by Thomas Mann
As for the three Ladies Buddenbrook, Uncle Gotthold’s daughters, their faces expressed annoyance and criticism, just as always. Friederike and Henriette, the two older girls, had grown bonier and gaunter with the years, whereas Pfiffi, the youngest at fifty-three, was much too short and fat.
Old Madame Kröger, Uncle Justus’s widow, had been invited, too; but she was not feeling well, or perhaps had no suitable dress to wear—it was not certain which.
They spoke of Gerda’s trip, about the train she was planning to take, and about the sale of the villa, along with the furniture, which Herr Gosch the broker was managing. Because Gerda was taking nothing with her. She was leaving just as she had come.
Then Frau Permaneder brought the conversation around to life; she regarded it from several important angles, expressing her views of the past and the future, although there was almost nothing to be said about the future now.
“Yes, when I’m dead, Erika can go away somewhere, too, for all I care,” she said. “But I couldn’t manage anywhere else, and as long as I’m still alive, we’ll stay together here, we few who are still left. You’ll all have to come to dinner once a week. And then we’ll read from the family papers.” And her hand brushed the writing case that lay before her. “Yes, Gerda, I gladly accept them. That’s settled. Did you hear, Thilda? Although you could just as well invite us all to dinner, really, because you’re no worse off than we are now. Yes, that’s how it goes. One struggles and takes another running start and goes into battle again—and all the while you’ve just sat there and waited patiently. You really are a muttonhead, Thilda, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”
“Oh, now, Tony,” Klothilde said with a smile.
“I’m sorry that I won’t be able to say goodbye to Christian,” Gerda said. And so they began to speak of Christian. There was little prospect of his ever leaving the institution where he was now confined, although he was not so bad that he could not have managed to live as a free man on his own. But his wife was only too pleased with the present state of affairs, or so Frau Permaneder claimed, and was in league with that doctor. And so, presumably, Christian would end his days in an institution.
Then there was a pause. Haltingly, tactfully, the conversation turned now to events just past, and when little Johann’s name was finally mentioned, the room fell silent and the murmur of the rain outside grew louder.
The silence lay like a somber secret over Hanno’s last illness, which must have been horrible beyond description. They did not look at one another as they spoke of it in hushed voices, hinting at it with guarded words. And then someone recalled the very last episode—when the patched and tattered little count had come to visit, almost forcing his way into the room where Hanno lay ill. Hanno had smiled when he heard his voice, even though he no longer recognized anyone, and Kai had kissed both his hands again and again.
“He kissed Hanno’s hands?” the Ladies Buddenbrook asked.
“Yes, over and over.”
They all thought about this for a while.
Suddenly Frau Permaneder broke into tears. “I loved him so,” she sobbed. “You don’t know how much I loved him, more than any of you—yes, forgive me, Gerda, and you’re his mother. Oh, he was an angel.”
“He is an angel now,” Sesame corrected her.
“Hanno, little Hanno,” Frau Permaneder went on, and the tears ran down those downy cheeks that had lost their glow. “Tom, Father, Grandfather, and all the others. Where have they all gone? We shall see them no more. Oh, how hard and sad it all is.”
“We shall see them again,” Friederike Buddenbrook said, folding her hands firmly in her lap; she lowered her eyes and thrust her nose in the air.
“Yes, that’s what they say. Oh, there are times, Friederike, when that is no comfort. God strike me, but sometimes I doubt there is any justice, any goodness, I doubt it all. Life, you see, crushes things deep inside us, it shatters our faith. See them again—if only it were so.”
But then Sesame Weichbrodt raised herself up to the table, as high as she could. She stood on her tiptoes, craned her neck, rapped on the tabletop—and her bonnet quivered on her head.
“It is so!” she said with all her strength and dared them with her eyes.
There she stood, victorious in the good fight that she had waged all her life against the onslaughts of reason. There she stood, hunchbacked and tiny, trembling with certainty—an inspired, scolding little prophet.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
John E. Woods is the distinguished translator of many books, most notably Arno Schmidt’s Evening Edged in Gold, for which he won both the American Book Award and the PEN Prize for translation; Patrick Süskind’s Perfume, for which he again won the PEN Prize in 1987; Mr. Süskind’s The Pigeon; Doris Dörrie’s Love, Pain, and the Whole Damn Thing and What Do You Want from Me?; and Libuše Moníková’s The Façade. Woods is also the translator of Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus and The Magic Mountain.