“Antonie!” he said. “Behold me here. Do you have a heart, a feeling heart? Hear me out. You see before you a devastated man, a man who will perish, if—indeed, a man who will surely die of grief, if you reject his love for you. Here I lie. Can you find it in your heart to say: ‘I despise you?’ ‘I am leaving you’?”
Tony wept. It was exactly the same as that day in the landscape room. She saw that same face distorted with fear, those pleading eyes directed up at her, and once again she was amazed and moved to see that there was no pretense in his pleas, that his fear was genuine.
“Get up, Grünlich,” she said, sobbing. “Please, get up.” And she tried to pull him up by the shoulders. “I do not despise you. How can you say such a thing.” In total helplessness, not knowing what else to say, she turned to her father. The consul took her hand, bowed to his son-in-law, and moved with her toward the hallway door.
“You’re leaving?” Herr Grünlich cried, leaping to his feet.
“I have already told you,” the consul said, “that I cannot be responsible for allowing my child to suffer such misfortune through no fault of her own. And, might I add, neither can you. No, sir, you have forfeited your rights to my daughter. And you should thank your Creator that the heart of this child has remained so pure and unsuspecting that, in leaving you, she does not despise you. Farewell.”
At this point Herr Grünlich lost his head. He had wanted to speak of a brief separation, of a reunion and a new life together, and perhaps even to salvage the inheritance. But all his careful planning, all his industry and invention were at an end. He could have picked up the large, unbreakable bronze plate from the mirrored whatnot stand, but instead he grabbed the fragile, ornate vase beside it and dashed it to the floor, breaking it in a thousand pieces.
“Ha! Fine! Fine!” he screamed. “Get out! Do you think I’ll weep great tears for you, you goose? No, no, you’re wrong there, my dear. I only married you for your money, but since it wasn’t nearly enough, you can just go on home. I’m fed up with you—fed up—fed up!”
Johann Buddenbrook led his daughter out in silence. But the consul returned alone again and walked over to Herr Grünlich, who was standing at the window staring out into the rain, his hands behind his back. He touched him softly on the shoulder, and softly admonished him, “Pull yourself together. Pray!”
10
THE ATMOSPHERE in the big house on Meng Strasse remained subdued for some time after Madame Grünlich returned home with her little daughter. Everyone moved about rather gingerly and no one liked to speak about “it”—except the person who had played the leading role in the affair, who felt completely in her element and, unlike the others, spoke of it with gusto.
Tony moved into the rooms on the third floor that her parents had occupied when the old Buddenbrooks were alive. She was somewhat disappointed when her papa would not hear of hiring a separate maid for them; and she spent a half-hour in pensive reflection the day he gently explained to her that her only proper course of action for now was to live a private life apart from the social whirl of the town, for, although by all ordinary standards she was an innocent victim of the fate that God had sent to test her, her position as a divorced woman demanded the greatest discretion at present. But Tony had the lovely knack of being able to adapt readily to any situation in life simply by tackling its new possibilities. She was soon enjoying her role of “innocent woman afflicted by tragedy”; her wardrobe was dark now, her pretty ash-blond hair was parted and neatly drawn back, just as she had worn it in her youth; and, to compensate for her lack of social pleasures, she found inexhaustible joy and great dignity in the gravity and importance of her new situation and provided the household with her views on marriage, Herr Grünlich, and life and destiny in general.
Not everyone offered her the opportunity. Elisabeth was convinced that her husband had acted as correctly as duty demanded; but whenever Tony began to speak, she would simply lift her lovely white hand and say, “Assez, my child. I do not wish to hear about the matter.”
Clara, now twelve years old, understood nothing of what had happened, and Cousin Thilda was just as dense. “Oh, Tony, how sad,” was all she knew to say, drawing out the syllables in amazement. But the young wife found an attentive audience in Mamselle Jungmann, who at age thirty-five was proud of having grown gray in service to the best circles of society. “You need have no fears, Tony, my child,” she said. “You are still young and will marry again.” And she also devoted much loyalty and love to raising little Erika, telling her the same stories and anecdotes the consul’s children had heard fifteen years before—particularly about an uncle in Marienwerder who had died of the hiccups because “his heart got squashed.”
But most of all Tony loved to chat with her father over dinner, or at breakfast early each morning. Her attachment to him had suddenly become much deeper than ever before. She had always been in awe of his powerful position in the town, of his diligent, sober, stern, and pious competence, had felt more respect than tenderness for him, but during the stormy scene in her salon, he had shown her his human side; it had touched her and filled her with pride that he had found her worthy of a serious, confidential discussion of the matter, that he had put the decision in her hands, and that he, who had always been so unimpeachable, had admitted almost humbly that he did not feel guiltless in what had happened to her. Certainly such a thought would never have occurred to Tony on her own; but since he had said it, she believed it, and her feelings for him had grown softer and tenderer. The consul’s view of the matter had not changed, either—in the wake of this terrible misfortune, he believed he owed his daughter twice as much love.
