Part 37 of 39
The glass was silent awhile. Then it staggered over to the P, zigzagged and returned to O. Great suspense. Dr. Ting-Fu giggled and said Holger must be a poet. Frau Stöhr began to laugh hysterically; which the glass appeared to resent, for after indicating the E it stuck and went no further. However, it seemed fairly clear that Dr. Ting-Fu was right.
What the deuce, so Holger was a poet? The glass revived, and superfluously, in apparent pridefulness, rapped yes. A lyric poet, Fräulein Kleefeld asked? She said “ly‑ric,” as Hans Castorp involuntarily noted. Holger was disinclined to specify. He gave no new answer, merely spelled out again, this time quickly and unhesitatingly, the word “poet,” adding the T he had left off before.
Good, then, a poet. The constraint increased. It was a constraint that in reality had to do with manifestations on the part of uncharted regions of their own inner, their subjective selves, but which, because of the illusory, half-actual conditions of these manifestations, referred itself to the objective and external. Did Holger feel at home, and content, in his present state? Dreamily, the glass spelled out the word “tranquil.” Ah, tranquil. It was not a word one would have hit upon oneself, but after the glass spelled it out, they found it well chosen and probable. And how long had Holger been in this tranquil state? The answer to this was again something one would never have thought of, and dreamily answered; it was “A hastening while.” Very good. As a piece of ventriloquistic poesy from the Beyond, Hans Castorp, in particular, found it capital. A “hastening while” was the time-element Holger lived in: and of course he had to answer as it were in parables, having very likely forgotten how to use earthly terminology and standards of exact measurement. Fräulein Levi confessed her curiosity to know how he looked, or had looked, more or less. Had he been a handsome youth? Herr Albin said she might ask him herself, he found the request beneath his dignity. So she asked if the spirit had fair hair.
“Beautiful, brown, brown curls,” the glass responded, deliberately spelling out the word “brown” twice. There was much merriment over this. The ladies said they were in love with him. They kissed their hands at the ceiling. Dr. Ting-Fu, giggling, said Mister Holger must be rather vain.
Ah, what a fury the glass fell into! It ran like mad about the table, quite at random, rocked with rage, fell over and rolled into Frau Stöhr’s lap, who stretched out her arms and looked down at it pallid with fear. They apologetically conveyed it back to its station, and rebuked the Chinaman. How had he dared to say such a thing—did he see what his indiscretion had led to? Suppose Holger was up and off in his wrath, and refused to say another word! They addressed themselves to the glass with the extreme of courtesy. Would Holger not make up some poetry for them? He had said he was a poet, before he went to hover in the hastening while. Ah, how they all yearned to hear him versify! They would love it so!
And lo, the good glass yielded and said yes! Truly there was something placable and good-humoured about the way it tapped. And then Holger the spirit began to poetize, and kept it up, copiously, circumstantially, without pausing for thought, for dear knows how long. It seemed impossible to stop him. And what a surprising poem it was, this ventriloquistic effort, delivered to the admiration of the circle—stuff of magic, and shoreless as the sea of which it largely dealt. Sea-wrack in heaps and bands along the narrow strand of the broad-flung bay; an islanded coast, girt by steep, cliffy dunes. Ah, see the dim green distance faint and die into eternity, while beneath broad veils of mist in dull carmine and milky radiance the summer sun delays to sink! No word can utter how and when the watery mirror turned from silver into untold changeful colour-play, to bright or pale, to spreading, opaline and moonstone gleams—or how, mysteriously as it came, the voiceless magic died away. The sea slumbered. Yet the last traces of the sunset linger above and beyond. Until deep in the night it has not grown dark: a ghostly twilight reigns in the pine forests on the downs, bleaching the sand until it looks like snow. A simulated winter forest all in silence, save where an owl wings rustling flight. Let us stray here at this hour—so soft the sand beneath our tread, so sublime, so mild the night! Far beneath us the sea respires slowly, and murmurs a long whispering in its dream. Does it crave thee to see it again? Step forth to the sallow, glacier-like cliffs of the dunes, and climb quite up into the softness, that runs coolly into thy shoes. The land falls harsh and bushy steeply down to the pebbly shore, and still the last parting remnants of the day haunt the edge of the vanishing sky. Lie down here in the sand! How cool as death it is, how soft as silk, as flour! It flows in a colourless, thin stream from thy hand and makes a dainty little mound beside thee. Dost thou recognize it, this tiny flowing? It is the soundless, tiny stream through the hourglass, that solemn, fragile toy that adorns the hermit’s hut. An open book, a skull, and in its slender frame the double glass, holding a little sand, taken from eternity, to prolong here, as time, its troubling, solemn, mysterious essence …
Thus Holger the spirit and his lyric improvisation, ranging with weird flights of thought from the familiar seashore to the cell of a hermit and the tools of his mystic contemplation. And there was more; more, human and divine, involved in daring and dreamlike terminology—over which the members of the little circle puzzled endlessly as they spelled it out; scarcely finding time for hurried though rapturous applause, so swiftly did the glass zigzag back and forth, so swiftly the words roll on and on. There was no distant prospect of a period, even at the end of an hour. The glass improvised inexhaustibly of the pangs of birth and the first kiss of lovers; the crown of sorrows, the fatherly goodness of God; plunged into the mysteries of creation, lost itself in other times and lands, in interstellar space; even mentioned the Chaldeans and the zodiac; and would most certainly have gone on all night, if the conspirators had not finally taken their fingers from the glass, and expressing their gratitude to Holger, told him that must suffice them for the time, it had been wonderful beyond their wildest dreams, it was an everlasting pity there had been no one at hand to take it down, for now it must inevitably be forgotten, yes, alas, they had already forgotten most of it, thanks to its quality, which made it hard to retain, as dreams are. Next time they must appoint an amanuensis to take it down, and see how it would look in black and white, and read connectedly. For the moment, however, and before Holger withdrew to the tranquillity of his hastening while, it would be better, and certainly most amiable of him, if he would consent to answer a few practical questions. They scarcely as yet knew what, but would he at least be in principle inclined to do so, in his great amiability?
