Chapter III: Drawing the Veil (Part 2 of 2)
“ Seven minutes! But they must be up! Joachim shook his head. A little later he took the thermometer out of his mouth, looked at it, and said: Yes, when you watch it, the time, it goes very slowly. I quite like the measuring, four times a day, for then you know what a minute — or seven of them — actually amounts to, up here in this place, where the seven days of the week whisk by the way they do! ”
“ You say ‘ actually,’ ” Hans Castorp answered. He sat with one leg flung over the balustrade, and his eyes looked bloodshot. “ But after all, time isn’t actual.’ When it seems long to you, then it is long; when it seems short, why, then it is short. But how long, or how short, it actually is, that nobody knows. He was unaccustomed to philosophize, yet somehow felt an impulse to do so.
Joachim gainsaid him. “How so- -we do measure it. We have watches and calendars for the purpose; and when a month is up, why, then up it is, for you, and for me, and for all of us.”
“ Wait,”” said Hans Castorp. He held up his forefinger, close to his tired eyes. “ A minute, then, is as long as it seems to you when you measure yourself? ”
“ A minute is as iong — it lasts as long — as it takes the second hand of my watch to complete a circuit.”
“ But it takes such a varied length of time — to our senses! And as a matter of fact – I say taking it just as a matter of fact,” he n peated, pressing his forefinger so hard against his nose that he bent the end of it quite round, “ it is motion, isn’t it, motion in space 5 Wait a minute! That means that we measure time by space. But that is no better than measuring space by time, a thing only very unscientific people do. From Hamburg to Davos is twenty hours — that is, by train. But on foot how long is it? And in the mind, how long 5 Not a second! ”
“ I say,” Joachim said, “ what’s the matter with you 5 Seems to me it goes to your head to be up here with us! ”
“ Keep quiet 1 I’m very clear-headed to-day. Well, then, what is time? ” asked Hans Castorp, and bent the tip of his nose so far round that it became white and bloodless. “ Can you answer me that 5 Space we perceive with our organs, with our senses of sight and touch. Good. But which is our organ of time — tell me that if vou can. You see, that’s where you stick. But how can we possibly measure anything about which we actually know nothing, not even a single one of its properties? We say of time that it passes. Very good, let it pass. But to be able to measure it — wait a minute: to be susceptible of being measured, time must flow evenly, but who ever said it did that? As far as our consciousness is concerned it doesn’t, we only assume that it does, for the sake of convenience; and our units of measurement are purely arbitrary, sheer conventions — ” Good, Joachim said. “ Then perhaps it is pure convention that I have five points too much here on my thermometer. But on account of those lines I have to drool about here instead of joining up, which is a disgusting fact.”
“ Have you 99.3 °? ”
“ Ingoing down already,” and Joachim made the entry on his chart. Last night it was almost ioo° — that was your arrival. A visit always makes it go up. But it is a good thing, notwithstanding.”
“ HI g° now,” said Hans Castorp. “ Fve still a great many ideas in my head about the time — a whole complex, if I may say so. But I won’t excite you with them now, you’ve too many degrees as it is. I’ll keep them all and return to them later, perhaps after breakfast. You will call me when it is time, I suppose. I’ll go now and lie down; it won’t hurt me, thank goodness.” With which he passed round the glass partition into his loggia, where stood his own reclining-chair and side-table. He fetched Ocecm Steamships and his beautiful, soft, dark-red and green plaid from within the room, which had already been put into perfect order, and sat himself down.
Soon he too had to put up the little sunshade; the heat became unbearable as he lay. But he was uncommonly comfortable, he decided, with distinct satisfaction. He did not recall in ali his experience so acceptable an easy-chair. The frame — a little oldfashioned, perhaps, a mere matter of taste, for the chair was obviously new — was of polished red-brown wood, and the mattress was covered in a soft cotton material; or rather, it was not a mattress, but three thick cushions, extending from the foot to the very top of the chair-back. There was a head-roll besides, neither too hard nor too yielding, with an embroidered linen cover, fastened on by a cord to the chair, and wondiously agreeable to the neck. Hans Castorp supported his elbow on the broad, smooth surface of the chair-arm, blinked, and reposed himself, The landscape, rather severe and sparse, though brightly sunny, looked like a framed painting as viewed through the arch of the loggia. Hans Castorp gazed thoughtfully at it. Suddenly he thought of something, and said aloud in the stillness: “ That was a dwarf, wasn’t it, that waited on us at breakfast? ”
“Sh-h,” went Joachim. “Don’t speak loud. Yes, a dwarf. Why? ”
“ Nothing. We hadn’t mentioned it.”
He mused on. It had been ten o’clock when he lay down. An hour passed. It was an ordinary hour, not long, not short. At its close a bell sounded through the house and garden, first afar, then near, then from afar again.
“ Breakfast,” Joachim said and could be heard getting up.
Hans Castorp too finished with his cure for the time and went into his room to put himself to rights a little. The cousins met in the corridor and descended the stair.
Hans Castorp said: “ Well, the lying-down is great! What sort of chairs are they? If they are to be had here, I’ll buy one and take it to Hamburg with me; they are heavenly to lie in. Or do you think Behrens had them made to his design? ”
Joachim did not know. They entered the dining-room, where the meal was again in full swing.
At every place stood a large glass, probably a half litre of milk; the room shimmered white with it.
“ No,” Hans Castorp said, when he was once more in his seat between the seamstress and the Englishwoman, and had docilely unfolded his serviette, though still heavy with the earlier meal; “ no, God help me, milk I never could abide, and least of all now! Is there perhaps some porter? ” He applied himself to the dwarf and put his question with the gentlest courtesy, but alas, there was none. She promised to bring Kulmbacher beer, and did so. It was thick, dark, and foaming brownly; it made a capital substitute for the porter. Hans Castorp drank it thirstily from a half-litre glass, and ate some cold meat and toast. Again there was oatmeal porridge and much butter and fruit. He let his eyes dwell upon them, incapable of more. And he looked at the guests as well; the groups began to break up for him, and individuals to stand out.
His own table was full, except the place at the top, which, he learned, was “ the doctor’s place.” For the doctors, when their work allowed, ate at the common table, sitting at each of the seven in turn; at each one a place was kept free. But just now neither was present; they were operating, it was said. The young man with the moustaches came in again, sank his chin once for all on his breast, and sat down, with his self-absorbed, care-worn mien. The lean, light blonde was in her seat, and spooned up yogurt as though it formed her sole article of diet. Next her appeared a lively little old dame, who addressed the silent young man in Russian; he regarded her uneasily, and answered only by nodding his head, looking as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. Opposite him, on the other side of the elderly lady, there was another young girl — pretty, with a blooming complexion and full bosom, chestnut hair that waved agreeably, round, brown, childlike eyes, and a little ruby on her lovely hand. She laughed often, and spoke Russian. Hans Castorp learned that her name was Marusja. He noticed further that when she laughed and talked, Joachim sat with eyes cast sternly down upon his plate.
Settembrini appeared through the side door, and, curling his moustaches, strode to his place at the end of the table diagonally in front of that where Hans Castorp sat. His table-mates burst out in peals of laughter as he sat down; he had probably said something cutting. Hans Castorp recognized the members of the HalfLung Club. Hermine Kleefeld, heavy-eyed, slid into her place at the table in front of one of the verandah doois, speaking as she did so to the thick-lipped youth who had worn his coat in the unseemly fashion that had struck Hans Castorp. The ivory-coloured Levi and the fat, freckled litis sat side by side at a table at right angles to Hans Castorp — he did not know any of their tablemates.
