Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

by Thomas Mann

  “But why are you so low?” she asked in alarmed amazement. “I would think you would be happy, Tom. Clara is still alive, and that will turn out all right, with God’s help. And as far as the rest goes? Here we are walking in your garden, and everything smells so sweet. There’s your new house, a dream come true. Hermann Hagenström lives in a hut compared with it. And you’ve managed it all yourself.”

  “Yes, it’s almost too beautiful, Tony. By which I mean that it’s all too new yet. It still bothers me a little somehow, and that may be why this bad mood comes over me, nags at me, and ruins everything. I was so looking forward to all this, but, as always, anticipation was the best part, because good things always come too late, and then, when it’s finished and ready, you can’t really enjoy it the way you should.”

  “Not enjoy it, Tom? A young man like you!”

  “We’re only as young or old as we feel. And when something good we’ve longed for finally does come along, it lumbers in a little too late somehow, loaded down with petty, annoying, upsetting details, covered with all the grime of reality that we never really imagined, and that is so irritating—irritating.”

  “Yes, yes. But we’re only as young or old as we feel, Tom.”

  “Yes, Tony. It may pass—just a little out of sorts, I’m sure. But I’m feeling older than I am these days. I have business worries, and yesterday, at a meeting of the Büchen Railroad Commission, Consul Hagenström simply rolled right over me, rebutted everything I said, practically had everyone smirking at me. I feel as if that sort of thing wouldn’t have happened before. I feel as if something is slipping away, as if I no longer hold it as firmly in my grasp as before. What is success? A mysterious, indescribable power—a vigilance, a readiness, the awareness that simply by my presence I can exert pressure on the movements of life around me, the belief that life can be molded to my advantage. Happiness and success are inside us. We have to reach deep and hold tight. And the moment something begins to subside, to relax, to grow weary, then everything around us is turned loose, resists us, rebels, moves beyond our influence. And then it’s just one thing after another, one setback after another, and you’re finished. The last few days I’ve been thinking about a Turkish proverb I read somewhere: ‘When the house is finished, death follows.’ Now, it doesn’t have to be death exactly. But retreat, decline, the beginning of the end. Do you remember, Tony,” he went on, slipping his arm under his sister’s and lowering his voice even more, “when Hanno was christened, how you said to me, ‘It’s as if a whole new era is beginning’? I can still hear it quite clearly, and it seemed to me then you were right, because then came the election for senator, and I was lucky, and this house rose up here out of the earth. But ‘senator’ and ‘house’ are superficialities, and I know something else that you weren’t even thinking about that day, something I’ve learned from life and history. I know that the external, visible, tangible tokens and symbols of happiness and success first appear only after things have in reality gone into decline already. Such external signs need time to reach us, like the light of one of those stars up there, which when it shines most brightly may well have already gone out, for all we know.”

  He fell silent, and they walked for a while, saying nothing, the quiet broken only by the splash of the fountain and the breeze whispering in the crown of the walnut tree. Then Frau Permaneder gave a labored sigh that was close to a sob.

  “How sad you sound, Tom. Sadder than I’ve ever heard you. But it’s good you’ve let it out. You’ll find it easier to banish all this from your mind now.”

  “Yes, Tony, I’ve got to do that, to try as best I can. And now give me the letters from Clara and the pastor. I’m sure you’ll not mind if I take matters in hand myself and have a talk with Mother tomorrow morning. But if it is tuberculosis, we shall have to resign ourselves to the worst.”

  7

  AND YOU DIDN’T EVEN ask me? Simply went right over my head?”

  “I acted as I believed I had to act.”

  “You’ve acted out of total confusion and behaved quite unreasonably.”

  “Reason is not earth’s highest good.”

  “Oh, spare me the platitudes. It is a matter of simple justice, which you have ignored in the most outrageous fashion.”

  “May I remind you, my son, that your tone of voice betrays a lack of the respect you owe me.”