The answer was yes. But now they discovered a great perplexity—what should they ask? It was as in the fairy-story, when the fairy or elf grants one question, and there is danger of letting the precious advantage slip through the fingers. There was much in the world, much of the future, that seemed worth knowing, yet it was so difficult to choose. At length, as no one else seemed able to settle, Hans Castorp, with his finger on the glass, supporting his cheek on his fist, said he would like to know what was to be the actual length of his stay up here, instead of the three weeks originally fixed.
Very well, since they thought of nothing better, let the spirit out of the fullness of his knowledge answer this chance query. The glass hesitated, then pushed off. It spelled out something very queer, which none of them succeeded in fathoming, it made the word, or the syllable “Go,” and then the word “Slanting” and then something about Hans Castorp’s room. The whole seemed to be a direction to go slanting through Hans Castorp’s room, that was to say, through number thirty-four. What was the sense of that? As they sat puzzling and shaking their heads, suddenly there came the heavy thump of a fist on the door.
They all jumped. Was it a surprise? Was Dr. Krokowski standing without, come to break up the forbidden session? They looked up guiltily, expecting the betrayed one to enter. But then came a crashing knock on the middle of the table, as if to testify that the first knock too had come from the inside and not the outside of the room.
They accused Herr Albin of perpetrating this rather contemptible jest, but he denied it on his honour; and even without his word they all felt fairly certain no one of their circle was guilty. Was it Holger, then? They looked at Elly, suddenly struck by her silence. She was leaning back in her chair, with drooping wrists and fingertips poised on the table-edge, her head bent on one shoulder, her eyebrows raised, her little mouth drawn down so that it looked even smaller, with a tiny smile that had something both silly and sly about it, and gazing into space with vacant, childlike blue eyes. They called to her, but she gave no sign of consciousness. And suddenly the night-table light went out.
Went out? Frau Stöhr, beside herself, made great outcry, for she had heard the switch turned. The light, then, had not gone out, but been put out, by a hand—a hand which one characterized afar off in calling it a “strange” hand. Was it Holger’s? Up to then he had been so mild, so tractable, so poetic—but now he seemed to degenerate into clownish practical jokes. Who knew that a hand which could so roundly thump doors and tables, and knavishly turn off lights, might not next catch hold of someone’s throat? They called for matches, for pocket torches. Fräulein Levi shrieked out that someone had pulled her front hair. Frau Stöhr made no bones of calling aloud on God in her distress: “O Lord, forgive me this once!” she moaned, and whimpered for mercy instead of justice, well knowing she had tempted hell. It was Dr. Ting-Fu who hit on the sound idea of turning on the ceiling light; the room was brilliantly illuminated straightway. They now established that the lamp on the night-table had not gone out by chance, but been turned off, and only needed to have the switch turned back in order to burn again. But while this was happening, Hans Castorp made on his own account a most singular discovery, which might be regarded as a personal attention on the part of the dark powers here manifesting themselves with such childish perversity. A light object lay in his lap; he discovered it to be the “souvenir” which had once so surprised his uncle when he lifted it from his nephew’s table: the glass diapositive of Clavdia Chauchat’s X-ray portrait. Quite uncontestably he, Hans Castorp, had not carried it into the room.
He put it into his pocket, unobservably. The others were busied about Ellen Brand, who remained sitting in her place in the same state, staring vacantly, with that curious simpering expression. Herr Albin blew in her face and imitated the upward sweeping motion of Dr. Krokowski, upon which she roused, and incontinently wept a little. They caressed and comforted her, kissed her on the forehead and sent her to bed. Fräulein Levi said she was willing to sleep with Frau Stöhr, for that abject creature confessed she was too frightened to go to bed alone. Hans Castorp, with his retrieved property in his breast pocket, had no objection to finishing off the evening with a cognac in Herr Albin’s room. He had discovered, in fact, that this sort of thing affected neither the heart nor the spirits so much as the nerves of the stomach—a retroactive effect, like seasickness, which sometimes troubles the traveller with qualms hours after he has set foot on shore.
His curiosity was for the time quenched. Holger’s poem had not been so bad; but the anticipated futility and vulgarity of the scene as a whole had been so unmistakable that he felt quite willing to let it go at these few vagrant sparks of hellfire. Herr Settembrini, to whom he related his experiences, strengthened this conviction with all his force. “That,” he cried out, “was all that was lacking. Oh, misery, misery!” And cursorily dismissed little Elly as a thorough-paced impostor.
