Herr Brecht did so. “It will be perfectly agreeable to me, Herr Senator, if you come in tomorrow or next day, at whatever hour you like, and we can go on with the operation. If you will permit me, I will just do a little more rinsing and pencilling, to reduce the pain somewhat.”
He did the rinsing and pencilling, and then the Senator went. Herr Brecht accompanied him to the door, pale as death, expending his last remnant of strength in sympathetic shoulder-shruggings.
“One moment, please!” shrieked Josephus as they passed through the waiting-room. He still shrieked as Thomas Buddenbrook went down the steps.
With a lever—yes, yes, that was tomorrow. What should he do now? Go home and rest, sleep, if he could. The actual pain in the nerve seemed deadened; in his mouth was only a dull, heavy burning sensation. Home, then. He went slowly through the streets, mechanically exchanging greetings with those whom he met; his look was absent and wandering, as though he were absorbed in thinking how he felt.
He got as far as Fishers’ Lane and began to descend the left-hand sidewalk. After twenty paces he felt nauseated. “I’ll go over to the public-house and take a drink of brandy,” he thought, and began to cross the road. But just as he reached the middle, something happened to him. It was precisely as if his brain was seized and swung around, faster and faster, in circles that grew smaller and smaller, until it crashed with enormous, brutal, pitiless force against a stony centre. He performed a half-turn, fell, and struck the wet pavement, his arms outstretched.
As the street ran steeply downhill, his body lay much lower than his feet. He fell upon his face, beneath which, presently, a little pool of blood began to form. His hat rolled a little way off down the road; his fur coat was wet with mud and slush; his hands, in their white kid gloves, lay outstretched in a puddle.
Thus he lay, and thus he remained, until some people came down the street and turned him over.
VIII
Frau Permaneder mounted the main staircase, holding up her gown in front of her with one hand and with the other pressing her muff to her cheek. She tripped and stumbled more than she walked; her cheeks were flushed, her capote sat crooked on her head, and little beads stood on her upper lip. … Though she met no one, she talked continually as she hurried up, in whispers out of which now and then a word rose clear and audible and emphasized her fear. “It’s nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t mean anything. God wouldn’t let anything happen. He knows what he’s doing, I’m very sure of that. … Oh, my God, I’ll pray every day—” She prattled senselessly in her fear, as she rushed up to the second storey and down the corridor.
The door of the antechamber opened, and her sister-in-law came toward her. Gerda Buddenbrook’s lovely white face was quite distorted with horror and disgust; and her close-set, blue-shadowed brown eyes opened and shut with a look of anger, distraction, and shrinking. As she recognized Frau Permaneder, she beckoned quickly with outstretched arms and embraced her, putting her head on her sister-in-law’s shoulder.
“Gerda! Gerda! What is it?” Frau Permaneder cried. “What has happened? What does it mean? They said he fell—unconscious? How is he?—God won’t let the worst happen, I know. Tell me, for pity’s sake!”
But the reply did not come at once. She only felt how Gerda’s whole form was shaken. Then she heard a whisper at her shoulder.
“How he looked,” she heard, “when they brought him! His whole life long, he never let anyone see even a speck of dust on him.—Oh, it is insulting, it is vile, for the end to have come like that!”
Subdued voices came out to them. The dressing-room door opened, and Ida Jungmann stood in the doorway in a white apron, a basin in her hands. Her eyes were red. She looked at Frau Permaneder and made way, her head bent. Her chin was trembling.
The high flowered curtains stirred in the draught as Tony, followed by her sister-in-law, entered the chamber. The smell of carbolic, ether, and other drugs met them. In the wide mahogany bed, under the red down coverlet, lay Thomas Buddenbrook, on his back, undressed and clad in an embroidered nightshirt. His half-open eyes were rolled up; his lips were moving under the disordered moustaches, and babbling, gurgling sounds came out. Young Dr. Langhals was bending over him, changing a bloody bandage for a fresh one, which he dipped into a basin at the bedside. Then he listened at the patient’s chest and felt his pulse.
On the bedclothes at the foot of the bed sat little Johann, clutching his sailor’s knot and listening broodingly to the sounds behind him, which his father was making. The Senator’s bemired clothing hung over a chair.
Frau Permaneder cowered down at the bedside, seized one of her brother’s hands—it was cold and heavy—and stared wildly into his face. She began to understand that, whether God knew what he was doing or not, he was at all events bent on “the worst”!
“Tom!” she clamoured, “do you know me? How are you? You aren’t going to leave us? You won’t go away from us? Oh, it can’t be!”
Nothing answered her, that could be called an answer. She looked imploringly up at Dr. Langhals. He stood there with his beautiful eyes cast down; and his manner, not without a certain self-satisfaction, expressed the will of God.
Ida Jungmann came back into the room, to make herself useful if she could. Old Dr. Grabow appeared in person, looked at the patient with his long, mild face, shook his head, pressed all their hands, and then stood as Dr. Langhals stood. The news had gone like the wind through the whole town. The vestibule door rang constantly, and inquiries after the Senator’s condition