  “And may I reply, my dear Mother, that I have never forgotten the respect I owe you, but that in matters touching the firm and the family I assume the position of my father as the head of that family and am not to be regarded in my capacity as a son.”

  “And I want you to be silent, Thomas!”

  “No, I’ll not be silent till you admit your reckless folly and weakness.”

  “I can dispose of my own property as I choose.”

  “Fairness and reason impose limits on your choices.”

  “I would never have thought you capable of wounding me like this.”

  “I would never have thought you capable of a direct slap in the face like this.”

  “Tom! Tom, please!” Frau Permaneder’s distraught voice broke in. She was sitting at the window seat in the landscape room, wringing her hands and watching her brother pace the room in dreadful, furious strides, while her mother, almost unnerved by anger and hurt, sat on the sofa, one hand propped against a cushion, the other rapping the table when she wanted to emphasize a point. All three of them were in mourning for Clara, who was no longer of this earth, and all three were pale and simply beside themselves.

  And what was going on here? Something horrible, ghastly, something that seemed absolutely monstrous and incredible even to those involved: a quarrel, a bitter argument between mother and son.

  It was a sultry August afternoon. Only ten days after the senator had gently prepared his mother before handing over to her the letters from Sievert and Clara Tiburtius, it had been his sad duty to give the old woman the news of Clara’s death. Then he had set out for the funeral in Riga, had returned with his brother-in-law, Tiburtius, who had spent several days with the family of his dear, departed wife and had even visited Christian in the hospital in Hamburg. And now, two days after the pastor had departed for home, Madame Buddenbrook had, with visible hesitation, made a certain disclosure to her son.

  “One hundred twenty-seven thousand five hundred marks courant!” he shouted, shaking his clasped hands in front of his face. “Forget the dowry! Let him keep the eighty thousand, even though there are no children. But the inheritance. To promise him Clara’s inheritance! And not ask me—simply go right over my head!”

  “Thomas, for our dear Lord’s sake, be fair to me, please. Could I have done anything else? Could I? She has been taken from us and is with God now, and from her deathbed she wrote, in pencil, with a trembling hand. ‘Mother,’ she wrote, ‘we shall never see one another again here below, and these are the last words I shall ever write, I can feel that so clearly. And my last fleeting thoughts are of my husband. God has not blessed us with children, but what would have been mine had I outlived you, let it devolve on him when the day comes that you follow me to that better world, that he may enjoy something of it in this life. Mother, this is my last request, a dying woman’s request. You will not deny it to me, I know.’ And I did not deny it to her, Thomas. I sent her the telegram, and she departed from this world in peace.” Madame Buddenbrook wept bitterly.

  “And you don’t say one word to me about it. It’s all kept secret from me. You simply go right over my head,” the senator said again.

  “Yes, I did keep it secret, Thomas. Because I felt that I simply had to comply with this last request of my dying daughter. And I knew that you would try to stop me.”

  “Yes, by God, I certainly would have!”

  “But you would have had no right, because three of my children are on my side!”

  “Oh, it seems to me my opinion outweighs two women and a sickly fool.”

  “You speak of your brother and sisters as harshly
as you speak to me.”

  “Clara was a pious but ignorant woman, Mother! And Tony is a child—who knew nothing about this until now, either, by the way. Otherwise she would have let it slip by now, don’t you suppose? And Christian? Yes, he managed to get Christian’s consent, your Tiburtius did. Who would have expected that of him? Don’t you realize yet what sort of man he is, your ingenious pastor? A rogue, that’s what he is. A fortune hunter!”

  “Sons-in-law are always scoundrels,” Frau Permaneder said in a low voice.

  “A fortune hunter! And what does he do? He goes to Hamburg, sits down next to Christian’s bed, and wins him over. ‘Yes,’ Christian says, ‘yes, Tiburtius, God go with you. But have you any idea of the pain here in my left side?’ Oh, it’s a conspiracy between stupidity and wickedness!” Beside himself now, the senator leaned against the wrought-iron grate of the cold stove and pressed both clasped hands to his brow.

