Chapter VI: Changes (Part 4 of 8)
inside, dictate what he heard to his assistant, and talk about something else all the time.
“ Ah, yes, gentlemen,” he said, “ this cursed libido! You can get some fun out of the thing, it’s all right for you. — Vesicular. — But a man in my position, verily I say unto you — dullness here — he hath his belly full. Is it my fault that phthisis and concupiscence go together — slight harshness here^ I didn’t arrange it that way; but before you know where you are you find yourself the keeper of a stew — restricted here under the left shoulder. We have psycho-analysis, we give the noodles every chance to talk themselves out — much good it does them! The more they talk the more lecherous they get. I preach mathematics. — Better here, the rhonchi are gone. — I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh. Lawyer Paravant was a bad case; he took my advice, he is now busy squaring the circle, and gets great relief. But most of them are too witless and lazy, God help them! — Vesicular. — You see, I know it’s only too easy for young folk to go to the bad up here — I used to try to do something about these debauches. But it happened a few times that some brother or bridegroom asked me to my face what affair it was of mine — and since then I’ve stuck to my last. — Slight rales up on the right.”
He finished with Joachim, thrust his stethoscope in the pocket of his smock, and rubbed his eyes with both huge hands, as was his habit when he had fc ‘ backslidden ” and become melancholy. Half mechanically, between yawns, he reeled off his patter: “ Well, Ziemssen, just keep your pecker up, you’ll be all right yet. You aren’t like a picture in a physiology-book, there’s a hitch here and there, and you haven’t cleaned up your GafFky, you’ve even gone up a peg or so, it’s six this time — but never mind, don’t pull a long face, you are better than you were when you came, I can hand it to you in writing. Just another five or six months — monaths , I mean. Did you know that is the earlier form of the word?
I mean to say moriath , after this — ”
“ Herr Hofrat,” Joachim began. He stood bare to the waist, heels together and chest out, with a determined bearing, and as mottled in the face as ever he had been that time when Hans Castorp first made observations on the pallor of the deeply tanned.
Behrens ran on without noticing: “ — and if you stop another round half year and do particular pipe-clay, why, you’ll be a made man, you can take Constantinople single-handed; you’ll be strong enough to command a regiment of Samsons — ” Who knows how much more nonsense he might have uttered if Joachim’s unflinching determination to make himself heard had not brought him to a stand.
“ Herr Hofrat,” the young man said, “ I should like to tell you, if you will pardon me, that I have decided to leave.”
“ What’s that? So you want to leave? I thought you wanted to go down later as a sound man, to be a soldier.”
“ No, I must leave now, Herr Hofrat, in a week, that is.”
“Do you mean what you say? You want to hop out of the frying-pan into the fire? You’re going to hook it? Don’t you call that desertion? ”
“ No, Herr Hofrat, I don’t look at it in that light. I must join my regiment.”
“ Even though I tell you I can surely discharge you in half a year, but not before? ”
Joachim’s bearing became even more correct. He took in his stomach, and replied, repressed and curt: “ I have been here a year and a half, Herr Hofrat. I cannot wait any longer. Originally it was to have been three months. Since then it has been increased, first another three, then another six, and so on, and still I am not cured.”
“ Is that my fault? ”
“ No, Herr Hofrat. But I cannot wait any longer. If I don’t want to miss my opportunity, I cannot wait to make my full cure up here. I must go down now. I need a little time for my equip ment and other arrangements.”
“ Your family knows what you are doing — do they consent 5 ”
“ My mother — yes. It is all arranged. The first of October T join the seventy-sixth regiment as cornet.”
“ At all hazards? ” Behrens asked, and fixed him with his bloodshot eyes.
“ I have the honour,” Joachim answered, his lips twitching.
“ Very good, Ziemssen.” The Hofrat’s tone changed; he abandoned his position, he relaxed in every way. “ Very well, then. Stir your stumps, go on, and God be with you. I see you know your own mind, and so much is certainly true, that “it is your affair and not mine. Every pot stands on its own bottom. You go at your own risk, I take no responsibility. But good Lord, it may turn out all right. Soldiering is an out-of-doors job. It may do you good, you may come through all right.”
“ Yes, Herr Hofrat.”
“ Well, and what about your cousin, the peaceful citizen over there? He wants to go along with you, does he? ” This was Hans Castorp, who was supposed to answer. He stood there as pale as at that first examination, which had ended by his being admitted as a patient. Now, as then, his heart could be seen hammering against his side. He said: “ I should like to be guided by your opinion, Herr Hofrat.”
“ My opinion. Good.” He drew him to him by the arm, and began to tap and listen. He did not dictate. It went rather fast. When he finished, he said: “ You may go.”
Hans Castorp stammered: “You — you mean — I am cured? ”
“Yes, you are cured. The place above in the left lobe is no longer worth talking about. Your temperature doesn’t go with it. Why you have it, I don’t know. I assume it is of no further importance. So far as I am concerned, you can go.”
“ But — Herr Hofrat — may I ask — that is — you are perhaps not altogether serious? ”
“ Not serious? Why not? What do you suppose? And incidentally, what do you think of me, might I be allowed to ask? What do you take me for? A bawdy-house keeper? ”
He was in a towering passion. The blood flared up in his cheeks and turned their blue to violet, his one-sided lip was wrenched so high that the canines of the upper jaw were visible. He advanced his head like a steer, with staring, bloodshot, watery eyes.
“ I won’t have it,” he bellowed. “ In the first place, I’m not the proprietor here! I’m on hire. I’m a doctor! I’m nothing but a doctor, I would give you to understand. I’m not a pimp. I’m no Signor Amoroso on the Toledo, in Napoli bella. I am a servant of suffering humanity! And if either one of you should perchance have conceived a different opinion of me and my character, then you can both go to the devil with my compliments — you can go to the dogs or you can turn up your toes, whichever you like, and a pleasant journey to you! ”
He strode across the room and was out of the door that led to the x-ray waiting-room. It crashed behind him.
The cousins looked imploringly at Dr. Krokowski, who buried his nose in his papers. They hurried into their clothes. On the stair Hans Castorp said: “That was awful. Have you ever seen him like that before? ”
“ No, not like that. But the authorities sometimes get these attacks. The important thing is to behave with dignity and let them pass over. He was irritated about the business with Polypraxios and Emmy Nolting. But did you see,” Joachim went on, and the joy of having fought and won his battle mounted in him and almost took away his breath, “ did you see how he gave in and showed no more fight, directly he saw I was in earnest? All one has to do is to show some pluck, and not let oneself be shouted down. Now I’ve even got a sort of leave — at least, he said himself I’ll probably pull out of it — and I’m travelling in a week — in three weeks I’ll be with the colours,” he finished, altering his phrase, and confining the joy that trembled in his voice to his own affairs, without reference to Hans Castorp’s.
