UNIVERSAL >- <ou CL OQ 212655 5 UNIVERSAL Gift of YALE UNIVERSITY With the aid of the ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION 1949 Also by Thomas AMlann FICTION The Beloved Returns ( Lotte in Weimar ) Buddenbrooks Doctor Faustus Joseph and His Brothers THE TALES OF JACOB YOUNG JOSEPH JOSEPH IN EGYPT JOSEPH THE PROVIDER Royal Highness Stories of Three Decades The Tables of the Law The Transposed Heads NON-FICTION Essays of Three Decades An Exchange of Letters Listen, Germany! Order of the Day , Political Essays and Speeches of Two Decades These are Borzoi Books published by Alfred A. Knopf in New York The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann THE | MAGIC MOUNTAIN* [DER ZAUBERBERG] Translated from the German by H. T. LOWE-PORTER .FRED A. KNOPF NEW YORK 1 9 4-9 ORIGINALLY ISSUED AS Per ^auberberg COP YRIGHXC& 9 2 4, BY S. FISCHER VERLAG BERLIN & THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK, & PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. Copyright 1927 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. First Published May 6, 1927 in Two Volumes Reset and Printed from New Plates, February, 1944 Second Printing, April 1945 Third Printing, June 1946 Fourth Printing, December 1947 Fifth Printing, October 1948 Sixth Printing, June 1949 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TRANSLATOR’S NOTE The translator wishes to thank, in this place, a number of scholars, authorities in the various special fields entered by The Magic Mountain , without whose help the version in all humility here offered to English readers, lame as it is, nTtlst have been more lack- ing still. That they gave so generously is not to be interpreted otherwise than as a tribute to a work of genius. But with all their help, the great difficulty remained: the violet had to be cast into the crucible, the organic work of art to be remoulded in another tongue. Shelley’s figure is perhaps not entirely apt here. Yet, since in the creative act word and thought are indivisible, the task was seen to be one before which artists would shrink and logical minds recoil. But of the author of The Magic Mountain it can be said in a special sense that he has looked into the seeds of Time. It was in- dispensable that we should read his book; intolerable that English readers should be barred from a work whose spirit, whatever its vehicle, is universal. It seemed better that an English version should be done ill than not done at all. H. T. L.-P. Foreword The story of Hans Castorp, which we would here set forth, not on his own account, for in him the reader will make acquaintance with a simple-minded though pleasing young man, but for the sake of the story itself, which seems to us highly worth telling — though it must needs be borne in mind, in Hans Castorp’s behalf, that it is his story, and not every story happens to everybody — this story, we say, belongs to the long ago; is already, so to speak, covered with historic mould, and unquestionably to be presented in the tense best suited to a narrative out of the depth of the past. That should be no drawback to a story, but rather the reverse. Since histories must be in the past, then the more past the better, it would seem, for them in their character as histories, and for him, the teller of them, rounding wizard of times gone by. With this story, moreover, it stands as it does to-day with human beings, not least among them writers of tales: it is far older than its vears; its age may not be measured by length of days, nor the weight of time on its head reckoned by the rising or setting of suns. In a word, the degree of its antiquity has noways to do with the pas- sage of time — in which statement the author intentionally touches upon the strange and questionable double nature of that riddling element. But we would not wilfully obscure a plain matter. The exag- gerated pastness of our narrative is due to its taking place before the epoch when a certain crisis shattered its wav through life and consciousness and left a deep chasm behind. It takes place — or, rather, deliberately to avoid the present tense, it took place, and had taken place — in the long ago, in the old days, the days of the world before the Great War, in the beginning of which so much began that has scarcely yet left off beginning. Yes, it took place before that; yet not so long before. Is not the pastness of the past the profounder, the completer, the more legendary, the more im- mediately before the present it falls? More than that, our story has, of its own nature, something of the legend about it now and again. VI FOREWORD We shall tell it at length, thoroughly, in detail — for when did a narrative seem too long or too short by reason of the actual time or space it took up? We do not fear being called meticulous, in- clining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting. Not all in a minute, then, will the narrator be finished with the story of our Hans. The seven days of a week will not suffice, no, nor seven months either. Best not too soon make too plain how much mortal time must pass over his head while he sits spun round in his spell. Heaven forbid it should be seven years! And now we begin. CONTENTS CHAPTER I ARRIVAL 3 NUMBER 34 IO IN THE RESTAURANT I 3 CHAPTER II OF THE CHRISTENING BASIN, AND OF GRANDFATHER IN HIS TWO- FOLD GUISE 19 AT TIENAPPELS’, AND OF YOUNG HANS’S MORAL STATE 28 CHAPTER III DRAWING THE VEIL 38 BREAKFAST 40 BANTER. VIATICUM. INTERRUPTED MIRTH 47 SATANA 5 * MENTAL GYMNASTIC 65 A WORD TOO MUCH JO OF COURSE, A FEMALE! 74 HERR ALBIN 78 SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS THAT TOUCH OUR HONOUR 8 1 CONTENTS viii CHAPTER IV NECESSARY PURCHASES 93 EXCURSUS ON THE SENSE OF TIME 102 HE PRACTISES HIS FRENCH IO5 POLITICALLY SUSPECT I IO HIPPE I I 5 ANALYSIS I24 DOUBTS AND CONSIDERATIONS I 3 I TABLE-TALK 1 34 MOUNTING MISGIVINGS. OF THE TWO GRANDFATHERS, AND THE BOAT-RIDE IN THE TWILIGHT 141 THE THERMOMETER l6l CHAPTER V SOUP-EVERLASTING 1 8 3 SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT 203 FREEDOM 219 WHIMS OF MERCURIUS 225 ENCYCLOPEDIC 236 HUMAN IORA 25 I RESEARCH 26 7 THE DANCE OF DEATH 286 WALPURGIS-NIGHT 3 2 2 CHAPTER VI CHANGES 344 367 A NEW-COMER CONTENTS IX OF THE CITY OF GOD, AND DELIVERANCE BY EVIL 386 CHOLER. AND WORSE 413 AN ATTACK, AND A REPULSE 425 OPERA T 1 ONES SPIRITUALES 44O SNOW 469 A SOLDIER, AND BRAVE 498 CHAPTER VII BY THE OCEAN OF TIME 54 1 MYNHEER PEEPERKORN 548 VINGT ET UN 556 mynheer peeperkorn ( Continued ) 574 MYNHEER PEEPERKORN ( C07iclusi07l ) 6 12 THE GREAT GOD DUMPS 624 FULLNESS OF HARMONY 635 HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE 653 HYSTERICA PASSIO 68 1 THE THUNDERBOLT J06 The Magic Mountain CHAPTER I Arrival An unassuming young man was travelling, in midsummer, from his native city of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of the Grisons, on a three weeks’ visit. From Hamburg to Davos is a long journey — too long, indeed, for so brief a stay. It crosses all sorts of country; goes up hill and down dale, descends from the plateau of Southern Germany to the shore of Lake Constance, over its bounding waves and on across marshes once thought to be bottomless. At this point the route, which has been so far over trunk-lines, gets cut up. There are stops and formalities. At Rorschach, in Swiss territory, you take train again, but only as far as Landquart, a small Alpine station, where you have to change. Here, after a long and windy wait in a spot devoid of charm, you mount a nar- row-gauge train; and as the small but very powerful engine gets under way, there begins the thrilling part of the journey, a steep and steady climb that seems never to come to an end. For the sta- tion of Landquart lies at a relatively low altitude, but now the wild and rocky route pushes grimly onward into the Alps themselves. Hans Castorp — such was the young man’s name — sat alone in his little grey-upholstered compartment, with his alligator-skin hand-bag, a present from his uncle and guardian, Consul Tienappel — let us get the introductions over with at once — his travelling- rug, and his winter overcoat swinging on its hook. The window was down, the afternoon grew cool, and he, a tender product of the sheltered life, had turned up the collar of his fashionably cut, silk-lined summer overcoat. Near him on the seat lay a paper- bound volume entitled Ocean Steamships ; earlier in the journey he had studied it off and on, but now it lay neglected, and the breath of the panting engine, streaming in, defiled its cover with particles of soot. Two days’ travel separated the youth — he was still too young to have thrust his roots down firmly into life — from his own THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 4 world, from all that he thought of as his own duties, interests, cares and prospects; far more than he had dreamed it would when he sat in the carriage on the way to the station. Space, rolling and re- volving between him and his native heath, possessed and wielded the powers we generally ascribe to time. From hour to hour it worked changes in him, like to those wrought by time, yet in a way even more striking. Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly. Such was the experience of young Hans Castorp. He had not meant to take the journey seriously or commit himself deeply to it; but to get it over quickly, since it had to be made, to return as he had gone, and to take up his life at the point where, for the mo- ment, he had had to lay it down. Only yesterday he had been en- compassed in the wonted circle of his thoughts, and entirely taken up by two matters: the examination he had just passed, and his approaching entrance into the firm of Tunder and Wilms, ship- builders, smelters, and machinists. With as much impatience as lay in his temperament to feel, he had discounted the next three weeks; but now it began to seem as though present circumstances required his entire attention, that it would not be at all the thing to take them too lightly. This being carried upward into regions where he had never be- fore drawn breath, and where he knew that unusual living condi- tions prevailed, such as could only be described as sparse or scanty — it began to work upon him, to fill him with a certain concern. Home and regular living lay not only far behind, they lay fathoms deep beneath him, and he continued to mount above them. Poised between them and the unknown, he asked himself how he was going to fare. Perhaps it had been ill-advised of him, born as he was a few feet above sea-level, to come immediately to these great heights, without stopping at least a day or so at some point in be- tween. He wished he were at the end of his journey; for once there he could begin to live as he would anywhere else, and not be re- minded by this continual climbing of the incongruous situation he found himself in. He looked out. The train wound in curves along the narrow pass; he could see the front carriages and the labouring engine vomiting great masses of brown, black, and greenish smoke, that floated away. Water roared in the abysses on the right; on the ARRIVAL 5 left, among rocks, dark fir-trees aspired toward a stone-grey sky. The train passed through pitch-black tunnels, and when daylight came again it showed wide chasms, with villages nestled in their depths. Then the pass closed in again; they wound along narrow defiles, with traces of snow in chinks and crannies. There were halts at wretched little shanties of stations; also at more important ones, which the train left in the opposite direction, making one lose the points of the compass. A magnificent succession of vistas opened before the awed eye, of the solemn, phantasmagorical world of towering peaks, into which their route wove and wormed itself: vistas that appeared and disappeared with each new winding of the path. Hans Castorp reflected that they must have got above the zone of shade-trees, also probably of song-birds; whereupon he felt such a sense of the impoverishment of life as gave him a slight attack of giddiness and nausea and made him put his hand over his eyes for a few seconds. It passed. He perceived that they had stopped climbing. The top of the col was reached; the train rolled smoothly along the level valley floor. It was about eight o’clock, and still daylight. A lake was visible in the distant landscape, its waters grey, its shores covered with black fir-forests that climbed the surrounding heights, thinned out, and gave place to bare, mist-wreathed rock. They stopped at a small station. Hans Castorp heard the name called out: it was “ Davos-Dorf.” Soon he would be at his journey’s end. And sud- denly, close to him, he heard a voice, the comfortable Hamburg voice of his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, saying: “ Hullo, there you are! Here’s where you get out! ” and peering through the window saw his cousin himself, standing below on the platform, in a brown ulster, bare-headed, and looking more robust than ever in his life before. He laughed and said again: “ Come along out, it’s all right! ” “ But I’m not there yet! ” said Hans Castorp, taken aback, and still seated. “ Oh, yes, you are. This is the village. It is nearer to the sana- torium from here. I have a carriage. Just give us your things.” And laughing, confused, in the excitement of arrival and meet- ing, Hans Castorp reached bag, overcoat, the roll with stick and umbrella, and finally Ocean Steamships out of the window. Then he ran down the narrow corridor and sprang out upon the plat- form to greet his cousin properly. The meeting took place with- out exuberance, as between people of traditional coolness and re- serve. Strange to say, the cousins had always avoided calling each other by their first names, simply because they were afraid of 6 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN showing too much feeling. And, as they could not well address each other by their last names, they confined themselves, by estab- lished custom, to the thou. A man in livery with a braided cap looked on while they shook hands, quickly, not without embarrassment, young Ziemssen in military position, heels together. Then he came forward to ask for Hans Castorp ’s luggage ticket; he was the concierge of the Inter- national Sanatorium Berghof, and would fetch the guest’s large trunk from the other station while the gentlemen drove directly up to supper. This man limped noticeably; and so, curiously enough, the first thing Hans Castorp said to his cousin was: “ Is that a war veteran? What makes him limp like that? ” “ War veteran! No fear! ” said Joachim, with some bitterness. “ He’s got it in his knee — or, rather, he had it — the knee-pan has been removed.” Hans Castorp bethought himself hastily. “ So that’s it? ” he said, and as he walked on turned his head and gave a quick glance back. “ But you can’t make me believe you’ve still got anything like that the matter with you! Why, you look as if you had just come from manoeuvres! ” And he looked sidelong at his cousin. Joachim was taller and broader than he, a picture of youthful vigour, and made for a uniform. He was of the very dark type which his blond-peopled country not seldom produces, and his already nut-brown skin was tanned almost to bronze. With his large, black eyes and small, dark moustache over the full, well- shaped mouth, he would have been distinctly handsome if his ears had not stood out. Up to a certain period they had been his only trouble in life. Now, however, he had others. Hans Castorp went on: “ You’re coming back down with me, aren’t you? I see no reason why not.” “ Back down with you? ” asked his cousin, and turned his large eyes full upon him. They had always been gentle, but in these five months they had taken on a tired, almost sad expression. “ When? ” “ Why, in three weeks.” “ Oh, yes, you are already on the way back home, in your thoughts,” answered Joachim. “ Wait a bit. You’ve only just come. Three weeks are nothing at all, to us up here — they look like a lot of time to you, because you are only up here on a visit, and three weeks is all you have. Get acclimatized first — it isn’t so easy, you’ll see. And the climate isn’t the only queer thing about us. You’re going to see some things you’ve never dreamed of — just ARRIVAL 7 wait. About me — it isn’t such smooth sailing as you think, you with your 4 going home in three weeks.’ That’s the class of ideas you have down below. Yes, I am brown, I know, but it is mostly snow-burning. It doesn’t mean much, as Behrens always says; he told me at the last regular examination it would take another half year, pretty certainly.” “ Half a year? Are you crazy? ” shouted Hans Castorp. They had climbed into the yellow cabriolet that stood in the stone-paved square in front of the shed-like station, and as the pair of brown horses started up, he flounced indignantly on the hard cushions. “ Half a year! You’ve been up here half a year already! Who’s got so much time to spend ” “ Oh, time — ! ” said Joachim, and nodded repeatedly, straight in front of him, paying his cousin’s honest indignation no heed. “ They make pretty free with a human being’s idea of time, up here. You wouldn’t believe it. Three weeks are just like a day to them. You’ll learn all about it,” he said, and added: “ One’s ideas get changed.” Hans Castorp regarded him earnestly as they drove. “ But seems to me you’ve made a splendid recovery,” he said, shaking his head. “ You really think so, don’t you? ” answered Joachim; “ I think I have too.” He drew himself up straighter against the cushions, but immediately relaxed again. “ Yes, I am better,” he explained, “ but I am not cured yet. In the left lobe, where there were rales, it only sounds harsh now, and that is not so bad; but lower down it is still very harsh, and there are rhonchi in the second intercostal space.” “ How learned you’ve got,” said Hans Castorp. “ Fine sort of learning! God knows I wish I’d had it sweated out of my system in the service,” responded Joachim. “ But I still have sputum,” he said, with a shoulder-shrug that was somehow indif- ferent and vehement both at once, and became him but ill. He half pulled out and showed to his cousin something he carried in the side pocket of his overcoat, next to Flans Castorp. It was a flat, curving bottle of bluish glass, with a metal cap. “ Most of us up here carry it,” he said, shoving it back. “ It even has a nickname; they make quite a joke of it. You are looking at the landscape? ” Hans Castorp was. “ Magnificent! ” he said. “ Think so? ” asked Joachim. They had driven for a space straight up the axis of the valley, along an irregularly built street that followed the line of the rail- way; then, turning to the left, they crossed the narrow tracks and 8 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN a watercourse, and now trotted up a high-road that mounted gently toward the wooded slopes. Before them rose a low, pro- jecting, meadow-like plateau, on which, facing south-west, stood a long building, with a cupola and so many balconies that from a distance it looked porous, like a sponge. In this building lights were beginning to show. It was rapidly growing dusk. The faint rose- colour that had briefly enlivened the overcast heavens was faded now, and there reigned the colourless, soulless, melancholy transi- tion-period that comes just before the onset of night. The popu- lous valley, extended and rather winding, now began to show lights everywhere, not only in the middle, but here and there on the slopes at either hand, particularly on the projecting right side, upon which buildings mounted in terrace formation. Paths ran up the sloping meadows to the left and lost themselves in the vague blackness of the pine forest. Behind them, where the valley nar- rowed to its entrance, the more distant ranges showed a cold, slaty blue. A wind had sprung up, and made perceptible the chill of evening. “ No, to speak frankly, I don’t find it so overpowering,” said Hans Castorp. “ Where are the glaciers, and the snow peaks, and the gigantic heights you hear about? These things aren’t very high, it seems to me.” “ Oh, yes, they are,” answered Joachim. “ You can see the tree line almost everywhere, it is very sharply defined; the fir-trees leave off, and after that there is absolutely nothing but bare rock. And up there to the right of the Schwarzhorn, that tooth-shaped peak, there is a glacier — can’t you see the blue? It is not very large, but it is a glacier right enough, the Skaletta. Piz Michel and Tinzen- horn, in the notch — you can’t see them from here — have snow all the year round.” “ Eternal snow,” said Hans Castorp. “ Eternal snow, if you like. Yes, that’s all very high. But we are frightfully high ourselves: sixteen hundred metres above sea-level. That’s why the peaks don’t seem any higher.” “ Yes, what a climb that was! I was scared to death, I can tell you. Sixteen hundred metres — that is over five thousand feet, as I reckon it. I’ve never been so high up in my life.” And Hans Ca- storp took in a deep, experimental breath of the strange air. It was fresh, and that was all. It had no perfume, no content, no humidity; it breathed in easily, and held for him no associations. “ Wonderful air,” he remarked, politely. “ Yes, the atmosphere is famous. But the place doesn’t look its best to-night. Sometimes it makes a much better impression — es- ARRIVAL 9 pecially when there is snow. But you can get sick of looking at it. All of us up here are frightfully fed up, you can imagine,” said Joachim, and twisted his mouth into an expression of disgust that was as unlike him as the shoulder-shrug. It looked irritable, dis- proportionate. “You have such a queer way of talking,” said Hans Castorp. “ Have I? ” said Joachim, concerned, and turned to look at his cousin. “ Oh, no, of course I don’t mean you really have — I suppose it just seemed so to me for the moment,” Hans Castorp hastened to assure him. It was the expression “ all of us up here,” which Joa- chim had used several times, that had somehow struck him as strange and given him an uneasy feeling. “ Our sanatorium is higher up than the village, as you see,” went on Joachim. “ Fifty metres higher. In the prospectus it says a hun- dred, but it is really only fifty. The highest of the sanatoriums is the Schatzalp — you can’t see it from here. They have to bring their bodies down on bob-sleds in the winter, because the roads are blocked.” “ Their bodies? Oh, I see. Imagine! ” said Hans Castorp. And suddenly he burst out laughing, a violent, irrepressible laugh, which shook him all over and distorted his face, that was stiff with the cold wind, until it almost hurt. “ On bob-sleds! And you can tell it me just like that, in cold blood! You’ve certainly got pretty cynical in these five months.” “ Not at all,” answered Joachim, shrugging again. “ Why not? It’s all the same to them, isn’t it? But maybe we do get cynical up here. Behrens is a cynic himself — but he’s a great old bird after all, an old corps-student. He is a brilliant operator, they say. You will like him. Krokowski is the assistant — • devilishly clever article. They mention his activities specially, in the prospectus. He psy- cho-analyses the patients.” “ He what? Psycho-analyses — how disgusting! ” cried Hans Castorp; and now his hilarity altogether got the better of him. He could not stop. The psycho-analysis had been the finishing touch. He laughed so hard that the tears ran down his cheeks; he put up his hands to his face and rocked with laughter. Joachim laughed just as heartily — it seemed to do him good; and thus, in great good spirits, the young people climbed out of the wagon, which had slowly mounted the steep, winding drive and deposited them be- fore the portal of the International Sanatorium Berghof. IO THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN Number 34 On their right as they entered, between the main door and the inner one, was the porter’s lodge. An official of the French type, in the grey livery of the man at the station, was sitting at the tele- phone, reading the newspaper. He came out and led them through the well-lighted halls, on the left of which lay the reception-rooms. Hans Castorp peered in as he passed, but they were empty. Where, then, were the guests, he asked, and his cousin answered: “ In the rest-cure. I had leave to-night to go out and meet you. Otherwise I am always up in my balcony, after supper.” Hans Castorp came near bursting out again. “ What! You lie out on your balcony at night, in the damp? ” he asked, his voice shak- ing. “ Yes, that is the rule. From eight to ten. But come and see your room now, and get a wash.” They entered the lift — it was an electric one, worked by the Frenchman. As they went up, Hans Castorp wiped his eyes. “ I’m perfectly worn out with laughing,” he said, and breathed through his mouth. “ You’ve told me such a lot of crazy stuff — that about the psycho-analysis was the last straw. I suppose I am a bit relaxed from the journey. And my feet are cold — are yours? But my face burns so, it is really unpleasant. Do we eat now? I feel hungry. Is the food decent up here? ” They went noiselessly along the coco matting of the narrow corridor, which was lighted by electric lights in white glass shades set in the ceiling. The walls gleamed with hard white enamel paint. They had a glimpse of a nursing sister in a white cap, and eye- glasses on a cord that ran behind her ear. She had the look of a Protestant sister — that is to say, one working without a real vo- cation and burdened with restlessness and ennui. As they went along the corridor, Hans Castorp saw, beside two of the white- enamelled, numbered doors, certain curious, swollen-looking, bal- loon-shaped vessels with short necks. He did not think, at the moment, to ask what they were. “ Here you are,” said Joachim. “ I am next you on the right. The other side you have a Russian couple, rather loud and offensive, but it couldn’t be helped. Well, how do you like it? ” There were two doors, an outer and an inner, with clothes- hooks in the space between. Joachim had turned on the ceiling light, and in its vibrating brilliance the room looked restful and cheery, with practical white furniture, white washable walls, clean II NUMBER 34 linoleum, and white linen curtains gaily embroidered in modem taste. The door stood open; one saw the lights of the valley and heard distant dance-music. The good Joachim had put a vase of flowers on the chest of drawers — a few bluebells and some yarrow, which he had found himself among the second crop of grass on the slopes. “ Awfully decent of you,” said Hans Castorp. “ What a nice room! I can spend a couple of weeks here with pleasure.” “ An American woman died here day before yesterday,” said Joachim. “ Behrens told me directly that she would be out before you came, and you might have the room. Her fiance was with her, an English officer of marines, but he didn’t behave very well. He kept coming out in the corridor to cry, just like a little boy. He rubbed cold cream on his cheeks, because he was close-shaven and the tears smarted. Night before last she had two first-class haemor- rhages, and that was the finish. But she has been gone since yester- day morning, and after they took her away of course they fumi- gated the room thoroughly with formalin, which is the proper thing to use in such cases.” Hans Castorp took in this information with a sprightly, yet half- distraught air. He was standing with his sleeves pushed back be- fore the roomy wash-hand-basin, the taps of which shone in the electric light, and gave hardly a glance at the white metal bed with its fresh coverlet. “ Fumigated it, eh? That’s ripping,” he said loquaciously and rather absurdly, as he washed and dried his hands. “ Methyl aldehyde; yes, that’s too much for the bacteria, no matter how strong they are. H 2 CO. But it’s a powerful stench. Of course, per- fect sanitation is absolutely essential.” He spoke with more of a Hamburg accent than his cousin, who had broken himself of it since his student days. Hans Castorp continued volubly. “ But what I was about to say was, probably the officer of marines used a safety-razor; one makes oneself sore with those things easier than with a well-sharpened blade — at least, that is my experience, and I use them both by turns. Well, and salt water would naturally make a tender skin smart, so he got in the way, in the service, of rubbing in cold cream. I don’t see anything strange about that . . .” He rattled on: said that he had two hundred Maria Man- cinis (his cigar) in his trunk, the customs officers had been very courteous; and gave his cousin greetings from various people at home. “ Don’t they heat the rooms here? ” he broke off to inquire, and ran to put his hands on the radiator. 