Chapter VII: By the Ocean of Time (Part 3 of 7)
“ Well, well, well! Enemy of the human race 1 How can you make such a general statement, Clavdia? Have you something definite and personal in your mind, when you say we don’t live for the sake of life, but for the sake of enriching ourselves? Women don’t usually moralize like that, so abstractly. Oh, morality, and that! A subject for Naphta and Settembrini to quarrel over. It belongs to the realm of the Great Confusion. Whether one lives for oneself, or for the sake of life — one doesn’t know oneself, no one can know that precisely and certainly. I mean, the limits are fluid. There is egoistic devotion, and there is devoted egoism. I think, on the whole, that it is as it is in love. Of course, it is probably immoral of me that I cannot very well attend to what you say to me about morality for being so happy that we are sitting here as we once did, and then never again, even since you came back. And that I may tell you there was never anything so lovely as the way those cuffs suit your hand, and the soft flowing silk your arm — your arm, that I know so well — ”
“ I am going.”
“ Oh, please, please not! I promise to have proper regard for the circumstances, and the — personalities.”
“ As one would expect, from a man without passion! ”
“ Yes, you see — you mock at me when I — and then, when I — you say you will leave me — ”
“ Pray speak a little more connectedly, if you expect me to understand you.” So I am not to have any benefit from all your practice in guessing the meaning of disconnected sentences” Is that fair, I ask — or I would if I did not know that it is not a matter of justice at all – ” No, justice is a phlegmatic passion. In contrast to jealousy — when phlegmatic people are jealous, they always make themseives ridiculous.”
“ There — ridiculous. Then grant me my phlegm. I repeat, how could I do without it? For instance, how else could I have endured to wait so long? ”
“ I beg pardon? ”
“ Aussi longtemps pour toir
“ Voyons, mon ami. I say no more about the form of address you persist in, in your folly. You will tire of it — and then, I am not prudish, not an outraged middle-class housewife — ”
“ No, for you are ill. Your illness gives you freedom. It makes you — wait, I must hunt for the word — it makes you — spirituelle! ”
“ We shall speak of that another time. It was something else I meant. Something I demand to hear. You shall not pretend I had anything to do with your waiting — if you did wait — that I encouraged you to it, or even permitted it. You must admit explicitly that the opposite was the case — ”
“ Certainly, Clavdia, with pleasure. You never asked me to wait, I did it on my own. I can quite understand your laying stress on the point — ”
“ Even when you make admissions, there is always some impertinence about them. You are impertinent by nature — not only with me, but in general — God knows why. Your admiration, your very humility, is an impertinence. Don’t think I can’t see it. I ought not to speak with you at all, and certainly not when you dare to talk about waiting for me. It is inexcusable that you are still here. You should have been long ago at your work, sur le chmtier, or wherever it was.”
“ Now that, Clavdia, is not spirituel — it even sounds conventional. You are just talking. You can’t mean it in Settembrini’s sense — and however else, then^ I cannot take it seriously. I will not go off without permission, like my poor cousin, who, as you said he would, died because he tried to do sendee down below, and who knew himself, I suppose, that he would die, but preferred death to doing service up here any longer. Well, it was for that he was a soldier. But I am not. I am a civilian, for me it would be deserting the colours to do what he did, and go and serve the cause of progress down in the flat-land, despite what Behrens says. It
would be the greatest disloyalty and ingratitude, to the illness , and its spirituel quality, and to my love for you, of which I bear scars both old and new — and to your arms I know so well, even admitting that it was in a dream, a highly spirituel dream, that I learned to know them , and that you had no responsibility for my dream, and were not bound by it, nor your freedom infringed on — ”
She laughed, cigarette in mouth, so that the Tartar eyes became narrow slits; leaning back against the wainscoting, her hands resting on the bench on either side of her, one leg crossed over the other, and swinging her foot in its patent-leather shoe.
“ Quelle generosite ! Pauvre petit ! Oh la la, vraiment — Precisely thus I have always imagined un homrne de genie ! ”
“ Don’t, Clavdia. I am no honrme de genie — as little as I am a personality. Lord, no. But chance — call it chance — brought me up here to these heights of the spirit — you, of course, do not know that there is such a thing as alchemistic -hermetic pedagogy, transubstantiation, from lower to higher, ascending degrees, if you understand what I mean. But of course matter that is capable of taking those ascending stages by dint of outward pressure must have a little something in itself to start with. And what I had in me, as I quite clearly know, was that from long ago, even as a lad, I was familiar with illness and death, and had in the face of all
common sense borrowed a lead pencil from you, as I did again on carnival night. But unreasoning love is spirituel; for death is the spirituel principle, the res bina, the lapis philo sophormn, and the pedagogic principle too, for love of it leads to love of life and love of humanity. Thus, as I have lain in my loge, it has been revealed to me, and I am enchanted to be able to tell you all about it. There are two paths to life: one is the regular one, direct, honest. The other is bad, it leads through death — that is the spirituel way.”
“ You are a quaint philosopher,” she said. “ I will not assert that I have understood all your involved German ideas; but it sounds human and good, and you are good, a good young man. You have truly behaved en philosophe , one must say that for
you —
“ Too much en philosophe for your taste, eh, Clavdia? ”
“ No more impertinences. They become tiresome. That you waited for me was silly — uncalled for. But you are not angry, because you waited in vain? ”
“ It was hard, Clavdia, even for a man phlegmatic in his passions. Hard for me and hard of you to come back with him like that — for of course you knew through Behrens that I was here and waiting for you. But I have told you I regard it as a
mynheer peeperkorn ream, what we had together, and I admit that you are free.
L nd I waited after all not quite in vain, for here you are, we it together as once we did, can hear the piercing sweetness of
this flowing siYk are your arms, your arms that I know — even though upstairs there lies your protector, in a fever, the mighty Peeperkorn, whose pearls you wear — ”
“ And with whom, for your own profit and enrichment, you have struck up such a friendship.”
“ Do not grudge me it, Clavdia, Settembrini reproached me with it too. But that is conventional prejudice. The man is a boon — for God’s sake, is he not a personality 5 He is already old — yes; but even so, I could well understand how you as a woman could love him madly. You do love him madly” ”
“ All honour to thy philosophy, my little German Hanschen,” she said, and lightly stroked his hair. “ But I could not find it in my heart to speak to you of my love for him. It would not be hit — man.”
“ Ah, why not, Clavdia- It is my belief that love of humanity begins where poor-spirited people believe it leaves off. We can speak quite quietly of him. You love him passionately 5 ”
She bent to toss her cigarette-end in the grate, and then sat with folded arms.
“ He loves me,” she said, “ and his love makes me proud and grateful, and devoted to him. Tu peux comprendre gela. Or else you are not worthy the friendship he feels for you. His feeling forced me to follow and serve him. What else could I do 5 You may judge. Is it possible for any human being to disregard his love? ”
“ Not possible,” Hans Castorp confirmed. “ No, of course, it was out of the question. How could a woman bring herself to disregard his feeling, and his anguish over that feeling to forsake him, as it were, in his Gethsemane — ”
“ Tu nes pas du tout stupide ” said she, her slanting eyes fixed in a reverie. “ You understand things. ‘ Anguish over the feeling “ Not much understanding is needed to know that you had to follow him — though, or rather because, there must be much that is troubling in his love.”
