“I’m sick at my stomach, Mama, I’m damned sick!” Christian whimpered, while round, deep-set eyes above an oversize nose wandered restlessly from side to side. It was only out of great desperation that he had managed to utter the word “damned.”
But the consul’s wife said, “When we use such words, Christian, the Lord punishes us with even worse sickness!”
Dr. Grabow felt the boy’s pulse; his face seemed to have grown even longer and milder. “A touch of indigestion—nothing significant, Frau Buddenbrook,” he consoled her. And then he continued in his slow, pedantic, official voice, “The best thing would be to put him to bed. A little soothing syrup, perhaps a cup of camomile tea to induce perspiration. And a strict diet—madame? I repeat, a strict diet. A little squab, a little French bread …”
“I don’t want squab!” Christian cried, beside himself. “I never want to eat again! I’m sick at my stomach, damned sick!” The potent word appeared to offer him real relief—so great was the fervor with which he uttered it.
Dr. Grabow laughed to himself, but smiled an indulgent, almost melancholy smile. Oh, the young man would eat again soon enough. He would live like the rest of the world. Like his father and grandfather, like his relatives and friends, he would spend his days sitting at a desk and enjoying a fine, rich meal four times a day. But it was in God’s hands. He, Friedrich Grabow, was not the sort of fellow to upset the lifelong habits of all these decent, prosperous, and comfortable commercial families. He would come when he was called, and recommend a strict diet for a few days—a little squab, a slice of French bread. Yes, yes—and with a good conscience assure them that it was nothing significant this time. Young as he was, he had held the hand of many a stalwart citizen who had consumed his last joint of meat, his last turkey and dressing, and then—whether death came suddenly and unexpectedly in his office chair or after he had suffered a while in his own solid bed—had commended his soul into God’s hands. A stroke, he would say, a paralytic stroke, a sudden and unpredictable death. Yes, yes, and he, Friedrich Grabow, could have tallied up for them all the many times when “it was nothing significant”—when perhaps he hadn’t even been called, or when perhaps, upon returning to the office after a good meal, they had experienced a certain brief, peculiar dizzy spell. But it was in God’s hands. He, Friedrich Grabow, was himself not averse to turkey and dressing. Today’s ham with shallot sauce had been delicious, damn if it hadn’t, and then, while you were still huffing and puffing, flat-iron pudding—macaroons, raspberries, and custard, yes, yes. “I repeat, a strict diet—Madame Buddenbrook? A little squab, a little French bread …”
8
INSIDE, in the dining room, things were breaking up.
“Mesdames et messieurs, I hope you have enjoyed your meal. There is coffee waiting for everyone and, if Madame is feeling generous, a liqueur as well, and of course a cigar for those who want one. I needn’t mention that the billiard table is available for anyone who wishes to play. Jean, you can guide our guests out to the back. Madame Köppen—may I have the honor?”
They were in the best of moods as they moved back through the large folding doors into the landscape room, chatting contentedly and telling one another what a fine meal it had been. The consul did not immediately follow, but instead gathered gentlemen interested in billiards around him.
“Would you like to hazard a little game, Father?”
No, Lebrecht Kröger was going to remain with the ladies, but Justus could certainly go on back. Köppen, Grätjens, Senator Langhals, and Dr. Grabow joined the consul, but Jean Jacques Hoffstede told them to go ahead without him. “Later, later. Johann Buddenbrook wants to pipe on his flute, and I simply have to wait for that. Au revoir, messieurs.”
As they strode along the columned hall, the six gentlemen heard the flute strike up its first tones in the landscape room, to the accompaniment of Elisabeth Buddenbrook on the harmonium—a small, bright, nimble melody that floated gracefully through the spacious rooms. The consul listened as long as there was music to be heard. He would have liked to remain behind in the landscape room himself, to sit in an armchair and give rein to his dreams and feelings as the tune carried him along. But one had one’s duties as a host.
“Bring a few cups of coffee and more cigars to the billiard room,” he said to the kitchen maid, who was just crossing the hallway.
“Yes, Lina, coffee, hear? Coffee!” Herr Köppen repeated with a voice as satisfied as his full belly and tried to give the girl’s red arm a pinch. He spoke the “c” of “coffee” far back in his throat, as if already tasting and swallowing it.
“I’m certain Madame Köppen was watching through the glass,” Consul Kröger remarked.
Senator Langhals asked, “So you live up there, Buddenbrook?”
