“The chimney can’t smoke, unless there’s a fire,” the Consul retorted. “I look into the office every few days. Short hairs are soon combed.”
“And Strunck and Hagenström have all the business in their hands anyhow,” the broker said morosely, with his elbows sprawled out on the table and his wicked old grey head in his hands.
“Oh, nothing can compete with a dung-heap, for smell,” Döhlmann said, with a deliberately coarse pronunciation, which must have depressed everybody’s spirits the more by its hopeless cynicism. “Well, and you, Buddenbrook—what are you doing now? Nothing, eh?”
“No,” answered Christian, “I can’t, any more.” And without more ado, having perceived the mood of the hour, he proceeded to accentuate it. He began, his hat on one side, to talk about his Valparaiso office and Johnny Thunderstorm. “Well, in that heat—‘Good God! Work, Sir? No, Sir. As you see, Sir.’ And they puffed their cigarette-smoke right in his face. Good God!” It was, as always, an incomparable expression of dissolute, impudent, lazy good-nature. His brother sat motionless.
Herr Gosch tried to lift his glass to his thin lips, put it back on the table again, cursing through his shut teeth, and struck the offending arm with his fist. Then he lifted the glass once more, and spilled half its contents, draining the remainder furiously at a gulp.
“Oh, you and your shaking, Gosch!” Peter Döhlmann exclaimed. “Why don’t you just let yourself go, like me? I’ll croak if I don’t drink my bottle every day—I’ve got as far as that; and I’ll croak if I do. How would you feel if you couldn’t get rid of your dinner, not a single day—I mean, after you’ve got it in your stomach?” And he favoured them with some repulsive details of his condition, to which Christian listened with dreadful interest, wrinkling his nose as far as it could go and countering with a brief and forcible account of his “misery.”
It rained harder than ever. It came straight down in sheets and filled the silence of the Kurgarden with its ceaseless, forlorn, and desolate murmur.
“Yes, life’s pretty rotten,” said Senator Gieseke. He had been drinking heavily.
“I’d just as lief quit,” said Christian.
“Let it go hang,” said Herr Gosch.