“ C’est exact. Troubling. There is much care with him, you know, many difficulties.” She had taken his hand, and played absently with the fingers — but suddenly she knitted her brows, she looked up and said: “ Metis — dis-moi: ce nest pas un peu — ordinaire , que nous parlons de ltd, covrme ga? “ No, Clavdia. Surely not. Far from it. Surely it is no more than human. You love the word, and I love to hear you say it, in your quaint pronunciation. My cousin Joachim did not like it — on military grounds. He thought it meant general licence and flabbiness, and in that sense, as an unlimited guazzabuglio of self-indulgence, I have my own suspicions of it, I confess. But in the sense of freedom, goodness, esprit , then it is great, we can freely apply it to our talk about Peeperkorn and the care and pain he causes you. Of course, they are the result of his sore spot — his dread of denying the feelings, that makes him love so much what he calls the classic gifts of life, the gift of Bacchus, liquid refreshment — we may speak of that in all reverence, for even in that weakness his scale is kingly and we shall lower neither him nor ourselves by speaking of it.”
“ It is not a question of us,” she said. She had folded her arms again. “ One would not be a woman if one were not willing to bear humiliation for the sake of a man like that, on the grand scale, as you say, when one is the object of his feeling and of his suffering from it.”
“Absolutely, Clavdia. Well said. For then even the humiliation is on the grand scale, and from the height of it the woman can look down on poor creatures built on smaller lines, and speak to them with such contempt as was in your voice when you said, about the postage stamps: ‘You ought to be more precise and dependable! ’ ”
“ You are hurt? You must not be. Let us put those feelings away, send them to Jericho. Do you agree? I have been wounded too sometimes — I will confess it, since we are sitting together like this. I have been angry with your phlegm, and your being such friends with him, on account of your egoistic craving for experience. Yet I was glad too, and grateful for the respect you paid him. You were loyal; if you were a bit impertinent too, after all I could make allowance for that.”
“ Very kind of you.”
She looked at him. “ You are incorrigible, it seems. And certainly I can’t quite tell how much esprit you have — but deep you are, a deep young man. Well, very good, one can do with it, and be friends. Shall we be friends, shall we make a league — not against but for him? Will you give me your hand on it? I am often frightened. — Sometimes I am afraid of the solitude with him — the inward solitude, tu sais — he is — frightening; sometimes I am afraid something may happen to him — it makes me shudder. — I should be glad to feel I had someone beside me. Enfin — if you care to know — that was why I came back here with him — chez toi
They sat knee to knee, he with his rocking-chair tipped toward her, she on her bench. Her last words were breathed close to his face, and she pressed his hand as she spoke. He said: “ To me? Oh, Clavdia! That is beautiful beyond words! You came back to me with him? And yet will you say my waiting was silly and wrong and fruitless? It would be very inept of me to refuse, not to know how to value your friendship, friendship with me for his sake — ”
She kissed him on the mouth. It was a Russian kiss, the kind that is exchanged in that spreading, soulful land, at high religious feasts, as a seal of love. But when a notoriously “ deep ” young man and a lady still young, and of such insinuating charm, exchange it, we are involuntarily reminded of Dr. Krokowski’s ingenious if not wholly unobjectionable method of treating the subject of love, in that slightly fluctuating sense, so that no one was ever quite sure whether it was earthly or heavenly, spiritual or fleshly love he had in mind. Are we so treating it, or were Clavdia Chauchat and Hans Castorp, when they exchanged their Russian kiss? But what will the reader say if we simply refuse to go into the question? To try to make a clean-cut distinction between the passionate and the soulful — that would, no doubt,, be analytical. But we feel that it would also be inept — to borrow Hans Castorp’s useful word — and certainly not in the least “ genial.” For what would “ clean-cut ” be? The subject is so equivocal, the limits so fluctuating. We make bold to laugh at the idea. Is it not well done that our language has but one word for all kinds of love, from the holiest to the most lustfully fleshly^ All ambiguity is therein resolved: love cannot but be physical, at its furthest stretch of holiness; it cannot be impious, in its interest fleshliness. It is always itself, as the height of shrewd “ geniality ” as in the depth of passion; it is organic sympathy, the touching sense-embrace of that which is doomed to decay. In the most raging as in the most reverent passion, there must be caritas. The meaning of the word varies? In God’s name, then, let it vary. That it does so makes it living, makes it human; it would be a regrettable lack of “ depth ” to trouble over the fact.
So while these youthful lips meet in their Russian kiss, let us darken our little stage and change the scene. For now, instead of the dimness of the hall we have the rather pensive light of a declining spring day in the season of melting snows; and our hero is seated in his wonted place at the bedside of Mynheer
6oo Peeperkorn, in friendly and respectful converse with that great man. Frau Chauchat, after the tea hour, at which she had appeared alone, as at the previous three meals, had gone shopping in the Platz, and Hans Castorp announced himself for his usual visit to the Dutchman. First of all to show him attention and help him pass the time; but also to be edified by the motions of the great man’s personality. In short, out of “ varying ” motives, varying as life varies. Peeperkorn laid aside the Telegraaf and tossed the horn-rimmed eye-glasses upon it. He reached his visitor a broad, sea-captain’s hand, and his thick chapped lips, on which sat a distressed expression, moved vaguely. Red wine and coffee were as usual to hand; the coffee things stood on a chair, stained brown from recent use — Mynheer had taken his regular afternoon drink, hot and strong, with sugar and cream, and was in a perspiration His face with its fringe of white hair was flushed, and little beads stood on brow and upper lip.
“ I am sweating somewhat,” he said. “ Come in, young man, come in. On the contrary. Sit down. It is a sign of weakness when one takes a hot drink and sweats thereafter. Will you — quite right — a handkerchief — thank you.” The flush soon faded and gave place to the yellowish pallor which was Mynheer’s facial teim after a bad attack. The fever had been severe this morning, and in all three stages, the cold, the hot, the moist; Peeperkom’s little eyes looked tired beneath the lined, masklike brow. He said: “ It is — by all means, young man. I would like to express mv — the word is — Positively. Appreciative — very kind of you
— to visit an ailing old man — ”
“ Not at all, Mynheer Peeperkorn. I am the one to be grateful, for permission to sit here a little; I get a great deal more out of it than vou — I assure you my motives are not altruistic. But what sort of description is that of yourself — an ailing old man- It would never occur to anyone to call you that. It gives an entirely false picture.”