His pupil said neither yea nor nay to that. He shrugged his shoulders, and expressed the view that we did not seem to be altogether sure what constituted actuality, nor yet, in consequence, what imposture. Perhaps the boundary line was not constant. Perhaps there were transitional stages between the two, grades of actuality within nature; nature being as she was, mute, not susceptible of valuation, and thus defying distinctions which in any case, it seemed to him, had a strongly moralizing flavour. What did Herr Settembrini think about “delusions”; which were a mixture of actuality and dream, perhaps less strange in nature than to our crude, everyday processes of thought? The mystery of life was literally bottomless. What wonder, then, if sometimes illusions arose—and so on and so forth, in our hero’s genial, confiding, loose and flowing style.
Herr Settembrini duly gave him a dressing-down, and did produce a temporary reaction of the conscience, even something like a promise to steer clear in the future of such abominations. “Have respect,” he adjured him, “for your humanity, Engineer! Confide in your God-given power of clear thought, and hold in abhorrence these luxations of the brain, these miasmas of the spirit! Delusions? The mystery of life? Caro mio! When the moral courage to make decisions and distinctions between reality and deception degenerates to that point, then there is an end of life, of judgment, of the creative deed: the process of decay sets in, moral scepsis, and does its deadly work.” Man, he went on to say, was the measure of things. His right to recognize and to distinguish between good and evil, reality and counterfeit, was indefeasible; woe to them who dared to lead him astray in his belief in this creative right. Better for them that a millstone be hanged about their necks and that they be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Hans Castorp nodded assent—and in fact did for a while keep aloof from all such undertakings. He heard that Dr. Krokowski had begun holding séances with Ellen Brand in his subterranean cabinet, to which certain chosen ones of the guests were invited. But he nonchalantly put aside the invitation to join them—naturally not without hearing from them and from Krokowski himself something about the success they were having. It appeared that there had been wild and arbitrary exhibitions of power, like those in Fräulein Kleefeld’s room: knockings on walls and table, the turning off of the lamp, and these as well as further manifestations were being systematically produced and investigated, with every possible safeguarding of their genuineness, after Comrade Krokowski had practised the approved technique and put little Elly into her hypnotic sleep. They had discovered that the process was facilitated by music; and on these evenings the gramophone was preempted by the circle and carried down into the basement. But the Czech Wenzel who operated it there was a not unmusical man, and would surely not injure or misuse the instrument; Hans Castorp might hand it over without misgiving. He even chose a suitable album of records, containing light music, dances, small overtures and suchlike tunable trifles. Little Elly made no demands on a higher art, and they served the purpose admirably.
To their accompaniment, Hans Castorp learned, a handkerchief had been lifted from the floor, of its own motion, or, rather, that of the “hidden hand” in its folds. The doctor’s wastepaper-basket had risen to the ceiling; the pendulum of a clock been alternately stopped and set going again “without anyone touching it,” a table-bell “taken” and rung—these and a good many other turbid and meaningless phenomena. The learned master of ceremonies was in the happy position of being able to characterize them by a Greek word, very scientific and impressive. They were, so he explained in his lectures and in private conversations, “telekinetic” phenomena, cases of movement from a distance; he associated them with a class of manifestations which were scientifically known as materializations, and toward which his plans and attempts with Elly Brand were directed.
He talked to them about biopsychical projections of subconscious complexes into the objective; about transactions of which the medial constitution, the somnambulic state, was to be regarded as the source; and which one might speak of as objectivated dream-concepts, in so far as they confirmed an ideoplastic property of nature, a power, which under certain conditions appertained to thought, of drawing substance to itself, and clothing itself in temporary reality. This substance streamed out from the body of the medium, and developed extraneously into biological, living end-organs, these being the agencies which had performed the extraordinary though meaningless feats they witnessed in Dr. Krokowski’s laboratory. Under some conditions these agencies might be seen or touched, the limbs left their impression in wax or plaster. But sometimes the matter did not rest with such corporealization. Under certain conditions, human heads, faces, full-length phantoms manifested themselves before the eyes of the experimenters, even within certain limits entered into contact with them. And here Dr. Krokowski’s doctrine began, as it were, to squint; to look two ways at once. It took on a shifting and fluctuating character, like the method of treatment he had adopted in his exposition of the nature of love. It was no longer plain-sailing, scientific treatment of the objectively mirrored subjective content of the medium and her passive auxiliaries. It was a mixing in the game, at least sometimes, at least half and half, of entities from without and beyond. It dealt—at least possibly, if not quite admittedly—with the non-vital, with existences that took advantage of a ticklish, mysteriously and momentarily favouring chance to return to substantiality and show themselves to thair summoners—in brief, with the spiritualistic invocation of the departed.