The latter was silent. He spoke no word, either of Joachim’s “ leave ” or his own — which might equally well have been mentioned. He made his preparations for the rest-cure, put the thermometer in his mouth, flung the camel’s-hair rugs about him with swift, practised hand, the perfected technique of that consecrated art the flat-land knows not of; then he lay still, neat as a sausage-roll, in his excellent chair, in the chill dampness of the early autumn afternoon.
The rain-clouds hung low. Remnants of snow rested on the boughs of the silver fir. The banner of the establishment was furled round its staff. A low murmur of voices rose from the rest-hall, whence last year, at much about this time, the voice of Herr Albin had risen to Hans Castorp’s ear. The cure was going on, the patients sat there with soon-chilled faces and fingertips. To him all this was long-established habit, the inevitable course of life; he knew the gratitude of the settled patient for the blessing of being able to lie, snugly ensconced, and think everything over at leisure.
So it was settled, Joachim was to go. Rhadamanthus had released him; not rite , not with a clean bill of health, yet half approvingly, on the ground, and in recognition, of his constant spirit. He would go down: first with the narrow-gauge road as far as Landquart, then to Romanshom, then across the wide, bottomless lake, over which in the legend the rider rode, across all Germany, and home. He would stop there, in the valley world, among men with no notion of the way to live, ignorant of “ measuring ” and of the whole ritual of rug-wrapping, of fur sleeping-sacks, of the three daily walks, of — it was hard to say, hard to count all the things of which those down below stood in blank ignorance; but the mere picture of Joachim, after a year and a half up here, living in the darkness of that flatlandish incomprehension — a picture only of Joachim, with hardly the faintest hypothetical reference to Hans Castorp himself — so bewildered the young man that he closed his eyes and waved it away with a motion of the hand, murmuring: “ Impossible! ”
And since it was impossible, he would live on up here, alone, 42 I
without Joachim? Yes, it came to that. How long? Until Behrens discharged him cured — in earnest, that is, not as he had to-day. But that was so indefinite a time-limit that he could no more prophesy it than could Joachim, on a like occasion long ago. Again, would the impossible by then have become any more possible 5 On the contrary, Joachim’s rash departure did — in honesty-offer his cousin a support, now, before the impossible should become utterly so, a guide and companion on a path which of himself he would never, never find again. Ah, if one consulted humanistic pedagogy, how humanistic pedagogy would adjure him to take the hand and accept the offered guidance! But Herr Settembrini was only a representative — of things and forces worth hearing about, it was true, but not the only forces there were. And with Joachim it was the same. He was a soldier. He was leaving — almost at the very time set for the return of the highbreasted one, for it was known that she would return in October. While the departure of the civilian Hans Castorp became impossible precisely because he had to wait for Clavdia Chauchat, whose return, as yet, was not even thought of. “ I don’t look at it in that light,” Joachim had answered when Rhadamanthus talked about desertion — though as far as Joachim was concerned that had probably only been some of the Hofrat’s melancholic maundering. But for him, the civilian, the thing was different. For him — ah, here was the right idea, the thought which he had set himself to evolve, as he lay out in the cold and damp — for him the real desertion would lie in his taking advantage of the occasion to dash off unlawfully — or half unlawfully — to the flat-land. It would be the abandonment of certain comprehensive responsibilities which had grown up out of his contemplation of the image called Homo Dei; it would be the betrayal of that appointed task of “ stock-taking,” that hard and harassing task, which was really beyond the powers native to him, but yet afforded his spirit such nameless and adventurous joys; that task it was his duty to perform, here in his chair, and up there in his blueblossoming retreat.
He tore the thermometer out of his mouth, violently as never before save when the Oberin had sold him the toy and he had first used it. He looked at it with the same avid curiosity now as then. Ah, Mercurius had indeed bounded upwards: he stood at 100.5°, almost .6°.
Hans Castorp threw off his covers, sprang up and strode to the corridor door and back. Then he lay down again, called softly to Joachim, and asked him what he measured. 4 2 2
“ I’m not measuring any more,” replied his cousin.
“Well, I’ve some temperament,” Hans Castorp said, emulating Frau Stohr; Joachim, behind the glass pane, answered never a word.
He said no more, on that day or the following; made no effort to find out his cousin’s plans — which would, indeed, be driven to declare themselves in no long time, by his either taking certain steps or refraining from them. They did so — by the latter. Hans Castorp seemed to hold with that quietism in whose view all action was an insult to God, who prefers to act by Himself. At all events, the young man’s activity during these days confined itself to a visit to Behrens; a consultation of which Joachim was aware, the result of which he could have accurately predicted beforehand. His cousin had explained that he took the liberty of placing more reliance upon the Hofrat’s oft-repeated exhortations to stop up here long enough to perfect his cure than he did upon an ill-considered verdict pronounced in the heat of the moment. His temperature was 100.5°, he could not regard himself as discharged in form; and unless the Hofrat’s recent statement was to be regarded in the light of an expulsion, to which he, the speaker, was not aware he had laid himself open, he wished to say that upon mature consideration he had decided to remain and await the event of a complete cure. To all which the Hofrat had merely responded: “ Bon! Werry good — no offence intended, none taken,” or words to that effect. That was talking like a sensible man; hadn’t he seen first off that Hans Castorp had more talent as a patient than that fire-eater his cousin? And so on.
All of this corresponded pretty accurately to Joachim’s guess. He said nothing, only noting in silence that Hans Castorp made no move to join in his preparations for departure. But the good Joachim was busy enough, in all conscience, with his own affairs. He had no more time to concern himself with his cousin’s fate or further sojourn. Within his own bosom the tempest raged. It was as well he no longer took his temperature — he had, so he said, let his instrument fall, and broken it — for the thermometer might have given contrary counsel: so fearfully wrought up was he, now darkly glowing, now pale with joyful agitation. He could no longer lie still in the cure; Hans Castorp heard how he went up and down all day in his room, throughout those hours* four times each day, when all over House Berghof the horizontal obtained. A year and a half it had been. And now at last, at last, he was off for the flat-land, for home and his regiment! Even though with only half a discharge. It was no trifling event 42 3
— Hans Castorp’s heart went out to his cousin as he heard his restless pacing. Eighteen months, the wheel full circle and halfway round again, he had lived up here, deep, deep into the life of the place, the inviolable ebb and flow of it, for seven times seventy days; and now he would go down to live among strangers and the uninitiate. What difficulties would he not have, to acclimatize himself? Would it be surprising if Joachim’s agitation consisted only in part of joyful emotion, and also in part of dread — if it was not also the pang of parting with all this familiar life that made him stride thus up and down his room? We leave Marusja out of account.