“ There are your neighbours,” Joachim said in a low voice to his cousin, bending forward as he spoke. The pair passed close beside Hans Castorp to the last table on the right, the “ bad ” Russian table, apparently, where there already sat a whole family, one of whom, a very ugly boy, was gobbling great quantities of porridge. The man was of slight proportions, with a grey, hollow-cheeked face. He wore a brown leather jacket; on his feet he had clumsy felt boots with buckled clasps. His wife, likewise small and slender, walked with tripping steps in her tiny, high-heeled Russia leather boots, the feathers swaying on her hat. Around her neck she wore a soiled feather boa. Hans Castorp looked at them with a ruthless stare, quite foreign to his usual manner — he himself was aware of its brutality, yet at the same time conscious of relishing that very quality. His eyes felt both staring and heavy. At that moment the glass door on the left slammed shut, with a rattle and ringing of glass; he did not start as he had on the first occasion, but only made a grimace of lazy disgust; when he wished to turn his head, he found the effort too much for him — it was really not worth while. And thus, for the second time, he was unable to fix upon the person who was guilty of behaving in that reckless way about a door.
The truth was that the breakfast beer, as a rule only mildly obfuscating to the young man’s sense, had this time completely stupefied and befuddled him. He felt as though he had received a blow on the head. His eyelids were heavy as lead; his tongue would not shape his simple thoughts when out of politeness he tried to talk to the Englishwoman. Even to alter the direction of his gaze he was obliged to conquer a great disinclination; and, added to all this, the hateful burning in his face had reached the
7 o same height as yesterday, his cheeks felt puffy with heat, he breathed with difficulty; his heart pounded dully, like a hammer muffled in cloth. If all these sensations caused him no high degree of suffering, that was only because his head felt as though he had inhaled a few whiffs of chloroform. He saw as in a dream that Dr. Krokowski appeared at breakfast and took the place opposite to his; the doctor, however, repeatedly looked him sharply in the eye, while he conversed in Russian with the ladies on his right. The young girls — the blooming Alarusja and the lean consumer of yogurt — cast down their eyes modestly as the doctor spoke. Hans Castorp did not, of course, bear himself otherwise than with dignity. In silence, since his tongue refused its office, but managing his knife and fork with particular propriety. When his cousin nodded to him and got up, he rose too, bowed blindly to the rest of the table, and with cautious steps followed Joachim out.
“ When do we lie down again? ” he asked, as they left the house. “ It’s the best thing up here, so far as I can see. I wish I were back again in my comfortable chair. Do we take a long walk? ”
A W ord Too Much
“ No,” answered Joachim. “ I am not allowed to go far. At this period I always go down below, through the village as far as the Platz if I have time. There are shops and people, and one can buy what one needs. Don’t worry, we rest for an hour again before dinner, and then after it until four o’clock.”
They went down the drive in the sunshine, crossed the watercourse and the narrow track, having before their eyes the mountain heights of the western side of the valley: the Little Schiahom, the Green Tower, and the Dorf berg — Joachim mentioned their names. The little walled cemetery of Davos-Dorf lay up there, at some height; Joachim pointed it out with his stick. They reached the high road, that led along the terraced slope a storey higher than the valley floor.
It was rather a misnomer to speak of the village, since scarcely anvthing but the word remained. The resort had swallowed it up, extending further and further toward the entrance of the valley, until that part of the settlement which was called the “ Dorf ” passed imperceptibly into the “ Platz.” Hotels and pensions, amply equipped with covered verandahs, balconies, and reclining-halls, lay on both sides of their way, also private houses with rooms to let. Here and there were new buildings, but also open spaces, which preserved a view toward the valley meadows. Hans Castorp, craving his familiar and wonted indulgence, had once more lighted a cigar; and, thanks probably to the beer that had gone before, he succeeded now and then in getting a whiff of the longed-for aroma — to his inexpressible satisfaction. But only now and then, but only faintly; the anxious receptivity of his attitude was a strain on the nerves, and the hateful leathery taste distinctly prevailed. Unable to reconcile himself to his impotence, he struggled awhile to regain the enjoyment which either escaped him wholly, or else mocked him by its brief presence; finally, worn out and disgusted, he flung the cigar away. Despite his benumbed condition he felt it incumbent upon him to be polite, to make conversation, and to this end he sought to recall those brilliant ideas he had previously had, on the subject of time. Alas, they had fled, the whole “ complex ” of them, and left not a trace behind: on the subject of time not one single idea, however insignificant, found lodgment in his head. He began, therefore, to talk of ordinary matters, of the concerns of the body — what he said sounded odd enough in his mouth.
“ When do you measure again? ” he asked. “ After eating” Yes, that’s a good time. When the organism is in full activity, it must show itself. Behrens must have been joking when he told me to take my temperature — Settembrini laughed like anything at the idea; there’s really no sense in it. I haven’t even a thermometer,”
“ Well,” Joachim said, “ that is the least of your difficulties. You can get one anywhere — they sell them in almost every shop.”
“ Why should P No, the lying-down is very much the thing. I’ll gladly do it; but measuring would be rather too much for a guest; I’ll leave that to the rest of you. If I only knew,” Hans Castorp went on, and laid his hands like a lover on his heart, “ if I only knew why I have palpitations the whole time — it is c * y disquieting; I keep thinking about it. For, you see, a person ordinarily has palpitation of the heart when he is frightened, or when he is looking forward to some great joy. But when the heart palpitates ail by itself, without any reason, senselessly, of its own accord, so to speak, I feel that’s uncanny, you understand, as if the body was going its own gait without any reference to the soul, like a dead body, only it is not really dead — there isn’t any such thing, of course — but leading a very active existence ail on its own account, growing hair and nails and doing a lively business in the physical and chemical line, so I’ve been told — ”
“ What kind of talk is that 5 ” Joachim said, with serious reproach. “ ‘ Doing a lively business ’! ” And perhaps he recalled the reproaches he had called down on his own head earlier in the day “ It’s a fact — it is very lively! Why do you object to that? ” Hans Castorp asked. “ But I only happened to mention it. I only meant to say that it is disturbing and unpleasant to have the body act as though it had no connexion with the soul, and put on such airs — by which I mean these senseless palpitations. You keep trying to find an explanation for them, an emotion to account for them, a feeling of joy or pain, which would, so to speak, justify them. At least, it is that way with me — but I can only speak for myself.”
“ Yes, yes,” Joachim said, sighing. “ It is the same thing, I suppose, as when you have fever — there are pretty lively goings-on in the system then too, to talk the way you do; it may easily be that one involuntarily tries to find an emotion which would explain, or even half-way explain the goings-on. But we are talking such unpleasant stuff,” he said, his voice trembling a little, and he broke off; whereupon Hans Castorp shrugged his shoulders — with the very gesture, indeed, which had, the evening before, displeased him in his cousin.
They walked awhile in silence, until Joachim asked: “ Well, how do you like the people up here? I mean the ones at our table.”