Johann Buddenbrook had taken no steps against his unscrupulous son-in-law. True, Tony and her mother had learned from several conversations just what dishonest means Herr Grünlich had employed to get his hands on the eighty thousand marks, but the consul was wary of having the matter made public or, worse, turned over to the courts. His pride as a man of business had been grievously wounded, and he wrestled in silence with the disgrace of having been swindled so badly.
Nevertheless, as soon as B. Grünlich had declared bankruptcy—causing not inconsiderable losses to various firms in Hamburg—the consul energetically prosecuted for divorce. And it was primarily that suit, the thought that she herself was the middle point of a real suit, that filled Tony with an indescribable sense of her own worth.
“Father,” she said—because during such conversations she never called the consul Papa—“Father, how is our case going? You do think, don’t you, that it will turn out well? The statute is perfectly clear; I’ve studied it myself: ‘the incapacity of the husband to support his family.’ The judges must surely recognize that. If there had been a son, however, Grünlich would retain custody.”
On another occasion she said, “I have given a great deal of thought to the years of my marriage, Father. And, you know, that was why the man wouldn’t live in the city, though I so much wanted to. That was why he never liked for me to go into town or move in society. The danger was much greater there than in Eimsbüttel that I might somehow learn just how matters stood with him. What a scoundrel!”
“It is not for us to judge, my child,” the consul replied.
And, once the divorce was granted, she assumed a serious face and approached him, saying, “You did enter it in the family records, didn’t you, Father? No? Oh, then surely I should. Please, give me the key to the secretary.”
And right beneath the lines that she had entered after her name four years before, she resolutely and proudly wrote: “This marriage was dissolved by law in February of 1850.”
Then she laid her pen down and pondered for a moment. “Father,” she said, “I know very well that all this leaves a blot on our family history. Yes, it does—I have given it a great deal of thought. It’s the same as if there were a splotch of ink on this page. But don’t worry, it’s up to me to see that it is erased. I am still young. Don’t you think that I’m still rathe
r pretty? Although, when Madame Stuht saw me again, she said, ‘O Lord, Madame Grünlich, you’ve grown so old!’ Well, one can’t spend one’s whole life being the silly goose I once was. Life sweeps one along with it. No. And so, in short, I shall marry again. You’ll see, it will all be made good again by a new, advantageous match. Don’t you think?”
“That’s in God’s hands, my child. But it is not at all proper to speak of such things at present.”
From this point on, moreover, Tony began to use a certain phrase frequently: “After all, life is like that.…” And at the word “life” she would open her eyes wide in a pretty but serious sort of way to indicate what deep insight she now had into human life and human fate.
When Thomas returned home from Pau in August that same year, the table in the dining room was enlarged still further, and Tony had a new chance to speak her mind. She loved and respected her brother with all her heart—after all, he had recognized and appreciated her sorrow that day, coming home from Travemünde. And she knew that someday, in the distant future, he would be head of the firm and of the family.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “we both have been through a lot, Tony.” Then he lifted an eyebrow and let his Russian cigarette wander from one corner of his mouth to the other—thinking, presumably, about the little flower-shop girl with the Malaysian face, who had recently married the son of the woman who owned the shop on Fischer Grube and was now running it all on her own.
Thomas Buddenbrook, though still a little pale, was a strikingly elegant man. It certainly looked as if the last few years had rounded out his education. There was something almost military about him—he was short but square-built with broad shoulders, he brushed his hair in little hilly waves over his ears, he had now trimmed his mustache in the French fashion, the pointed ends twirled with hot tongs so that they stood straight out to each side. But both the bluish veins visible at his temples where his hair was waved back on each side and his tendency to take a chill—despite all Dr. Grabow’s valiant efforts to counteract it—indicated that his constitution was not especially robust. Still, in the finer details of his physical appearance—the chin, the nose, and especially the hands, those marvelous, genuine Buddenbrook hands—he had grown more and more to resemble his grandfather.
When he spoke French it had a distinctively Spanish ring, and he amazed everyone with his fondness for certain modern writers who specialized in satire and polemics. The only person in town who showed any understanding for his taste in literature was Herr Gosch the broker; his father was most stern in his condemnation of it. But that in no way affected the look of pride and joy that appeared in the consul’s eyes when he thought of his eldest son. With great and deep pleasure he welcomed him back to his office as a colleague, and indeed began to take renewed interest himself in their work there—particularly after the death of Madame Kröger, which occurred at the end of the year.
They bore the old lady’s loss with appropriate composure. She was old as the hills and very lonely toward the end. God took her, and the Buddenbrooks received a lot of money, a nice round sum of one hundred thousand thalers courant, which increased the firm’s working capital in a most timely fashion.
A second result of her death was that the consul’s brother-in-law, Justus Kröger, who was weary of a long string of business setbacks, sold out and retired the moment he had his inheritance in hand. Justus Kröger, the debonair suitier, the son of the old cavalier à la mode, was not a very happy man. He was too easygoing, too generous of heart ever to attain a solid and undisputed position in the world of business; he had already spent a considerable portion of the money he had now inherited from his parents; and of late, his elder son, Jakob, was seriously adding to his worries.