“ V ery good,” responded Mynheer. He closed his eyes for a second or so, leaning his majestic head against the pillows, the chin raised, the fingers with their long nails folded on his kingly chest, the muscles of which showed beneath the tricot shirt. “ You are right, young man, or, rather, you mean it well. I am sure. It was pleasant yesterday — yes, yesterday afternoon, at that hospitable spot — the name of which I have now forgotten
— where we ate the excellent salami and scrambled eggs — and that sound native wine — ”
“ It was gorgeous,” Hans Castorp confirmed. “ We certainly are filled up — the Berghof chef would not have been pleased to see us putting it in — one and all; he’d have felt insulted. That was genuine salami, the real thing; Herr Settembrini ate it with tears in his eyes. He is a patriot, you must know, a democratic patriot. He has consecrated his burgher’s pike on the altar of humanity, so that salami may be taxed at the Brenner frontier.”
“ That is no matter,” Peeperkom declared. “ He is most chivalrous and courteous and very affable in conversation — a gallant gentleman, though obviously unable to change his clothing with any frequency.”
“None at all,” said Hans Castorp, “none at all’ I know him well, have been friendly with him for a long time; he was kind enough to take me up, because he found I was a ‘ delicate child of life.’ That is an expression we use between us, the sense of which is not obvious without the context. He has taken much pains to influence me for my good. But never, summer or winter, have I seen him wear anything but those check trousers and that threadbare double-breasted coat. He wears the old things with great dignity, there is something gallant about him, I agree with you there. The way he does it is a triumph over poverty — I like better to see it than little Naphta’s elegance, that always seems suspicious – a work of darkness, as it were, and lie gets the money for it in some hole-and-corner way, I understand.”
“ A chivalrous and affable gentleman, ’ repeated Peeperkom, passing over Hans Castorp’s remarks about little Naphta. But also — forgive me the reservation — not free from prejudice. Madame, my companion, has no great opinion of him — you may have seen. She feels little sympathy – no doubt because she perceives the same prejudice to exist toward herself. Not a word, young man. I am far from — comment on Herr Settembrini and your friendly feelings for him — No more! I should not think of saying that in any point — he has failed in any respect in knightly courtesy. My dear friend — irreproachable, very. But there is — a line drawn, a certain — a withdrawal — which makes comprehensible Madame Chauchat’s — ’ .
“Feeling against him. Perfectly natural. Perfectly justified. Pardon me, Mynheer Peeperkom, for taking the words out of your mouth. I venture to do so in the consciousness that you will not misunderstand me. When one thinks how women are made (you smile, to hear a person of my youth and inexperience making general observations on this subject) — how dependent a woman’s feeling for a man is upon his feeling for her – it is not surprising. Women, if you will permit me so to express myself, are creatures not of action but of reaction; they do not initiate, they are inactive in the sense that they are passive. May I, even at the risk of being tiresome, try to follow that a little further? Woman, so far as I have been able to observe, regards herself, in a love-affair, as the object. She lets it come; she does not make a free choice, she only chooses on the basis of the man’s having chosen, and even then, even then, I must repeat, her choice is suspect, it is prejudiced by the very fact that she has been chosen — provided, of course, the man is not too poor a specimen, and even so — Good Lord, what unalloyed drivel I’m talking! But when one is young, everything seems new and astonishing. You ask a woman: ‘ Do you love him? ’ And she tells you: ‘ He loves me so much! ’ and rolls her eyes up, or else rolls them down. Imagine an answer like that from one of us — if you will pardon me putting us in the same category. Perhaps there are men who would answer like that, but they are poor-spirited creatures — their women wear the breeches, if you will forgive the expression. I should like to know what kind of self-appraisement is at the bottom of the feminine answer. Is it that the woman thinks she owes a man boundless devotion merely because he has conferred the favour of his choice upon so lowly a creature? Or does she see in the man’s love an infallible sign of her personal excellence? I’ve often asked myself these questions, when I have been thinking quietly alone.”
“ Primitive — traditional mysteries you touch on there, young man, applying your glib little phrases to the sacred conditions of our existence,” responded Peeperkom. “ Man is intoxicated by his desire, woman demands and expects to be intoxicated by it. Hence our holy duty of feeling, hence the shame in unfeelingness, in powerlessness to awaken the woman to desire. Will you take a glass of red wine with me? I will drink, for I am thirsty. I have given out a considerable amount of water to-day.”
“ Thanks, Mynheer Peeperkorn. I do not usually take anything at this hour; but I am always ready to drink a swallow or so to your health.”
“Then take the wineglass. There is only one, I will use the water-glass. It won’t insult this simple wine to drink it out of an ordinary tumbler — ” He poured out the wine, with Hans Castorp’s help, as his hand trembled slightly, and drank thirstily, as though it had been water.
“ That is refreshing,” he said. “ Won’t you have some more? No? Permit me to fill my glass ” — the second time, he spilled some wine; the turned-over sheet was stained with dark-red spots. “ I repeat,” he said, with one lancelike finger reared up, “ I repeat, that therein lies our duty, our sacred duty to feel. Feeling, you understand, is the masculine force that rouses life. Life slumbers. It needs to be roused, to be awakened to a drunken marriage with divine feeling. For feeling, young man, is godlike. Man is godlike, in that he feels. He is the feeling of God. God created him in order to feel through him. Man is nothing but the organ through which God consummates his marriage with roused and intoxicated life. If man fails in feeling, it is blasphemy; it is the surrender of His masculinity, a cosmic catastrophe, an irreconcilable horror — ” He drank.
“ Permit me to relieve you of your glass,” Hans Castorp said. “ I find your train of thought highly edifying, Mynheer Peeperkorn. You are developing a theology there, in which you ascribe to man a highly honourable, if perhaps rather a one-sided religious function. There is, if I may say so, a certain austerity in your conception, it has its alarming side. Pardon me. All religious austerity is naturally somewhat alarming to people who are built on modest lines. I have no thought of criticizing the conception, I should like simply to return to your remark about certain prejudices, which, according to your observations, Herr Settembrini has on the subject of Madame. I have known Herr Settembrini for some time, more than a year, for years, in fact. And I can assure you that his prejudices, in so far as they exist, are in no case of a petty or bourgeois character. It would be absurd to think so. It can only be a question of prejudice in a general sense, impersonal, relating to certain pedagogic principles, which, in my character as a delicate child of life, Herr Settembrini has been at pains to — byt that would lead ^ us too far.
It is a very complex subject, into which I could not —
“ And you love Madame? ” Mynheer suddenly asked. He turned toward his visitor that kingly countenance, with the sore, writhen mouth and the pale little eyes under the arabesque of
lines on the brow. , . T r 1
Hans Castorp started. He stammered: “ I – that is – I feel great
respect for Frau Chauchat, certainly, in her character as —
“ Pray! ” said Peeperkom, stretching out his hand with that gesture which held back the flow of words. Having thus made a free space for what he was about to say, Let me ’ e went on, “ let me repeat, that I am far from reproaching this Italian gentleman with any actual offence against the rules of chivalry. I levelled this reproach against no one – no one. But it occurs to me — Understand me, young man, I am gratified, very. 0 presence rejoices my heart. At the same time, I say to myself: your acquaintance with Madame is older than ours. You were a companion of her earlier sojourn up here. And she is a woman of the rarest charms, and I am only an ailing old man. How does it happen — to-day, as I was unable to accompany her, she goes down unattended to the village to make purchases — there is no harm in that, none at all. But doubtless — am I then to ascribe it to the — what was it you said? — the pedagogic principles of Signor Settembrini that you — I beg you not to misunderstand me — ”
“ Not at all, Mynheer Peeperkom. Absolutely not. Not in the least. I act independently. On the contrary, Herr Settembrini has even taken occasion to — I regret to see that you have spilled wine on your sheets, Mynheer Peeperkom. May I not — we usually put salt on while the spots are fresh — ”
“ It does not matter,” said Peeperkom, fixing his guest with his glance.
