Part 31 of 39
Mynheer Peeperkorn, an elderly Dutchman, spent some time at House Berghof, that establishment which, in its prospectus, so correctly described itself as “international.” Pieter Peeperkorn—such was his name, so he called himself, as for instance, “Pieter Peeperkorn will now take unto himself a Hollands gin”—was a colonial Dutchman, a man from Java, a coffee-planter. His slightly faded nationality is scarcely sufficient ground for introducing him at this late day into our story. God knows we have had racial mixtures aplenty in the famous cure conducted with such many-tongued efficiency by Herr Hofrat Behrens! There was the Egyptian princess who had given the Hofrat the extraordinary coffee-machine and sphinx cigarettes, a sensational person with cropped hair and beringed fingers yellow with nicotine, who went about—except at the main meal of the day, for which she made full Parisian toilet—in a sack coat and well-pressed trousers; and who scorned the world of men, to lay hot and heavy, though fitful siege to an insignificant little Romanian Jewess called plain Frau Landauer, while Lawyer Paravant for her royal highness’s beaux yeux neglected his mathematics and altogether played the fool for love. This princess, in addition to her own colourful personality, had among her little suite a Moorish eunuch, a weak and sickly man, who yet, despite his basic and constitutional lack—upon which Caroline Stönr loved to dwell—clung to life more desperately than most, and was quite inconsolable over the conclusions Hofrat Behrens drew from the transparency they made of his dusky inside.
Mynheer Peeperkorn, then, compared with such phenomena, might seem well-nigh colourless. And it is true that this part of our story might, like an earlier chapter, bear the caption “A Newcomer.” But the reader need not fear that in him another occasion for pedagogic strife has arrived upon the scene. No, Mynheer Peeperkorn was not the man to be the bearer of logical confusion. He was quite a different man, as we shall see. Yet he brought sore dismay and perplexity upon the hero of our tale, as will shortly be very evident.
Mynheer Peeperkorn arrived at the Dorf station by the same evening train as Frau Chauchat. They drove up in the same sleigh to House Berghof, and supped together in the restaurant. The arrival, in short, was not only coincident but concurrent, and continued in that sense, Mynheer taking his place beside the returned wanderer at the “good” Russian table, opposite the doctor’s seat—the place Popoff had occupied, what time he performed his wild and equivocal antics. The companionship troubled our good Hans Castorp—that it should turn out like this had never entered his mind. The Hofrat, after his own fashion, had announced the day and hour of Clavdia’s return. “Well, Castorp, old top,” he said, “there’s always a reward for faithful waiting. Tomorrow the little puss will be slinking back—I’ve had a dispatch.” But not a word that she might not come alone. Perhaps he did not know that she and Peeperkorn were travelling together; at least, he showed surprise when Hans Castorp, the day after, as much as took him to task.
“Don’t know myself where she picked him up,” he declared. “I take it they met on the return from the Pyrenees. Alas, poor Strephon! Tut, my lad, you’ll have to put up with it, no use pulling a long face. They’re thick as thieves, it seems, have even their luggage in common. The man’s larded with money, from what I hear. Retired coffeeking, Malayan valet, plutocratic is no word for it. But he hasn’t come up here for fun. A catarrhal condition due to alcoholism—and from what I can see he is threatened with tropical fever, malignant, intermittent, you know; protracted, obstinate. You’ll have to be patient with him.”
“Don’t mention it,” replied Hans Castorp, loftily. “And what about you?” he said to himself. “I wonder what your feelings are; you didn’t come off scot-free either, or I miss my guess, you blue-in-the-face widower, with your oil-painting technique. Old dog in the manger! You needn’t tell me: so far as Peeperkorn is concerned, I’m certain we’re companions in misery.”—“Quaint creature,” he continued aloud, and shrugged. “An original, certainly. He’s so lean—yet he’s robust; that is the impression he makes, at least that’s the impression I got at breakfast. Lean, and robust, those are the adjectives, I think, though they aren’t commonly used together. He is certainly tall and broad, and likes to stand with his legs apart and his hands in his trouser pockets—which, I observe, are put in running up and down, not like yours and mine and most people’s of our class. And when he stands there and talks, in his guttural Dutch voice, there’s something unmistakably robust about him. But he has a sparse whisker, you could almost count the hairs; and his eyes are very small and pale, hardly any colour to them at all. He keeps trying to open them wide, and has made a lot of wrinkles, regular corrugations, that turn up on the temples and run straight across his forehead, and his forehead is high and red, with long wisps of white hair. He wears a clerical waistcoat, but his tailcoat is check. These are the impressions I got this morning.”
