Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

  Consul Buddenbrook pulled the leather writing case to him in order to take out some of the other papers and scan them. There were very old, yellowed, tattered letters that worried mothers had written their sons working in foreign lands, on which those who received them had noted: “Received and taken to heart.” There were certificates of citizenship, with the crest and seal of the free Hanseatic city, insurance policies, poems of congratulation, and requests to serve as a godparent. There were business letters, like those a son had written from Stockholm or Amsterdam to his father and partner, containing, along with the reassurance that the wheat was safe and secure, a touching request to extend greetings to his wife and children at once. There was a special diary the consul had kept during his trip through England and the Brabant, its cover displaying an etching of Edinburgh’s castle and Grassmarket. There was the sad documentation of Gotthold’s letters to his father, and finally, cheerfully capping it all, the latest festive poem by Jean Jacques Hoffstede.

  He heard the sound of dainty, hasty chimes. Just above the secretary hung a painting in muted colors, a depiction of an old-fashioned marketplace and a church, and in its steeple, a real clock had just struck ten in its distinctive tones. The consul closed the case full of family records and carefully put it away in a back drawer of the secretary. Then he went across to the bedroom.

  Here the walls were hung with dark fabric in the same large-flowered pattern used for the long draperies of the new mother’s bed. A feeling of peace and convalescence, of triumph over fear and pain, hung in the air, along with the scents of eau de cologne and medicines, their traces blended by the gentle warmth of the stove. Only dim light filtered through the closed curtains.

  Both grandparents were standing side by side, bent over the cradle and watching the sleeping child. The consul’s wife, however, lay in bed, wearing an elegant lace jacket, her reddish hair perfectly coiffed, a happy smile playing over her rather pallid face. She put out her lovely hand to greet her husband, a gold bracelet tinkling at the wrist, and as was her habit she turned the palm upward as far as possible, which seemed to heighten the warmth of her gesture.

  “Well, Bethsy, how are you feeling?”

  “Splendid, splendid, my dear Jean!”

  Her hand still in his, he turned toward his parents and lowered his face to the baby girl, who was breathing in rapid, noisy gasps, and for a whole minute he took in the warm, benign, touching fragrance she emitted. “God bless you,” he said in hushed tones, kissing the brow of this little creature—whose tiny, wrinkled yellow fingers bore an awful resemblance to a chicken’s claws.

  “She drank and drank something wonderful,” Madame Antoinette remarked. “Just look at the stupendous weight she’s gained.”

  “Would you believe me if I say she looks like my Netty?” old Johann Buddenbrook said, his face absolutely radiant with happiness and pride. “Those flashing black eyes, the devil take me if …”

  The old woman modestly waved this aside. “Ah, how can anyone speak of a resemblance at this point? You’re going to church, Jean?”

  “Yes, it’s ten—high time we left, I’m just waiting for the children.”

  And the children could be heard now. They were storming noisily down the stairs, to the accompaniment of Klothilde’s audible, chastening hisses; but when they entered the room, all dressed in their little fur coats—St. Mary’s still bore winter’s chill of course—they did so softly and cautiously, first of all because of their little sister, and second, because they had to compose themselves for Sunday worship. Their faces were red and excited. What a holiday! The stork, definitely a very strong, muscular stork, had brought all sorts of marvelous things besides their new sister: for Thomas, a new sealskin school bag; for Antonie, a large doll with real—how extraordinary!—real hair; a colorful picture book for well-behaved Klothilde, who in her quiet, grateful way was occupied almost exclusively with a bag of sweets that the stork had also brought; and for Christian, an entire puppet theater, complete with Sultan, Death, and the Devil.

  They kissed their mother and were permitted one cautious peek behind the green silk curtains, and then, together with their father, who had thrown on his cape and picked up his hymnal, they quietly set out for church, the Sunday calm broken only by piercing cries from the newest member of the family, who had suddenly awakened.

  2

  EACH SUMMER—in June, or maybe even in May—Tony Buddenbrook would join her maternal grandparents in their house beyond the Burg Gate, and for her that was pure joy.

  Life was good in the country, in the luxuriously furnished villa with all its barns, servants’ quarters, carriage houses—and incredible orchards, vegetable gardens, and flower beds that fell away steeply toward the Trave River. The Krögers lived in grand style, and although this dazzling wealth was of a different sort from the solid if somewhat ponderous prosperity of the Buddenbrooks, it was obvious that everything at her grandparents’ was always about two notches more splendid than at home; and that impressed young Miss Buddenbrook.

  There could be no thought here of any chore in the house, let alone in the kitchen, whereas on Meng Strasse, although it was of no particular importance to her grandfather—or to her mother, for that matter—her father and grandmother all too frequently reminded her to help with the dusting, always holding up to her the example of humble, devout, and diligent Cousin Klothilde. The aristocratic tendencies of her mother’s side of the family stirred within the young lady when she sat in her rocking chair and gave an order to the maid or the butler. In addition to them, the staff of the elder Krögers included two other serving girls and a coachman.

