Buddenbrooks (33 page)

CHAPTER IV

EVERY vacant seat in the Senate must, according to the Constitution, be filled within four weeks. Three of them have passed, and this is election-day--a day of thaw, at the end of February. It is about one o'clock, and people are thronging into Broad Street. They are thronging before the Town Hall, with its ornamental glazed-brick facade, its pointed towers and turrets mounting toward a whitish grey sky, its covered steps supported on outstanding columns, its pointed arcades, through which there is a glimpse of the market place and the fountain. The crowd stands steadfastly in the dirty slush that melts beneath their feet; they look into each other's faces and then straight ahead again, and crane their necks. For beyond that portal, in the Council Room, in fourteen arm-chairs arranged in a semicircle sit the electors, who have been chosen from the Senate and the Assembly and await the proposals of the voting chambers. The affair has spun itself out. It appears that the debate in the chambers will not die down; the struggle is so bitter that up to now not one single unanimous choice has been put before the Council--otherwise the Burgomaster would at once announce an election. Extraordinary! Rumours--� nobody knows whence, nobody knows how--come from within the building and circulate in the street. Perhaps Herr Kaspersen, the elder of the two beadles, who always refers to himself as a "servant of the State," is standing inside there and telling what he hears, out of the corner of his mouth, through his shut teeth, with his eyes turned the other way! The story goes that proposals have been laid before the 21 sitting, but that each of the three chambers has turned in a different name: namely Hagenstrom, Kistenmaker, and Bud-denbrook. A secret ballot must now be taken, with ballot-papers--it is to be hoped that it will show a clear plurality! FDr people without overshoes are suffering, and stamping their feet to warm them. The waiting crowd is made up of all sorts and conditions. There are sea-faring characters, with bare tattoed necks and their hands in the pockets of their sailor trousers; grain porters with their incomparably respectable countenances, and their blouses and knee-breeches of black glazed calico; drivers who have clambered down from their wagons of piled-up sacks, and stand whip in hand to wait for the decision; servant-maids in neckerchiefs, aprons and thick striped petticoats with little white caps perched on the backs of their heads and market-baskets hanging on their bare arms; fish and vegetable women with their flat straw baskets--even a couple of pretty farm girls with Dutch caps, short skirts, and long flowing sleeves coming out from their gaily-embroidered stay-bodies. Mingled among these, burghers, shop-keepers who have come out hatless from neighbouring shops to exchange their views, sprucely-dressed young men who are apprentices in the business of their fathers or their fathers' friends--and schoolboys with satchels and bundles of books. Two labourers with bristling sailor beards, stand chewing their tobacco; behind them is an excited lady, craning her neck this way and that to get a glimpse of the Town Hall between their powerful shoulders. She wears a long evening cloak trimmed with brown fur, which she holds together from the inside with both hands. Her face is well covered with a thick brown veil. She shifts her feet about in the melting snow. "Gawd! Kurz hain't gettin' it this time, nuther, be he?" says the one labourer to the other. "Naw, ye mutton-head, 'tis certain he bain't. There's no BUDDENBRDOK5 more talk o' him. Th' votin's between Hagenstrbm, Budden- brook, Jn' Kistenmaker. 'Tis all about they,--now." " 'Tis whether which DUB D' th' three be ahead o' the others, eh?" "So 'tis; yes, they do say so." "Then I'm minded they'll be choosin' Hagenstrom." "Eh, smarty--so they'll be choosin' Hagenstrb'm? Ye can tell that to yer grandmother!" And therewith he spits-his tobacco-juice on the ground close to his own feet, the-crowd being too dense to admit of a trajectory. He takes hold of his trousers in both hands and pulls them up higher under his belt, and goes on: "Hagenslrbm, he's a great pig--he be so fat he can't breathe through his own nose! If so be it's all o'er wi' Kurz then I'm fer Buddenbrook. Tis a very shrewd chap." "So 'tis, so 'tis. But Hagenstrom, he's got the money." "That bain't the question--'tis no matter o' riches." " 'n' then this Buddenbrook--he be so devilish fine wi' his cuffs 'n' his silk tie 'n' his stickin'-out moustaches; hast seen him walk? He hops along like a bird." "Ye ninny, that bain't the question, no more'n th' other." "They say his sister've put away two men a'ready." The lady in the fur cloak trembles visibly. "Eh, that soart