“Where is it?”
“Here on the left side, the lower jaw. A back tooth. It is decayed, of course. The pain is simply unbearable. Goodbye, Kistenmaker. You can understand that I am in a good deal of a hurry.”
“Yes, of course—don’t you think I am, too? Awful lot to do. Goodbye. Good luck! Have it out—get it over with at once—always the best way.”
Thomas Buddenbrook went on, biting his jaws together, though it made the pain worse to do so. It was a furious burning, boring pain, starting from the infected back tooth and affecting the whole side of the jaw. The inflammation throbbed like red-hot hammers; it made his face burn and his eyes water. His nerves were terribly affected by the sleepless night he had spent. He had had to control himself just now, lest his voice break as he spoke.
He entered a yellow-brown house in Mill Street and went up to the first storey, where a brass plate on the door said, “Brecht, Dentist.” He did not see the servant who opened the door. The corridor was warm and smelled of beefsteak and cauliflower. Then he suddenly inhaled the sharp odour of the waiting-room into which he was ushered. “Sit down! One moment!” shrieked the voice of an old woman. It was Josephus, who sat in his shining cage at the end of the room and regarded him sidewise out of his venomous little eyes.
The Senator sat down at the round table and tried to read the jokes in a volume of Fliegende Blätter, flung down the book, and pressed the cool silver handle of his walking-stick against his cheek. He closed his burning eyes and groaned. There was not a sound, except for the noise made by Josephus as he bit and clawed at the bars of his cage. Herr Brecht might not be busy; but he owed it to himself to make his patient wait a little.
Thomas Buddenbrook stood up precipitately and drank a glass of water from the bottle on the table. It tasted and smelled of chloroform. Then he opened the door into the corridor and called out in an irritated voice: if there were nothing very important to prevent it, would Herr Brecht kindly make haste—he was suffering.
And immediately the bald forehead, hooked nose, and grizzled moustaches of the dentist appeared in the door of the operating-room. “If you please,” he said. “If you please,” shrieked Josephus. The Senator followed on the invitation. He was not smiling. “A bad case,” thought Herr Brecht, and turned pale.
They passed through the large light room to the operating-chair in front of one of the two largest windows. It was an adjustable chair with an upholstered headrest and green plush arms. As he sat down, Thomas Buddenbrook briefly explained what the trouble was. Then he leaned back his head and closed his eyes.
Herr Brecht screwed up the chair a bit and got to work on the tooth with a tiny mirror and a pointed steel instrument. His hands smelled of almond soap, his breath of cauliflower and beefsteak.
“We must proceed to extraction,” he said, after a while, and turned still paler.
“Very well, proceed, then,” said the Senator, and shut his eyes more tightly.
There was a pause. Herr Brecht prepared something at his chest of drawers and got out his instruments. Then he approached the chair again.
“I’ll paint it a little,” he said; and began at once to apply a strong-smelling liquid in generous quantities. Then he gently implored the patient to sit very still and open his mouth very wide—and then he began.
Thomas Buddenbrook clutched the plush armrests with both his hands. He scarcely felt the forceps close around his tooth; but from the grinding sensation in his mouth, and the increasingly painful, really agonizing pressure on his whole head, he was made amply aware that the thing was under way. Thank God, he thought, now it can’t last long. The pain grew and grew, to limitless, incredible heights; it grew to an insane, shrieking, inhuman torture, tearing his entire brain. It approached the catastrophe. “Here we are,” he thought. “Now I must just bear it.”
It lasted three or four seconds. Herr Brecht’s nervous exertions communicated themselves to Thomas Buddenbrook’s whole body, he was even lifted up a little on his chair, and he heard a soft, squeaking noise coming from the dentist’s throat. Suddenly there was a fearful blow, a violent shaking as if his neck were broken, accompanied by a quick cracking, crackling noise. The pressure was gone, but his head buzzed, the pain throbbed madly in the inflamed and ill-used jaw; and he had the clearest impression that the thing had not been successful: that the extraction of the tooth was not the solution of the difficulty, but merely a premature catastrophe which only made matters worse.
Herr Brecht had retreated. He was leaning against his instrument-cupboard, and he looked like death. He said: “The crown—I thought so.”
Thomas Buddenbrook spat a little blood into the blue basin at his side, for the gum was lacerated. He asked, half-dazed: “What did you think? What about the crown?”
“The crown broke off, Herr Senator. I was afraid of it.—The tooth was in very bad condition. But it was my duty to make the experiment.”
“What next?”
“Leave it to me, Herr Senator.”
“What will you have to do now?”
“Take out the roots. With a lever. There are four of them.”
“Four. Then you must take hold and lift four times.”
“Yes—unfortunately.”
“Well, this is enough for today,” said the Senator. He started to rise, but remained seated and put his head back instead.
“My dear Sir, you mustn’t demand the impossible of me,” he said. “I’m not very strong on my legs, just now. I have had enough for today. Will you
