Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

  Herr Buddenbrook made use of his gold snuffbox. “The boy’s a monkey! Be better if he just became a poet, wouldn’t it, Hoffstede?”

  Mamselle Jungmann pulled the window curtains, tucking one over the other, and the room soon lay in the restless, but discreet and soft candlelight provided by the crystal chandelier and the candlesticks on the secretary.

  “Well, Christian,” the consul’s wife said—her hair had taken on a golden sheen now—“what did you learn this afternoon?” And it turned out that Christian had had lessons in writing, arithmetic, and singing.

  He was a lad of seven, who even now looked ridiculously like his father. He had the same rather small, round, deep-set eyes, the same jutting arch to the nose was evident already, and a few lines beneath the cheekbones suggested that the shape of the face would not retain its present childish fullness.

  “We laughed ourselves silly”—he was starting to chatter away now, while his eyes wandered from person to person in the room. “I have to tell you what Herr Stengel said to Siegmund Köstermann.” He bent forward, shaking his head and addressing the empty air with great emphasis. “ ‘Externally, my good lad, externally you are sleek and dapper, true, but internally, my good lad, you are black.’ ” He dropped all his “r”s as he said it, and “black” came out as “bleck”—and his face was so convincingly comic at depicting this “extuhnal” sleekness and dapperness that they all broke into laughter.

  “A monkey!” old Buddenbrook repeated with a giggle.

  Herr Hoffstede, however, was beside himself with ecstasy. “Charmant!” he cried. “Unsurpassable! You have to know Marcellus Stengel! To a tee! No, it’s really too precious!”

  Thomas, who lacked such talents, stood beside his younger brother laughing heartily, with no trace of envy. His teeth were not very good, were small and yellowish. But his nose was strikingly well chiseled, and both his eyes and the shape of his face greatly resembled those of his grandfather.

  Some adults seated themselves on the chairs, some on the sofa, and they chatted now with the children, commented on the unseasonable cold, on the house. Herr Hoffstede was admiring the splendid inkwell—a black-spotted hunting dog of Sèvres porcelain—that graced the secretary. Dr. Grabow, however, a man about the same age as the consul and with a long, kind, and gentle smiling face framed in whiskers, was inspecting the cakes, raisin bread, and various saltcellars set out for display on the table. This was the “salt and bread” sent by relatives and friends to mark the move to a new home. But as evidence that these were gifts from persons of some substance, the bread came in the form of sweet, spicy, heavy pastries and the salt in sturdy gold containers.

  “Looks as if I will have some work to do,” the doctor said, pointing to the sweets and cautioning the children. And then, rocking his head, he held up a formidable utensil for salt, pepper, and mustard.

  “From Lebrecht Kröger,” Monsieur Buddenbrook said with a grin. “Always a fair man, my good relative is. I did not present him with anything so fine when he built his summer house out beyond the Burg Gate. But he’s always been … stylish! generous! a cavalier à la mode.”

  The bell had set up a clangor through the whole house several times now. Pastor Wunderlich arrived, a portly old gentleman in a long, black coat. His hair was powdered, and he had a merry, fair face in which a pair of gray, alert eyes sparkled. He had been a widower for many years and counted himself among the confirmed bachelors, like Herr Grätjens, the tall broker who had come with him and who was forever rolling up a scrawny hand and holding it to his eye like a telescope, as if examining a painting—he was generally recognized as a connoisseur of fine art.

  And Senator Dr. Langhals arrived as well, with his wife, long-time friends of the family; and Köppen the wine merchant—no forgetting him—with his large, ruddy face set between two overstuffed shoulders, and his equally stout wife.

  It was after four-thirty when the Krögers arrived at last—both older and younger generations, along with Consul Kröger’s sons, Jakob and Jürgen, who were the same ages as Tom and Christian. And, almost simultaneously, here came the parents of the younger Madame Kröger: lumber merchant Herr Oeverdieck and his wife—an elderly, affectionate couple, who made a habit of exchanging the most youthful terms of endearment for everyone to hear.

