Chapter I: Arrival
Arrival
An unassuming young man was travelling, in midsummer, from his native city of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of the Grisons, on a three weeks’ visit.
From Hamburg to Davos is a long journey — too long, indeed, for so brief a stay. It crosses all sorts of country; goes up hill and down dale, descends from the plateau of Southern Germany to the shore of Lake Constance, over its bounding waves and on across marshes once thought to be bottomless.
At this point the route, which has been so far over trunk-lines, gets cut up. There are stops and formalities. At Rorschach, in Swiss territory, you take train again, but only as far as Landquart, a small Alpine station, where you have to change. Here, after a long and windy wait in a spot devoid of charm, you mount a narrow-gauge train; and as the small but very powerful engine gets under way, there begins the thrilling part of the journey, a steep and steady climb that seems never to come to an end. For the station of Landquart lies at a relatively low altitude, but now the wild and rocky route pushes grimly onward into the Alps themselves.
Hans Castorp — such was the young man’s name — sat alone in his little grey-upholstered compartment, with his alligator-skin hand-bag, a present from his uncle and guardian, Consul Tienappel — let us get the introductions over with at once — his travellingrug, and his winter overcoat swinging on its hook. The window was down, the afternoon grew cool, and he, a tender product of the sheltered life, had turned up the collar of his fashionably cut, silk-lined summer overcoat. Near him on the seat lay a paperbound volume entitled Ocean Steamships; earlier in the journey he had studied it off and on, but now it lay neglected, and the breath of the panting engine, streaming in, defiled its cover with particles of soot.
Two days’ travel separated the youth — he was still too young to have thrust his roots down firmly into life — from his own world, from all that he thought of as his own duties, interests, cares and prospects; far more than he had dreamed it would when he sat in the carriage on the way to the station. Space, rolling and revolving between him and his native heath, possessed and wielded the powers we generally ascribe to time. From hour to hour it worked changes in him, like to those wrought by time, yet in a way even more striking. Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.
Such was the experience of young Hans Castorp. He had not meant to take the journey seriously or commit himself deeply to it; but to get it over quickly, since it had to be made, to return as he had gone, and to take up his life at the point where, for the moment, he had had to lay it down. Only yesterday he had been encompassed in the wonted circle of his thoughts, and entirely taken up by two matters: the examination he had just passed, and his approaching entrance into the firm of Tunder and Wilms, shipbuilders, smelters, and machinists. With as much impatience as lay in his temperament to feel, he had discounted the next three weeks; but now it began to seem as though present circumstances required his entire attention, that it would not be at all the thing to take them too lightly.
This being carried upward into regions where he had never before drawn breath, and where he knew that unusual living conditions prevailed, such as could only be described as sparse or scanty — it began to work upon him, to fill him with a certain concern. Home and regular living lay not only far behind, they lay fathoms deep beneath him, and he continued to mount above them. Poised between them and the unknown, he asked himself how he was going to fare. Perhaps it had been ill-advised of him, born as he was a few feet above sea-level, to come immediately to these great heights, without stopping at least a day or so at some point in between. He wished he were at the end of his journey; for once there he could begin to live as he would anywhere else, and not be reminded by this continual climbing of the incongruous situation he found himself in. He looked out. The train wound in curves along the narrow pass; he could see the front carriages and the labouring engine vomiting great masses of brown, black, and greenish smoke, that floated away. Water roared in the abysses on the right; on the left, among rocks, dark fir-trees aspired toward a stone-grey sky. The train passed through pitch-black tunnels, and when daylight came again it showed wide chasms, with villages nestled in their depths. Then the pass closed in again; they wound along narrow defiles, with traces of snow in chinks and crannies. There were
halts at wretched little shanties of stations; also at more important ones, which the train left in the opposite direction, making one lose the points of the compass. A magnificent succession of vistas opened before the awed eye, of the solemn, phantasmagorical world of towering peaks, into which their route wove and wormed itself: vistas that appeared and disappeared with each new winding of the path. Hans Castorp reflected that they must have got above the zone of shade-trees, also probably of song-birds; whereupon he felt such a sense of the impoverishment of life as gave him a slight attack of giddiness and nausea and made him put his hand over his eyes for a few seconds. It passed. He perceived that they had stopped climbing. The top of the col was reached; the train rolled smoothly along the level valley floor.