But joy weighed down the scale. The good Joachim’s heart overflowed at his lips. He spoke always of himself, he made no reference to Hans Castorp’s future. He said how fresh and new the world would seem, himself, all life, and every day, every hour of the time. Once more he would rejoice in real, solid time, the long, vital years of youth. He spoke of his mother, Hans Castorp’s step-aunt Ziemssen, who had the same gentle black eyes as her son. She had never visited him up here in all this time; put off like him from month to month, from half-year to half-year, she had delayed for the entire term of his stay in the mountains. He spoke of the oath of fidelity to the colours, which he would soon be taking — spoke ardently, with a smile on his face. It was a solemn ceremony: in the presence of the standard he would be sworn to it, literally, to the standard — “ You don’t say! Seriously? ” Hans Castorp asked. “ To the flag-pole? To that scrap of bunting? ” Even so! It was symbolic; in the artillery they were sworn to the gun. What fanatical customs, the civilian remarked; extravagantly emotional he found them. Joachim nodded, full of pride and joy.
He spent his time in preparations; settled his last account with the management, and days ahead of time began to pack. He packed his summer and winter clothing, and had the sleeping-bag and camel’s-hair rugs sewed up in sacking by one of the servants. They might be useful at manoeuvres. He began to make his farewells; paid visits to Naphta and Settembrini — alone, for his cousin did not offer to go with him, nor did he ask what Settembrini had said to Joachim’s imminent departure and to Hans Castorp’s imminent stopping-behind. Whether Settembrini had remarked “ Yes, yes,” or “ I see, I see,” or both, or merely “ Poveretto ! ” To Hans Castorp it was evidently all one.
Came the eve of departure. Joachim performed for the last time each act of the daily round: each meal, each rest period, each 4 2 ‘
walk; he took leave of the physicians and the Oberin. The morning dawned. He came to table with cold hands and burning eyes; he had not closed them all night. He ate scarce a mouthful; and when the dwarf waitress came to say that his trunks had been strapped, he started up from his chair to take leave of his tablemates. Frau Stohr wept, the easy, brineless tears of the simpleminded; and after, behind Joachim’s back, shook her head at the schoolmistress and turned her hand about in the air, with the fingers spread out, thus expressing a cheap and common scepticism on the score of Joachim’s competence to depart, and his future welfare. Hans Castorp saw her do it, as he drank out his cup standing, in act to follow his cousin. Then came the business of tipping, and receiving the management’s official farewell in the vestibule. The usual group of spectators stood about: Frau litis with her “ steriletto,” the ivory Levi, the inordinate Popoff and his wife. They waved their handkerchiefs as the wagon went down the drive with the brake on. Joachim had been presented with roses. He wore a hat, Hans Castorp none.
The morning was glorious, with the first sunshine after days of gloom. The Schiahorn, the Green Towers, the round top of the Dorfberg stood out unchangeable and unmistakable against the blue; Joachim’s eyes rested on them. Hans Castorp said it was almost a pity the weather had turned so fine on the last day. There was a sort of spite about it; partings were always easier if some inhospitable impression was left at the end. To which Joachim: he didn’t need anything to make it easier, and this was excellent weather for manoeuvres, he could do with it down below. They said little else. Things being as they were between them, and the situation for them both, there was indeed not much to say. The lame porter sat on the box with the driver.
Erect and bouncing on the hard cushions, they laid the watercourse behind them, the narrow-gauge track; drove along the inregularly built-up street beside the latter, and drew up in the paved square before the station of the Dorf, that was little more than a shell. Hans Castorp with a thrill recalled first impressions. Since his arrival, thirteen months before, in the twilight, he had not seen the station. “ Here was where I arrived,” he remarked superfluously, to Joachim, who only said: “ So you did,” and paid the coachman.
The nimble lame man attended to tickets and luggage. They stood together on the platform by the miniature train, in one of whose grey-upholstered compartments Joachim kept a place with his overcoat, travelling-rug and roses. “Well, get along, 42 5
and take your fanatical oath,” Hans Castorp told his cousin, and Joachim answered: “ I mean to.” What else was there to say? Last greetings to exchange, greetings to those down below, to those up here. Hans Castorp drew patterns on the asphalt with his cane. “ Take your places! ” shouted the guard. Hans Castorp started; looked at Joachim, Joachim at him. They put out their hands. Hans Castorp was vaguely smiling; the other’s eyes looked sad, beseeching. “ Hans! ” he said — yes, incredible and painful as the thing was, it happened: he had called his cousin by his first name. Not with the thou, not “ old fellow,” or “ man,” by which forms they had addressed each other their lives long. No, in defiance of all reserve, almost gushingly, he called his cousin by his first name. “ Hans! ” he said, and pressed his hand imploringly — and the latter noted that the excitement of the journey, the sleepless night, the emotion, made Joachim’s head tremble on his neck, as his own did when he “ took stock ” — “ Hans,” he said earnestly, “ come down soon! ” He swung himself up. The door banged, the train whistled, the carriages shunted together. The little engine puffed and pulled off, the train glided after. The traveller waved his hat from the window, the other, on the platform, his hand. Desolately he stood, after that, a long time, alone. Then slowly he retraced the path that more than a year ago he had first traversed with Joachim.
An Attack , and a Repulse
The wheel revolved. The hand on time’s clock moved forward. Orchis and aquilegia were out of bloom, and the mountain pink. The deep-blue, star-shaped gentian and the autumn crocus, pale and poisonous, appeared again among the damp grass, and a reddish hue overspread the forests. The autumn equinox was past. All Souls’ was in sight — and, for practised time-consumers, probably also the Advent season, the solstice, and Christmas. But for the moment there were lovely October days, a succession of them, like that on which the cousins had viewed the Hofrat’s paintings.
Since Joachim’s departure Hans Castorp sat no more at Frau Stohr’s table, the one with Dr. Blumenkohl’s empty place, at which the gay Marusja had been wont to smother her irresponsible mirth in her orange-scented pocket-handkerchief. New guests, strangers, sat there now. Our friend, two months deep in his second year, had been given a new place by the management at a near-by table, diagonally to his old one, between that and the “ good ” Russian table. In short, Settembrini’s table. Yes, Hans Castorp sat in the humanist’s vacated seat, again at the end, facing the “ doctor’s place,” which at each of the seven tables was left free for the Hofrat and his famulus to use when they could.