That young man had apparently chosen immoral companions in the big city of Hamburg, had cost his father immense sums over the years; and when the day came on which Consul Kröger cut off his funds, his wife, a weak and softhearted woman, secretly sent her dissolute son more money, creating a sad state of discord between husband and wife. And, to cap it all, at almost the same time that B. Grünlich went bankrupt, something even worse happened at Dahlbeck & Co., where Jakob worked in Hamburg. There had been a breach of trust, a transgression. It was not talked about, certainly no one asked Justus Kröger anything about it—but it was common knowledge that Jakob would soon be sailing for New York, where he had found a job as a traveling salesman. He was seen in town once before he left: a foppishly dressed young fellow with an unwholesome look about him. He had come to get more money from his mother, beyond what his father had already given him for the trip.
In short, then, things had come to such a pass that Consul Justus spoke about “my son,” as if he had only one heir, Jürgen—who, although he had never been guilty of any misdemeanors, seemed of rather limited mental capacities. He had graduated from high school only with great difficulty and had since been in Jena, where he was studying law, with neither much joy nor success, it appeared.
Johann Buddenbrook was greatly grieved by these less than admirable developments in his wife’s family and was therefore all the more anxious about his own children. He was justified in placing the fullest confidence in the earnest competence of his elder son. As for Christian, Mr. Richardson had written that, although the young man had shown a true talent for making the English language his own, he had not shown sufficient interest in business and evidenced all too great a weakness for the amusements of the metropolis—the theater, for example. Christian’s own letters expressed a lively interest in travel, and he begged ardently for permission to accept a position “out there”—which meant in South America, in Chile perhaps. “Wanderlust, nothing more,” the consul said and demanded that he at least finish his fourth year perfecting his mercantile knowledge with Mr. Richardson. At which point several more letters were exchanged concerning his plans, and in the summer of 1851 Christian Buddenbrook did indeed sail for Valparaiso, where he had found a position. He left directly from England without first returning home.
Apart from his concern about his two sons, the consul was also pleased to notice with what resolve and self-assurance Tony defended her position in town as a born Buddenbrook—especially when it was to be expected that, as a divorced woman, she would have to overcome all sorts of maliciousness and prejudices among the other families.
“Oh!” she cried, returning home from a walk with a red face and tossing her hat on the sofa in the landscape room. “That Möllendorpf woman, or Hagenström, or Semlinger, or whatever, that Julie, that creature! What do you think happened, Mama? She didn’t even greet me—no, she did not greet me. She was waiting for me to greet her first. What do you say to that! I walked right past her on Breite Strasse with my head held high and looked straight at her.”
“Don’t go too far, now, Tony. No. Everything has its limits. Why couldn’t you greet Madame Möllendorpf first? You two are the same age, and she is a married woman, just as you once were.”
“Never, Mama. Good Lord, the dregs!”
“Assez, my dear. Such indelicate expressions.”
“Oh, it’s very easy to get carried away.”
Her hatred of this particular “upstart family” was nursed by the mere thought that the Hagenströms might now feel justified in thinking they could look down on her, but no less by the family’s flourishing prosperity. Old Hinrich had died at the beginning of 1851, and his son Hermann—Hermann with the lemon buns and the slaps—was now carrying on his father’s very profitable export business at the side of old Herr Strunck; and within a year he married the daughter of Consul Huneus, the richest man in town, whose wholesale lumber business had enabled him to leave each of his three children two million marks. Hermann’s brother, Moritz, had been an unusually successful student—despite his bad lungs—and established a law office in town. He was considered to be very astute and sly—indeed, to be a man of taste and wit—and he quickly built up a sizable practice. There was nothing of his Semlinger heritage about him, but he did have
a yellow complexion and pointed gap-teeth.
She even had to keep her head held high in her own family. Ever since Uncle Gotthold had retired from business to spend his days walking around his modest home in trousers that were too short and too baggy, eating cough drops from a tin box—he loved his sweets—his attitude toward his more privileged stepbrother had grown milder and more tolerant with the years, though that did not preclude his taking a certain quiet satisfaction in Tony’s ill-fated marriage, inasmuch as he himself had three unmarried daughters. And speaking of his wife, née Stüwing, and particularly of those three young women—now aged twenty-six, twenty-seven, and twenty-eight—they showed an almost extravagant interest in their cousin’s misfortunes and divorce—indeed, a much livelier one than they had exhibited at the time of her engagement and marriage. On “children’s day,” which since the death of Madame Kröger was held each Thursday on Meng Strasse, Tony had no easy time of it holding her own against them.
“Good heavens, you poor thing,” said Pfiffi, the youngest, who was short and plump and who with each word would give a funny little jiggle, while drops of moisture collected at the corners of her mouth. “So the decree has come through, then? And so you’re right back where you were before, aren’t you?”
“Oh, on the contrary,” said Henriette, who, like her older sister, was taller and skinnier, extraordinarily so. “You’re in much sadder shape than if you had never married at all.”
“I certainly agree,” Friederike chimed in. “In that case it’s ever so much better never to marry.”