Part 14 of 39
Joachim had stepped down; the technician changed the plate. Hofrat Behrens personally instructed the novice how to sit and hold himself.
“Put your arms about it,” he said. “Embrace the board—pretend it’s something else, if you like. Press your breast against it, as though it filled you with rapture. Like that. Draw a deep breath. Hold it!” he commanded. “Now, please!” Hans Castorp waited, blinking, his lungs distended. Behind him the storm broke loose: it crackled, lightened, detonated—and grew still. The lens had looked into his inside.
He got down, dazed and bewildered, notwithstanding he had not been physically sensible of the penetration in the slightest degree.
“Good lad,” said the Hofrat. “Now we shall see.” The experienced Joachim had already moved over toward the entrance door and taken position at a stand; at his back was the lofty structure of the apparatus, with a bulb half full of water, and distillation tubes; in front of him, breast-high, hung a framed screen on pulleys. On his left, between switchboard and instrumentarium, was a red globe. The Hofrat, bestriding a stool in front of the screen, lighted the light. The ceiling light went out, and only the red glow illumined the scene. Then the master turned this too off, with a quick motion, and thick darkness enveloped the laboratory.
“We must first accustom the eyes,” the Hofrat was heard to say, in the darkness. “We must get big pupils, like a cat’s, to see what we want to see. You understand, our everyday eyesight would not be good enough for our purposes. We have to banish the bright daylight and its pretty pictures out of our minds.”
“Naturally,” said Hans Castorp. He stood at the Hofrat’s shoulder, and closed his eyes, since the darkness was so profound that it did not matter whether he had them open or shut. “First we must wash our eyes with darkness to see what we want to see. That is plain. I find it quite right and proper, as a matter of fact, that we should collect ourselves a little, beforehand—in silent prayer, as it were. I am standing here with my eyes shut, and have quite a pleasant sleepy feeling. But what is it I smell?”
“Oxygen,” said the Hofrat. “What you notice in the air is oxygen. Atmospheric product of our little private thunderstorm, you know. Eyes open!” he commanded. “The magicking is about to begin.” Hans Castorp hastened to obey.
They heard a switch go on. A motor started up, and sang furiously higher and higher, until another switch controlled and steadied it. The floor shook with an even vibration. The little red light, at right angles to the ceiling, looked threateningly across at them. Somewhere lightening flashed. And with a milky gleam a window of light emerged from the darkness: it was the square hanging screen, before which Hofrat Behrens bestrode his stool, his legs sprawled apart with his fists supported on them, his blunt nose close to the pane, which gave him a view of a man’s interior organism.
“Do you see it, young man?” he asked. Hans Castorp leaned over his shoulder, but then raised his head again to look toward the spot where Joachim’s eyes were presumably gazing in the darkness, with the gentle, sad expression they had worn during the other examination. “May I?” he asked.
“Of course,” Joachim replied magnanimously, out of the dark. And to the pulsation of the floor, and the snapping and cracking of the forces at play, Hans Castorp peered through the lighted window, peered into Joachim Ziemssen’s empty skeleton. The breastbone and spine fell together in a single dark column. The frontal structure of the ribs was cut across by the paler structure of the back. Above, the collarbones branched off on both sides, and the framework of the shoulder, with the joint and the beginning of Joachim’s arm, showed sharp and bare through the soft envelope of flesh. The thoracic cavity was light, but blood-vessels were to be seen, some dark spots, a blackish shadow.
“Clear picture,” said the Hofrat, “quite a decent leanness—that’s the military youth. I’ve had paunches here—you couldn’t see through them, hardly recognize a thing. The rays are yet to be discovered that will go through such layers of fat. This is nice clean work. Do you see the diaphragm?” he asked, and indicated with his finger the dark arch in the window, that rose and fell. “Do you see the bulges here on the left side, the little protuberances? That was the inflammation of the pleura he had when he was fifteen years old. Breathe deep,” he commanded. “Deeper! Deep, I tell you!” And Joachim’s diaphragm rose quivering, as high as it could; the upper parts of the lungs could be seen to clear up, but the Hofrat was not satisfied. “Not good enough,” he said. “Can you see the hilus glands? Can you see the adhesions? Look at the cavities here, that is where the toxins come from that fuddle him.” But Hans Castorp’s attention was taken up by something like a bag, a strange, animal shape, darkly visible behind the middle column, or more on the right side of it—the spectator’s right. It expanded and contracted regularly, a little after the fashion of a swimming jellyfish.