12 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN “No, they keep us pretty cool,” answered Joachim. “The weather would have to be different from this before they put on the heat in August.” “ August, August! ” said Hans Castorp. “ But I am cold, abom- inably cold; I mean in my body, for my face bums shockingly — just feel it! ” This demand was entirely foreign to the young man’s nature — so much so that he himself was disagreeably impressed as he heard himself make it. Joachim did not take up the offer, but merely said: “ That is the air — it doesn’t mean anything; Behrens himself is purple in the face all day long. Some people never get used to it. Come along now, do, or we shan’t get anything to eat.” Outside they saw the nursing sister again, peering short-sight- edly and inquisitively after them. But in the first storey Hans Castorp suddenly stopped, rooted to the spot by a perfectly ghastly sound coming from a little distance off round a bend in the corridor. It was not a loud sound, but so distinctly horrible that Hans Castorp made a wry face and looked wide-eyed at his cousin. It was coughing, obviously, a man coughing; but cough- ing like to no other Hans Castorp had ever heard, and compared with which any other had been a magnificent and healthy mani- festation of life: a coughing that had no conviction and gave no relief, that did not even come out in paroxysms, but was just a feeble, dreadful welling up of the juices of organic dissolution. “ Yes,” said Joachim. “ That’s a bad case. An Austrian aristo- crat, you know, very elegant. He’s a born horseman — a gentle- man rider. And now he’s come to this. But he still gets about.” As they went, Hans Castorp discoursed earnestly upon the gentleman rider’s cough. “You must realize,” he said, “that I’ve never heard anything like it before. It is entirely new to me, and naturally it makes a great impression. There are different kinds of cough, dry and loose, and people always say the loose one is better than the other, the barking kind. When I had croup, in my youth ” (he actually said “ in my youth ”!), “ I bayed like a wolf, and I can still re- member how glad everybody was when it got looser. But a cough like this — I didn’t know there was such a cough! It isn’t a human cough at all. It isn’t dry and yet isn’t loose either — that is very far from being the right word for it. It is just as if one could look right into him when he coughs, and see what it looks like: all slime and mucous ” “ Oh,” said Joachim, “ I hear it every day, you don’t need to describe it to me.” IN THE RESTAURANT *3 But Hans Castorp could not get over the coughing he had heard. He kept repeating that he could see right into the gentleman rider’s vitals; when they reached the restaurant his travel-weary eyes had an excited glitter. In the Restaurant It was charming in the restaurant, elegantly appointed and well lighted. The room lay to the right of the hall, opposite the salons, and was, Joachim explained, used chiefly by new arrivals, and by guests eating out of the usual meal hours or entertaining company. But it also served for birthday feasts, farewell parties, even to cele- brate a favourable report after a general examination. There were lively times here in the restaurant on occasion, Joachim said, and champagne flowed freely. Now, no one was here but a solitary lady of some thirty years, reading a book and humming; she kept tapping the table-cloth lightly with the middle finger of her left hand. After the young people had taken their places, she changed hers, in order to sit with her back to them. Joachim explained in a low voice that she suffered from shyness as from a disease, and ate all her meals in the restaurant, with a book. It was said that she had entered her first tuberculosis sanatorium as a young girl, and had never lived in the world since. “ So compared with her, you are only a novice, with your five months; and still will be when you have a year on your back,” said Hans Castorp to his cousin; whereat Joachim, with his newly ac- quired shoulder-shrug, took up the menu. They had sat down at the raised table in the window, the pleas- antest spot in the room, facing each other against the cream-col- oured hangings, their faces lighted by the red-shaded table-lamp. Hans Castorp clasped his freshly washed hands and rubbed them together in agreeable anticipation — a habit of his when he sat down to table, perhaps because his ancestors had said grace before meat. They were served by a friendly maid in black frock and white apron. She had a pleasant, throaty voice, and her broad face was indisputably healthy-coloured. To his great amusement, Hans Castorp learned that the waitresses here were called “ dining-room girls.” They ordered a bottle of Gruaud Larose, and Hans Castorp sent it back to have it warmed. The food was excellent: asparagus soup, stuffed tomatoes, a roast with vegetables, an exceedingly well-prepared sweet, cheese, and fruit. Hans Castorp ate heartily, though his appetite did not turn out quite so stout as he had thought. But he always ate a good deal, out of pure self-respect, even when he was not hungry. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 14 Joachim paid scant honour to the meal. He was tired of the cooking, he said; they all were, up here, and it was customary to grumble at the food. If one had to sit up here for ever and a day ! But, on the other hand, he partook of the wine with gusto, not to say abandon; and repeatedly, though with careful avoidance of emotional language, expressed his joy at having some- body here with whom one could have a little rational conversa- tion. “ Yes, it’s first-rate you’ve come,” he said, and his gentle voice betrayed some feeling. “ I must say it is really an event for me — it is certainly a change, anyhow, a break in the everlasting monot- ony.” “ But time must go fast, living up here,” was Hans Castorp’s view. “ Fast and slow, as you take it,” answered Joachim. “ It doesn’t go at all, I tell you. You can’t call it time — and you can’t call it living either! ” he said with a shake of the head; and fell to his glass again. Hans Castorp drank too, though his face was like fire. Yet he was still cold, and felt a curious restlessness in his limbs, at once pleasurable and troubling. His words fell over each other, he often mis-spoke and passed it over with a deprecating wave. Joachim too was in a lively humour, and their conversation continued in a still freer and more convivial vein after the humming, tapping lady had got up suddenly and left the room. They gesticulated with their forks as they ate, nodded, shrugged their shoulders, talked with their mouths full. Joachim wanted to hear about Hamburg, and brought the conversation round to the proposed regulation of the Elbe. “ Epoch-making,” said Hans Castorp. “ Epoch-making for the development of our shipping. Can’t be over-estimated. We’ve budgeted fifty millions for immediate expenditure and you may be sure we know what we’re about.” But notwithstanding all the importance he attached to the pro- jected improvement, he jumped away from the theme and de- manded that Joachim tell him more about life “ up here ” and about the guests — which the latter straightway did, being only too pleased to be able to unbosom himself. He had to repeat the story of the corpses sent down by bob-sleigh, and vouch for its truth. Hans Castorp being taken by another fit of laughing, his cousin laughed too, with hearty enjoyment, and told other funny things to add fuel to their merriment. There was a lady sitting at his table, named Frau Stohr, the wife of a Cannstadt musician; a IN THE RESTAURANT 15 rather serious case, she was, and the most ignorant creature he had ever seen. She said diseased for deceased, quite seriously, and she called Krokowski the Asst. And you had to take it all in without cracking a smile. She was a regular gossip — most people were, up here — and published it broadcast that another lady, a certain Frau litis, carried a “ steriletto ” on her person. “ That is exactly what she called it, isn’t that priceless? ” They lolled in their chairs, they flung themselves back and laughed so hard that they shook; and they began to hiccup at nearly the same time. Now and then Joachim’s face would cloud over and he would remember his lot. “ Yes, we sit here and laugh,” he said, with a long face, his words interrupted by the heaving of his diaphragm, “ we sit here and laugh, but there’s no telling when I shall get away. When Behrens says half a year, you can make up your mind it will be more. It is hard, isn’t it? — you just tell me if you don’t think it is pretty hard on me. I had already been accepted, I could have taken my exams next month. And now I have to drool about with a thermometer stuck in my mouth, and count the howlers of this ignorant Frau Stohr, and watch the time slipping away. A year is so important at our age. Down below, one goes through so many changes, and makes so much progress, in a single year of life. And I have to stag- nate up here — yes, just stagnate like a filthy puddle; it isn’t too crass a comparison.” Strange to say, Hans Castorp’s only reply to all this was a query as to whether it was possible to get porter up here; when Joachim looked at him, in some astonishment, he perceived that his cousin was overcome with sleep, that in fact he was actually nodding. “ But you are going to sleep! ” said Joachim. “ Come along, it is time we both went to bed.” “ ‘ You can’t call it time,’ ” quoth Hans Castorp, thick-tongued. He went with his cousin, rather bent and stiff in the knees, like a man bowed to the earth with fatigue. However, in the dimly lighted corridor he pulled himself sharply together on hearing his cousin say: “ There’s Krokowski sitting there. I think I’ll just have to present you, as briefly as possible.” Dr. Krokowski sat in the bright light at the fire-place of one of the reception-rooms, close to the folding doors. He was reading a paper, and got up as the young people approached. Joachim, in military position, heels together, said: “ Herr Doc- tor, may I present my cousin Castorp from Hamburg? He has just arrived.” Dr. Krokowski greeted the new inmate with a jovial and robust THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 16 heartiness, as who should say that with him all formality was superfluous, and only jocund mutual confidence in place. He was about thirty-five years old, broad-shouldered and fleshy, much shorter than either of the youths before him, so that he had to tip back his head to look them in the face. He was unusually pale, of a translucent, yes, phosphorescent pallor, that was further ac- centuated by the dark ardour of his eyes, the blackness of his brows, and his rather long, full whisker, which ended in two points and already showed some white threads. He had on a black double-breasted, somewhat worn sack suit; black, open-worked sandal-like shoes over grey woollen socks, and a soft turn-down collar, such as Hans Castorp had previously seen worn only by a photographer in Danzig, which did, in fact, lend a certain stamp of the studio to Dr. Krokowski’s appearance. Smiling warmly and showing his yellow teeth in his beard, he shook the young man by the hand, and said in a baritone voice, with rather a foreign drawl: “ Wel-come to our midst, Herr Castorp! May you get quickly acclimatized and feel yourself at home among us! Do you come as a patient, may I ask? ” It was touching to see Hans Castorp labour to master his drowsi- ness and be polite. It annoyed him to be in such bad form, and with the self-consciousness of youth he read signs of indulgent amusement in the warmth of the Assistant’s manner. He replied, mentioning his examinations and his three weeks’ visit, and ended by saying he was, thank God, perfectly healthy. “ Really? ” asked Krokowski, putting his head teasingly on one side. His smile grew broader. “ Then you are a phenomenon worthy of study. I, for one, have never in my life come across a perfectly healthy human being. What were the examinations you have just passed, if I may ask? ” “ I am an engineer, Herr Doctor,” said Hans Castorp with modest dignity. “ Ah, an engineer! ” Dr. Krokowski’s smile retreated as it were, lost for the moment something of its genial warmth. “ A splendid calling. And so you will not require any attention while you are here, either physical or psychical? ” “ Oh, no, thank you ever so much,” said Hans Castorp, and al- most drew back a step as he spoke. At that Dr. Krokowski’s smile burst forth triumphant; he shook the young man’s hand afresh and cried briskly: “Well, sleep well, Herr Castorp, and rejoice in the fullness of your per- fect health; sleep well, and auf Wiedersehen! ” With which he dismissed the cousins and returned to his paper. IN THE RESTAURANT l 7 The lift had stopped running, so they climbed the stairs; in si- lence, somewhat taken aback by the encounter with Dr. Kro- kowski. Joachim went with his cousin to number thirty-four, where the lame porter had already deposited the luggage of the new arrival. They talked for another quarter-hour while Hans Castorp unpacked his night and toilet things, smoking a large, mild cigarette the while. A cigar would have been too much for him this evening — a fact which impressed him as odd indeed. “ He looks quite a personality,” he said, blowing out the smoke. “ He is as pale as wax. But dear me, what hideous footgear he wears! Grey woollen socks, and then those sandals! Was he really offended at the end, do you think? ” “ He is rather touchy,” admitted Joachim. “You ought not to have refused the treatment so brusquely, at least not the psychical. He doesn’t like to have people get out of it. He doesn’t take much stock in me because I don’t confide in him enough. But every now and then I tell him a dream I’ve had, so he can have something to analyse.” “ Then I certainly did offend him,” Hans Castorp said fretfully, for it annoyed him to give offence. His weariness rushed over him with renewed force at the thought. “ Good-night,” he said; “ I’m falling over.” “ At eight o’clock I’ll come fetch you to breakfast,” Joachim said, and went. Hans Castorp made only a cursory toilet for the night. Hardly had he put out the bedside light when sleep overcame him; but he started up again, remembering that in that bed, the day be- fore yesterday, someone had died. “ That wasn’t the first time either,” he said to himself, as though the thought were reassur- ing. 44 It is a regular death-bed, a common death-bed.” And he fell asleep. No sooner had he gone off, however, than he began to dream, and dreamed almost without stopping until next morning. Prin- cipally he saw his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, in a strange, dislo- cated attitude on a bob-sled, riding down a steep course. He had a phosphorescent pallor like Dr. Krokowski, and in front of him sat the gentleman rider and steered. The gentleman rider was in- distinct, like someone one has heard cough, but never seen. “ It’s all the same to us up here,” remarked the dislocated Joa- chim; and then it was he and not the gentleman rider who was coughing in that horribly pulpy manner. Hans Castorp wept bit- terly to hear, and then perceived that he must run to the chemist’s to get some cold cream. But Frau litis, with a pointed snout, sat i8 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN by the road-side with something in her hand, which must be her “ steriletto,” but was obviously nothing else than a safety-razor. This made Hans Castorp go from tears to laughing; and thus he was tossed back and forth among varying emotions, until the dawn came through his half-open balcony door and wakened him. CHAPTER II Of the Christening Basin , and of Grandfather in His Two- fold Guise Hans Castorp retained only pale memories of his parental home. His father and mother he had barely known; they had both dropped away in the brief period between his fifth and seventh birthdays; first the mother, quite suddenly, on the eve of a con- finement, of an arterial obstruction following neuritis — an em- bolus, Dr. Heidekind had called it — which caused instantaneous cardiac arrest. She had just been laughing, sitting up in bed, and it looked as though she had fallen back with laughter, but really it was because she had died. The father, Hermann Castorp, could not grasp his loss. He had been deeply attached to his wife, and not being of the strongest himself, never quite recovered from her death. His spirit was troubled; he shrank within himself; his be- numbed brain made him blunder in his business, so that the firm of Castorp and Son suffered sensible financial losses; and the next spring, while inspecting warehouses on the windy landing-stage, he got inflammation of the lungs. The fever was too much for his shaken heart, and in five days, notwithstanding all Dr. Heidekind’s care, he died. Attended to his rest by a respectable concourse of citizens, he followed his wife to the Castorp family vault, a charm- ing site in St. Katherine’s churchyard, with a view of the Botanical Gardens. His father the Senator survived him a short time; then he too passed away, likewise of inflammation of the lungs. His death agony was sore, for unlike his son, Hans Lorenz Castorp had been a man of tough constitution, and firmly rooted in life. Before his death, for the space of a year and a half, the grandfather harboured the orphaned Hans Castorp in his home, a mansion standing in a narrow lot on the Esplanade, built in the early years of the last century, in the northern-classic style of architecture. It was painted a depressing weather-colour, and had pilasters on either 20 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN side the entrance door, which was approached by a flight of five steps. Besides the parterre, which had windows going down to the floor and furnished with cast-iron grilles, there were two upper storeys. In the parterre were chiefly reception-rooms, and a very light and cheerful dining-room, with walls decorated in stucco. Its three windows, draped with wine-coloured curtains, looked out on the back garden. In this room, daily, at four o’clock, for the space of eighteen months, grandfather and grandson dined to- gether, served by old Fiete, who had ear-rings in his ears and silver buttons on his livery, also a batiste neckcloth like his mas- ter’s, in which he buried his shaven chin just as Hans Lorenz Ca- storp did in his. Grandfather said thou to him and addressed him in dialect — not with any humorous intent, for he had no bent that way, but in all seriousness, and because it was his custom so to do in his dealings with the common people — the warehouse hands, postmen, coachmen, and servants. Hans Castorp liked to hear it, and very much he liked to hear Fiete reply, in dialect too, bending over as he served and speaking into his master’s left ear, for the Senator could hear much better on that side. The old man would listen and nod and go on eating, sitting erect between the table and the high back of his mahogany chair, and scarcely at all bending over his plate. And his grandson, opposite, watched in silence, with deep, unconscious concentration, Grandfather’s beautiful, thin, white old hands, with their pointed nails, and, on the right forefinger, the green seal ring with the crest; watched the small, deft, practised motions with which they arranged a mouthful of meat, vegetable, and potato on the end of his fork, and with a slight inclination of the head conveyed it to his mouth. Then he would look at his own hands, and their still clumsy movements, and see in them the hope foreshadowed of one day holding and using his knife and fork as Grandfather did. Again, he would wonder whether he should ever bury his chin in such another neck-band as that which filled the wide space inside Grandfather’s extraordinary collar, with its sharp points brushing the old man’s cheeks. He doubted it. One would have to be as old as Grandfather for that; in these days, save for him and his old Fiete, nobody, far and wide, wore such collars and neckcloths. It was a pity; little Hans Castorp liked the way Grandfather’s chin nestled in the high, snow-white band. Even after he was grown, he recalled it with pleasure; something in the depth of his being responded to it. When they had done, they folded their table-napkins and put OF THE CHRISTENING BASIN 21 them in their silver rings— -a job at which Hans Castorp never acquitted himself very well, for they were the size of small table- cloths. Then the Senator got up from his chair, which Fiete drew away behind him, and went with shuffling steps into his “ office ” to get a cigar. Sometimes the grandson followed him in. This office had come to exist because of a peculiarity in the arrangement of the lower floor — namely, that the dining-room had been planned with three windows instead of two, and ran the whole width of the house; which left space for only two drawing- rooms, instead of the usual three, and gave to one of them, at right angles to the dining-room, with a single window on the street, a quite disproportionate depth. Of this room, therefore, some quar- ter of the length had been cut off, and turned into a cabinet. It was a strip of a room, with a skylight; twilighted, and not much furnished — there was an etagere , on which stood the Senator’s cigar case; a card-table, the drawer of which held whist cards, counters, little marking-boards with tiny teeth that clapped open and shut, a slate and slate-pencil, paper cigar-holders, and other such attractions; and finally, in the comer, a rococo case in pali- sander-wood, with yellow silk stretched behind its glass doors. “ Grandpa,” little Hans Castorp might say, standing on tiptoes to reach the old man’s ear, “ please show me the christening basin.” And the grandfather, who had already pulled back the skirts of his long cashmere frock-coat and taken the bunch of keys from his trouser pocket, forthwith opened the door of the glass case, whence floated odours odd and pleasant to the boy’s sense. Inside were all manner of disused and fascinating objects: a pair of silver- branched candlesticks, a broken barometer in a wooden case with allegorical carving, an album of daguerreotypes, a cedar-wood case for liqueurs, a funny little Turk in flowing silk robes, under which was a hard body with a mechanism inside. Once, when you wound him up, he had been able to leap about all over the table, but he was long since out of repair. Then there was a quaint old model of a ship; and right at the bottom a rat-trap. But from one of the middle shelves Grandfather took a much-tarnished, round silver dish, with a tray likewise of silver, and showed them both to the boy, lifting them separately and turning them about in his hands as he told the story he had so often told before. Plate and basin, one could see, and as the little one heard once again, had not originally belonged together; but, Grandfather said, they had been in use together for a round hundred years, or since the time when the basin was made. The latter was very beautiful, 22 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN of simple and elegant form, in the severe taste of the early nine- teenth century. It rested, plain and solid, on a round base, and had once been gilt within, but the gilding had faded with time to a yellow shimmer. Its single decoration was a chaste garland of roses and serrated leaves about the brim. As for the plate, its far greater antiquity could be read on the inside: the date 1650 was engraved there in ornamental figures, framed in curly engraved lines exe- cuted in the “ modern manner ” of the period, florid and capricious devices and arabesques that were something between star and flower. On the back, engraved in a variety of scripts, were the names of its successive owners, seven in number, each with the date when it had passed into his hands. The old man named each one to his grandson, pointing with beringed index finger. There was Hans Castorp’s father’s name, there was Grandfather’s own, there was Great-grandfather’s; then the “ great ” came doubled, tripled, quadrupled, from the old man’s mouth, whilst the little lad listened, his head on one side, the eyes full of thought, yet fixed and dreamy too, the childish lips parted, half with awe, half sleep- ily. That great-great-great-great — what a hollow sound it had, how it spoke of the falling away of time, yet how it seemed the expression of a piously cherished link between the present, his own life, and the depth of the past! All that, as his face showed, made a profound impression. As he listened to the great-great-great, he seemed to smell the cool, earthy air of the vault of St. Michael’s or Saint Katherine’s; the breath of regions where one went hat in hand, the head reverently bowed, walking weavingly on the tips of one’s toes; seemed, too, to hear the remote and set-apart hush of those echoing places. Religious feeling mingled in his mind with thoughts of death and a sense of history, as he listened to the sombre syllable; he received therefrom an ineffable gratification — indeed, it may have been for the sake of hearing the sound that he so often begged to see the christening basin. Grandfather set the vessel back on the tray, and let the boy look into the smooth, faintly golden inside, which caught the light from the window in the ceiling. “ Yes,” he said, “ it will soon be eight years since we held you over it, and the water flowed into it from your baptism. Lassen, the sexton of St. Jacob’s, poured it into our good Pastor Bugen- hagen’s hand, and it ran out over your little topknot and into the basin. We had warmed it, so it should not frighten you and make you cry, and you did not; you cried beforehand, though, so loud that Bugenhagen could hardly get on with the service, but you stopped when you felt the water — and that, let us hope, was out OF THE CHRISTENING BASIN 23 of respect for the Holy Sacrament. A few days from now it will be forty-four years since your blessed father was a baby at the baptismal font, and it was over his head the water flowed into the basin. That was here in this house, where he was born, in front of the middle dining-room window, and old Pastor Hezekiel was still alive. He was the man the French nearly shot when he was young, because he preached against their burning and looting. He has been with God these many years. Then, five-and-seventy years ago, I was the youngster whose head they held over this selfsame basin; that was in the dining-room too, and the minister spoke the very words that were spoken when you and your father were baptized, and the clear, warm water flowed over my head precisely the same way — there wasn’t much more hair than there is now — and fell into this golden bowl just as it did over yours.” The little one looked up at Grandfather’s narrow grey head, bending over the basin as it had in the time he described. A familiar feeling pervaded the child: a strange, dreamy, troubling sense: of change in the midst of duration, of time as both flowing and per- sisting, of recurrence in continuity — these were sensations he had felt before on the like occasion, and both expected and longed for again, whenever the heirloom was displayed. As a young man he was aware that the image of his grandfather was more deeply and clearly imprinted on his mind, with greater significance, than those of his own parents. The fact might rest upon sympathy and physical likeness, for the grandson resembled the grandfather, in so far, that is, as a rosy youth with the down on his chin might resemble a bleached, rheumatic septuagenarian. Yet it probably spoke even more for that which was indeed' the truth, that the grandfather had been the real personality, the pic- turesque figure of the family. Long before Hans Lorenz Castorp’s passing, his person and the things for which he stood had ceased to be representative of his age. He had been a typical Christian gentleman, of the Reformed faith, of a strongly conservative cast of mind, as obstinately con- vinced of the right of the aristocracy to govern as if he had been born in the fourteenth century, when the labouring classes had be- gun to make head against the stout resistance of the free patriciate and wrest from it a place and voice in the councils of the ancient city. He had little use for the new. His active years had fallen in a decade of rapid growth and repeated upheavals, a decade of prog- ress by forced marches, which had made continual demands on the public capacity for enterprise and self-sacrifice. Certainly he had no part or lot, old Castorp, in the brilliant triumph of the modem THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 2 4 spirit that followed hard upon. It was not his fault; he had held far more with ancestral ways and old institutions than with ruinous schemes for widening the harbour, or godless and rubbishing plans for a great metropolis. He had put on the brakes; he had whittled things down wherever he could; and if matters had gone to his liking, the administration would have continued to wear the same old-fashioned, idyllic guise as, in his time, his own office did. Such, in his lifetime and afterwards, was the figure the old man presented to the eye of his fellow burghers; and such, in essentials, was he also to the childish gaze of little Hans Castorp, who knew naught of affairs of state, and whose formless, uncritical judgments were rather the fruit of mere lively perceptions. Yet they persisted into later life, as the elements of a perfectly conscious memory- f )icture, which defied expression or analysis, but was none the ess positive for all that. We repeat that natural sympathy was in play here too, the close family tie and essential intimacy which not infrequently leaps over an intervening generation. Senator Castorp was tall and lean. The years had bent his back and neck, but he tried to counteract the curvature by pressure in another direction; drawing down his mouth with sedulous dignity, though the lips were shrunken against the bare gums, for he had lost all his teeth, and put in the false ones only to eat. It was this posture also which helped to steady an incipient shaking of the head, gave him his look of being sternly reined up, and caused him to support his chin on his neckcloth in the manner so congenial to little Hans Castorp ’s taste. He loved his snuff-box — it was a longish, gold-inlaid tortoise- shell one — and on account of his snuff-taking, used a red pocket- handkerchief, the corner of which always hung out of the back pocket of his coat. If this foible added a quaint touch to his appear- ance, yet the effect was only of a slight negligence or licence due to age, which length of days either consciously and cheerfully permits itself, or else brings in its train without the victim’s being aware. If weakness it were, it was the only one the sharp eye of the child ever noted in his grandfather’s exterior. But the old man’s everyday appearance was not his real and authentic one, either to the seven-year-old child, or to the memory of the grown man in after years. That was different, far finer and truer; it was Grand- father as he appeared in a life-size portrait which had once hung in the house of Hans Castorp ’s own parents, had moved over with him to the Esplanade on their death, and now hung above the great red satin sofa in the reception-room. The painting showed Hans Lorenz Castorp in his official garb as OF THE CHRISTENING BASIN 25 Councillor: the sober, even godly, civilian habit of a bygone cen- tury, which a commonwealth both self-assertive and enterprising had brought with it down the years and retained in ceremonial use in order to make present the past and make past the present, to bear witness to the perpetual continuity of things, and the per- fect soundness of its business signature. Senator Castorp stood at full length on a red-tiled floor, in a perspective of column and pointed arch. His chin was dropped, his mouth drawn down, his blue, musing eyes, with the tear ducts plain beneath them, directed toward the distant view. He wore the black coat, cut full like a robe, more than knee-length, with a wide trimming of fur all round the edge; the upper sleeves were wide and puffed and fur- trimmed too, while from beneath them came the narrow under- sleeves of plain cloth, then lace cuffs, which covered the hands to the knuckles. The slender, elderly legs were cased in black silk stockings; the shoes had silver buckles. But about his neck was the broad, starched ruff, pressed down in front and swelling out on the sides, beneath which, for good measure, a fluted jabot came out over the waistcoat. Under his arm he held the old-fashioned, broad-brimmed hat, that tapered to a point at the top. It was a capital painting, by an artist of some note, in an old- masterish style that suited the subject and was reminiscent of much Spanish, Dutch, late Middle Ages work. Little Hans Castorp had often looked at it; not, of course, with any knowledge of art, but with a larger, even a fervid comprehension. Only once — and then only for a moment — had he ever seen Grandfather as he was here represented, on the occasion of a procession to the Rathaus. But he could not help feeling that this presentment was the genuine, the authentic grandfather, and the everyday one merely subsid- iary, not entirely conformable — a sort of interim grandfather, as it were. For it was clear that the deviations and idiosyncrasies pre- sented by his everyday appearance were due to incomplete, per- haps even unsuccessful adaptation; they were the not quite eradi- cate vestiges of Grandfather’s pure and genuine form. The choker collar and band, for instance, were old-fashioned; an ad- jective it would have been impossible to apply to that admirable article of apparel whose interim representative they were: namely, the ruff. The same was true of the outlandish top-hat Grandfather wore, with the bell-shaped crown, to which the broad-brimmed felt in the painting corresponded, only with a higher degree of actuality; and of the voluminous frock-coat, whose archetype and original was for little Hans Castorp the lace- and fur-trimmed ceremonial garment. 