o' thing--what do we know about it? Likely the Consul he couldn't help it hisself." The lady in the veil thinks to herself, "He couldn't, indeed! Thank God for that," and presses her hands together, inside her cloak. " 'n' then," adds the Buddenbrook partisan, "didn't the Burgomaster his own self stan' godfeyther to his son? Can't ye tell somethin' by that?" "Yes, can't you indeed?" thinks the lady. "Thank heaven, that did do some good." She starts. A fresh rumour from the Town Hall, running zig-zag through the crowd, has reached her ears. The balloting, it seems, has not been decisive. Eduard Kistenmaker, indeed, has received fewer votes than 23 the other two candidates, and his name has been dropped. But the struggle goes on between Buddenbrook and Hagen-strbm. A sapient citizen remarks that if the voting continues to be even, it will be necessary to appoint five arbitrators. A voice, down in front at the entrance steps, shouts suddenly: "Hfine Seehas is 'lected--'rah for Hrinc Seehas!" Heine Seehas, be it known, is an habitual drunkard, who peddles hot bread on a liltle wagon through the streets. Everybody roars with laughter, and stands on tip-toe to see the wag who is responsible for the joke. The lady in the veil is seized with a nervous giggle; her shoulders shake for a moment, and then give a shrug which expresses as plainly as words: "Is this the time for torn-foolery like that?" She collects herself again, and stares with intensity between the two labourers at the Town Hall. But almost at the same moment her hands slip from her cloak, so that it opens in front, her figure relaxes, her shoulders droop, she stands there entirely crushed. Hagenstrbm!--The word seems to have corns from nobody knows where--down from the sky, or up from the earth. It is everywhere at once. There is no contradiction. So it is decided. Hagenstrbm! Hagenstrbm it is, then. One may as well go home. The lady in the veil might have known. It was ever thus, She will go home--she feels the tears rising in her throat. This state of things has lasted a second or so, when there occurs a shouting and a backward jostling of the throng. It runs through the whole assemblage, as those in front press back those behind, and at the same time something red appears in the doorway. It is the coats of the bfarlles Kaspersen and Uhlefeldt. They are in full-dress uniform, with white riding breeches, three-cornered hats, yellow gaunt-let gloves, and short dress swords. They appear side by side, and make their way through the crowd, which falls back before them. They move like fate: silent, resolved, inexorable, not looking to right or left, with gaze directed toward the ground. They take, according to instructions, the route marked out by the election. And it is not in the direction of Sand Street! They have turned to the right--they are going down Broad Street! The lady in the veil cannot believe her eyes. However, all about her, people are seeing just what she sees; they are pushing on after the beadles, and saying to each other: "It isn't Hagenslrom, it's Buddenbrook!'* And a group of gentlemen emerge from the portal, in excited conversation, and hurry with rapid steps down Broad Street, to be the first to offer congratulations. Then the lady holds her cloak together and runs for it. She runs, indeed, as seldom lady runs. Her veil blows up, revealing her flushed face--no matter for that; and one of her furred goloshes keeps flapping open in the sloppy snow and hindering her frightfully: yet she outruns them all! She gains the house at the corner of Bakers' Street, she rings the alarm-bell at the vestibule-door--fire, murder, thieves!--she shouts at the maid who opens: "They're coming, Kathrin, they're coming," takes the stairs, and storms into the living-room. Her brother himself sits there, certainly a little pale. He puts down his paper and makes a gesture, almost as if to ward her off. But she puts her arms about him, and repeats: "They're coming, Tom, they're coming! You are the man--and Hermann Hagenstrb'm is out!" That was Friday. On the following day, Senator Budden-brook stood in the Council Hall, in the seat of the deceased James Mollendorpf, and in the presence of the City Fathers there assembled, and the Delegation of Burgesses, he took the oath: "I will conscientiously perform the duties of my office, strive with all my power for the good of the State, faithfully obey the Constitution, honourably pursue the pub-lic weal, and in the discharge of my office, regard neither my own advantage nor that of my relatives and friends. I will 25 support the laws of the State and do justice on all alike, whether rich or poor. In all things where secrecy is needful, I will not speak, and especially will I not reveal what is given me to keep silent. So help me God!"