It was about eight o’clock, and still daylight. A lake was visible in the distant landscape, its waters grey, its shores covered with black fir-forests that climbed the surrounding heights, thinned out, and gave place to bare, mist-wreathed rock. They stopped at a small station. Hans Castorp heard the name called out: it was “ Davos-Dorf.” Soon he would be at his journey’s end. And suddenly, close to him, he heard a voice, the comfortable Hamburg voice of his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, saying: “ Hullo, there you are! Here’s where you get out! ” and peering through the window saw his cousin himself, standing below on the platform, in a brown ulster, bare-headed, and looking more robust than ever in his life before. He laughed and said again: “ Come along out, it’s all
right! ”
“ But I’m not there yet! ” said Hans Castorp, taken aback, and
still seated.
“ Oh, yes, you are. This is the village. It is nearer to the sanatorium from here. I have a carriage. Just give us your things.”
And laughing, confused, in the excitement of arrival and meeting, Hans Castorp reached bag, overcoat, the roll with stick and umbrella, and finally Ocean Steamships out of the window. Then he ran down the narrow corridor and sprang out upon the platform to greet his cousin properly. The meeting took place without exuberance, as between people of traditional coolness and reserve. Strange to say, the cousins had always avoided calling each other by their first names, simply because they were afraid of showing too much feeling. And, as they could not well address each other by their last names, they confined themselves, by established custom, to the thou.
A man in livery with a braided cap looked on while they shook hands, quickly, not without embarrassment, young Ziemssen in military position, heels together. Then he came forward to ask for Hans Castorp’s luggage ticket; he was the concierge of the International Sanatorium Berghof, and would fetch the guest’s large trunk from the other station while the gentlemen drove directly up to supper. This man limped noticeably; and so, curiously enough, the first thing Hans Castorp said to his cousin was: “ Is that a war veteran? What makes him limp like that? ”
“ War veteran! No fear! ” said Joachim, with some bitterness. “ He’s got it in his knee — or, rather, he had it — the knee-pan has been removed.”
Hans Castorp bethought himself hastily.
“ So that’s it! ” he said, and as he walked on turned his head and gave a quick glance back. “ But you can’t make me believe you’ve still got anything like that the matter with you! Why, you look as if you had just come from manoeuvres! ” And he looked sidelong at his cousin.
Joachim was taller and broader than he, a picture of youthful vigour, and made for a uniform. He was of the very dark type which his blond-peopled country not seldom produces, and his already nut-brown skin was tanned almost to bronze. With his large, black eyes and small, dark moustache over the full, wellshaped mouth, he would have been distinctly handsome if his ears had not stood out. Up to a certain period they had been his only trouble in life. Now, however, he had others.
Hans Castorp went on: “You’re coming back down with me, aren’t you? I see no reason why not.”
“ Back down with you? ” asked his cousin, and turned his large eyes full upon him. They had always been gentle, but in these five months they had taken on a tired, almost sad expression. “ When? ”
“ Why, in three weeks.”
“ Oh, yes, you are already on the way back home, in your thoughts,” answered Joachim. “ Wait a bit. You’ve only just come. Three weeks are nothing at all, to us up here — they look like a lot of time to you, because you are only up here on a visit, and three weeks is all you have. Get acclimatized first — it isn’t so easy, you’ll see. And the climate isn’t the only queer thing about us. You’re going to see some things you’ve never dreamed of — just wait. About me — it isn’t such smooth sailing as you think, you with your ‘ going home in three weeks.’ That’s the class of ideas you have down below. Yes, I am brown, I know, but it is mostly snow-buming. It doesn’t mean much, as Behrens always says; he told me at the last regular examination it would take another half year, pretty certainly.”