Hans Castorp put on a judicial air. “ Dear me,” he said, “ I don’t find them so very interesting. Some of the people at the other tables look more so, but that mav be only seeming. Frau Stohr ought to have her hair shampooed, it is so greasy. And that Mazurka — or whatever her name is — seemed rather silly to me. She keeps giggling and stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth.”
Joachim laughed loudly at the twist his cousin had given the name.
“ 1 Mazurka ’ is capital,” he said. “ Her name is Marusja, with your kind permission — it is the same as Marie. Yes, she really is too undisciplined, and after all, she has every reason to be serious,” he said, “ for her case is by no means light.”
“ Who would have thought it? ” said Hans Castorp. “ She looks so very fit. Chest trouble is the last thing one would accuse her of.” He tried to catch his cousin’s eye, and saw that Joachim’s sunburnt face had gone all spotted, as a tanned complexion will when the blood leaves it with suddenness; his mouth too was pitifully drawn, and wore an expression that sent an indefinable chill of fear over Hans Castorp and made him hasten to change the subject. He hurriedly inquired about others of their table-mates and tried to forget Marusja and the look on Joachim’s face — an effort in which he presently succeeded.
The Englishwoman with the rose tea was Miss Robinson. The seamstress was not a seamstress but a schoolmistress at a lycee in Konigsberg – which accounted for the precision of her speech. Her name was Fraulein Engelhart. As for the name of the lively little old lady, Joachim, as long as he had been up here, did not know it. All he knew was that she was great-aunt to the young lady who ate yogurt, and lived with her permanently in the sanatorium. The worst case at their table was Dr. Blumenkohl, Leo Blumenkohi, from Odessa, the young man with the moustaches and the absorbed and care-worn air. He had been here years.
They were now walking on the city pavement, the main street, obviously, of an international centre. They met the guests of the cure, strolling about, young people for the most part: gallants in “ sporting,” without their hats; white-skirted ladies, also hatless. One heard Russian and English. Shops with gay show-windows were on either side of the road, and Hans Castorp, his curiosity struggling with intense weariness, forced himself to look into them, and stood a long time before a shop that purveyed fashionable male wear, to decide whether its display was really up to the mark.
They reached a rotunda with covered galleries, where a band was giving a concert. This was the Kurhaus. Tennis was being played on several courts by long-legged, clean-shaven youths in accurately pressed flannels and rubber-soled shoes, their arms bared to the elbow, and sunburnt girls in white frocks, who ran and flung themselves high in the sunny aii in their efforts to strike the white ball. The well-kept courts looked as though coated with flour. The cousins sat down on an empty bench to watch and criticize the game.
“ You don’t play here? ” Hans Castorp asked.
“I am not allowed,” Joachim answered. “We have to lie — nothing but lie. Settembrini says we live horizontally — he calls us horizontallers; that’s one of his rotten jokes. Those are healthy people, there — or else they are breaking the rules. But they don’t play very seriously anyhow — it’s more for the sake of the costume. As far as breaking the rules goes, there are more forbidden things besides tennis that get played here — poker, and petitschevaux , in this and that hotel. At our place there is a notice about it; it is supposed to be the most harmful thing one can do. Even so, there are people who slip out after the evening visit and come down here to gamble. That prince who gave Behrens his title always did it, they say.”
Hans Castorp barely attended. His mouth was open, for he could not have breathed through his nose without sniffing; he felt with dull discomfort that his heart was hammering out of time with the music; and with this combined sense of discord and disorder he was about to doze off when Joachim suggested that they go home.
They returned almost in silence. Hans Castorp stumbled once or twice on the level street and grinned ruefully as he shook his head. The lame man took them up in the lift to their own storey. They parted, with a brief “ See you later ” at the door of number thirty-four; Hans Castorp piloted himself through his room to the balcony, where he dropped just as he was upon his deck-chair and, without once shifting to a more comfortable posture, sank into a dull half-slumber, broken by the rapid beating of his unquiet heart.
Of Course , A Female!
How long it lasted he could not have told. When the moment arrived, the gong sounded. But it was not the gong for the meal, it was only the dressing-bell, as Hans Castorp knew, and so he still lay, until the metallic drone rose and died away a second time. When Joachim came to- fetch him, Hans Castorp wanted to change, but this Joachim would not allow. He hated and despised unpunctuality. Would he be likely, he asked, to get on, and get strong enough for the service, if he was too feeble to observe the hours for meals? Wherein he was, of course, quite right, and Hans Castorp could only say that he was not ill at all, but only utterly and entirely sleepy. He confined himself to washing his hands; and then for the third time they went down together to the dininghall.
The guests streamed in through both entrances, they even came through the open verandah door. Soon they all sat at their several tables as though they had never risen. Such at least was Hans Castorp’s impression — a dreamy and irrational impression, of course, but one which his muddled brain could not for an instant get rid of, in which it even took a certain satisfaction, so that several times in the course of the meal he sought to call it up again and was always perfectly successful in reproducing the illusion. The gay old lady continued to talk in her semifluid tongue at the care-worn Dr. Blumenkohl, diagonally opposite; her lean niece actually at last ate something else than yogurt; namely, the thick cream of barley soup, which was handed round in soup-plates by the waitresses. Of this she took a few spoonfuls and left the rest. Pretty Marusja giggled, then stuffed her dainty handkerchief in her mouth — it gave out a scent of oranges. Miss Robinson read the same letters, in the same round script, which she had read at breakfast. Obviously she knew not a word of German, nor wished to do so. Joachim, preux chevalier , said something to her in English, which she answered in a monosyllable without ceasing to chew, and relapsed again into silence. Frau Stohr, sitting there in her woollen blouse, gave the table to know she had been examined that forenoon; she went into particulars, affectedly drawing back her upper lip from the rodent-like teeth. There were rhonchi to be heard in the upper right side, and under the left shoulder-blade the breathing was still very limited; the “ old man ” said she would have to stop another five months. It sounded very common to hear her refer thus to Herr Hofrat Behrens. She displayed, moreover, a feeling of injury because the “ old man ” was not sitting at her table to-day, where he should by rights be sitting if he had taken them “ a la tournee ” — by which she presumably meant in turn — instead of going to the next table again. (There, in fact, he really was sitting, his great hands folded before his place.) But of course that was Frau Salomon’s table, the fat Frau Salomon from Amsterdam, who came decolletee to table even on week-days, a sight which the “ old man ” liked to see, though for her part — Frau Stohr’s — she never could understand why, since he could see all he wanted of Frau Salomon at every examination. She related, in an excited whisper, that last night, in the general rest-hall up under the roof, somebody had put out the light, for purposes which she designated as “ transparent.” The “ old man ’ had seen it, and stormed so you could hear it all over the place. He had not discovered the culprit, of course, but it didn’t take a university education to guess that it was Captain Miklosich from Bucharest, for whom, when in the society of ladies, it could never be dark enough: a man without any and all refinement — though he did wear a corset — and, by nature, simply a beast of prey — a perfect beast of prey, repeated Frau Stohr, in a stifled whisper, beads of perspiration on her brow and upper lip. The relations between him and Frau Consul-General Wurmbrandt from Vienna were known throughout Dorf and Platz — it was idle any longer to speak of them as clandestine. Not merely did the captain go into the Frau Consul-General’s bedroom while she was still in bed, and remain there throughout her toilet; last Thursday he had not left the Wurmbrandt’s room until four in the morning; that they knew from the nurse who was taking care of young Franz in number nineteen — his pneumothorax operation had gone wrong. She had, in her embarrassment, mistaken her own door, and burst suddenly into the room of Herr Paravant, a Dortmund aw-
7 6 the magic mountain
yer. Lastly Frau Stohr held forth for some time on the merits of a “ cosmic ” establishment down in the village, where she bought her mouth-wash. Joachim gazed stonily downwards at his plate.