Hans Castorp changed colour. He said, with a hollow smile: “Everything up here is out of the ordinary. The spirit of the place, if I may put it so, is not conventional. The sufferer, whether man or woman, is privileged. The laws of chivalry are thus forced rather into the background. You are for the moment indisposed, Mynheer Peeperkom, an acute indisposition. Your companion is relatively well. I think I do as Madame would wish in representing her here beside you, in her absence — in so far as there can be any talk of representing her, ha ha! — instead of representing you with her and offering to attend her into the village. How indeed should I come to be playing the cavalier to Madame? I have no title to the position, no mandate, and I have, I must admit, a strong sense of mine and thine. In short, I find my position is correct, in face of the general situation, and also the very genuine feelings I entertain for vou. Mynheer Peeperkom. You asked me, I believe, a question, and I think what I have said should be a satisfactory answer to it.”
“ A very amiable answer,” Peeperkom responded. “ I listen with involuntary pleasure, young man, to your fluent little phrases. Your tongue runs on, it springs over stock and stone, and rounds off all the sharp comers. But satisfactory — no. Your answer does not quite satisfy me — you must forgive me for disappointing you. Austere, my dear friend — you used the word with reference to some of my remarks just now. But in yours too I seem to note a certain austerity, they seem a little stiff and forced, and not in harmony with your nature, though I am acquainted with the phenomenon through your bearing in one respect and therefore recognize it now. I mean the formal manner vou assume toward Madame — and toward no one else in our little circle, on our walks and excursions. And of which you owe me an explanation. It is a duty, an obligation. I am not mistaken. I have confirmed my observation too many times, and it is unlikely it has not been remarked by others as well — with the difference that these others may perhaps — or even probably — possess a key which I do not.”
Mynheer spoke with uncommon precision and clarity this afternoon, despite the exhaustion consequent upon his fever. There was scarcely a trace of his usual rhapsodic style. He half sat in his bed, his powerful shoulders and splendid head turned toward his guest; one arm was stretched out over the coverlet, with the freckled, sea-captain’s hand erect at the end of the woollen sleeve, forming the ring of precision. The lance-tipped fingers were aloft. And his lips formed the words, as precisely, as “ plastically,” as Herr Settembrini himself could have wished, and rolled the r in his throat in words like probably and austerity.
“ You smile,” he-went on. “ You seem to be busy searching the tablets of your memory and finding them blank. But there can be no doubt that you know what I mean. I do not say that you do not sometimes address Madame, or that you do not answer her, as occasion arises. But I repeat, you do so with a definite constraint, an evasiveness, and, in fact, an avoidance of one certain form. One gets the impression that there has been a one-sided wager, it is as though you had eaten a philippina with Madame, and made up that you will not address her with the usual form of address. In short, you never use the third person plural. You never say Sie to Madame.”
“ But Mynheer Peeperkom — how absurd what sort of philippina would that be? ”
tk May I mention the circumstance — you are surely aware of it yourself – that you have just grown pale to the lips ? ”
Hans Castorp did not look up. He bent over and busied himself with the red stains on the sheet. u It had to come to that, I suppose,” he thought. “ It had to come out. — And I suppose I even helped it on myself. I can see that now. Did I really go pale? It may be. For now we’ve certainly come to grips. What will happen? Shall I keep on lying’ It might still go – but I won t. I’ll just sit tight a few minutes and look at these blood-stains — I mean wine-stains — on the sheet.”
6o6 They were both silent. The stillness lasted some two or three minutes — and gave evidence how much under such circumstances these very small units of time can expand.
It was Pieter Peeperkorn who first spoke. “ On the evening when I first had the pleasure of making your acquaintance,” he said, beginning in a singsong tone, and letting his voice fall at the end, as though embarked on a long recitative, “ we had a little celebration, sat very late eating and drinking and making merry, and then, in an elevated mood, of spirit free and unrestrained, arm in arm we sought our beds. As we parted, here at my door, the idea came to me to ask you to salute Madame on the brow, as a good friend from her former visit up here. You bluntly refused, rejected the idea on the ground that it would be preposterous. You will not deny that the expression itself demanded an explanation — an explanation for which you have remained until now in my debt. Are you willing to absolve yourself of it? ” ^
“ Ah, so he noticed that too,” Hans Castorp thought, and bent closer over the wine-stains, one of which he scratched with his middle finger. “ The fact is I suppose I wanted him to notice it, or I should not have said it. But what to say now? My heart is pounding. Will there be an exhibition of royal rage? Perhaps I’d best keep an eye on his fist, he may be holding it over me already. Certainly I am in a fine position — between the devil and the deep blue sea, as it were.”
And suddenly he felt his right wrist grasped by the hand of Peeperkorn.
“ Hullo’ ” he thought. “ Why should I be sitting here with my tail between my legs? Have I done him any injury? Not in the least. Let him talk to the man in Daghestan before he does to me. And after that somebody else, and so on. And then me. And what has he to complain of about me? Nothing, so far. Then why should my heart be pounding like this? It is high time I sit up and look him in the eye — with all due respect to his personality, of course.”
He did so. The great man’s face was yellow, the eyes pale beneath the forehead’s heavy folds, a bitter expression sat on the wounded lips. They looked each other in the eye, the splendid old man and the insignificant young one, and Peeperkorn continued to hold Hans Castorp by the wrist. At last he said, gently: “ You were Clavdia’s lover when she was here before.”
Hans Castorp bowed his head once more but lifted it again straightway, took a deep breath, and began: “ Mynheer Peeper-
MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 6oj
kom! It is in the highest degree repugnant to me to tell you a lie. I am searching for a means of avoiding it, but this is not easy. I should be boasting if I say yes, lying if I say no. Let me explain in what sense this is to be taken. I lived a long time, oh, a very long time in this house with Clavdia — I beg pardon, with the present companion of your travels — before making her acquaintance. Our relations — or, rather, my relation to her
— was never the social one; I can only say of it that its beginnings are shrouded in darkness. In my thoughts I have never named Clavdia but with the thou — and never in reality either. For on the evening when, casting off certain pedagogic restraints of which we were speaking, I made bold to approach her, upon a pretext furnished me by the long-ago past, it was carnival. It was an evening of masks and freedom, an irresponsible hour, when the thou was in force, and by the power of magic and dreams, somehow had — full sway. And — it was also the eve of Clavdia’s departure.”