26 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN Thus he was glad from his heart that it should be the authentic, the perfect grandfather who lay there resplendent on that day when he came to take last leave of him. It was in the room where so often they had sat facing each other at table; and now, in the centre, Hans Lorenz Castorp was lying in a silver-mounted coffin, upon a begarlanded bier. He had fought out the attack on his lungs, fought long and stoutly, despite his air of being at home in the life of the day only by dint of his powers of adaptability. One hardly knew whether he had won or lost in the struggle; but in any case there he lay, with a stern yet satisfied expression, on his bed of state. He had altered with the illness, his nose looked sharp and thin; the lower half of his body was hidden by a coverlet on which lay a palm branch; the head was lifted high by the silken pillow, so that his chin rested beautifully in the front swell of the ruff. Between the hands, half-shrouded in their lace cuffs, their visibly cold, dead fingers artfully arranged to simulate life, was stuck an ivory cross. He seemed to gaze, beneath drooping lids, steadfastly down upon it. Hans Castorp had probably seen his grandfather several times at the beginning of this last illness, but not toward the end. They had spared him the sight of the struggle, the more easily that it had been mostly at night; he had only felt it through the sur- charged atmosphere of the house, old Fiete’s red eyes, the coming and going of the doctors. What he gathered as he stood now by the bier in the dining-room, was that Grandfather had finally and formally surmounted his interim aspect and assumed for all time his true and adequate shape. And that was a gratifying result, even though old Fiete continually wept and shook his head, even though Hans Castorp himself wept, as he had at sight of the mother he had abruptly been bereft of, and the father who, so little time after her, lay in his turn still and strange before the little boy’s eyes. Thus for the third time in so short a space and in such young years did death play upon the spirit and senses — but chiefly on the senses — of the lad. The sight was no longer strange, it was al- ready right familiar; and as on those earlier occasions, only in still greater degree, he bore himself in the presence of death with a responsible air, quite self-controlled, showing no nervous weak- ness, if some natural dejection. He was unaware of the practical result the loss would mean to his own life, or else with childlike indifference was instinctively confident that he would be taken care of somehow; thus, at the bier, he displayed both an uncom- prehending coolness and a detached alertness of observation, to OF THE CHRISTENING BASIN 2 7 which were added, on this third occasion, a feeling and expression of connoisseurship. And something more, a peculiar, precocious variation: he seemed no longer to think of tears — either the fre- quent outburst of grief or the contagion from the grief of others — as a natural reaction. In three or four months after nis father’s pass- ing he had forgotten about death; but now he remembered, and all the impressions of that time recurred, precise, immediate, and piercing in their transcendent strangeness. Reduced to order and put into words, they would have been something like the following. In one aspect death was a holy, a pensive, a spiritual state, possessed of a certain mournful beauty. In another it was quite different. It was precisely the opposite, it was very physical, it was material, it could not possibly be called either holy, or pensive, or beautiful — not even mournful. The solemn, spiritual side expressed itself in the ceremonial lying-in- state of the corpse, in the fan-leaved palm and the wealth of flow- ers, all which symbolized the peace of God and the heavenly king- dom, as did even more explicitly the ivory cross stuck between the dead fingers of what was once Grandfather, and the bust of Christ by Thorwaldsen at the head of the bier, with towering candelabra on either side. It was these last that gave a churchly air to the scene. All such arrangements had their more precise justification in the fact that Grandfather was now clothed for ever in his true and proper guise. But over and above that raison d'etre they had an- other, of a more profane kind, of which little Hans Castorp was distinctly aware, though without admitting it in so many words. One and all of them, but expressly the flowers, and of these more expressly the hosts of tuberoses, were there to palliate the other aspect of death, the side which was neither beautiful nor exactly sad, but somehow almost improper — its lowly, physical side — to slur it over and prevent one from being conscious of it. It was this other aspect of death- that made Grandfather himself look so strange; not like Grandfather at all, more like a life-size wax doll, which death had put in his place to be the centre of all this pious and reverent spectacle. He who lay there — or, more correctly, that which lay there — was not Grandfather himself, but a shell, made, as Hans Castorp was aware, not of wax, but of its own substance, and only of that. Therein, precisely, was the impropriety. It was scarcely sad at all — as things are not which have to do with the body and only with it. Little Hans Castorp regarded that substance, waxy yellow, and fine-grained like cheese, of which the life-size figure was made, the face and hands of what had been Grandfather. A fly had settled on the quiet brow, and 28 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN began to move its proboscis up and down. Old Fiete shooed it cautiously away, taking care not to touch the forehead of the dead, putting on a seemly air of absent-mindedness — of obscurantism, as it were — as though he neither might nor would take notice of what he was doing. This correctness of demeanour obviously had to do with the fact that Grandfather was now no longer anything but body. But the fly, after a circling flight, came to rest on Grand- father’s fingers, close to the ivory cross. And Hans Castorp, watch- ing, thought he detected, more plainly than ever before, a familiar, strange exhalation, faint, yet oddly clinging — he blushed to find that it made him think of a former schoolfellow, who was avoided by his class-mates because he suffered from a certain unpleasant affection — for the drowning out of which the tuberoses were there, and which, with all their lovely luxuriance and the strong- ness of their scent, they yet failed to overpower. He stood three times by his Grandfather’s bier. Once alone with old Fiete; once with Great-uncle Tienappel, the wine merchant, and his two uncles, James and Peter; the third and last time when a group of harbour hands in their Sunday clothes came to take leave of the head of the house of Castorp and Son. Then came the funeral. The room was full of people, and Pastor Bugenhagen of St. Michael’s, the same who had baptized little Hans, preached the sermon in a ruff. He was most friendly with the boy as they drove out together to the cemetery, in the first carriage behind the hearse. Thus did another epoch in the life of Hans Castorp come to an end, and again he moved to a new home and new sur- roundings, for the second time in his young life. At Tienappels\ and of Young Hans’s Moral State The change was no loss to him; for he entered the home of his appointed guardian. Consul Tienappel, where he wanted for noth- ing. Certainly this was true so far as his bodily needs were con- cerned, and not less in the sense of safe-guarding his interests — about which he was still too young to know anything at all. For Consul Tienappel, an uncle of Hans’s deceased mother, was ad- ministrator of the Castorp estate; he put up the property for sale, took in hand the business of liquidating the firm of Castorp and Son, Importers and Exporters, and realized from the whole nearly four hundred thousand marks, the inheritance of young Hans. This sum Consul Tienappel invested in trust funds, and took unto himself two per cent or the interest every quarter, without im- pairment of his kinsmanly feeling. at tien Appels’ 29 The Tienappel house lay at the foot of a garden in Harveste- huderstrasse; the windows looked out on a plot of lawn in which not the tiniest weed was suffered to flourish, then upon public rose-borders, and then upon the river. The Consul went on foot every morning to his business in the Old Town — although he possessed more than one fine equipage — in order to get a little exercise, for he sometimes suffered from cerebral congestion. He returned in the same way at five in the afternoon, at which time the Tienappels dined, with due and fitting ceremony. He was a weighty man, whose suits were always of the best English cloths; his eyes were watery blue and prominent behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his nose was ruddy, and his square-cut beard was grey; he wore a flashing brilliant on the stubby little finger of his left hand. His wife was long since dead. He had two sons, Peter and James, of whom one was in the navy and seldom at home, the other occu- pied in the paternal wine trade, and destined heir to the business. The housekeeping, for many years, had been the care of an Altona goldsmith’s daughter, named Schalleen, who wore starched white ruffles at her plump, round wrists. Hers it was to see to it that the table, morning and evening, was richly laden with cold meats, with crabs and salmon, eel and smoked breast of goose, with tomato ketchup for the roast beef. She kept a watchful eye on the hired waiters when Consul Tienappel gave a gentlemen’s dinner; and she it was who, so far as in her lay, took the place of a mother to little Hans Castorp. So he grew up; in wretched weather, in the teeth of wind and mist, grew up, so to say, in a yellow mackintosh, and, generally speaking, he throve. A little anaemic he had always been, so Dr. Heidekind said, and had him take a good glass of porter after third breakfast every day, when he came home from school. This, as everyone knows, is a hearty drink — Dr. Heidekind considered it a blood-maker — and certainly Hans Castorp found it most sooth- ing to his spirits and encouraging to a propensity of his, which his Uncle Tienappel called “ dozing namely, sitting staring into space, with his jaw dropped and his thoughts fixed on just nothing at all. But on the whole he was sound and fit, an adequate tennis player and rower; though actually handling the oars was less to his taste than sitting of a summer evening on the terrace of the Uhlen- horst ferry-house, with a good drink before him and the sound of music in his ears, while he watched the lighted boats, and the swans mirrored in the bright water. Hear him talk, sedate and sen- sible, in a rather low, monotonous voice, just tinged with dialect; observe him in his blond correctness, with his well-shaped head, THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 3 ° which had about it some stamp of the classic, and his self-possessed, indolent bearing, the fruit of innate, inherited, perfectly uncon- scious self-esteem — you would swear that this young Castorp was a legitimate and genuine product of the soil in which he flour- ished, and strikingly at home in his environment. Nor would he, had he ever put such a question to himself, have been for a single second doubtful of the answer. Yes, he was thoroughly in his element in the atmosphere of this great seaboard city: this reeking air, compact of good living and a retail trade that embraced the four corners of the earth. It had been the breath of his father’s nostrils, and the son drew it in with profound acquiescence and a sense of well-being. The exhalations from water, coals, and tar, the sharp tang in the nostrils from heaped-up stacks of colonial produce; the huge steam-cranes at the dock-side, imitating the quiet, the intelligence, and the giant strength of elephants at work, as they hoisted tons of sacks, bales, chests, vats, and carboys out of the bowels of seagoing ships and conveyed them into waiting trains and scales; the business men, in yellow rubber coats like his own, streaming to the Bourse at mid- day, where, as he knew, there was oftentimes pretty sharp work, and a man might have to strengthen his credit at short notice by giving out invitations to a big dinner — all this he felt, saw, heard, knew. Besides it all, there was the field in which later was to lie his own particular interest: the confusion of the yards, the mam- moth bodies of great ships, Asiatic and African liners, lying in dry- dock, keel and propeller bare, supported by props as thick as tree- trunks, lying there in monstrous helplessness, swarmed over by troops of men like dwarfs, scouring, whitewashing, hammering; there were the roofed-over ways, wrapped in wreaths of smoke- like mist, holding the towering frames of rising ships, among which moved the engineers, blue-print and loading scale in hand, directing the work-people. All these were familiar sights to Hans Castorp from his youth upwards, awaking in him only the agree- able, homely sensations or “ belonging,” which were the preroga- tive of his years. Such sensations would reach their height when he sat of a Sunday forenoon with James Tienappel or his cousin Ziemssen — Joachim Ziemssen — in the pavilion at Alster, break- fasting on hot cuts and smoked meat, with a glass of old port; or when, having eaten, he would lean back in his chair and give him- self up to his cigar. For therein especially was he true to type, that he liked good living, and notwithstanding his thin-bloodedness and look of over-refinement clung to the grosser pleasures of life as a greedy suckling to its mother’s breast. AT TIENAPPELS 3 * Comfortably, not without dignity, he carried the weight of cul- ture with which the governing upper class of the commercial city endowed its children. He was as clean as a well-cared-for baby, and dressed by the tailor in whom the young men of his social sphere felt most confidence. Schalleen took beautiful care of his small stock of carefully marked linen, which was bestowed in a dressing-chest on the English plan. When he studied away from home, he regularly sent back his laundry to be washed and mended, for it was a saying of his that outside Hamburg nobody in the kingdom knew how to iron. A rough spot on the cuff of his dainty coloured shirts filled him with acute discomfort. His hands, though not particularly aristocratic in shape, were well tended and fresh- skinned, and he wore a platinum chain ring as well as the seal ring inherited from Grandfather. His teeth were rather soft and defec- tive and he had a number of gold fillings. Standing and walking, he rather stuck out his abdomen, which hardly made an athletic impression; but his bearing at table was beyond cavil. Sitting very erect, he would turn the whole upper part of his body to speak to his neighbour (with self-possession, of course, and a little platt ) and he kept his elbows well in as he dismembered his piece of fowl, or deftly, with the appointed tool, drew the rosy flesh from a lobster’s shell. His first requirement after a meal was the finger-bowl of perfumed water, his second the Russian cigarette — which paid no duty, as he had a convenient way of getting them smuggled in. After the cigarette the cigar; he favoured a Bremen brand called Maria Mancini, of which we shall hear more hereafter; the fragrant narcotic blended so sooth- ingly with the coffee. Hans Castorp protected his supply of to- bacco from the injurious effects of steam-heating by keeping it in the cellar, whither he would betake himself every morning to load his case with his stock for the day. It went against his grain to eat butter served in the piece instead of in little fluted balls. It will be seen that we mean to say everything that may be said in Hans Castorp’s favour, yet without fulsomeness, not making him out as better, or worse, than he was. He was neither genius nor dunderhead; and if, in our description of him, we have avoided the use of the word mediocre, it has been for reasons quite uncon- nected with his intelligence, hardly even with any bearing upon his whole simple personality, but rather out of regard for his lot in life, to which we incline to ascribe a certain importance above and beyond personal considerations. His head-piece sustained without undue strain the demands made upon it by the course at the Real-gymnasium — strain, indeed, was something to which he THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 3 2 was quite definitely disinclined, whatever the circumstances or the object of his effort; less out of fear of hurting himself than because he positively saw no reason, or, more precisely, saw no positive reason, for exertion. This then, perhaps, is why we may not call him mediocre: that, somehow or other, he was aware of the lack of such a reason. A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contem- poraries. He may regard the general, impersonal foundations of his existence as definitely settled and taken for granted, and be as far from assuming a critical attitude toward them as our good Hans Castorp really was; yet it is quite conceivable that he may none the less be vaguely conscious of the deficiencies of his epoch and find them prejudicial to his own moral well-being. All sorts of personal aims, ends, hopes, prospects, hover before the eyes of the indi- vidual, and out of these he derives the impulse to ambition and achievement. Now, if the life about him, if his own time seem, how- ever outwardly stimulating, to be at bottom empty of such food for his aspirations; if he privately recognize it to be hopeless, view- less, helpless, opposing only a hollow silence to all the questions man puts, consciously or unconsciously, yet somehow puts, as to the final, absolute, and abstract meaning in all his efforts and activi- ties; then, in such a case, a certain laming of the personality is bound to occur, the more inevitably the more upright the charac- ter in question; a sort of palsy, as it were, which may even extend from his spiritual and moral over into his physical and organic part. In an age that affords no satisfying answer to the eternal question of “ Why? ” “ To what end? ” a man who is capable of achievement over and above the average and expected modicum must be equipped either with a moral remoteness and single- mindedness which is rare indeed and of heroic mould, or else with an exceptionally robust vitality. Hans Castorp had neither the one nor the other of these; and thus he must be considered mediocre, though in an entirely honourable sense. All this that we have said has reference to the inward state of the young man not only during his school years, but also in those that followed, after he had made choice of his civil profession. On his way through his forms at school, he had now and again to take one for the second time. But in the main his origin, his good breed- ing, and also a pretty if unimpassioned gift for mathematics got him forward; and when he received his one-year service certifi- cate, he made up his mind to continue at school, principally, it must be said, because he thus prolonged a situation he was used to, AT TIENAPPELS* 33 in which no definite decisions had to be taken, and in which he had further time to think matters over and decide what he really wanted to do, which he was far from knowing after he had arrived at the top form. Even when it was finally decided — to say when Hans Castorp finally decided it would be saying too much — he had the feeling that it might quite as well have been decided some other way. So much, however, was true, that he had always liked ships. As a small boy he had filled the pages of his note-books with drawings of fishing-barks, five-masters and vegetable-barges. When he was fifteen, he had had a front seat at the christening ceremony of the new double-screw steamer Hansa . He had watched her leave the ways at Blohm and Voss’s, and afterwards made quite a happy water-colour of the graceful ship, done with a good deal of atten- tion to detail, and a loving and not unskilful treatment of the glassy green, rolling waves. Consul Tienappel hung it in his private office, and somebody told him that it showed talent, that the artist might develop into a good marine painter — a remark which the Consul could safely repeat to his ward, for Hans Castorp only laughed good-humouredly, and not for a moment considered letting him- self in for a career of being eccentric and not getting enough to eat. “ You haven’t so much, you know,” his Uncle Tienappel would say to him. “ James and Peter will get most of what I have; that is to say, it stops in the business, and Peter will draw his interest. What belongs to you is well invested, and brings you in something safe. But it’s no joke living on your interest to-day, unless one has at least five times what you have; and if you want to be somebody here in this town and live as you have been brought up to, you’ll have to earn a good bit more to put with it, you mark my words, my son.” Hans Castorp marked them. He looked about for a profession suitable in his own eyes and those of his fellow citizens. And when he had once chosen — it came about at the instance of old Wilms, of the firm of Tunder and Wilms, who said to Consul Tienappel at the Saturday whist-table that young Castorp ought to study ship-building; it would be a good idea, he could come into his office and he would keep an eye on him — when he had once chosen, he thought very highly of his calling. It was, to be sure, confoundedly complicated and fatiguing, but all the same it was very first-rate, very solid, very important. And certainly, being peaceful in his tastes, he preferred it to that of his cousin Ziemssen, the son of his mother’s half-sister, who was bent on being an THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 34 officer. But Joachim Ziemssen was rather weak in the chest, and for that reason a calling which would keep him in the open, and in which there was no mental strain or fatigue to speak of, might be quite the right thing for him, Hans Castorp thought with easy condescension. He had the greatest respect for work — though personally he found that he tired easily. And here we revert to our suggestion of a few pages back: the idea that an unfavourable influence exerted upon a man’s personal life by the times in which he lives may even extend to his physical organism. Hans Castorp respected work — as how should he not have? It would have been unnatural. Work was for him, in the nature of things, the most estimable attribute of life; when you came down to it, there was nothing else that was estimable. It was the principle by which one stood or fell, the Absolute of the time; it was, so to speak, its own justification. His regard for it was thus religious in its character, and, so far as he knew, unquestioning. But it was another matter, whether he loved it; and that he could not do, however great his regard, the simple reason being that it did not agree with him. Exacting occupation dragged at his nerves, it wore him out; quite openly he confessed that he liked better to have his time free, not weighted with the leaden load of effort; lying spacious before him, not divided up by obstacles one had to grit one’s teeth and conquer, one after the other. These conflicting sentiments on the subject of work had, strictly speaking, to be reconciled. Is it, perhaps, possible, if he had been able to believe in work as a positive value, a self- justifying principle, believe in it in the very depth of his soul, even without being himself conscious of doing so, that his body as well as his spirit — first the spirit and through it the body as well — would have been able to devote itself to his task with more of joy and constancy, would have been able to find peace therein? Here again is posed the question of Hans Castorp’s mediocrity or more than mediocrity, to which we would give no hard and fast answer. For we do not set up as the young man’s encomiast, and prefer to leave room for the other view: namely, that his work stood somewhat in the way of his un- clouded enjoyment of his Maria Mancini. To military service he was not inclined. His being revolted against it, and found ways of making difficulties. It may be, too, that Staff Medical Officer Dr. Eberding, who visited at Harveste- huderstrasse, heard from Consul Tienappel, in the course of con- versation, that young Castorp was leaving home to begin his tech- nical studies, and would find a call to the colours a very sensible interruption to his labours. AT TIENAPPELS Working slowly and deliberately — he kept up his soothing habit of porter breakfasts while he was away — he filled his brain with analytic and descriptive geometry, differential calculus, me- chanics, projection, hydrostatic; reckoned full and empty dis- placement, stability, trim moment, and metacentre; and sometimes he got very sick of it. His technical drawings, the draughts and designs of frames, waterlines and longitudinal projections, were not quite so good as the picturesque representation of the Hansa on the high seas; but wherever it was in place to call in the sense perceptions to help out the intellectual, wherever he could wash in the shadows and lay on the cross-sections in the con- ventional colours, there Hans Castorp showed more dexterity than most. When he came home for the holidays, very clean, very well dressed, with a little red-blond moustache that became his sleepy, young patrician face, obviously en route to a considerable position in life, people looked at him, the people who concerned them- selves with the affairs of the community and made it their busi- ness to know all about family and social relations — and that, in a self-governing city-state, meant most of the population — they looked him well over, his fellow citizens, and asked themselves what public role young Castorp was destined to fill. He had tradi- tions, his name was old and good, they would certainly have to reckon with him one day, as a political factor. Some day he would sit in the Assembly, or on the Board of Directors, he would help make the laws, he would occupy some honourable office and share the burdens of sovereignty. He would belong to the executive branch, perhaps, or the Finance or Building Commission. His voice would be listened to, his vote would count. It would be interesting to see what party he would choose. Appearances were deceiving, but he did not look as a man does whom the democrats can count on; and his likeness to his grandfather was unmistakable. Would he take after him, and be a drag, a conservative element? It was quite possible — but so was the opposite. He was an engineer, studying ship-building; on the technical side, in touch with world commerce. He might turn out to be a radical, a reckless spender, a profane destroyer of old buildings and landscape beauties. He might be as unfettered as a Jew, as irreverent as an American; he might prefer a ruthless break with tradition to a considered de- velopment of natural resources; he might incline to plunge the state into foolhardy experimentation. All that was conceivable. Was it in his blood to feel that their Worships in the Senate, be- fore whom the double sentry at the Rathms presented arms, were THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 36 likely to know best in all contingencies; or would he side with the opposition in the Assembly? In his blue eyes, under their reddish- brown brows, his fellow citizens read no answer to their curious questioning. And he probably knew none himself, Hans Castorp, this still unwritten page. When he took the journey upon which we have encountered him, he was in his twenty-third year. He had spent four semesters at the Dantzig Polytechnic, four more at the technical schools of Braunschweig and Karlsruhe, and had just previously passed his first final, quite respectably, if without any fanfare of trumpets. And now he was preparing to enter the firm of Tunder and Wilms, as volunteer apprentice, in order to get his practical training in the ship-yards. But at this point his life took the following turn. He had had to work hard and steadily for his examination, and came home look- ing rather paler than a man of his blond, rosy type should do. Dr. Heidekind scolded, and insisted on a change of air; a complete change, not a stay at Norderney or Wyk on Fohr — that would not mend matters this time, he said; if they wanted his advice, it was that Hans Castorp should go for a few weeks to the high mountains before he took up his work in the yards. Consul Tienappel told his nephew and foster-son he approved of the plan, only that in that case they would part company for the summer, for wild horses couldn’t drag him into the high moun- tains. They were not for him; he required a reasonable atmos- pheric pressure, else he might get an attack. Hans Castorp would be good enough to go by himself — let him pay his cousin Ziemssen a visit. It was an obvious suggestion. Joachim Ziemssen was ill — not ill like Hans Castorp, but in all seriousness, critically. There had been a great scare, in fact. He had always been subject to feverish ca- tarrh, and one day he actually spat blood; whereupon he had been rushed off to Davos, heels over head, to his great distress and affliction, for he had just then arrived within sight of the goal of all his hopes. Some semesters long, he had complied with the wish of his family and studied law; then, yielding