Such manifestations it was that Comrade Krokowski, with the assistance of his followers, was latterly striving to produce; sturdily, with his ingratiating smile, challenging their cordial confidence, thoroughly at home, for his own person, in this questionable morass of the subhuman, and a born leader for the timid and compunctious in the regions where they now moved. He had laid himself out to develop and discipline the extraordinary powers of Ellen Brand and, from what Hans Castorp could hear, fortune smiled upon his efforts. Some of the party had felt the touch of materialized hands. Lawyer Paravant had received out of transcendency a sounding slap on the cheek, and had countered with scientific alacrity, yes, had even eagerly turned the other cheek, heedless of his quality as gentleman, jurist, and onetime member of a duelling corps, all of which would have constrained him to quite a different line of conduct had the blow been of terrestrial origin. A. K. Ferge, that good-natured martyr, to whom all “highbrow” thought was foreign, had one evening held such a spirit hand in his own, and established by sense of touch that it was whole and well shaped. His clasp had been heartfelt to the limits of respect; but it had in some indescribable fashion escaped him. A considerable period elapsed, some two months and a half of biweekly sittings, before a hand of otherworldly origin, a young man’s hand, it seemed, came fingering over the table, in the red glow of the paper-shaded lamp, and, plain to the eyes of all the circle, left its imprint in an earthenware basin full of flour. And eight days later a troop of Krokowski’s workers, Herr Albin, Frau Stöhr, the Magnuses, burst in upon Hans Castorp where he sat dozing toward midnight in the biting cold of his balcony, and with every mark of distracted and feverish delight, their words tumbling over one another, announced that they had seen Elly’s Holger—he had showed his head over the shoulder of the little medium, and had in truth “beautiful brown, brown curls.” He had smiled with such unforgettable, gentle melancholy as he vanished!
Hans Castorp found this lofty melancholy scarcely consonant with Holger’s other pranks, his impish and simple-minded tricks, the anything but gently melancholy slap he had given Lawyer Paravant and the latter had pocketed up. It was apparent that one must not demand consistency of conduct. Perhaps they were dealing with a temperament like that of the little hunchbacked man in the nursery song, with his pathetic wickedness and his craving for intercession. Holger’s admirers had no thought for all this. What they were determined to do was to persuade Hans Castorp to rescind his decree; positively, now that everything was so brilliantly in train, he must be present at the next séance. Elly, it seemed, in her trance had promised to materialize the spirit of any departed person the circle chose.
Any departed person they chose? Hans Castorp still showed reluctance. But that it might be any person they chose occupied his mind to such an extent that in the next three days he came to a different conclusion. Strictly speaking it was not three days, but as many minutes, which brought about the change. One evening, in a solitary hour in the music-room, he played again the record that bore the imprint of Valentine’s personality, to him so profoundly moving. He sat there listening to the soldierly prayer of the hero departing for the field of honour:
“If God should summon me away,
Thee I would watch and guard alway,
O Marguerite!”
and, as ever, Hans Castorp was filled by emotion at the sound, an emotion which this time circumstances magnified and as it were condensed into a longing; he thought: “Barren and sinful or no, it would be a marvellous thing, a darling adventure! And he, as I know him, if he had anything to do with it, would not mind.” He recalled that composed and liberal “Certainly, of course,” he had heard in the darkness of the X-ray laboratory, when he asked Joachim if he might commit certain optical indiscretions.
The next morning he announced his willingness to take part in the evening séance; and half an hour after dinner joined the group of familiars of the uncanny, who, unconcernedly chatting, took their way down to the basement. They were all old inhabitants, the oldest of the old, or at least of long standing in the group, like the Czech Wenzel and Dr. Ting-Fu; Ferge and Wehsal, Lawyer Paravant, the ladies Kleefeld and Levi, and, in addition, those persons who had come to his balcony to announce to him the apparition of Holger’s head, and of course the medium, Elly Brand.
That child of the north was already in the doctor’s charge when Hans Castorp passed through the door with the visiting-card: the doctor, in his black tunic, his arm laid fatherly across her shoulder, stood at the foot of the stair leading from the basement floor and welcomed the guests, and she with him. Everybody greeted everybody else, with surprising hilarity and expansiveness—it seemed to be the common aim to keep the meeting pitched in a key free from all solemnity or constraint. They talked in loud, cheery voices, poked each other in the ribs, showed everyway how perfectly at ease they felt. Dr. Krokowski’s yellow teeth kept gleaming in his beard with every hearty, confidence-inviting smile; he repeated his “Welcome” to each arrival, with special fervour in Hans Castorp’s case—who, for his part, said nothing at all, and whose manner was hesitating. “Courage, comrade,” Krokowski’s energetic and hospitable nod seemed to be saying, as he gave the young man’s hand an almost violent squeeze. No need here to hang the head, here is no cant nor sanctimoniousness, nothing but the blithe and manly spirit of disinterested research. But Hans Castorp felt none the better for all this pantomime. He summed up the resolve formed by the memories of the X-ray cabinet; but the train of thought hardly fitted with his present frame; rather he was reminded of the peculiar and unforgettable mixture of feelings—nervousness, pridefulness, curiosity, disgust, and awe—with which, years ago, he had gone with some fellow students, a little tipsy, to a brothel in Sankt-Pauli.