“ Full sway,” repeated Peeperkom. “ You have put that very
— very — well.” He released Hans Castorp’s hand, and began with his own huge ones to massage both sides of his own face, eyes, cheeks, and chin. Then he folded his hands upon the winebespotted sheet, and laid his head on the left shoulder, the one toward his guest, with the effect that his face was lightly turned away.
“ I have given you the best answer I could, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” Hans Castorp said. “ I have tried to say neither too much nor too little. I was concerned to let you see that it is in a way open to us to count that evening — when the thou had full sway, and it was the eve or Chvdia’s departure — or not to count it. It was an extraordinary occasion, almost outside the calendar, intercalated, so to speak, a twenty-ninth of February. It would have been only half a lie if I had simply denied the truth of what you said.”
Peeperkorn made no answer.
“ I preferred,” Hans Castorp began again, after a pause, “ to tell you the truth, rather than run the risk of losing your favour, which, I openly admit, would be a sensible loss to me, I may say a blow, a real blow, comparable to the one I received when Frau Chauchat returned hither as the companion of your travels. I have risked letting this happen, because I have long wished and hoped that there might be understanding between myself and the man for whom I entertained feelings of the most extraordinary respect and reverence. It seemed finer, more ‘ human 9 to me — you know that is Clavdia’s favourite word, and how she pronounces it, in that enchanting, husky drawl of hers — than silence and dissimulation; and in that sense a weight was lifted from my heart when you put your question.”
No answer.
“ One thing more, Mynheer Peeperkom,” Hans Castorp went on. “ There was another thing that made me wish to make a clean breast of it to you: and that was the personal experience I had with the irritating effect of uncertainty, being let in for suspicions that could be neither confirmed nor dismissed. You know now who it was — before this present relationship was established which it would be absurd of me not to respect — with whom Clavdia spent — or experienced, or committed — that twenty -ninth of February. It is clear to you now. But for my part I have never been able to know — though of course I realized that anyone in my situation has to reckon with the past — by which I really mean predecessors — and though I also realized that Hofrat Behrens is an amateur portrait-painter, and had, in the course of many sittings, made a capital portrait of her, with a treatment of the skin so very lively and realistic that — between ourselves — it gave me very seriously to think. I have tormented myself no end with that riddle, and still do.”
“ You still love her? ” Peeperkom asked, without changing his position, his face still turned away. The large room fell more and more into twilight.
“ You will pardon me, Mynheer Peeperkom,” answered Hans Castorp, “ but my feeling for you, which is one of the highest respect and admiration, will not permit me to speak of my feeling for the present companion of yo:r travels.”
“ And does she — ” Peeperkom asked, with lowered voice, “ does she still return your feeling? ”
“ I do not say,” answered Hans Castorp, “ I do not say that she ever returned it. That is scarcely credible. We were touching upon this subject earlier in the afternoon, when we spoke of the responsive nature of women. There is nothing much about me to fall in love with. I am not built on a grand scale, as you can see. The possibility of — of a twenty-ninth of February could only be ascribed to feminine receptivity on the basis of the man’s choice already made. I must say that when I refer to myself as a man, it seems to me a sort of self-advertising and bad taste — but at all events, Clavdia is a woman.”
“ She was responsive to your feeling,” murmured Peeperkom, with wry lips. “ How much more so to yours,” said Hans Castorp. “ And in all probability to many another. One has to face that, when — ”
“Stop! ” Peeperkorn said, still turned away, but with a gesture of the palm toward his interlocutor. “ Is it not rather — common — of us to talk about her? ”
“ I don’t feel it so, Mynheer Peeperkorn. I think I can set your mind at rest on that point. These are human topics we are treating of; human in the sense that they have to do with freedom and the spiritual — you must pardon me if I use a rather ambiguous terminology, but I needed the expression lately, and made it my own.”
“ Very good, go on,” Peeperkorn said in a low voice.
Hans Castorp spoke in a low voice, too, and sat on the edge of his chair by the bed, bent toward the kingly old man, his hands between his knees.
“ For she is certainly a most spirituel being,” he said, “ and the husband beyond the Caucasus — you know, of course, that she has a husband beyond the Caucasus — gives her her freedom, whether out of stupidity or intelligence I don’t know, I don’t know the chap. But it is a good thing he does, for it is her illness grants it to her — and whoever falls into our situation will do well to follow his example, and not complain, either of the past or of the future.”
“ You don’t complain? ” asked Peeperkorn, and turned his face. It seemed ashen in the twilight, the pale, weary eyes stared out beneath the great folds of brow, the large chapped lips stood half open, like the mouth of a tragic mask.
“ I hardly thought it was a question of myself,” Hans Castorp answered modestly. “ What I meant was that you should not complain, nor deprive me of your friendship because of events in the past. That is what concerns me at this hour.”
“ But aside from that,” Peeperkorn said, “ I must involuntarily have been the cause of much suffering on your part.”
“ If you put the question,” responded Hans Castorp, and if I answer yes, my answer must not be taken to mean that I did not know how to value the enormous privilege of knowing you; for that privilege was indissolubly bound up with the suffering.
“ I thank you, young man, I thank you. I value the courtesy of your little phrases But, aside from our acquaintance —
“It is difficult,” Hans Castorp said, “to divorce the two; and the idea does not commend itself to me that I should divorce them in order to be free to reply in the affirmative to your question. The very fact that it was a personality like you in whose
6 io company Clavdia returned could only make more distressing and involved her coming back in the company of anybody whatever. It gave me a quarter of an hour, I assure you, and still does, that I do not deny; I have purposely kept as much as I could to the positive element, that is my sincere feeling of honour and reverence for you, Mynheer Peeperkorn — in which there mingled a spice of malice against your mistress; for women are never at ease when their lovers come to terms.”
“ True enough,” Peeperkorn said, and ran his hand over mouth and chin to conceal a smile, as though he were afraid Madame Chauchat might see it. Hans Castorp too smiled discreetly — and then they both nodded, in mutual understanding.
“ This little revenge,” went on Hans Castorp, “ was granted me at the end, because, so far as I personally am concerned, I have a quarrel after all, not with Clavdia, not with you, Mynheer Peeperkorn, but with my lot in general, my destiny. I will try to tell you about it, in so far as I can, now that I am secure in the honour of your confidence, and in this altogether exceptional and extraordinary twilight hour.”
“ Pray do so,” said Peeperkorn, courteously, and Hans Castorp went on.
