Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/42

RV 32 (BUDDENBROOKS) greatly hindered his progress in walking and talking, there was no longer any immediate danger to be feared. The child was slender of limb, and rather tall for his age. His hair, pale brown and very soft, began to grow rapidly, and fell waving over the shoulders of his full, pinafore-like frocks. The family likenesses were abundantly clear, even now. From the first he possessed the Buddenbrook hand, broad, a little too short, but finely articulated, and his nose was precisely the nose of his father and great-grandfather, though the nostrils would probably remain more delicate. But the whole lower part of his face, longish and narrow, was neither Buddenbrook nor Kröger, but from the mother’s side of the house. This was true of the mouth in particular, which, when closed, began very early to wear an anxious, woebegone expression that later matched the look of his strange, gold-brown, blue-shadowed eyes.

So he began to live: brooded over by his father’s reserved tenderness, clothed and nurtured under his mother’s watchful eye; prayed over by Aunt Antonie, presented with tops and hobby-horses by the Frau Consul and Uncle Justus; and when his charming little perambulator appeared on the streets, it was looked after with interest and expectation. Madame Decho, the stately nurse, had attended the child up to now; but it had been settled that when they moved into the new house, not she, but Ida Jungmann, should move in with them, and the latter’s place with the old Frau Consul be filled by somebody else.

Senator Buddenbrook carried out his plans. He had no difficulty in obtaining title to the property in Fishers’ Lane. The Broad Street house was turned over to Gosch the broker, who dramatically declared himself prepared to assume the task of disposing of it. Stephan Kistenmaker, who had a growing family, and, with his brother Eduard, made good money in the wine business, bought it at once. Herr Voigt undertook the new building, and soon there was a clean plan to unroll before the eyes of the family on Thursday after-

RV 32 (32)