As everyone was now present, Dr. Krokowski selected two controls—they were, for the evening, Frau Magnus and the ivory Levi—to preside over the physical examination of the medium, and they withdrew to the next room. Hans Castorp and the remaining nine persons awaited in the consulting-room the issue of the austerely scientific procedure—which was invariably without any result whatever. The room was familiar to him from the hours he had spent here, behind Joachim’s back, in conversation with the psychoanalyst. It had a writing-desk, an armchair and an easy-chair for patients on the left, the window side; a library of reference-books on shelves to right and left of the side door, and in the further right-hand corner a chaise-longue, covered with oilcloth, separated by a folding screen from the desk and chairs. The doctor’s glass instrument-case also stood in that corner, in another was a bust of Hippocrates, while an engraving of Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson hung above the gas fireplace on the right side wall. It was an ordinary consulting-room, like thousands more; but with certain temporary special arrangements. The round mahogany table whose place was in the centre of the room, beneath the electric chandelier, upon the red carpet that covered most of the floor, had been pushed forward against the left-hand wall, beneath the plaster bust; while a smaller table, covered with a cloth and bearing a red-shaped lamp, had been set obliquely near the gas fire, which was lighted and giving out a dry heat. Another electric bulb, covered with red and further with a black gauze veil, hung above the table. On this table stood certain notorious objects: two table-bells, of different patterns, one to shake and one to press, the plate with flour, and the paper-basket. Some dozen chairs of different shapes and sizes surrounded the table in a half-circle, one end of which was formed by the foot of the chaise-longue, the other ending near the centre of the room, beneath the ceiling light. Here, in the neighbourhood of the last chair, and about halfway to the door, stood the gramophone; the album of light trifles lay on a chair next it. Such were the arrangements. The red lamps were not yet lighted, the ceiling light was shedding an effulgence as of common day, for the window, above the narrow end of the writing-desk, was shrouded in a dark covering, with its openwork cream-coloured blind hanging down in front of it.
After ten minutes the doctor returned with the three ladies. Elly’s outer appearance had changed: she was not wearing her ordinary clothes, but a night-gownlike garment of white crêpe, girdled about the waist by a cord, leaving her slender arms bare. Her maidenly breasts showed themselves soft and unconfined beneath this garment, it appeared she wore little else.
They all hailed her gaily. “Hullo, Elly! How lovely she looks again! A perfect fairy! Very pretty, my angel!” She smiled at their compliments to her attire, probably well knowing it became her. “Preliminary control negative,” Krokowski announced. “Let’s get to work, then, comrades,” he said. Hans Castorp, conscious of being disagreeably affected by the doctor’s manner of address, was about to follow the example of the others, who, shouting, chattering, slapping each other on the shoulders, were settling themselves in the circle of chairs, when the doctor addressed him personally.
“My friend,” said he, “you are a guest, perhaps a novice, in our midst, and therefore I should like, this evening, to pay you special honour. I confide to you the control of the medium. Our practice is as follows.” He ushered the young man toward the end of the circle next the chaise-longue and the screen, where Elly was seated on an ordinary cane chair, with her face turned rather toward the entrance door than to the centre of the room. He himself sat down close in front of her in another such chair, and clasped her hands, at the same time holding both her knees firmly between his own. “Like that,” he said, and gave his place to Hans Castorp, who assumed the same position. “You’ll grant that the arrest is complete. But we shall give you assistance too. Fräulein Kleefeld, may I implore you to lend us your aid?” And the lady thus courteously and exotically entreated came and sat down, clasping Elly’s fragile wrists, one in each hand.
Unavoidable that Hans Castorp should look into the face of the young prodigy, fixed as it was so immediately before his own. Their eyes met—but Elly’s slipped aside and gazed with natural self-consciousness in her lap. She was smiling a little affectedly, with her lips slightly pursed, and her head on one side, as she had at the wineglass séance. And Hans Castorp was reminded, as he saw her, of something else: the look on Karen Karstedt’s face, a smile just like that, when she stood with Joachim and himself and regarded the unmade grave in the Dorf graveyard.
The circle had sat down. They were thirteen persons; not counting the Czech Wenzel, whose function it was to serve Polyhymnia, and who accordingly, after putting his instrument in readiness, squatted with his guitar at the back of the circle. Dr. Krokowski sat beneath the chandelier, at the other end of the row, after he had turned on both red lamps with a single switch, and turned off the centre light. A darkness, gently aglow, lay over the room, the corners and distances were obscured. Only the surface of the little table and its immediate vicinity were illumined by a pale rosy light. During the next few minutes one scarcely saw one’s neighbours; then their eyes slowly accustomed themselves to the darkness and made the best use of the light they had—which was slightly reinforced by the small dancing flames from the chimneypiece.
The doctor devoted a few words to this matter of the lighting, and excused its lacks from the scientific point of view. They must take care not to interpret it in the sense of deliberate mystification and scene-setting. With the best will in the world they could not, unfortunately, have more light for the present. The nature of the powers they were to study would not permit of their being developed with white light, it was not possible thus to produce the desired conditions. This was a fixed postulate, with which they must for the present reckon. Hans Castorp, for his part, was quite satisfied. He liked the darkness, it mitigated the queerness of the situation. And in its justification he recalled the darkness of the X-ray room, and how they had collected themselves, and “washed their eyes” in it, before they “saw.”
The medium, Dr. Krokowski went on, obviously addressing his words to Hans Castorp in particular, no longer needed to be put in the trance by the physician. She fell into it herself, as the control would see, and once she had done so, it would be her guardian spirit Holger, who spoke with her voice, to whom, and not to her, they should address themselves. Further, it was an error, which might result in failure, to suppose that one must bend mind or will upon the expected phenomena. On the contrary, a slightly diffused attention, with conversation, was recommended. And Hans Castorp was cautioned, whatever else he did, not to lose control of the medium’s extremities.
