Christian arrived. He came from Hamburg, where he had been, he said, on business. He only stopped a short time in the sickroom, and left it, his eyes roving wildly, rubbing his forehead, and saying “It’s frightful—it’s frightful—I can’t stand it any longer.”
Pastor Pringsheim came, measured Sister Leandra with a chilling glance, and prayed with a beautifully modulated voice at the bedside.
Then came the brief “lightening”: the flickering up of the dying flame. The fever slackened; there was a deceptive return of strength, and a few plain, hopeful words, that brought tears of joy to the eyes of the watchers at the bedside.
“Children, we shall keep her; you’ll see, we shall keep her after all!” cried Thomas Buddenbrook. “She will be with us next Christmas!”
But even in the next night, shortly after Gerda and her husband had gone to bed, they were summoned back to Meng Street by Frau Permaneder, for the mother was struggling with death. A cold rain was falling, and a high wind drove it against the windowpanes.
The bedchamber, as the Senator and his wife entered it, was lighted by two sconces burning on the table; and both physicians were present. Christian too had been summoned from his room, and sat with his back to the bed and his forehead bowed in his hands. They had sent for the dying woman’s brother, Justus Kröger, and he would shortly be here. Frau Permaneder and Erica were sobbing softly at the foot of the bed. Sister Leandra and Mamsell Severin had nothing more to do, and stood gazing in sadness on the face of the dying.
The Frau Consul lay on her back, supported by a quantity of pillows. With both her blue-veined hands, once so beautiful, now so emaciated, she ceaselessly stroked the coverlet in trembling haste. Her head in the white nightcap moved from side to side with dreadful regularity. Her lips were drawn inward, and opened and closed with a snap at every tortured effort to breathe, while the sunken eyes roved back and forth or rested with an envious look on those who stood about her bed, up and dressed and able to breathe. They were alive, they belonged to life; but they could help her no more than this, to make the sacrifice that consisted in watching her die. … And the night wore on, without any change.
“How long can it go on, like this?” asked Thomas Buddenbrook, in a low tone, drawing Dr. Grabow away to the bottom of the room, while Dr. Langhals was undertaking some sort of injection to give relief to the patient. Frau Permaneder, her handkerchief in her hand, followed her brother.
“I can’t tell, my dear Senator,” answered Dr. Grabow. “Your dear mother may be released in the next few minutes, or she may live for hours. It is a process of strangulation: an oedema—”
“I know,” said Frau Permaneder, and nodded while the tears ran down her cheeks. “It often happens in cases of inflammation of the lungs—a sort of watery fluid forms, and when it gets very bad the patient cannot breathe any more. Yes, I know.”
The Senator, his hands folded, looked over at the bed.
“How frightfully she must suffer,” he whispered.
“No,” Dr. Grabow said, just as softly, but in a tone of authority, while his long, mild countenance wrinkled more than ever. “That is a mistake, my dear friend, believe me. The consciousness is very clouded. These are largely reflex motions which you see; depend upon it.” And Thomas answered: “God grant it”—but a child could have seen from the Frau Consul’s eyes that she was entirely conscious and realized everything.
They took their places again. Consul Kröger came and sat bowed over his cane at the bedside, with reddened eyelids.
The movements of the patient increased. This body, delivered over to death, was possessed by a terrible unrest, an unspeakable craving, an abandonment of helplessness, from head to foot. The pathetic, imploring eyes now closed with the rustling movement of the head from side to side, now opened with a heartbreaking expression, so wide that the little veins of the eyeballs stood out blood-red. And she was still conscious!
A little after , Christian got up. “I can’t stand it any more,” he said, and went out, limping, and supporting himself on the furniture on his way to the door. Erica Weinschenk and Mamsell Severin had fallen asleep to the monotonous sound of the raucous breathing, and sat rosy with slumber on their chairs.
About it grew much worse. They lifted the patient and wiped the perspiration from her brow. Her breathing threatened to stop altogether. “Let me sleep,” she managed to say. “Give me a sleeping-draught.” Alas, they could give her nothing to make her sleep.
Suddenly she began again to reply to voices which the others could not hear. “Yes, Jean, not much longer now.” And then, “Yes, dear Clara, I am coming.”
The struggle began afresh. Was this a wrestling with death? Ah, no, for it had become a wrestling with life for death, on the part of the dying woman. “I want—,” she panted, “I want—I cannot—let me sleep! Have mercy, gentlemen—let me sleep!”
Frau Permaneder sobbed aloud as she listened, and Thomas groaned softly, clutching his head a moment with both hands. But the physicians knew their duty: they were obliged, under all circumstances, to preserve life just as long as possible; and a narcotic would have effected an unresisting and immediate giving-up of the ghost. Doctors were not made to bring death into the world, but to preserve life at any cost. There was a religious and moral basis for this law, which they had known, once, though they did not have it in mind at the moment. So they strengthened the heart action by various devices, and even improved the breathing by causing the patient to retch.
By the struggle was at its height. The Frau Consul, erect in convulsions, with
