Thomas Mann

“ And now began for Tony Buddenbrook a stretch of beautiful summer weeks, briefer, lovelier, than any she had ever spent in Travemünde. She bloomed as she felt her burden no longer upon her; her gay, pert, careless manner had come back. The Consul looked at her with satisfaction when he came on Sundays with Tom and Christian. On those days they ate at the table-d’hôte, sat under the awnings at the pastry-cook’s, drinking coffee and listening to the band, and peeped into the roulette-room at the gay folk there, like Justus Kröger and Peter Döhlmann. The Consul himself never played. ”

“ She could adjust herself with ease and cheerfulness to any situation. She soon grew charmed with her rôle of the injured wife returned to the house of her fathers; wore dark frocks, dressed her ash-blonde hair primly like a young girl’s, and felt richly repaid for her lack of society by the weight she had acquired in the household, the seriousness and dignity of her new position, and above all by the immense pleasure of being able to talk about Herr Grünlich and her marriage and to make general observations about life and destiny, which she did with the utmost gusto. ”

“ Are you always cruel? Tell me: You didn’t like this Herr Grünlich. But is there any one to whom you have been more gracious? Sometimes I think: Has she a cold heart? Let me tell you something: a man is not idiotic simply because he weeps when you won’t look at him. I swear it. I am not sure, not at all, that I wouldn’t do the same thing. You see, you are such a dainty, spoilt thing. Do you always make fun of people that lie at your feet? Have you really a cold heart?”
After the first giggle, Tony’s lip began to quiver. ”

“ I am not a stupid goose any more, I am a divorced woman—and I am made to feel it, that’s certain. Believe me, Tom, it lies like a weight on my heart, to know that I have besmirched our name, even if it was not any fault of mine. You can do whatever you will, you can earn money and be the first man in the town—but people will still say: ‘Yes, but his sister is a divorced woman.’ Julchen Möllendorpf, the Hagenström girl—she doesn’t speak to me! Oh, well, she is a goose. It is the same with all families. ”

“ Tony had gone into the salon to give the polished nut-wood secretary and the curved table-legs her personal attention with the aid of a gay little feather duster. Then she moved slowly through the dining-room into the living-room with dignity and marked self-respect. The Demoiselle Buddenbrook had plainly not grown less important in her own eyes since becoming Madame Grünlich. She held herself very erect, chin in, and looked down at the world from above. She carried in one hand her little lacquered key-basket; the other was in the pocket of her gown, whose soft folds played about her. ”

“ Perhaps she might even go on in the path prescribed for her and marry Herr Grünlich—that was a detail, after all—but when he spoke to her she could always say to herself, “I know something you don’t: the nobility is in principle despicable.”
She smiled to herself and was assuaged. But suddenly, in the noise of the wheels, she heard Morten’s voice with miraculous clearness. She distinguished every nuance of his kindly, dragging speech as he said: “To-day we must both ‘sit on the rocks,’ Fräulein Tony,” and this little memory overpowered her. ”

“ Speak openly, Tony. Have you learned to love your husband in these years of marriage?”
Tony wept afresh; and covering her eyes with both hands, in which she held the batiste handkerchief, she sobbed out: “Oh, what are you asking me, Papa? I have never loved him—he has always been repulsive to me. You know that.”
It would be hard to say what went on in Johann Buddenbrook. His eyes looked shocked and sad; but he bit his lips hard together, and great wrinkles came in his cheeks, as they did when he had brought a piece of business to a successful conclusion. ”

“ Gerda and Thomas climbed out of the trunk-laden carriage wrapped in their furs; and she drew them into the house in her embrace.
“Here you are! You lucky people, to have travelled so far in the world. ‘Knowest thou the house? High-pillared are its walls!’ Gerda, you are more beautiful than ever; here, I must kiss you—no, so, on the mouth. How are you, Tom, old fellow?—yes, I must kiss you too. Marcus says everything has gone well here. Mother is waiting for you at home, but you can first just make yourselves comfortable. Will you have some tea? ”

“ So Tony, on her way through the streets, chattered with all and sundry. She and Tom would clamber about in the granaries on the water-side, among the piles of oats and wheat, prattling to the labourers and the clerks in the dark little ground-floor offices; they would even help haul up the sacks of grain. She knew the butchers with their trays and aprons, when she met them in Broad Street; she accosted the dairy women when they came in from the country, and made them take her a little way in their carts. ”

“ Herr Grünlich looked at his banker helplessly and began afresh: “Father! I implore you again: think what you are doing. Is it a question of me alone? I—oh, I myself might be allowed to perish. But your daughter, my wife, whom I [227] love, whom I won after such a struggle—and our child—both innocent children—are they to be brought low as well? No, Father, I will not bear it; I will kill myself. Yes, I would kill myself with this hand. Believe me—and may heaven pardon you if it will.”
Johann Buddenbrook leaned back in his arm-chair quite white, with a fast-beating heart. ”