to irresistible inward urging, he had changed over, presented himself as ensign and been accepted. And now, for the past five months, he had been stuck in the International Sanatorium Berghof (directing physician Hof rat Behrens) and was bored half sick, as he wrote home on postcards. If Hans Castorp wanted to do himself a good turn before he en- tered his post at Tunder and Wilms’s, what more natural than that AT TIENAPPELs’ 37 he should go up to Davos and keep his poor cousin company for a while — it would be agreeable on both sides. It was midsummer before he made up his mind to go. Already the last week in July. He left for a stay of three weeks. CHAPTER III Drawing the Veil He had been so utterly weary, he had feared to oversleep; but he was on his legs rather earlier than usual, and had a superfluity of leisure in which to perform the accustomed ritual of his morning toilet, in which a rubber tub, a wooden bowl of green lavender soap, and the accompanying little brush played the principal parts. He had even time to do some unpacking and moving in. As he covered his cheeks with scented lather and drew over them the blade of his silver-plated “ safety,” he recalled his confused dreams and shook his head indulgently over so much nonsense, with the superior feeling a man has when shaving himself in the clear light of reason. He did not feel precisely rested, yet had a sense of morn- ing freshness. With powdered cheeks, in his Scotch-thread drawers and red morocco slippers, he walked out on the balcony, drying his hands. The balcony ran across the house and was divided into small sepa- rate compartments by opaque glass partitions, which did not quite reach to the balustrade. The morning was cool and cloudy. Trails of mist lay motionless in front of the heights on one side and the other, while great cloud-masses, grey and white, hung down over the distant peaks. Patches and bands of blue showed here and there; now and then a gleam of sunshine lighted up the village down in the valley, till it glistened whitely against the dark fir- covered slopes. Somewhere there was music, very likely in the same hotel where there had been a concert the evening before. The subdued chords of a hymn floated up; after a pause came a march. Hans Castorp loved music from his heart; it worked upon him in much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with deeply soothing, narcotic effect, tempting him to doze. He listened well pleased, his head on one side, his eyes a little bloodshot. He could see below him the winding road up to the sanatorium, by which he had come the night before. Among the dewy grass of the sloping terrace short-stemmed, star-shaped gentians stood out. Part of the level ground had been enclosed for a garden, with DRAWING THE VEIL 39 flower-beds, gravel paths, and an artificial grotto under a stately silver fir. A hall, with reclining-chairs and a galvanized roof, opened towards the south; near it stood a flag-pole, painted red- dish-brown, on which the flag fluttered open now and then on its cord. It was a fancy flag, green and white, with the caduceus, the emblem of healing, in the centre. A woman was walking in the garden, an elderly lady, of melan- choly, even tragic aspect. Dressed all in black, a black veil wound about her dishevelled grey-black hair, with wrinkled brow and coal-black eyes that had hanging pouches of skin beneath them, she moved with rapid, restless step along the garden paths, staring straight before her, her knees a little bent, her arms hanging stiffly down. The ageing face in its southern pallor, with the large, wried mouth drawn down on one side, reminded Hans Castorp of a por- trait he had once seen of a famous tragic actress. And strange it was to see how the pale, black-clad woman unconsciously matched her long, woeful pace to the music of the march. He looked down upon her with pensive sympathy; it seemed to him the sad apparition darkened the morning sunshine. But in the same instant he became aware of something else, something audi- ble: certain noises penetrating to his hearing from the room on the left of his own, which was occupied, Joachim had said, by a Rus- sian couple. Again he felt a discrepancy; these sounds no more suited the blithe freshness of the morning than had the sad sight in the garden below — rather they seemed to befoul the air, make it thick, sticky. Hans Castorp recalled having heard similar sounds the evening before, though his weariness had prevented him from heeding them: a struggling, a panting and giggling, the offensive nature of which could not long remain hidden to the young man, try as he good-naturedly did to put a harmless construction on them. Perhaps something more or other than good nature was in play, something to which we give a variety of names, calling it now purity of soul, which sounds insipid; again by that grave, beautiful name of chastity; and yet again disparaging it as hy- pocrisy, as “ hating to look facts in the face ”; even ascribing it to an obscure sense of awe and piety — and, in truth, something of all these was in Hans Castorp’s face and bearing as he listened. He seemed to be practising a seemly obscurantism; to be mentally drawing the veil over these sounds that he heard; to be telling him- self that honour forbade his taking any cognizance of them, or even hearing them at all — it gave him an air of propriety which was not quite native, though he knew how to assume it on occa- sion. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 40 With this mien, then, he drew back from the balcony into his room, in order not to listen further to proceedings which, for all the giggling that went with them, were plainly in dead earnest, even alarming. But from indoors the noise could be heard even more plainly. He seemed to hear a chase about the room; a chair fell over; someone was caught and seized; loud kissing ensued — and the music below had changed to a waltz, a popular air whose hackneyed, melodious phrases accompanied the invisible scene. Hans Castorp stood towel in hand and listened, against his better judgment. And he began to blush through the powder; for what he had all along seen coming was come, and the game had passed quite frankly over into the bestial. “ Good Lord! ” he thought. He turned away and made as much noise as possible while he con- cluded his toilet. “ Well, at least they are married, as far as that goes,” he said to himself. “ But in broad daylight — it’s a bit thick! And last night too, I’m sure. But of course they are ill, or at least one of them, or they wouldn’t be here — that may be some excuse. The scandalous part of it is, the walls are so thin one can’t help hearing everything. Simply intolerable. The place is shamefully jerry-built, of course. What if I should see them, or even be intro- duced? I simply couldn’t endure it! ” Here Hans Castorp re- marked with surprise that the flush which had mounted in his freshly shaven cheek did not subside, nor its accompanying warmth: his face glowed with the same dry heat as on the evening before. He had got free of it in sleep, but the blush had made it set in again. He did not feel the friendlier for this discovery to- wards the wretched pair next door; in fact he stuck out his lips and muttered a derogatory word in their direction, as he tried to cool his hot face by bathing it in cold water — and only made it glow the more. He felt put out; his voice vibrated with ill humour as he answered to his cousin’s knock on the wall; and he appeared to Joachim on his entrance like anything but a man refreshed and invigorated by a good night’s sleep. Breakfast “ Morning,” Joachim said. “ Well, that was your first night up here. How did you find it? ” He was dressed for out-of-doors, in sports clothes and stout boots, and carried his ulster over his arm. The outline of the flat bottle could be seen on the side pocket. As yesterday, he wore no hat. “ Thanks,” responded Hans Castorp, “ it was well enough, I BREAKFAST 41 won’t try to judge yet. I’ve had all sorts of mixed-up dreams, and this building seems to possess the disadvantage of being porous — the sound goes straight through it. It’s annoying. — Who is that dark woman down in the garden? ” Joachim knew at once whom he meant. “ Oh,” he said, “ that’s Tous-les-deux. We all call her that up here, because it’s the only thing she says. Mexican, you know; doesn’t know a word of German and hardly any French, just a few scraps. She has been here for five weeks with her eldest son, a hopeless case, without much longer to go. He has it all over, tubercular through and through, you might say. Behrens says it is much like typhus, at the end — horrible for all concerned. Well, two weeks ago the second son came up, to see his brother before the end — handsome as a picture; both of them were that, with eyes like live coals — they fluttered the dovecots, I can tell you. He had been coughing a bit down below, but otherwise quite lively. Well, he no sooner gets up here than he begins to run a tempera- ture, high fever, you know, 103. i°. They put him to bed — and if he gets up again, Behrens says, it will be more good luck than good management. But it was high time he came, in any case, Behrens says. — Well, and since then the mother goes about — whenever she is not sitting with them — and if you speak to her, she just says: 6 T ous les deux ! ’ She can’t say any more, and for the moment there is no one up here who understands Spanish.” “ So that’s it,” Hans Castorp said. “ Will she say it to me, when I get to know her, do you think? That will be queer — funny and weird at the same time, I mean.” His eyes looked as they had yes- terday, they felt hot and heavy, as if tired with weeping, and yet brilliant too, with the gleam that had been kindled in them yester- day at the sound of that strange, new cough on the part of the gentleman rider. He had the feeling that he had been out of touch with yesterday since waking, and had only now picked up the threads again where he laid them down. He told his cousin he was ready, sprinkling a few drops of lavender-water on his handker- chief as he spoke and dabbing his face with it, on the brow and under the eyes. “ If you like, we can go to breakfast, tous les deux” he recklessly joked. Joachim looked with mildness at him, then smiled his enigmatic smile of mingled melancholy and mock- ery — or so it seemed, for he did not express himself otherwise. After looking to his supply of cigars Hans Castorp took coat and stick, also, rather defiantly, his hat — he was far too sure of himself and his station in life to alter his ways and acquire new ones for a mere three weeks’ visit — and they went out and down THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 42 the steps. In the corridor Joachim pointed to this and that door and gave the names of the occupants — there were German names, but also all sorts of foreign ones — with brief comments on them and the seriousness of their cases. They met people already coming back from breakfast, and when Joachim said good-morning, Hans Castorp courteously lifted his hat. He was tense and nervous, as a young man is when about to present himself before strangers — when, that is, he is conscious that his eyes are heavy and his face red. The last, how- ever, was only true in part, for he was rather pale than otherwise. “ Before I forget it,” he said abruptly, “ you may introduce me to the lady in the garden if you like, I mean if it happens that way, I have no objection. She would just say: 4 Tous les deux ’ to me, and I shouldn’t mind it, being prepared, and knowing what it means — I should know how to look. But I don’t wish to know the Russian pair, do you hear? I expressly- don’t wish it. They are a very ill-behaved lot. If I must live for three weeks next door to them, and nothing else could be arranged, at least I needn’t know them. I am justified in that, and I simply and explicitly decline.” “ Very good,” Joachim said. “ Did they disturb you? Yes, they are barbarians, more or less; uncivilized, I told you so before. He comes to the table in a leather jacket, very shabby, I always won- der Behrens doesn’t make a row. And she isn’t the cleanest in this world, with her feather hat. You may make yourself quite easy, they sit at the 4 bad ’ Russian table, a long way off us — there is a 4 good ’ Russian table, too, you see, where the nicer Russians sit — and there is not much chance of you coming into contact with them, even if you wanted to. It is not very easy to make acquaint- ance here, partly from the fact that there are so many foreigners. Personally, as long as I’ve been here, I know very few.” 44 Which of the two is ill? ” Hans Castrop asked . 44 He or she? ” 44 The man I think. Yes, only the man,” Joachim answered, ab- sently. They passed among the hat- and coat-racks and entered the light, low-vaulted hall, where there was a buzzing of voices, a clattering of dishes, and a running to and fro of waitresses with steaming jugs. There were seven tables, all but two of them standing length- wise of the room. They were good-sized, seating each ten persons, though not all of them were at present full. A few steps diagonally into the room, and they stood at their places; Hans Castorp’s was at the end of a table placed between the two crosswise ones. Erect behind his chair, he bowed stiffly but amiably to each table-mate in turn, as Joachim formally presented him; hardly seeing them, BREAKFAST 43 much less having their names penetrate his mind. He caught but a single name and person — Frau Stohr, whom he perceived to have a red face and greasy ash-blond hair. Looking at her he could quite credit the malapropisms Joachim told of. Her face expressed nothing but ill-nature and ignorance. He sat down, observing as he did so that early breakfast was taken seriously up here. There were pots of marmalade and honey, basins of rice and oatmeal porridge, dishes of cold meat and scrambled eggs; a pleni- tude of butter, a Gruyere cheese dropping moisture under a glass bell. A bowl of fresh and dried fruits stood in the centre of the table. A waitress in black and white asked Hans Castorp whether he would drink coffee, cocoa or tea. She was small as a child, with a long, oldish face — a dwarf, he realized with a start. He looked at his cousin, who only shrugged indifferently with brows and shoulders, as though to say: “ Well, what of it? ” So he adjusted himself as speedily as possible to the fact that he was being served by a dwarf, and put special consideration into his voice as he asked for tea. Then he began eating rice with cinnamon and sugar, his eyes roving over the table full of other inviting viands, and over the guests at the six remaining tables, Joachim’s companions and fellow victims, who were all inwardly infected, and now sat there breakfasting. The hall was done in that modem style which knows how to give just the right touch of individuality to something in reality very simple. It was rather shallow in proportion to its length, and opened in great arched bays into a sort of lobby surrounding it, in which serving-tables were placed. The pillars were faced half- way up with wood finished to look like sandalwood, the upper part white-enamelled, like the ceiling and upper half of the walls. They were stenciled in gay-coloured bands of simple and lively designs which were repeated on the girders of the vaulted ceiling. The room was further enlivened by several electric chandeliers in bright brass, consisting of three rings placed horizontally one over the other and held together by delicate woven work, the lowest ring set with globes of milky glass like little moons. There were four glass doors, two on the opposite wall, opening on the veran- dah, a third at the bottom of the room on the left, leading into the front hall, and a fourth, by which Hans Castorp had entered through a vestibule, as Joachim had brought him down a different stair from the one they had used yesterday evening. He had on his right a plain-looking woman in black, with a dull flush on her cheeks, the skin of which was downy-looking, as an older person’s often is. She looked to him like a seamstress THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 44 or home dressmaker, the idea being suggested by the fact that she took only coffee and buttered rolls for breakfast; since his child- hood he had always somehow associated dressmakers with coffee and buttered rolls. On his left sat an English spinster, also well on in years, very ugly, with frozen, withered-looking fingers. She sat reading her home letters, which were written in round hand, and drinking tea the colour of blood. Next her was Joachim, and then Frau Stohr, in a woollen blouse of Scotch plaid. She held her left hand doubled up in a fist near her cheek as she ate, and drew her upper lip back from her long, narrow, rodent-like teeth when she spoke, obviously trying to make an impression of culture and re- finement. A young man with thin moustaches sat next beyond. His facial expression was of one with something bad-tasting in his mouth, and he ate without a word. He had come in after Hans Castorp was already seated, with his chin sunk on his breast; and sat down so, without even lifting his head in greeting, seeming by his bearing plumply to decline being made acquainted with the new guest. He was, perhaps, too ill to have thought of or care for appearances, or even to take any interest in his surroundings. Opposite him there had sat for a short time a very lean, light- blonde girl who emptied a bottle of yogurt on her plate, ladled it up with a spoon, and took herself off. The conversation at table was not lively. Joachim talked po- litely with Frau Stohr, inquired after her condition and heard with proper solicitude that it was unsatisfactory. She com- plained of relaxation. “ I feel so relaxed/' she said with a drawl and an underbred, affected manner. And she had had 99. 1 0 when she got up that morning — what was she likely to have by after- noon? The dressmaker confessed to the same temperature, but she on the contrary felt excited, tense, and restless, as though some important event were about to happen, which was cer- tainly not the case; the excitation was purely physical, quite without emotional grounds. Hans Castorp thought to himself that she could not be a dressmaker after all; she spoke too correctly, even pedantically. He found her excitation, or rather the expres- sion of it, somehow unsuitable, almost offensive, in so homely and insignificant a creature. He asked her and Frau Stohr, one after the other, how long they had been up here, and found that one had five, the other seven months to her credit. Then he mus- tered his English to inquire of his neighbour on the right what sort of tea she was drinking (it was made of rose-hips) and if it tasted good, which she almost passionately affirmed; then he watched people coming and going in the room; the first break- BREAKFAST 45 fast, it appeared, was not regarded as a regular meal, in any strict sense. He had been a little afraid of unpleasant impressions, but found himself agreeably disappointed. The room was lively, one had not the least feeling of being in a place of suffering. Tanned young people of both sexes came in humming, spoke to the waitresses, and fell to upon the viands with robust appetite. There were older people, married couples, a whole family with children, speaking Russian, and half-grown lads. The women wore chiefly close- fitting jackets of wool or silk— the so-called sweater — in white or colours, with turnover collars and side pockets; they would stand with hands thrust deep in these pockets, and talk — it looked very pretty. At some tables photographs were being handed about — amateur photography, no doubt — at another stamps were be- ing exchanged. The talk was of the weather, of how one had slept, of what one had “ measured in the mouth ” on rising. Nearly everybody seemed in good spirits, probably on no other grounds than that they were in numerous company and had no immediate cares. Here and there, indeed, sat someone who rested his head on his hand and stared before him. They let him stare, and paid no heed. Hans Castorp gave a sudden angry start. A door was slammed — it was the one on the left, leading into the hall, and someone had let it fall shut, or even banged it, a thing he detested; he had never been able to endure it. Whether from his upbringing, or out of a natural idiosyncrasy, he loathed the slamming of doors, and could have struck the guilty person. In this case, the door was filled in above with small glass panes, which augmented the shock with their ringing and rattling. “ Oh, come,” he thought angrily, “ what kind of damned carelessness was that? ” But at the same time the seamstress addressed him with a remark, and he had no time to see who the transgressor had been. Deep creases furrowed his blond brows, and his face was contorted as he turned to reply to his neighbour. Joachim asked whether the doctors had come through. Yes, someone answered, they had been there once and left the room just as the cousins entered. Then it would be better not to wait, Joachim thought. An opportunity for introducing his cousin would surely come in the course of the day. But at the door they nearly ran into Hofrat Behrens, as he entered with hasty steps, followed by Dr. Krokowski. “ Hullo-ullo there! Take care, gentlemen! That might have been rough on all of our corns! ” He spoke with a strong low- THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 46 Saxon accent, broad and mouthingly. “ Oh, so here you are,” he addressed Hans Castorp, whom Joachim, heels together, pre- sented. “ Well, glad to see you.” He reached the young man a hand the size of a shovel. He was some three heads taller than Dr. Krokowski; a bony man, his hair already quite white; his neck stuck out, his large, goggling bloodshot blue eyes were swimming in tears; he had a snub nose, and a close-trimmed little moustache, which made a crooked line because his upper lip was drawn up on one side. What Joachim had said about his cheeks was fully borne out; they were really purple, and set off his head garishly against the white surgeon’s coat he wore, a belted smock of more than knee-length, beneath which showed striped trousers and a pair of enormous feet in rather worn yellow laced boots. Dr. Krokowski too was in professional garb; but his smock was of some shiny black stuff and made like a shirt, with elastic bands at the wrists. It contrasted sharply with the pallor of his skin. His manner suggested that he was present solely in his capacity as assistant; he took no part in the greeting, but a certain expression at the comers of his mouth betrayed the fact that he felt the strain of his subordinate position. “ Cousins? ” the Hofrat asked, motioning with his hand from one to the other of the two young men and looking at them with his bloodshot eyes. “ Is he going to follow the drums like you? ” he addressed Joachim, jerking his head at Hans Castorp. “God forbid, eh? I could tell as soon as I saw you” — he spoke now directly to the young man — “ that you were a layman; there’s something civilian and comfortable about you, not like our sabre- rattling corporal here! You’d be a better patient than he is, I’ll wager. I can tell by looking at people, you know, whether they’ll make good patients or not; it takes talent, everything takes talent — and this myrmidon here hasn’t a spark. Maybe he shows up on the parade-ground, for aught I know; but he’s no good at being ill. Will you believe it, he’s always wanting to clear out! Badgers me all the time, simply can’t wait to get down there and be skinned alive. There’s doggedness for you! Won’t give us even a measly half-a-year! And yet it’s quite pretty up here; I leave it to you if it isn’t, Ziemssen, what? . . . Well, your cousin will appreciate us, even if you don’t. He’ll get some fun out of it. There’s no shortage in the lady market here, either; we have the most charming females. At least, some of them are very pictur- esque on the outside. But you ought to have better colour your- self, you know, if you want to please the sex. ‘ The golden tree of life is green,’ as the poet says — but it’s a poor colour for the BANTER 47 complexion, all the same. Totally anaemic, of course,” he broke off, and without more ado put up his index and middle fingers and drew down Hans Castorp’s eyelid. “ Precisely! Totally anaemic, as I was saying. You know it wasn’t such a bad idea of yours to let your native Hamburg shift for itself awhile. Great insti- tution, Hamburg — simply revels in humidity — sends us a tidy contingent every year. But if I may take the occasion to give you the benefit of my poor opinion — sine pecunia, you under- stand, quite sine pecunia — I would suggest that you do just as your cousin does, while you are up here. You couldn’t turn a better trick than to behave for the time as though you had a slight tuberculosis pulmonum y and put on a little flesh. It’s curi- ous about the metabolism of protein with us up here. Although the process of combustion is heightened, yet the body at the same time puts on flesh. — Well, Ziemssen, slept pretty well, what? . . . Splendid! Then get on with the out-of-doors exercise — but not more than half an hour, you hear? And afterwards stick the quick- silver cigar in your face, eh? And be good and write it down, Ziemssen! That’s a conscientious lad! Saturday I’ll look at the curve. Your cousin better measure too. Measuring can’t hurt any- body. Morning, gentlemen. Have a good time — morning — morn- ing — ” Krokowski joined him as he sailed off down the hall, swinging his arms palms backward, directing to right and left the question about sleeping well, which was answered on all sides in the affirmative. Banter . Viaticum . Interrupted Mirth “ Very nice man,” Hans Castorp said, as after a friendly nod to the lame concierge, who was sorting letters in his lodge, they passed out into the open air. The main entrance was on the south-west side of the white building, the central portion of which was a storey higher than the wings, and crowned by a turret with a roof of slate-coloured tin. You did not issue from this side into the hedged-in garden, but were immediately in the open, in sight of the steep mountain meadows, dotted with single fir-trees of moderate size, and writhen, stunted pines. The way they took — it was the only one they could take, outside the drive going down to the valley — rose by a gentle ascent to the left, behind the sanatorium, past the kitchen and domestic offices, where huge dustbins stood at the area rails. Thence it led in the same direction for a goodish piece, then made a sharp bend to the right and mounted more rapidly along the thinly THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 48 wooded slopes. It was a reddish path, firm and yet ratter moist underfoot, with boulders here and there along the edge. The cousins were by no means alone upon it: guests who had finished breakfast not long after them followed hard upon their steps, and groups of others, already returning, approached with the stalking gait of people descending a steep incline. “ Very nice man,” repeated Hans Castorp. “ He has such a flow of words I enjoy listening to him. 4 Quicksilver cigar ’ was capital, I got it at once. — But I’ll just light up a real one,” he said, pausing, “ I can’t hold out any longer. I haven’t had a proper smoke since yesterdav after luncheon. Excuse me a minute.” He opened his automobile-leather case, with its silver monogram, and drew out a Maria Mancini, a beautiful specimen of the first layer, flattened on one side as he particularly liked it; he cut off the tip slantingly with a sharp little tool he wore on his watch- chain, then, striking a tiny flame with his pocket apparatus, puffed with concentration at the long, blunt-ended cigar until it was alight. “ There! ” he said. “ Now, as far as I’m concerned, we can get on with the exercise. You don’t smoke — out of sheer dog- gedness, of course.” “ I never do smoke,” answered Joachim; 44 why should I begin up here? ” 44 1 don’t understand it,” Hans Castorp said. 44 1 never can under- stand how anybody can not smoke — it deprives a man of the best part of life, so to speak — or at least of a first-class pleasure. When I wake in the morning, I feel glad at the thought of being able to smoke all day, and when I eat, I look forward to smoking afterwards; I might almost say I only eat for the sake of being able to smoke — though of course that is more or less of an ex- aggeration. But a day without tobacco would be flat, stale, and unprofitable, as far as I am concerned. If I had to say to myself to-morrow: 4 No smoke to-day ’ — I believe I shouldn’t find the courage to get up — on my honour, I’d stop in bed. But when a man has a good cigar in his mouth — of course it mustn’t have a side draught or not draw well, that is extremely irritating — but with a good cigar in his mouth a man is perfectly safe, nothing can touch him — literally. It’s just like lying on the beach: when you lie on the beach, why, you lie on the beach, don’t you? — you don’t require anything else, in the line of work or amusement either. — People smoke all over the world, thank goodness; there is nowhere one could get to, so far as I know, where the habit hasn’t penetrated. Even polar expeditions fit themselves out with supplies of tobacco to help them carry on. I’ve always felt a thrill BANTER 49 of sympathy when I read that. You can be very miserable: I might be feeling perfectly wretched, for instance; but I could always stand it if I had my smoke.” “ But after all,” Joachim said, “ it is rather flabby-minded of you to be so dependent on it. Behrens is right, you are certainly a civilian. He meant it for a sort of compliment, I dare say; but the truth is, you are a civilian — incurable. But then, you are healthy, you can do what you like,” he added, and his eyes took on their tired look. “ Yes, healthy except for the anaemia,” said Hans Castorp. “That was certainly straight from the shoulder, his telling me I look green. But it is true — I’ve noticed myself that I look green in comparison with the rest of you up here, though it never struck me down home. And it was nice of him to give me advice gratis like that — ‘ sine pecimia as he put it. I’ll gladly undertake to do as he says, and live just as you do. After all, how else should I do while I’m up here? And it can’t do me any harm; suppose I do put on a little flesh, then, in God’s name — though it sounds a bit disgusting, you will admit.” Joachim coughed slightly now and then as they walked, it seemed to strain him to go uphill. When he did so for the third time, he paused and stood still with a frown. “ Go on ahead,” he said. Hans Castorp hastened to do so, without looking round. Then he slackened his pace, and