The Frau Consul, Christian, Clothilde, Ida Jungmann, Frau Permaneder, and Hanno were assembled in the salon, the last two supporting, not without difficulty, the family present, a great commemorative tablet. The Frau Consul, deeply moved, embraced her eldest-born.
“This is a wonderful day, my dear son—a wonderful day,” she repeated. “We must thank God unceasingly, with all our hearts, for His mercies—for all His mercies.” She wept.
The Senator was attacked by weakness in her embrace. He felt as though something within him freed itself and flew away. His lips trembled. An overwhelming need possessed him to lay his head upon his mother’s breast, to close his eyes in her arms, to breathe in the delicate perfume that rose from the soft silk of her gown, to lie there at rest, seeing nothing more, saying nothing more. He kissed her and stood erect, putting out his hand to his brother, who greeted him with the absentminded embarrassment which was his usual bearing on such occasions. Clothilde drawled out something kindly. Ida Jungmann confined herself to making a deep bow, while she played with the silver watch-chain on her flat bosom.
“Come here, Tom,” said Frau Permaneder uncertainly. “We can’t hold it any longer, can we, Hanno?” She was holding it almost alone, for Hanno’s little arms were not much help; and she looked, what with her enthusiasm and her effort, like an enraptured martyr. Her eyes were moist, her cheeks burned, and her tongue played, with a mixture of mischief and nervousness, on her upper lip.
“Here I am,” said the Senator. “What in the world is this? Come, let me have it; we’ll lean it against the wall.” He propped it up next to the piano and stood looking at it, surrounded by the family.
In a large, heavy frame of carved nut-wood were the portraits of the four owners of the firm, under glass. There was the founder, Johann Buddenbrook, taken from an old oil painting—a tall, grave old gentleman, with his lips firmly closed, looking severe and determined above his lace jabot. There was the broad and jovial countenance of Johann Buddenbrook, the friend of Jean Jacques Hoffstede. There was Consul Johann Buddenbrook, in a stiff choker collar, with his wide, wrinkled mouth and large aquiline nose, his eyes full of religious fervour. And finally there was Thomas Buddenbrook himself, as a somewhat younger man. The four portraits were divided by conventionalized blades of wheat, heavily gilded, and beneath, likewise in figures of brilliant gilt, the dates –. Above the whole, in the tall, Gothic hand of him who had left it to his descendants, was the quotation: “My son, attend with zeal, to thy business by day; but do none that hinders thee from thy sleep at night.”
The Senator, his hands behind his back gazed for a long time at the tablet.
“Yes, yes,” he said abruptly, and his tone was rather mocking, “an undisturbed night’s rest is a very good thing.” Then, seriously, if perhaps a little perfunctorily, “Thank you very much, my dear family. It is indeed a most thoughtful and beautiful gift. What do you think—where shall we put it? Shall we hang it in my private office?”
“Yes, Tom, over the desk in your office,” answered Frau Permaneder, and embraced her brother. Then she drew him into the bow-window and pointed.
Under a deep blue sky, the two-coloured flag floated above all the houses, right down Fishers’ Lane, from Broad Street to the wharf, where the Wullenwewer and the Friederike Överdieck lay under full flag, in their owner’s honour.
“The whole town is the same,” said Frau Permaneder, and her voice trembled. “I’ve been out and about already. Even the Hagenströms have a flag. They couldn’t do otherwise.—I’d smash in their window!” He smiled, and they went back to the table together. “And here are the telegrams, Tom, the first ones to come—the personal ones, of course; the others have been sent to the office.” They opened a few of the dispatches: from the family in Hamburg, from the Frankfort Buddenbrooks, from Herr Arnoldsen in Amsterdam, from Jürgen Kröger in Wismar. Suddenly Frau Permaneder flushed deeply.
“He is a good man, in his way,” she said, and pushed across to her brother the telegram she had just opened: it was signed Permaneder.
“But time is passing,” said the Senator, and looked at his watch. “I’d like my tea. Will you come in with me? The house will be like a beehive after a while.”
His wife, who had given a sign to Ida Jungmann, held him back.
“Just a moment, Thomas. You know Hanno has to go to his lessons. He wants to say a poem to you first. Come here, Hanno. And now, just as if no one else were here—you remember? Don’t be excited.”
It was the summer holidays, of course, but little Hanno had private lessons in arithmetic, in order to keep up with his class. Somewhere out in the suburb of St. Gertrude, in a little ill-smelling room, a man in a red beard, with dirty fingernails, was waiting to discipline him in the detested “tables.” But first he was to recite to Papa a poem painfully learned by heart, with Ida Jungmann’s help, in the little balcony on the second floor.
He leaned against the piano, in his blue sailor suit with the white V front and the wide linen collar with a big sailor’s knot coming out beneath. His thin legs were crossed, his body and head a little inclined in an attitude of shy, unconscious grace. Two or three weeks before, his hair had been cut, as not only his fellow-pupils, but the master as well, had laughed at it; but his head was still covered with soft abundant ringlets, growing down over the forehead and temples. His eyelids drooped, so that the long brown lashes lay over the deep blue shadows; and his closed lips were a little