“We will now form the chain,” finished Dr. Krokowski; and they did so, laughing when they could not find each other’s hands in the dark. Dr. Ting-Fu, sitting next Hermine Kleefeld, laid his right hand on her shoulder and reached his left to Herr Wehsal, who came next. Beyond him were Herr and Frau Magnus, then A. K. Ferge; who, if Hans Castorp mistook not, held the hand of the ivory Levi on his right—and so on. “Music!” the doctor commanded, and behind him his neighbour the Czech set the instrument in motion and placed the needle on the disk. “Talk!” Krokowski bade them, and as the first bars of an overture by Millöcker were heard, they obediently bestirred themselves to make conversation, about nothing at all: the winter snowfall, the last course at dinner, a newly arrived patient, a departure, “wild” or otherwise—artificially sustained, half drowned by the music, and lapsing now and again. So some minutes passed.
The record had not run out before Elly shuddered violently. A trembling ran through her, she sighed, the upper part of her body sank forward so that her forehead rested against Hans Castorp’s, and her arms, together with those of her guardians, began to make extraordinary pumping motions to and fro.
“Trance,” announced the Kleefeld. The music stopped, so also the conversation. In the abrupt silence they heard the baritone drawl of the doctor. “Is Holger present?”
Elly shivered again. She swayed in her chair. Then Hans Castorp felt her press his two hands with a quick, firm pressure.
“She pressed my hands,” he informed them.
“He,” the doctor corrected him. “He pressed your hands. He is present. Wel‑come, Holger,” he went on with unction. “Wel‑come, friend and fellow comrade, heartily, heartily wel‑come. And remember, when you were last with us,” he went on, and Hans Castorp remarked that he did not use the form of address common to the civilized West—“you promised to make visible to our mortal eyes some dear departed, whether brother soul or sister soul, whose name should be given to you by our circle. Are you willing? Do you feel yourself able to perform what you promised?”
Again Elly shivered. She sighed and shivered as the answer came. Slowly she carried her hands and those of her guardians to her forehead, where she let them rest. Then close to Hans Castorp’s ear she whispered: “Yes.”
The warm breath immediately at his ear caused in our friend that phenomenon of the epidermis popularly called gooseflesh, the nature of which the Hofrat had once explained to him. We mention this in order to make a distinction between the psychical and the purely physical. There could scarcely be talk of fear, for our hero was in fact thinking: “Well, she is certainly biting off more than she can chew!” But then he was straightway seized with a mingling of sympathy and consternation springing from the confusing and illusory circumstance that a blood-young creature, whose hands he held in his, had just breathed a yes into his ear.
“He said yes,” he reported, and felt embarrassed.
“Very well, then, Holger,” spoke Dr. Krokowski. “We shall take you at your word. We are confident you will do your part. The name of the dear departed shall shortly be communicated to you. Comrades,” he turned to the gathering, “out with it, now! Who has a wish? Whom shall our friend Holger show us?”
A silence followed. Each waited for the other to speak. Individually they had probably all questioned themselves, in these last few days; they knew whither their thoughts tended. But the calling back of the dead, or the desirability of calling them back, was a ticklish matter, after all. At bottom, and boldly confessed, the desire does not exist; it is a misapprehension precisely as impossible as the thing itself, as we should soon see if nature once let it happen. What we call mourning for our dead is perhaps not so much grief at not being able to call them back as it is grief at not being able to want to do so.
This was what they were all obscurely feeling; and since it was here simply a question not of an actual return, but merely a theatrical staging of one, in which they should only see the departed, no more, the thing seemed humanly unthinkable; they were afraid to look into the face of him or her of whom they thought, and each one would willingly have resigned his right of choice to the next. Hans Castorp too, though there was echoing in his ears that large-hearted “Of course, of course” out of the past, held back, and at the last moment was rather inclined to pass the choice on. But the pause was too long; he turned his head toward their leader, and said, in a husky voice: “I should like to see my departed cousin, Joachim Ziemssen.”
That was a relief to them all. Of those present, all excepting Dr. Ting-Fu, Wenzel, and the medium had known the person asked for. The others, Ferge, Wehsal, Herr Albin, Paravant, Herr and Frau Magnus, Frau Stöhr, Fräulein Levi, and the Kleefeld, loudly announced their satisfaction with the choice. Krokowski himself nodded well pleased, though his relations with Joachim had always been rather cool, owing to the latter’s reluctance in the matter of psychoanalysis.
“Very good indeed,” said the doctor. “Holger, did you hear? The person named was a stranger to you in life. Do you know him in the Beyond, and are you prepared to lead him hither?”
Immense suspense. The sleeper swayed, sighed, and shuddered. She seemed to be seeking, to be struggling; falling this way and that, whispering now to Hans Castorp, now to the Kleefeld, something they could not catch. At last he received from her hands the pressure that meant yes. He announced himself to have done so, and—
“Very well, then,” cried Dr. Krokowski. “To work, Holger! Music,” he cried. “Conversation!” and he repeated the injunction that no fixing of the attention, no strained anticipation was in place, but only an unforced and hovering expectancy.
And now followed the most extraordinary hours of our hero’s young life. Yes, though his later fate is unclear, though at a certain moment in his destiny he will vanish from our eyes, we may assume them to have been the most extraordinary he ever spent.
