Despite the stormy life that lay behind her, and despite her weak digestion, she did not look her fifty years. Her skin was a little faded and downy, and a few hairs grew on her upper lip—the pretty upper lip of Tony Buddenbrook. But there was not a white hair in the smooth coiffure beneath the mourning cap.
Poor Clothilde bore up under the departure of her relative, as one must bear up under the afflictions of this life. She took it with patience and tranquillity. She had done wonders at the supper table, and now she sat among the others, lean and grey as of yore, and her words were drawling and friendly.
Erica Weinschenk, now thirty-one years old, was likewise not one to excite herself unduly over her aunt’s departure. She had lived through worse things, and had early learned resignation. Submission was her strongest characteristic: one read it in her weary light-blue eyes—the eyes of Bendix Grünlich—and heard it in the tones of her patient, sometimes plaintive voice.
The three Misses Buddenbrook, Uncle Gotthold’s daughters, wore their old affronted and critical air; Friederike and Henriette, the eldest, had grown leaner and more angular with the years; while Pfiffi, the youngest, now fifty-three years old, was much too little and fat.
Old Frau Consul Kröger, Uncle Justus’ widow, had been asked too, but she was rather ailing—or perhaps she had no suitable gown to put on: one couldn’t tell which.
They talked about Gerda’s journey and the train she was to take; about the sale of the villa and its furnishings, which Herr Gosch had undertaken. For Gerda was taking nothing with her—she was going away as she had come.
Then Frau Permaneder began to talk about life. She was very serious and made observations upon the past and the future—though of the future there was in truth almost nothing to be said.
“When I am dead,” she declared, “Erica may move away if she likes. But as for me, I cannot live anywhere else; and so long as I am on earth, we will come together here, we who are left. Once a week you will come to dinner with me—and we will read the family papers.” She put her hand on the portfolio that lay before her on the table. “Yes, Gerda, I will take them over, and be glad to have them. Well, that is settled. Do you hear, Tilda? Though it might exactly as well be you who should invite us, for you are just as well off as we are now. Yes—so it goes. I’ve struggled against fate, and done my best, and you have just sat there and waited for everything to come round. But you are a goose, you know, all the same—please don’t mind if I say so—”
“Oh, Tony,” Clothilde said, smiling.
“I am sorry I cannot say goodbye to Christian,” said Gerda, and the talk turned aside to that subject. There was small prospect of his ever coming out of the institution in which he was confined, although he was probably not too bad to go about in freedom. But the present state of things was very agreeable for his wife. She was, Frau Permaneder asserted, in league with the doctor; and Christian would, in all probability, end his days where he was.
There was a pause. They touched delicately and with hesitation upon recent events, and when one of them let fall little Johann’s name, it was still in the room, except for the sound of the rain, which fell faster than before.
This silence lay like a heavy secret over the events of Hanno’s last illness. It must have been a frightful onslaught. They did not look in each other’s eyes as they talked; their voices were hushed, and their words were broken. But they spoke of one last episode—the visit of the little ragged count who had almost forced his way to Hanno’s bedside. Hanno had smiled when he heard his voice, though he hardly knew anyone; and Kai had kissed his hands again and again.
“He kissed his hands?” asked the Buddenbrook ladies.
“Yes, over and over.”
They all thought for a while of this strange thing, and then suddenly Frau Permaneder burst into tears.
“I loved him so much,” she sobbed. “You don’t any of you know how much—more than any of you—yes, forgive me, Gerda—you are his mother.—Oh, he was an angel.”
“He is an angel, now,” corrected Sesemi.
“Hanno, little Hanno,” went on Frau Permaneder, the tears flowing down over her soft faded cheeks. “Tom, Father, Grandfather, and all the rest! Where are they? We shall see them no more. Oh, it is so sad, so hard!”
“There will be a reunion,” said Friederike Buddenbrook. She folded her hands in her lap, cast down her eyes, and put her nose in the air.
“Yes—they say so.—Oh, there are times, Friederike, when that is no consolation, God forgive me! When one begins to doubt—doubt justice and goodness—and everything. Life crushes so much in us, it destroys so many of our beliefs—! A reunion—if that were so—”
But now Sesemi Weichbrodt stood up, as tall as ever she could. She stood on tiptoe, rapped on the table; the cap shook on her old head.
“It is so!” she said, with her whole strength; and looked at them all with a challenge in her eyes.
She stood there, a victor in the good fight which all her life she had waged against the assaults of Reason: humpbacked, tiny, quivering with the strength of her convictions, a little prophetess, admonishing and inspired.
Colophon
Buddenbrooks
was published in 1901 by
