Buddenbrooks/Volume 2/Part 7/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
Christian Buddenbrook, proprietor of the firm of H. C. F. Purmeister and Company of Hamburg, came into his brother’s living-room, holding in his hand his modish grey hat and his walking-stick with the nun’s bust. Tom and Gerda sat reading together. It was half past nine on the evening of the christening day.
“Good evening,” said Christian, “Oh, Thomas, I must speak with you at once—Please excuse me, Gerda.—It is urgent, Thomas.”
They went into the dark dining-room, where the Consul lighted a gas-jet on the wall, and looked at his brother. He expected nothing good. Except for the first greeting, he had had no opportunity to speak with Christian, but he had looked at him, during the service, and noted that he seemed unusually serious, and even more restless than common: in the course of Pastor Pringsheim’s discourse he had left the room for several minutes. Thomas had not written him since the day in Hamburg when he had paid over into his brother’s hands an advance of 10,000 marks current on his inheritance, to settle his indebtedness. “Just go on as you are going,” he had said, “and you’ll soon run through all your money. As far as I am concerned, I hope you will cross my path very little in future. You have put my friendship to too hard a test in these three years.” Why was he here now? Something must be driving him.
“Well?” asked the Consul.
“I’m done,” Christian said. He let himself down sidewise on one of the high-backed chairs around the dining-table, and held his hat and stick between his thin knees.
“May I ask what it is you are done with, and what brings you to me?” said the Consul. He remained standing.
“I’m done,” repeated Christian, shaking his head from side to side with frightful earnestness and letting his little round eyes stray restlessly back and forth. He was now thirty-three years old, but he looked much older. His reddish-blond hair was grown so thin that nearly all the cranium was bare. His cheeks were sunken, the cheek-bones protruded sharply, and between them, naked, fleshless, and gaunt, stood the huge hooked nose.
“If it were only this—!” he went on, and ran his hand down the whole of his left side, very close, but not touching it. “It isn’t a pain, you know—it is a misery, a continuous, indefinite ache. Dr. Drögemuller in Hamburg tells me that my nerves on this side are all too short. Imagine, on my whole left side, my nerves aren’t long enough! Sometimes I think I shall surely have a stroke here, on this side, a permanent paralysis. You have no idea, I never go to sleep properly. My heart doesn’t beat, and I start up suddenly, in a perfectly terrible fright. That happens not once but ten times before I get to sleep. I don’t know if you know what it is. I’ll tell you about it more precisely. It is—”
“Not now, the Consul said coldly. “Am I to understand that you have come here to tell me this? I suppose not.”
“No, Thomas. If it were only that—but it is not that—alone. It is the business. I can’t go on with it.”
“Your affairs are in confusion again?” The Consul did not start, he did not raise his voice. He asked the question quite calmly, and looked sidewise at his brother, with a cold, weary glance.
“No, Thomas. For to tell you the truth—it is all the same now—I never really was in order, even with the ten thousand, as you know yourself. They only saved me from putting up the shutters at once. The thing is—I had more losses at once, in coffee—and with the failure in Antwerp—That’s the truth. So then I didn’t do any more business; I just sat still. But one has to live—so now there are notes and other debts—five thousand thaler. You don’t know the hole I’m in. And on top of everything else, this agony—”
“Oh, so you just sat still, did you?” cried the Consul, beside himself. His self-control was gone now. “You let the wagon stick in the mud and went off to enjoy yourself! You think I don’t know the kind of life you’ve been living—theatres and circus and clubs—and women—”
“You mean Aline. Yes, Thomas, you have very little understanding for that sort of thing, and it’s my misfortune, perhaps, that I have so much. You are right when you say it has cost me too much; and it will cost me a goodish bit more, for—I’ll tell you something, just here between two brothers—the third child, the little girl, six months old, she is my child.”
“You fool, you!”
“Don’t say that, Thomas. You should be just, even if you are angry, to her and to—why shouldn’t it be my child? And as for Aline, she isn’t in the least worthless, and you ought not to say she is. She is not at all promiscuous; she broke with Consul Holm on my account, and he has much more money than I have. That’s how decent she is. No, Thomas, you simply can’t understand what a splendid creature she is—and healthy—she is as healthy—!” He repeated the word, and held up one hand before his face with the fingers crooked, in the same gesture as when he used to tell about “Maria” and the depravity of London. “You should see her teeth when she laughs. I’ve never found any other teeth to compare with them, not in Valparaiso, or London, or anywhere else in the world. I'll never forget the evening I first met her, in the oyster-room, at Uhlich’s. She was living with Consul Holm then. Well, I told her a story or so, and was a bit friendly; and when I went home with her afterwards—well, Thomas, that’s a different sort of feeling from the one you have when you do a good stroke of business! But you don’t like to hear about such things—I can see that already—and anyhow, it’s over with. I’m saying good-bye to her, though I shall keep in touch with her on account of the child. I’ll pay up everything I owe in Hamburg, and shut up shop. I can’t go on. I’ve talked with Mother, and she is willing to give me the five thousand thaler to start with, so I can put things in order; and I hope you will agree to it, for it is much better to say quite simply that Christian Buddenbrook is winding up his business and going abroad, than for me to make a failure. You think so too, don’t you? I intend to go to London again, Thomas, and take a position. It isn’t good for me to be independent—I can see that more and more. The responsibility—whereas in a situation one just goes home quite care-free, at the end of the day. And I liked living in London. Do you object?”
During this exposition, the Consul had turned his back on his brother, and stood with his hands in his pockets, describing figures on the floor with his foot.
“Very good, go to London,” he said, shortly, and without turning more than half-way toward his brother, he passed into the living-room.
But Christian followed him. He went up to Gerda, who sat there alone, reading, and put out his hand.
“Good night, Gerda. Weill, Gerda, I’m off for London. Yes, it’s remarkable how one gets tossed about hither and yon. Now it’s again into the unknown, into a great city, you know, where one meets an adventure at every third step, and sees so much of life. Strange—do you know the feeling? One gets it here—sort of in the pit of the stomach—it’s very odd.”