“Look at his heart,” and the Hofrat lifted his huge hand again from his thigh and pointed with his forefinger at the pulsating shadow. Good God, it was the heart, it was Joachim’s honour-loving heart, that Hans Castorp saw!
“I am looking at your heart,” he said in a suppressed voice.
“Go ahead,” answered Joachim again; probably he smiled politely up there in the darkness. But the Hofrat told him to be quiet and not betray any sensibility. Behrens studied the spots and the lines, the black festoon in the intercostal space; while Hans Castorp gazed without wearying at Joachim’s graveyard shape and bony tenement, this lean memento mori, this scaffolding for mortal flesh to hang on. “Yes, yes! I see, I see!” he said, several times over. “My God, I see!” He had heard of a woman, a long-dead member of the Tienappel connection, who had been endowed or afflicted with a heavy gift, which she bore in all humility: namely, that the skeletons of persons about to die would appear before her. Thus now Hans Castorp was privileged to behold the good Joachim—but with the aid and under the auspices of physical science; and by his cousin’s express permission, so that it was quite legitimate and without gruesome significance. Yet a certain sympathy came over him with the melancholy destiny of his clairvoyant relative. He was strongly moved by what he saw—or more precisely, by the fact that he saw it—and felt stirrings of uneasy doubt, as to whether it was really permissible and innocent to stand here in the quaking, crackling darkness and gaze like this; his itch to commit the indiscretion conflicted in his bosom with religious emotion and feelings of concern.
But a few minutes later he himself stood in the pillory, in the midst of the electrical storm, while Joachim, his body closed up again, put on his clothes. Again the Hofrat peered through the milky glass, this time into Hans Castorp’s own inside; and from his half-utterances, his broken phrases and bursts of scolding, the young man gathered that what he saw corresponded to his expectations. He was so kind as to permit the patient, at his request, to look at his own hand through the screen. And Hans Castorp saw, precisely what he must have expected, but what it is hardly permitted man to see, and what he had never thought it would be vouchsafed him to see: he looked into his own grave. The process of decay was forestalled by the powers of the light-ray, the flesh in which he walked disintegrated, annihilated, dissolved in vacant mist, and there within it was the finely turned skeleton of his own hand, the seal ring he had inherited from his grandfather hanging loose and black on the joint of his ring-finger—a hard, material object, with which man adorns the body that is fated to melt away beneath it, when it passes on to another flesh that can wear it for yet a little while. With the eyes of his Tienappel ancestress, penetrating, prophetic eyes, he gazed at this familiar part of his own body, and for the first time in his life he understood that he would die. At the thought there came over his face the expression it usually wore when he listened to music: a little dull, sleepy, and pious, his mouth half open, his head inclined toward the shoulder.
The Hofrat said: “Spooky, what? Yes, there’s something distinctly spooky about it.”
He closed off the current. The floor ceased to vibrate, the lightnings to play, the magic window was quenched in darkness. The ceiling light came on. As Hans Castorp flung on his clothes, the Hofrat gave the two young men the results of his observations, in nontechnical language, out of regard for their lay minds. It seemed that in Hans Castorp’s case, the test of the eye confirmed that of the ear in a way to add lustre to science. The Hofrat had seen the old as well as the fresh spots, and “strands” ran from the bronchial tubes rather far into the organ itself—“strands” with “nodules.” Hans Castorp would be able to see for himself later, in the diapositive which they would give him for his very own. The word of command was calm, patience, manly self-discipline; measure, eat, lie down, wake, and drink tea. They left; Hans Castorp, going out behind Joachim, looked over his shoulder. Ushered in by the technician, Frau Chauchat was entering the laboratory.
Freedom
How did it seem now to our young Hans Castorp? Was it as though the seven weeks which, demonstrably and without the shadow of a doubt, he had spent with them up here, were only seven days? Or, on the contrary, did they seem much longer than had actually been the case? He asked himself, inwardly, and also by way of asking Joachim; but he could not decide. Both were probably true: when he looked back, the time seemed both unnaturally long and unnaturally short, or rather it seemed anything but what it actually was—in saying which we assume that time is a natural phenomenon, and that it is admissible to associate with it the conception of actuality.