  “Late guests are fine guests,” Consul Buddenbrook said, kissing his mother-in-law’s hand.

  “And arrive en masse!” And after sweeping an arm over the contingent of Kröger in-laws, Johann Buddenbrook shook hands with Herr Kröger, senior.

  Lebrecht Kröger, cavalier à la mode, was a large, distinguished man. His hair was lightly powdered, but he wore the latest fashion. Two rows of jeweled buttons sparkled on his velvet vest. His son Justus sported a goatee and a mustache turned up at the ends, but he strongly resembled his father in stature and demeanor and was equally a master of elegant, rounded gestures with his hand.

  They did not take seats at once, but stood there in expectation of the main event, engaging in casual, preliminary conversation. And now Johann Buddenbrook, senior, offered his arm to Madame Köppen, and said in a voice audible to all, “Well, if everyone has an appetite, mesdames et messieurs …”

  Mamselle Jungmann and the kitchen maid had opened the white folding doors to the dining room, and the party moved at a confident, leisurely pace in its direction—one could reckon with a nourishing snack at the Buddenbrooks’.

  3

  AS THE WHOLE PARTY set in motion, the younger master of the house reached into his left breast pocket, and at the sound of rustling paper his hospitable smile suddenly vanished and was replaced by a tense and worried look, while a few muscles at both temples twitched as if he were clenching his teeth. He feigned a couple of steps in the direction of the dining room, then held back as his eyes searched for his mother, who was bringing up the rear at the side of Pastor Wunderlich and about to cross the threshold.

  “Beg your pardon, pastor—a word with you, Mama.” And while the pastor gave him an amiable nod, Consul Buddenbrook pressed the old woman to join him at the window in the landscape room.

  “To be brief—there’s a letter from Gotthold,” he said quickly in a low voice and, gazing into her dark, questioning eyes, he pulled the folded and sealed paper from his pocket. “It’s his handwriting—this is the third letter now, and Papa only answered the first. What am I to do? It came at two this afternoon, and I would have given it to Father long before now, but how can I spoil the mood for him today? What do you say? There’s still time to ask him to leave the room for a moment.”

  “No, you’re right, Jean, it can wait!” Madame Buddenbrook said and with a customary swift motion took hold of her son’s arm. “You know what’s in it!” she added worriedly. “He simply won’t give in, the lad won’t. He’s taken it into his head that he’s due compensation for his share in the house. No, no, Jean, not just yet. This evening, perhaps, right before bed.”

  “What to do?” the consul repeated, shaking his lowered head. “I’ve often wanted to ask Papa to give in. It mustn’t look as if I have worked my way into Father’s bosom and am conspiring against my stepbrother, Gotthold, and I have to avoid even the appearance of such a thing with Father as well. But, in all honesty, I am a joint partner. And for the present Bethsy and I are paying perfectly fair rent for use of the third floor. As far as my sister in Frankfurt goes, it’s all arranged. Her husband has received his compensation—with Father still alive—a quarter of the cost of the house, a very favorable settlement that Papa managed quite cleverly, very much to the firm’s advantage. But Papa’s snubbing Gotthold like this is …”

  “No, Jean, that’s nonsense. His position in the matter is really quite clear. But Gotthold thinks that as his stepmother I care only for my own children’s interests and am deliberately estranging his father from him. That is the sad part.”

  “But it’s his fault!” the consul came close to shouting, and then dampened his voice with a glance toward the dining room. “This
sorry state of affairs is his fault. Judge for yourself—why couldn’t he be reasonable! Why did he have to marry this Demoiselle Stüwing with her … shop?” The consul laughed in annoyance and embarrassment at the word. “Father’s prejudice against her shop is, to be sure, a weakness of his. But it’s a bit of vanity that Gotthold should have respected.”

  “Oh, Jean, the best thing would be for Papa to give in.”