The meal was as faultlessly prepared as it was abundant. Counting the hearty soup, it consisted of no less than six courses. After the fish followed an excellent meat dish, with garnishings, then a separate vegetable course, then roast fowl, a pudding, not inferior to yesterday evening’s, and lastly cheese and fruit. Each dish was handed twice and not in vain. At all seven tables they filled their plates and ate: they ate like wolves; they displayed a voracity which would have been a pleasure to see, had there not been something else about it, an effect almost uncanny, not to say repulsive. It was not only the light-hearted who thus laced into the food – those who chattered as they ate and threw pellets of bread at each other. No, the same appetite was evinced by the silent, gloomy ones as well, those who in the pauses between courses leaned their heads on their hands and stared before them. A half-grown youth at the next table on the left, by his years a schoolboy, with his wrists coming out of his jacket sleeves, and thick, round eye-glasses, cut all the heaped-up food on his plate into a sort of mash, then bent over and gulped it down; he reached with his serviette behind his glasses now and then and dried his eyes — whether it was sweat or tears he dried one could not tell.
There were two incidents during the course of the meal of which Hans Castorp took note, so far as his condition permitted. One was the banging of the glass door, which occurred while they were having the fish course. Hans Castorp gave an exasperated shrug and angrily resolved that this time he really must find out who did it. He said this not only within himself, his lips formed the words. “ I must find out,” he whispered with exaggerated earnestness. Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress both looked at him in surprise. He turned the whole upper half of his body to the left and opened wide his bloodshot blue eyes.
It was a lady who was passing through the room; a woman, or rather girl, of middle height, in a white sweater and coloured skirt, her reddish-blond hair wound in braids about her head. Hans Castorp had only a glimpse of her profile. She moved, in singular contrast to the noise of her entrance, almost without sound, passing with a peculiarly gliding step, her head a little thrust forward, to her place at the furthest table on the left, at right angles to the verandah door: the “ good ” Russian table, in fact. As she walked, she held one hand deep in the pocket of her close-fitting jacket; the other she lifted to the back of her head and arranged the plaits of her hair. Hans Castorp looked at the hand. He was habitually observant and critical of this feature, and accustomed when he made a new acquaintance to direct his attention first upon it. It was not particularly ladylike, this hand that was putting the braids to rights; not so refined and well kept as the hands of ladies in Hans Castorp’s own social sphere. Rather broad, with stumpy fingers, it had about it something primitive and childish, something indeed of the schoolgirl. The nails, it was plain, knew nothing of the manicurist’s art; they were cut in rough-and-ready schoolgirl fashion, and the skin at the side looked almost as though someone were subject to the childish vice of finger biting. But Hans Castorp sensed rather than saw this, owing to the distance. The laggard greeted her table-mates with a nod, and took her place on the inner side of the table with her back to the room, next to Dr. Krokowski, who was sitting at the top. As she did so, she turned her head, with the hand still raised to it, toward the dining-room and surveyed the public; Hans Castorp had opportunity for the fleeting observation that her cheek-bones were broad and her eyes narrow. — A vague memory of something, of somebody, stirred him slightly and fleetingly as he looked.
“ Of course, a female! ” he thought, or rather he actually uttered, in a murmur, yet so that the schoolmistress, Fraulein Engelhart, understood. The poor old spinster smiled in sympathy.
“ That is Madame Chauchat,” she said. “ She is so heedless. A charming creature.” And the downy flush on her cheek grew a shade darker — as it did whenever she spoke.
“ A Frenchwoman? ” Hans Castorp asked, with severity.
“ No, she is a Russian,” was the answer. “ Her husband is very likely French or of French descent, I am not sure.”
Hans Castorp asked, still irritated, if that was he — pointing to a gentleman with drooping shoulders who sat at the “ good ” Russian table.
“ Oh, no,” the schoolmistress answered, “ he isn’t here; he has never been here, no one knows him.”
“ She ought to learn how to shut a door,” Hans Castorp said. “ She always lets it slam. It is a piece of ill breeding.”
And on the schoolmistress’s meekly accepting this reproof as though she herself had been the guilty party, there was no more talk of Madame Chauchat.
The second event was the temporary absence of Dr. Blumenkohl from the room — nothing more. The mildly disgusted facial expression suddenly deepened, he looked with sadder fixity into space, then unobtrusively moved back his chair and went out. Whereupon Frau Stohr’s essential ill breeding showed itself in the clearest light; probably out of vulgar satisfaction in the fact that she was less ill than Dr. Blumenkohl. She accompanied his exit with comments half pitying, half contemptuous.
“ Poor creature,” she said. “ He’ll soon be at his last gasp. He had to go out for a talk with his ‘ Blue Peter.’ ”
Quite stolidly, without repulsion, she brought out the grotesque phrase — Hans Castorp felt a mixture of repugnance and desire to laugh. Presently Dr. Blumenkohl came back in the same unobtrusive way, took his place, and went on eating. He too ate a great deal, twice of every dish, always in silence, with the same melancholy, preoccupied air.
Thus the midday meal came to an end. Thanks to the skilled service — the dwarf at Hans Castorp’s table was one of the quickest on her feet — it had lasted only a round hour. Breathing heavily, and not quite sure how he got upstairs, Hans Castorp lay once more in his capital chair upon his loggia; after this meal there was rest-cure until tea-time — the most important and rigidly adhered-to rest period of the day. Between the opaque glas walls that divided him on the one side from Joachim, on the other from the Russian couple, he lay and idly dreamed, his heart pounding, breathing through his mouth. On using his handkerchief he discovered it to be red with blood, but had not enough energy to think about the fact, though he was rather given to worrying over himself and by nature inclined to hypochondria. Once more he had lighted a Maria Mancini, and this time he smoked it to the end, no matter how it tasted. Giddy and oppressed, he considered as in a dream how very odd he had felt since he came up here. Two or three times his breast was shaken by inward laughter at the horrid expression which that ignorant creature, Frau Stohr, had used.
Herr Albin
Below in the garden the fanciful banner with the caduceus lifted itself now and again in a breath of wind. The sky was once more evenly, overcast. The sun was gone, the air had grown almost inhospitably cool. The general rest-hall seemed to be full; talking and laughter went on below.
“ Herr Albin, I implore you, put away your knife; put it in your pocket, there will be an accident with it,” a high, uncertain voice besought. Then: “ Dear Herr Albin, for heaven’s sake, spare our nerves, and take that murderous tool out of our sight,” a second voice chimed in.
A blond young man, with a cigarette in his mouth, sitting in the outside easy-chair, responded pertly: “ Couldn’t think of it! I m sure the ladies haven t the heart to prevent me from amusing myself a little! I bought that knife in Calcutta, of a blind wizard. He could swallow it, and then have his boy dig it up fifty paces from where he stood. Do look – it is sharper than a razor. You only need to touch the blade; it goes into your flesh like cutting butter. Wait a minute, I’ll show it you close by.” And Herr Albin stood up. A shriek arose. “ Or rather,” said he, “ I’ll fetch my revolver; that will be more interesting. Piquant little tool — useful too. Send a bullet through anything. — I’ll go up and get it.”