  Say what you like, there is something pleasant about waking of a morning in a large bedroom with lovely, cheerful wallpaper and finding that the first thing you touch is a heavy satin quilt; and it is exceptional to have an early breakfast in a room opening onto a terrace, with the fresh morning air drifting in from the front garden through an open glass door, and to be served neither coffee, nor tea, but a cup of chocolate—yes, every morning, a cup of birthday chocolate, with a thick moist piece of pound cake.

  True, except on Sundays, Tony had to eat her breakfast all alone, because it was not her grandparents’ custom to appear until well after school began. And so, after she had devoured her cake and chocolate, she would pick up her school bag, skip across the terrace, and walk down through the well-tended front garden.

  She was really very pretty, little Tony Buddenbrook was. Flowing from beneath her straw hat was a thick head of blond hair, curly of course, and turning darker with each passing year; and the slightly protruding upper lip gave a saucy look to her fresh little face with its lively gray-blue eyes, a sauciness repeated in her small, graceful body. There was self-assurance in the spring of her thin legs in their snow-white stockings. A great many people knew her, and they would greet Consul Buddenbrook’s little daughter as she stepped through the garden gate onto the chestnut-lined lane. The vegetable lady, for instance, in her big straw bonnet with bright green ribbons, driving her little cart on the way from the village, would call out a friendly, “And a good mornin’ to you, missy!”; and Matthiesen, a tall grain hauler in a black jacket and knee breeches, white stockings, and buckled shoes, would even doff his homely top hat respectfully as he passed.

  Tony would stand and wait a while for her neighbor Julie Hagenström, with whom she usually walked to school. Julie, a girl with big bright black eyes and shoulders that she carried a little high, lived in the next villa, which was entirely overgrown with grapevines. Her father, Herr Hagenström, whose family was rather new to town, had married a young woman from Frankfurt—née Semlinger, by the way—a lady who had extraordinarily thick black hair and the largest diamond earrings in the city. Herr Hagenström, partner in the export firm of Strunck & Hagenström, took eager and ambitious interest in the affairs of the town, but his marriage had caused some astonishment among families with stricter traditions—the Möllendorpfs, the Langhalses, the Buddenbrooks. Quite a
part from that, however, and despite his active participation on committees, councils, and boards of directors, he was not particularly well liked. He appeared determined to oppose the old established families every chance he got, to dispute their opinions with some wily argument or other, and to push through his own, establishing himself as more competent and indispensable than anyone else. Consul Buddenbrook once said of him: “Hinrich Hagenström is meddlesome and obstructive. He must be out to make me his personal target; he blocks me whenever he can. There was a scene today at the Central Committee for Paupers, and just a few days ago in the Finance Department.…” And Johann Buddenbrook added: “A damn troublemaker!” On another occasion both father and son came home to dinner angry and depressed. What had happened? Oh, nothing—they had lost a large consignment of rye to be shipped to Holland. Strunck & Hagenström had snapped it right from under their noses; a sly fox, that Hinrich Hagenström.

  Tony had heard such remarks often enough so that she was not inclined to have an especially high opinion of Julie Hagenström. They walked to school together because they were neighbors, but usually they just annoyed each other.

  “My father has a thousand thalers,” Julie said, assuming she was telling a dreadful lie. “What about yours?”

  Tony was struck dumb with envy and humiliation. Then, very calmly and casually, she said, “My chocolate tasted awfully good this morning. What do you drink for breakfast, Julie?”

  “Oh, before I forget,” Julie replied, “would you like one of my apples? You would? Well, I’m not going to give you one!” And she pursed her lips, and her black eyes grew moist at the sheer delight of it.

  Sometimes Julie’s brother Hermann, who was a few years older than she, walked with them to school. She had another brother, named Moritz, but he was sickly and was tutored at home. Hermann was blond, but his rather flat nose hung down over his upper lip. And because he breathed only through his mouth, was constantly smacking his lips.

  “Nonsense!” he said. “Papa has a lot more than a thousand thalers.” The interesting thing about him was that he never took a sandwich to school for his snack, but a lemon bun—a soft, oval milk pastry with raisins—and, to make matters worse, he would top it with tongue sausage or breast of goose. That was the sort of taste he had.

  This was something new to Tony Buddenbrook. Lemon buns with breast of goose—that really must taste good, she thought. And whenever he let her peek into his lunch box, she would let it be known that she would like to try it.

  One morning Hermann said, “I can’t spare any today, Tony, but I’ll bring another bun tomorrow, and it’ll be yours if you’ll give me something in return.”

  Well, the next morning, Tony walked out onto the lane and waited five minutes, but Julie still hadn’t come. She waited one more minute, and then Hermann came out alone; he was smacking his lips softly and swinging his lunch box back and forth on its strap.

  “Well,” he said, “here’s a lemon bun with breast of goose. There’s not even any fat on it—nothing but lean meat. What’ll you give me for it?”

  “Let’s see—would a shilling do?” Tony asked. They were standing in the middle of the lane.

  “A shilling …” Hermann repeated; then he swallowed hard and said, “No, I want something else.”

  “What?” Tony asked. She was ready to pay anything for this delicacy.