At the upper end, next the place of the medical presiding officer, the hump-backed Mexican sat, perched on many cushions; the amateur photographer, whose facial expression was that of a deaf person, because he possessed no language with which to communicate his thoughts. Beside him sat the ancient maiden lady from Siebenburgen. She, as Herr Settembrini had said, claimed the interest of all and sundry for her brother-in-law, a man of whom nobody knew anything, or wished to know. Regularly at certain hours of the day this lady was to be seen at the balustrade of her loggia with a little Tula-silver-handled cane across the nape of her neck — it served also as a support on her walks — expanding her flat chest by means of deep-breathing exercises. Opposite her sat a Czech, whom everybody called Herr Wenzel, as his family name was impossible to pronounce. Herr Settembrini, indeed, did once essay to utter the involved succession of consonants; less in good faith than by way of testing gaily the elegant helplessness of his Latinity in face of that matted and tangled growth of sound. Although plump as a mole, with an appetite amazing even up here, the Czech had for four years been asseverating that there was no hope for him. Of an evening, he would strum the songs of his native land upon a beribboned mandolin; or talk about his sugar-beet plantation, and the pretty girls who worked it. On Hans Castorp’s either side sat the wedded pair from Halle, Magnus the brewer and his wife, about whom melancholy hung as a cloud, because they had no tolerance for certain important products of metabolism: he sugar, she albumen. Their spirits, particularly the sallow Frau Magnus’s, were proof against any ray of cheer; forlomity exhaled from her like damp from a cellar; even more than Frau Stohr she represented that unedifying union of dullness and disease, which had offended Hans Castorp’s soul — under correction from Herr Settembrini. Herr Magnus was livelier and chattier, though only in a vein intolerable to the Italian’s literary sense. He was inclined to choler too, and often clashed with Herr Wenzel on political and other grounds. The nationalistic aspirations of the Czech exasperated him; again, the latter declared himself in favour of prohibition, and made moral remarks about the brewing industry, while Herr Magnus, very red in the face, defended from the hygienic viewpoint the unexceptionableness of the drink with which his interests were bound up. At such moments as these, Herr Settembrini’s 42 7
light and humorous touch had often preserved the amenities; but Hans Castorp, in his place, found his authority little able to cope with the situation.
With only two of his table-mates had he personal relations: Anton Karlowitsch Ferge from St. Petersburg, that good-natured sufferer, was one, on his left. He had things to tell, under his bushy, red-brown moustaches, about the manufacture of rubber shoes; about distant regions in the polar circle, about perpetual winter at the North Cape. Hans Castorp and he sometimes made their daily round together. The other, who joined them as occasion offered, and who sat next the hump-backed Mexican, at the far end of the table, was the man from Mannheim, with the thin hair and poor teeth — Ferdinand Wehsal by name, and merchant by calling — whose eyes had rested with such dismal longing upon Frau Chauchat’s pleasing person, and who since that carnival night had sought Hans Castorp’s company.
He did so with meek persistence, with a deprecating devotion which was even repugnant to Hans Castorp, understanding as he did its involved origins; but to which he felt himself humanly bound to respond. Blandly, then, and aware that even a lifting of the brows would suffice to make the poor-spirited creature cringe and shrink away, he suffered Wehsal’s fawning presence, and the latter lost no chance to make himself agreeable. He suffered the man to carry his overcoat as they went on their walks together, and Wehsal did this devotedly; suffered even the conversation of the Mannheimer, which was depressing to a degree. Wehsal had an itch to raise questions like this: would there be any sense in making a declaration of love to a woman whom one adored, but who made absolutely no response — a declaration, in other words, of hopeless love? What did his companion thinks For his part, he thought well of the idea, he thought there would be boundless happiness in the experience. Even if the act of confession aroused nothing but disgust, and involved great humiliation, still it insured a moment of intimate contact with the beloved object. The confidence drew her into the circle of his passion, and if after that all was indeed over, yet the loss was paid for by the despairing bliss of the moment; for the avowal was an act of force, the more satisfying the greater the resistance it encountered. At this point a darkening of Hans Castorp’s brows made Wehsal desist, though it had more reference to the presence of the good-natured Ferge, with his shrinking from the higher flights of conversation, than to any moral censorship on the part of our hero. Unwilling to make him out as either better or worse than he really was, we feel bound to mention that the wretched Wehsal, one evening when they were alone, prayed him, with pallid lips, for the love of God to tell him what had taken place after the mardi gras festivities, and Hans Castorp had goodnaturedly complied, without, as the reader may imagine, introducing any wanton or flippant element into his recital. Still, there seems every reason, on our part and on his, not to go into it very much, and we will only add that thereafter Wehsal carried his friend’s overcoat with even more self-abnegation than before.
So much of our Hans’s table-mates. The seat at his right was vacant, was only occupied for a few days by a guest, such as he himself had once been, a visiting relative from below, an envoy, one might say — no other than Hans’s uncle James Tienappel.
It was uncanny, to have suddenly sitting next him a delegate and ambassador from home, exhaling from the very weave of his English suit of clothes the atmosphere of that old life in the “ upper ” world so far below. But it was bound to come. For a long time Hans Castorp had silently reckoned with the possibility of an advance from the flat-land, and even been fairly sure what personal shape it would take. It was, in fact, not difficult to guess who would come, for Peter, the seafaring man, was almost out of the question, while as for Great-uncle Tienappel himself, it was no less true than ever that wild horses could not drag him to a spot from the atmospheric pressure of which he had everything to fear. No, James was the man to be sent with a commission from home to search out the truant — and his advent had been expected even earlier. After Joachim had returned alone, and told the family circle what the state of things was, the visit had been due and overdue, and thus Hans Castorp was not in the slightest degree nonplussed when, scarcely two weeks after his cousin left, the concierge handed him a telegram. He opened it with foreknowledge of its contents, and read the announcement of James Tienappel’s impending arrival. He had business in Switzerland, and would take the occasion to make Hans a visit on his heights. He would be here the day after to-morrow.
“ Good,” thought Hans Castorp. “ Excellent,” he thought. And added to himself something like “ Don’t mention it! ” “ If you only knew! ” he silently apostrophized the oncoming one. In a word, he took the approaching visit with utter composure; announced it to Hofrat Behrens and the management, engaged a room — Joachim’s, it being still vacant — and on the next day but one, at the hour of his own arrival, towards eight o’clock — it was already dark — drove in the same uncomfortable vehicle in which he had seen Joachim off, down to station “ Dorf,” to meet the envoy from the flat-land, who had come to spy out the land.
