Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

by Thomas Mann

  It was clear that Dr. Mantelsack was calling on people in no regular order whatever and did not care at all who had not been examined for some time. It was no longer so appallingly probable that Hanno would be called on—that would require a stroke of dire misfortune today. He exchanged glances with Kai and began to unwind, letting his legs and arms relax.

  Suddenly Timm was interrupted in his recitation. Whether because Dr. Mantelsack was having trouble understanding him or because he just wanted the exercise, he left his platform, strolled slowly among his pupils, and stood now, Ovid in hand, right next to Timm, who with one quick, imperceptible motion had moved his book out of sight—and was now completely helpless. His funnel-shaped mouth snapped at the air; he gazed at the professor with honest, blue, distraught eyes and managed not one syllable more.

  “Well, now, Timm,” Dr. Mantelsack said. “You’ve suddenly come to a halt, have you?”

  And Timm grabbed his head, rolled his eyes, took a deep breath, and finally said with a lunatic smile, “I get all mixed up when you stand beside me, Professor Mantelsack.”

  And Professor Mantelsack smiled, too; his smile said that he felt flattered. He said, “Well, collect your thoughts now and continue.” And with that he strolled back to his chair.

  And Timm collected his thoughts. He pulled his book back in front of him, opened it, all the while visibly struggling to regain his composure by looking around the room; he now lowered his head and found his train of thought again.

  “Satisfactory,” the professor said when Timm had finished. “You’ve learned it well, no doubt about that. Except that you show very little regard for the rhythm, Timm. You seem to have some idea about the elisions, and yet you haven’t actually spoken in hexameters. My impression is that you’ve learned the entire passage as if it were prose. But as I said, you’ve worked hard and have done your best—and he who always strives to do his best … You may be seated.”

  Timm sat down beaming with pride, and Dr. Mantelsack apparently jotted down “satisfactory” beside his name. The remarkable thing was that in that moment not only the teacher but Timm himself and all his classmates, too, were honestly convinced that Timm was truly a fine, hardworking student who had indeed earned a good grade. Even Hanno Buddenbrook was unable to resist this impression, although he sensed something deep inside rebelling against the idea. And now he listened attentively for the next name to be announced.

  “Mumme,” Dr. Mantelsack said. “Once more—Aurea prima …?”

  So it was Mumme. Thank God, because that meant Hanno was probably safe now. There was hardly any chance that the verse would have to be recited a third time, and it had been the “B”s’ turn only recently to translate a new passage.

  Mumme got up. He was a tall, pale fellow with trembling hands and unusually large, round glasses. He had bad eyes, was so nearsighted that when he stood up he could not read from the book on his desk. He had to learn, and he did. But because he hadn’t expected to be called on today—and was so dreadfully untalented besides—he could not remember much of it and ground to a halt after the first few words. Dr. Mantelsack prompted him, prompted him a second time in a sharper tone; the third time he was downright indignant; and when Mumme got stuck for good, the professor erupted in fierce anger.

  “That is totally unsatisfactory, Mumme. Sit down. What a sad figure you cut, let me assure you. You’re an idiot—stupid and lazy is going a bit too far.”

  Mumme foundered and went under. He looked like calamity personified, and at that moment there was no one in the room who did not despise him. But once again Hanno Buddenbrook felt something rebel inside him, sensed a queasiness that made his throat contract. At the same time, however, he realized with terrible clarity what was happening now. With a flourish, Dr. Mantelsack made a mark fraught with doom next to Mumme’s name and scowled as he paged through his notebook. It was only too clear—in his wrath, he had decided to go back to the regular order and was checking whose turn it actually was. And as Hanno sat there overwhelmed by this realization, he heard his name called—it was like a bad dream.

  “Buddenbrook!” Dr. Mantelsack had said. “Buddenbrook.” The sound still echoed in the air, and yet Hanno couldn’t quite believe it. There was a buzzing in his ears now. He kept his seat.

  “Herr Buddenbrook!” Doctor Mantelsack said, staring at him with bulging, sapphire-blue eyes that sparkled behind his thick glasses. “Would you please be so kind?”