  This paroxysm of fury was out of proportion to the real circumstances. No, it wasn’t the 127,500 marks courant that had reduced him to a state in which no one had ever seen him before. It was, rather, that, given his general irritable mood, this was the last link in a chain of defeats and humiliations to which he had been subjected in his business and in civic affairs over the last few months. Nothing was going right. Nothing was turning out the way he wanted. Had things gone so far now that, when it came to the most crucial matters, people simply “went right over his head,” here in the house of his forefathers? That a pastor from Riga could swindle him behind his back? He could have prevented it, but his influence had not even been put to the test. Events had taken their course without him. But it seemed to him that this sort of thing could not have happened in the past, that it would not have dared happen in the past. It was another shock to his faith in his own good fortune, his authority, his future. And it was nothing more than his own inner weakness and desperation that erupted here in this scene with his mother and sister.

  Frau Permaneder stood up and hugged him. “Calm down, Tom,” she said. “Control yourself. Is it really that bad? You’ll make yourself ill. Tiburtius need not live all that long, and after his death, the money returns to us. And it can be changed, of course, if that’s what you really want. Can’t it be changed, Mama?”

  Madame Buddenbrook answered only with sobs.

  “No, oh no,” the senator said, pulling himself together and waving his hand in a weak, dismissive gesture. “Let it stand as it is. Do you suppose I’m going to run off to the courts and sue my own mother, turning a private scandal into a public one? Let things take their course,” he concluded and moved wearily toward the glass door, where he stopped.

  “But just don’t believe that everything is going all that well for us,” he said in a subdued voice. “Tony lost eighty thousand marks courant. And Christian has wasted not just the fifty thousand advanced him from his inheritance, but another thirty thousand besides—and there will be more, because he’s not earning anything and he’ll need to go to Oeynhausen for treatment. And now not only is Clara’s dowry gone forever, but someday her whole share of the estate will leave the family for an indefinite period as well. And business is not good; it’s been dreadful, in fact, ever since I spent a hundred thousand on my new house. No, things are not going well for this family, not when there are grounds for scenes such as we’ve had here today. Believe me—believe this if nothing else—if Father were alive, if he were here with us today, he would fold his hands and commend us all to the mercy of God.”

  8

  WARS AND RUMORS of war. Soldiers quartered in homes. Bustle in the streets. Prussian officers move across the parquet on the main floor of Senator Buddenbrook’s new home, they kiss the hand of the lady of the house and frequent the Club with Christian, who has returned from Oeynhausen; and on Meng Strasse, Mamselle Rieke Severin, who is Madame Buddenbrook’s new companion, helps the housemaid drag piles of mattresses out to the “Portal,” the old summerhouse, which is now full of soldiers.

  Confusion, commotion, and tension everywhere. Troops march out through the gates, new troops arrive, overrun the town, eat, sleep, fill the citizens’ ears with the din of drum rolls, trumpet blasts, and shouted commands—then they march off again. Royal princes are extended a warm welcome. Wave after wave of soldiers come and go. Then silence and suspense.

  In late autumn and winter the troops return victorious, are quartered in homes again, and then depart amid the cheers of relieved citizens. Peace. The brief peace of 1865—the future gestates in its womb.

  And between two wars, little Johann, with his soft wavy hair and his pleated pinafores, quietly and innocently plays beside the fountain in his garden or up on the “balcony,” created especially for him by the addition of a little row of columns on the third-floor landing—a four-year-old at play. His games have a deeper meaning and fascination that adults can no longer fathom and require nothing more than three pebbles, or a piece of wood with a dandelion helmet, perhaps; but above all they require only the pure, strong, passionate, chaste, still-untroubled fantasy of those happy years when life still hesitates to touch us, when neither duty nor guilt dares lay a hand upon us, when we are allowed to see, hear, laugh, wonder, and dream without the world’s demanding anything in return, when the impatience of those whom we want so much to love has not yet begun to torment us for evidence, some early token, that we will diligently fulfill our duties. Ah, it will not be long, and all that will rain down upon us in overwhelming, raw power, will assault us, stretch us, cramp us, drill us, corrupt us.