Stairs led to the third floor, where the consul and his family had their quarters, but there was also another row of rooms along the left side of the hallway. The gentlemen smoked their cigars as they strode down the wide staircase with its openwork railing of white-enameled wood. The consul halted on the landing.
“There are three more rooms on the mezzanine,” he explained, “a breakfast room, my parents’ bedroom, and another room, open to the garden, though it’s not used much. A little hallway serves as a corridor along one side. But—straight ahead!—as you can see, the delivery wagons can drive right through the passageway and on across to Becker Grube, at the rear of the property.”
The wide, echoing passageway below was paved with large, square stones. There were offices both to one side of the vestibule door and at the far end of the passage, whereas the doors to the cellar and the kitchen, still fragrant with tart shallot sauce, were to the left of the stairway. On the far side, somewhat higher up, newly painted wooden galleries jutted from the wall: the servants’ quarters, the only access a flight of open stairs rising from the passageway. Next to the stairs stood a couple of enormous old cupboards and a carved chest.
They passed through a glass door, then down a few very low steps over which wagons could also pass, and into the courtyard, where the scullery stood off to the left. From here they could look out over the prettily designed garden—at present a damp, autumnal gray, its beds protected by straw mats against the frost. It was closed off at the far end by the “Portal,” the summerhouse with its rococo façade. The gentlemen, however, took a path down the left side of the courtyard, which first passed between two walls and then opened onto a second courtyard, in front of the back building.
Here a slippery set of stairs led down into a vaulted cellar with an earthen floor. It served as a warehouse, and a pulley rope for lifting sacks of grain dangled from the highest loft. But they took the dry, clean stairway on the right, which led to the second floor, where the consul opened a white door onto the billiard room.
Herr Köppen flung himself in exhaustion onto one of the hard chairs that lined the walls of the wide, bare, severe-looking room. “I’ll watch for now,” he exclaimed, brushing the fine drops of rain from his tailcoat. “Damned if that isn’t quite a hike through your house, Buddenbrook!”
As in the landscape room, a fire was burning behind the brass grate of the stove. From the three high and narrow windows there was a view out over damp red roofs, gray courtyards, gables.
“A game of carom, senator?” the consul asked, taking cues from the rack. Then he walked around both tables, closing the pockets. “Who wants to play with us? Grätjens? Doctor? All right. Grätjens and Justus. Here, you take the other table—Köppen, you really must play.”
The wine merchant stood up and, with a mouth still full of cigar smoke, he listened to a strong gust of wind that whistled among the houses, drove pricks of rain against the windowpanes, and howled, caught in the trap of the chimney.
“Damn!” he said, puffing out smoke. “Do you think the Wullenwewer will be able to make harbor, Buddenbrook? What wretched weather.”
Yes, the news from Travemünde had not been the best, Consul Kröger confirmed, chalking the leath
er on his cue. Storms all along the coast. Good Lord, it was almost as bad as in ’24, when St. Petersburg had the big flood.—Well, here came the coffee.
They helped themselves, took a sip, and began to play. But then the conversation turned to the Customs Union—oh, Consul Buddenbrook was enthusiastic about the Customs Union!
“What an inspiration, gentlemen!” he shouted, taking his shot and turning around eagerly to the other table, where the topic had first been mentioned. “We should join at the first opportunity.”
Herr Köppen, however, did not share this opinion—no, he practically snorted his opposition. “And our self-sufficiency? And our independence?” he asked, leaning belligerently on his cue. “What about that? Would it ever occur to Hamburg to go along with this Prussian invention? Why don’t we just let ourselves be annexed, Buddenbrook? Heaven forbid, what could a Customs Union do for us, I want to know! Isn’t everything going just fine?”
“Yes, for you and your wines, Köppen! And perhaps for Russian products, I’ll leave those aside. But we’re not importing anything else! And as far as exports go, well, yes, we send a little grain to Holland and England, that’s true. But, no, everything’s not going fine, unfortunately. Lord knows, we did other business around here in days past. But as part of the Customs Union, the Mecklenburgs and Schleswig-Holstein would be open to us. There’s no foreseeing how our own enterprise would pick up.”
“Oh, please, Buddenbrook,” Grätjens began, bending over the table and taking careful aim, waving the cue back and forth in his bony hand, “a Customs Union—I don’t understand. Our system is so simple and practical, is it not? All that’s needed is an oath and the ship clears customs.”
“A lovely old institution.” The consul had to admit that.