They were hours—more than two of them, to be explicit, counting in a brief intermission in the efforts on Holger’s part which now began, or rather, on the girl Elly’s—of work so hard and so prolonged that they were all toward the end inclined to be fainthearted and despair of any result; out of pure pity, too, tempted to resign an attempt which seemed pitilessly hard, and beyond the delicate strength of her upon whom it was laid. We men, if we do not shirk our humanity, are familiar with an hour of life when we know this almost intolerable pity, which, absurdly enough no one else can feel, this rebellious “Enough, no more!” which is wrung from us, though it is not enough, and cannot or will not be enough, until it comes somehow or other to its appointed end. The reader knows we speak of our husband- and fatherhood, of the act of birth, which Elly’s wrestling did so unmistakably resemble that even he must recognize it who had never passed through this experience, even our young Hans Castorp; who, not having shirked life, now came to know, in such a guise, this act, so full of organic mysticism. In what a guise! To what an end! Under what circumstances! One could not regard as anything less than scandalous the sights and sounds in this red-lighted lying-in chamber, the maidenly form of the pregnant one, bare-armed, in flowing night-robe; and then by contrast the ceaseless and senseless gramophone music, the forced conversation which the circle kept up at command, the cries of encouragement they ever and anon directed at the struggling one: “Hullo, Holger! Courage, man! It’s coming, just keep it up, let it come, that’s the way!” Nor do we except the person and situation of the “husband”—if we may regard in that light our young friend, who had indeed formed such a wish—sitting there, with the knees of the little “mother” between his own, holding in his her hands, which were as wet as once little Leila’s, so that he had constantly to be renewing his hold, not to let them slip.
For the gas fire in the rear of the circle radiated great heat.
Mystical, consecrate? Ah, no, it was all rather noisy and vulgar, there in the red glow, to which they had now so accustomed their eyes that they could see the whole room fairly well. The music and shouting were so like the revivalistic methods of the Salvation Army, they even made Hans Castorp think of the comparison, albeit he had never attended at a celebration by these cheerful zealots. It was in no eerie or ghostly sense that the scene affected the sympathetic one as mystic or mysterious, as conducing to solemnity; it was rather natural, organic—by virtue of the intimate association we have already referred to. Elly’s exertions came in waves, after periods of rest, during which she hung sidewise from her chair in a totally relaxed and inaccessible condition, described by Dr. Krokowski as “deep trance.” From this she would start up with a moan, throw herself about, strain and wrestle with her captors, whisper feverish, disconnected words, seem to be trying, with sidewise, jerking movements, to expel something; she would gnash her teeth, once even fastened them in Hans Castorp’s sleeve.
This had gone on for more than an hour when the leader found it to the interest of all concerned to grant a brief intermission. The Czech Wenzel, who had introduced an enlivening variation by closing the gramophone and striking up very expertly on his guitar, laid that instrument aside. They all drew a long breath and broke the circle. Dr. Krokowski strode over to the wall and switched on the ceiling lamp; the light flashed up glaringly, making them all blink. Elly, bent forward, her face almost in her lap, slumbered. She was busy too, absorbed in the oddest activity, with which the others appeared familiar, but which Hans Castorp watched with attentive wonder. For some minutes together she moved the hollow of her hand to and fro in the region of her hips: carried the hand away from her body and then with scooping, raking motion drew it towards her, as though gathering something and pulling it in. Then, with a series of starts, she came to herself, blinked in her turn at the light with sleep-stiffened eyes and smiled.
She smiled affectedly, rather remotely. In truth, their solicitude seemed wasted; she did not appear exhausted by her efforts. Perhaps she retained no memory of them. She sat down in the chair reserved for patients, by the writing-desk near the window, between the desk and the screen about the chaise-longue; gave the chair a turn so that she could support her elbow on the desk and look into the room; and remained thus, receiving their sympathetic glances and encouraging nods, silent during the whole intermission, which lasted fifteen minutes.
It was a beneficent pause, relaxed, and filled with peaceful satisfaction in respect of work already accomplished. The lids of cigarette-cases snapped, the men smoked comfortably, and standing in groups discussed the prospects of the séance. They were far from despairing or anticipating a negative result to their efforts. Signs enough were present to prove such doubting uncalled for. Those sitting near the doctor, at the far end of the row, agreed that they had several times felt, quite unmistakably, that current of cool air which regularly whenever manifestations were under way streamed in a definite direction from the person of the medium. Others had seen light-phenomena, white spots, moving conglobations of forces showing themselves at intervals against the screen. In short, no faint-heartedness! No looking backward now they had put their hands to the plough. Holger had given his word, they had no call to doubt that he would keep it.
Dr. Krokowski signed for the resumption of the sitting. He led Elly back to her martyrdom and seated her, stroking her hair. The others closed the circle. All went as before. Hans Castorp suggested that he be released from his post of first control, but Dr. Krokowski refused. He said he laid great stress on excluding, by immediate contact, every possibility of misleading manipulation on the part of the medium. So Hans Castorp took up again his strange position vis-à-vis to Elly; the white light gave place to rosy twilight, the music began again, the pumping motions; this time it was Hans Castorp who announced “trance.” The scandalous lying-in proceeded.
With what distressful difficulty! It seemed unwilling to take its course—how could it? Madness! What maternity was this, what delivery, of what should she be delivered? “Help, help,” the child moaned, and her spasms seemed about to pass over into that dangerous and unavailing stage obstetricians call eclampsia. She called at intervals on the doctor, that he should put his hands on her. He did so, speaking to her encouragingly. The magnetic effect, if such it was, strengthened her to further efforts.