finally almost stopped, as it seemed to him he must have got a good distance ahead or Joachim. But he did not look round. A troop of guests of both sexes approached him. He had seen them coming along the level path half-way up the slope; now they were stalking downhill directly towards him; he heard their voices. They were six or seven persons of various ages: some in the bloom of youth, others rather older. He took a good look at them, from the side, as he walked with bent head, thinking about Joachim. They were tanned and bare-headed, the women in sweaters, the men mostly without overcoats or even walking- sticks, all of them like people who have just gone casually out for a turn in the open. Going downhill involves no sustained muscular effort, only an agreeable process of putting on the brakes in order not to finish by running and tripping head over heels; it is really nothing more than just letting yourself go; and thus the gait of these people had something loose- jointed and flighty about it, which communicated itself to the appearance of the whole group and made one almost wish to be of their lively party. They came close up to him, he saw their faces clearly. No, THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 50 they were not all brown: two of the ladies were, on the contrary, distinctly pale; one of them thin as a lath, and ivory-white of complexion, the other shorter and plump, disfigured by freckles. They all looked at him, smiling rather boldly. A tall young girl in a green sweater, with untidy hair and foolish, half-open eyes, brushed past Hans Castorp, nearly touching him with her arm. And as she did so she whistled — oh, impossible! Yes, she did though; not with her mouth, indeed, for she did not pucker the lips, but held them firmly closed. She whistled from somewhere inside, and looked at him with her silly, half-shut eyes — it was an extraordinarily unpleasant whistle, harsh and penetrating, yet hollow-sounding; a long-drawn-out note, falling at the end, like the sound made by those rubber pigs one buys at fairs, that give out the air in a wailing key as they collapse. The sound issued, inexplicably, from her breast — and then, with her troop, she had passed on. Hans Castorp stood and stared. In a moment he turned round, understanding at least so much, that the atrocious thing must have been a joke, a put-up job; for he saw over his shoulder that they were laughing as they went, that a stodgy, thick-lipped youth, whose coat was turned up in an unseemly way about him so that he could put both hands in his trouser pockets, turned his head and laughed quite openly. Joachim approached. He had greeted the group with his usual punctiliousness, almost pausing, and bowing with heels together; now he came mildly up to his cousin. “ Why are you making such a face? ” he asked. “ She whistled,” answered Hans Castorp. “ She whistled out of her inside as she passed. Will you have the goodness to ex- plain to me how? ” “ Oh! ” Joachim said, and laughed curtly. “ Nonsense, she didn’t do it with her inside. That was Hermine Kleefeld, she whistles with her pneumothorax.” “ With her what? ” Hans Castorp demanded. He felt wrought up, without knowing why. His voice was between laughter and tears as he added: “ You can’t expect me to understand your lingo.” “ Oh, come along,” Joachim said. “ I can explain it to you as we go. You looked rooted to the spot! It’s a surgical operation, they often perform it up here. Behrens is a regular aab at it. When one of the lungs is very much affected, you understand, and the other one fairly healthy, they make the bad one stop functioning for a while, to give it a rest. That is to say, they BANTER 51 make an incision here, somewhere on the side, I don’t know the precise place, but Behrens has it down fine. Then they fill you up with gas — nitrogen, you know — and that puts the cheesy part of the lung out of operation. The gas doesn’t last long, of course; it has to be renewed every two weeks; they fill you up again, as it were. Now, if that keeps on a year or two, and all goes well, the lung gets healed. Not always, of course; it’s a risky business. But they say they have had a good deal of success with it. Those people you saw just now all have it. That was Frau litis, with the freckles, and the thin, pale one was Fraulein Levi, that had to lie so long in bed, you know. They have formed a group, for of course a thing like the pneumothorax brings people together. They call themselves the Half-Lung Club; everybody knows them by that name. And Hermine Kleefeld is the pride of the club, because she can whistle with hers. It is a special gift, by no means everybody can do it. I can’t tell you how it is done, and she herself can’t exactly describe it. But when she has been walk- ing rather fast, she can make it whistle, and of course she does it to frighten people, especially when they are new to the place. Also, I believe she uses up nitrogen when she does it, for she has to be refilled once a week.” Then it was that Hans Castorp laughed. His excitement, while Joachim was speaking, had fixed for its outlet upon laughter rather than tears; and he laughed as he walked, his hand over his eyes, his shoulders bent, shaken by a succession of subdued chuckles. “ Are they incorporated? ” he asked as soon as he could speak. His voice sounded weak and tearful with suppressed laughter. “ Have they any by-laws? Pity you aren’t a member, you could get me in as a guest, as — as associate half-lunger. — You ought to ask Behrens to put you out of commission, then perhaps you could learn to whistle too; it must be something one could learn — well, that’s the funniest thing ever I heard in my life! ” he finished, heaving a deep sigh. “ I beg your pardon for speaking of it like this, but they seem very jolly over it them- selves, your pneumatic friends. The way they were coming along — and to think that was the Half-Lung Club. Tootle-ty-too, she went at me — she must be out of her senses! It was utter cheek — will you tell me why they behave so cheekily? ” Joachim sought for a reply. “ Good Lord,” he said, “ they are so free — ■ I mean, they are so young, and time is nothing to them, and then they may die — perhaps — why should they make a long face? Sometimes I think being ill and dying aren’t serious at all. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 5 2 just a sort of loafing about and wasting time; life is only serious down below. You will get to understand that after a while, but not until you have spent some time up here.” “ Surely, surely,” Hans Castorp said. “ I’m sure I shall. I al- ready feel great interest in the life up here, and when one is interested, the understanding follows. — But what is the matter with me — it doesn’t taste good,” he said, and took his cigar out of his mouth to look at it. “ I’ve been asking myself all this time what the matter was, and now I see it is Maria. She tastes like papier mache, I do assure you — precisely as when one has a spoilt digestion. I can’t understand it. I did eat more than usual for breakfast, but that cannot be the reason, for she usually tastes particularly good after a too hearty meal. Do you think it is be- cause I had such a disturbed night? Perhaps that is how I got out of order. No, I really can’t stick it,” he said, after another attempt. “ Every pull is a disappointment, there is no sense in forcing it.” And after a hesitating moment he tossed the cigar off down the slope, among the wet pine-boughs. “Do you know what I think it has to do with? ” he asked. “ I feel convinced it is connected with this damned heat I feel all the time in my face. I have suffered from it ever since I got up. I feel as though I were blushing the whole time, deuce take it! Did you have anything like that when you first came? ” “ Yes,” said Joachim. “ I was rather queer at first. Don’t think too much of it. I told you it isn’t so easy to accustom oneself to the life up here. But you will get right again after a bit. Look, that bench is in a pretty place. Let’s sit down awhile and then go home. I must take my cure.” The path had become level. It ran now in the direction of Davos-Platz, some third of the height, and kept a continuous view, between high, sparse, wind-blown pines, of the settlement below, gleaming whitely in the bright air. The bench on which they sat leaned against the steep wall of the mountain-side, and near them a spring in an open wooden trough ran gurgling and plashing to the valley. Joachim was for instructing his cousin in the names of the mist-wreathed Alpine heights which seemed to enclose the valley on the south, pointing them out in turn with his alpenstock. But Hans Castorp gave the mountains only a fleeting glance. He sat bent over, tracing figures on the ground with the ferrule of his cityish silver-mounted walking-stick. There were other things he wanted to know. “ What I meant to ask you,” he began, “ the case in my room BANTER 53 had died just before I got here; have there been many deaths since you came? ” “ Several, certainly,” answered Joachim. “ But they are very discreetly managed, you understand; you hear nothing of them, or only by chance afterwards; everything is kept strictly private when there is a death, out of regard for the other patients, espe- cially the ladies, who might easily get a shock. You don’t notice it, even when somebody dies next door. The coffin is brought very early in the morning, while you are asleep, and the person in question is fetched away at a suitable time too — for instance, while we are eating.” “ H’m,” said Hans Castorp, and continued to draw. “ I see. That sort of thing goes on behind the scenes, then.” “ Yes — for the most part. But lately — let me see, wait a minute, it might be possibly eight weeks ago — ” “Then you can hardly say lately,” Hans Castorp pounced on him crisply. “ What? Well, not lately, then, since you’re so precise. I was just trying to reckon. Well, then, some time ago, it was, I got a glimpse behind the scenes — purely by chance — and I remem- ber it as if it were yesterday. It was when they brought the Sacrament to little Hu jus, Barbara Hu jus — she was a Catholic — the Last Sacrament, you know, Extreme Unction. She was still about when I first came up here, and she could be wildly hilar- ious, regularly giggly, like a little kid. But after that it went pretty fast with her, she didn’t get up any more — her room was three doors off mine — and then her parents arrived, and now the priest was coming to her. It was while everybody was at tea, not a soul in the passages. But I had gone to sleep in the after- noon rest and overslept myself, I hadn’t heard the gong and was a quarter of an hour late. So that at the decisive moment I wasn’t where all the others were, but behind the scenes, as you call it; as I go along the corridor, they come toward me, in their lace robes, with the cross in front, a gold cross with lanterns — it made me think of the Schellenbaum they march with, in front of the recruits.” “ What sort of comparison is that? ” Hans Castorp asked, severely. “ It looked like that to me — I couldn’t help thinking of it. But listen. They came towards me, marching, quick step, three of them, so far as I remember: the man with the cross, the priest, with glasses on his nose, and a boy with a censer. The priest was holding the Sacrament to his breast, it was covered up, and he had THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 54 his head bent on one side and looked very sanctified — k is their holy of holies, of course.” “Exactly,” Hans Castorp said. “And just for that reason I wonder at your making the comparison you did.” “Yes, but wait a bit — if you had been there, you wouldn’t have known what kind of face you would make remembering it afterwards. It was the sort of thing to give you bad dreams — ” “How?” “ Like this: I ask myself how I am supposed to behave, under the circumstances. I had no hat to take off — ” “ There, you see, don’t you? ” Hans Castorp interrupted him again. “ You see now, one ought to wear a hat. Naturally I’ve noticed that none of you do up here; but you should, so you can have something to take off when it is proper to do so. Well, but what then? ” “ I stood against the wall,” Joachim went on, “ as respectfully as I could, and bent over a little when they were by me — it was just at little Hujus’s door, number twenty-eight. The priest seemed to be pleased that I saluted; he acknowledged very courte- ously and took off his cap. But at the same time they came to a stop, and the ministrant with the censer knocks, and lifts the latch, and makes way for his superior to enter. Just try to imagine my sensations, and how frightened I was! The minute the priest sets his foot over the threshold, there begins a hullabaloo from inside, a screaming such as you never heard the like of, three or four times running, and then a shriek — on and on without stopping, at the top of her lungs: Ah-h-h-h! So full of horror and rebellion, and anguish, and — well, perfectly indescribable. And in between came a gruesome sort of begging. Then it suddenly got all dulled and hollow-sounding, as though it had sunk down into the earth, or were coming out of a cellar.” Hans Castorp had turned with violence to face his cousin. “ Was that the Hujus? ” he asked abruptly. “ And how do you mean — out of a cellar? ” “ She had crawled down under the covers,” said Joachim. “ Im- agine how I felt! The priest stood on the threshold and spoke sooth- ingly, I can see now just how he stuck his head out and drew it back again while he talked. The cross-bearer and the acolyte hesitated, and couldn’t get in. I could see between them into the room. It was just like yours and mine, the bed on the side wall left of the door, and people were standing at the head, the rela- tives of course, the parents, talking soothingly at the bed, where BANTER 55 you could see nothing but a formless mass that was begging and protesting horribly, and kicking about with its legs.” 44 You say she kicked? ” “ With all her might. But it did her no good, she had to take the Sacrament. The priest went up to her, and the two others went inside the room, and the door closed. But first I saw little Hujus’s head come up for a second, a shock of blond hair, and look at the priest with staring eyes, that were without any colour, and then with a wail go down under the sheet again.” “ And you tell me all that now for the first time? ” Hans Castorp said, after a pause. “ I can’t understand how you came not to speak of it yesterday evening. But, good Lord, she must have had strength, to defend herself like that. That takes strength. They ought not to fetch the priest before one is quite weak.” “ She was weak,” responded Joachim. — “ Oh, there’s so much to tell, one doesn’t have time to pick and choose. She was weak enough! It was only the fright gave her so much strength. She was in a fearful state when she saw she was going to die; and she was such a young girl, it was excusable, after all. But grown men behave like that too, sometimes, and it’s deplorably feeble of them, of course. Behrens knows how to treat them, he takes just the right tone in such cases.” 44 What kind of tone? ” Hans Castorp asked with drawn brows. “ 4 Don’t behave like that,’ he tells them,” Joachim answered. “ At least, that is what he told somebody lately — we heard it from the Directress, who was present and helped to hold the man. He was one of those who make a regular scene at the end, and simply won’t die. So Behrens brought him up with a round turn: 4 Do me the favour not to behave like that,’ he said to him; and the patient became quite calm and died as quietly as you please.” Hans Castorp slapped his thigh and threw himself back against the bench, looking up at the sky. “ I say, that’s pretty steep,” he cried. 44 Goes at him like that, and simply tells him not to behave that way! To a dying man! But after all, a dying man has something in a way — sacred about him. One can’t just — perfectly coolly, like that — a dying man is sort of holy, I should think! ” 44 1 don’t deny it,” said Joachim. 44 But when one behaves as feebly as that — ” 44 No,” persisted Hans Castorp, with a violence out of propor- tion to the opposition he met, 44 1 insist that a dying man is above any chap that is going about and laughing and earning his living THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN and eating his three meals a day. It isn’t good enough — ” his voice quavered “ — it isn’t good enough, for one to calmly — just calmly — ” his words trailed off in a fit of laughter that seized and overcame him, the laughter of yesterday, a profound, illimita- ble, body-shaking laughter, that shut up his eyes and made tears well from beneath their lids. “ Sh-h! ” went Joachim, suddenly. “ Keep quiet,” he whis- pered, and nudged his uncontrollably hilarious cousin in the side. Hans Castorp looked up through tears. A stranger was approaching them from the left, a dark man of graceful carriage, with curling black moustaches, wearing light- coloured check trousers. He exchanged a good-morning with Joachim in accents agreeable and precise, and then remained standing before them in an easy posture, leaning on his cane, with his legs crossed. Satana His age would have been hard to say, probably between thirty and forty; for though he gave an impression of youthfulness, yet the hair on his temples was sprinkled with silver and gone quite thin on his head. Two bald bays ran along the narrow scanty parting, and added to the height of his forehead. His clothing, loose trousers in light yellowish checks, and too long, double- breasted pilot coat, with very wide lapels, made no slightest claim to elegance; and his stand-up collar, with rounding corners, was rough on the edges from frequent washing. His black cravat showed wear, and he wore no cuffs, as Hans Castorp saw at once from the lax way the sleeve hung round the wrist. But despite all that, he knew he had a gentleman before him: the stranger’s easy, even charming pose and cultured expression left no doubt of that. Yet by this mingling of shabbiness and grace, by the black eyes and softly waving moustaches, Hans Castorp was irresistibly re- minded of certain foreign musicians who used to come to Ham- burg at Christmas to play in the streets before people’s doors. He could see them rolling up their velvet eyes and holding out their soft hats for the coins tossed from the windows. “ A hand-organ man,” he thought. Thus he was not surprised at the name he heard, as Joachim rose from the bench and in some em- barrassment presented him: “ My cousin Castorp, Herr Settem- brini.” Hans Castorp had got up at the same time, the traces of his burst of hilarity still on his face. But the Italian courteously bade them both not to disturb themselves, and made them sit down SATANA 57 again, while he maintained his easy pose before them. He smiled, standing there and looking at the cousins, in particular at Hans Castorp; a smile that was a fine, almost mocking deepening and crisping of one corner of the mouth, just at the point where the full moustache made its beautiful upward curve. It had upon the cousins a singular effect: it somehow constrained them to mental alertness and clarity; it sobered the reeling Hans Castorp in a twinkling, and made him ashamed. Settembrini said: “You are in good spirits — and with reason too, with excellent reason. What a splendid morning! A blue sky, a smjiling sun ” — with an easy, adequate motion of the arm he raised a small, yellowish-skinned hand to the heavens, and sent a lively glance upward after it — “ one could almost forget where one is.” He spoke without accent, only the precise enunciation be- trayed the foreigner. His lips seemed to take a certain pleasure in forming the words. It was most agreeable to hear him. “ You had a pleasant journey hither, I hope? ” he turned to Hans Castorp. “ And do you already know your fate — I mean has the mournful ceremony of the first examination taken place? ” Here, if he had really been expecting a reply he should have paused; he had put his question, and Hans Castorp prepared to answer. But he went on: “ Did you get off easily? One might put — ” here he paused a second, and the crisping at the corner of his mouth grew crisper — “ more than one interpretation upon your laughter. How many months have our Minos and Rhada- manthus knocked you down for? ” The slang phrase sounded droll on his lips. “ Shall I guess? Six? Nine? You know we are free with the time up here — ” Hans Castorp laughed, astonished, at the same time racking his brains to re member who Minos and Rhadamanthus were. He answered: “Not at all — no, really, you are under a misappre- hension, Herr Septem — ” “ Settembrini,” corrected the Italian, clearly and with empha- sis, making as he spoke a mocking bow. “ Herr Settembrini — I beg your pardon. No, you are mistaken. Really I am not ill. I have only come on a visit to my cousin Ziemssen for a few weeks, and shall take advantage of the oppor- tunity to get a good rest — ” “ Zounds! You don’t say? Then you are not one of us? You are well, you are but a guest here, like Odysseus in the kingdom of the shades? You are bold indeed, thus to descend into these depths peopled by the vacant and idle dead — ” THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 58 “ Descend, Herr Settembrini? I protest. Here I have climbed up some five thousand feet to get here — ” “ That was only seeming. Upon my honour, it was an illusion,” the Italian said, with a decisive wave of the hand. “We are sunk enough here, aren’t we, Lieutenant? ” he said to Joachim, who, no little gratified at this method of address, thought to hide his satisfaction, and answered reflectively: “ I suppose we do get rather one-sided. But we can pull our- selves together, afterwards, if we try.” “ At least, you can, I’m sure — you are an upright man,” Set- tembrini said. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said, repeating the word three times, with a sharp s , turning to Hans Castorp again as he spoke, and then, in the same measured way, clucking three times with his tongue against his palate. “ I see, I see, I see,” he said again, giving the s the same sharp sound as before. He looked the new- comer so steadfastly in the face that his eyes grew fixed in a stare; then, becoming lively again, he went on: “ So you come up quite of your own free will to us sunken ones, and mean to bestow upon us the pleasure of your company for some little while? That is delightful. And what term had you thought of putting to your stay? I don’t mean precisely. I am merely inter- ested to know what the length of a man’s sojourn would be when it is himself and not Rhadamanthus who prescribes the limit.” “Three weeks,” Hans Castorp said, rather pridefully, as he saw himself the object of envy. “ O dio! Three weeks! Do you hear, Lieutenant? Does it not sound to you impertinent to hear a person say: 4 1 am stopping for three weeks and then I am going away again ’? We up here are not acquainted with such an unit of time as the week — if I may be permitted to instruct you, my dear sir. Our smallest unit is the month. We reckon in the grand style — that is a privilege we shadows have. We possess other such; they are all of the same quality. May I ask what profession you practise down below? Or, more probably, for what profession are you preparing your- self? You see we set no bounds to our thirst for information — curiosity is another of the prescriptive rights of shadows.” “ Pray don’t mention it,” said Hans Castorp. And told him. “ A ship-builder! Magnificent! ” cried Settembrini. “ I assure you, I find that magnificent — though my own talents lie in quite another direction.” “ Herr Settembrini is a literary man,” Joachim explained, rather self-consciously. “ He wrote the obituary notices of Car- ducci for the German papers — Carducci, you know.” He got SATANA 59 more self-conscious still, for his cousin looked at him in amaze- ment, as though to say: “ Carducci? What do you know about him? Not any more than I do, I’ll wager.” “ Yes,” the Italian said, nodding. “ I had the honour of tell- ing your countrymen the story of our great poet and free- thinker, when his life had drawn to a close. I knew him, I can count myself among his pupils. I sat at his feet in Bologna. I may thank him for what culture I can call my own — and for what joyousness of life as well. But we were speaking of you. A ship- builder! Do you know you have sensibly risen in my estimation? You represent now, in my eyes, the world of labour and practi- cal genius.” “ Herr Settembrini, I am only a student as yet, I am just beginning.” “ Certainly. It is the beginning that is hard. But all work is hard, isn’t it, that deserves the name? ” “ That’s true enough, God knows — or the Devil does,” Hans Castorp said, and the words came from his heart. Settembrini’s eyebrows went up. “ Oh,” he said, “ so you call on the Devil to witness that senti- ment— the Devil incarnate, Satan himself? Did you know that my great master wrote a hymn to him? ” “ I beg your pardon,” Hans Castorp said, “ a hymn to the Devil? ” “ The very Devil himself, and no other. It is sometimes sung, in my native land, on festal occasions. ‘ O salute , O Satana , O ribellione, O forza vindice della ragione! . . .’ It is a magnificent song. But it was hardly Carducci’s Devil you had in mind when you spoke; for he is on the very best of terms with hard work; whereas yours, who is afraid of work and hates it like poison, is probably the same of whom we are told that we may not hold out even the little finger to him.” All this was making the very oddest impression on our good Hans Castorp. He knew no Italian, and the rest of it sounded no less uncomfortable, and reminded him of Sunday sermons, though delivered quite casually, in a light, even jesting tone. He looked at his cousin, who kept his eyes cast down; then he said: “ You take my words far too literally, Herr Settembrini. When I spoke of the Devil, it was just a manner of speaking, I assure you.” “ Somebody must have some esprit” Settembrini said, looking straight ahead, with a melancholy air. Then recovering himself, he skilfully got back to their former subject, and went on blithely: “ At all events, I am probably right in concluding from 6o THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN your words that the calling you have embraced is as strenuous as it is honourable. As for myself, I am a humanist, a homo hmnamcs . I have no mechanical ingenuity, however sincere my respect for it. But I can well understand that the theory of your craft re- quires a clear and keen mind, and its practice not less than the entire man. Am I right? ” “ You certainly are, I can go all the way with you there,” Hans Castorp answered. Unconsciously he made an effort to reply with eloquence. “ The demands made to-day on a man in my profession are simply enormous. It is better not to have too clear an idea of their magnitude, it might take away one's courage: no, it’s no joke. And if one isn’t the strongest in the world — It is true that I am here only on a visit; but I am not very robust, and I cannot with truth assert that my work agrees with me so wonderfully well. It would be a great deal truer to say that it rather takes it out of me. I only feel really fit when I am doing nothing at all.” “ As now, for example? ” “ Now? Oh, now I am so new up here, I am still rather be- wildered — you can imagine.” “ Ah — bewildered.” “ Yes, and I did not sleep so very well, and the early breakfast was really too solid. — I am accustomed to a fair breakfast, but this was a little too rich for my blood, as the saying goes. In short, I feel a sense of oppression — and for some reason or other, my cigar this morning hasn’t the right taste, something that as good as never happens to me, or only when I am seriously upset — and to-day it is like leather. I had to throw it away, there was no use forcing it. Are you a smoker, may I ask? No? Then you cannot imagine the annoyance and disappointment it is for anyone like me, who have smoked from my youth up, and taken such pleasure in it.” “ I am without experience in the field,” Settembrini answered, “ but I find that my lack of it is in no poor company. So many fine, self-denying spirits have refrained. Carducci had no use for the practice. But you will find our Rhadamanthus a kindred spirit. He is a devotee of your vice.” “ Vice, Herr Settembrini? ” “Why not? One must call things by their right names; life is enriched and ennobled thereby. I too have my vices.” “ So Hofrat Behrens is a connoisseur? A charming man.” “ You find him so? Then you have already made his acquaint- ance? ” “ Yes, just now, as we came out. It was almost like a profes- SATANA 6 1 sional visit — but gratis, you know — sine pecimia. He saw at once that I am anaemic. He advised me to follow my cousin’s regimen entirely: to lie out on the balcony a good deal — he even said I should take my temperature.” “ Did he indeed? ” Settembrini cried out. “ Capital! ” He laughed and threw back his head. “ How does it go, that opera of yours? ‘ A fowler bold in me you see, forever laughing mer- rily! ’ Ah, that is most amusing! And you will follow his advice? Of course, why shouldn’t you? He’s a devil of a fellow, our Rhadamanthus! ‘ Forever laughing ’ — even if it is rather forced at times. He is inclined to melancholia, you know. His vice doesn’t agree with him — of course, else it would be no vice. Smoking gives him fits of depression; that is why our respected Frau Direc- tress has taken charge of his supplies, and only deals him out daily rations. It even happens sometimes that he yields to the tempta- tion to steal it, ana then he gets an attack of melancholia. A troubled spirit, in short. Do you know your Directress already, too? No? You have made a mistake. You must remedy it at the earliest opportunity. My dear sir, she comes of the noble race of von Mylendonk. And she is distinguished from the Medici Venus by the fact that where the goddess has a bosom, she has a cross.” “ Ah, ha ha! — capital! ” Hans Castorp laughed. “ Her Christian name is Adriatica.” “ Adriatica! ” shouted Hans Castorp. “ Priceless! Adriatica von Mylendonk! Isn’t that splendid! Sounds as though she had been dead a very long time. It is positively mediaeval.” “ My dear sir,” Settembrini answered him, “ there is a good deal up here that is positively mediaeval, as you express it. Per- sonally, I am convinced that Rhadamanthus was actuated simply and solely by artistic feeling when he made this fossil head over- seer of his Chamber of Horrors. You know he is an artist, by the bye. He paints in oils. Why not? There’s no law against it — any- body can paint that likes. Frau Adriatica tells all who will listen to her, not counting those who won’t, that a Mylendonk was abbess of a cloister at Bonn on the Rhine, in the thirteenth cen- tury. It can’t have been long after that she herself saw the light of day.” “ Ha ha! Why, Herr Settembrini, I find you are a mocker! ” “ A mocker? You mean I am malicious? Well, yes, perhaps I am, a little,” said Settembrini. “ My great complaint is that it is my fate to spend my malice upon such insignificant objects. I hope, Engineer, you have nothing against malice? In my eyes, it is reason’s keenest dart against the powers of darkness and 62 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN ugliness. Malice, my dear sir, is the animating spirit of criticism; and criticism is the beginning of progress and enlightenment.” And he began to talk about Petrarch, whom he called the father of the modern spirit. “ I think,” Joachim said thoughtfully, “ that we ought to be going to lie down.” The man of letters had been speaking to an accompaniment of graceful gestures, one of which he now rounded off in Joachim’s direction and said: “ Our lieutenant presses on to the service. Let us go together, our way is the same: the 4 path on the right that shall lead to the halls of the mightiest Dis ’ — ah, Virgil, Virgil! He is unsurpassable. I am a believer in progress, certainly, gentle- men; but Virgil — he has a command of epithet no modern can approach.” And on their homeward path he recited Latin verse with an Italian pronunciation; interrupting himself, however, as he saw coming towards them a young girl — a girl of the vil- lage, as it seemed, and by no means remarkable for her looks — whom he laid himself out to smile at and ogle most killingly: “ O la, la, sweet, sweet, sweet! ” he chirruped. “ Pretty, pretty, pretty! 