Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/83

RV 73 (BUDDENBROOKS) “Sh-h!” said Ida. “Yes, he is asleep.” Frau Permaneder went on her tip-toes toward the little bed, cautiously raised the curtain, and bent to look down at her sleeping nephew’s face.

The small Johann Buddenbrook lay on his back, his little face, in its frame of long light-brown hair, turned toward the room. He was breathing softly but audibly into the pillow. Only the fingers showed beneath the too long, too wide sleeves of his nightgown: one of his hands lay on his breast, the other on the coverlet, with the bent fingers jerking slightly now and then. The half-parted lips moved a little too, as if forming words. From time to time a pained expression mounted over the little face, beginning with a trembling of the chin, making the lips and the delicate nostrils quiver and the muscles of the narrow forehead contract. The long dark eyelashes did not hide the blue shadows that lay in the corners of the eyes.

“He is dreaming,” said Frau Permaneder, moved.

She bent over the child and gently kissed his slumbering cheek; then she composed the curtains and went back to the table, where Ida, in the golden light from the lamp, drew a fresh stocking over her darning-ball, looked at the hole, and began to fill it in.

“You are darning, Ida—funny, I can’t imagine you doing anything else.”

“Yes, yes, Tony. The boy tears everything, now he has begun to go to school.”

“But he is such a quiet, gentle child.”

“Ye-s, he is. But even so—”

“Does he like going to school?”

“Oh, no-o, Tony. He would far rather have gone on here with me. And I should have liked it better too. The masters haven’t known him since he was a baby, the way I have—they don’t know how to take him, when they are teaching him. It is often hard for him to pay attention, and he gets tired so easily—” RV 73 (73)