  “A kiss!” Hermann Hagenström cried, throwing both arms around Tony and kissing away blindly; but he never so much as touched her face, because she flung her head back with great skill, thrust her book bag against his chest with her left hand, and, summoning all her strength, gave his face three or four slaps with her right. He stumbled backward, but at just that moment his sister Julie dashed out from behind a tree and, like a little black devil hissing with rage, threw herself at Tony, tore off her hat, and scratched her cheeks unmercifully. That event more or less marked the end of their friendship.

  Tony had certainly not denied young Hagenström his kiss out of shyness, by the way. She was a fairly cheeky young thing, whose high spirits had caused her parents, in particular the consul, considerable worry, and although she was bright enough and could quickly learn anything demanded of her in school, her behavior was so unsatisfactory that the principal, one Fräulein Agatha Vermehren, finally had to visit Meng Strasse and, though perspiring with embarrassment, politely suggested to the consul’s wife that her young daughter be given a serious reprimand—for despite many well-intended warnings she had once again been guilty of a flagrant piece of mischief right out on the street.

  There was nothing wrong with the fact that Tony knew everyone on the streets of town, and would chat with almost anyone; the consul was quite agreeable to that, because it revealed a sense of community and love of neighbor, rather than conceit. Together with Thomas, she would scramble about among the piles of oats and wheat spread out in the lofts of the warehouses along the Trave, she would chatter away with the workers and the clerks who sat in their little dim offices on the ground floor, she would even help hoist the sacks on the pulleys. She knew the butchers in white aprons who came walking down Breite Strasse carrying trays of meat; she knew the women who came in from the country with their tin cans of milk, and sometimes she even asked for a ride in their carts; she knew the gray-bearded master goldsmiths who worked in little wooden booths built into the arcades along the market square, knew the women who sold fish, fruit, and vegetables at the market and the porters idling on street corners, chewing tobacco. All fine and good.

  But there was a pale, beardless man, of undetermined age and with a wistful smile, whose habit it was to take a morning stroll along Breite Strasse; and it was not his fault that at every sudden sound—if, for instance, someone shouted “ha!” or “ho!”—he would hop about in a kind of dance, and Tony would make him dance the moment she spotted him. And there was nothing nice about the distress that cries of “Madame Brella” or “Miss Mushroom” caused a tiny little woman with a large head, whose habit it was to protect herself in bad weather with a monstrous umbrella full of holes. And it was quite reprehensible for two or three like-minded girlfriends to appear at the door of the elderly lady who sold woolen dolls in the narrow alley off Johannis Strasse—although, admittedly, she did have the most curious red eyes—to tug at her bell as hard as they could, and, when the old woman came out, to ask in a deceptively friendly voice whether this might be the residence of Herr or Madame Spittoon, and then to run away screeching loudly. But Tony had done it all, and, so it seemed, with a perfectly good conscience. Because, if any of these tortured creatures dared to threaten her, it was a sight to behold how she would take a step back, toss her pretty head with its protruding upper lip, and utter a half-shocked, half-contemptuous “Pooh!,” as if to say: “Just try and get me in trouble! If you don’t happen to know, I am Consul Buddenbrook’s daughter.”

  She walked about the town like a little queen who reserved to herself the right to be gracious or cruel, as the mood or fancy of the moment struck her.

  3

  JEAN JACQUES HOFFSTEDE had hit the nail on the head in his remarks about Consul Buddenbrook’s two sons.

  Thomas, who was destined from birth to be a merchant and the future owner of the firm, attended modern, scientific classes beneath the Gothic arches of the Old School. He was a clever, alert, and prudent young man, but he took immense enjoyment in Christian’s wonderful gift for imitating the teachers of the humanities classes he attended, where he showed no less talent than his brother, although less seriousness. In particular Thomas enjoyed his imitation of Herr Marcellus Stengel, who worked very hard at instructing his students in singing, drawing, and similar diverting disciplines.

  Herr Stengel, who always had a half-dozen marvelously sharpened pencils sticking out of his vest pocket, wore a foxy-red wig, an open buff-colored coat that reached almost to his ankles, and high stiff collars that all but covered his temples; he was a witty man who loved to make philosophical distinctions, such as: “You were asked
to draw a line, my good boy, and what have you done? You have made a stroke!”—He said “struck” instead of “stroke.” Or, to a lazy boy: “You’ll be sitting in the fourth form not for years, but for years on end!”—And he pronounced “years” as “yeahs,” and his “fourth form” sounded almost like “fuhth fuhm.” His favorite lesson consisted in teaching them “The Woodland Green,” during the singing of which several students were sent into the corridor so that they could echo, very softly and carefully, the last word of the chorus’s intoned “We wander so merry through field and wood.” Once, however, when this task was assigned to Christian Buddenbrook, his cousin Jürgen Kröger, and his friend Andreas Gieseke, the fire chief’s son, instead of executing a gentle echo, they sent the coal box tumbling down the stairs and were told to appear for detention at Herr Stengel’s home at four that afternoon—which turned out to be a rather pleasant experience. Herr Stengel had forgotten all about the infraction and asked his housekeeper to bring one cup of tea each for the students Buddenbrook, Kröger, and Gieseke, and soon thereafter he let the young gentlemen go.