4 Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,’ ” he quoted as they passed, and kissed his hand at the poor girl’s embarrassed back. 44 What a windbag it is,” Hans Castorp thought. He remained of that opinion still, after the Italian had recovered from his attack of gallantry and begun to scoff again. His animadversions were chiefly directed upon Herr Hofrat Behrens: he jeered at the size of his feet, and at the title he had received from a certain prince who suffered from tuberculosis of the brain. Of the scan- dalous courses of that royal personage the whole neighbourhood still talked; but Rhadamanthus had shut his eye — both eyes, in fact — and behaved every inch a Hofrat. Did the gentlemen know that he — the Hofrat — had invented the summer season? He it was, and no other. One must give the devil his due. There had been a time when only the faithfullest of the faithful had spent the summer in the high valley. Then our humourist, with his unerring eye, had perceived that this neglect was simply the re- sult of unfortunate prejudice. He got up the idea that, so far at least as his own sanatorium was concerned, the summer cure was not only not less to be recommended than the winter one, it was, on the contrary, of great value, really quite indispensable. And he knew how to get this theory put about, to have it come to people’s ears; he wrote articles on the subject and launched them m the press — since when the summer season had been as flourish- ing as the winter one. SATANA 63 “ Genius! ” said Settembrini. “ In-tu-ition! ” He went on to criticize the proprietors of all the other sanatoria m the place, praising their acquisitive talents with mordant sarcasm. There was Professor Kafka. Every year, at the critical moment, when the snow began to melt, and several patients were asking leave to depart, he would suddenly find himself obliged to be away for a week, and promise to take up all requests on his return. Then he would stop away for six weeks, while the poor wretches waited for him, and while, incidentally, their bills continued to mount. Kafka was once sent for to go to Fiume for a consulta- tion, but he would not go until he was guaranteed five thousand good Swiss francs; and thus two weeks were lost in pourparlers . Then he went; but the day after the arrival of the great man, the patient died. Dr. Salzmann asserted that Kafka did not keep his hypodermic syringes clean, and his patients got infected one from the other. He also said he wore rubber soles, that his dead might not hear him. On the other hand, Kafka told it about that Dr. Salzmann’s patients were encouraged to drink so much of the fruit of the vine — for the benefit of Dr. Salzmann’s pocket-book — that they died off like flies, not of phthisis but cirrhosis of the liver. Thus he went on, Hans Castorp laughing with good-natured enjoyment at this glib and prolific stream of slander. It was, in- deed, great fun to listen to, so eloquent was it, so precisely ren- dered, so free from every trace of dialect. The words came, round, clear-cut, and as though newly minted, from his mobile lips, he tasted his own wdl-turned, dexterous, biting phrases with obvious and contagious relish, and seemed to be far too clear- headed and self-possessed ever to mis-speak. “ You have such an amusing way of talking, Herr Settem- brini,” Hans Castorp said. “ So lively, so — I don’t quite know how to characterize it.” “ Plastic? ” responded the Italian, and fanned himself with his handkerchief, though it was far from warm. “ That is proba- bly the word you seek. You mean I have a plastic way of speaking. But look! ” he cried, “ what do my eyes behold? The judges of our infernal regions! What a sight! ” The walkers had already put behind them the turn in the path. Whether thanks to Settembrini’s conversation, the fact that they were walking downhill, or merely that they were much nearer the sanatorium than Hans Castorp had thought — for a path is always longer the first time we traverse it — at all events, the return had been accomplished in a surprisingly short time. Settem- THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 64 brini was right, it was the two physicians who were walking along the free space at the back of the building; the Hofrat ahead, in his white smock, his neck stuck out and his hands moving like oars; on his heels the black-shirted Dr. Krokowski, who looked the more self-conscious that medical etiquette constrained him to walk behind his chief when they made their rounds together. “ Ah, Krokowski,” Settembrini cried. “ There he goes — he w r ho knows all the secrets in the bosoms of our ladies — pray ob- serve the delicate symbolism of his attire: he wears black to indi- cate that his proper field of study is the night. The man has but one idea in his head, and that a smutty one. How does it happen, Engineer, that we have not spoken of him until now? You have made his acquaintance? ” Hans Castorp answered in the affirmative. “ Well? I am beginning to suspect that you like him, too.” “ I don’t know, really, Herr Settembrini. I’ve seen him only casuallv. And I am not very quick in my judgments. I am in- clined to look at people and say: 4 So that’s you, is it? Very good.’ ” “ That is apathetic of you. You should judge — to that end you have been given your eyes and your understanding. You felt that I spoke maliciously, just now. If I did, perhaps it was not without intent to teach. We humanists have all of us a pedagogic itch. Hu- manism and schoolmasters — there is a historical connexion be- tween them, and it rests upon psychological fact: the office of schoolmaster should not — cannot — be taken from the humanist, for the tradition of the beauty and dignity of man rests in his hands. The priest, who in troubled and inhuman times arrogated to himself the office of guide to youth, has been dismissed; since when, my dear sirs, no special type of teacher has arisen. The humanistic grammar-school — you may call me reactionary, En- gineer, but in abstractor generally speaking, you understand, I remain an adherent — ” He continued in the lift to expatiate upon this theme, and left off only when the cousins got out as the second storey was reached. He himself went up to the third, where he had, Joachim said, a little back room. “ He hasn’t much money, I suppose,” Hans Castorp said, enter- ing Joachim’s room, which looked precisely like his own. “ No, I suppose not,” Joachim answered, “ or only so much as just makes his stay possible. His father was a literary man too, you know, and, I believe, his grandfather as well.” “ Yes, of course,” Hans Castorp said. “ Is he seriously ill? ” MENTAL GYMNASTIC 65 “ Not dangerously, so far as I know, but obstinate, keeps com- ing back. He has had it for years, and goes away in between, but soon has to return again.” “ Poor chap! So frightfully keen on work as he seems to be! Enormously chatty, goes from one thing to another so easily. Rather objectionable, though, it seemed to me, with that girl. I was quite put off, for the moment. But when he talked about human dignity, afterwards, I thought it was great — sounded like an address. Do you see much of him? ” Mental Gymnastic Joachim’s reply came impeded and incoherent. He had taken a small thermometer from a red leather, velvet-lined case on his table, and put the mercury-filled end under his tongue on the left side, so that the glass instrument stuck slantingly upwards out of his mouth. Then he changed into indoor clothes, put on shoes and a braided jacket, took a printed form and pencil from his table, also a book, a Russian grammar — for he was studying Rus- sian with the idea that it would be of advantage to him in the service — and, thus equipped, took his place in the reclining-chair on his balcony, throwing his camel’s-hair rug lightly across his feet. It was scarcely needed. During the last quarter-hour the layer of cloud had grown steadily thinner, and now the sun broke through in summerlike warmth, so dazzlingly that Joachim protected his head with a white linen shade which was fastened to the arm of his chair, and furnished with a device by means of which it could be adjusted to the position of the sun. Hans Castorp praised this contrivance. He wished to await the result of Joachim’s measure- ment, and meanwhile looked about to see how everything was done: observed the fur-lined sleeping-sack that stood against the wall in a corner of the loggia, for Joachim to use on cold days; and gazed down into the garden, with his elbows on the balus- trade. The general rest-hall was populated by reclining patients, reading, writing, or conversing. He could see only a part of the interior, some four or five chairs. “ How long does that go on? ” he asked, turning round. Joachim raised seven fingers. “ Seven minutes! But they must be up! ” Joachim shook his head. A little later he took the thermometer out of his mouth, looked at it, and said: “ Yes, when you watch it, the time, it goes very slowly. I quite like the measuring, four times 66 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN a day; for then you know what a minute — or seven of them — actually amounts to, up here in this place, where the seven days of the week whisk by the way they do! ” “ You say ‘ actually,’ ” Hans Castorp answered. He sat with one leg flung over the balustrade, and his eyes looked bloodshot. “ But after all, time isn't ‘ actual.’ When it seems long to you, then it is long; when it seems short, why, then it is short. But how long, or how short, it actually is, that nobody knows.” He was unaccustomed to philosophize, yet somehow felt an impulse to do so. Joachim gainsaid him. “How so? —we do measure it. We have watches and calendars for the purpose; and when a month is up, why, then up it is, for you, and for me, and for all of us.” “ Wait,” said Hans Castorp. He held up his forefinger, close to his tired eyes. “ A minute, then, is as long as it seems to you when you measure yourself? ” “ A minute is as long — it lasts as long — as it takes the second hand of my watch to complete a circuit.” “ But it takes such a varied length of time — to our senses! And as a matter of fact — I say taking it just as a matter of fact,” he repeated, pressing his forefinger so hard against his nose that he bent the end of it quite round, “ it is motion, isn’t it, motion in space? Wait a minute! That means that we measure time by space. But that is no better than measuring space by time, a thing only very unscientific people do. From Hamburg to Davos is twenty hours — that is, by train. But on foot how long is it? And in the mind, how long? Not a second! ” “ I say,” Joachim said, “ what’s the matter with you? Seems to me it goes to your head to be up here with us! ” “ Keep quiet! I’m very clear-headed to-day. Well, then, what is time? ” asked Hans Castorp, and bent the tip of his nose so far round that it became white and bloodless. “ Can you answer me that? Space we perceive with our organs, with our senses of sight and touch. Good. But which is our organ of time — tell me that if you can. You see, that’s where you stick. But how can we possibly measure anything about which we actually know nothing, not even a single one of its properties? We say of time that it passes. Very good, let it pass. But to be able to measure it — wait a minute: to be susceptible of being measured, time must flow evenly, but who ever said it did that? As far as our con- sciousness is concerned it doesn’t, we only assume that it does, for the sake of convenience; and our units of measurement are purely arbitrary, sheer conventions — ” MENTAL GYMNASTIC 67 “ Good,” Joachim said. “ Then perhaps it is pure convention that I have five points too much here on my thermometer. But on account of those lines I have to drool about here instead of joining up, which is a disgusting fact.” “ Have you 99.3 °? ” “ It’s going down already,” and Joachim made the entry on his chart. “Last night it was almost ioo° — that was your arrival. A visit always makes it go up. But it is a good thing, notwith- standing.” “ I’ll go now,” said Hans Castorp. “ I’ve still a great many ideas in my head about the time — a whole complex, if I may say so. But I won’t excite you with them now, you’ve too many degrees as it is. I’ll keep them all and return to them later, perhaps after breakfast. You will call me when it is time, I suppose. I’ll go now and lie down; it won’t hurt me, thank goodness.” With which he passed round the glass partition into his loggia, where stood his own reclining-chair and side-table. He fetched Ocean Steam- ships and his beautiful, soft, dark-red and green plaid from within the room, which had already been put into perfect order, and sat himself down. Soon he too had to put up the little sunshade; the heat became unbearable as he lay. But he was uncommonly comfortable, he decided, with distinct satisfaction. He did not recall in all his experience so acceptable an easy-chair. The frame — a little old- fashioned, perhaps, a mere matter of taste, for the chair was obviously new — was of polished red-brown wood, and the mat- tress was covered in a soft cotton material; or rather, it was not a mattress, but three thick cushions, extending from the foot to the very top of the chair-back. There was a head-roll besides, neither too hard nor too yielding, with an embroidered linen cover, fastened on by a cord to the chair, and wondrously agreeable to the neck. Hans Castorp supported his elbow on the broad, smooth surface of the chair-arm, blinked, and reposed himself, The landscape, rather severe and sparse, though brightly sunny, looked like a framed painting as viewed through the arch of the loggia. Hans Castorp gazed thoughtfully at it. Suddenly he thought of something, and said aloud in the stillness: “ That was a dwarf, wasn’t it, that waited on us at breakfast? ” “Sh-h,” went Joachim. “Don’t speak loud. Yes, a dwarf. Why? ” “ Nothing. We hadn’t mentioned it.” He mused on. It had been ten o’clock when he lay down. An hour passed. It was an ordinary hour, not long, not short. At its 68 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN close a bell sounded through the house and garden, first afar, then near, then from afar again. “ Breakfast,” Joachim said and could be heard getting up. Hans Castorp too finished with his cure for the time ana went into his room to put himself to rights a little. The cousins met in the corridor and descended the stair. Hans Castorp said: “ Well, the lying-down is great! What sort of chairs are they? If they are to be had here, I’ll buy one and take it to Hamburg with me; they are heavenly to lie in. Or do you think Behrens had them made to his design? ” Joachim did not know. They entered the dining-room, where the meal was again in full swing. At every place stood a large glass, probably a half litre of milk; the room shimmered white with it. “ No,” Hans Castorp said, when he was once more in his seat between the seamstress and the Englishwoman, and had docilely unfolded his serviette, though still heavy with the earlier meal; “ no, God help me, milk I never could abide, and least of all now! Is there perhaps some porter? ” He applied himself to the dwarf and put his question with the gentlest courtesy, but alas, there was none. She promised to bring Kulmbacher beer, and did so. It was thick, dark, and foaming brownly; it made a capital substitute for the porter. Hans Castorp drank it thirstily from a half-litre glass, and ate some cold meat and toast. Again there was oatmeal por- ridge and much butter and fruit. He let his eyes dwell upon them, incapable of more. And he looked at the guests as well; the groups began to break up for him, and individuals to stand out. His own table was full, except the place at the top, which, he learned, was “ the doctor’s place.” For the doctors, when their work allowed, ate at the common table, sitting at each of the seven in turn; at each one a place was kept free. But just now neither was present; they were operating, it was said. The young man with the moustaches came in again, sank his chin once for all on his breast, and sat down, with his self-absorbed, care-worn mien. The lean, light blonde was in her seat, and spooned up yogurt as though it formed her sole article of diet. Next her appeared a lively little old dame, who addressed the silent young man in Rus- sian; he regarded her uneasily, and answered only by nodding his head, looking as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. Opposite him, on the other side of the elderly lady, there was another young girl — pretty, with a blooming complexion and full bosom, chest- nut hair that waved agreeably, round, brown, childlike eyes, and a little ruby on her lovely hand. She laughed often, and spoke Rus- MENTAL GYMNASTIC 69 sian. Hans Castorp learned that her name was Marusja. He noticed further that when she laughed and talked, Joachim sat with eyes cast sternly down upon his plate. Settembrini appeared through the side door, and, curling his moustaches, strode to his place at the end of the table diagonally in front of that where Hans Castorp sat. His table-mates burst out in peals of laughter as he sat down; he had probably said some- thing cutting. Hans Castorp recognized the members of the Half- Lung Club. Hermine Kleefeld, heavy-eyed, slid into her place at the table in front of one of the verandah doors, speaking as she did so to the thick-lipped youth who had worn his coat in the un- seemly fashion that had struck Hans Castorp. The ivory-coloured Levi and the fat, freckled litis sat side by side at a table at right angles to Hans Castorp — he did not know any of their table- mates. “ There are your neighbours,” Joachim said in a low voice to his cousin, bending forward as he spoke. The pair passed close be- side Hans Castorp to the last table on the right, the “ bad ” Russian table, apparently, where there already sat a whole family, one of whom, a very ugly boy, was gobbling great quantities of porridge. The man was of slight proportions, with a grey, hollow-cheeked face. He wore a brown leather jacket; on his feet he had clumsy felt boots with buckled clasps. His wife, likewise small and slender, walked with tripping steps in her tiny, high-heeled Russia leather boots, the feathers swaying on her hat. Around her neck she wore a soiled feather boa. Hans Castorp looked at them with a ruthless stare, quite foreign to his usual manner — he himself was aware of its brutality, yet at the same time conscious of relishing that very quality. His eyes felt both staring and heavy. At that moment the glass door on the left slammed shut, with a rattle and ringing of glass; he did not start as he had on the first occasion, but only made a grimace of lazy disgust; when he wished to turn his head, he found the effort too much for him — it was really not worth while. And thus, for the second time, he was unable to fix upon the per- son who was guilty of behaving in that reckless way about a door. The truth was that the breakfast beer, as a rule only mildly ob- fuscating to the young man’s sense, had this time completely stupefied and befuddled him. He felt as though he had received a blow on the head. His eyelids were heavy as lead; his tongue would not shape his simple thoughts when out of politeness he tried to talk to the Englishwoman. Even to alter the direction of his gaze he was obliged to conquer a great disinclination; and, added to all this, the hateful burning in his face had reached the THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 7 ° same height as yesterday, his cheeks felt puffy with heat, he breathed with difficulty; his heart pounded dully, like a hammer muffled in cloth. If all these sensations caused him no high degree of suffering, that was only because his head felt as though he had inhaled a few whiffs of chloroform. He saw as in a dream that Dr. Krokowski appeared at breakfast and took the place opposite to his; the doctor, however, repeatedly looked him sharply in the eye, while he conversed in Russian with the ladies on his right. The young girls — the blooming Marusja and the lean consumer of yogurt — cast down their eyes modestly as the doctor spoke. Hans Castorp did not, of course, bear himself otherwise than with dig- nity. In silence, since his tongue refused its office, but managing his knife and fork with particular propriety. When his cousin nodded to him and got up, he rose too, bowed blindly to the rest of the table, and with cautious steps followed Joachim out. “ When do we lie down again? ” he asked, as they left the house. “ It’s the best thing up here, so far as I can see. I wish I were back again in my comfortable chair. Do we take a long walk? ” A Word Too Much “ No,” answered Joachim. “ I am not allowed to go far. At this period I always go down below, through the village as far as the Platz if I have time. There are shops and people, and one can buy what one needs. Don’t worry, we rest for an hour again before dinner, and then after it until four o’clock.” They went down the drive in the sunshine, crossed the water- course and the narrow track, having before their eyes the moun- tain heights of the western side of the valley: the Little Schiahom, the Green Tower, and the Dor fberg — Joachim mentioned their names. The little walled cemetery or Davos-Dorf lay up there, at some height; Joachim pointed it out with his stick. They reached the high road, that led along the terraced slope a storey higher than the valley floor. It was rather a misnomer to speak of the village, since scarcely anything but the word remained. The resort had swallowed it up, extending further and further toward the entrance of the valley, until that part of the settlement which was called the “ Dorf ” passed imperceptibly into the “ Platz.” Hotels and pensions, amply equipped with covered verandahs, balconies, and reclining-halls, lay on both sides of their way, also private houses with rooms to let. Here and there were new buildings, but also open spaces, which preserved a view toward the valley meadows. A WORD TOO MUCH 7 * Hans Castorp, craving his familiar and wonted indulgence, had once more lighted a cigar; and, thanks probably to the beer that had gone before, he succeeded now and then in getting a whiff of the longed-for aroma — to his inexpressible satisfaction. But only now and then, but only faintly; the anxious receptivity of his atti- tude was a strain on the nerves, and the hateful leathery taste dis- tinctly prevailed. Unable to reconcile himself to his impotence, he struggled awhile to regain the enjoyment which either escaped him wholly, or else mocked him by its brief presence; finally, worn out and disgusted, he flung the cigar away. Despite his be- numbed condition he felt it incumbent upon him to be polite, to make conversation, and to this end he sought to recall those bril- liant ideas he had previously had, on the subject of time. Alas, they had fled, the whole “ complex ” of them, and left not a trace behind: on the subject of time not one single idea, however insig- nificant, found lodgment in his head. He began, therefore, to talk of ordinary matters, of the concerns of the body — what he said sounded odd enough in his mouth. “ When do you measure again? ” he asked. “ After eating? Yes, that’s a good time. When the organism is in full activity, it must show itself. Behrens must have been joking when he told me to take my temperature — Settembrini laughed like anything at the idea; there’s really no sense in it. I haven’t even a thermometer.” “ Well,” Joachim said, “ that is the least of your difficulties. You can get one anywhere — they sell them in almost every shop.” “ Why should 1? No, the lying-down is very much the thing. I’ll gladly do it; but measuring would be rather too much for a guest; I’ll leave that to the rest of you. If I only knew,” Hans Ca- storp went on, and laid his hands like a lover on his heart, “ if I only knew why I have palpitations the whole time — * it is very disquieting; I keep thinking about it. For, you see, a person or- dinarily has palpitation of the heart when he is frightened, or when he is looking forward to some great joy. But when the heart palpitates all by itself, without any reason, senselessly, of its own accord, so to speak, I feel that’s uncanny, you understand, as if the body was going its own gait without any reference to the soul, like a dead body, only it is not really dead — there isn’t any such thing, of course — but leading a very active existence all on its own account, growing hair and nails and doing a lively business in the physical and chemical line, so I’ve been told — ” “ What kind of talk is that? ” Joachim said, with serious re- proach. “ ‘ Doing a lively business ’! ” And perhaps he recalled the reproaches he had called down on his own head earlier in the day THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 72 “ It’s a fact — it is very lively! Why do you object to that? ” Hans Castorp asked. “ But I only happened to mention it. I only meant to say that it is disturbing and unpleasant to have the body act as though it had no connexion with the soul, and put on such airs — by which I mean these senseless palpitations. You keep try- ing to find an explanation for them, an emotion to account for them, a feeling of joy or pain, which would, so to speak, justify them. At least, it is that way with me — but I can only speak for myself.” “ Yes, yes,” Joachim said, sighing. “ It is the same thing, I sup- pose, as when you have fever — there are pretty lively goings-on in the system then too, to talk the way you do; it may easily be that one involuntarily tries to find an emotion which would ex- plain, or even half-way explain the goings-on. But we are talking such unpleasant stuff,” he said, his voice trembling a little, and he broke off; whereupon Hans Castorp shrugged his shoulders — with the very gesture, indeed, which had, the evening before, dis- pleased him in his cousin. They walked awhile in silence, until Joachim asked: “ Well, how do you like the people up here? I mean the ones at our table.” Hans Castorp put on a judicial air. “ Dear me,” he said, “ I don’t find them so very interesting. Some of the people at the other tables look more so, but that may be only seeming. Frau Stohr ought to have her hair shampooed, it is so greasy. And that Ma- zurka — or whatever her name is — seemed rather silly to me. She keeps giggling and stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth.” Joachim laughed loudly at the twist his cousin had given the name. “ ‘ Mazurka ’ is capital,” he said. “ Her name is Marusja, with your kind permission — it is the same as Marie. Yes, she really is too undisciplined, and after all, she has every reason to be serious,” he said, “ for her case is by no means light.” “ Who would have thought it? ” said Hans Castorp. “ She looks so very fit. Chest trouble is the last thing one would accuse her of.” He tried to catch his cousin’s eye, and saw that Joachim’s sun- burnt face had gone all spotted, as a tanned complexion will when the blood leaves it with suddenness; his mouth too was pitifully drawn, and wore an expression that sent an indefinable chill of fear over Hans Castorp and made him hasten to change the subject. He hurriedly inquired about others of their table-mates and tried to forget Marusja and the look on Joachim’s face — an effort in which he presently succeeded. The Englishwoman with the rose tea was Miss Robinson. The A WORD TOO MUCH 73 seamstress was not a seamstress but a schoolmistress at a lycee in Konigsberg — which accounted for the precision of her speech. Her name was Fraulein Engelhart. As for the name of the lively little old lady, Joachim, as long as he had been up here, did not know it. All he knew was that she was great-aunt to the young lady who ate yogurt, and lived with her permanently in the sana- torium. The worst case at their table was Dr. Blumenkohl, Leo Blumenkohl, from Odessa, the young man with the moustaches and the absorbed and care-worn air. He had been here years. They were now walking on the citypavement, the main street, obviously, of an international centre. They met the guests of the cure, strolling about, young people for the most part: gallants in “ sporting,” without their hats; white-skirted ladies, also hatless. One heard Russian and English. Shops with gay show-windows were on either side of the road, and Hans Castorp, his curiosity struggling with intense weariness, forced himself to look into them, and stood a long time before a shop that purveyed fashion- able male wear, to decide whether its display was really up to the mark. They reached a rotunda with covered galleries, where a band was giving a concert. This was the Kurhaus. Tennis was being played on several courts by long-legged, clean-shaven youths in accurately pressed flannels and rubber-soled shoes, their arms bared to the elbow, and sunburnt girls in white frocks, who ran and flung themselves high in the sunny air in their efforts to strike the white ball. The well-kept courts looked as though coated with flour. The cousins sat down on an empty bench to watch and criticize the game. “ You don’t play here? ” Hans Castorp asked. “I am not allowed,” Joachim answered. “We have to lie — nothing but lie. Settembrini says we live horizontally — he calls us horizontallers; that’s one of his rotten jokes. Those are healthy people, there — or else they are breaking the rules. But they don’t play very seriously anyhow — it’s more for the sake of the cos- tume. As far as breaking the rules goes, there are more forbidden things besides tennis that get played here — poker, and petits - chevaux , in this and that hotel. At our place there is a notice about it; it is supposed to be the most harmful thing one can do. Even so, there are people who slip out after the evening visit and come down here to gamble. That prince who gave Behrens his title al- ways did it, they say.” Hans Castorp barely attended. His mouth was open, for he could not have breathed through his nose without sniffing; he felt THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 74 with dull discomfort that his heart was hammering out of time with the music; and with this combined sense of discord and dis- order he was about to doze off when Joachim suggested that they go home. They returned almost in silence. Hans Castorp stumbled once or twice on the level street and grinned ruefully as he shook his head. The lame man took them up in the lift to their own storey. They parted, with a brief “ See you later ” at the door of number thirty-four; Hans Castorp piloted himself through his room to the balcony, where he dropped just as he was upon his deck-chair and, without once shifting to a more comfortable posture, sank into a dull half-slumber, broken by the rapid beating of his unquiet heart. Of Course , A Female! How long it lasted he could not have told. When the moment arrived, the gong sounded. But it was not the gong for the meal, it was only the dressing-bell, as Hans Castorp knew, and so he still lay, until the metallic drone rose and died away a second time. When Joachim came to fetch him, Hans Castorp wanted to change, but this Joachim would not allow. He hated and despised unpunctuality. Would he be likely, he asked, to get on, and get strong enough for the service, if he was too feeble to observe the hours for meals? Wherein he was, of course, quite right, and Hans Castorp could only say that he was not ill at all, but only utterly and entirely sleepy. He confined himself to washing his hands; and then for the third time they went down together to the dining- hall. The guests streamed in through both entrances, they even came through the open verandah door. Soon they all sat at their several tables as though they had never risen. Such at least was Hans Ca- storp’s impression — a dreamy and irrational impression, of course, but one which his muddled brain could not for an instant get rid of, in which it even took a certain satisfaction, so that several times in the course of the meal he sought to call it up again and was al- ways perfectly successful in reproducing the illusion. The gay old lady continued to talk in her semifluid tongue at the care-worn Dr. Blumenkohl, diagonally opposite; her lean niece actually at last ate something else than yogurt; namely, the thick cream of barley soup, which was handed round in soup-plates by the wait- resses. Of this she took a few spoonfuls and left the rest. Pretty Marusja giggled, then stuffed her dainty handkerchief in her mouth — it gave out a scent of oranges. Miss Robinson read the OF COURSE, A FEMALE! 