“ Half a year? Are you crazy? ” shouted Hans Castorp. They had climbed into the yellow cabriolet that stood in the stone-paved square in front of the shed-like station, and as the pair of brown horses started up, he flounced indignantly on the hard cushions. “ Half a year! You’ve been up here half a year already! Who’s got so much time to spend ”
“ Oh, time — ! ” said Joachim, and nodded repeatedly, straight in front of him, paying his cousin’s honest indignation no heed. ” They make pretty free with a human being’s idea of time, up here. You wouldn’t believe it. Three weeks are just like a day to them. You’ll learn all about it,” he said, and added: “ One’s ideas get changed.”
Hans Castorp regarded him earnestly as they drove. “ But seems to me you’ve made a splendid recovery,” he said, shaking his head.
“ You really think so, don’t you 5 ” answered Joachim; “ I think I have too.” He drew himself up straighter against the cushions, but immediately relaxed again. Yes, I am better,” he explained, “ but I am not cured vet. In the left lobe, where there were rales, it only sounds harsh now, and that is not so bad; but lower down it is still very harsh, and there are rhonchi in the second intercostal space.”
” How learned you’ve got,” said Hans Castorp.
“ Fine sort of learning! God knows I wish I’d had it sweated out of my system in the service,” responded Joachim. 4v But I still have sputum,” he said, with a shoulder-shrug that was somehow indifferent and vehement both at once, and became him but ill. He half pulled out and showed to his cousin something he carried in the side pocket of his overcoat, next to Hans Castorp. It was a flat, curving bottle of bluish glass, with a metal cap.
” Most of us up here carry it,” he said, shoving it back. ” It even has a nickname; they make quite a joke of it. You are looking at the landscape? ”
Hans Castorp was. ” Magnificent! ” he said.
” Think so? ” asked Joachim.
They had driven for a space straight up the axis of the valley, along an irregularly built street that followed the line of the railway; then, turning to the left, they crossed the narrow tracks and a watercourse, and now trotted up a high-road that mounted gently toward the wooded slopes. Before them rose a low, projecting, meadow-like plateau, on which, facing south-west, stood a long building, with a cupola and so many balconies that from a distance it looked porous, like a sponge. In this building lights were beginning to show. It was rapidly growing dusk. The faint rosecolour that had briefly enlivened the overcast heavens was faded now, and there reigned the colourless, soulless, melancholy transition-period that comes just before the onset of night. The populous valley, extended and rather winding, now began to show lights everywhere, not only in the middle, but here and there on the slopes at either hand, particularly on the projecting right side, upon which buildings mounted in terrace formation. Paths ran up the sloping meadows to the left and lost themselves in the vague blackness of the pine forest. Behind them, where the valley narrowed to its entrance, the more distant ranges showed a cold, slaty blue. A wind had sprung up, and made perceptible the chill of evening.
“ No, to speak frankly, I don’t find it so overpowering,” said Hans Castorp. “ Where are the glaciers, and the snow peaks, and the gigantic heights you hear about? These things aren’t very high, it seems to me.”
“ Oh, yes, they are,” answered Joachim. “ You can see the tree line almost everywhere, it is very sharply defined; the fir-trees leave off, and after that there is absolutely nothing but bare rock. And up there to the right of the Schwarzhorn, that tooth-shaped peak, there is a glacier — can’t you see the blue? It is not very large, but it is a glacier right enough, the Skaletta. Piz Michel and Tinzenhorn, in the notch — you can’t see them from here — have snow all the year round.”
“ Eternal snow,” said Hans Castorp.
“ Eternal snow, if you like. Yes, that’s all very high. But we are frightfully high ourselves: sixteen hundred metres above sea-level. That’s why the peaks don’t seem any higher.”
“Yes, what a climb that was! I was scared to death, I can tell you. Sixteen hundred metres — that is over five thousand feet, as I reckon it. I’ve never been so high up in my life.” And Hans Castorp took in a deep, experimental breath of the strange air. It was fresh, and that was all. It had no perfume, no content, no humidity; it breathed in easily, and held for him no associations.