Behrens answered: “I see you’ve taken his number—you’re right, too, for you will have to come to terms with his being here.”
“Yes, I expect we shall,” said Hans Castorp. We have left it to him to describe the unlooked-for guest, and he has not come badly off—we could scarcely add anything essential to the picture. He had a good view; as we know, he had in Clavdia’s absence moved closer to the “good” Russian table; the one where he now sat stood parallel with hers, only rather farther away from the verandah door. Both he and Peeperkorn were on the inner and narrow side of their respective tables, and thus, in a way, neighbours, Hans Castorp being slightly in the Dutchman’s rear, very advantageously placed to observe him, as also to look at the three-quarter view which Frau Chauchat’s profile presented. We might round out Hans Castorp’s description by a few notes: as, that the Dutchman’s nose was large and fleshy, his mouth large too, and bare of moustaches, the lips of irregular shape, as though chapped. His hands were fairly broad, with long, pointed nails; he used them freely as he talked, and he talked almost continuously, though Hans Castorp failed to get his drift. Those adequate, compelling, cleanly attitudes of the hands—so varied, so full of subtle nuances—possessed a technique like that of an orchestral conductor. He would curve forefinger and thumb to a circle; extend the palm, that was so broad, with nails so pointed, to hush, to caution, to enjoin attention—and then, having by such means led up to some stupendous utterance, produce an anticlimax by saying something his audience could not quite grasp. Yet this, perhaps, was less a disappointment than it was a conversion of expectancy into ecstatic amaze; for the speaking gesture made good what he did not say, and was of itself alone vastly satisfying and diverting. Sometimes, indeed, after leading up to his climax, he left it out altogether. He would lay his hand tenderly on the arm of the young Bulgarian scholar next him, or on Frau Chauchat’s on the other side; then lift it obliquely for silence, create suspense for what he was about to say, wrinkling high his brows, so that the lines running upwards from the outer corners of his eyes were deepened like those on a mask; he would look down on the cloth before his neighbour’s place, and from his thick, distorted lips words of the highest import seemed about to issue then, after more pause, he would breathe an outward breath, give up the struggle, nod, as though to say “As you were,” and return undelivered to his coffee, which was served to him of extra strength, in his own machine.
After the draught he would proceed thus, choking off with one hand the conversation, making a silence round him, as a conductor hushes the confused sounds of tuning instruments and collects his orchestra to begin a number; mastering at will any situation, for could anything resist that regal head, with its aureole of white hair and its pallid eyes, the great folds of the brows, the long whisker and shaven raw upper lip? They were silent, they looked at him and smiled, they waited, anticipatorily nodding. He spoke.
In rather a low voice he said: “Ladies and gentlemen. Very well. Very well indeed. Very. Settled. But will you keep in mind, and—not for one moment—not one moment—lose sight of the fact—but no more. On this point not another word. What is incumbent upon me to say is not so much—it is in the first place simply this: it is our duty—we lie under a solemn—an inviolable—No! No, ladies and gentlemen! It was not thus—it was not thus that I—how mistaken to imagine that I—quite right, ladies and gentlemen! Set—tled. Let us drop the subject. I feel we understand each other, and now—to the point!”
He had said absolutely nothing. But look, manner, and gestures were so peremptory, perfervid, pregnant, that all, even Hans Castorp, were convinced they had heard something of high moment; or, if aware of the total lack of matter and sequence in the speech, certainly never missed it. We wonder how it might appear to a deaf person. Perhaps the impressiveness of what he saw would make him draw an altogether wrong conclusion as to what he might have heard but for his infirmity—and cause him to suffer accordingly. Such people incline to mistrust and bitterness. On the other hand, a young Chinaman at the other end of the table, who possessed too little of the language to understand what had been said, but had yet assiduously listened and looked, clapped his hands and called out: “Très bien, très bien.”