  Great things were happening while Hanno played. War broke out, victory was uncertain, and then was decided. Hanno Buddenbrook’s hometown, having shrewdly sided with Prussia, could gaze with some satisfaction on rich Frankfurt, which was now made to pay for its faith in Austria and was no longer a free city.

  But in July, shortly before the armistice, a large wholesale house in Frankfurt declared bankruptcy, and at one blow the firm of Johann Buddenbrook lost the round sum of twenty thousand thalers courant.

  PART EIGHT

  (Dedicated to my brother Heinrich—to the man and to the writer)

  1

  HERR HUGO WEINSCHENK had been employed as director of the Municipal Fire Insurance Company for some time now, and whenever he crossed the large entrance hall to pass from the outer to the inner office—striding with a swinging self-assured gait, elbows nonchalantly bobbing at his sides, clenched fists held in front of him—he cut a striking figure; and, indeed, dressed in his buttoned-up frock coat and sporting a small black mustache shaped in manly fashion to frame the corners of his earnest mouth and reveal his drooping lower lip, he seemed the epitome of a busy, prosperous gentleman.

  In contrast, twenty-year-old Erika Grünlich was now a tall, pretty young lady in full bloom, with a fresh complexion enhanced by good health and youthful energy. If chance happened to find her descending the staircase, or standing on the landing, just as Herr Weinschenk was passing by—and chance managed this fairly often—the director would tip his top hat, revealing his head of short black hair just beginning to gray at the temples, emphasize the swing in his stride very slightly, and greet the young woman with a surprised and admiring glance from boldly roving brown eyes. And Erika would run off, sit down on a window seat somewhere, and weep in helpless confusion for an hour or so.

  Fräulein Grünlich had been raised very properly under Therese Weichbrodt’s watchful eye, and her thoughts were not wide-ranging. She wept over Herr Weinschenk’s top hat, over the way he lifted his eyebrows when he caught sight of her and quickly let them fall again, over his absolutely royal posture and his carefully balanced fists. Her mother, Frau Permaneder, already saw farther.

  Her daughter’s future had been a worry for years now, because, compared with other marriageable young ladies, Erika was definitely at a disadvantage. Not only did Frau Permaneder not go out in society—she lived at war with it. The assumption that, because she was twice divorced, people in the best circles regarded her as
an inferior had become fixed in her mind somehow, and she saw disdain and spite where often there was probably nothing more than indifference. It was quite likely that Hermann Hagenström, a freethinking and loyal fellow, whom wealth had made cheerful and magnanimous, would have greeted her on the street if he had not felt it strictly forbidden by the way she laid her head back and looked right past him, avoiding his pâté-de-foie-gras face, which, to use her own strong language, she “hated like the plague.” And so Erika had grown up outside her uncle’s social circle, attending none of the senator’s balls and having little opportunity to make the acquaintance of young gentlemen.

  It was nevertheless Frau Antonie’s most fervent wish—particularly since she had “gone out of business” herself, as she put it—that her daughter would fulfill the hopes that had gone so awry for her, that she would marry happily and advantageously, bringing honor to the family and erasing the memory of her mother’s fate. Particularly for the sake of her older brother, who had displayed so little optimism of late, Tony longed for some proof that the family’s luck had not run out, that they were not finished and done with. Her second dowry, the seventeen thousand thalers that Herr Permaneder had so generously returned, lay ready for Erika; and the moment Frau Antonie’s sharp, experienced eye noted the first tender bonds forming between her daughter and the director, she began to importune heaven with prayers that Herr Weinschenk would pay a visit.

  And he did. He appeared on the second floor, was received by the three women—grandmother, daughter, and grandchild—joined in ten minutes of small-talk, and promised to return sometime for coffee and more leisurely conversation.