LATE in the evening, but Gerda Buddenbrook, Frau Permaneder, Christian, and little Johann were still sitting in the living room, at the round table, hard at work by the light of the large overhead gas lamp. Their task was to prepare a list of people who would receive death announcements and to address the envelopes. Pens scratched. Now and then someone had an inspiration and added a new name to the list. Even Hanno had to help—time was short, and his handwriting was neat and legible.

  It was quiet in the house and out on the street. Only seldom did they hear footsteps, which then echoed away. The gas lamp spluttered softly, someone muttered a name, paper rustled. Occasionally they would all look at one another and suddenly recall what had just happened.

  Frau Permaneder scribbled away busily. But every five minutes, almost as if she were timing it, she would lay her pen down, press her hands together, bring them up to her mouth, and break into a lament. “I can’t comprehend it,” she cried—indicating that she had indeed gradually begun to comprehend what had really happened. “It’s all over now!” she cried out quite unexpectedly in absolute despair, weeping loudly as she wrapped her arm around her sister-in-law’s neck. And, with renewed strength, she then went back to work.

  Christian was in much the same state as poor Klothilde. He had not shed a single tear and was a little ashamed of the fact. His sense of shame outweighed everything else he felt. His constant preoccupation with his own condition, with his physical and mental quirks, had left him exhausted and lethargic. Now and then he would sit up straight and rub his hand across his bald head and say in a choked voice, “Yes, it’s terribly sad.” He said this to himself, as a kind of stern reprimand, and forced his eyes to moisten a little.

  Suddenly something happened that upset them all. Little Johann began to laugh. He had come across a name with a curious sound to it—it was just too irresistible. He repeated it with a snort, bent forward, began to shake, to gasp for air, and could no longer contain himself. At first they convinced themselves that he was crying; but that was not the case. The adults looked at him in bewildered incredulity. Then his mother sent him to bed.

  9

  A TOOTH—Senator Buddenbrook had died of a toothache, that was the word around town. But, confound it all, people didn’t die of that! He had been in pain, Herr Brecht had broken off the crown, and afterward he had simply collapsed on the street. Had anyone ever heard the like?

  But it made no difference now, that was his problem. The first thing that had to be done, however, was to send wreaths—large wreaths, expensive wreaths, wreaths that would do a person credit, that would be noted in newspaper articles and that showed they came from people with loyal hearts and substantial incomes. And they were sent, they poured in from all sides, from public organizations and families and individuals: laurel wreaths, wreaths of fragrant flowers, silver wreaths with black bows or bows in the town colors, with dedications printed in black or gold letters. And palm fronds, huge arrays of palm fronds.

  All the flower shops were doing business on a grand scale, and Iwersen’s, directly across from the Buddenbrook home, was doing as well as any. Frau Iwersen rang the vestibule bell several times a day and brought floral arrangements of various sorts—from Senator So-and-so, from this organization or that. On one such visit she asked if she might perhaps go upstairs for a moment and see the senator? Yes, she was told, she might, and, following Fräulein Jungmann, she climbed the main staircase, not saying a word, but letting her eyes glide softly over its polished opulence.

  She climbed the stairs heavily—she was expecting, as usual. Over the years her looks had grown a bit more common, but her narrow black eyes and those Malaysian cheekbones were still attractive, and it was quite apparent that she must have been extraordinarily pretty at one time. She was admitted into the salon, where Thomas Buddenbrook had been laid out.

  There, in the middle of the large and well-lighted room, from which the furniture had been removed, he lay clad in white silk, covered in white silk, bedded on the white silk pillows of his casket, and the strong, numbing potpourri of tuberoses, violets, and other flowers filled the room. At his head, at the center of a semicircle of branched silver candlesticks, stood Thovaldsen’s Christ mounted on a pedestal hung with black crape. The floral arrangements—wreaths, baskets, and bouquets—had been placed along the walls, set out on the floor, or strewn over his silken coverlet; palm fronds rested against the bier, some of them hanging low over the dead man’s feet. His face was abraded in places; the nose in particular looked badly bruised. But his hair had been trimmed just as he had always worn it in life, and Herr Wenzel had used a curling iron to set and curl his mustaches, so that they extended well beyond his white cheeks. His head was turned a little to one side and an ivory cross had been placed between his folded hands.

  Frau Iwersen held back at the door, staring across the room to the bier. But then Frau Permaneder appeared—veiled in black and sniffling from much weeping. Pulling aside the portieres, she entered from the living room and gently bade Frau Iwersen to come nearer—and only then did she risk moving out a little farther across the parquet floor. She stood there with her hands folded across her protruding stomach, and her narrow black eyes took it all in: the flowers, the candlesticks, the bows, the white silk, and Thomas Buddenbrook’s face. It would have been difficult to put a name to this pale pregnant woman’s blurred expression. Finally she said, “Yes …”; gave one—just one—brief, suppressed sob, and turned to go.

