Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/99

RV 89 (BUDDENBROOKS) at being, as he felt? feeble and inadequate to the situation in hand.

He said now, slowly and fretfully: “Oh, my dear child, I wish we might ignore the whole affair!”

“Ignore it, Tom? Impossible! Unthinkable! Do you think you could suppress the fact? Do you imagine the whole town would forget the meaning of the day?”

“I don’t say it is possible—I only say I wish it were. It is pleasant to celebrate the past, when one is gratified with the present and the future. It is agreeable to think of one’s forefathers when one feels at one with them and conscious of having acted as they would have done. If the jubilee came at a better time—but just now, I feel small inclination to celebrate it.”

“You must not talk like that, Tom. You don’t mean it; you know perfectly that it would be a shame to let the hundredth anniversary of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook go by without a sign or a sound of rejoicing. You are a little nervous now, and I know why, though there is really no reason for it. But when the day comes, you will be as moved as all the rest of us.”

She was right; the day could not be passed over in silence. It was not long before a notice appeared in the papers, calling attention to the coming anniversary and giving a detailed history of the old and estimable firm—but it was really hardly necessary. In the family, Justus Kröger was the first to mention the approaching event, on the Thursday afternoon; and Frau Permaneder saw to it that the venerable leather portfolio was solemnly brought out after dessert was cleared away, and the whole family, by way of foretaste, perused the dates and events in the life of the first Johann Buddenbrook, Hanno’s great-great-grandfather: when he had varioloid and when genuine smallpox, when he fell out of the third-storey window on to the floor of the drying-house, and when he had fever and delirium—she read all that aloud with pious fervour. Not content with

RV 89 (89)