“ No, no, don’t, pray don’t, Herr Albin! ” in a loud outcry from many voices. But Herr Albin had already come out to go up to his room: very young and lanky, with a rosy, childish face, and little strips of side-whisker close to his ears.
“ Herr Albin,” cried a lady’s voice from within, “ do fetch your greatcoat instead, and put it on; do it just to please me! Six weeks long you have lain with inflammation of the lungs, and now you sit here without an overcoat, and don’t even cover yourself, and smoke cigarettes! That is tempting Providence; on my word it is, Herr Albin! ”
He only laughed scornfully as he went off, and in a few minutes returned with the revolver in his hand. The silly geese squawked worse than before, and some of them even made as if they would spring from their chairs, wrap their blankets round them, and flee.
“ Look how little and shiny he is,” said Herr Albin. “ But when I press him here, then he bites.” Another outcry. “ Of course, he is loaded — to the hilt,” he continued. “ In this disk here are the six cartridges. It turns one hole at each shot. But I don’t keep him merely for a joke,” he said noticing that the sensation was wearing off. He let the revolver slip into his breast pocket, sat down again, flung one leg over the other, and lighted a fresh cigarette. a Certainly not for a joke,” he repeated, and compressed his lips.
“ What foi, then — what for? ” they asked, their voices trembling.
“ Horrible! ” came a sudden cry, and Herr Albin nodded.
“ I see you begin to understand,” he said. ‘‘ In fact, you are right, that is what I keep it for,” he went on airily, inhaling,
8o despite the recent inflammation of the lungs, a mass of smoke and breathing it slowly out again. “ I keep it in readiness for the day when I can’t stand this farce any longer, and do myself the honour to bid you a respectful adieu. It is all very simple. I’ve given the matter some study, and I know precisely how to do it.” Another screech at the word. “ I eliminate the region of the heart, the aim is not very convenient there. I prefer to annihilate my consciousness at its very centre by introducing my charming little foreign body direct into this interesting organ.” — Herr Albin indicated with his index finger a spot on his close-cropped blond pate. “ You aim here — ” he drew the nickel-plated revolver out of his pocket once more and tapped with the barrel against his skull — “ just here, above the artery; even without a mirror the thing is simple — ”
A chorus of imploring protest arose, mingled with heavy sobbing. “ Herr Albin, Herr Albin, put it away, take it from your temple, it is dreadful to see you! Herr Albin, you are young, you will get well, you will return to the world, everybody will love you! But put on your coat and lie down, cover yourself, go on with your cure. Don’t drive the bathing-master away next time he comes to rub you down with alcohol. And stop smoking cigarettes — Herr Albin, we implore you, for the sake of your young, your precious life! ”
But Herr Albin was inexorable. “ No, no,” he said “ let me alone, I’m all right, thanks. I’ve never refused a lady anything yet; but you see it’s no good trying to put a spoke in the wheel of fate. I am in my third year up here — I’m sick of it, fed up, I can’t play the game any more — do you blame me for that 5 Incurable, ladies, as I sit here before you, an incurable case; the Hofrat himself is hardly at the pains any longer to pretend I am not. Grant me at least the freedom which is all I can get out of the situation. In school, when it was settled that someone was not to move up to the next form, he just stopped where he was; nobody asked him any more questions, he did not have to do any more work. It’s like that with me; I am in that happy condition now. I need do nothing more, I don’t count, I can laugh at the whole thing. Would you like some chocolate 5 Do take some — no, you won’t be robbing me, I have heaps of it in my room, eight boxes, and five tablets of Gala-Peter and four pounds of Lindt. The ladies of the sanatorium gave it to me when I was ill with my inflammation of the lungs — ”
From somewhere a bass voice was audible, commanding quiet. Herr Albin gave a short laugh, a ragged, wavering laugh; then 8’l
stillness reigned in the rest-hall , a stillness as of a vanished dream . a disappearing wraith. Afterwards the voices rose again, sounding strange in the silence. Hans Castorp listened until they were quite hushed. He had an indistinct notion that Herr Albin was a puppy, yet could not resist a certain envy. In particular, the school-days comparison made an impression on him; he himself had stuck in the lower second and well remembered this situation, of course rather to be ashamed of and yet not without its funny side. In particular he recalled the agreeable sensation of being totally lost and abandoned, with which, in the fourth quarter, he gave up the running -he could have “laughed at the whole thing.” His reflections were dim and confused, it would be difficult to define them; but in effect it seemed to him that, though honour might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others, and not inferior: advantages, even, that were well-nigh boundless in their scope. He tried to put himself in Herr Albin’s place and see how T it must feel to be finally relieved of the burden of a respectable life and made free of the infinite realms of shame; and the young man shuddered at the wild wave of sweetness which swept over him at the thought and drove on his labouring heart to an even quicker pace.
Satana Makes Proposals That Touch Our Honour
After a while he lost consciousness. It was half past three by his watch when he was roused by voices behind the left-hand glass partition. Dr. Krokowski at this hour made the rounds alone, and he was talking in Russian with the unmannerly pair on the next balcony, asking the husband how he did, it seemed, and inspecting the fever chart. He did not, however, continue his route by the balconies, but skirted Hans Castorp’s section, passing along the corridor and entering Joachim’s room by the door. Hans Castorp felt rather hurt to have Krokowski circle round and leave him out — even though a tete-a-tete with the gentleman was something he was far from hankering after. Of course he was healthy, he was not included with the other inmates; up here, he reflected, it was the sound and healthy person who did not count, who got no attention — and this the young man found vastly annoying.
Dr. Krokowski stopped with Joachim two or three minutes; then he went on down the row of balconies, and Hans Castorp heard his cousin say that it was time to get up and make ready for tea. “ Good,” he answered, and rose. But he was giddy from long lying, and the unrefreshing half-slumber had made his face bum anew; yet he felt chilly; perhaps he had not been well enough covered as he lay.
He washed his eyes and hands, brushed his hair, put his doming to rights, and met Joachim outside in the corridor.
“ Did you hear that Herr Albin? ” he asked, as they went down the steps.
“ I should say I did,” his cousin answered. “ The man ought to be disciplined — disturbing the whole rest period with his gabble, and exciting the ladies so that it puts them back for weeks. A piece of gross insubordination. But who is there to denounce him? On the contrary, that sort of thing makes quite a welcome diversion.”
“ Do you think he would really do it — put a bullet into himself? It’s a ‘ very simple matter,’ to use his own words.”
“ Oh,” answered Joachim, “ it isn’t so out of the question, more’s the pity. Such things do happen up here. Two months before I came, a student who had been here a long time hanged himself down in the wood, after a general examination. It was a good deal talked about still, in the early days after I came.”
Hans Castorp gaped excitedly. “ Well,” he declared, “ I am certainly far from feeling fit up here. I couldn’t say I did. I think it’s quite possible I shan’t be able to stop, that I’ll have to leave — you wouldn’t take it amiss, would you? ”
“ Leave? What is the matter with you? ” cried Joachim. “Nonsense! You’ve just come. You can’t judge from the first day! ”
“ Good Lord, is it still only the first day? It seems to me I’ve been up here a long time — ages.”