  Frau Permaneder loved these visits. She never left the house; with untiring devotion she supervised the demonstrations of respect that people felt they needed to show her brother’s mortal remains. Again and again, she would read aloud in her throaty voice the newspaper articles that paid tribute to his accomplishments—just as they had on the occasion of the firm’s centennial, except that now they also lamented the loss of such an important man. She sat in the living room to receive all the visitors who came to pay their condolences, after Gerda had greeted them in the salon—and there was no end of visitors, legions of them. She conferred with various people about arrangements for the funeral. She arranged the scenes of farewell. She invited the office personnel upstairs to say a final goodbye to their boss. And the warehouse workers had to come as well. Shuffling their big feet across the parquet floor, they filed in with the corners of their mouths turned down, expressing vast integrity, and exuding the odors of brandy, chewing tobacco, and physical labor. They stared at the ostentatious funerary display, at first in amazement and then with increasing boredom; they fidgeted with their caps in their hands, until one of them found the courage to depart, and then the whole troop shuffled out behind him. Frau Permaneder was enchanted. She claimed she had seen several of them with tears trickling down into their bristly beards. This was simply not true. It had not happened. But what did it matter, if she chose to see it that way, if it made her happy?

  The day of the burial drew near. The metal casket was hermetically sealed and covered with flowers, the candles were lit, and the house filled up with people. Pastor Pringsheim stood at the head of the casket, erect and majestic, his expressive head resting on his wide ruff as if it were a plate.

  A well-trained butler, something between a waiter and a majordomo, had been hired to oversee the ceremonies. Top hat in hand, he ran down the staircase on soft soles, and in a pierci
ng whisper he called out across the entrance hall filled to overflowing with uniformed civil servants from the tax office and grain haulers in blouses, knee breeches, and top hats: “The rooms are full, but there’s still a little space left along the corridor.”

  Then everything was silent. Pastor Pringsheim began to speak, and his elegant voice filled the whole house with sonorous, well-modulated tones. He stood there beside the figure of Christ, wringing his hands before his face or spreading them wide in blessing, while down below, in front of the house, the hearse drawn by four horses waited under the winter sky, and, behind it, a long row of carriages that reached all the way down the street to the river. Facing the door were two rows of soldiers, rifles resting at their sides; Lieutenant von Throta stood at the head of the company, his drawn sword held in his arm, his glowing eyes fixed on the bay window upstairs. A great many people craning their necks filled the street below or watched from windows all around.

  Finally there was a stir in the vestibule, the lieutenant’s shouted command rang out, the soldiers presented arms with a loud crack, Herr von Throta lowered his sword; the casket appeared. Borne by four men in black coats and three-cornered hats, it swayed gently out the front door. A gust of wind carried the scent of flowers across the curious crowd, ruffled the black plumes atop the hearse, tossed the manes of all the horses in the long line stretching down to the river, and tugged at the black ribbons fixed to the hats of the coachman and his grooms. A few straggling snowflakes descended from heaven in great, slow arcs.

  The horses of the funeral coach were shrouded in black, with only their restless eyes visible. They slowly began to move, led by the four black grooms; the military closed in behind them, and now the rest of the coaches pulled up, one after another. Christian Buddenbrook climbed into the first with the pastor. Little Johann followed in the next, together with his well-fed relatives from Hamburg. And now, as the flags flying at half-mast on all the buildings flapped in the wind, Thomas Buddenbrook’s funeral procession wound its slow, long, sad, solemn way through the streets. The civil servants and grain haulers marched on foot.

  Followed by a host of mourners, the casket moved down the paths of the cemetery, past crosses, statues, chapels, and bare weeping willows, and approached the Buddenbrook family vault, where the guard of honor stood waiting and presented arms anew. From behind some shrubs came the muted, heavy rhythms of a dirge.

  Once again the large stone cover with the chiseled family crest had been pushed aside, and once again the town’s gentry gathered at the edge of the leafless woods and looked down into the brickwork abyss into which Thomas Buddenbrook was now lowered to join his parents. There they stood, these gentlemen of accomplishment and wealth, their heads lowered or held mournfully to one side—the legislators among them identifiable by their white gloves and neckties. And behind them stood the throng of civil servants, grain haulers, office-workers, and warehouse hands.

  The music ceased; Pastor Pringsheim spoke. And as his benediction died away in the cool air, they all lined up for a final handshake with the deceased’s brother and son.

  It was a tedious formality. Christian Buddenbrook received all expressions of sympathy with the same half-distracted, half-embarrassed look he adopted on all solemn occasions. Dressed in his thick pea-jacket with gold buttons, little Johann stood beside him, his eyes ringed with bluish shadows and fixed on the ground; he never looked directly at anyone, but kept his head held on a slant, braced against the wind, a wry, hurt look on his face.

  PART ELEVEN

  (Dedicated to my friend Otto Grautoff)

  1

  SOMETIMES WE HAPPEN to recall someone, think of her, and wonder how she is doing, and suddenly we remember that she is no longer to be found strolling about the streets, that her voice is no longer part of the general chorus, that she has simply vanished from the arena of life and now lies beneath the earth somewhere out beyond the town gates.