  Fine—so it was meant to be. It had to turn out like this. Very differently from what he had expected, but all was lost now. He was resigned to his fate. Would it end in a truly terrible outburst of rage? He stood up and was about to offer some inane, ridiculous excuse, to say he had “forgotten” to memorize the verses—when suddenly he noticed the boy ahead of him holding his book open for him.

  The boy ahead of him was Hans Hermann Kilian, a small fellow with brown, greasy hair and broad shoulders. He wanted to be an officer and was so inspired by esprit de corps that he couldn’t leave Johann Buddenbrook high and dry, even though he couldn’t stand him. He even pointed a finger at the place to begin.

  And Hanno stared at the book and began to read. With a faltering voice and pursed brows and lips he read about the Golden Age, which had arisen first, when of their own free will, with no compulsion, no law, men had kept faith and done the right. “There was no fear of punishment,” he said in Latin, “no menacing words to be read on tablets of bronze; no suppliant throng to gaze in fear upon its judge’s face.…” With an agonized, grim look on his own face, he purposely read badly and disjointedly, intentionally ignored elisions marked in pencil in Kilian’s book, mangled the rhythm, groped for words, and made it look as if he were laboring to recall each one—expecting at any moment that the professor would find him out and pounce on him. The sweet, malicious joy of seeing the book open before him made his skin tingle; but he was totally disgusted with himself, too, and intentionally cheated as badly as possible, hoping that this would make his deception a little less sordid. Then he stopped, and silence reigned in the room—he did not dare look up. The silence was horrible; his lips turned white, he was sure Dr. Mantelsack had seen it all.

  At last the professor sighed and said, “Oh, Buddenbrook, si tacuisses. You will excuse my use of the classical informal pronoun. Do you know what you have done? You have dragged beauty through the dust, you have behaved like a Vandal, a barbarian—you, a creature whom the muses have deserted, Buddenbrook, it’s written on your face. If I were to ask myself whether you were coughing the whole time or reciting noble verses, I would be inclined to think it was the former. Timm has little developed sense of rhythm, but compared with you he is a genius, a rhapsodist. Be seated, unhappy man. You have studied, I grant. You have learned. I cannot give you a bad grade. You have made the best of your abilities. Although they tell me that you are musical and play the piano, is that right? How can that be? Well, enough, sit down, you’ve worked hard, it seems—that will do.”

  He jotted a “satisfactory” in his notebook, and Hanno Buddenbrook sat down. He felt now just as Timm the rhapsodist had felt before him. He could not help being sincerely moved by the praise implied in Dr. Mantelsack’s words. In that moment he was truly of the opinion that he was a somewhat untalented but hardworking student, who had emerged from his trial with relative honor; and he clearly sensed that his classmates, including Hans Hermann Kilian, all held the same view. Something like nausea stirred in him again; but he was too exhausted to think about that. Pale and trembling, he closed his eyes and sank into lethargy.

  Dr. Mantelsack, however, went on with the lesson. He moved now to the verse that they were supposed to have translated for today and called on Petersen. Petersen stood up, bright and cheerful and confident, striking a valiant pose, ready to fight the good fight. But he was doomed to perish today. The class could not come to an end without a catastrophe—one far worse than what had happened to poor myopic Mumme.

  Petersen translated, casting a glance
now and then at the right-hand page in his book, which had nothing to do with the passage. He did this very deftly. He acted as if something about it bothered him, and he passed his hand over it and blew at it as if there were a speck of dust or whatever that annoyed him and needed to be brushed away. And then something ghastly happened.

  All of a sudden Dr. Mantelsack shifted his weight violently—and Petersen responded with an equally sudden violent motion. And in the same moment, virtually tumbling head over heels, the professor left his platform and headed directly toward Petersen with long, inexorable strides.

  “You have a pony there in your book, a translation,” he said, standing beside him now.

  “A pony … no … I …” Petersen stammered. He was a handsome lad with a massive wave of blond hair that swept down over his forehead and extraordinarily beautiful blue eyes, which flickered now with fear.

  “Do you have a pony in your book?”