“ Don’t begin to philosophize again about time,” said Joachim. “ You had me perfectly bewildered this morning.”
“ No, don’t worry, I’ve forgotten all of it,” answered Hans Castorp, “ the whole ‘ complex.’ I’ve lost all the clear-headedness I had — it’s gone. Well, and so it’s time for tea.”
“ Yes; and after that we walk as far as the bench again, like this morning.”
“ Just as you say. Only I hope we shan’t meet Settembrini again. I’m not up to any more learned conversation. I can tell you that beforehand.”
At tea all the various beverages were served which it is possible to serve at that meal. Miss Robinson drank again her brew made of rose-hips, the grand-niece spooned up her yogurt. There were milk, tea, coffee, chocolate, even bouillon; and on every hand the guests, newly arisen from some two hours’ repose after their heavy luncheon, were busily spreading huge slices of raisin cake with butter.
Hans Castorp chose tea, and dipped zwieback in it; he also tasted some marmalade. The raisin cake he contemplated with an interested eye, but literally shuddered at the thought of eating any. Once more he sat here in his place, in this vaulted room with its gay yet simple decorations, its seven tables. It was the fourth time. Later, at seven o’clock, he sat there agam for the fifth time, and that was supper. In the brief and trifling interval the cousins had taken a turn as far as the bench on the mountain-side, beside the little watercourse. The path had been full of patients; Hans Castorp had often to lift his hat. Followed a last period of rest on the balcony, a fugitive and empty interlude of an hour and a half.
He dressed conscientiously for the evening meal, and, sitting in his place between Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress, he ate: julienne soup, baked and roast meats with suitable accompaniments, tw~o pieces of a tart made of macaroons, butter-cream, chocolate, jam and marzipan, and lastly excellent cheese and pumpernickel. As before, he ordered a bottle of Kulmbacher. But, by the time he had half emptied his tall glass, he became clearly and unmistakably aware that bed was the best place for him. His head roared, his eyelids were like lead, his heart went like a set of kettledrums, and he began to torture himself with the suspicion that pretty Marusja, who was bending over her plate covering her face with the hand that wore the ruby ring, was laughing at him — though he had taken enormous pains not to give occasion for laughter. Out of the far distance he heard Frau Stohr telling, or asserting, something which seemed to him such utter nonsense that he was conscious of a despairing doubt as to whether he had heard aright, or whether he had turned her words to nonsense in his addled brain. She was declaring that she knew how to make twenty-eight different sauces to serve with fish; she would stake her reputation on the fact, though her own husband had warned her not to talk about it: “ Don’t talk about it,” he had told her; “ nobody will believe it, or, if they do, they will simply laugh at you! ” And yet she would say it, say once and for all, that it was twenty-eight fish-sauces she could make. All of which, to our good Hans Castorp, seemed too mad for words; he clutched his brow with his hand, and in his amazement quite forgot that he had a bite of pumpernickel and Cheshire still to be chewed and swallowed. When he rose from table, he had it still in his mouth.
They went out through the left-hand glass door, that fatal door which always slammed, and which led directly to the front hall. Nearly all the guests went out the same way; it appeared that after dinner a certain amount of social intercourse took place in the hall and the adjoining salons. Most of the patients stood about in little groups chatting. Games were begun at two green extension-tables: at the one, dominoes; at the other, bridge, and here only the young folk played, among them Hermine Kleefeld and Herr Albin. In the iirst salon were some amusing optical diversions: the first a stereoscope, behind the lenses of which one inserted a photograph — for instance, there was one of a Venetian gondolier — and on looking through, you saw the figure standing out in the round, lifelike, though bloodless; another was a kaleidoscope — you put your eye to the lens and slightly turned a wheel, when all sorts of gay-coloured stars and arabesques danced and juggled before it with the swift changefulness of magic. A third was a revolving drum, into which you inserted a strip of cinematographic film and then looked through the openings as it whirled, and saw a miller fighting with a chimney-sweep, a schoolmaster chastising a boy, a leaping rope-dancer and a peasant pair dancing a folk-dance. Hans Castorp, his cold hands on his knees, gazed a long time into each of these contrivances. He paused awhile by the card-table, where Herr Albin, the incurable, sat with the comers of his mouth drawn down, and handled the cards with a supercilious, man-of-the-worldly air. In a comer sat Dr. Krokowski, absorbed in a brisk and hearty conversation with a half-circle of ladies, among them Frau Stohr, Frau litis, and Fraulein Levi. The occupants of the “ good ” Russian table had withdrawn into a neighbouring small salon, separated from the card-room by a portiere, where they formed a small and separate coterie, consisting, in addition to Madame Chauchat, of a languid, blond-bearded youth with a hollow chest and prominent eyeballs; a young girl of pronounced brunette type, with a droll, original face, gold ear-rings, and wild woolly hair; besides these, Dr. Blumenkohl, who had joined their circle, and two other youths with drooping shoulders. Madame Chauchat wore a blue frock with a white lace collar. She sat, the centre of her group, on the sofa behind the round table, at the bottom of the small salon, her face turned toward the card-room. Hans Castorp, who could not look at the unmannerly creature without disapproval, said to himself: “ She reminds me of something, but I cannot tell what.”
A tall man of some thirty years, growing bald, played the wedding march from the Midsummer Night’s Dream three times on end, on the little brown piano, and on being urged by some of the ladies, began the melodious piece for the fourth time, gazing deep and silently into their eyes, one after the other.
“ May I be permitted to ask after the state of your health, Engineer? ” inquired Settembrini, who had lounged up among the other guests, hands in pockets, and now presented himself before Hans Castorp. He still wore his pilot coat and check trousers. He smiled as he spoke, and Hans Castorp felt again the sobering effect of that fine and mocking curl of the lip beneath the waving black moustaches. He looked rather stupidly at the Italian, with lax mouth and red-veined eyes.
u Oh, it’s you! ” he said. “ The gentleman we met this morning on our walk — at that bench up there — near the — yes, I knew you at once. Can you believe it,” he went on, though conscious of saying something gauche , “ can you believe it, I took you for an organ-grinder when I first saw you 2 Of course, that’s all utter rot,” he added, seeing a coolly inquiring expression on Settembrini’s face. “ Perfectly idiotic. I can’t comprehend how in the world I — ”
“ Don’t disturb yourself, it doesn’t matter,” responded Settembrini, after fixing the young man with a momentary intent regard. “ Well, and how have you spent your day, the first of your sojourn in this gay resort? ”
“ Thanks very much — quite according to the rules,” answered Hans Castorp. “ Prevailingly ‘ horizontal,’ as I hear you prefer to call it.”
Settembrini smiled. “ I may have taken occasion co express myself thus,” he said. “ Well, and you found it amusing, this manner of existence? ”
“ Amusing or dull, whichever you like,” responded Hans Castorp. “ It isn’t always so easy to decide which, you know. At all events, I haven’t been bored; there are far too lively goings-on up here for that. So much that is new and unusual to hear and see — and yet, in another way, it seems as though I had been here a long time, instead of just a single day — as if I had got older and wiser since I came — that is the way I feel.”