And Mynheer Peeperkorn came “to the point.” He drew himself up, swelled his broad chest, buttoned the check frock-coat over the clerical waistcoat; the pose of his white head was regal. He beckoned to a “dining-room girl”—it was the dwarf—and though busily engaged, she at once obeyed his weighty summons, and stood, milk jug and coffeepot in hand, by his chair. She too felt drawn to look at him with an ingratiating smile on her large, old face; she too was rapt by the pallid gaze beneath the deep-wrinkled brow; by the lifted hand, whose thumb and forefinger were joined in an O, while the other three with their lanceolate nails stood stiffly up.
“My child,” said he, “very well. Very well indeed—very. You are small—what is that to me? On the contrary. I find it a positive good, I thank God, that you are as you are; I thank God you are so small and full of character. What I want of you is also small and full of character. But in the first place, what is your name?”
She said, smiling and stammering, that her name was Emerentia.
“Splendid,” cried Peeperkorn, throwing himself back in his chair and stretching out his arm toward her. He cried it in the tone of one who would say “Wonderful! Is not everything wonderful?”—“My child,” he went on, with a perfectly serious face, almost sternly, “you surpass all my expectations. Emerentia! You utter it so modestly—yet, taken with your person, it holds out such boundless possibilities. Beautiful. Worth dwelling upon, communing with in the depths of one’s—in order to—understand me, my child: as a term of endearment—the pet name. It might be Rentia. Though Emchen would equally warm and fortify the heart—in short, for the moment, I will abide by Emchen. Emchen, then, Emchen my child, attend. A little bread, my love. But hold! Let no misunderstanding come between us—for in your somewhat over life-size face I seem to read—bread, Renzchen, bread; yet not baker’s bread, of which in this place we have enough and to spare, in all conceivable forms. Not corn that is baked, my angel, but corn that is burnt—in other words, distilled. Bread of God, bread of sunshine, little pet name; bread for the laving of man’s weary spirit. But I still have misgivings—whether the sense of this word I would even consider substituting for it another, the beautiful word ‘cordial’—if here we did not encounter a new danger, that it might be understood in the ordinary thoughtless sense—No more, Rentia. Settled. Set‑tled, and out of the question. Rather would I, in consideration of the debt of honour I acknowledge, right cordially to rejoice your characteristic smallness—a gin, love, and haste thee. A Schiedamer, Emerentia. Bring me one hither.”
“A geneva, sir,” repeated the dwarf, and spun three times round on herself, seeking a place for her jugs, which she finally deposited on Hans Castorp’s table, quite near him, obviously not wishing to burden Herr Peeperkorn with the same. She put wings to her feet, and he soon received his desire. The little glass was so full that the “bread” overflowed and bedewed the plate. He took the grain distillation between thumb and middle finger, and held it toward the light. “Pieter Peeperkorn,” he declared, “will now take unto himself a glass of Hollands.” He appeared to chew the liquid somewhat, then swallowed it down; “And now,” he said, “I look on you all with new eyes.” He lifted Frau Chauchat’s hand from the cloth, carried it to his lips and laid it back, letting his own rest for some while upon it.