  “No, sir, no, Dr. Mantelsack. A pony? I most certainly do not have a pony. You are quite mistaken. You are wrong to entertain such suspicions.” Petersen spoke in a way that none of the boys ever spoke. In his fear he carefully chose his words, hoping that this would rattle the professor. “I am not cheating,” he said in his great distress. “I have always been honest, my whole life long.”

  But Dr. Mantelsack was all too certain of the painful truth. “Give me your book,” he said icily.

  Petersen clung to his book. He raised both hands in the air, and although he was half tongue-tied now, he continued to exclaim, “Please believe me, sir. There is nothing in my book, Dr. Mantelsack. I don’t have a pony. I haven’t cheated. I’ve always been honest.”

  “Give me the book,” the professor repeated and stamped one foot.

  Petersen went limp, his face turned gray.

  “All right,” he said, handing over the book, “here it is. Yes, there’s a pony in it. You can see for yourself, there it is. But I wasn’t using it,” he suddenly shouted to the whole room.

  Dr. Mantelsack, however, ignored this absurd lie, which was born of desperation alone. He pulled out the “pony,” looked at it as if he had some putrid piece of garbage in his hand, slipped it into his pocket, and disdainfully tossed Petersen’s Ovid back on his desk. “The class attendance book,” he said in a hollow voice.

  Adolf Todtenhaupt dutifully brought the class attendance book to him, and Petersen was given a demerit for attempted cheating, which would have devastating repercussions for a long time to come. It sealed his doom—he would be held back at Easter. “You are a discredit to this class,” Dr. Mantelsack said and then returned to his professorial chair.

  Petersen sat down, a ruined man. They all saw his neighbor edge away from him. And they all regarded him with a mixture of disgust, pity, and horror. He had fallen, and was now left alone, utterly abandoned—because he had been caught. They all shared one opinion about Petersen: he was truly “a discredit to the class.” Without any resistance, they recognized and accepted this verdict, just as they had recognized and accepted Timm and Buddenbrook’s success or poor Mumme’s misfortune. And so did Petersen himself.

  Of these twenty-five young men, those who had a rugged constitution, who were strong and fit for life as it really is, accepted the world as they found it at this moment and were not offended in the least. Things had taken their natural course and everything was as it should be. But there was another pair of eyes that stared ahead in gloomy thought—little Johann’s studied Hans Hermann Kilian’s broad back, and those golden-brown eyes ringed with bluish shadows were full of contempt, rebellion, and fear. Dr. Mantelsack, however, went on with the lesson. He asked for someone, anyone, Adolf Todtenhaupt if need be, to translate—he had lost all interest in trying to examine dubious scholars for today. And then it was the turn of another boy, who was poorly prepared and did not even know what “patula Jovis arbore, glandes” meant, and Buddenbrook was called upon to tell him. He said it softly and without looking up, because Dr. Mantelsack had asked him—and was given a nod of approval.

  And once the students had been tested, they lost all interest in the class themselves. Dr. Mantelsack had one of his gifted pupils volunteer to continue the translation, but he paid no more attention to him than did the other twenty-four boys, who began to do the homework for their next class. It made no difference now. No more grades would be awarded here today, and there was no way of judging their conscientiousness in Latin now. And the class was almost over anyway. It was over; the bell rang. So this was how things had been destined to turn out for Hanno. He had even been given a nod of approval.

  “Well,” Kai said, as they moved along the Gothic corridor toward the chemistry hall with the rest of their classmates, “what do you say now, Hanno? ‘They need only see Caesar’s face.’ You were incredibly lucky.”

  “I feel sick, Kai,” little Johann said. “I can do without the luck, it makes me sick.”

  And Kai knew he would have felt exactly the same in Hanno’s shoes.

  The chemistry hall was a vaulted amphitheater with tiers of benches, a long lab table, and two display cabinets filled with vials. Their homeroom had been hot and close by the end of Latin class again, but here the air was saturated with the noxious stench of hydrogen sulfide. Kai flung open a window, then swiped Adolf Todtenhaupt’s rewritten notes and hurriedly started to copy the section that had to be shown the teacher today. Hanno and several other students did the same. It took them the whole break between classes; then the bell rang and Dr. Marotzke appeared.

