Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/71

RV 61 (BUDDENBROOKS) He narrated like one inspired; he possessed the gift of tongues. He narrated in English, Spanish, low German, and Hamburgese; he depicted stabbing affrays in Chile and pickpocketings in Whitechapel. He drew upon his repertory of comic songs, and half sang, half recited, with incomparable pantomime and highly suggestive gesture:

“I sauntered out one day.

In an idle sort o’ way,

And chanced to see a maid, ahead o’ me.

She’d such a charmin’ air,

Her back—was French—I’d swear,

And she wore her ’at as rakish as could be.

I says, ‘My pretty dear,

Since you an’ I are ’ere,

Perhaps you’d take me arm and walk along?’

She turned her pretty ’ead.

And looked—at me—and said,

‘You just get on, my lad, and hold your tongue!’&ThinSpace;”

From this he went off on an account of a performance at the Renz Circus, in Hamburg, and reproduced a turn by a troupe of English vaudeville artists, in such a way that you felt you were actually present. There was the usual hubbub behind the curtain, shouts of “Open the door, will you!” quarrels with the ring-master; and then, in a broad, lugubrious English-German, a whole string of stories: the one about the man who swallowed a mouse in his sleep, and went to the vet., who advised him to swallow a cat; and the one about “my grandmother—lively old girl, she was” who, on her way to the railway station, encounters all sorts of adventures, ending with the train pulling out of the station in front of the nose of the “lively old girl.” And then Christian broke off with a triumphant “Orchestra!” and made as if he had just waked up and was very surprised that no music was forthcoming.

But, quite suddenly, he stopped. His face changed, his motions relaxed. His little deep round eyes began to stray

RV 61 (61)