“ I have been up here a long time, Mynheer Peeperkorn, years. How long I hardly know myself, but it has been years of my life. My cousin, to visit whom I came up, in the first instance, was a soldier, an upright and honourable soul, but that was no help to him — he died, and left me, and I remained here alone. I was no soldier, but a civilian, I had a profession, as you may have heard, a good, two-fisted job, which is even supposed to do its share in drawing together the nations of the earth — but somehow it did not draw me. I admit this freely; but the reasons for it I cannot describe otherwise than to say that they are veiled in obscurity, the same obscurity that envelops the origin of my feeling for Madame your mistress — I call her that expressly to show that I am not thinking of undermining the situation as it exists — my feeling for Clavdia Chauchat, and my intimate sense of her being, which I have had since the first moment her eyes met mine and bewitched me, enchanted me, you understand, beyond all reason. For love of her, in defiance of Herr Settembrini, I declared myself for the principle of unreason, the spirituel principle of disease, under whose aegis I had alree Jy, in reality, stood for a long time back; and I remained up here, I no longer know precisely how long. I have forgotten, broken with, everything, my relatives, my calling, all my ideas of life. When Clavdia went 6 1 I
away, I waited here for her return, so that now I am wholly lost to life down below, and dead in the eyes of my friends. That is what I meant when I spoke of my destiny, and said there might be some justice in a complaint over my present state. I have read a story — no, I saw it in the theatre: a good-natured youth, a soldier like my cousin, who comes to know a charming gipsy — charming she was, with a flower behind her ear, a wild and fatal creature, who so bewitches him that he goes off altogether, sacrifices everything to her, deserts the colours, joins the smugglers, dishonours himself in every way. Well, when he has got so far, she for her part has had enough of him, and takes up with a matador, a forceful personality with a magnificent baritone voice. The end of it all is that the little soldier, white as a sheet, shirt open at the throat, stabs his mistress with his knife in front of the circus — which, after all, she brought upon herself. It is rather a pointless story after all: how did I come to think of it? ”
Mynheer Peeperkorn, at mention of the knife, had shifted his position in the bed, with a quick motion to one side, turning his face toward his guest, and looking him piercingly in the eye. Now he pulled himself to a more comfortable posture, supporting himself on one elbow, and said: “ Well, young man, I have listened to you, and I have the whole picture. On my side, let me make you an honourable declaration. Were my hair not white, my limbs not racked with fever, you would see me ready to give you satisfaction, man to man, weapon to weapon, for the injury I unwittingly did you, and that which my companion added to it, for which likewise it is mine to atone. Positively, my friend — you would see me at your service. But as matters lie, you must let me make a different proposal. It is this: I recall an exalted moment, when our acquaintance was very young, when I felt myself pleasantly impressed by your native parts, and stood ready to offer you the brotherly thou; but then perceived that the moment was premature. Very good. I stand again to-day at that moment, I return to it, I declare that the period of probation has come to an end. Young man, we are brothers. Your phrase was that the thou had full sway — very good, let ours likewise have full sway, let us give free rein to brotherly feeling. The satisfaction which age and incapacity prevent me from giving you, I offer in another form, in the form of a brotherly alliance, such as one forms against a third party, against the world, against all and sundry; let us swear it to each other in the name of our feeling for somebody. Take your wineglass, young man, I will use the water-glass again, it does the crude new wine no shame — ”
6 12 With his trembling hand he filled the glasses, Hans Castorp hastening to assist him.
“ Take it,” repeated Peeperkorn, “ take my arm, let us drink so, let us drink it out — positively, young man. Very. Here is my hand. Art thou satisfied? ”
“That is no word for it, of course, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” said Hans Castorp. He had not found it easy to drink out the full glass at a draught; he spilled a little and dried his knee with his handkerchief. “ I might better say that I am immensely happy, and can hardly grasp how this has all come about, it is like a dream. What an immense honour for me! How I have deserved it I scarcely know, certainly in no active sense. It is not surprising that at first it seems entirely too bold, and I doubt if I shall be able to fetch it out — especially in Clavdia’s presence, who is not quite so likely to be pleased with the new arrangement, all at once.”
“ Leave that to me,” responded Peeperkorn; “ the rest is a matter of practice and habit. Go, now, young man. Leave me, my son. The night has fallen, our loved one mav return any moment, and a meeting between you just now would perhaps not be quite well-advised.”
“ Farewell, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” Hans Castorp said, and rose. “ Yes, it has grown dark. I can imagine Herr Settembrini coming in suddenly and turning on the light, to let reason and convention reign — it is a weakness of his. Good-bye until to-morrow. I leave you, so proud, so joyful, as I could never have dreamed it was possible for me to be. And now you will have at least three good days, and free of fever, and that rejoices me as much as though it were myself. Brother, good-night! ”
Mynheer Peeperkorn (Conclusion)
A waterfall is always an attractive goal for an excursion. We scarcely know how to explain why Hans Castorp, with all his native love of falling water, had never visited the picturesque cascade in the valley of the Fluela. His cousin’s strong sense of duty to the service had probably prevented him, during Joachim’s time; the latter’s purposeful attitude had tended to confine their activities to the close vicinity of the Berghof. But even since that time — if we except the winter excursions on skis — Hans Castorp ’s relations with the mountain scenery had been extremely conservative, not to say monotonous. The young man found a curious pleasure in the contrast between the limitations of his physical sphere and the broad scope of his mental operations. However. 6i 3
when it was proposed that his little group of seven people should make a driving excursion to the waterfall, he readily assented.
It was the blissful month of May, oft celebrated in the pleasant little ditties of the flat-land. Up here the air was fresh, the temperature scarcely ingratiating; but at least the snow was gone. It might, indeed, snow again; during the last few days there had been flurries of gigantic flakes, but it did not lie, it only made wet. The winter drifts had wasted away, they were gone, save for vestiges here and there; and the green slopes, the open paths, tempted the spirit to rove.
The group had been less socially occupied of late weeks owing to the illness of its ruling spirit, the prepotent Pieter Peeperkom. His fever refused to yield to the beneficent working of the climate or the skilled ministrations of so excellent a doctor as Hofrat Behrens. He was obliged to spend much time in bed, not only on the days when the quartan fever held sway, but on others too. There was trouble with his liver and spleen, Behrens told those who tended him; the digestion was not what it should be — in short, the Hofrat did not neglect to point out that the condition seemed to indicate a danger of chronic debility, not to be ignored.
Mynheer Peeperkom had presided at only one evening festivity in all these weeks; and the group had taken but one short walk. Hans Castorp was rather relieved than otherwise at this state of affairs; for the pledge he had drunk with Clavdia Chauchat’s protector made him difficulties, in general conversation, of the same kind he had to deal with in the case of Frau Chauchat herself, namely the avoidance of the formal mode of address — as though, as Peeperkom said, they had eaten a philippina together. He was fertile in expedients to get round it or simply leave it out; nevertheless, the favour accorded him by Peeperkom had doubled his present dilemma.
But now the excursion to the waterfall was the order of the day; Peeperkom himself had arranged it, and felt equal to the effort. It was the third day after the usual attack, and he announced that he wished to take advantage of it. He did not, indeed, appear at the early meals of the day, but took them, in company with Madame Chauchat, in their salon, as they often did of late. But Hans Castorp received word, through the lame concierge, to be ready for a drive an hour after the midday meal, and further, to communicate with Ferge and Wehsal, Settembrini and Naphta, and to engage two landaus for three o’clock.