An odd man, and of great personal weight, though incoherent. The population of the Berghof were enthusiastic over him. It was reported that he had only lately retired from his colonial interests and transferred them to the continent. He was said to have a magnificent house at The Hague, and another at Scheveningen. Frau Stöhr called him a money magnet (the unhappy woman meant “magnate”) and indicated the string of pearls Frau Chauchat had worn in the evening since her return to the Berghof. These pearls, Frau Stöhr considered, were scarcely a token of affection from the trans-Caucasian husband; more likely they came out of the common travelling-trunk. She winked and jerked her head in the direction of Hans Castorp, whose discomfiture she parodied with her mouth drawn down—no, illness and affliction had had no power to refine Caroline Stöhr; her jeers over the young man’s disappointment positively went beyond bounds. He preserved his composure, and corrected her blunder, not unadroitly. It was “magnate,” not “magnet” she had meant to say, he told her. Money-magnate. But “magnet” was not so bad after all—certainly Herr Peeperkorn had a good deal that was attractive about him. The schoolmistress, Fräulein Engelhart, with a wry smile, flushing dully, but not looking at him as she spoke, asked how he liked the new guest. He replied, quite calmly, that he found Mynheer Peeperkorn a “blurred personality”; a personality, that is, undoubtedly, though blurred. The precision of the characterization showed objectivity and poise; it dislodged the schoolmistress from her position. Ferdinand Wehsal, too, made oblique reference to the unexpected circumstances of Frau Chauchat’s return; and got from Hans Castorp proof that a look may be every whit as telling and unequivocal as the articulate word. “You paltry wretch,” said the stare with which Hans Castorp measured the Mannheimer—said it without the shadow of a doubt of its meaning. Wehsal understood that look, and pocketed it up; even nodded and showed his bad teeth; but from that time forward he ceased to carry Hans Castorp’s overcoat, when they went their walks with Naphta, Settembrini, and Ferge.
But dear me, Hans Castorp could carry his own coat, couldn’t he—and much preferred to; he had only let the poor creature take it now and then out of sheer good feeling. However, there was no doubt everybody in the circle knew that Hans Castorp was hard hit by the wholly unforeseen circumstance, which frustrated all the hopes he had cherished against the return of his carnival partner. It would be putting it even better to say that she had rendered nugatory all his hopes; that, precisely, was the mortifying fact.
His designs had been of the most discreet and delicate, he had meant nothing clumsy or abrupt. He would not even fetch her from the station—what a mercy, indeed, he had not thought of doing so! Uncertain whether a woman—upon whom illness had conferred such a degree of freedom—uncertain whether she would even admit the fantastic adventures of a dream dreamed on carnival night, in a foreign tongue to boot! Whether she would even wish in the first instance to be reminded of them. No, there would be no exigence, no clumsy pressing of claims. Admitted that his relations with the slant-eyed sufferer went beyond the limits prescribed by the traditions of the Occident; the uttermost formality of civilization, even for the moment apparent forgetfulness—was indicated as the suitable procedure. A respectful greeting from table to table—only that, for the time, no more. A courtly approach as occasion indicated, an easy inquiry after the health of the traveller. The actual meeting would follow in good time, as a reward for his chivalrous reserve.
All this fine feeling, now, had become null and void—Hans Castorp’s conduct being deprived of choice, and therewith of merit. The presence of Mynheer Peeperkorn effectively disposed of any tactics save utter aloofness. On the evening of the arrival, Hans Castorp had seen from his loge the sleigh come up the winding drive. On the box next the coachman sat the Malayan valet, a yellow little man with a fur collar to his overcoat, and a bowler hat. At the back, his hat over his brows, sat the stranger, beside Clavdia. That night Hans Castorp got little sleep. Next morning he heard for the asking the name of the mysterious new arrival; heard likewise that the two travellers occupied neighbouring suites on the first floor. He was early at breakfast, and sat in his place erect but pale, awaiting the slamming of the glass door. It did not come. Clavdia’s entrance was noiseless; for Mynheer Peeperkorn closed the door behind her—tall and broad, his white hair flaring above his lofty brow, he followed the familiar gliding tread of his companion, as with head stuck out before her she slipped to her chair. Yes, she was unchanged. Regardless of his programme, Hans Castorp devoured her, with his sleep-weary eyes. There was the red-blond hair, no more elaborately dressed than of yore, wound in the same simple braid about her head; there were the “prairie-wolf’s eyes,” the rounding neck, the lips that seemed fuller than they actually were, thanks to the prominent cheekbones, which gave the cheeks that exquisite flat or slightly concave look.—Clavdia! he thought, and thrilled. He fixed his eyes on the unexpected guest; not without a toss of the head for the splendid masklike impression the person made; not without summoning a sneer at pretensions which, however justified by present possession, were invalidated by the past—by certain very definite events in the past—for instance in the field of amateur portraiture. Hans Castorp knew, for had not those events visited himself with justifiable pangs?—Even her way of turning, before she sat down, to present herself, as it were, to the room, she had as of yore. Mynheer Peeperkorn assisted at the little ceremony, standing behind her while it took place, and then seating himself at Clavdia’s side.