“Wonderful air,” he remarked, politely.
“ Yes, the atmosphere is famous. But the place doesn’t look its best to-night. Sometimes it makes a much better impression — especially when there is snow. But you can get sick of looking at it. All of us up here are frightfully fed up, you can imagine,” said Joachim, and twisted his mouth into an expression of disgust that was as unlike him as the shoulder-shrug. It looked irritable, disproportionate.
“ You have such a queer way of talking,” said Hans Castorp.
“ Have I? ” said Joachim, concerned, and turned to look at his cousin.
“ Oh, no, of course I don’t mean you really have — I suppose it just seemed so to me for the moment,” Hans Castorp hastened to assure him. It was the expression “ all of us up here,” which Joachim had used several times, that had somehow struck him as strange and given him an uneasy feeling.
“ Our sanatorium is higher up than the village, as you see,” went on Joachim. “ Fifty metres higher. In the prospectus it says a hundred, but it is really only fifty. The highest of the sanatoriums is the Schatzalp — you can’t see it from here. They have to bring their bodies down on bob-sleds in the winter, because the roads are blocked.”
“Their bodies? Oh, I see. Imagine! ” said Hans Castorp. And suddenly he burst out laughing, a violent, irrepressible laugh, which shook him all over and distorted his face, that was stiff with the cold wind, until it almost hurt. “ On bob-sleds! And you can tell it me just like that, in cold blood! You’ve certainly got pretty cynical in these five months.”
“ Not at all,” answered Joachim, shrugging again. “ Why not? It’s all the same to them, isn’t it? But maybe we do get cynical up here. Behrens is a cynic himself — but he’s a great old bird after all, an old corps-student. He is a brilliant operator, they say. You will like him. Krokowski is the assistant — devilishly clever article. They mention his activities specially, in the prospectus. He psycho-analyses the patients.”
“ He what? Psycho-analyses — how disgusting! ” cried Hans Castorp; and now his hilarity altogether got the better of him. He could not stop. The psycho-analysis had been the finishing touch. He laughed so hard that the tears ran down his cheeks; he put up his hands to his face and rocked with laughter. Joachim laughed just as heartily — it seemed to do him good; and thus, in great good spirits, the young people climbed out of the wagon, which had slowly mounted the steep, winding drive and deposited them before the portal of the International Sanatorium Berghof. Number 34
On their right as they entered, between the main door and the inner one, was the porter’s lodge. An official of the French type, in the grey livery of the man at the station, was sitting at the telephone, reading the newspaper. He came out and led them through the well-lighted halls, on the left of which lay the reception-rooms. Hans Castorp peered in as he passed, but they were empty. Where, then, were the guests, he asked, and his cousin answered: “ In the rest-cure. I had leave to-night to go out and meet you. Otherwise I am always up in my balcony, after supper.”
Hans Castorp came near bursting out again. “ What! You lie out on your balcony at night, in the damp? ” he asked, his voice shaking.
“ Yes, that is the rule. From eight to ten. But come and see your room now, and get a wash.”
They entered the lift — it was an electric one, worked by the Frenchman. As they went up, Hans Castorp wiped his eyes.
“ I’m perfectly worn out with laughing,” he said, and breathed through his mouth. “ You’ve told me such a lot of crazy stuff — that about the psycho-analysis was the last straw. I suppose I am a bit relaxed from the journey. And my feet are cold — are yours? But my face burns so, it is really unpleasant. Do we eat now? I feel hungry. Is the food decent up here? ”
They went noiselessly along the coco matting of the narrow corridor, which was lighted by electric lights in white glass shades set in the ceiling. The walls gleamed with hard white enamel paint. They had a glimpse of a nursing sister in a white cap, and eyeglasses on a cord that ran behind her ear. She had the look of a Protestant sister — that is to say, one working without a real vocation and burdened with restlessness and ennui. As they went along the corridor, Hans Castorp saw, beside two of the whiteenamelled, numbered doors, certain curious, swollen-looking, balloon-shaped vessels with short necks. He did not think, at the moment, to ask what they were.