Accordingly, at this hour they assembled before the portal of the Berghof-Hans Castorp, Ferge and Wehsal, and awaited the pair from the appartements de luxe; whiling the time by holding out lumps of sugar on the palms of their hands, for the horses to nip them up with thick, moist black lips. Their companions appeared with no great delay on the threshold; Peeperkorn’s kingly head seemed narrower; he lifted his hat as he stood in a long, rather shabby ulster, by Madame Chauchat’s side, and his lips shaped a vague form of greeting to the company in general. Then he descended and shook hands with the three gentlemen, who met him at the foot of the steps. He laid his left hand on Hans Castorp’s shoulder, saying: “ Well, young man, and how goes it, my son? ”
“ Topping, thanks, I hope it’s mutual,” responded the young man.
The sun shone, the day was beautiful and bright. But they had done well to don overcoats, driving would be cool. Madame Chauchat too wore a warm belted mantle of some woolly stuff with a pattern of large checks, and a small fur about her shoulders. The rim of her felt hat was turned down at one side by the olivegreen veil she wore bound under her chin; an effect so charming that it was actual pain to most of the beholders — Ferge being the only man there not in love with her. To his disinterested state was probaby due the temporary advantage he presently enjoyed, of being selected to sit opposite Mynheer and iMadame in the first landau, while Hans Castorp mounted with Wehsal into the second, catching as he did so a mocking smile that for a moment visited Frau Chauchat’s face. The others would be called for at their lodgings. The Malayan servant joined the party with a capacious basket, from the top of which protruded the necks of two winebottles. He bestowed it under the back seat of the first landau, took his place by the coachman on the box and folded his arms; the horses started up, and the carriages, with the brakes against their wheels, drove down the drive.
Wehsal had seen Frau Chauchat’s smile, and expressed himself on the subject to his companion, showing his bad teeth as he talked.
“ Did you see,” he asked, “ how she was laughing at you for having to drive alone with me? Yes, yes, a man like me is always fair game. Do you find it so disgusting to have to sit next to me? ”
“ Pull yourself together, Wehsal, and stop talking in that poorspirited way,” Hans Castorp admonished him. “ Women are for ever smiling, at anything, just for the sake of smiling; there is no sense in attending to it. Why do you always cry yourself down? You have your advantages and your disadvantages, like the rest of us. For instance, you can play out of the Midsummer Night’s Dream , and it’s not everybody who can. Will you play for us again soon? ”
“ Yes, you think you can talk to me condescendingly, like that,” retorted the wretched soul, “ and you don’t know what cheek there is in your consolation and how it just lowers me the more. You have the right to, though. You are laughing out of the wrong corner of your mouth now; but once you were in the seventh heaven, and felt her arms about your neck — oh, God, it bums me in the pit of my stomach when I think of it — and you are conscious of all you have had, when you look down on me and my torments and think what a beggarly wretch I am.”
“You haven’t a pretty way of expressing yourself, Wehsal. I don’t need to conceal my opinion of it, since you reproach me with being cheeky: it is really very repulsive and probably intentional on your part; you lay yourself out to be disgusting and humiliate yourself, the whole time. Are you really so desperately in love with her 5 ”
“ Fearfully,” answered Wehsal, with a head-shake. “ Words cannot express what I have had to endure from my craving for her. I wish I could say it will be the death of me — but the trouble is, one can neither die nor live. It was a bit better while she was away, I was gradually beginning to forget her. But since she came back, and I have her daily before my eyes, I get attacks — I bite my hand and strike about me, and am beside myself. Such things ought not to be; yet one cannot wish not to have them. Whoever is in that state cannot wish not to be, it would be like wishing not to live, because it has bound itself up with life. What good would it do to die? Afterwards — afterwards, yes, gladly. In her arms it would be bliss. But before — no; it would be preposterous, because life is longing, and longing is life — it cannot go against itself, that is the cursed catch in the game. Even when I say cursed, it is only a way of talking, as though I were somebody else, for in myself I cannot feel it so. There are many kinds of torture, Castorp, and whichever one you are under, your one desire and longing is to be free of it. But the torture of fleshly lust is the only one you can never wish to be free of, except through satisfaction. Never, never in any other way, never at any price. So it is; the man who is not suffering from it doesn’t dwell on it; but the man who is learns to know our Lord Jesus Christ, and his tears run down. Good Lord in heaven, what a thing it is, that the flesh can crave the flesh like that, simply because it is not its own flesh, but belongs to another soul — how strange, and yet, when you come to look at it, how unassuming, how friendly, how almost apolo-
6i6 getic! One might say, almost, if that is all he wants, in God’s name let him have it! What is it I want, Castorp? Do I want to kill her? Do I want to shed her blood^ I only want to fondle her. Dear, good Castorp, don’t despise me for whining like this — but after all, couldn’t she let me have my way P There would be something higher about it, Castorp; I am not a beast of the field, in my way I am a man too. Pure fleshly desire casts about, here, there, and everywhere; it is not bound, not fixed, and so we call it animal. But when it is fixed upon a human being, with a human face, then we begin talking about love. It is not that I just crave her carnal part, to enjoy as if she were a flesh-andblood doll; if there were one least little thing different about her face, it might be that I should not crave her at all — which shows that I love her soul, and love her with my soul. For love of the face is love of the s 3ul — ”
“ Why, Wehsal, what’s the matter with you? You are off your head, you don’t know 7 how you are going on — ”
“ But that is just it,” pursued the unhappy wretch, “ that she has a soul, that she is a creature made up of soul and body. And her soul will have absolutely nothing to do with mine, nor her body either, and thence come, oh, God, the torments I suffer, and therefore is my desire condemned to shame, and my body must mortify itself for ever. Why will she know 7 nothing of me, Castorp, either body or soul, and whv is my desire a horror to her : Am I not a man ^ Even if I am repulsive ? I sw r ear to you that I am, that I would give her more than all the others who have lain there, once she opened to me the bliss of her embrace, of her arms, which are beautiful because her soul is so. There is not a glory of the flesh I would not offer her, Castorp, if it were only a matter of the body, not of the countenance, if it were not her accursed soul that wall have none of me, without which I should have no longing for her body — that is the devil’s treadmill in which I eternally go round and round.”
“ Hush, Wehsal, hush, the coachman can understand you. He does not turn his head, on purpose, but I can see by the expression of his back that he is listening.”
“ Yes, you’re right, he is listening, and he understands. There you have again the thing I am talking about, and can see what it is like. If I were speaking of — of palingenesis, or hydrostatics, he would not understand, and would not listen, he would not have the faintest idea about it, nor care to have. There is no popular understanding for those things. But this business of body and soul, the last and highest and most ghastly private matter in the world, is also the most universal — everybody can understand it and laugh at anyone suffering from it, whose days are a torture of desire and his nights a torment of hell. Castorp, dear Castorp, let me make my little moan to you — you don’t know the sort of nights I have. Every night I dream of her, ah, what do I not dream of her, it makes me bum inside even to think of it! And all the dreams end the same way: she gives me a box on the ear, slaps me in the face, sometimes spits at me, with her face all distorted with disgust, and then I awake, covered with sweat and drowned in shame and desire — ”
“ That will do, Wehsal. We will sit quiet now, and make up our minds to hold our tongues until we reach the grocer’s and someone gets in with us. That is my wish. I don’t want to wound you, and I admit that your mental state is a quite choice and particular mess. But you know the story about the maiden who by way of being punished for something had snakes and toads hop out of her mouth, a snake or a toad for every word she spoke. The book does not say what she did about it, but I should think she finally had to keep her mouth shut.”