As for that courtly salute from table to table—nothing came of it. Clavdia’s eyes, when she presented herself, had passed over Hans Castorp’s person and his whole vicinity, and rested upon the far corner of the room. At the next meal it was the same. And the more meals passed without any response to his gaze than this blank and indifferent passing-over, the more impracticable became the project of the courtly salute. After supper the two travelling-companions sat in the small salon, on the sofa together, surrounded by their tablemates; and Peeperkorn, his magnificent visage flaming against the flashing white of hair and beard, drank out the bottle of red wine he had ordered at table. At each of the main meals he drank one, or two, or two and a half bottles, in addition to the “bread” which he took even at early breakfast. Obviously the system of this kingly man stood in more than common need of moistening. He took in fluid likewise in the form of extra-strong coffee, many times a day, drinking it out of a large cup, even after dinner—or rather, he drank it during dinner, along with the wine. Wine and coffee, Hans Castorp heard him say, were both good for fever—quite aside from their cordial and refreshing properties—very good against the intermittent tropical fever which had kept him in bed for several hours the second day after he arrived. The Hofrat called it quartan fever: it took the Dutchman about every fourth day, first with a chill, then with a fever, then with a mighty sweat. He was said to have also an inflamed spleen, from the same cause.
Vingt-Et-Un
A little time passed, some three or four weeks—this on our own reckoning, since on Hans Castorp’s we cannot depend. They brought no great change. On our hero’s part they witnessed an abiding scorn of the unforeseen circumstances which kept him in undeserved exile, of, in particular, that circumstance which called itself Pieter Peeperkorn, when it took unto itself a glass of gin—the disturbing presence of that kingly, incoherent man, which upset Hans Castorp far more than had the presence of the “organ-grinder” in the old days. His brows took on two querulous vertical wrinkles, and five times daily he contracted them as he sat and looked at the returned traveller—glad despite himself to be able to look at her—and at the high-and-mighty presence sitting there all unaware what a poor light past events shed on his present pretensions.
One evening the social hour happened to be livelier than usual—which it might be at any time without especial cause. A Hungarian student played spirited gipsy waltzes on his fiddle; and Hofrat Behrens, who chanced to be present for a quarter-hour with Dr. Krokowski, got somebody to play the melody of the “Pilgrims’ Chorus” on the bass notes of the piano, while he himself operated in a skipping movement with a brush over the treble, and parodied the violin counterpoint. Everybody laughed; and the Hofrat, nodding benevolent approval of his own sprightly performance, withdrew amid applause. The gaiety prolonged itself, there was more music, people sat down with drinks beside them to dominoes and bridge, trifled with the optical instruments, or stood in groups talking. Even the Russian circle mingled with the others in hall and music-room. Mynheer Peeperkorn was to be seen among them—or rather, he could not but be seen, wherever he was, his kingly head towering high above any scene, and dwarfing it by the sheer weight and majesty of his person. Those who stood about him, drawn first by the reports of the man’s wealth, soon hung absorbed upon his personality. Forgetful of all else, they stood laughing and nodding, spellbound by the pallid eye, by the brow’s mighty folds, by the compulsion of the gestures his long-nailed hands performed. And never, for one moment, were they conscious of any lack in his incoherent, rhapsodic, literally futile remarks.