CHAPTER V

OUR desires and our performance are conditioned by certain needs of our nervous systems which are very hard to define in words. What people called Thomas Buddenhrook's "vanity"--his care for his personal appearance, his ex-travagant dressing--was at bottom not vanity but something else entirely. It was, originally, no more than the effort of a man of action to he certain, from head to toe, of the adequacy and correctness of his bearing. But the demands made by himself and by others upon his talents and his rapacities were constantly increased. He was overwhelmed by public and private affairs. When the Senate sat to appoint its committees, one of the main departments, the administration of the taxes, fell to his lot. But tolls, railways, and other administrative business claimed his time as well; and he presided at hundreds of committees that called into play all the capacities he possessed: he had to summon every ounce of his flexibility, his foresight, his power to charm, in order not to wound the sensibilities of his elders, to defer constantly to them, and yet to keep the reins in his own hands. If his so-called vanity notably increased at the same time, if he felt a greater and greater need to refresh himself bodily, to renew himself, to change his clothing several times a day, all this meant simply that Thomas Buddenbrook, though he was barely thirty-seven years old, was losing his elasticity, was wearing himself out fast. When good Dr. Grabow begged him to relax a little, IIP answered, "Oh, my dear Doctor, I haven't reached that point yet!" By which he meant that he still had an interminable deal of work to do before he arrived at the goal and could 27 settle back to enjoy himself. The truth was, he hardly believed himself in such a condition. Yet it drove him on, it left him no peace. Even when he seemed to rest, as he sat with the paper after dinner, a thousand ideas whirled about in his brain, while the veins stood out on his temples, and he twisted the ends of his moustaches with a certain still intensity of passion. He concentrated with equal violence whether the subject of his thought was a business manoeuvre, a public speech, or a decision to renew his entire stock of body linen, in order to be sure that he had enough, for a while, at least. If such wholesale buying afforded him passing relief and satisfaction, he could indulge himself in it without scruple, for his business at this time was as brilliant as ever it had been in his grandfather's day. The repute of the firm grew, not only in the town but round about, and throughout the whole community he continued to be held in ever greater regard. His talents were admitted on all hands, with ad-miration or envy as the case might be; while he himself wrestled ceaselessly, at times despairingly, to evolve an order and method of work which should enable him to overtake the flights of his own restless imagination. Thus, when, in the summer of 1863, Senator Buddenbrook went about with his mind full of plans for the building of a great new house, it was not arrogance which impelled him. He was driven by his own inability to be quiet--which his fellow-burghers would have been right in ascribing to his "vanity"--for it was another manifestation of the same thing. To make a new home, and a radical change in his outward life; to pack up, to re-install himself afresh, to weed out all the accumulations of bygone years and set aside every-thing old or superfluous: all this, even in imagination, gave him feelings of freshness, newness, spotlessness, stimulation. All of which he must have craved indeed, for he attacked the plan with great enthusiasm, and already had his eye on a suitable location. There was a property of considerable extent at the lower end of Fishers' Lane. The house, grey with age, in bad repair, was offered for sale on the death of its ownei, an ancient spinster, the relic of a forgotten family, who had dwelt there alone. On this piece of land the Senator thought to build his house; and he surveyed it with a speculative eye v/hen he passed the spot on his way to the harbour. The neighbourhood was pleasant enough--good burgher-houses, the most modest among them being the narrow little facade opposite, with a small flower-shop on the ground floor. He threw himself into the affair. He made a rough esti-mate of the expense involved, and though the sum he fixed provisionally was by no means a small one, he felt he could compass it without undue effort. But then he would suddenly have the thought that the whole thing was a senseless folly, and confess to himself that his present house had plenty of room for himself, his wife, their child, and their servants. But the half-conscious cravings were stronger; and in the desire to have them strengthened and justified from outside, he first revealed his plan to his sister. "Well, Tony, what do you say to it? The whole house is a sort of band-box, isn't it?