  Kai and Hanno’s nickname for him was “the deep professor.” He was a man of average height, a brunette with a very yellow complexion, two large bumps on his forehead, and a beard that was as bristly and greasy as his hair. He always looked unwashed and short of sleep, although that was probably a false impression. He taught natural sciences, but his specialty was mathematics, and he had the reputation of being an important thinker in the subject. He loved to talk about philosophical passages in the Bible, and sometimes, when he was in a whimsical good mood, he condescended to treat upperclassmen to strange exegeses on obscure verses. He was also an officer in the reserves—and served enthusiastically. Being both a civil servant and a military officer, he stood high on Director Wulicke’s list. Of all the teachers, he demanded the most discipline; his critical eyes would pass down the rows of students, who had to stand at attention and provide sharp, curt answers to his questions. There was something a little revolting about this mixture of mysticism and military polish.

  They pulled out the clean copies of their notes, and Dr. Marotzke walked around the room, tapping each notebook with his finger—although several pupils, who had not done the work, presented him with old notes or something from another class without his ever noticing.

  Then the lesson began, and twenty-five young men now had occasion to prove the same zeal for boron, chlorine, and strontium that they had just shown for Ovid. Hans Hermann Kilian was praised for knowing that BaSO4 or “heavy spar” was commonly used in counterfeiting. He was the star of the class in any case, since he wanted to be an officer. Hanno and Kai knew nothing, and they fared very badly in Dr. Marotzke’s notebook.

  But once the grades for quizzes and recitations had been meted out, the general interest in chemistry was as good as exhausted. Dr. Marotzke began to perform a couple of experiments, producing popping noises and colored vapors, but that was more or less just to fill up the hour. Finally he dictated the material to be learned for next time. Then the bell rang and their third class was behind them, too.

  Everyone was glad of that—except Petersen, who had had a very bad morning—because now came an hour of fun that no one needed to fear and that promised nothing but high jinx and amusement. It was English with Modersohn, a young philologist who for several weeks now had been doing his practice teaching at the institution, or, as Kai, Count Mölln, liked to put it, was the understudy hoping to become the star. But there was little chance that he would be hired—his classes were much too exube
rant.

  Several boys remained behind in the chemistry hall and others went back up to their homeroom; but no one was forced to go down into the freezing courtyard, because Herr Modersohn was in charge of the corridor upstairs now and did not even dare try to send anyone outside. Besides, their task was now to prepare for his arrival in the room.

  The noise level in the classroom did not diminish in the least when the bell rang for fourth period. They all talked and laughed in happy anticipation of the party. His head propped in his hands, Count Mölln went on reading about Roderick Usher, and Hanno sat quietly watching the show. Several boys made animal noises. A rooster crowed very loudly, and Wasservogel, at the back of the room, made sounds like a grunting pig, although you couldn’t tell that the noise was coming from somewhere inside him. A large drawing adorned the blackboard, a cross-eyed face, the work of Timm the rhapsodist. And when Herr Modersohn entered, try as he might, he was unable to close the door, because a fat pine cone had been stuck in the crack—Adolf Todtenhaupt had to remove it.

  Herr Modersohn was a small, ugly man who carried one shoulder hunched forward when he walked; his face was contorted in a peevish expression and framed by a very scraggly, black beard. He seemed in a constant state of embarrassment. He would blink his bright eyes, take a breath, and open his mouth as if he were about to speak—and then couldn’t find the words he was looking for. He took three steps away from the door and stepped on a noisemaker, a noisemaker of such exceptional quality that it sounded as if he had landed on dynamite. He jerked back, wincing, smiled in his misery, and pretended nothing had happened. He stood beside the middle row of desks, propping the palm of one hand on the first desktop and assuming his customary skewed stance. But they knew that this was his favorite pose, and so someone had spilled ink on the spot, and Herr Modersohn’s little, clumsy hand was now stained black. He pretended not to notice, put his wet, smeary hand behind his back, blinked, and said in a low, frail voice, “The order in this classroom leaves something to be desired.”