Thus passed the second hour, while the guitar was strummed or the gramophone gave out the contents of the album of light music into the twilight to which they had again accustomed their vision. Then came an episode, introduced by Hans Castorp. He supplied a stimulus by expressing an idea, a wish; a wish he had cherished from the beginning, and might perhaps have profitably expressed before now. Elly was lying with her face on their joined hands, in “deep trance.” Herr Wenzel was just changing or reversing the record when our friend summoned his resolution and said he had a suggestion to make, of no great importance, yet perhaps—possibly—of some avail. He had—that is, the house possessed among its volumes of records—a certain song, from Gounod’s Faust, “Valentine’s Prayer,” baritone with orchestral accompaniment, very appealing. He, the speaker, thought they might try the record.
“Why that particular one?” the doctor asked out of the darkness.
“A question of mood. Matter of feeling,” the young man responded. The mood of the piece in question was peculiar to itself, quite special—he suggested they should try it. Just possible, not out of the question, that its mood and atmosphere might shorten their labours.
“Is the record here?” the doctor inquired.
No, but Hans Castorp could fetch it at once.
“What are you thinking of?” Krokowski promptly repelled the idea. What? Hans Castorp thought he might go and come again and take up his business where he had left it off? There spoke the voice of utter inexperience. Oh, no, it was impossible. It would upset everything, they would have to begin all over. Scientific exactitude forbade them to think of any such arbitrary going in and out. The door was locked. He, the doctor, had the key in his pocket. In short, if the record was not now in the room—
He was still talking when the Czech threw in, from the gramophone: “The record is here.”
“Here?” Hans Castorp asked.
“Yes, here it is, Faust, ‘Valentine’s Prayer.’ ” It had been stuck by mistake in the album of light music, not in the green album of arias, where it belonged; quite by chance—or mismanagement or carelessness, in any case luckily—it had partaken of the general topsy-turvyness, and here it was, needing only to be put on.
What had Hans Castorp to say to that? Nothing. It was the doctor who remarked: “So much the better,” and some of the others chimed in. The needle scraped, the lid was put down. The male voice began to choral accompaniment: “Now the parting hour has come.”
No one spoke. They listened. Elly, as the music resumed, renewed her efforts. She started up convulsively, pumped, carried the slippery hands to her brow. The record went on, came to the middle part, with skipping rhythm, the part about war and danger, gallant, god-fearing, French. After that the finale, in full volume, the orchestrally supported refrain of the beginning.
“O Lord of heaven, hear me pray …”
Hans Castorp had work with Elly. She raised herself, drew in a straggling breath, sighed a long, long, outward sigh, sank down and was still. He bent over her in concern, and as he did so, he heard Frau Stöhr say, in a high, whining pipe: “Ziemssen!”
He did not look up. A bitter taste came in his mouth. He heard another voice, a deep, cold voice, saying: “I’ve seen him a long time.”
The record had run off, with a last accord of horns. But no one stopped the machine. The needle went on scratching in the silence, as the disk whirred round. Then Hans Castorp raised his head, and his eyes went, without searching, the right way.
There was one more person in the room than before. There in the background, where the red rays lost themselves in gloom, so that the eye scarcely reached thither, between writing-desk and screen, in the doctor’s consulting-chair, where in the intermission Elly had been sitting, Joachim sat. It was the Joachim of the last days, with hollow, shadowy cheeks, warrior’s beard and full, curling lips. He sat leaning back, one leg crossed over the other. On his wasted face, shaded though it was by his head-covering, was plainly seen the stamp of suffering, the expression of gravity and austerity which had beautified it. Two folds stood on his brow, between the eyes, that lay deep in their bony cavities; but there was no change in the mildness of the great dark orbs, whose quiet, friendly gaze sought out Hans Castorp, and him alone. That ancient grievance of the outstanding ears was still to be seen under the head-covering, his extraordinary head-covering, which they could not make out. Cousin Joachim was not in mufti. His sabre seemed to be leaning against his leg, he held the handle, one thought to distinguish something like a pistol-case in his belt. But that was no proper uniform he wore. No colour, no decorations; it had a collar like a litewka jacket, and side pockets. Somewhere low down on the breast was a cross. His feet looked large, his legs very thin, they seemed to be bound or wound as for the business of sport more than war. And what was it, this headgear? It seemed as though Joachim had turned an army cook-pot upside-down on his head, and fastened it under his chin with a band. Yet it looked quite properly warlike, like an old-fashioned foot-soldier, perhaps.
Hans Castorp felt Ellen Brand’s breath on his hands. And near him the Kleefeld’s rapid breathing. Other sound there was none, save the continued scraping of the needle on the rundown, rotating record, which nobody stopped. He looked at none of his company, would hear or see nothing of them; but across the hands and head on his knee leaned far forward and stared through the red darkness at the guest in the chair. It seemed one moment as though his stomach would turn over within him. His throat contracted and a four- or fivefold sob went through and through him. “Forgive me!” he whispered; then his eyes overflowed, he saw no more.
He heard breathless voices: “Speak to him!” he heard Dr. Krokowski’s baritone voice summon him, formally, cheerily, and repeat the request. Instead of complying, he drew his hands away from beneath Elly’s face, and stood up.
Part 37 of 39