“ Wiser, too? ” Settembrini asked, and raised his eyebrows. “ Will you permit me to ask how old you are? ” And behold, Hans Castorp could not tell! At that moment he did not know how old he was, despite strenuous, even desperate efforts to bethink himself. In order to gain time he had the question repeated, and then answered: “ I? How old I am? In my twenty-fourth year, of course. I’ll soon be twenty-four. I beg your pardon, but I am very tired,” he went on. “ Tired isn’t the word for it. Do you know how it is when you are dreaming, and know that you are dreaming, and try to awake and can’t? That is precisely the way I feel. I certainly must have some fever; otherwise I simply cannot explain it. Imagine, my feet are cold ail the way up to my knees. If one may put it that way, of course one’s knees aren’t one’s feet — do excuse me, I am all in a muddle, and no wonder, considering I was whistled at in the morning with the pn — the pn — eumothorax, and in the afternoon had to listen to this Herr Albin~in the horizontal, on top of that! It seems to me I cannot any more trust my five senses, and that I must confess disturbs me more than my cold feet and the heat in my face. Tell me frankly: do you think it is possible Frau Stohr knows how to make twenty-eight different kinds of fishsauces? I don’t mean if she actually can make them — that I should consider out of the question — I mean if she said at table just now she could, or if I only imagined she did — that is all I want to know.”
Settembrini looked at him. He seemed not to have been listening. His eyes were set again, they had taken on a fixed stare, and he said: “ Yes, yes, yes,” and “ I see, I see, I see,” each three times, just as he had done in the morning, in a considering, deriding tone, and giving a sharp sound to the s’ s.
“ Twenty-four? ” he asked after a while.
“ No, twenty-eight,” Hans Castorp said. “ Twenty-eight fishsauces. Not sauces in general, special sauces for fish — that is the monstrous part of it.”
“ Engineer,” Settembrini said sharply, almost angrily, “ pull yourself together and stop talking this demoralized rubbish. I know nothing about it, nor do I wish to. You are in your twentyfourth year, you say 5 H’m. Permit me to put another question, or rather, with your kind permission, make a suggestion. As your stay up here with us does not appear to be conducive, as you don’t feel comfortable, either physically or, unless I err, mentally, how would it be if you renounced the prospect of growing older on this spot — in short, what if you were to pack to-night, and be up and away with the first suitable train? ”
“ You mean I should go away? ” Hans Castorp asked; “ when I’ve hardly come? No, why should I try to judge from the first day? ”
He happened, as he spoke, to direct his gaze into the next room, and saw Frau Chauchat’s full face, with its narrow eyes and broad cheek-bones. “ What is it, what or whom in all the world does she remind me of? ” But his w’eary brain, despite the effort he made, refused an answer.
“ Of course,” he went on, “ it is true it is not so easy for me to get acclimatized up here. But that was to be expected. I’d be ashamed to chuck it up and go away like that, just because I felt upset and feverish for a few days. I’d feel a perfect coward. It would be a senseless thing to do, you admit it yourself, don’t you? ”
He spoke with a sudden insistence, jerking his shoulders excitedly — he seemed to want to make the Italian withdraw his suggestion in form.
“ I pay every homage to reason,” Settembrini answered. “ I pay homage to valour too. What you say sounds well; it would be hard to oppose anything convincing against it. I myself have seen some beautiful cases of acclimatization. There was Fraulein Kneifer, Ottilie Kneifer, last year. She came of a good family — the daughter of an important government official. She was here some year and a half and had grown to feel so much at home that when her health was quite restored — it does happen, up here; people do sometimes get well — she couldn’t bear to leave. She implored the Hofrat to let her stop; she could not and would not go; this was her home, she was happy here. But the place was full, they wanted her room, and so all her prayers were in vain; they stood out for discharging her cured. Ottilie was taken with high fever, her curve went well up. But they found her out by exchanging her regular thermometer for a ‘ silent sister.’ You aren’t acquainted as yet with the term; it is a thermometer without figures, which the physician measures with a little rule, and plots the curve himself. Ottilie, my dear sir, had 98.4°; she was normal. Then she went bathing in the lake – it was the beginning of May; we were having frost at night; the water was not percisely icecold, say a few degrees above. She remained some time in the water, trying to contract some illness or other — alas, she was, and remained, quite sound. She departed in anguish and despair, deaf to all the consolations her parents could give. ‘ What shall I do down there? ’ she kept crying. ‘ This is my home! ’ I never heard what became of her. — But you are not listening, Engineer. Unless I am much mistaken, simply remaining on your legs costs
D you an effort. Lieutenant! ” he addressed himself to Joachim, who was just coming up. “ Take your cousin and put him to bed. He umtes the virtues of courage and moderation — but just now he is a little groggy.”
“ No, really, I understood everything you said,” protested Hans Castorp. “ The ‘ silent sister ’ is a mercury thermometer without figures — you see, I got it all.”
But he went up in the lift with Joachim and several other patients as well, for the conviviality was over for the evening; the guests were separating to seek the halls and loggias for the evening cure. Hans Castorp went into his cousin’s room. The corridor floor, with its strip of narrow coco matting, billowed beneath his feet, but this, apart from its singularity, was not unpleasant. He sat down in Joachim’s great flowered arm-chair — there was one just like it in his own room — and lighted his Maria Mancini. It tasted like glue, like coal, like anything but what it should taste like. Still he smoked on, as he watched Joachim making ready for his cure, putting on his house jacket, then an old overcoat, then, armed with his night-lamp and Russian primer, going into the balcony. He turned on the light, lay down with his thermometer in his mouth, and began, with astonishing dexterity, to wrap himself in the wo camels-hair rugs that were spread out over his chair. Hans Castorp looked on with honest admiration for his skill. He flung the covers over him, one after the other: first from the left side, all their length up to his shoulders, then from the feet up, then from the right side, so that he formed, when finished, a neat compact parcel, out of which stuck only his head, shoulders, and arms.
“ How well you do that! ” Hans Castorp said.
“ That’s the practice I’ve had,” Joachim answered, holding the thermometer between his teeth in order to speak. “ You’ll learn. To-morrow we must certainly get you a pair of rugs. You can use them afterwards at home, and up here they are indispensable, particularly as you have no sleeping-sack.”
” I shan’t lie out on the balcony at night,” Hans Castorp declared. ” I can tell you that at once. It would seem perfectly weird to me. Everything has its limits. I must draw the line somewhere, since I’m really only up here on a visit. I will sit here awhile and smoke my cigar in the regular way. It tastes vile, but I know it’s good, and that will have to do me for to-day. It is close on nine — it isn’t even quite nine yet, more’s the pity — but when it is half past, that is late enough for a man to go to bed at least half-way decently.” A shiver ran over him, then several, one after the other. Hans Castorp sprang up and ran to the thermometer on the wall, as if to catch it in flagrante . According to the mercury, there were fifty degrees of heat in the room. He clutched the radiator; it was cold and dead. He murmured something incoherent, to the effect that it was a scandal to have no heating, even if it was August. It wasn’t a question of the name of the month, but of the temperature that obtained, which was such that actually he was as cold as a dog. Yet his face burned. He sat down, stood up again, and with a murmured request for permission fetched Joachim’s coverlet and spread it out over himself at he sat in the chair. And thus he remained, hot and cold by turns, torturing himself with his nauseous cigar. He was overcome by a wave of wretchedness; it seemed to him he had never in his life before felt quite so miserable.