“ Here you are,” said Joachim. “ I am next you on the right. The other side you have a Russian couple, rather loud and offensive, but it couldn’t be helped. Well, how do you like it? ”
There were two doors, an outer and an inner, with clotheshooks in the space between. Joachim had turned on the ceiling light, and in its vibrating brilliance the room looked restful and cheery, with practical white furniture, white washable walls, clean
II linoleum, and white linen curtains gaily embroidered in modern taste. The door stood open, one saw the lights of the valley and heard distant dance-music. The good Joachim had put a vase of flowers on the chest of drawers — a few bluebells and some yarrow, which he had found himself among the second crop of grass on the slopes.
“ Awfully decent of you,” said Hans Castorp. “ What a nice room! I can spend a couple of weeks here with pleasure.”
“ An American woman died here day before yesterday,” said Joachim. “ Behrens told me directly that she v ould be out before you came, and you might have the room. Her fiance was with her, an English officer of marines, but he didn’t behave very well. He kept coming out in the corridor to cry, just like a little boy. He rubbed cold cream on his cheeks, because he was close-shaven and the tears smarted. Night before last she had two first-class haemorrhages, and that was the finish. But she has been gone since yesterday morning, and after they took her away of course they fumigated the room thoroughly with formalin, which is the proper thing to use in such cases.”
Hans Castorp took in this information with a sprightly, yet halfdistraught air. He was standing with his sleeves pushed back before the roomy wash-hand-basin, the taps of which shone in the electric light, and gave hardly a glance at the white metal bed with its fresh coverlet.
“Fumigated it, eh D That’s ripping,” he said loquaciously and rather absurdly, as he washed and dried his hands. “ Methyl aldehyde; yes, that’s too much for the bacteria, no matter how strong they are. H 2 CO. But it’s a powerful stench. Of course, perfect sanitation is absolutely essential ” He spoke with more of a Hamburg accent than his cousin, who had broken himself of it since his student davs. Hans Castorp continued volubly. “ But what I was about to say was, probably the officer of marines used a safety-razor; one makes oneself sore with those things easier than with a well-sharpened blade — at least, that is my experience, and I use them both by turns. Well, and salt water would naturally make a tender skin smart, so he got in the way, in the service, of rubbing in cold cream. I don’t see anything strange about that . . .” He rattled on: said that he had two hundred Maria Mancinis (his cigar) in his trunk, the customs officers had been very courteous; and gave his cousin greetings from various people at home. “ Don’t they heat the rooms here ? ” he broke off to inquire, and ran to put his hands on the radiator. “ No, they keep us pretty cool,” answered Joachim. “ The weather would have to be different from this before they put on the heat in August.”
“ August, August! ” said Hans Castorp. “ But I am cold, abominably cold; I mean in my body, for my face burns shockingly — just feel it! ”
This demand was entirely foreign to the young man’s nature — so much so that he himself was disagreeably impressed as he heard himself make it. Joachim did not take up the offer, but merely said: “ That is the air — it doesn’t mean anything; Behrens himself is purple in the face all day long. Some people never get used to it. Come along now, do, or we shan’t get anything to eat.”
Outside they saw the nursing sister again, peering short-sightedly and inquisitively after them. But in the first storey Hans Castorp suddenly stopped, rooted to the spot by a perfectly ghastly sound coming from a little distance off round a bend in the corridor. It was not a loud sound, but so distinctly horrible that Hans Castorp made a wry face and looked wide-eyed at his cousin. It was coughing, obviously, a man coughing; but coughing like to no other Hans Castorp had ever heard, and compared with which any other had been a magnificent and healthy manifestation of life: a coughing that had no conviction and gave no relief, that did not even come out in paroxysms, but was just a feeble, dreadful welling up of the juices of organic dissolution.
“ Yes,” said Joachim. “ That’s a bad case. An Austrian aristocrat, you know, very elegant. He’s a born horseman — a gentleman rider. And now he’s come to this. But he still gets about.”