75 same letters, in the same round script, which she had read at break- fast. Obviously she knew not a word of German, nor wished to do so. Joachim, preux chevalier , said something to her in English, which she answered in a monosyllable without ceasing to chew, and relapsed again into silence. Frau Stohr, sitting there in her woollen blouse, gave the table to know she had been examined that forenoon; she went into particulars, affectedly drawin g back her upper lip from the rodent-like teeth. There were rhonchi to be heard in the upper right side, and under the left shoulder-blade the breathing was still very limited; the “ old man ” said she would have to stop another five months. It sounded very common to hear her refer thus to Herr Hofrat Behrens. She displayed, more- over, a feeling of injury because the “ old man ” was not sitting at her table to-day, where he should by rights be sitting if he had taken them “ a la tournee ” — by which she presumably meant in turn — instead of going to the next table again. (There, in fact, he really was sitting, his great hands folded before his place.) But of course that was Frau Salomon’s table, the fat Frau Salomon from Amsterdam, who came decolletee to table even on week-days, a sight which the “ old man ” liked to see, though for her part — Frau Stohr’s — she never could understand why, since he could see all he wanted of Frau Salomon at every examination. She related, in an excited whisper, that last night, in the general rest-hall up under the roof, somebody had put out the light, for purposes which she designated as “ transparent.” The “ old man ” had seen it, and stormed so you could hear it all over the place. He had not discovered the culprit, of course, but it didn’t take a university education to guess that it was Captain Miklosich from Bucharest, for whom, when in the society of ladies, it could never be dark enough: a man without any and all refinement — though he did wear a corset — and, by nature, simply a beast of prey — a perfect beast of prey, repeated Frau Stohr, in a stifled whisper, beads of perspiration on her brow and upper lip. The relations between him and Frau Consul-General Wurmbrandt from Vienna were known throughout Dorf and Platz — it was idle any longer to speak of them as clandestine. Not merely did the captain go into the Frau Consul-General’s bedroom while she was still in bed, and remain there throughout her toilet; last Thursday he had not left the Wurmbrandt ’s room until four in the morning; that they knew from the nurse who was taking care of young Franz in number nineteen — his pneumothorax operation had gone wrong. She had, in her embarrassment, mistaken her own door, and burst suddenly into the room of Herr Paravant, a Dortmund law- THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 76 yer. Lastly Frau Stohr held forth for some time on the merits of a “ cosmic ” establishment down in the village, where she bought her mouth-wash. Joachim gazed stonily downwards at his plate. The meal was as faultlessly prepared as it was abundant. Count- ing the hearty soup, it consisted of no less than six courses. After the fish followed an excellent meat dish, with garnishings, then a separate vegetable course, then roast fowl, a pudding, not in- ferior to yesterday evening’s, and lastly cheese and fruit. Each dish was handed twice and not in vain. At all seven tables they filled their plates and ate: they ate like wolves; they displayed a voracity which would have been a pleasure to see, had there not been something else about it, an effect almost uncanny, not to say repulsive. It was not only the light-hearted who thus laced into the food — those who chattered as they ate and threw pellets of bread at each other. No, the same appetite was evinced by the silent, gloomy ones as well, those who in the pauses between courses leaned their heads on their hands and stared before them. A half-grown youth at the next table on the left, by his years a schoolboy, with his wrists coming out of his jacket sleeves, and thick, round eye-glasses, cut all the heaped-up food on his plate into a sort of mash, then bent over and gulped it down; he reached with his serviette behind his glasses now and then and dried his eyes — whether it was sweat or tears he dried one could not tell. There were two incidents during the course of the meal of which Hans Castorp took note, so far as his condition permitted. One was the banging of the glass door, which occurred while they were having the fish course. Hans Castorp gave an ex- asperated shrug and angrily resolved that this time he really must find out who did it. He said this not only within himself, his lips formed the words. “ I must find out,” he whispered with ex- aggerated earnestness. Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress both looked at him in surprise. He turned the whole upper half of his body to the left and opened wide his bloodshot blue eyes. It was a lady who was passing through the room; a woman, or rather girl, of middle height, in a white sweater and coloured skirt, her reddish-blond hair wound in braids about her head. Hans Castorp had only a glimpse of her profile. She moved, in singular contrast to the noise of her entrance, almost without sound, passing with a peculiarly gliding step, her head a little thrust forward, to her place at the furthest table on the left, at right angles to the verandah door: the “ good ” Russian table, in fact. As she walked, she held one hand deep in the pocket of her close-fitting jacket; the other she lifted to the back of her OF COURSE, A FEMALE! 77 head and arranged the plaits of her hair. Hans Castorp looked at the hand. He was habitually observant and critical of this feature, and accustomed when he made a new acquaintance to direct his attention first upon it. It was not particularly lady- like, this hand that was putting the braids to rights; not so re- fined and well kept as the hands of ladies in Hans Castorp’s own social sphere. Rather broad, with stumpy fingers, it had about it something primitive and childish, something indeed of the school- girl. The nails, it was plain, knew nothing of the manicurist’s art; they were cut in rough-and-ready schoolgirl fashion, and the skin at the side looked almost as though someone were subject to the childish vice of finger biting. But Hans Castorp sensed rather than saw this, owing to the distance. The laggard greeted her table-mates with a nod, and took her place on the inner side of the table with her back to the room, next to Dr. Krokowski, who was sitting at the top. As she did so, she turned her head, with the hand still raised to it, toward the dining-room and surveyed the public; Hans Castorp had opportunity for the fleeting ob- servation that her cheek-bones were broad and her eyes narrow. — A vague memory of something, of somebody, stirred him slightly and fleetingly as he looked. “ Of course, a female! ” he thought, or rather he actually uttered, in a murmur, yet so that the schoolmistress, Fraulein Engelhart, understood. The poor old spinster smiled in sympathy. “ That is Madame Chauchat,” she said. “ She is so heedless. A charming creature.” And the downy flush on her cheek grew a shade darker — as it did whenever she spoke. “ A Frenchwoman? ” Hans Castorp asked, with severity. “ No, she is a Russian,” was the answer. “ Her husband is very likely French or of French descent, I am not sure.” Hans Castorp asked, still irritated, if that was he — pointing to a gentleman with drooping shoulders who sat at the “ good ” Russian table. “ Oh, no,” the schoolmistress answered, “ he isn’t here; he has never been here, no one knows him.” “ She ought to learn how to shut a door,” Hans Castorp said. “ She always lets it slam. It is a piece of ill breeding.” And on the schoolmistress’s meekly accepting this reproof as though she herself had been the guilty party, there was no more talk of Madame Chauchat. The second event was the temporary absence of Dr. Blumen- kohl from the room — nothing more. The mildly disgusted facial expression suddenly deepened, he looked with sadder fixity into THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 78 space, then unobtrusively moved back his chair and went out. Whereupon Frau Stohr’s essential ill breeding showed itself in the clearest light; probably out of vulgar satisfaction in the fact that she was less ill than Dr. Blumenkohl. She accompanied his exit with comments half pitying, half contemptuous. “ Poor creature,” she said. “ He’ll soon be at his last gasp. He had to go out for a talk with his ‘ Blue Peter.’ ” Quite stolidly, without repulsion, she brought out the grotesque phrase — Hans Castorp felt a mixture of repugnance and desire to laugh. Presently Dr. Blumenkohl came back in the same un- obtrusive way, took his place, and went on eating. He too ate a great deal, twice of every dish, always in silence, with the same melancholy, preoccupied air. Thus the midday meal came to an end. Thanks to the skilled service — the dwarf at Hans Castorp’s table was one of the quickest on her feet — it had lasted only a round hour. Breathing heavily, and not quite sure how he got upstairs, Hans Castorp lay once more in his capital chair upon his loggia; after this meal there was rest-cure until tea-time — the most important and rigidly adhered-to rest period of the day. Between the opaque glass walls that divided him on the one side from Joachim, on the other from the Russian couple, he lav and idly dreamed, his heart pounding, breathing through his mouth. On using his hand- kerchief he discovered it to be red with blood, but had not enough energy to think about the fact, though he was rather given to worrying over himself and by nature inclined to hypochondria. Once more he had lighted a Maria Mancini, and this time he smoked it to the end, no matter how it tasted. Giddy and op- pressed, he considered as in a dream how very odd he had felt since he came up here. Two or three times his breast was shaken by inward laughter at the horrid expression which that ignorant creature, Frau Stohr, had used. Herr Albin Below in the garden the fanciful banner with the caduceus lifted itself now and again in a breath of wind. The sky was once more evenly overcast. The sun was gone, the air had grown almost inhospitably cool. The general rest-hall seemed to be full; talking and laughter went on below. “ Herr Albin, I implore you, put away your knife; put it in your pocket, there will be an accident with it,” a high, uncer- tain voice besought. Then: “ Dear Herr Albin, for heaven’s sake, HERR ALBIN 79 spare our nerves, and take that murderous tool out of our sight, a second voice chimed in. A blond young man, with a cigarette in his mouth, sitting in the outside easy-chair, responded pertly: “ Couldn’t think of it! I’m sure the ladies haven’t the heart to prevent me from amus- ing myself a little! I bought that knife in Calcutta, of a blind wizard. He could swallow it, and then have his boy dig it up fifty paces from where he stood. Do look — it is sharper than a razor. You only need to touch the blade; it goes into your flesh like cutting butter. Wait a minute, I’ll show it you close by.” And Herr Albin stood up. A shriek arose. “ Or rather,” said he, “ I’ll fetch my revolver; that will be more interesting. Piquant little tool — useful too. Send a bullet through anything. — I’ll go up and get it.” “ No, no, don’t, pray don’t, Herr Albin! ” in a loud outcry from many voices. But Herr Albin had already come out to go up to his room: very young and lanky, with a rosy, childish face, and little strips of side-whisker close to his ears. “ Herr Albin,” cried a lady’s voice from within, “ do fetch your greatcoat instead, and put it on; do it just to please me! Six weeks long you have lain with inflammation of the lungs, and now you sit here without an overcoat, and don’t even cover yourself, and smoke cigarettes! That is tempting Providence; on my word it is, Herr Albin! ” He only laughed scornfully as he went off, and in a few minutes returned with the revolver in his hand. The silly geese squawked worse than before, and some of them even made as if they would spring from their chairs, wrap their blankets round them, and flee. “ Look how little and shiny he is,” said Herr Albin. “ But when I press him here, then he bites.” Another outcry. “ Of course, he is loaded— to the hilt,” he continued. “In this disk here are the six cartridges. It turns one hole at each shot. But I don’t keep him merely for a joke,” he said noticing that the sensation was wearing off. He let the revolver slip into his breast pocket, sat down again, flung one leg over the other, and lighted a fresh cigarette. * Certainly not for a joke,” he repeated, and compressed his lips. “ What for, then — what for? ” they asked, their voices trembling. “ Horrible! ” came a sudden cry, and Herr Albin nodded. “ I see you begin to understand,” he said. “ In fact, you are right, that is what I keep it for,” he went on airily, inhaling, 8o THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN despite the recent inflammation of the lungs, a mass of smoke and breathing it slowly out again. “ I keep it in readiness for the day when I can’t stand this farce any longer, and do myself the honour to bid you a respectful adieu. It is all very simple. I’ve given the matter some study, and I know precisely how to do it.” Another screech at the word. “ I eliminate the region of the heart, the aim is not very convenient there. I prefer to annihilate my conscious- ness at its very centre by introducing my charming little foreign body direct into this interesting organ.” — Herr Albin indicated with his index finger a spot on his close-cropped blond pate. “ You aim here — ” he drew the nickel-plated revolver out of his pocket once more and tapped with the barrel against his skull — “ just here, above the artery; even without a mirror the thing is simple — ” A chorus of imploring protest arose, mingled with heavy sob- bing. “ Herr Albin, Herr Albin, put it away, take it from your temple, it is dreadful to see you! Herr Albin, you are young, you will get well, von will return to the world, everybody will love you! But put on vour coat and lie down, cover yourself, go on with your cure. Don’t drive the bathing-master away next time he comes to rub you down with alcohol. And stop smoking cigarettes — Herr Albin, we implore you, for the sake of your young, your precious life! ” But Herr Albin was inexorable. “ No, no,” he said “ let me alone, I’m all right, thanks. I’ve never refused a lady anything yet; but you see it’s no good trying to put a spoke in the wheel of fate. I am in my third year up here — I’m sick of it, fed up, I can’t play the game any more — do you blame me for that? Incurable, ladies, as I sit here before you, an incurable case; the Hofrat him- self is hardly at the pains any longer to pretend I am not. Grant me at least the freedom which is all I can get out of the situation. In school, when it was settled that someone was not to move up to the next form, he just stopped where he was; nobody asked him any more questions, he did not have to do any more work. It’s like that with me; I am in that happy condition now. I need do nothing more, I don’t count, I can laugh at the whole thing. Would you like some chocolate? Da take some — no, you won’t be robbing me, I have heaps of it in my room, eight boxes, and five tablets of Gala-Peter and four pounds of Lindt. The ladies of the sanatorium gave it to me when I was ill with my inflamma- tion of the lungs — ” From somewhere a bass voice was audible, commanding quiet. Herr Albin gave a short laugh, a ragged, wavering laugh; then SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS 8l stillness reigned in the rest-hall, a stillness as of a vanished dream, a disappearing wraith. Afterwards the voices rose again, sound- ing strange in the silence. Hans Castorp listened until they were quite hushed. He had an indistinct notion that Herr Albin was a puppy, yet could not resist a certain envy. In particular, the school-days comparison made an impression on him; he himself had stuck in the lower second and well remembered this situation, of course rather to be ashamed of and yet not without its funny side. In particular he recalled the agreeable sensation of being totally lost and abandoned, with which, in the fourth quarter, he gave up the running — he could have “ laughed at the whole thing.” His reflections were dim and confused, it would be diffi- cult to define them; but in effect it seemed to him that, though honour might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others, and not inferior: advantages, even, that were well-nigh boundless in their scope. He tried to put himself in Herr Albin’s place and see how it must feel to be finally relieved of the burden of a respectable life and made free of the infinite realms of shame; and the young man shuddered at the wild wave of sweetness which swept over him at the thought and drove on his labouring heart to an even quicker pace. Satana Makes Proposals T hat T ouch Our Honour After a while he lost consciousness. It was half past three by his watch when he was roused by voices behind the left-hand glass partition. Dr. Krokowski at this hour made the rounds alone, and he was talking in Russian with the unmannerly pair on the next balcony, asking the husband how he did, it seemed, and inspecting the fever chart. He did not, however, continue his route by the balconies, but skirted Hans Castorp ’s section, passing along the corridor and entering Joachim's room by the door. Hans Castorp felt rather hurt to have Krokowski circle round and leave him out — even though a tete-a-tete with the gentleman was something he was far from hankering after. Of course he was healthy, he was not included with the other in- mates; up here, he reflected, it was the sound and healthy person who did not count, who got no attention — and this the young man found vastly annoying. Dr. Krokowski stopped with Joachim two or three minutes; then he went on down the row of balconies, and Hans Castorp heard his cousin say that it was time to get up and make ready for tea. 82 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN “ Good,” he answered, and rose. But he was giddy from long lying, and the unrefreshing half-slumber had made his face burn anew; yet he felt chilly; perhaps he had not been well enough covered as he lay. He washed his eyes and hands, brushed his hair, put his cloth- ing to rights, and met Joachim outside in the corridor. “ Did you hear that Herr Albin? ” he asked, as they went down the steps. “ I should say I did,” his cousin answered. “ The man ought to be disciplined — disturbing the whole rest period with his gabble, and exciting the ladies so that it puts them back for weeks. A piece of gross insubordination. But who is there to denounce him? On the contrary, that sort of thing makes quite a welcome diversion.” “ Do you think he would really do it — put a bullet into him- self? It's a ‘ very simple matter,’ to use his own words.” “ Oh,” answered Joachim, “ it isn’t so out of the question, more’s the pity. Such things do happen up here. Two months before I came, a student who had been here a long time hanged himself down in the wood, after a general examination. It was a good deal talked about still, in the early days after I came.” Hans Castorp gaped excitedly. “ Well,” he declared, “ I am certainly far from feeling fit up here. I couldn’t say I did. I think it’s quite possible I shan’t be able to stop, that I’ll have to leave — you wouldn’t take it amiss, would you? ” “ Leave? What is the matter with you? ” cried Joachim. “ Nonsense! You’ve just come. You can’t judge from the first day! ” “ Good Lord, is it still only the first day? It seems to me I’ve been up here a long time — ages.” “ Don’t begin to philosophize again about time,” said Joachim. “ You had me perfectly bewildered this morning.” “No, don’t worry, I’ve forgotten all of it,” answered Hans Castorp, “ the whole ‘ complex.’ I’ve lost all the clear-headedness I had — it’s gone. Well, ana so it’s time for tea.” “ Yes; and after that we walk as far as the bench again, like this morning.” “ Just as you say. Only I hope we shan’t meet Settembrini again. I’m not up to any more learned conversation. I can tell you that beforehand.” At tea all the various beverages were served which it is possi- ble to serve at that meal. Miss Robinson drank again her brew made of rose-hips, the grand-niece spooned up her yogurt. There SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS 83 were milk, tea, coffee, chocolate, even bouillon ; and on every hand the guests, newly arisen from some two hours’ repose after their heavy luncheon, were busily spreading huge slices of raisin cake with butter. Hans Castorp chose tea, and dipped zwieback in it; he also tasted some marmalade. The raisin cake he contemplated with an interested eye, but literally shuddered at the thought of eating any. Once more he sat here in his place, in this vaulted room with its gay yet simple decorations, its seven tables. It was the fourth time. Later, at seven o’clock, he sat there again for the fifth time, and that was supper. In the brief and trifling interval the cousins had taken a turn as far as the bench on the mountain-side, beside the little watercourse. The path had been full of patients; Hans Castorp had often to lift his hat. Followed a last period of rest on the balcony, a fugitive and empty interlude 01 an hour and a half. He dressed conscientiously for tne evening meal, and, sitting in his place between Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress, he ate: julienne soup, baked and roast meats with suitable accompani- ments, two pieces of a tart made of macaroons, butter-cream, chocolate, jam and marzipan, and lastly excellent cheese and pumpernickel. As before, he ordered a bottle of Kulmbacher. But, by the time he had half emptied his tall glass, he became clearly and unmistakably aware that bed was the best place for him. His head roared, his eyelids were like lead, his heart went like a set of kettledrums, and he began to torture himself with the suspicion that pretty Marusja, who was bending over her plate covering her face with the hand that wore the ruby ring, was laughing at him — though he had taken enormous pains not to give occasion for laughter. Out of the far distance he heard Frau Stohr telling, or asserting, something which seemed to him such utter nonsense that he was conscious of a despairing doubt as to whether he had heard aright, or whether he had turned her words to nonsense in his addled brain. She was declaring that she knew how to make twenty-eight different sauces to serve with fish; she would stake her reputation on the fact, though her own hus- band had warned her not to talk about it: “ Don’t talk about it,” he had told her; “ nobody will believe it, or, if they do, they will simply laugh at you! ” And yet she would say it, say once and for all, that it was twenty-eight fish-sauces she could make. All of which, to our good Hans Castorp, seemed too mad for words; he clutched his brow with his hand, and in his amazement quite forgot that he had a bite of pumpernickel and Cheshire still to be THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 84 chewed and swallowed. When he rose from table, he had it still in his mouth. They went out through the left-hand glass door, that fatal door which always slammed, and which led directly to the front hall. Nearly all the guests went out the same way; it appeared that after dinner a certain amount of social intercourse took place in the hall and the adjoining salons. Most of the patients stood about in little groups chatting. Games were begun at two green extension-tables: at the one, dominoes; at the other, bridge, and here only the young folk played, among them Hermine Kleefeld and Herr Albin. In the first salon were some amusing optical diversions: the first a stereoscope, behind the lenses of which one inserted a photograph — for instance, there was one of a Venetian gondolier — and on looking through, you saw the figure stand- ing out in the round, lifelike, though bloodless; another was a kaleidoscope — you put your eye to the lens and slightly turned a wheel, when all sorts of gay-coloured stars and arabesques danced and juggled before it with the swift changefulness of magic. A third was a revolving drum, into which you inserted a strip of cinematographic film and then looked through the open- ings as it whirled, and saw a miller fighting with a chimney-sweep, a schoolmaster chastising a boy, a leaping rope-dancer and a peasant pair dancing a folk-dance. Hans Castorp, his cold hands on his knees, gazed a long time into each of these contrivances. He paused awhile by the card-table, where Herr Albin, the in- curable, sat with the corners of his mouth drawn down, and handled the cards with a supercilious, man-of-the-worldly air. In a comer sat Dr. Krokowski, absorbed in a brisk and hearty conversation with a half-circle of ladies, among them Frau Stohr, Frau litis, and Fraulein Levi. The occupants of the “ good ” Rus- sian table had withdrawn into a neighbouring small salon, sep- arated from the card-room by a portiere, where they formed a small and separate coterie, consisting, in addition to Madame Chauchat, of a languid, blond-bearded youth with a hollow chest and prominent eyeballs; a young girl of pronounced brunette type, with a droll, original face, gold ear-rings, and wild woolly hair; besides these, Dr. Blumenkohl, who had joined their circle, and two other youths with drooping shoulders. Madame Chauchat wore a blue frock with a white lace collar. She sat, the centre of her group, on the sofa behind the round table, at the bottom of the small salon, her face turned toward the card-room. Hans Castorp, who could not look at the unmannerly creature without SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS 85 disapproval, said to himself: “ She reminds me of something, but I cannot tell what.” A tall man of some thirty years, growing bald, played the wed- ding march from the Midsummer Night's Dream three times on end, on the little brown piano, and on being urged by some of the ladies, began the melodious piece for the fourth time, gazing deep and silently into their eyes, one after the other. “ May I be permitted to ask after the state of your health, Engineer? ” inquired Settembrini, who had lounged up among the other guests, hands in pockets, and now presented himself before Hans Castorp. He still wore his pilot coat and check trousers. He smiled as he spoke, and Hans Castorp felt again the sobering effect of that fine and mocking curl of the lip beneath the waving black moustaches. He looked rather stupidly at the Italian, with lax mouth and red-veined eyes. “ Oh, it’s you! ” he said. “ The gentleman we met this morning on our walk — at that bench up there — near the — yes, I knew you at once. Can you believe it,” he went on, though conscious of saying something gauche , “ can you believe it, I took you for an organ-grinder when I first saw you? Of course, that’s all utter rot,” he added, seeing a coolly inquiring expression on Settem- brini’s face. “ Perfectly idiotic. I can’t comprehend how in the world I — ” “ Don’t disturb yourself, it doesn’t matter,” responded Settem- brini, after fixing the young man with a momentary intent regard. “ Well, and how