--and the winding stair is really a joke. It isn't quite the thing, is it? and now that you've had me made Senator--in a word, don't you think I owe it to myself?" Ah, in the eyes of Madame Permaneder, what was there he did not owe to himself? She was full of practical enthu-siasm. She crossed her arms on her breast and walked up and down with her shoulders raised and her head in the air. "Of course you do, Tom; goodness gracious, yes! What possible objection could there be? And when you have married an Arnoldsen, with a hundred thousand thaler to boot--I'm very proud to be the first you've told it to. It was lovely of you. And if you do do it, Tom, why, you must do it well, that's what I say. It must be grand." "H'm, well, yes, I agree with you. I'm willing to spend BUDDENBROOK5 something on it. Til have Voigt, and we'll go over the plana together. Voigt has a great deal of taste." The second opinion which Thomas called in was Gerda'a. She praised the idea unreservedly. The confusion of moving would not be pleasant, but the prospect of a large music-room with good acoustic properties impressed her most happily. As for the old Frau Consul, she was quite prepared to think of the new house as a logical consequence of all the other blessings which had fallen to her lot, and to give thanks to God therefor, accordingly. Since the birth of the heir, and the recent election, she gave freer expression to her molhprly pride, and had a way of saying "my son, the Senator," which the Broad Street Buddenbrooks found most offensive. These aging spinsters felt that all too little shadow set off the sunshine through which Thomas's outward life ran its brilliant course. It was no great consolation--at the Thurs-day family gatherings--to pour contempt on poor, good-natured Clothilde. As for Christian--Christian, through the good office of Mr. Rirhardson, his former chief, had found a situation in London, whence he had lately telegraphed a fantastic desire to marry Fraulein Puvogel, an idea upon which his mother had firmly set her foot--Christian now be-longed, quite simply, to Jacob Krbger's class, and was, as it were, a dead issue. They consoled themselves, to some extent, with the little weaknesses of the old Frau Consul and Frau Permaneder. They would bring the conversation round to the subject of coiffures: the Frau Consul was capable of saying, in the blandest way, that she always wore "her" hair very simply, whereas it was plain to any one gifted by God with intelligence, and certainly to the Misses Buddenbrook, that the immutable red-blonde hair under the old lady's cap could no longer by any stretch be called "her" hair. Still more gratifying was it to get Cousin Tony started on the subject of those nefarious persons who had formerly had an influence on her life. Teary Trietschke! Gr�! Permaneder! Hagenstrb'm!--Tony, when she was egged on to it, would utter these names into the air like so many little trumpet ings of disgust, with her shoulders well up. They had a sweet sound in the ears of the daughters of Uncle Gotthold. They could not dissimulate, and they would accept no responsibility for omitting to say that little Johann was fright-fully slow about learning to walk and talk. They were really quite right: it was an admitted fact that Hanno--this was the nickname adopted by the Frau Senator for her son--at a time when he was able to call all the members of his family by name with fair correctness, was incapable of pronouncing the names Friederike, Henriette, and Pfiffi so that any one could understand what he said. And at fifteen months he had not taken a single step alone. The Misses Buddenbrook, shaking their heads pessimistically, declared that the child would be halt and tongue-tied to the end of his days. They later admitted the error of their gloomy prophecy; but nobody, in fact, denied that Hanno was a little backward. His early infancy was a struggle for life, and his family was in constant anxiety. At birth he had been too feeble to cry out; and soon after the christening a three-day attack of cholera-infantum was almost enough to still for ever the little heart set pumping, in the first place, with such difficulty. But he survived; and good Dr. Grabow did his best, by the most painstaking care and nourishment, to strengthen him for the difficult period of teething. The first tiny white point had barely pricked through the gum, when the child was attacked by convulsions, which repeated themselves with greater and greater violence, until again the worst was to be feared. Dnce more the old doctor speechlessly pressed the parents' hands. The child lay in profound exhaustion, and the vacant look in the shadowy eyes indicated an affection of the brain. The end seemed almost to be wished for. But Hanno regained some little strength, consciousness returned; and though the crisis which he had survived 31 greatly hindered his progress in walking and talking, there was no longer any immediate danger to be feared. The child was slender of limb, and rather tall for his age. His hair, pale brown and very soft, began to grow