“Did he say that?” Kai asked with deep interest.
“Yes; he meant my Uncle Christian, in the institution in Hamburg. One must just give me up—oh, I’d be so happy if they would! I have so many worries; everything is so hard for me. If I give myself a little cut or bruise anywhere, and make a wound that would heal in a week with anybody else, it takes a month with me. It gets inflamed and infected and makes me all sorts of trouble. Herr Brecht told me lately that all my teeth are in a dreadful condition—not to mention the ones that have been pulled already. If they are like that now, what will they be when I am thirty or forty years old? I am completely discouraged.”
“Oh, come,” Kai said, and struck into a livelier gait. “Now you must tell me something about your playing. I want to write something marvellous—perhaps I’ll begin it today, in drawing period. Will you play this afternoon?”
Hanno was silent a moment. A flush came upon his face, and a painful, confused look.
“Yes, I’ll play—I suppose—though I ought not. I ought to practise my sonatas and études and then stop. But I suppose I’ll play; I cannot help it, though it only makes everything worse.”
“Worse?”
Hanno was silent.
“I know what you mean,” said Kai after a bit, and then neither of the lads spoke again.
They were both at the same difficult age. Kai’s face burned, and he cast down his eyes. Hanno looked pale and serious; his eyes had clouded over, and he kept giving sideways glances.
Then the bell rang, and they went up.
The geography period came next, and an important test on the kingdom of Hesse-Nassau. A man with a red beard and brown tailcoat came in. His face was pale, and his hands were very full of pores, but without a single hair. This was “the clever one,” Dr. Mühsam. He suffered from occasional haemorrhages, and always spoke in an ironic tone, because it was his pose to be considered as witty as he was ailing. He possessed a Heine collection, a quantity of papers and objects connected with that cynical and sickly poet. He proceeded to mark the boundaries of Hesse-Nassau on the map that hung on the wall, and then asked, with a melancholy, mocking smile, if the gentlemen would indicate in their books the important features of the country. It was as though he meant to make game of the class and of Hesse-Nassau as well; yet this was an important test, and much dreaded by the entire form.
Hanno Buddenbrook knew next to nothing about Hesse-Nassau. He tried to look on Adolf Todtenhaupt’s book; but Heinrich Heine, who had a penetrating observation despite his suffering, melancholy air, pounced on him at once and said: “Herr Buddenbrook, I am tempted to ask you to close your book, but that I suspect you would be glad to have me do so. Go on with your work.”
The remark contained two witticisms. First, that Dr. Mühsam addressed Hanno as Herr Buddenbrook, and, second, that about the copybook. Hanno continued to brood over his book, and handed it in almost empty when he went out with Kai.
The difficulties were now over with for the day. The fortunate ones who had come through without marks, had light and easy consciences, and life seemed like play to them as they betook themselves to the large well-lighted room where they might sit and draw under the supervision of Herr Drägemüller. Plaster casts from the antique stood about the room, and there was a great cupboard containing divers pieces of wood and doll-furniture which served as models. Herr Drägemüller was a thickset man with a full round beard and a smooth, cheap brown wig which stood out in the back of the neck and betrayed itself. He possessed two wigs, one with longer hair, the other with shorter; if he had had his beard cut he would don the shorter wig as well. He was a man with some droll peculiarities of speech. For instance, he called a lead pencil a “lead.” He gave out an oily-alcoholic odour; and it was said of him that he drank petroleum. It always delighted him to have an opportunity to take a class in something besides drawing. On such occasions he would lecture on the policy of Bismarck, accompanying himself with impressive spiral gestures from his nose to his shoulder. Social democracy was his bugbear—he spoke of it with fear and loathing. “We must keep together,” he used to say to refractory pupils, pinching them on the arm. “Social democracy is at the door!” He was possessed by a sort of spasmodic activity: would sit down next a pupil, exhaling a strong spirituous odour, tap him on the forehead with his seal ring, shoot out certain isolated words and phrases like “Perspective! Light and shade! The lead! Social democracy! Stick together!”—and then dash off again.
Kai worked at his new literary project during this period, and Hanno occupied himself with conducting, in fancy, an overture with full orchestra. Then school was over, they fetched down their things, the gate was
