Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/291

RV 281 (BUDDENBROOKS) ing, 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 down hill, 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.

RV 281 (281)