rapidly, and fell waving over the shoulders of his full, pinafore-like frocks. The family likenesses wrre abundantly clear, even now. From the first he possessed the Eudden-brook hand, broad, a little too short, but finely articulated, and his nose was precisely the nose of his father and great-grandfather, though the nostrils would probably remain more delicate. But the whole lower part of his face, longish and narrow, was neither Buddenbrook nor Kroner, but from the mother's side of the house. This was true of the mouth in particular, which, when closed, began very early tn wear an anxious, woebegone expression that later matched the look of his strange, gold-brown, blue-shadowed eyes. So he began to live: brooded over by his father's reserved tenderness, clothed nnd nurtured under his mother's watchful eye; prayed over by Aunt Antonie, presented with tops and hobby-horses by the Frau Consul and Uncle Justus; and when his charming little perambulator appeared on the streets, it was looked after with interest and expectation. Madame Decho, the stately nurse, had attended the child up to now; but it had been settled that when they moved into the new house, not she, but Ida Jungmann, should move in with them, and the lalter's place with the old Frau Consul be filled by somebody else. Senator Buddenbrook carried out his plans. He had no difficulty in obtaining title to the property in Fishers' Lane. The Broad Street house was turned nver to Gosc-h the broker, who dramatically declared himself prepared to assume the task of disposing of it, Stephan Kistenmaker, who had a growing family, and, with his brother Eduard, made good money in the wine business, bought it at once. Herr Voigt undertook the new building, and soon there was a clean plan to unroll before the eyes of the family on Thursday after- BUDDENBRDDK5 noons, when they could, in fancy, see the fa�e already before them: an imposing brick fagade with sandstone caryatides supporting the bow-window, and a flat roof, of which Clothilda remarked, in her pleasant drawl, that one might drink afternoon coffee there. The Senator planned to transfer the business offices to his new building, which would, of course, leave empty the ground floor of the house in Meng Street. But here also things turned out well: for it appeared that the City Fire Insurance Company wanted to rent the rooms by the month for their offices--which was quickly arranged. Autumn came, and the grey walls crumbled to heaps of rubbish, and Thomas Buddenbrook's new house rose above its roomy cellars, while winter set in and slowly waned again. In all the town there was no pleasanter topic of con-versation. It was "tip-top"--it was the finest dwelling-house far and wide. But it must cost like the deuce--the old Consul would never have spent money so recklessly. Thus the neighbours, the middle-class dwellers in the gabled houses, looking out at the workmen on the scaffoldings, enjoying the sight of the rising walls, and speculating on the date of the carpenters' feast. It came at length, and was celebrated with due circum-stance. Up on the flat-topped roof an old master mason made the festal speech and flung the champagne boLlle over his shoulder, while the tremendous wreath, woven of roses, green garlands, and gay-coloured leaves, swayed between standards, heavily in the breeze. The workmen's feast was held at a neighbouring inn, at long tables, with beer, sandwiches, and cigars; and Senator Buddenbrook and his wife and his little son on Madame Decho's arm, walked through the narrow space between the tables and bowed his thanks at the cheers they gave him. When they got outside, they put little Hanno back into his carriage, and Thomas and Gerda crossed the road to have another look at the red facade with the white caryatides .33 BUDDENBROOK5 They stood before the flower-shop with the narrow door and the. poor little show-window, in which only a few pots of onions stood on a green glass slab. Iwersen, the proprietor, a blond giant of a man, in a woollen jacket, was in the doorway with his wife. She was of a quite different build, slender and delicate, with a dark, southern-looking face. She held a four- or five-year-old boy by one hand, while with the other she was pushing a little carriage back and forth, in which a younger chili lay asleep; and she was plainly expecting a third blessing. Iwersen made a low, awkward bow; his wife, continuing to push the little carriage back and forth, looked calmly and observantly at the Frau Senator with her narrow black eyes, as the lady approached them on her husband's arm. Thomas paused and pointed with his walking-stick at the great garland far above them. "You did a good job, Iwersen," said he. "No, Herr Sen'tor. That's the wife's work. She's the one fer these affairs." "Oh," said the Senator, raised his head with a little jerk, and gave, for a second, a clear friendly look straight into
Frau Iwersen's face. Then, without adding a word, he courteously waved his hand, and they moved on their way.