“ Grüss Gott! Lord, I’m just silly glad to see you. Do you think sometimes of little old [327] Munich and what a gay time we had? Oh, my, oh my! And here we are again. Who would ’a’ thought it?”
Tony, on her side, greeted him with great vivacity, drew up a chair, and began to chat with him about her weeks in Munich. Now the conversation went on without hitches, and the Frau Consul followed it, smiling and nodding encouragingly at Herr Permaneder. She would translate this or that expression into her own tongue, and then lean back into the sofa again, well pleased with her own intelligence. ”

“ Clean and open dealings must be the rule. Why, you can open your books any day, for all the world to see, and say, ‘Here they are, look at them.’ We should all of us be just the same. I know how God has made me. I am not afraid. Let Julchen Möllendorpf pass me in the street and not speak, if she wants to. Let Pfiffi Buddenbrook sit here on Thursday afternoons and shake all over with spite, and say, ‘Well, that is the second time! But, of course, both times the men were to blame!’ I feel so far above all that now, Thomas—farther than I can tell you! ”

“ She broke off, buried her chin once more in her hand, and stared out of the window. He stood before her, his weight on one leg, his hands in his trousers pockets. His eyes rested on her unseeing, for he was in deep thought, and slowly moving his head from side to side.
“Tony,” he said. “You’re telling the truth. I knew it all along; but you betrayed yourself just now. It is not the man at all. It is the place. It isn’t this other idiotic business—it is the whole thing all together. You couldn’t get used to it. Tell the truth.”
“Thomas,” she cried, “it is the truth!” ”

“ The spring was more advanced than usual, and with the spring had come to the Buddenbrook family a joy that made old Johann sing about the house and moved his son to the depths of his heart.
The Consul sat at the big roll-top writing-desk in the window of the breakfast-room, at nine o’clock one Sunday morning. He had before him a stout leather portfolio stuffed with papers, from among which he had drawn a gilt-edged notebook with an embossed cover, and was busily writing in it in his small, thin, flowing script. His hand hurried over the paper, never pausing except to dip his quill in the ink. ”

“ Well, adieu, dear Mamma; I can write no more. If I live and prosper, as you always say, I shall stop here three or four weeks more, and when I come back I will tell you more of Munich, for in a letter it is hard to know where to begin. I like it very much; that I must say—though one would have to train a cook to make decent sauces. You see, I am an old woman, with my life behind me, and I have nothing more to look forward to on earth. But if, for example, Erica should—if she lives and prospers—marry here, I should have nothing against it ”

“ I see now how fully your grief is justified, and how completely your husband, in a moment of weakness, forgot what he owed to you and—”
“In a moment—?” cried Tony. She sprang up. She made two steps backward and feverishly dried her eyes. “A moment, Mamma! He forgot what he owed to me and to our name? He never knew it, from the very beginning! A man that quietly sits down with his wife’s dowry—a man without ambition or energy or will-power! A man that has some kind of thick soup made out of hops in his veins instead of blood—and I verily believe he has! ”

“ Clara Buddenbrook was now in her nineteenth year. She had grown to be a young lady of an austere and peculiar beauty, with a tall, slender figure, dark, smooth hair, and stern yet dreamy eyes. Her nose was slightly hooked, her mouth a little too firmly closed. In the household she was most intimate with her poor and pious cousin Clothilde, whose father had lately died, and whose idea it was to “establish herself” soon—which meant to go into a pension somewhere with the money and furniture which she had inherited. Clara had nothing of Clothilde’s meek and hungry submissiveness. ”

“ She had always known, of course, that she should one day marry, and be the wife of a business man, and embark upon a solid and advantageous married life, commensurate with the position of the family and the firm. But suddenly, for the first time in her life, somebody, some actual person, in serious earnest, wanted to marry her. How did people act? To her, her, Tony Buddenbrook, were now applicable all those tremendous words and phrases which she had hitherto met with only in books: her “hand,” her “consent,” “as long as life shall last!” ”

“ There was a certain Pastor Trieschke from Berlin. His nickname was Teary Trieschke, because every Sunday he began to weep at an appropriate place in his sermon. Teary Trieschke had a pale face, red eyes, and cheek-bones like a horse’s. He had been stopping for eight or ten days with the Buddenbrooks, conducting devotions and holding eating contests with poor Clothilde, turn about. He happened to fall in love with Tony—not with her immortal soul, oh no, but with her upper lip, her thick hair, her pretty eyes and charming figure. ”