  “But can I suggest that to him?” the consul whispered, his hand flying excitedly to his brow. “As regards my personal concerns in the matter, I would have to say: Father, pay up. But I’m joint partner, too, who must represent the firm’s interests, and if Papa doesn’t think he has any obligation to withdraw moneys from our working capital for a disobedient and rebellious son—We are talking about eleven thousand thalers courant. No, no, I can’t advise him to do that. But neither can I advise against it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. And the scene with Papa is bound to be so désagréable.”

  “Later this evening, Jean. Come now, they’re all waiting.”

  The consul hid the paper in his breast pocket and offered his mother his arm, and they stepped side by side over the threshold into the brightly lit dining room, where the others had just finished finding their places at the long table.

  The wall coverings here displayed white statues of gods standing among slender columns, creating an almost three-dimensional effect against the sky-blue background. The heavy red curtains at the windows had been closed, and in each corner of the room eight candles burned in a tall, gold-plated candelabrum, not to mention those in silver branched candlesticks on the table. Above the massive buffet, which faced the landscape room, hung an enormous painting—a gulf in Italy, its blue misty hue extraordinarily effective in this light. Substantial, stiff-backed sofas upholstered in red damask stood along the walls.

  Every trace of worry and care had vanished from Madame Buddenbrook’s face as she took her seat between Pastor Wunderlich and Kröger senior, who presided at the window end of the table.

  “Bon appétit!” she said with a sudden, brief, cordial nod, while her eyes rapidly swept the full length of the table to the children at the far end.

  4

  AS I’VE SAID, Herr Buddenbrook, my compliments.” Herr Köppen’s ponderous voice carried over the general table conversation. The kitchen maid—with her exposed, red arms, a heavy striped skirt, and a little white cap on the back of her head—assisted by Mamselle Jungmann and Elisabeth Buddenbrook’s chambermaid from the third floor, had now served the hot herb soup with croutons, and they all began to spoon it cautiously.

  “My compliments! Such spaciousness, such noblesse. Must say, a man could live well here, must say.” Herr Köppen had not been on visiting terms with the previous owners of the house; he had not been a rich man for long, did not come from a patrician family, and unfortunately could not wean himself from the use of several homelier turns of phrase—“must say,” for example. Besides which, he said “commliments.”

  “And not at all expensive,” Herr Grätjens remarked dryly—and he should know—and went on inspecting the Italian gulf through his telescoped hand.

  As far as possible the ladies and gentlemen were seated in pairs, the long chain of the family broken here and there by friends. But the rule had not been strictly enforced, and the old Oeverdiecks were as usual practically sitting on each other’s laps, exchanging loving nods. Kröger senior, however, was enthroned high and erect between the wife of Senator Langhals and Madame Antoinette, dividing his hand gestures and reserved jests equally between those two ladies.

  “When was the house built?” Herr Hoffstede addressed his question across the table to the elder Buddenbrook, who was conversing in a jovial and ironical tone with Madame Köppen.

  “In—now, wait—around 1680, if I’m not mistaken. My son is much better than I with dates of that sort.”

  “Eighty-two,” the consul confirmed, bowing slightly; he had taken a seat, without a lady companion, beside Senator Langhals, farther down the table. “It was completed in the winter of 1682. At the time Ratenkamp & Co. had started to prosper quite nicely. It’s sad—the way the firm fell off in the last twenty years.”

  Conversation came to a halt, which lasted for a good thirty seconds. They looked into their plates and recalled the once so prosperous family that had built the house, lived here, and then, having sunk into poverty, moved away.

  “Ah yes, very sad,” Grätjens the broker said, “and when you think what madness led to their ruin—If only Dietrich Ratenkamp hadn’t made Geelmaack a partner. God knows, once he started running things, I simply threw up my hands. I knew from very reliable sources, my friends, the awful risks he was taking behind Ratenkamp’s back, lending money here and taking out credit there, all in the firm’s name. Finally it all came to an end. The banks grew suspicious—nothing left to back him up. You simply have no idea. But, then, who was minding the store? Geelmaack, maybe? They simply ran amok like rats, year in, year out. And Ratenkamp paid no attention whatever.”

