Hagenström--bitten with all his teeth into his leg, like a furious
little dog. His blue eyes flashed through the red-blond hair that hung
down wet all over his face. He paid richly for the deed, did the little
Count, and left the swimming-pool much the worse for the encounter. But
Consul Hagenström’s son limped perceptibly when he went home.
Nourishing remedies and physical exercise were the basis of the
treatment calculated to turn Senator Buddenbrook’s son into a strong
and healthy lad. But no less painstakingly did the Senator strive to
influence his mind and give him lively impressions of the practical
world in which he was to live.
He began gradually to introduce him into the sphere of his future
activities. He took him on business expeditions down to the harbour
and let him stand by on the quay while he spoke to the dockers in
a mixture of Danish and dialect or gave orders to the men who with
hollow, long-drawn cries were hauling up the sacks to the granary
floor. He took him into dark little warehouse offices to confer with
superintendents. All this life of the harbours, ships, sheds, and
granaries, where it smelled of butter, fish, sea-water, tar, and
greasy iron, had been to Thomas Buddenbrook from childhood up the
most fascinating thing on earth. But his son gave no spontaneous
expression of his own enchantment with the sight; and so the father
was fain to arouse it in him. “What are the names of the boats that
ply to Copenhagen? The _Naiad_, the _Halmstadt_, the _Friederike
Överdieck_--why, if you know those, my son, at least that’s something!
You’ll soon learn the others. Some of those people over there hauling
up the grain have the same name as you--they were named after your
grandfather, as you were. And their children are often named after
me--or Mamma. We give them little presents every year.--Now this next
granary--we don’t stop at it; we go past and don’t talk to the men; it
is a rival business.”
“Should you like to come, Hanno?” he said another time. “There is a
ship of our line being launched to-day, and I shall christen it. Do you
want to go?” And Hanno signified that he wanted to go. He went with his
father, listened to his speech, and saw him break a bottle of champagne
on the prow of the ship; saw how she glided down the ways, which had
been smeared with green soap, and into the water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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