Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/84

RV 74 (BUDDENBROOKS) “Poor darling! Have they whipped him yet?”

“No, indeed. Sakes alive, how could they have the heart, if the boy once looked at them—?”

“How was it the first time he went? Did he cry?”

“Yes, indeed, he did. He cries so easily—not loud, but sort of to himself. And he held your brother by the coat and begged to be allowed to stop at home—”

“Oh, my brother took him, did he?—Yes, that is a hard moment, Ida. I remember it like yesterday. I howled, I do assure you. I howled like a chained-up dog; I felt dreadfully. And why? Because I had had such a good time at home. I noticed at once that all the children from the nice houses wept, and the others not at all—they just stared and grinned at us.—Goodness, what is the matter with him, Ida?”

She turned in alarm toward the little bed, where a cry had interrupted her chatter. It was a frightened cry, and it repeated itself in an even more anguished tone the next minute; and then three, four, five times more, one after another. “Oh, oh, oh!” It became a loud, desperate protest against something which he saw or which was happening to him. The next moment little Johann sat upright in bed, stammering incomprehensibly, and staring with wide-open, strange golden-brown eyes into a world which he, and he alone, could see.

“That's nothing,” said Ida. “It is the pavor. It is sometimes much worse than that.” She put her work down calmly and crossed the room, with her long heavy stride, to Hanno’s bed. She spoke to him in a low, quieting voice, laid him down, and covered him again.

“Oh, I see—the pavor,” repeated Frau Permaneder. “What will he do now? Will he wake up?”

But Hanno did not waken at all, though his eyes were wide and staring, and his lips still moved.

“&ThinSpace;In my—little—garden—go—,’&ThinSpace;”

said Hanno, mumblingly, RV 74 (74)