If we look about for our friend Hans Castorp, we shall find him in the reading- and writing-room, where once (but that “once” is vague, not the teller nor the reader of this story, nor yet its hero, being any longer clear upon the degree of its “onceness”)—where once he had received certain very important communications touching the history of human progress. It was quiet here—only two or three other persons shared his retreat. At one of the double tables, under the electric light, a man was writing; and a lady with two pairs of glasses on her nose sat by the bookshelves and turned over the leaves of an illustrated magazine. Hans Castorp sat near the open door to the music-room, with his back to the portières, on a chair that happened to be standing there, a plush-covered chair in Renaissance style, with a high straight back, and no arms. He held a newspaper as though to read it, but instead was listening with his head on one side to the snatches of music and talk from the next room. His brows were dark, his thoughts seemed not on harmonies bent, but rather on the thorny path of his present disillusionment. Bitter, bitter was the weird of our young man, who had borne out the long waiting only to be gulled at the end. Indeed he seemed not far from a sudden determination to fling his paper upon the chair he sat in, to escape by the hall door and exchange the empty gaieties of the salon for the frosty solitude of his balcony, and the society of his Maria.
“And your cousin, Monsieur?” a voice suddenly asked above and behind his shoulder. It was a voice enchanting to his ear; it seemed his senses had been expressly contrived to perceive its sweet-and-bitter huskiness as the very height and summit of earthly harmonies; it was the voice that once had said to him: “Certainly. But be careful not to break it”—a compelling, fateful voice. And if he heard aright, it had asked him about Joachim.
Slowly he let his newspaper fall, and turned his face up a little, so that the crown of his head came against the straight back of his chair. He even closed his eyes, but quickly opened them, and gazed somewhere into space—the expression on the poor wight’s face was well-nigh that of a sleepwalker, or clairvoyant. He wished she might ask again, but she did not, he was not even sure she still stood behind him, when, after all that pause, so tardily and with scarce audible voice he answered: “He is dead. He went down below to the service, and he died.”
He realized that this “dead” was the first word to fall between them; likewise, simultaneously, that she was not sure of expressing herself in his tongue, and chose short and easy phrases to condole in. Still standing behind and above him, she said: “Oh, woe, alas! That is too bad! Quite dead and buried? Since when?”
“Some time ago. His mother came and took him back with her. He had grown a beard, a soldier’s beard. They fired three salvoes over his grave.”
“He deserved them. He was a very good young man. Far better than most other people—than some others one knows.”
“Yes, he was good and brave. Rhadamanthus always talked about his doggedness. But his body would have it otherwise. Rebellio carnis, the Jesuits call it. He always set store by his body—in the highest sense. However, his body thought otherwise, and snapped its fingers at doggedness. But it is more moral to lose your life than to save it.”
“Monsieur is still the philosophizing fainéant, I see. But Rhadamanthus? Who is that?”
“Behrens. That is Settembrini’s name for him.”
“Ah, Settembrini. Him I know. That Italian who—whom I did not like. He was not hu‑man. He had—arrogance.” The voice dwelt on the word “human”—dreamily, fanatically; and accented arrogance on the final syllable. “He is no longer here? And I am so stupid, I do not know what is Rhadamanthus.”
“A humanistic allusion. Settembrini has moved away. We’ve philosophized a lot of late, he and I and Naphta.”
“Who is Naphta?”
“His adversary.”
“If he is that, then I would gladly make his acquaintance.—Did I not tell you your cousin would die if he went down to be a soldier?”
And Hans Castorp answered as he had vowed and dreamed: “Tu l’as su,” he said.
“What are you thinking of?” she asked him.
There was a long pause. He did not retract, he waited, with the crown of his head pressed against the chair-back, and his gaze half tranced, to hear her voice again; and again he was not sure she was still there, again he was afraid the broken music might have drowned her departing footsteps. At last it came again: “And Monsieur did not go down to his cousin’s funeral?”
He replied: “No, I bade him adieu up here, before they shut him away, when he had begun to smile in his beard. His brow was cold—tu sais comme les fronts des morts sont froids?”
“Again! What a way is that to address a lady whom one hardly knows!”
“Must I speak not humanly, but humanistically?”
“Quelle blague! You were here all the time?”
“Yes. I waited.”
“Waited—for what?”
“For thee!”
A laugh came from above him, a word that sounded like “Madman!”—“For me? How absurd it is—ils ne t’auraient pas laissé partir.”
“Oh, yes, Behrens would have, once—he was furious. But it would have been folly. I have not only the old scars that come from my schooldays, but the fresh places that give me my fever.”
“Still fever?”