At all events October was before the door, it might enter any day. The calculation was an easy one for Hans Castorp to make, and he gathered the same result from the conversation of his fellow-patients. “Do you know that in five days it will be the first again?” he heard Hermine Kleefeld say to two of her familiars, the student Rasmussen and the thick-lipped young man, whose name was Gänser. It was after luncheon, and the guests lingered chatting in the dining-room, though the air was heavy with the odours of the meal just served, instead of going into the afternoon rest-cure. “The first of October, I saw it on the calendar in the office. That makes the second of its kind I’ve spent in the pleasure resort. Well, summer is over, in so far as there has been a summer, that is—it has really been a sell, like life in general.” She shook her head, fetched a sigh from her one lung, and rolled up to the ceiling her dull and stolid eyes. “Cheer up, Rasmussen,” she said, and slapped her comrade on the drooping shoulder. “Make a few jokes!”
“I don’t know many,” he responded, letting his hands flap finlike before his breast, “and those I do I can’t tell, I’m so tired all the time.”
“ ‘Not even a dog,’ ” Gänser said through his teeth, “ ‘would want to live longer’—if he had to live like this.”
They laughed and shrugged their shoulders.
Settembrini had been standing near them, his toothpick between his lips. As they went out he said to Hans Castorp: “Don’t you believe them, Engineer, never believe them when they grumble. They all do it, without exception, and all of them are only too much at home up here. They lead a loose and idle life, and imagine themselves entitled to pity, and justified of their bitterness, irony, and cynicism. ‘This pleasure resort,’ she said. Well, isn’t it a pleasure resort, then? In my humble opinion it is, and in a very questionable sense too. So life is a ‘sell,’ up here at this pleasure resort! But once let them go down below and their manner of life will be such as to leave no doubt that they mean to come back again. Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice, and materialism. As the atmosphere in which we live is obviously very favourable to such miasmic growths, I may hope, or rather, I must fear, that you understand my meaning.”
Truly the Italian’s words were of the sort that seven weeks ago, down in the flat-land, would have been empty sound to Hans Castorp’s ears. But his stay up here had made his mind receptive to them: receptive in the sense that he comprehended them with his mind, if not with his sympathies, which would have meant even more. For although he was at bottom glad that Settembrini, after all that had passed, continued, as he did, still to talk to him, admonishing, instructing, seeking to establish an influence upon his mind, yet his understanding had reached the point where he was critical of the Italian’s words, and at times, up to a point, withheld his assent. “Imagine,” he said to himself, “he talks about irony just as he does about music, he’ll soon be telling us that it is politically suspect—that is, from the moment it ceases to be a ‘direct and classic device of oratory.’ But irony that is ‘not for a moment equivocal’—what kind of irony would that be, I should like to ask, if I may make so bold as to put in my oar? It would be a piece of dried-up pedantry!” Thus ungrateful is immature youth! It takes all that is offered, and bites the hand that feeds it.
But it would have seemed too risky to put his opposition into words. He confined himself to commenting upon what Herr Settembrini had said about Hermine Kleefeld, which he found ungenerous—or rather, had his reasons for wishing to find it so.
“But the girl is ill,” he said. “She is seriously ill, without the shadow of a doubt—she has every reason for pessimism. What do you expect of her?”
“Disease and despair,” Settembrini said, “are often only forms of depravity.”
“And Leopardi,” thought Hans Castorp, “who definitely despaired of science and progress? And our schoolmaster himself? He is infected too and keeps coming back here, and Carducci would have had small joy of him.”
Aloud he said: “You are good! Why, the girl may lie down and die any day, and you call it depravity! You’ll have to make that a little clearer. If you said that illness is sometimes a consequence of depravity, that would at least be sensible.”
“Very sensible indeed!” Settembrini put in. “My word! So if I stopped at that, you would be satisfied?”
“Or if you said that illness may serve as a pretext for depravity—that would be all right, too.”
“Grazie tanto!”
“But illness a form of depravity? That is to say, not originating in depravity, but itself depravity? That seems to me a paradox.”
“I beg of you, Engineer, not to impute to me anything of the sort. I despise paradoxes, I hate them. All that I said to you about irony I would say over again about paradoxes, and more besides. Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all! Moreover, I note that you are once more defending disease—”
“No; what you are saying interests me. It reminds me of things Dr. Krokowski says in his Monday lectures. He too explains organic disease as a secondary phenomenon.”
“Scarcely the pure idealist.”
“What have you against him?”
“Just that.”
“You are down on analysis?”
“Not always—I am for it and against it, both by turns.”
“How am I to understand that?”