Crimson-faced, bare-headed, overcoatless, he stood at the edge of the platform as the train rolled in, beneath his relative’s carriage window, and told him to come on out, for he was here. Consul Tienappel — he was Vice-Consul, having obligingly relieved his father of that office too — stepped out, wrapped in his winter overcoat, and half frozen, for the October evening was chill, indeed was nearly cold enough for frost, toward morning it would probably freeze; stepped out of his compartment in lively surprise, which he expressed after the elegant, somewhat rarefied manner of the gentlemanly north-west German; greeted his nephew-cousin with repeated and emphatically uttered exclamations of satisfaction at his appearance; saw himself relieved by the lame concierge of all care for his luggage, and climbed with Hans Castorp up on the high, hard seat of the cabriolet, in the square outside. They drove under a heaven thick with stars, and Hans Castorp, his head tipped back, with pointing forefinger expounded to his uncle-cousin the starry field, named planets by name and showed off this or that constellation. The other, more observant of his companion than of the cosmos, said to himself that it was perhaps conceivable, it was at least not actually lunatic, to begin a conversation by talking about the stars, but there were other subjects that lay closer to hand. Since when, he asked, had Hans Castorp known so much about matters up aloft; and the young man replied that his knowledge was the fruit of long lying in the evening rest-cure, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. What? He lay out in a balcony at night? Oh, yes. The Consul would too. He would have nothing else to do.
“ Certainly, of course,” James Tienappel acquiesced, rather intimidated. His foster-brother spoke on, equably, monotonously. He sat without hat or overcoat, in the air, fresh to frostiness, of the autumn evening. “ I suppose you aren’t cold? ” James asked him, shivering in his inch-thick ulster. He talked fast and rather indistinctly, his teeth showing a tendency to chatter. “ We don’t feel the cold,” Hans Castorp said, with tranquil brevity.
The Consul could not look at him enough as they sat and drove. Hans Castorp asked after relatives and friends at home. James conveyed various greetings, including Joachim’s, who was already with the colours, and radiant with pride and joy. Hans Castorp received them with a quiet word of thanks, without asking more particular questions about his home. Disquieted by an indefinite something, either emanating from his nephew, or 43O
caused by his own unsettlement after the long journey, James looked about him, not able to descry much of the landscape; he drew in a deep breath of the strange air, exhaled it, and pronounced it magnificent. Of course, the other answered, not for nothing was it famous far and wide. It had great properties. It accelerated oxidization, yet at the same time one put on flesh. It was capable of healing certain diseases which were latent in every human being, though its first effects were strongly favourable to these, and by dint of a general organic compulsion, upwards and outwards, made them come to the surface, brought them, as it were, to a triumphant outburst. — Beg pardon — triumphant? — Yes; had he never felt that an outbreak of disease had something jolly about it, an outburst of physical gratification? “ Certainly, of course,” the uncle hastened to say, with his lower jaw under imperfect control. And then announced that he could stop eight days — a week, that was; seven days — or perhaps six. He said he found Hans Castorp looking very fit indeed, thanks to a stay that had been so much longer than anyone anticipated, and this being the case he supposed his nephew would travel down with him when he left.
“ Oh, no, I don’t quite intend to play the fool like that,” Hans Castorp said. Uncle James talked like a valley man. Let him stop up here a bit, look about him and get used to things, he would change his tune. The thing was to achieve an absolute cure, and to that end Behrens had just lately socked him another six months. “ Are you crazy? ” the uncle asked. He addressed his relative as “ young man,” and asked if he was crazy. A holiday that would soon have lasted a year and a quarter, and now another half a year on top of that! Who, deuce take it, had all that time to waste? Hans Castorp laid back his head, and laughed, a quiet, brief chuckle. Time! Uncle James would have to alter his ideas about time, in the first place, before he could talk. Tienappel said he would have a serious conversation to-morrow with the Hofrat, on Hans’s affair. “ By all means,” advised the nephew. “ You’ll like him. An interesting character, brusque to a degree, yet melancholy.” He pointed up to the lights on the Schatzalp, and casually mentioned that they had to bring down their corpses by bobsleigh in the winter.
The gentlemen supped together in the restaurant, after Hans Castorp had conducted his relative to his room and given him a chance to get a wash-up. It had been fumigated with H 2 CO, he explained, quite as thoroughly as though the late tenant had not gone off without leave, but in quite a different way — an exit 43 I
instead of an exodus. The uncle inquired what he meant. “ Jargon,” said Hans Castorp. “ A way we have in the service. Joachim deserted — deserted to the colours — funny, but it can be done. But make haste, or we shall get nothing hot to eat.” In the warm, well-lighted restaurant they sat down facing each other at the raised table in the window. The dwarf waitress served them nimbly, and James ordered a bottle of burgundy, which was presented lying in a basket. They touched glasses, and the grateful glow ran through their veins. The younger talked of life up here, of the events the changing seasons brought in their course, of various personalities among the patients, of the pneumothorax, the functioning of which he explained at length, describing the ghastly nature of the pleura-shock, and citing the case of the goodnatured Herr Ferge, with the three-coloured fainting-fits, the hallucinatory stench, and the diabolic laughing-fit when they felt over the pleura. He paid for the meal. James ate and drank heartily, as was his custom — with an appetite still further sharpened by his journey and the change of air. But he intermitted the process several times, sat with his mouth full of food and forgot to chew, holding his knife and fork at an obtuse angle above his plate and regarding Hans Castorp with a fixed stare. He seemed unaware that he did this, nor did the other give sign of remarking it. Consul Tienappel’s temples, covered with thin blond hair, showed swollen veins.