“Yes, still, a little—or nearly always. It is intermittent. But not an intermittent fever.”
“Des allusions?”
He was silent. He still gazed somnambulantly, but his brows were gathered. After a while he asked: “Et toi—où as-tu été?”
A hand struck the back of the chair. “Toujours ce tutoyer! Mais c’est un sauvage!—Where have I been? All over. In Moscow”—the voice pronounced it “Muoscow”—“in Baku—in some German baths, in Spain.”
“Oh, in Spain. Did you like it?”
“So-so. The travelling is bad. The people are half Moorish. Castile is bare and stark. The Kremlin is finer than that castle or monastery, or whatever it is, at the foot of the mountains—”
“Yes, the Escurial.”
“Yes, Philip’s castle. An inhuman place. I preferred the folk-dancing in Catalonia, the sardana to the bagpipes. Moi, j’ai dansé aussi moi! they take each other’s hands and dance in a ring—the whole square is full of dancing people. C’est charmant. That is hu‑man. I bought a little blue cap, such as all the men and boys of the people wear down there, almost like a fez—the boina. I shall wear it in the rest-cure, and other places, perhaps. Monsieur shall judge if it becomes me.”
“What monsieur?”
“Sitting here in this chair.”
“Not Mynheer Peeperkorn?”
“He has already pronounced judgment—he says I look charming in it.”
“He said that—all of it? Did he really finish the sentence, so it could be understood?”
“Ah! It seems Monsieur is out of temper? Monsieur would be spiteful, cutting? He would laugh at people who are much greater and better, and—more hu‑man than himself and his—his ami bavard de la Méditerranée, son maître et grand parleur—put together. But I cannot listen—”
“Have you my X-ray portrait?” he interrupted, crestfallen.
She laughed. “I must look it out.”
“I carry yours here. And on my bedside table I have a little easel—”
He did not finish. Before him stood Peeperkorn. He had searched for his travelling-companion, entered through the portières and stood in front of Hans Castorp’s chair, behind which he saw her talking; stood like a tower, so close to Hans Castorp as to rouse the latter from his trance, and make him realize that it was in place to get up and be mannerly. But they were so close he had to slide sidewise from his seat, and then the three stood in a triangle, the centre of which was the chair.
Frau Chauchat complied with the requirements of the civilized West, by presenting the gentlemen to each other, Hans Castorp to Peeperkorn as “an acquaintance of a former stay.” Superfluous to account for Herr Peeperkorn. She gave his name, and the Dutchman bent a look upon the young man, out of his colourless eyes, beneath the astonishing arabesque of wrinkles that made his face so like an old idol’s; gave him a look, and put out his hand, which was freckled on the back, and would have looked like a sea-captain’s, Hans Castorp thought, but for the lanceolate fingernails. For the first time, he stood under the immediate influence of Peeperkorn’s impressive personality (“personality” was the word that always occurred to one in reference to this man, one knew straightway that this was a personality; and the more one saw of him the more one was convinced that a personality must look not otherwise than as he did) and his unstable youth felt the weight of this broad-shouldered, red-faced man in the sixties, with his aureole of white hair, his cracked lips and the chin-whisker that strayed long and scanty over the clerical waistcoat. Peeperkorn’s manner was courtesy itself.
“My dear sir,” he said, “with the greatest of pleasure. Don’t mention it. I am entirely your man. In making your acquaintance, I distinctly feel—as a young man, you inspire me with confidence. I like you. I—don’t mention it. Settled, sir, settled. You suit me.”
What could Hans Castorp do? Peeperkorn’s gestures were conclusive, peremptory. He liked Hans Castorp. It was “settled.” And his satisfaction gave Peeperkorn an idea, which he indicated by means of speaking gesture. His fair companion, coming to the rescue, elaborated and made it vocal.
“My child,” he said. “Very well. Very well indeed. Very. But how would it be—? Pray understand me. Our life here is but brief. Our power to do it justice is but—These are facts, my child. Laws. In‑ex‑orable. In short, my child, in short and in brief—” He paused, in an impressive attitude, which suggested that he would defer to another’s judgment but disclaim responsibility if, despite his warning, an error were committed.