“ Clara, now twelve years old, understood nothing, and Cousin Clothilde was just as stupid. “Oh, Tony!”—that was all she could say, with drawling astonishment. But the young wife found an attentive listener in Mamsell Jungmann, who was now thirty-five years old and could boast of having grown grey in the service of the best society. “You don’t need to worry, Tony, my child,” she would say. “You are young; you will marry again.” ”

“ Aha! Four years ago—when the knife was at our throat, the rope around our neck—suddenly we made a match with Fräulein Buddenbrook, and spread the news on ’Change, even before it had actually come off! Congratulations, my dear friend; my best respects!”
“Kesselmeyer,” groaned Herr Grünlich, making spasmodic motions with his hands, as though waving off an evil spirit. He rushed into one corner of the room, where he sat down and buried his face in his hands. The ends of his whiskers lay on his shanks, and he rocked his knees up and down in his emotion. ”

“ I have nothing left over for the regular life— I don’t know whether you understand—”
“Oh, so you see that?” cried Thomas, standing still and folding his arms on his breast. “You humbly admit that, and still you go on the same old way? Are you a dog, Christian? A man has some pride, by God! One doesn’t live a life that one may not know how to defend oneself. But so you are. That is your character. If you can only see a thing and understand and describe it—. No, my patience is at an end, Christian.” And the Consul took a quick backward step and made a gesture with his arms straight out. ”

“ He can’t go away without speaking to you and your Mamma, and if you didn’t want him, you should have sent him away before now.”
“You are right there, Ida; but I could not do it—I suppose because it is to be! But now I keep thinking: ‘It isn’t too late yet; I can still draw back!’ So I am living here tormenting myself—”
“Do you like him, Tony? Tell me straight out.”
“Yes, Ida. It would not be the truth if I should say no. He is not handsome—but that isn’t the important thing in this life; and he is as good as gold, and couldn’t do anything mean—at least, he seems so to me. ”

“ Tony said. “She can sit how she likes, she will always be Tony Buddenbrook. Tilda and she are certainly the beauties of the family.”
Clothilde was astonished almost to death. “Good gracious, Tom,” she said. It was inconceivable how she could drawl out the syllables. Tony bore the jeer in silence. It was never any use, Tom was more than a match for her. He could always get the last word and have the laugh on his side. ”

“ An enormous brick-red boiled ham appeared, strewn with crumbs and served with a sour brown onion sauce, and so many vegetables that the company could have satisfied their appetites from that one vegetable-dish. Lebrecht Kröger undertook the carving, and skilfully cut the succulent slices, with his elbows slightly elevated and his two long forefingers laid out along the back of the knife and fork. With the ham went the Frau Consul’s celebrated “Russian jam,” a pungent fruit conserve flavoured with spirits.
No, Pastor Wunderlich regretted to say that he had never set eyes on Bonaparte. ”

“ Oh, heavens, yes; you are right, of course, Gerda. It is mostly imagination that one enjoys oneself on such parties. Still, one goes, because one does not like to seem odd, either to oneself or to the others. Everybody has that kind of vanity; don’t you think so? People get the idea that you are solitary or else unhappy, and they have less respect for you. And then, there is something else, Gerda dear. We all want to pay a little court to Herr Permaneder. ”

“ The lively interest in public affairs which the years of the Revolution had brought in, was suffering throughout the whole country from a period of prostration and arrest, and that field was too sterile to occupy a vigorous talent; but Thomas Buddenbrook possessed the spirit to take to himself that wise old saying that all human achievement is of a merely symbolic value, and thus to devote all that he had of capacity, enthusiasm, energy, and strength of will to the service of the community as well as to the service of his own name and firm. ”

“ Friederike chimed in. “Then it is ever so much better never to have married at all.”
“Oh, no, dear Friederike,” said Tony, erecting her head, while she bethought herself of a telling and clever retort. “You make a mistake there. Marriage teaches one to know life, you see. One is no longer a silly goose. And then I have more prospect of marrying again than those who have never married at all!” ”

“ God alone knew how much grief and religious emotion—and, on the other hand, how much of a pretty woman’s self-conscious pleasure—there was in the bowed attitude. Thomas was not in the mood to think about it. But Christian looked sidewise at his sister with a mixture of mockery and misgiving, as if to say: “Can you really carry that off? Shan’t you feel silly when you get up? How uncomfortable!” Tony caught this look as she rose, but she was not in the least put out. ”

“ The Frau Consul was out, and Tony sat with a book alone at the window of the landscape-room, when Anton brought her a card. Before she had time to read the name, a young man in a bell-skirted coat and pea-green pantaloons entered the room. It was, of course, Herr Grünlich, with an expression of imploring tenderness upon his face.
Tony started up indignantly and made a movement to flee into the next room. How could one possibly talk to a man who had proposed for one’s hand? ”