“Analysis as an instrument of enlightenment and civilization is good, in so far as it shatters absurd convictions, acts as a solvent upon natural prejudices, and undermines authority; good, in other words, in that it sets free, refines, humanizes, makes slaves ripe for freedom. But it is bad, very bad, in so far as it stands in the way of action, cannot shape the vital forces, maims life at its roots. Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as death, with which it may well belong—allied to the grave and its unsavory anatomy.”
“Well roared, lion,” Herr Castorp could not help thinking, as he often did when Herr Settembrini delivered himself of something pedagogic. Aloud he only said: “We’ve been having to do with X-ray anatomy in these days, down on the lower-floor. Behrens called it that, when he X-rayed us.”
“Oh, so you have made that stage too? Well?”
“I saw the skeleton of my hand,” Hans Castorp said, and sought to call up the feeling that had mounted in him at the sight. “Did you get them to show you yours?”
“No, I don’t take the faintest interest in my skeleton. But what was the physician’s verdict?”
“He saw ‘strands’—strands with nodules.”
“The scoundrel!”
“I have heard you call Hofrat Behrens that before, Herr Settembrini. What do you mean by it?”
“I assure you the epithet was deliberately chosen.”
“No, Herr Settembrini, there I find you are unjust. I admit the man has his faults; his manner of speech becomes disagreeable in the long run, there is something forced about it, especially when one remembers he had the great sorrow of losing his wife up here. But what an estimable and meritorious man he is, after all, a benefactor to suffering humanity! I met him the other day coming from an operation, resection of ribs, a matter of life and death, you know. It made a great impression on me, to see him fresh from such exacting and splendid work, in which he is so much the master. He was still warm from it, and had lighted a cigar by way of reward. I envied him.”
“That was commendable of you. Well, and your sentence?”
“He has not set any definite time.”
“That is good too. And now let us betake us to our cure, Engineer. Each to his own place.”
They parted at the door of number thirty-four.
“You are going up to the roof now, Herr Settembrini? It must be more fun to lie in company than alone. Do you talk? Are they pleasant people?”
“Oh, they are nothing but Parthians and Scythians.”
“You mean Russians?”
“Russians, male and female,” said Settembrini, and the corner of his mouth spanned a little. “Goodbye, Engineer.”
He had said that of malice aforethought, undoubtedly. Hans Castorp walked into his own room in confusion. Was Settembrini aware of his state? Very likely, like the schoolmaster he was, he had been spying on him, and seen which way his eyes were going. Hans Castorp was angry with the Italian and also with himself, for having by his lack of self-control invited the thrust. He took up his writing materials to carry them with him into the balcony—for now it was no more use; the letter home, the third letter, must be written—and as he did so he went on whipping up his anger, muttering to himself about this windbag and logic chopper, who meddled with matters that were no concern of his, and chirruped to the girls in the street. He felt quite disinclined to the effort of writing, the organ-grinder had put him off it altogether, with his innuendo. But no matter what his feelings, he must have winter clothing, money, footwear, linen—in brief, everything he might have brought with him had he known he was coming, not for three short summer weeks, but for an indefinite stay which was certain to last for a piece into the winter—or rather, considering the notions about time current up here, was quite likely to last all the winter. It was this he must let them know at home, even if only as a possibility; he must tell the whole story, and not put them, or himself, off any longer with pretexts.
In this spirit, then, he wrote, practising the technique he had so often seen Joachim practise; with a fountain-pen, in his deck-chair, with his knees drawn up and the portfolio laid upon them. He wrote upon the letter-paper of the establishment, of which he kept a supply in his table drawer, to James Tienappel, who stood closest to him among the three uncles, and asked him to pass the news on to the Consul. He spoke of an unfortunate occurrence, of suspicions that had proved justified, of the medical opinion that it would be best for him to remain where he was for a part, perhaps for all of the winter, since cases like his often proved more obstinate than those that began more alarmingly and it was clearly advisable to go after the infection energetically and root it out once for all. From this point of view, he considered, it had been a most fortunate circumstance that he had chanced to come here, and been induced to submit to an examination, for otherwise he might have remained for some time in ignorance of his condition, and been apprised of it later and more alarmingly. As for the length of time which would probably be required for the cure, they must not be surprised to hear the whole winter might easily slip away before his return—in short, that he might come down hardly earlier than Joachim. Ideas about time were different up here from those ordinarily held about the length of stay at the baths, or at an ordinary cure. The smallest unit of time, so to speak, was the month, and a single month was almost no time at all.