“ I feel simply wretched,” he muttered. And suddenly he was moved by an extraordinary and extravagant thrill of joy and suspense, of which he was so conscious that he sat motionless waiting for it to come again. It did not — only the misery remained. He stood up at last, flung Joachim’s coverlet on the bed, and got something out that sounded like a good-night: “ Don’t freeze to death; call me again in the morning,” his lips hardly shaping the words; then he staggered along the corridor to his own room.
He sang to himself as he undressed — certainly not from excess of spirits. Mechanically, without the care which was their due, he went through all the motions that made up the ritual of his nightly toilet; poured the pink mouth-wash and discreetly gargled, washed his hands with his mild and excellent violet soap, and drew on his long batiste night-shirt, with H.C. embroidered on the breast pocket. Then he lay down and put out the light, letting his hot and troubled head fall upon the American woman’s dying-pillow.
He had thought to fall asleep at once, but he was wrong. His eyelids, which he had scarcely been able to hold up, now declined to close; they twitched rebelliously open whenever he shut them. He told himself that it was not his regular bed-time; that during the day he had probably rested too much. Someone seemed to be beating a carpet out of doors — which was not very probable, and proved not to be the case, for it was the beating of his own heart he heard, quite outside of himself and away in the night, exactly as though someone were beating a carpet with a wicker beater.
It had not yet grown entirely dark in the room; the light from the little lamps in the loggias, Joachim’s and the Russian pair’s, fell through the open balcony door. As Hans Castorp lay there on his back blinking, he recalled an impression amongst the host received that day, an observation he had made, and then, with shrinking and delicacy, sought to forget. It was the look on Joachim’s face when they spoke of Marusja and her physical characteristics — an oddly pathetic facial distortion, and a spotted pallor on the sun-browned cheeks. Hans Castorp saw and understood what it meant, saw and understood in a manner so new, so sympathetic, so intimate, that the carpet-beater outside redoubled the swiftness and severity of its blows and almost drowned out the sound of the evening serenade down in the Platz — for there was a concert again in the same hotel as before, and they were playing a symmetrically constructed, insipid melody that came up through the darkness. Hans Castorp whistled a bar of it in a whisper — one can whistle in a whisper — and beat time with his cold feet under the plumeau.
That was, of course, the right way not to go to sleep, and now he felt not the slightest inclination. Since he had understood in that new, penetrating sense why Joachim had changed colour, the whole world seemed altered to him, he felt pierced for the second time by that feeling of extravagant joy and suspense. And he waited for, expected something, without asking himself what. But when he heard his neighbours to right and left conclude their evening cure and re-enter their rooms to exchange the horizontal without for the horizontal within, he gave utterance to the conviction that at least this evening the barbaric pair would keep the peace.
“ I can surely go to sleep without being disturbed; they will behave themselves,’’ he said. But they did not, nor had Hans Castorp been sincere in his conviction that they would. For his part, to tell the truth, he would not have understood it if they had. Notwithstanding which, he indulged in soundless expressions of utter astonishment as he listened.
“ Unheard of,” he whispered. “ It’s incredible — who would have believed it? ” And between such exclamations joined again in the insipid music that swelled insistently up from the Platz.
Later he went to sleep. But with sleep returned the involved dreams, even more involved than those of the first night — out of which he often started up in fright, or pursuing some confused fancy. He seemed to see Hofrat Behrens walking down the garden path, with bent knees and arms hanging stiffly in front of him, adapting his long and somehow solitary-looking stride
SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS g j
to the time of distant march-music. As he paused before Hans Castorp, the latter saw that he was wearing a pair of glasses with thick, round lenses. He was uttering all sorts of nonsense. “ A civilian, of course,” he said, and without saying by your leave, drew down Hans Castorp’s eyelid with the first and middle fingers of his huge hand. “ Respectable civilian, as I saw at once. But not without talent, not at all without talent for a heightened degree of oxidization. Wouldn’t grudge us a year, he wouldn’t, just one little short year of service up here. Well, hullo-ullo! gentlemen, on with the exercise,” he shouted, and putting his two enormous first fingers in his mouth, emitted a whistle of such peculiarly pleasing quality that from opposite directions Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress, much smaller than life-size, came flying through the air and perched themselves right and left on the Hofrat’s shoulders, just as they sat right and left of Hans Castorp in the dining-room. And the Hofrat skipped away, wiping his eyes behind his glasses with a table-napkin — but whether it was tears or sweat he wiped could not be told.
Then it seemed to the dreamer that he was in the school courtyard, where for so many years through he had spent his recesses, and was in the act of borrowing a lead-pencil from Madame Chauchat, who seemed to be there too. She gave him a half-length red pencil in a silver holder, and warned him in an agreeable, husky voice to be sure to return it to her after the hour. And as she looked at him — with her narrow, blue-grey eyes above the broad cheek-bones — he tore himself by violence away from his dream, for now he had it fast and meant to hold it, of what and whom she so vividly reminded him. Hastily he fixed this occurrence in his mind, to have it fast for the morrow. Then sleep and dream once more overpowered him, and he saw himself in the act of flight from Dr. Krokowski, who had lain in wait for him to undertake some psychoanalysis. He fled from the doctor, but his feet were leaden; past the glass partitions, along the balconies, into the garden; in his extremity he tried to climb the redbrown flagstaff — and woke perspiring at the moment when the pursuer seized him by his trouser-leg.
Hardly was he calm when slumber claimed him once more. The content of his dream entirely changed, and he stood trying to shoulder Settembrini away from the spot where they stood, the Italian smiling in his subtle, mocking way, under the full, upward-curving moustaches — and it was precisely this smile which Hans Castorp found so injurious.
u You are a nuisance,” he distinctly heard himself say. “ Get 9 2
away, you are only a hand-organ man, and you are in the way here.” But Settembrini would not let himself be budged; Hans Castorp was still standing considering what was to be done when he was unexpectedly vouchsafed a signal insight into the true nature of time; it proved to be nothing more or less than a “ silent sister,” a mercury column without degrees, to be used by those who wanted to cheat. He awoke with the thought in his mind that he must certainly tell Joachim of this discovery on the morrow.
In such adventures, among such discoveries, the night wore away. Hermine Kleefeld, as well as Herr Albin and Captain Miklosich, played fantastic roles — the last carried off Frau Stohr in his fury, and was pierced through and through with a lance by Lawyer Paravant. One particular dream, however, Hans Castorp dreamed twice over during the night, both times in precisely the same form, the second time toward morning. He sat in the dininghall with the seven tables when there came a great crashing of glass as the verandah door banged, and Madame Chauchat entered in a white sweater, one hand in her pocket, the other at the back of her head. But instead of going to the “ good ” Russian table, the unmannerly female glided noiselessly to Hans Castorp’s side and without a word reached him her hand — not the back, but the palm — to kiss. Hans Castorp kissed that hand, which was not overly well kept, but rather broad, with stumpy fingers, the skin roughened next the nails. And at that there swept over him anew, from head to foot, the feeling of reckless sweetness he had felt for the first time when he tried to imagine himself free of the burden of a good name, and tasted the boundless joys of shame. This feeling he experienced anew in his dream, only a thousandfold stronger than in his waking hour.
Part 4 of 30