“That may easily be. I am sure I do not want to discuss it any further.”
“What do you expect to do? Get a divorce?”
“Yes, Tom; such is my firm determination. I feel that I owe it to myself, my child, and my family.”
“That is all nonsense, of course,” he said in a dispassionate tone. He turned on his heel and moved away, as if his words had settled the matter. “It takes two to make a divorce, my child. Do you think Permaneder will just say yes and thank you kindly? The idea is absurd.”
“Oh, you can leave that to me,” she said, quite undismayed. “You mean he will refuse on account of the seventeen thousand marks current. But Grünlich wasn’t willing, either, and they made him. There are ways and means, I’m sure. I’ll go to Dr. Gieseke. He is Christian’s friend, and he will help me. Oh, yes, of course, I know it was not the same thing then. It was ‘incapacity of the husband to provide for his family.’ You see, I know my way about in these affairs. Dear me, you act as if this were the first time in my life that I got a divorce! But even so, Tom. Perhaps there is nothing that applies to this case. Perhaps it is impossible—you may be right. But it is all the same; my resolve is fixed. Let him keep the money. There are higher things in life. He will never see me again, either way.”
She coughed again. She had left the bed and seated herself in an easy-chair, resting one elbow on its arm. Her chin was so deeply buried in her hand that her four bent fingers clutched her under lip. She sat with her body turned to the right, staring with red, excited eyes out of the window.
The Consul walked up and down, sighed, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders. He paused in front of her, fairly wringing his hands.
“You are a child, Tony, a child,” said he in a discouraged, almost pleading tone. “Every word you have spoken is the most utter childish nonsense. Will you make an effort, now, if I beg you, to think about the thing for just one minute like a grown woman? Don’t you see that you are acting as if something very serious and dreadful had happened to you—as if your husband had cruelly betrayed you and heaped insults on you before all the world? Do try to realize that nothing of the sort has happened! Not a single soul in the world knows anything about that silly affair that happened at the top of your staircase in Kaufinger Street. Your dignity, and ours, will suffer no slightest diminution if you go calmly and composedly back to Permaneder—of course, with your nose in the air! But, on the other hand, if you don’t go back, if you give this nonsense so much importance as to make a scandal out of it, then you will be wounding our dignity indeed.”
She jerked her chin out of her hand and stared him in the face.
“That’s enough, Thomas Buddenbrook. Be quiet now; it’s my turn. Listen. So you think there is no shame and no scandal so long as people don’t get to hear it? Ah, no! The shame that gnaws at us secretly and eats away our self-respect—that is far, far worse. Are we Buddenbrooks the sort of people to be satisfied if everything looks ‘tip-top,’ as you say here, on the outside, no matter how much mortification we have to choke down, inside our four walls? I cannot help feeling astonished at you, Tom. Think of our Father and how he would act to-day—and then judge as he would! No, no! Clean and open dealings must be the rule. Why, you can open your books any day, for all the world to see, and say, ‘Here they are, look at them.’ We should all of us be just the same. I know how God has made me. I am not afraid. Let Julchen Möllendorpf pass me in the street and not speak, if she wants to. Let Pfiffi Buddenbrook sit here on Thursday afternoons and shake all over with spite, and say, ‘Well, that is the second time! But, of course, both times the men were to blame!’ I feel so far above all that now, Thomas—farther than I can tell you! I know I have done what I thought was right. But if I am to be so afraid of Julchen Möllendorpf and Pfiffi Buddenbrook as to swallow down all sorts of insults and let myself be cursed out in a drunken dialect that isn’t even grammar—to stop with a man in a town where I have to get used to that kind of language and the kind of scenes I saw that night at the top of the stairs—where I have to forget my origin and my upbringing and everything that I am, and learn to disown it altogether in order to act as if I were satisfied and happy—that is what I call undignified—that is what I call scandalous, I tell you!”