“No, really, Herr Buddenbrook, just because you think something is ‘lovely’!” Senator Langhals was a little annoyed. “I’m not a commercial man, but if I were to be honest—no, the freeman’s oath is fast becoming a farce, I must say. A mere formality, and people pay no regard to it at all. And the state comes out on the losing end. I’ve heard things that are simply scandalous. I am convinced that, as far as the senate is concerned, our joining the Customs Union would be …”
“Then it’s going to end in conflict!” Herr Köppen furiously threw his cue to the floor. He said “congflick” and from here on threw caution to the winds in matters of pronunciation. “A congflick, I tell you, ’nd I know something about what that means. No, beggin’ your pardon, senator, but there’s jist no settin’ you to rights, heav’n help you!” And he began to speak heatedly of arbitration committees and the welfare of the state and freemen’s oaths and independent states.
Thank God, Jean Jacques Hoffstede arrived! He entered arm in arm with Pastor Wunderlich, two dispassionate and sprightly old gentlemen from the untroubled days of the past.
“Now, my fine friends,” he began, “I have something for you: a little joke, a witty epigram taken from the French. Now, listen closely!”
He eased himself onto a chair, facing the billiard players, who leaned on their cues or against the tables. Pulling a piece of paper from his pocket, he laid his long index finger with its signet ring against his pointed nose and merrily read, with naïve epic emphasis:
As Maréchal Saxe took his coach for a ride,
With proud Madame Pompadour right by his side,
Young Frelon remarked as they drove ’cross the heath,
“Behold, the king’s sword—and behold, the king’s sheath!”
Herr Köppen was taken aback for a moment, then set aside the congflick and the welfare of the state and joined in the laughter, till the room echoed with it. Pastor Wunderlich, however, stepped to the window and, judging from the bounce of his shoulders, chuckled softly to himself.
They stayed a good while back here in the billiard room, because Hoffstede had several more jokes of a similar sort at the ready. Herr Köppen had opened his vest and was in the best of moods, for he was more at home here than in the dining room. He had a droll Plattdeutsch comment to add for every shot, and now and then he cheerily recited to himself: “As Maréchal Saxe …”
The little verse sounded more than curious in his rough bass voice.…
9
IT WAS RATHER LATER, around eleven o’clock, when the party reassembled in the landscape room and at the same time began to break up. After having her hand kissed by all the men, Elisabeth Buddenbrook immediately went up to see how the ailing Christian was doing, leaving the supervision of the maids and the cleaning up to Mamselle Jungmann, since Madame Antoinette had retired to her room on the mezzanine. The consul, however, accompanied his guests down the stairs to the entrance hall and through the door to the street.
A cutting wind was blowing the rain aslant, and the old Krögers, wrapped in thick fur coats, crept hastily into their majestic equipage, which had been waiting for some time. An unsteady flicker came from the yellow light of the oil lamps burning on poles outside the house—and of those suspended from thick chains across the pavement farther down the street. Here and there the houses, some with bays, some with stoops and benches, protruded into the street as it sloped down toward the Trave. Wet grass sprouted up between the cracked cobblestones. Across the way, St. Mary’s Church lay wrapped in shadows, darkness, and rain.
“Merci,” Lebrecht Kröger said and shook the hand of the consul, who was standing beside the carriage. “Merci, Jean, it was very kind of you.” Then the door slammed and the equipage rumbled off. Pastor Wunderlich and Grätjens the broker departed as well with thanks. Herr Köppen, in a coat with a fivefold cape and a broad-brimmed gray stovepipe, his stout wife on his arm, said in his most honest bass tones, “ ’vnin’, Buddenbrook. Now go on back in, don’t catch cold. And many thanks, eh? Don’t know when I et that well last. And my red at four marks courant proved agreeable, it seems? So, g’night, then.”
The Köppens walked beside Consul Kröger and his family in the direction of the river, while Senator Langhals, Dr. Grabow, and Jean Jacques Hoffstede moved off in the opposite direction.
Consul Buddenbrook stood a few steps outside the door, shivering a little in his cloth coat, his hands in the pockets of his light-colored trousers, and listened to the footsteps as they faded in the deserted, wet, and badly lit streets. Then he turned and looked up at the gray gabled façade of the house. His eyes lingered on the motto that stood chiseled in antique letters above the entrance: “Dominus providebit.” Lowering his head, he entered, and carefully bolted the unwieldy, creaking door. He let the vestibule door fall into its lock with a snap and slowly walked down the dully echoing entrance hall.