The conversation did not run upon their home below, there was no reference to family or personal, business or city affairs, nor yet to the firm of Tunder and Wilms, Ship-builders, Smelters, and Machinists, who were still waiting for their apprentice — though it was likely they had too much else to do to be aware that they were waiting. James Tienappel had touched, of course, on these topics, during their drive and after, but they had fallen flat; no one had picked them up. They had bounded off, as it were, from Hans Castorp’s serene, unfeigned, unmistakable sangfroid, which was like a suit of armour; like his indifference to the chill of that autumn evening, like his little phrase “ We don’t feel the cold.” This air of his may have been the reason why his uncle looked at him so fixedly. They spoke of the Oberin and the doctors, of Dr. Krokowski’s lectures, at one of which James would be present if he stopped a week. Who had told the nephew the uncle would wish to be present 5 Nobody — he had simply assumed it, with such tranquil certitude as to render absurd the bare idea of not being present, which, accordingly, James hastened to disclaim with a quick “ Certainly, of course,” as though anxious to show he had never for a moment considered it. It was this very power, quiet yet compelling, that caused Consul Tienappel all unconsciously to gaze at his nephew; and now even open-mouthed, for he found his nasal passages obstructed, though, so far as he knew, he had no catarrh. He heard his relative hold forth upon the disease which was the business of life up here, and upon the receptivity commonly displayed for it; upon Hans Castorp’s own simple but tedious case, upon the attraction the bacilli had for the cellular tissue of the air passages of the throat, bronchial tubes, and pulmonary vesicles; upon the formation of nodules, the manifestation of soluble toxins and their narcotic effect upon the system; of the breaking-down of the tissues, of caseation, and the question whether the disease would be arrested by a chalky petrefaction and heal by means of fibrosis, or whether it would extend the area, create still larger cavities, and destroy the organ. He was told of the “ galloping ” form the disease sometimes assumed, which made the end an affair of not more than a few months or even weeks; of pneumotomy, of the Hofrat’s masterly surgery, of resection of the lungs, an operation which was to be performed to-morrow or the day after upon a severe case just brought to the sanitorium, a charming, or oncecharming Scotswoman suffering from gem grama pulmonwn , gangrene of the lungs, a green and black pestilence, which obliged her to inhale all day a vaporized solution of carbolic acid, lest she go out of her head from sheer physical disgust. Here, suddently, the Consul, to his own great surprise and chagrin, burst out laughing. He fairly snorted, but recovered himself immediately, horrified; coughed, and tried his best to disguise the senseless outbreak. He felt a relief, which however bore within it the seeds of fresh disquiet, when he saw that Hans Castorp paid no heed, though he must have noticed the incident, but passed it over with an unconcern which was not so much tact, consideration, or courtesy, as it was the purest indifference, an uncanny invulnerability or complaisance, as though he had long ceased to notice or to feel surprise at such occurrences. Perhaps the Consul wished to make his burst of hilarity appear plausible; perhaps he had some other connexion in mind; at all events, he abruptly took over the conversation and began talking like a club-man. The veins stood out on his forehead, as he described a chanscmette by a certain cafe-chantant artiste, a perfectly crazy piece of goods, who was then on the boards at St. Pauli, taking away the breath of his Hamburg fellow-males by her temperamental charms, which he essayed to describe to his cousin. His tongue was a little thick, though that need not have troubled him, since his cousin’s strange complaisance seemed to cover this phenomenon like the other. But his weariness became at length so overpowering that the meeting broke up at about half past ten, and he was scarcely capable of attending when he was introduced to the oft-mentioned Dr. Krokowski, who sat reading a newspaper near the door of one of the salons. He responded little else than “ Certainly, of course ” to the doctor’s blithe and hearty greeting, and was relieved when his nephew left him, passing by the balcony from Joachim’s room to his own, after bidding him good-night and saying he would fetch him for eight o’clock breakfast. He was glad to relapse into the deserter’s bed, with his regular good-night cigarette — with which he nearly caused a conflagration, by twice falling asleep with it alight between his lips.
James Tienappel, whom Hans Castorp addressed by turns as Uncle James and James, was a long-legged man close to the forties, dressed in good English suiting and florid iinen; with thinnish canary-yellow hair, blue eyes set close together, a closeclipped, straw-coloured moustache, and carefully manicured hands. He had continued to live in the old Consul’s roomy villa in Harvestehuder Way, though he had been a husband and father for some years, having taken a wife from his own social sphere, of his own highly civilized and elegant type, with the same soft, quick, pointedly polite manner of speech. In his own sphere he passed for a very energetic, cautious and — despite his refined ways — coldly practical man of business. But outside it — when he travelled south, for instance — he displayed a kind of eager pliancy, a quick and friendly readiness to step outside his own personality, which was by no means a sign or the insecurity of his own culture, but rather betrayed a conviction of its sufficiency, and a desire to correct his own aristocratic limitations; it evidenced a wish not to show surprise at new ways, even when he found them extraordinary past belief. “ Certainly, of course,” he would hasten to remark, so that nobody might say of him that with all his elegance he was limited. He had come up here on a definite practical mission, to see how matters stood with his dilatory young kinsman, to “ prize him loose,” as he put it to himself, and take him back home. But he was conscious that he was operating on foreign territory; and the first few minutes up here had made him suspect that he was a guest in a sphere quite foreign to him, and more instead of less self-assured than his own. His business instincts conflicted with his good breeding — the more keenly the more he was aware of the self-confident poise of the institutional life.
All this Hans Castorp had realized when he replied to the Consul’s wire with an inward “ Don’t mention it! ” But we must not suppose that he consciously practised on his uncle with the strange properties of the place. He had been too long a part of it; it was not he who wielded them against the aggressor, but they him. Everything — from the moment when an emanation from his nephew had first whispered to the Consul that his undertaking had small chance of success — everything about the situation fulfilled itself, simply, inevitably, up to the end, and Hans Castorp accompanied the process with his melancholy, fatalistic smile.
On the first morning, at breakfast, the host made his guest acquainted with his circle of table-mates. Afterwards James met the Hofrat, who came paddling through the dining-room, with the black and pale assistant in his wake, strewing on all sides his regular rhetorical question: “ Slept well? ” He met the Hofrat, and from his lips heard that not only had it been a clipper of an idea to come on a visit to his marooned cousin, but that he served his own interest even better in so coming, for that he was totally anaemic was plain to any eye. He, Tienappel, anaemic? — “ Ray-ther so,” said Behrens, and putting up a forefinger pulled down the skin under James’s eye. Ray-ther so! ” he reiterated. The avuncular guest would be turning a clever trick to stretch himself out on his balcony for a few weeks and do his best to emulate the good example set him by his nephew. In his condition he could do nothing sharper than to act as though he had a slight case of tuberculosis pulmonum — it was always present anyhow. “ Certainly, of course,” replied the Consul hastily; and as the Hofrat paddled off, he gazed after the man and his neckbone, with open mouth and mien sedulously polite, for quite a while, his nephew standing by, utterly unmoved, unscathed. They took the prescribed walk, as far as the watercourse and back, after which James Tienappel experienced his first rest-cure. Hans Castorp lent him one of his camel’s-hair rugs, in addition to James’s own plaid; he himself found one cover quite enough this fine autumn weather. And instructed him step by step in the traditional art of putting on rugs; yes, after he had got the Consul all nicely mummified, deliberately undid him again, to the end that he should pack himself up alone, with Hans Castorp lending a helping hand. Then the adept taught the catechumen how to attach the linen parasol to his chair and adjust it against the sun. The Consul was pleased to be jocose. The spirit of the flat-land was still strong within him, and he made merry over his lesson, as he had earlier over the prescribed exercise after breakfast. But when he saw the peaceful, uncomprehending smile with which his nephew met his jests, a smile in which was mirrored all the serene self-assurance of the local tradition, alarm laid hold on him. He feared, actually, the impairment of his business energy, and hastily resolved to have the decisive conversation with the Hofrat as soon as possible and get it over — that very afternoon if it could be done, while he still possessed and could bring to bear the strength of conviction which he had brought with him from below. He distinctly felt that this was weakening, that his own good breeding had joined hands against him with the spirit of the place.