As they went, Hans Castorp discoursed earnestly upon the gentleman rider’s cough.
“You must realize,” he said, “that I’ve never heard anything like it before. It is entirely new to me, and naturally it makes a great impression. There are different kinds of cough, dry and loose, and people always say the loose one is better than the other, the barking kind. When I had croup, in my youth ” (he actually said “ in my youth ”!), “ I bayed like a wolf, and I can still remember how glad everybody was when it got looser. But a cough like this — I didn’t know there was such a cough! It isn’t a human cough at all. It isn’t dry and yet isn’t loose either — that is very far from being the right word for it. It is just as if one could look right into him when he coughs, and see what it looks like: all slime and mucous ”
“ Oh,” said Joachim, “ I hear it every day, you don’t need to describe it to me.” But Hans Castorp could not get over the coughing he had heard. He kept repeating that he could see right into the gentleman rider’s vitals; when they reached the restaurant his travel-weary eyes had an excited glitter.
In the Restaurant
It was charming in the restaurant, elegantly appointed and well lighted. The room lay to the right of the hall, opposite the salons, and was, Joachim explained, used chiefly by new arrivals, and by guests eating out of the usual meal hours or entertaining company. But it also served for birthday feasts, farewell parties, even to celebrate a favourable report after a general examination. There were lively times here in the restaurant on occasion, Joachim said, and champagne flowed freely. Now, no one was here but a solitary lady of some thirty years, reading a book and humming; she kept tapping the table-cloth lightly with the middle finger of her left hand. After the young people had taken their places, she changed hers, in order to sit with her back to them. Joachim explained in a low voice that she suffered from shyness as from a disease, and ate all her meals in the restaurant, with a book. It was said that she had entered her first tuberculosis sanatorium as a young girl, and had never lived in the world since.
“ So compared with her, you are only a novice, with your five months; and still will be when you have a year on your back,” said Hans Castorp to his cousin; whereat Joachim, with his newly acquired shoulder-shrug, took up the menu.
They had sat down at the raised table in the window, the pleasantest spot in the room, facing each other against the cream-coloured hangings, their faces lighted by the red-shaded table-lamp. Hans Castorp clasped his freshly washed hands and rubbed them together in agreeable anticipation — a habit of his when he sat down to table, perhaps because his ancestors had said grace before meat. They were served by a friendly maid in black frock and white apron. She had a pleasant, throaty voice, and her broad face was indisputably healthy-coloured. To his great amusement, Hans Castorp learned that the waitresses here were called “ dining-room girls.” They ordered a bottle of Gruaud Larose, and Hans Castorp sent it back to have it warmed. The food was excellent: asparagus soup, stuffed tomatoes, a roast with vegetables, an exceedingly well-prepared sweet, cheese, and fruit. Hans Castorp ate heartily, though his appetite did not turn out quite so stout as he had thought. But he always ate a good deal, out of pure self-respect, even when he was not hungry. Joachim paid scant honour to the meal. He was tired of the cooking, he said; they all were, up here, and it was customary to grumble at the food. If one had to sit up here for ever and a
day ! But, on the other hand, he partook of the wine with
gusto, not to say abandon; and repeatedly, though with careful avoidance of emotional language, expressed his joy at having somebody here with whom one could have a little rational conversation.
“ Yes, it’s first-rate you’ve come,” he said, and his gentle voice betrayed some feeling. “ I must say it is really an event for me — it is certainly a change, anyhow, a break in the everlasting monotony.”
“ But time must go fast, living up here,” was Hans Castorp’s view.
“ Fast and slow, as you take it,” answered Joachim. “ It doesn’t go at all, I tell you. You can’t call it time — and you can’t call it living either! ” he said with a shake of the head, and fell to his glass again.
Hans Castorp drank too, though his face was like fire. Yet he was still cold, and felt a curious restlessness in his limbs, at once pleasurable and troubling. His words fell over each other, he often mis-spoke and passed it over with a deprecating wave. Joachim too was in a lively humour, and their conversation continued in a still freer and more convivial vein after the humming, tapping lady had got up suddenly and left the room. They gesticulated with their forks as they ate, nodded, shrugged their shoulders, talked with their mouths full. Joachim wanted to hear about Hamburg, and brought the conversation round to the proposed regulation of the Elbe.