“ But every human being needs to express what he feels,” said Wehsal complainingly, “ to relieve himself, my dear Castorp, when he is in the state I am in! ”
“ And every human being has the right to do it, too, if you like. But my dear Wehsal, it seems to me there are certain rights a man simply does not assert.”
After which, according to Hans Castorp’s desire, they were silent. Moreover, they were now arrived at the grocer’s vineclad cottage, where they needed not to linger at all, for Naphta and Settembrini stood waiting in the street; the one in his shabby fur, the other in a yellowish-white spring overcoat, copiously stitched, and looking almost foppish. They all bowed and exchanged greetings, and Naphta took his place beside Ferge in the first landau, which now contained four persons, while Herr Settembrini added himself to the other two in the second carriage Wehsal gave up his place on the back seat, and the Italian lolled there elegantly, as though on his native Corso; in his very best mood, and bubbling over with esprit .
He talked about the pleasure of driving, the charm of sitting still and being moved along at the same time amid a changing scene; showed a fatherly interest in Hans Castorp, even patted the forlorn Wehsal’s cheek and bade him forget his own un6l8
sympathetic ego in admiration of the blithe exterior world, to which the Italian pointed with a spacious gesture of his hand in its worn leather glove.
It was a delightful drive. The horses, all four of them sturdy, glossy, well-fed beasts, with a blaze on each forehead, covered the excellent road at a steady pace. There was no dust. The route was bordered here and there by crumbling rock tufted with grass and flowers. Telegraph-poles flew past. Their way wound along the mountain forests in pleasant curves that invited the interest and led it on; in the sunny distance glimmered mountain heights still partly covered with snow. They left behind their own accustomed valley, and the change of scene refreshed their spirits. At the edge of the forest they drew up, having decided to cover on foot the remainder of the distance to the goal they had in mind — a goal of which they had been for some time aware, by reason of the sound that came to their ears, at first scarcely perceptible, but steadily increasing in volume. They all heard, directly they dismounted, that far-away, sibilant, vibrating roar, that distant murmuring of water, as yet so faint that they would suddenly lose the sound and pause to listen again.
“ It is mild enough now,” Settembrini said. He had often been here before. “ But when you come close, it is brutal, at this time of the year. You won’t be able to hear yourselves think — mark my words.”
Thus they entered the woods, along a path strewn with damp pine-needles: Pieter Peeperkom first, leaning on Madame Chauchat’s arm, his soft black hat drawn down on his brows, walking with his slumping gait; behind them Hans Castorp, hatless, like the other gentlemen, hands in pockets, head on one side, whistling softly as he looked about; then Naphta and Settembrini, then Ferge and Wehsal, last the Malay with the tea-basket on his arm. They all talked about the wood.
For the wood was not quite usual, it had a peculiarity which made it picturesque, exotic, even uncanny. It abounded in a hanging moss that draped and wreathed and wrapped the trees: the matted web of this parasitic plant hung and dangled in long, pallid beards from the branches, so that scarcely any pine-needles were visible for the shrouding veil. A complete, a bizarre transformation, a bewitched and morbid scene. For the trees were sick of this rank growth, it threatened to choke them to death — so all the visitors felt, as the little train wound along the path toward the sound, and the hissing and splashing swelled slowly to a mighty tumult that justified Settembrini’s prediction. A turn in the path revealed the bridge and the rocky ravine down which the torrent poured. At the” moment their eyes perceived it, their ears seemed saluted with the maximum of sound — for which infernal was the only right word. The volume of water fell perpendicularly in a single cascade, perhaps nine or ten feet high, and of considerable breath, and foaming white shot away over the rocks. The frantic noise of its falling seemed to mingle all possible intensities and variations of sound — hissing, thundering, roaring, bawling, whispering, crashing, crackling, droning, chiming — truly it was enough to drive one senseless. The visitors went very close, on the slippery rocks at the bottom of the chasm, and stood looking, bespattered with its spray, enveloped in its mist, their ears stopped by its insensate clamour. They exchanged glances and head-shakes and rather intimidated smiles as they stood regarding this spectacle, this long catastrophe of foam and fury, whose preposterous roaring deafened them, frightened them, bewildered their senses of sight and hearing, so that they even imagined they heard above, below, and on all sides, cries of warning, trumpet-calls, hoarse human voices.
Gathered in a little group behind Mynheer Peeperkorn, Frau Chauchat surrounded by the five gentlemen, they stood and looked into the surging waters. The others could not see the Dutchman’s face, but they saw him take off his hat, and breathe in the freshness with expanding chest. They communicated by looks and signs, for words would have been useless, even shrieked immediately into the ear, against that raging thunder. Their lips formed soundless phrases of wonder and admiration. Hans Castorp, Settembrini, and Ferge proposed, by nods and signs, to climb up the side of the ravine in which they stood, and look down upon the water from above. It was not difficult: a series of narrow steps cut in the rock led up to an upper storey, so to speak, of the forest. They climbed it, one behind the other, reached the bridge which spanned the water just where it arched to pour downward, and leaning on the rail, waved to the party below. Then they crossed over and climbed laboriously down on the other side of the stream, whence they rejoined their friends by a second bridge over the whirling torrent.
Tea-drinking was now indicated; and more than one of them said it might be well to withdraw a little from the din in order to enjoy that refreshment in comfort, not totally dumb, not utterly deafened and dazed. But they learned that Peeperkorn thought otherwise. He shook his head, and pointed several times with violence toward the ground. His distorted lips curled back with the emphasis of the “ Here! ” they shaped. What could the others do? In such matters he was accustomed to command, and the weight of his personality would always have been decisive, ever* if he had not been, as he was, master and mover of the expedition. Size itself is tyrannical, autocratic; thus it has always been, thus it will remain. Mynheer desired to eat in sight, in thunderous hearing of the waterfall, it was his mighty will. Who did not wish to go hungry must acquiesce. Most of them felt dissatisfied. Herr Settembrini saw that all chance of conversation, of a human interchange of ideas, would be out of the question, and flung up his hand with a gesture of resigned despair. The Malay hastened to carry out his master’s will. Two camp-stools were set up against the rocks for Monsieur and Madame, and at their feet upon a cloth he spread out the contents of the basket: coffee-apparatus and glasses, thermos bottles, cake and wine. The others found places on boulders, or against the railing of the foot-bridge, holding their cups of hot coffee in their hands, their plates on their knees; they ate silently, amid the clamour.
Part 26 of 30