The weather was cool, he sat in his overcoat, with a rug about him, and his hands were cold. At times he looked up from the paper which he was covering with these reasonable and sensible phrases, at the landscape now so familiar he scarcely saw it any more: this extended valley with its retreating succession of peaks at the entrance—they looked pale and glassy today—with its bright and populous floor, which glistened when the sun shone full upon it, and its forest-clad or meadowy slopes, whence came the sound of cowbells. He wrote with growing ease, and wondered why he had dreaded to write. For as he wrote he felt that nothing could be clearer than his presentation of the matter, and that there was no doubt it would meet with perfect comprehension at home. A young man of his class and circumstances acted for himself when it seemed advisable; he took advantage of the facilities which existed expressly for him and his like. So it was fitting. If he had taken the journey home, they would have made him come back again on hearing his report. He asked them to send what things he needed. And at the end he asked to have money sent: a monthly cheque of eight hundred marks would cover everything.
He signed his name. It was done. This last letter was exhaustive, it covered the case; not according to the time-conceptions of down below, but according to those obtaining up here; it asserted Hans Castorp’s freedom. This was his own word, albeit not expressed; he would hardly have shaped the syllables even in his mind; but he felt the full sense of its meaning, as he had come to know it during his stay up here—a sense which had little to do with the Settembrinian significance—and his breast was shaken with that excited alarm, which swept over him in a wave, as it had done before.
His head was hot with the blood that had gone to it as he wrote, his cheeks burned. He took the thermometer from his lamp-stand and “measured,” as though to make use of an opportunity. Mercurius had gone up to 100°.
“Look at that,” he thought; and added a postscript to his letter: “It did strain me rather, after all, to write this. My temperature is 100°. I see that I must be very quiet, for the present. You must excuse me if I don’t write often.” Then he lay back, and held up his hand toward the light, palm outward, as he had held it behind the light-screen. But the light of day did not encroach upon its living outline; rather it looked more substantial and opaque for its background of bright air, only its outer edges were rosily illuminated. This was his living hand, that he was used to see, to use, to wash—not that uncanny scaffolding which he had beheld through the screen. The analytic grave then opened was closed again.
Whims of Mercurius
October began as months do: their entrance is, in itself, an unostentatious and soundless affair, without outward signs and tokens; they, as it were, steal in softly and, unless you are keeping close watch, escape your notice altogether. Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
To Hans Castorp the first day of October and the last day of September were as like as two peas; both were equally cold and unfriendly, and those that followed were the same. In the rest-cure one used one’s overcoat and both camel’s-hair rugs, not only in the evening, but in the daytime. The fingers that held the book were stiff and clammy, however the cheeks burned; and Joachim was strongly tempted to resort to his fur sack, but resisted, in order not to pamper himself thus early in the season.
Some days later, however—that is, between the beginning and middle of the month—there came another change: a latter summer set in, with amazing splendour. The praises of this mountain October, which Hans Castorp had heard, were not idly sung. For some two and a half weeks all the glories of heaven reigned over valley and mountain, one day outvied another in blueness and clarity, and the sun burned down with such immediate power that everyone felt impelled to don the lightest of wear, muslin frocks and linen trousers already put aside. The adjustable canvas parasol without a handle was called into requisition, and fitted by its cunning device of holes and pegs on to the arm of the reclining-chair; and even its shelter was felt to be insufficient against the midday glare.
“I’m glad I’m here still, for this,” said Hans Castorp to his cousin. “It has been so wretched at times, and now it is as though we had the winter behind us, and only good weather to look forward to.” He was quite right. There were indeed not many signs that pointed to the true state of the calendar; and even those there were did not strike the eye. Aside from the few oak-trees that had been set out down in the Platz, where they had just managed to survive, and long before now had despondently shed their leaves, the whole region held no deciduous trees to give the landscape an autumnal cast; only the hybrid Alpine alder, which renews its soft needles as though they were leaves, showed a wintry baldness. The other trees of the region, whether towering or stunted, were evergreen pines and firs, invincible against the assaults of this irregular winter, which might scatter its snowstorms through all the months of the year: only the many-shaded, rust-red tone that lay over the forest gave notice, despite the glowing sunshine, of a declining year. Yet, looking closer, there were the wild flowers, speaking, though softly, yet to the same effect; the meadow orchis, the bushy aquilegia were no longer in bloom, only the gentian and the lowly autumn crocus, bearing witness to the inner sharpness of the superficially heated air, that could pierce one to the bone as one sat, like a chill in fever, though one glowed outwardly from the ardour of the sun.