  Madame Buddenbrook, née Stüwing, Uncle Gotthold’s widow, was dead. Death had likewise placed its seal of reconciliation and transfiguration upon the brow of this woman, who had once been the cause of heated argument within the family. But as her three daughters, Friederike, Henriette, and Pfiffi, received their relatives’ condolences, they felt perfectly justified in drawing long, indignant faces, as if to say: “You see, your persecution has finally sent her to her grave.” Although their mother had lived to a ripe old age.

  Madame Kethelsen had gone to her rest as well. Having spent her last years tormented by gout, she had passed on gently, simply, firm in her childish faith and envied by her educated sister, who still had to do battle with rationalist doubts now and then, and who, although she had grown ever more hunchbacked and tiny, was bound to this sinful earth by a rugged constitution.

  Consul Peter Döhlmann had been called home, too. He had consumed his entire fortune at the breakfast table. Finally succumbing to Hunyadi-Janos water, he had left his daughter an annuity of two hundred marks a year and relied on general respect for the name Döhlmann to ensure that she would be admitted into the Johannis Cloister.

  Justus Kröger had also gone to his reward. That was unfortunate, because now no one could prevent his weak-willed wife from selling the last of the family silver in order to send money to degenerate Jakob, who was still leading a dissolute life out in the world somewhere.

  As for Christian Buddenbrook one would have searched in vain for him around town—he no longer dwelt within its walls. Less than a year after the death of his brother, the senator, he had moved to Hamburg, and there, before the eyes of God and man, he had married a lady with whom he had long been on close terms, one Fräulein Aline Puvogel. No one had been able to stop him. What sums he had not already spent of his mother’s inheritance—half the interest from which had always found its way to Hamburg—were now administered by Herr Stephan Kistenmaker, who had been appointed to that office by his deceased friend’s will. But in all other matters, Christian was now his own master. As soon as rumors of the marriage reached her, Frau Permaneder wrote a long and extraordinarily hostile letter to Aline Buddenbrook of Hamburg, beginning with the salutation, “Madame!” and declaring in deftly poisoned words that she, Frau Permaneder, had no intention of ever recognizing either the addressee or her children as members of the family.

  Herr Kistenmaker was the executor of the will, the administrator of the Buddenbrook estate, and the guardian of little Johann—and he held all three offices with great dignity. They vested him with very important responsibilities and allowed him to move about the exchange with all the hallmarks of overwork, including rubbing his hand through his hair and assuring one and all that he was wearing out. Nor ought it to be forgotten that for his administrative efforts he drew a salary, paid quite punctually, of two percent of the estate’s revenues. On the whole, however, he was not very successful at his tasks and very soon incurred the wrath of Gerda Buddenbrook.

  The situation was this: everything was to be liquidated and the firm dissolved, within one year. That was the senator’s testamentary wish. Frau Permaneder responded to this with violent emotion. “And Johann, little Johann? What about Hanno?” she asked. She was disappointed—indeed, deeply hurt—by the idea that her brother had passed over his son and sole heir, that he had not wished to keep the firm going for his sake. She spent many hours weeping over it, because it meant that the firm’s venerable shield, a treasure handed down over four generations, would have to be disposed of, that its history would come to an end—even though there was a legitimate heir. But then she found comfort in telling herself that the end of the firm was not the same as the end of the family, that her nephew would simply have to begin a fresh, new enterprise that would allow him to follow his high calling—which was to carry on the name of his forebears in proud splendor and to bring the family to a second flowering. It was not for nothing that he looked so much like his great-grandfather.

  And so, under the direction of Herr Kistenmaker and old Herr Marcus, the firm began to be
liquidated—and things went from bad to worse. The prescribed period was very limited, but it had to be observed to the letter and time was growing short. Pending business contracts were sold off much too quickly and on disadvantageous terms. One hasty and unprofitable sale followed another. The warehouses and stored grain were sold off at a considerable loss. And what didn’t fall to Herr Kistenmaker’s excess of zeal was ruined by old Herr Marcus’s procrastination. Word around town had it that the old man carefully warmed not just his overcoat and hat beside the stove before going out in winter, but his walking stick as well. And if an opportunity for selling at a profit did present itself, he was sure to let it slip past. In short, the losses piled up. Thomas Buddenbrook’s estate had been valued on paper at 650,000 marks. Within a year after the reading of the will, it was clear that nothing even close to that sum could be reckoned with.

  Vague, exaggerated rumors began to circulate about this unprofitable liquidation, and they were fed by reports that Gerda Buddenbrook was thinking of selling her grand home. There were marvelous stories about why she was forced to do so, about how the Buddenbrook fortune was dwindling away to nothing. And so, gradually, a general mood began to spread through the town, and its effects soon reached the widow Buddenbrook’s household itself—at first much to her amazement and dismay, and then to her growing indignation. One day Frau Permaneder’s sister-in-law greeted her with the news that several repairmen and suppliers of household goods had been pressing her, Gerda Buddenbrook, in the most improper fashion, to settle some large accounts—and Tony stood there frozen in place for a while before breaking into dreadful laughter. Gerda Buddenbrook was so furious that she even mentioned the half-formed notion of taking little Johann, leaving town, and moving back to live with her old father in Amsterdam, where they could play duets together. But this aroused such a storm of protest from Frau Permaneder that Gerda had to put the idea aside for the time being.