And furthermore he felt that it had been superfluous for the Hofrat to advise him, on account of his anaemia, to live during his stay here as the patients did. For, it appeared, this followed of itself; no other course seemed possible. This was perhaps partly the fruit of his nephew’s calm and invulnerable self-assurance; perhaps it was not absolutely the only and inevitable course to pursue — but how was a man of his breeding to distinguish? Nothing could be clearer than that the abundant second breakfast should follow upon the rest period, after which the stroll down to the Platz appeared the natural and inevitable sequence — and then Hans Castorp did his uncle up again. He did him up — the right phrase for it — and there, in the autumn sunlight, in a chair whose qualities should be sung rather than spoken, he let him lie, until a clanging gong summoned the patients to the midday meal. So lavish was it, so altogether tiptop and first-rate, that the main rest period which ensued seemed an inward necessity rather than an outward conformity, and James participated in it with the sincerest personal conviction. And so on until the mighty supper and the social evening in the salon with the optical diversions. What objection could be brought against a daily regimen like that, which so blandly took acquiescence for granted? None, surely, even though the Consul’s critical powers had not been diminished by a physical discomfort which, while not actual illness, yet, composed of mingled fatigue and excitement, with the concomitants of chill and feverishness, was burdensome enough.
Hans Castorp had availed himself of the official channels in arranging for that ardently desired consultation with Hofrat Behrens: he had given a message to the bathing-master, which the latter passed on to the Oberin, and Consul Tienappel had the opportunity of making the acquaintance of this peculiar personality. She appeared to him as he lay upon his balcony, and her extraordinary manner put a severe strain on the good breeding of the hapless gentleman lying there in his chair like a sausage-roll. He would be so good, he was told, to have patience for a few days; the Hofrat was busy, there were operations and general examinations, suffering humanity must take precedence, that was a sound Christian principle; and as he was ostensibly in good health, he must get used to the idea that he was not number one up here, that he must stand back and await his turn. It would be different if he wished to make an appointment for an examination — she, Adriatica, would not have been surprised if he had. When she looked him straight in the eyes — like that — she found his rather blurred and flickering; and he looked, as he lay, not as though everything were in the best of order with him, she herself would hardly give him a clean bill of health. Was it really an examination or a private interview he wanted 5 “ The latter, of course,” James assured her. Then he would be so good as to wait until she let him know. The Hofrat had not much time for private interviews.
In short, it all turned out quite otherwise than James had expected, and the conversation with the Directress no little disturbed his equanimity. A man of his breeding hesitated to say rudely to his nephew that he found her an appalling person: it would be indiscreet, considering how plainly Hans Castorp’s manner revealed his acceptance of all the extraordinary phenomena up here. James merely tapped at his nephew’s door, and insinuated that Fraulein Mylendonk was surely extremely original. Hans Castorp looked up inquiringly, and half assented; asking, in his turn: “ Did she sell you a thermometer? ” “ Me — no,” said his uncle. “ Is that the custom up here? ” The worst of it was that Hans Castorp would clearly not have been surprised if she had. It was “We don’t feel the cold ” all over again. And the Consul did feel the cold, felt it persistently, though his head was hot. He thought to himself that if the Oberin had offered him a thermometer, he would certainly have refused it, and thereby have committed a blunder, since he could not ask to use his nephew’s — he was too civilized for that.
Some days passed, perhaps four or five. The life of the ambassador ran on rails — the rails laid for it to run on — and that it should run off them was unthinkable. The Consul had his experiences, got his impressions — in which we shall not trouble to follow him. One day, in Hans Castorp’s room, he lifted from its easel on the chest of drawers a black glass plate, one of the small personal articles with which the owner adorned his cleanly quarters. He held it toward the light; it proved to be a photographic negative. He looked at it — “ What is that? ” he said. He might well ask. It showed the headless skeleton of a human form — the upper half, that is — enveloped in misty flesh; he recognized the female torso. “ That? Oh, a souvenir,” the nephew answered. To which the uncle replied: “ Pardon me,” and hastily replaced the picture on its easel. We give this merely as example of the sort of experience the four or five days supplied him. He attended one of Dr. Krokowski’s conferences — that he should stop away was unthinkable. On the sixth day he achieved the much-desired private talk with the Hofrat. He was sent for, and after breakfast descended the stairs to the basement, to have a serious word with the man on the subject of his nephew and the way he spent his time.
When he came up, he asked, in a still, small voice: “ Did you ever hear the like of that^ ”
But it was plain that Hans Castorp had. It was plain that whatever James could tell him would not make him “ feel the cold.” So James broke off, and to his nephew’s further, mildly interested, query answered: “ Oh, nothing.” But from hour to hour he developed a new habit: of peering diagonally upwards, with drawn brows and puckered lips, then suddenly turning his head to repeat the same gaze in the opposite direction. Had the interview with the Hofrat also gone off differently from James’s expectations? Had it lost its character as a private interview, had the subject shifted from Hans Castorp to James Tienappel? One might think so. The Consul showed himself in high spirits. He talked a great deal, laughed without reason, struck his nephew with his fist in the pit of the stomach, shouting: “ Hullo there, old fellow! ” Between times he had that look, first here and then suddenly there. But there came to be another, more definite goal to his glances, at table, on their walks, and in the salon of an evening.
We have heard of a certain Frau Redisch, wife of a Polish industrialist, who had sat at the table with Frau Salomon, absent without leave, and the greedy schoolboy with the round spectacles. The Consul had scarcely noticed her at first, and indeed she was just a rest-hall dame, like another — a shortish brunette of abundant forms, no longer of the youngest, even slightly grey, but with a coquettish double chin and lively brown eyes. In point of culture she was far from being able to hold her own with Frau Consul Tienappel down below. So much is certain. But the Consul, after Sunday supper, in the hall, made the discovery, thanks to the decollete of Frau Redisch’s spangled black frock, that her bosom was very white and voluptuous, the breasts pressed together so that the crease between them was visible for some way; and the mature and elegant gentleman was as much shaken by this discovery as though it possessed for him a new and undreamed-of significance. He sought and made acquaintance with Frau Redisch; conversed with her at length, first standing and then sitting, and went up to bed singing. Next day Frau Redisch wore no spangled frock, her bosom was shrouded; but the Consul knew what he knew, and stuck by his discovery. He sought to intercept the lady on her walks, and strolled beside her in conversation, bending towards and over her in the most gallant and pointed way; he drank to her at table and she responded, smiling so much as to show several gold fillings in her teeth; he spoke of her to his nephew, and said she was a divine creature — whereupon he burst out in song. And all this Hans Castorp let pass, with perfect equanimity, as much as to say that it was all regular and true to form. But it could not strengthen James’s authority over his junior, nor add lustre to his embassy.