  “He was as good as paralyzed,” the consul said. A somber, taciturn look came over his face. Bending forward, he moved his spoon through his soup, letting his little, round, deep-set eyes drift to the head of the table now and then.

  “He walked around like a man under enormous pressures, and I think one can understand what they were. And why did he ally himself with Geelmaack? He brought wretched little capital with him and his reputation was not the best. He must have felt he had to shift some part of his dreadful responsibilities to someone else, simply because he sensed that it was all coming to an end. The firm had been badly mismanaged, the old family was passé. Wilhelm Geelmaack surely did little more than supply the final push into the abyss.”

  “Is that your opinion as well, my good consul?” Pastor Wunderlich asked with a circumspect smile while pouring red wine for himself and the lady beside him. “That it would all have turned out just as it did even without Geelmaack and all his extravagant dealings?”

  “Possibly not,” the consul said, mulling it over and without addressing anyone in particular. “But I do think Dietrich Ratenkamp’s alliance with Geelmaack was inevitable—fate simply took its course. He must have acted under the pressure of implacable necessity. Ah, I’m convinced that he halfway knew about his partner’s dealings, that he was not totally ignorant of what state his warehouse was in. But he was immobilized.”

  “Well, assez, Jean,” the senior Buddenbrook said, laying his spoon aside. “That’s merely another one of your idées.”

  With a preoccupied smile, the consul lifted his glass to his father.

  But Lebrecht Kröger said, “No, it’s time we looked to the happy present.” And he carefully and elegantly grasped the neck of his bottle of white wine—a small silver stag decorated the cork—and laid it slightly on its side for a closer examination of the label. “C. F. Köppen,” he read and nodded to the wine merchant. “Ah yes, where would we be without you.”

  Madame Antoinette kept a watchful eye on the movements of her serving girls as the gold-rimmed Meissener plates were changed, and Mamselle Jungmann called orders into the mouthpiece of the speaking tube that connected dining room and kitchen.

  The fish course was passed, and as Pastor Wunderlich carefully served himself he said, “A happy present is not something we can always take for granted. These young people who have joined to celebrate with us older folks probably cannot imagine that things were ever any different. I might add that I have played a personal role in the destinies of our Buddenbrooks on a few occasions. And whenever my eye chances to fall upon such items”—and he picked up a heavy silver spoon from the table and turned to Madame Antoinette—“I have to think if it might not be one of the pieces that our friend the philosopher Lenoir, sergeant to His Majesty Emperor Napoleon, held in his hands back in aught six—and then I am reminded of our meeting that day on Alf Strasse, madame.”

  Madame Buddenbrook gazed at her lap and smiled a half-em
barrassed smile full of memories. Tom and Tony, who didn’t like fish and had been attentively following the adults’ conversation, called up to the head of the table in unison, “Oh yes, tell us about it, Grandmama!” But the pastor, who knew that she did not like to recount what had been a rather upsetting incident for her, began to tell the old story yet once again; the children would have been delighted to hear it even for the hundredth time, and perhaps it was still unfamiliar to one or two of the guests.

  “Well, to be brief, picture it: An afternoon in November, and so cold and rainy, Lord have mercy, and I am returning from a pastoral call, walking down Alf Strasse and thinking about the evil times that had befallen us. Prince Blücher was gone, the French were in the town, but one noticed little general excitement. The streets were quiet, people were sitting in their houses, keeping a sharp eye out. Prahl the butcher had stepped in front of his door, his hands in his pockets, and called out in that booming voice of his: ‘Well, if this ain’t the last straw, if this ain’t the last straw—!’ And—bang!—a bullet had struck him right in the head. Well, and so then I’m thinking I’d better look in on the Buddenbrooks, that a cheering word might be welcome, what with Madame having to deal with soldiers quartered in her house and her husband down with erysipelas.