“ Epoch-making,” said Hans Castorp. “ Epoch-making for the development of our shipping. Can’t be over-estimated. We’ve budgeted fifty millions for immediate expenditure and you may be sure we know what we’re about.”
But notwithstanding all the importance he attached to the projected improvement, he jumped away from the theme and demanded that Joachim tell him more about life “ up here ” and about the guests — which the latter straightway dia, being only too pleased to be able to unbosom himself. He had to repeat the story of the corpses sent down by bob-sleigh, and vouch for its truth. Hans Castorp being taken by another fit of laughing, his cousin laughed too, with hearty enjoyment, and told other funny things to add fuel to their merriment. There was a lady sitting at his table, named Frau Stohr, the wife of a Cannstadt musician; a rather serious case, she was, and the most ignorant creature he had ever seen. She said diseased for deceased, quite seriously, and she called Krokowski the Asst. And you had to take it all in without cracking a smile. She was a regular gossip — most people were, up here — and published it broadcast that another lady, a certain Frau litis, carried a “ steriletto ” on her person. “ That is exactly what she called it, isn’t that priceless? ” They lolled in their chairs, they flung themselves back and laughed so hard that they shook; and they began to hiccup at nearly the same time.
Now and then Joachim’s face would cloud over and he would remember his lot.
“ Yes, we sit here and laugh,” he said, with a long face, his words interrupted by the heaving of his diaphragm, “ we sit here and laugh, but there’s no telling when I shall get away. When Behrens says half a year, you can make up your mind it will be more. It is hard, isn’t it? — you just tell me if you don’t think it is pretty hard on me. I had already been accepted, I could have taken my exams next month. And now I have to drool about with a thermometer stuck in my mouth, and count the howlers of this ignorant Frau Stbhr, and watch the time slipping away. A year is so important at our age. Down below, one goes through so many changes, and makes so much progress, in a single year of life. And I have to stagnate up here — yes, just stagnate like a filthy puddle; it isn’t too crass a comparison.”
Strange to say, Hans Castorp’s only reply to all this was a query as to whether it was possible to get porter up here; when Joachim looked at him, in some astonishment, he perceived that his cousin was overcome with sleep, that in fact he was actually nodding.
“ But you are going to sleep! ” said Joachim. “ Come along, it is time we both went to bed.”
“ ‘ You can’t call it time,’ ” quoth Hans Castorp, thick-tongued. He went with his cousin, rather bent and stiff in the knees, like a man bowed to the earth with fatigue. However, in the dimly lighted corridor he pulled himself sharply together on hearing his cousin say: “ There’s Krokowski sitting there. I think I’ll just have to present you, as briefly as possible.”
Dr. Krokowski sat in the bright light at the fire-place of one of the reception-rooms, close to the folding doors. He was reading a paper, and got up as the young people approached.
Joachim, in military position, heels together, said: “ Herr Doctor, may I present my cousin Castorp from Hamburg? He has just arrived.”
Dr. Krokowski greeted the new inmate with a jovial and robust 1 6
heartiness, as who should say that with him all formality was superfluous, and only jocund mutual confidence in place. He was about thirty-five years old, broad-shouldered and fleshy, much shorter than either of the youths before him, so that he had to tip back his head to look them in the face. He was unusually pale, of a translucent, yes, phosphorescent pallor, that was further accentuated by the dark ardour of his eyes, the blackness of his brows, and his rather long, full whisker, which ended in two points and already showed some white threads. He had on a black double-breasted, somewhat worn sack suit; black, open-worked sandal-like shoes over grey woollen socks, and a soft turn-down collar, such as Hans Castorp had previously seen worn only by a photographer in Danzig, which did, in fact, lend a certain stamp of the studio to Dr. Krokowski’s appearance. Smiling warmly and showing his yellow teeth in his beard, he shook the young man by the hand, and said in a baritone voice, with rather a foreign drawl: “ Wel-come to our midst, Herr Castorp! May you get quickly acclimatized and feel yourself at home among us! Do you come as a patient, may I ask? ”
It was touching to see Hans Castorp labour to master his drowsiness and be polite. It annoyed him to be in such bad form, and with the self-consciousness of youth he read signs of indulgent amusement in the warmth of the Assistant’s manner. He replied, mentioning his examinations and his three weeks’ visit, and ended by saying he was, thank God, perfectly healthy.