The cook was just coming down the steps with a tray full of clinking glasses, and he asked her, “Where’s the master, Trina?”
“In the dining room, sir.” Her face turned as red as her arms, for she was a country girl and easily disconcerted.
He walked upstairs, and as he moved along the dark columned hall, his hand moved to his breast pocket—there was a rustling of paper. Then he entered the dining room. In one corner a few remnants of candles were still burning on one of the candelabra, illuminating the now cleared table. The tart fragrance of shallot sauce lay stubbornly in the air.
And at the far end of the room, by the windows, Johann Buddenbrook was walking leisurely back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back.
10
WELL, MY SON JOHN! HOW goes it, lad!” He stopped and extended a hand to his son—a white hand, with short but delicately shaped fingers, the hand of the Buddenbrooks. In the dull and fitful light, his robust body was outlined against the dark red of the curtains, only his powdered wig and lace jabot shining white.
“Not tired yet? I’m just pacing here, listening to the wind—rotten weather! Captain Kloot is sailing back from Riga.”
“Oh, Father, all will go well, with God’s help.”
“Can I depend on it? I admit, you and the Lord are on intimate terms.”
Seeing his father’s g
ood mood, the consul was feeling a little more at ease.
“Yes, well, to come to the point,” he began, “I didn’t just want to say good night, Papa, but in fact—now, you won’t be angry, will you? I didn’t wish to bother you till now, not on such a festive evening—but this letter came this afternoon.”
“Monsieur Gotthold—voilà!” The old man pretended to remain quite calm as he accepted the bluish paper, still sealed. “Herr Johann Buddenbrook, Sr. Personal. Your good stepbrother is a man of conduite, Jean. Did I ever answer that second letter of his that came the other day? And here he’s written a third.” While his pink face grew more and more somber, he ripped open the seal with one finger, quickly unfolded the thin paper, and leaned over to catch the candlelight, giving the letter a sharp rap with the back of his hand. There seemed to be disloyalty and rebellion even in the handwriting—for whereas the hand of the Buddenbrooks usually hurried lightly across paper in tiny, slanted lines, this large and wildly tilted script had been pressed on the page with eruptive energy. Many words had been underlined with a rapid flourish of the pen.
The consul had withdrawn a little to one side against the wall, where the chairs were; since his father was standing he did not sit down, but instead nervously grasped one of the chairs’ high arms, and watched the old man read, scowling, his head bent to one side, his lips moving rapidly.
Father,
I am most likely mistaken to hope that your sense of justice is sufficient for you to gauge my indignation upon receiving no answer to my second urgent letter, written upon receipt of your reply (which I shall not presume to characterize!) to my initial inquiry regarding the matter at issue. I must, however, assert that I consider the manner in which you have chosen to widen the lamentable rift separating us to be a sin for which one day you shall indeed be called to answer before the judgment seat of God. It is sad enough that upon a day long past you chose to turn against me so cruelly and completely, merely because in following the inclinations of my heart I wed my present spouse and in so doing took charge of a certain retail establishment, thereby offending your inordinate pride. Yet the manner in which you are treating me at present cries out to Heaven, and, should you entertain the idea that in light of your silence I shall be content to remain silent myself, you are sadly mistaken. The purchase price of the house you recently acquired on Meng Strasse was some 100,000 marks courant, and I am also aware that Johann, your joint partner and the son of your second marriage, currently leases lodgings with you and that upon your death will become the sole owner of both your business and your house. You have come to an agreement with my stepsister and her husband in Frankfurt, and I have no intention of interfering in the matter. But as regards me, your eldest son, you have gone so far in your un-Christian anger as to refuse me outright any compensation for my share in the house! I kept my peace when you chose to make a payment of 100,000 marks courant so that I might set up my own business at the time of my marriage and also promised a single payment of another 100,000 as my share of the inheritance. At the time I was not sufficiently cognizant of the extent of your wealth. Now, however, I see things more clearly, and since I need not regard myself as disinherited on principle, I therefore lay claim in this particular instance to a compensation of 33,335 marks courant, that is to say, one-third of the purchase price. I do not choose to speculate to what damnable influences I owe the treatment I have thus far received and borne so patiently; but I do protest said treatment with all the sense of justice I can muster as a Christian and a man of business, and I assure you for the last time that, should you not choose to respect my just claims, I will no longer be able to respect you either as a Christian or as my father or as a man of business.