Hans Castorp did not keep inward count of the time, as does the man who husbands it, notes its passing, divides and tells and labels its units. He had not heeded the silent entry of the tenth month, but he was arrested by its appeal to the senses, this glowing heat that concealed the frost within and beneath it. It was a sensation which, to anything like this degree, he had never before experienced, and it aroused him to the culinary comparison which he made to Joachim, of an omelette en surprise, holding an ice concealed within the hot froth of the beaten egg. He often made such comments, talking headlong and volubly, as a man does in a feverish chill. But between whiles he was silent; we shall not say self-absorbed, for his attention was presumably directed outwards, though upon a single point. All else, whether of the animate or the inanimate world, swam about him in a mist—a mist of his own making, which Hofrat Behrens and Dr. Krokowski would doubtless have explained as the product of soluble toxins, as the befuddled one himself did also, though without having the slightest power or even desire to rid himself of the state they induced.
For that is an intoxication, by which one is possessed, under the influence of which one abhors nothing more than the thought of sobriety. It asserts itself against impressions that would weaken its force, it will not admit them, it wards them off. Hans Castorp was aware, and had even spoken of the fact, that Madame Chauchat’s profile was not her strong point, that it was no longer quite youthful, was even a little sharp. And the consequence? He avoided looking at her in profile, he literally closed his eyes when he caught that view of her, even at a distance; it pained him. Why? Should not reason have leaped to take advantage of the favourable moment to reassert itself? But what do we ask? He grew pale with rapture when, tempted by the brilliant weather, she appeared at second breakfast in the white lace matinée which made her look so ravishing—appeared late, accompanied by the banging of the door, smiling, her arms raised in a pretty posture, and presented herself thus to the dining-room before she glided to her seat. But he was enraptured not so much because she looked so charming, as because her charm added strength to the sweet intoxication in his brain, the intoxication that willed to be, that cared only to be justified and nourished.
An authority of Ludovico Settembrini’s way of thinking might have characterized as depravity, as a “form of depravity,” such a lack of good intention. Hans Castorp sometimes pondered over the literary things the Italian had said about illness and despair—which he had found incomprehensible, or at least pretended to himself to find them so. He looked at Clavdia Chauchat—at the flaccidity of her back, the posture of her head; he saw her come habitually late to table, without reason or excuse, solely out of a lack of order and disciplined energy. He saw the same lack when she let slam every door through which she passed, when she moulded bread pellets at the table, when she gnawed her fingers; and he had a suspicion, which he did not put into words, that if she was ill—and that she was, probably incurably, since she had been up here so often and so long—her illness was in good part, if not entirely, a moral one: as Settembrini had said, neither the ground nor the consequence of her “slackness,” but precisely one and the same thing. He recalled the contemptuous gesture of the humanist when he spoke of the “Parthians and Scythians” in whose company he was forced to take the rest-cure. It had been a gesture not only of deliberate, but also of natural and instinctive disdain; and that feeling was quite comprehensible to Hans Castorp. Had he not once, who always sat so erect at table, loathed and despised the banging of doors, and never, never was tempted to gnaw his fingers, because to that end Maria had been given him instead, had he not once taken deep offence at the unmannerly behaviour of Frau Chauchat, and felt an unconquerable sense of superiority when he heard the narrow-eyed one essay to speak his mother-tongue?
The present state of his feelings, however, had put on one side any such sentiments as these; it was now the Italian who was the object of his irritation, because he, in his benightedness, had spoken of Parthians and Scythians and had not meant thereby the persons at the “bad” Russian table, the shock-headed, linenless students, who sat there disputing endlessly in their outlandish tongue, which was obviously the only one they knew, and which, in its soft, spineless character reminded Hans Castorp of the thorax without ribs Hofrat Behrens had described to him. True, the manners and customs of such people might readily awaken feelings of disgust in the breast of a humanist. They ate with their knives, and unmentionably messed the front of their blouses. Settembrini asserted that one of them, a medical student well on in his training, was so ignorant of Latin, as not to know, for example, what the word “vacuum” meant. As for the married couple in number thirty-two, Hans Castorp’s own daily experience of them was such as to render quite credible Frau Stöhr’s report, that when the bathing-master entered their room in the morning for the usual massage, they received him lying in bed together.
Part 14 of 39