“ Really ^ ” asked Krokowski, putting his head teasingly on one side. His smile grew broader. “ Then you are a phenomenon worthy of study. I, for one, have never in my life come across a perfectly healthy human being. What were the examinations you have just passed, if I may ask? ”
“ I am an engineer, Herr Doctor,” said Hans Castorp with modest dignity.
u Ah, an engineer! ” Dr. Krokowski’s smile retreated as it were, lost for the moment something of its genial warmth. “ A splendid calling. And so you will not require any attention while you are here, either physical or psychical? ”
“ Oh, no, thank you ever so much,” said Hans Castorp, and almost drew back a step as he spoke.
At that Dr. Krokowski’s smile burst forth triumphant; he shook the young man’s hand afresh and cried briskly: “ Well, sleep well, Herr Castorp, and rejoice in the fullness of your perfect health; sleep well, and azcf Wiedersehen! ” With wdiich he dismissed the cousins and returned to his paper. The lift had stopped running, so they climbed the stairs; in silence, somewhat taken aback by the encounter with Dr. Krokowski. Joachim went with his cousin to number thirty-four, where the lame porter had already deposited the luggage of the new arrival. They talked for another quarter-hour while Hans Castorp unpacked his night and toilet things, smoking a large, mild cigarette the while. A cigar would have been too much for him this evening — a fact which impressed him as odd indeed.
“ He looks quite a personality,” he said, blowing out the smoke. “ He is as pale as wax. But dear me, what hideous footgear he w’ears! Grey woollen socks, and then those sandals! Was he really offended at the end, do you think? ”
“ He is rather touchy,” admitted Joachim. “You ought not to have refused the treatment so brusquely, at least not the psychical. He doesn’t like to have people get out of it. He doesn’t take much stock in me because I don’t confide in him enough. But every now and then I tell him a dream I’ve had, so he can have something to analyse.”
“ Then I certainly did offend him,” Hans Castorp said fretfully, for it annoyed him to give offence. His weariness rushed over him with renewed force at the thought.
“ Good-night,” he said; “ I’m falling over.”
“At eight o’clock I’ll come fetch you to breakfast,” Joachim said, and went.
Hans Castorp made only a cursory toilet for the night. Hardly had he put out the bedside light when sleep overcame him; but he started up again, remembering that in that bed, the day before yesterday, someone had died. “ That wasn’t the first time either,” he said to himself, as though the thought were reassuring. “ It is a regular death-bed, a common death-bed.” And he fell asleep.
No sooner had he gone off, however, than he began to dream, and dreamed almost wfithout stopping until next morning. Principally he saw his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, in a strange, dislocated attitude on a bob-sled, riding down a steep course. He had a phosphorescent pallor like Dr. Krokowski, and in front of him sat the gentleman rider and steered. The gentleman rider was indistinct, like someone one has heard cough, but never seen.
“ It’s all the same to us up here,” remarked the dislocated Joachim; and then it was he and not the gentleman rider who was coughing in that horribly pulpy manner. Hans Castorp wept bitterly to hear, and then perceived that he must run to the chemist’s to get some cold cream. But Frau litis, with a pointed snout, sat
i8 by the road-side with something in her hand, which must be her “ steriletto,” but was obviously nothing else than a safety-razor. This made Hans Castorp go from tears to laughing; and thus he was tossed back and forth among varying emotions, until the dawn came through his half-open balcony door and wakened him.
Part 1 of 30