The meal at which he saluted Frau Redisch by lifting his glass — twice in fact, during it, once at the fish and once at the sherbet — was one which the Hofrat partook of at Hans Castorp’s table, in the course of his turn round the seven, at each of which his place at the upper end was reserved. He sat folding his giant hands between Herr Wehsal and the hunch-backed Mexican, with whom he spoke Spanish, for he could talk in almost any language, even Turkish and Hungarian. He sat, with his little one-sided moustache and his blue, goggling, bloodshot eyes, and looked on at Consul Tienappel saluting Frau Redisch with his glass of Bordeaux. Afterwards, as the meal progressed, the Hofrat made a little speech, incited thereunto by James, who unexpectedly asked him, down the whole length of the table, what was the process of physical decomposition. The Hofrat was at home in that field, the physical was so to speak his domain, he was the king of it; would he not tell them what happened when the body decomposed?
“ In the first place,” the Hofrat complied, putting his elbows on the table and bowing over his folded hands, “ in the first place, your belly bursts. You lie there on your chips and sawdust, and you bloat; the gases swell you up, puff you all out, the way frogs do when bad little boys fill them up with air. You get to be a regular balloon; the skm of your belly can’t stand it any more, it bursts. You go pop. You relieve yourself mightily, like Judas Iscariot when he fell from the bough and all his bowels gushed out. And after that you are fit for society again. If you got leave to come back, you could visit your friends without being offensive. You are thoroughly stunk out. After that you’re perfectly refined, like the burghers of Palermo, hanging in the cellars of the Capucins outside Porta Nuova: quite the gentlemen they are, all dried up and elegant, everybody respects them. The main thing is to get well stunk out.”
“ Certainly, of course,” said the Consul. “ Thanks very much.” The next morning he had vanished.
He was off, gone down with the first little train to the flat-land — though not without having put his affairs in order — that we would not suggest. He had paid his bill, and the fee for the fumigation of his room; then, in all haste, without a syllable to his relative, he had packed his hand-bags — probably the night before, or even in the dawning, when everybody else was asleep — and when Hans Castorp entered his uncle’s room at the hour for early breakfast, he found it empty.
Arms akimbo, he stood and said: “ Well, well! ” And a pensive smile overspread his features. “ Yes, yes,” he said, and nodded. Somebody had taken to his heels. In headlong haste, breathless, as though the moment of resolution must not be let slip, he had flung his things together and made off. Not with his cousin by his side, not after fulfilment of his lofty mission, but glad to save even himself by flight, the goodman had deserted to the flat-land — well, pleasant journey to you, Uncle James!
Hans Castorp let no one suspect his ignorance of his uncle’s plans. Particularly not the lame concierge who had taken his uncle to the station. From Lake Constance James sent back a card, saying that he had had a telegram requiring his immediate return for business reasons. He had not liked to disturb his cousin (a polite lie). And he wished him a continued pleasant sojourn at House Berghof. W r as that said in mockery? If so, Hans Castorp found it highly disingenuous, for his uncle had been in no jesting mood when he cut short his stay. No, he had become inwardly aware — one could conceive him paling at the thought — that even as it was, after only a week up here, he would find everything down below wrong and out of place, and that the feeling would last a considerable time before readjustment set in: it would seem to him unnatural to go to his office, instead of taking a prescribed walk after breakfast, and thereafter lying ritually wrapped, horizontal in a balcony. And this dread perception had been the immediate ground of his flight.
Thus ended the campaign of the flat-land to recover its lost Hans Castorp. Our young man did not conceal from himself that
o the total failure of this embassy marked a crisis in the relations between himself and the world below. It meant that he gave it up, finally and with a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders; it meant, for himself, the consummation of freedom — the thought of which had gradually ceased to make him shudder.
Operationes Spirituales
Leo Naphta came from a little place near the Galician- Volhynian border. His father, of whom he spoke with respect, obviously with the feeling that he was now remote enough from his native scene to view it with impartial benevolence, had been the village schochet, or slaughterer — a calling different indeed from that of the gentile butcher, who was labourer and tradesman, whereas Leo’s father was an official, and the holder of a spiritual office. Elie Naphta, after being tested by the rabbi in his pious proficiency, had been empowered by him to slaughter suitable animals after the Mosaic law and according to Talmudic prescription. The performance of his ritual task had imparted something priestly to his being; and his blue eyes, which the son described as sending out gleams like stars, had held in their depth a wealth of silent spiritual fervour. The solemnity of his bearing spoke of that early time when the killing of animals had been in actual fact a priestly office. Leo, or Leib, as he had been called in his childhood, had been allowed to watch in the court-yard while the father carried out his task, aided by his helper, a powerful youth of the athletic Jewish type, beside whom the slender Elie with his round blond beard seemed still more fragile and delicate. Standing near the victim, which was hobbled and bound indeed, but not stunned, he would lift the mighty slaughter-knife and bring it to rest in a deep gash close to the cervical vertebra; while the assistant held the quickly filling basins to receive the gushing, steaming blood, and the child looked on at the sight with that childish gaze which often pierces through the sense into the essential, and may have been in an unusual degree the gift of the starry-eyed Elie’s son. He knew that Christian butchers had to stun their cattle with a blow from a club before killing them, and that this regulation was made in order to avoid unnecessary cruelty. Yet his father, so fine and so intelligent by comparison with those louts, and starry-eyed as never one of them, did his task according to the Law, striking down the creature while its senses were undimmed, and letting its life-blood well out until it sank. The boy Leib felt that the stupid goyim were actuated by an easy and irreverent good nature, which paid less honour to the deity than did his father’s solemn mercilessness; thus the conception of piety came to be bound up in his mind with that of cruelty, and the idea of the sacred and the spiritual with the sight and smell of spurting blood. For he probably saw that his father had not chosen his bloody trade out of the same brutal tastes that moved the lusty gentile butcher or his own Jewish assistant to find gratification in it, but rather on spiritual grounds, and in a sense bespoken by the starry eyes.
Yes, Elie Naphta had been a brooding and refining spirit; a student of the T or ah , but a critic as well, discussing the Scriptures with his rabbi — with whom he not infrequently disagreed. In his village, and not only among those of his own creed, he had passed for something unusual, for a man of more than common knowledge — knowledge for the most part of holy things, but possibly also of matters that might not be quite canny, and anyhow were not in the ordinary run. There was something irregular, schismatic, about him, something of the familiar of God, a Baal-Shem or Zaddik, a miracle-man. Once he had actually cured a woman of a malignant sore, and another time a boy of spasms, simply by means of blood and invocations. But it was precisely this aura of an uncanny piety, in which the odour of his bloodboltered calling played a part, that proved his destruction. There had been the unexplained death of two gentile boys, a popular uprising, a panic of rage — and Elie had died horribly, nailed crucifix-wise on the door of his burning home. His tuberculous, bedridden wife, the boy Leo, and four brothers and sisters, all wailing and lamenting with upflung arms, had fled the country.
Part 19 of 30