Frau Chauchat was obviously skilled in interpreting his half-uttered wishes. She said: “Why not? We might remain down a little longer, make a party, perhaps, and drink a bottle of wine together.” She turned to Hans Castorp. “Make haste! Why are you waiting? We must have company, we three are not enough. Who is still in the salon? Ask anyone who is there, fetch some of your friends down from their balconies. We will ask Dr. Ting-fu from our table.”
Peeperkorn rubbed his hands.
“Very good,” he said. “Absolutely. Capital. Do as you are bid, young man, make haste! Let us make a little company, play, and eat and drink. Let us feel that—settled, young man. Absolutely.”
Hans Castorp took the lift to the second storey. He knocked at Ferge’s door, who in his turn fetched Wehsal and Herr Albin from their chairs in the main rest-hall below. Lawyer Paravant and the Magnus couple were still in the hall, Frau Stöhr and the Kleefeld in the salon. A large table was set up under the centre chandelier, chairs and serving-tables put about. Mynheer courteously greeted each guest as he appeared, with a glance of the pallid eyes and a lifting of the masklike brows. They sat down, twelve together, Hans Castorp between his kingly host and Clavdia Chauchat. Cards and counters were produced, they decided on some rounds of vingt-et-un. Peeperkorn summoned the dwarf and in his most impressive manner ordered wine—white Chablis of ’06, three bottles for a start—and dessert, whatever pâtisseries and dried fruits were to be had. He rubbed his hands in high glee as the good things came in, and communicated his sentiments in broken phrases which were none the less entirely successful, at least in the direction of establishing his “personality.” He laid both hands on his neighbour’s arm, then raised his long forefinger with the pointed nail, and claimed and received the admiration of the table for the splendid golden colour of the wine in the rummers, for the sugar that sweated from the Malaga grapes, for a certain sort of little salt and poppy-seed pretzel. These, he declared, were divine, and with an imperious gesture nipped in the bud any possible protest against the strength of his adjective. He had taken charge of the bank at first, but soon turned it over to Herr Albin and was understood to say that the charge of it hindered his unfettered enjoyment.
The gambling was to him quite evidently a minor consideration. The stakes were very low, a mere trifle in his view, though the bidding, at his suggestion, began at fifty rappen, a considerable sum to most of those present. Lawyer Paravant and Frau Stöhr went white and red by turns; the latter suffered pangs of indecision when called on to decide whether it was too high for her to buy at eighteen. She squealed aloud when Herr Albin with chill routine dealt her a card so high as to confound her hopes over and over. Peeperkorn laughed heartily.
“Squeal away, madame, squeal away,” said he. “It sounds shrill and full of life, it wells up from depths—drink, madame, drink and refresh yourself for new efforts.” He filled her glass, also his neighbour’s and his own, ordered three more bottles, and clicked glasses with Wehsal and Frau Magnus the inly wasted one; they two seeming to stand in most need of enlivenment. Faces flushed more and more, from the effects of the truly marvellous wine—only Dr. Ting-fu’s remained unchangingly yellow, with jet-black slits of eyes. He staked very high, with his little suppressed giggle, and was shamelessly lucky. Lawyer Paravant, his gaze a-swim, challenged fate by putting ten francs on an only moderately hopeful opening card, bought until he was pale in the face, and then won twice his money back; for Herr Albin had rashly doubled on the strength of an ace he received. Not only the persons involved felt the shock of these events; the whole circle shared the shattering effect. Even Herr Albin, whose sangfroid outdid the croupiers of Monte Carlo, where, according to him, he was an old habitué, now scarcely mastered his excitement. Hans Castorp played high, so did Frau Stöhr and the Kleefeld, Frau Chauchat as well. They went the rounds: played Chemin de Fer, “My Aunt, Your Aunt,” and the perilous Différence. There were outbursts of jubilation and despair, explosions of rage, attacks of hysterical laughter—all due to the reaction of this unlawful pleasure upon their nerves; and all perfectly serious and genuine. The chances and changes of life itself would have called up in them no other reaction.
Part 31 of 39