have you spent your day, the first of your sojourn in this gay resort? ” “ Thanks very much — quite according to the rules,” answered Hans Castorp. “ Prevailingly ‘ horizontal,’ as I hear you to call it.” Settembrini smiled. “ I may have taken occasion to express my- self thus,” he said. “ Well, and you found it amusing, this manner of existence? ” u Amusing or dull, whichever you like,” responded Hans Ca- storp. “ It isn’t always so easy to decide which, you know. At all events, I haven’t been bored; there are far too lively goings-on up here for that. So much that is new and unusual to hear and see — and yet, in another way, it seems as though I had been here a long time, instead of just a single day — as if I had got older and wiser since I came — that is the way I feel.” “ Wiser, too? ” Settembrini asked, and raised his eyebrows. Will you permit me to ask how old you are? ” 86 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN And behold, Hans Castorp could not tell! At that moment he did not know how old he was, despite strenuous, even desperate efforts to bethink himself. In order to gain time he had the ques- tion repeated, and then answered: “ I? How old I am? In my twenty-fourth year, of course. I’ll soon be twenty-four. I beg your pardon, but I am very tired,” he went on. “ Tired isn’t the word for it. Do you know how it is when you are dreaming, and know that you are dreaming, and try to awake and can’t? That is precisely the way I feel. I certainly must have some fever; otherwise I simply cannot explain it. Imagine, my feet are cold all the way up to my knees. If one may put it that way, of course one’s knees aren’t one’s feet — do excuse me, I am all in a muddle, and no wonder, considering I was whistled at in the morning with the pn — the pn — eumothorax, and in the afternoon had to listen to this Herr Albin — in the horizontal, on top of that! It seems to me I cannot any more trust my five senses, and that I must confess disturbs me more than my cold feet and the heat in my face. Tell me frankly: do you think it is possible Frau Stohr knows how to make twenty-eight different kinds of fish- sauces? I don’t mean if she actually can make them — that I should consider out of the question — I mean if she said at table just now she could, or if I only imagined she did — that is all I want to know.” Settembrini looked at him. He seemed not to have been listen- ing. His eyes were set again, they had taken on a fixed stare, and he said: “ Yes, yes, yes,” and “ I see, I see, I see,” each three times, just as he had done in the morning, in a considering, deriding tone, and giving a sharp sound to the s’ s. “ Twenty-four? ” he asked after a while. “No, twenty-eight,” Hans Castorp said. “Twenty-eight fish- sauces. Not sauces in general, special sauces for fish — that is the monstrous part of it.” “ Engineer,” Settembrini said sharply, almost angrily, “ pull yourself together and stop talking this demoralized rubbish. I know nothing about it, nor do I wish to. You are in your twenty- fourth year, you say? H’m. Permit me to put another question, or rather, with your kind permission, make a suggestion. As your stay up here with us does not appear to be conducive, as you don’t feel comfortable, either physically or, unless I err, mentally, how would it be if you renounced the prospect of growing older on this spot — in short, what if you were to pack to-night, and be up and away with the first suitable train? ” “ You mean I should go away? ” Hans Castorp asked; “ when SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS 87 IVe hardly come? No, why should I try to judge from the first day? ” He happened, as he spoke, to direct his gaze into the next room, and saw Frau Chauchat’s full face, with its narrow eyes and broad cheek-bones. “ What is it, what or whom in all the world does she remind me of? ” But his weary brain, despite the effort he made, refused an answer. “ Of course,” he went on, “ it is true it is not so easy for me to get acclimatized up here. But that was to be expected. I’d be ashamed to chuck it up and go away like that, just because I felt upset and feverish for a few days. I’d feel a perfect coward. It would be a senseless thing to do, you admit it yourself, don’t you? ” He spoke with a sudden insistence, jerking his shoulders ex- citedly— he seemed to want to make the Italian withdraw his suggestion in form. “ I pay every homage to reason,” Settembrini answered. “ I pay homage to valour too. What you say sounds well; it would be hard to oppose anything convincing against it. I myself have seen some beautiful cases of acclimatization. There was Fraulein Kneifer, Ottilie Kneifer, last year. She came of a good family — the daughter of an important government official. She was here some year and a half and had grown to feel so much at home that when her health was quite restored — it does happen, up here; people do sometimes get well — she couldn’t bear to leave. She implored the Hofrat to let her stop; she could not and would not go; this was her home, she was happy here. But the place was full, they wanted her room, and so all her prayers were in vain; they stood out for discharging her cured. Ottilie was taken with high fever, her curve went well up. But they found her out by exchanging her regular thermometer for a ‘silent sister.’ You aren’t acquainted as yet with the term; it is a thermometer without figures, which the physician measures with a little rule, and plots the curve himself. Ottilie, my dear sir, had 98.4°; she was normal. Then she went bathing in the lake — it was the beginning of May; we were having frost at night; the water was not percisely ice- cold, say a few degrees above. She remained some time in the water, trying to contract some illness or other — alas, she was, and remained, quite sound. She departed in anguish and despair, deaf to all the consolations her parents could give. ‘ What shall I do down there? ’ she kept crying. ‘ This is my home! ’ I never heard what became of her. — But you are not listening, Engineer. Unless I am much mistaken, simply remaining on your legs costs 88 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN you an effort. Lieutenant! ” he addressed himself to Joachim, who was just coming up. “ Take your cousin and put him to bed. He unites the virtues of courage and moderation — but just now he is a little groggy.” “ No, really, I understood everything you said,” protested Hans Castorp. u The 4 silent sister ’ is a mercury thermometer without figures — you see, I got it all.” But he went up in the lift with Joachim and several other patients as well, for the conviviality was over for the evening; the guests were separating to seek the halls and loggias for the evening cure. Hans Castorp went into his cousin’s room. The corridor floor, with its strip of narrow coco matting, billowed beneath his feet, but this, apart from its singularity, was not un- pleasant. He sat down in Joachim’s great flowered arm-chair — there was one just like it in his own room — and lighted his Maria Mancini. It tasted like glue, like coal, like anything but what it should taste like. Still he smoked on, as he watched Joachim making ready for his cure, putting on his house jacket, then an old overcoat, then, armed with his night-lamp and Russian primer, going into the balcony. He turned on the light, lay down with his thermometer in his mouth, and began, with astonishing dex- terity, to wrap himself in the two camel’s-hair rugs that were spread out over his chair. Hans Castorp looked on with honest admiration for his skill. He flung the covers over him, one after the other: first from the left side, all their length up to his shoulders, then from the feet up, then from the right side, so that he formed, when finished, a neat compact parcel, out of which stuck only his head, shoulders, and arms. “ How well you do that! ” Hans Castorp said. 44 That’s the practice I’ve had,” Joachim answered, holding the thermometer between his teeth in order to speak. 44 You’ll learn. To-morrow we must certainly get you a pair of rugs. You can use them afterwards at home, and up here they are indispensable, particularly as you have no sleeping-sack.” 44 1 shan’t lie out on the balcony at night,” Hans Castorp de- clared. 44 1 can tell you that at once. It would seem perfectly weird to me. Everything has its limits. I must draw the line somewhere, since I’m really only up here on a visit. I will sit here awhile and smoke my cigar in the regular way. It tastes vile, but I know it’s good, and that will have to do me for to-day. It is close on nine — it isn’t even quite nine yet, more’s the pity — but when it is half past, that is late enough for a man to go to bed at least half-way decently.” SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS 89 A shiver ran over him, then several, one after the other. Hans Castorp sprang up and ran to the thermometer on the wall, as if to catch it in flagrante . According to the mercury, there were fifty degrees of heat in the room. He clutched the radiator; it was cold and dead. He murmured something incoherent, to the effect that it was a scandal to have no heating, even if it was August. It wasn’t a question of the name of the month, but of the temperature that obtained, which was such that actually he was as cold as a dog. Yet his face burned. He sat down, stood up again, and with a murmured request for permission fetched Joachim’s coverlet and spread it out over himself at he sat in the chair. And thus he remained, hot and cold by turns, torturing himself with his nauseous cigar. He was overcome by a wave of wretchedness; it seemed to him he had never in his life before felt quite so miserable. 44 1 feel simply wretched,” he muttered. And suddenly he was moved by an extraordinary and extravagant thrill of joy and sus- pense, of which he was so conscious that he sat motionless waiting for it to come again. It did not — only the misery remained. He stood up at last, flung Joachim’s coverlet on the bed, and got something out that sounded like a good-night: 44 Don’t freeze to death; call me again in the morning,” his lips hardly shaping the words; then he staggered along the corridor to his own room. He sang to himself as he undressed — certainly not from excess of spirits. Mechanically, without the care which was their due, he went through all the motions that made up the ritual of his nightly toilet; poured the pink mouth-wash and discreetly gar- gled, washed his hands with his mild and excellent violet soap, and drew on his long batiste night-shirt, with H.C. embroidered on the breast pocket. Then he lay down and put out the light, letting his hot and troubled head fall upon the American woman’s dying-pillow. He had thought to fall asleep at once, but he was wrong. His eyelids, which he had scarcely been able to hold up, now declined to close; they twitched rebeliiously open whenever he shut them. He told himself that it was not his regular bed-time; that during the day he had probably rested too much. Someone seemed to be beating a carpet out of doors — which was not very probable, and proved not to be the case, for it was the beating or his own heart he heard, quite outside of himself and away in the night, ex- actly as though someone were beating a carpet with a wicker beater. It had not yet grown entirely dark in the room; the light from THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 90 the little lamps in the loggias, Joachim’s and the Russian pair’s, fell through the open balcony door. As Hans Castorp lay there on his back blinking, he recalled an impression amongst the host received that day, an observation he had made, and then, with shrinking and delicacy, sought to forget. It was the look on Joachim’s face when they spoke of Marusja and her physical char- acteristics — an oddly pathetic facial distortion, and a spotted pallor on the sun-browned cheeks. Hans Castorp saw and under- stood what it meant, saw and understood in a manner so new, so sympathetic, so intimate, that the carpet-beater outside redoubled the swiftness and severity of its blows and almost drowned out the sound of the evening serenade down in the Platz — for there was a concert again in the same hotel as before, and they were playing a symmetrically constructed, insipid melody that came up through the darkness. Hans Castorp whistled a bar of it in a whisper — one can whistle in a whisper — and beat time with his cold feet under the plumectu . That was, of course, the right way not to go to sleep, and now he felt not the slightest inclination. Since he had under- stood in that new, penetrating sense why Joachim had changed colour, the whole world seemed altered to him, he felt pierced for the second time by that feeling of extravagant joy and sus- pense. And he waited for, expected something, without asking himself what. But when he heard his neighbours to right and left conclude their evening cure and re-enter their rooms to exchange the horizontal without for the horizontal within, he gave utter- ance to the conviction that at least this evening the barbaric pair would keep the peace. “ I can surely go to sleep without being disturbed; they will behave themselves,” he said. But they did not, nor had Hans Ca- storp been sincere in his conviction that they would. For his part, to tell the truth, he would not have understood it if they had. Notwithstanding which, he indulged in soundless expres- sions of utter astonishment as he listened. “ Unheard of,” he whispered. “ It’s incredible — who would have believed it? ” And between such exclamations joined again in the insipid music that swelled insistently up from the Platz. Later he went to sleep. But with sleep returned the involved dreams, even more involved than those of the first night — out of which he often started up in fright, or pursuing some con- fused fancy. He seemed to see Hofrat Behrens walking down the garden path, with bent knees and arms hanging stiffly in front of him, adapting his long and somehow solitary-looking stride SATANA MAKES PROPOSALS 9 * to the time of distant march-music. As he paused before Hans Castorp, the latter saw that he was wearing a pair of glasses with thick, round lenses. He was uttering all sorts of nonsense. “ A civilian, of course,” he said, and without saying by your leave, drew down Hans Castorp’s eyelid with the first and middle fingers of his huge hand. “ Respectable civilian, as I saw at once. But not without talent, not at all without talent for a heightened degree of oxidization. Wouldn’t grudge us a year, he wouldn’t, just one little short year of service up here. Well, hullo-ullo! gentlemen, on with the exercise,” he shouted, and putting his two enormous first fingers in his mouth, emitted a whistle of such peculiarly pleasing quality that from opposite directions Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress, much smaller than life-size, came flying through the air and perched themselves right and left on the Hofrat’s shoulders, just as they sat right and left of Hans Castorp in the dining-room. And the Hofrat skipped away, wiping his eyes behind his glasses with a table-napkin — but whether it was tears or sweat he wiped could not be told. Then it seemed to the dreamer that he was in the school court- yard, where for so many years through he had spent his recesses, and was in the act of borrowing a lead-pencil from Madame Chauchat, who seemed to be there too. She gave him a half-length red pencil in a silver holder, and warned him in an agreeable, husky voice to be sure to return it to her after the hour. And as she looked at him — with her narrow, blue-grey eyes above the broad cheek-bones — he tore himself by violence away from his dream, for now he had it fast and meant to hold it, of what and whom she so vividly reminded him. Hastily he fixed this occur- rence in his mind, to have it fast for the morrow. Then sleep and dream once more overpowered him, and he saw himself in the act of flight from Dr. Krokowski, who had lain in wait for him to undertake some psychoanalysis. He fled from the doctor, but his feet were leaden; past the glass partitions, along the bal- conies, into the garden; in his extremity he tried to climb the red- brown flagstaff — and woke perspiring at the moment when the pursuer seized him by his trouser-leg. Hardly was he calm when slumber claimed him once more. The content of his dream entirely changed, and he stood trying to shoulder Settembrini away from the spot where they stood, the Italian smiling in his subtle, mocking way, under the full, upward-curving moustaches — and it was precisely this smile which Hans Castorp found so injurious. “ You are a nuisance,” he distinctly heard himself say. “ Get THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 92 away, you are only a hand-organ man, and you are in the way here.” But Settembrini would not let himself be budged; Hans Castorp was still standing considering what was to be done when he was unexpectedly vouchsafed a signal insight into the true nature of time; it proved to be nothing more or less than a “ silent sister,” a mercury column without degrees, to be used by those who wanted to cheat. He awoke with the thought in his mind that he must certainly tell Joachim of this discovery on the morrow. In such adventures, among such discoveries, the night wore away. Hermine Kleefeld, as well as Herr Albin and Captain Mik- losich, played fantastic roles — the last carried off Frau Stohr in his fury, and was pierced through and through with a lance by Lawyer Paravant. One particular dream, however, Hans Castorp dreamed twice over during the night, both times in precisely the same form, the second time toward morning. He sat in the dining- hall with the seven tables when there came a great crashing of glass as the verandah door banged, and Madame Chauchat en- tered in a white sweater, one hand in her pocket, the other at the back of her head. But instead of going to the “ good ” Russian table, the unmannerly female glided noiselessly to Hans Castorp’s side and without a word reached him her hand — not the back, but the palm — to kiss. Hans Castorp kissed that hand, which was not overly well kept, but rather broad, with stumpy fingers, the skin roughened next the nails. And at that there swept over him anew, from head to foot, the feeling of reckless sweetness he had felt for the first time when he tried to imagine himself free of the burden of a good name, and tasted the boundless joys of shame. This feeling he experienced anew in his dream, only a thousand- fold stronger than in his waking hour. CHAPTER IV Necessary Purchases “ Is your summer over now? ” Hans Castorp ironically asked his cousin, on the third day. There had come a violent change of scene. On the visitor’s second full day up here, the most brilliant sum- mer weather prevailed. Above the aspiring lance-shaped tips of the fir-trees the sky gleamed deepest blue, the village down in the valley glared white in the heat, and the air was filled with the sound, half gay, half pensive, of bells, from the cows that roamed the slopes, cropping the short, sun-warmed meadow grass. At early breakfast the ladies appeared in lingerie blouses, some with open-work sleeves, which did not become them all alike. In particular it did not suit Frau Stohr, the skin of whose arms was too porous; such a fashion was distinctly not for her. The masculine population too had in various ways taken cognizance of the nne weather: they sported mohair coats and linen suits — Joachim Ziemssen had put on white flannel trou- sers with his blue coat, and thus arrayed looked more military than ever. As for Settembrini, he had more than once announced his in- tention of changing. “ Heavens, how hot the sun is! ” he said, as he and the cousins strolled down to the village after luncheon. “ I see I shall have to put on thinner clothes.” Yet after this ex- plicit expression of his intentions, he continued to appear in his check trousers and pilot coat with the wide lapels. They were probably all his wardrobe could boast. But on the third day it seemed as though nature suffered a sud- den reserve; everything turned topsyturvy. Hans Castorp could scarcely trust his eyes. It happened when they were lying in their balconies, some twenty minutes after the midday meal. Swiftly the sun hid its face, ugly turf-coloured clouds drew up over the south-western ridge, and a wind from a strange quarter, whose chill pierced to the marrow, as though it came out of some un- THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 94 known icy region, swept suddenly through the valley; down went the thermometer — a new order obtained. “ Snow,” said Joachim’s voice, behind the glass partition. u What do you mean, snow? ” Hans Castorp asked him. “ You don’t mean to say it is going to snow now? ” “ Certainly,” answered Joachim. “ We know that wind. When it comes, it means sleighing.” “ Rubbish! ” Hans Castorp said. “ If I remember rightly, it is the beginning of August.” But Joachim, versed in the signs of the region, knew whereof he spoke. For in a few minutes, accompanied by repeated claps of thunder, a furious snow-storm set in, so heavy that the land- scape seemed wrapped in white smoke, and of village and valley scarcely anything could be seen. It snowed away all the afternoon. The heat was turned on. Joachim availed himself of his fur sack, and was not deterred from the service of the cure; but Hans Castorp took refuge in his room, pushed up a chair to the hot pipes, ana remained there, looking with frequent head-shakings at the enormity outside. By next morning the storm had ceased. The thermometer showed a few degrees above freezing, but the snow lay a foot deep, and a completely wintry landscape spread itself before Hans Castorp’s astonished eyes. They had turned off the heat. The temperature of the room was 45 °. “ Is your summer over now? ” Hans Castorp asked his cousin, in bitter irony. “ You can’t tell,” answered the matter-of-fact Joachim. “ We may have fine summer weather yet. Even in September it is very possible. The truth is, the seasons here are not so distinct from each other; they run in together, so to speak, and don’t keep to the calendar. The sun in winter is often so strong that you take off your coat, and perspire as you walk. And in summer — well, you see for yourself! And then the snow, that puts out all one’s calculations. It snows in January, but in May not much less, and, as you observe, it snows in August too. On the whole, one may say there is never a month without snow; you may take that for a rule. In short, there are winter days and summer days, spring and autumn days; but regular seasons we don’t actually have up here.” “ A fine mixed-up state of affairs,” said Hans Castorp. In over- coat and galoshes he went with his cousin down to the village, to buy himself blankets for the out-of-doors cure, since it was plain his plaid would not suffice. For the moment he even weighed NECESSARY PURCHASES 95 the thought of purchasing a fur sack as well, but gave it up, in- deed, felt a certain revulsion from the idea. “ No, no,” he said, “ we’ll stop at the covers. I’ll have use for them down below, and everybody has covers; there’s nothing strange or exciting about them. But a fur sack is altogether too special — if I buy one, it is as if I were going to settle down here, as if I belonged, understand what I mean? No, for the present we’ll let it go at that; it would absolutely not be worth while to buy a sack for the few weeks I’m up here.” Joachim agreed, and they acquired two camel’s-hair rugs like his own, in a fine and well-stocked shop in the English quarter. They were in natural colour, long, broad, and delightfully soft, and were to be sent at once to the International Sanatorium Berg- hof, Room 34: Hans Castorp looked forward to using them that very afternoon. This, of course, was after second breakfast, for otherwise the daily programme left no time sufficient to go down into the Platz. It was raining now, and the snow in the streets had turned to a slush that spattered as they walked. They overtook Settem- brini on the road, climbing up to the sanatorium under an um- brella, bare-headed. The Italian looked sallow; his mood was ob- viously elegiac. In well-chosen, clearly enunciated phrases he complained of the cold and damp from which he suffered so bitterly. If they would only heat the building! But the ruling powers, in their penuriousness, had the fire go out directly it stopped snowing — an idiotic rule, an insult to human intelligence. Hans Castorp objected that presumably a moderate temperature was part of the regimen of the cure; it would certainly not do to coddle the patients. But Settembrini answered with embittered scorn. Oh, of course, the regimen of the cure! Those august and inviolate rules! Hans Castorp was right in referring to them, as he did, with bated breath. Yet it was rather striking (of course only in the pleasantest sense) that the rules most honoured in the observance were precisely those which chimed with the financial interest of the proprietors of the establishment; whereas, on the other hand, to those less favourable they were inclined to shut an eye. The cousins laughed, and Settembrini began to speak of his deceased father, who had been brought to his mind in connexion with the talk about heated rooms. “ My father,” he said slowly, in tones replete with filial piety, “ my father was a most delicately organized man, sensitive in body as in soul. How he did love his tiny, warm little study! In winter a temperature of twenty degrees Reaumur must always THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 96 obtain there, by means of a small red-hot stove. When you entered it from the corridor on a day of cold and damp, or when the cutting tramontana blew, the warmth of it laid itself about you like a shawl, so that for very pleasure your eyes would fill with tears. The little room was stuffed with books and manuscripts, some of them of great value; he stood among them, at his narrow desk, in his blue flannel night-shirt, and devoted himself to the service of letters. He was small and delicately built, a good head shorter than I — imagine! — but with great tufts of grey hair on his temples, and a nose — how long and pointed it was! And what a Romanist, my friends! One of the first of his time, with a rare mastery of our own tongue, and a Latin stylist such as no longer exists — ah, a ‘ uomo letterato ’ after Boccaccio’s own heart! From far and wide scholars came to converse with him — one from Haparanda, another from Cracow — they came to our city of Padua, expressly to pay him homage, and he received them with dignified friendliness. He was a poet of distinction too, com- posing in his leisure tales in the most elegant Tuscan prose — he was a master of the idioma gentile ” Settembrini said, rolling his native syllables with the utmost relish on his tongue and turning his head from side to side. “ He laid out his little garden after Virgil’s own plan — and all that he said was sane and beautiful. But warm, warm he must have it in his little room; otherwise he would tremble with cold, and he could weep with anger if they let him freeze. And now imagine, Engineer, and you, Lieutenant, what I, the son of my father, must suffer in this accursed and bar- barous land, where even at summer’s height the body shakes with cold, and the spirit is tortured and debased by the sights it sees. — Oh, it is hard! What types about us! This frantic devil of a Hof rat, Krokowski ” — Settembrini pretended to trip over the name — “ Krokowski, the father-conressor, who hates me because I’ve too much human dignity to lend myself to his papish practices. — And at my table — what sort of society is that in which I am forced to take my food? At my right sits a brewer from Halle — Magnus by name — with a moustache like a bundle of hay. ‘ Don’t talk to me about literature,’ says he. 4 What has it to offer? Anything but beautiful characters? What have I to do with beautiful char- acters? I am a practical man, and in life I come into contact with precious few.’ That is the idea he has of literature — beautiful characters! Mother of God! His wife sits there opposite him, losing flesh all the time, and sinking further and further into idiocy. It is a filthy shame.” Hans Castorp and Joachim were in silent agreement about this NECESSARY PURCHASES 97 talk of Settembrini’s: they found it querulous and seditious in tone, if also highly entertaining and “ plastic ” in its verbal pun- gency and animus. Hans Castorp laughed good-humouredly over the “ bundle of hay,” likewise over the “ beautiful characters ”— or, rather, the drolly despairing way Settembrini spoke of them. Then he said: “ Good Lord, yes, the society is always mixed in a place like this, I suppose. One’s not allowed to choose one’s table-mates — that would lead to goodness knows what! At our table there is a woman of the same sort, a Frau Stohr — I think you know her? Ghastly ignorant, I must say — sometimes when she rattles on, one doesn’t know where to look. But she complains a lot about her temperature, and how relaxed she feels, and I’m afraid she is by no means a light case. That seems so strange to me: diseased and stupid both — I don’t exactly know how to ex- press it, but it gives me a most peculiar feeling, when somebody is so stupid, and then ill into the bargain. It must be the most melancholy thing in life. One doesn’t know what to make of it; one wants to feel a proper respect for illness, of course — after all there is a certain dignity about it, if you like. But when such asininity comes on top of it — ‘ cosmic ’ for 4 cosmetic,’ and other howlers like that — one doesn’t know whether to laugh or to weep. It is a regular dilemma for the human feelings — I find it more deplorable than I can say. What I mean is, it’s not con- sistent, it doesn’t hang together; I can’t get used to the idea. One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and un- usual. At least as a rule — or I don’t know, perhaps I am saying more than I could stand for,” he finished. “ It was only because we happened to speak of it — ” He stopped in confusion. Joachim too looked rather uncomfortable, and Settembrini lifted his eyebrows and said not a word, with an air of waiting politely for the end of his speech. He was, in fact, holding off until Hans Castorp should break down entirely before he an- swered. But now he said: “ Sapristi, Engineer! You are display- ing a most unexpected gift of philosophy! By your own theory, you must be yourself more ailing than you look, you are so obviously possessed of esprit. But, if you will permit me to say so, I can hardly subscribe to your deductions; I must deny them; my position is one of absolute dissent. I am, as you see, rather intolerant than otherwise in things of the intellect; I would rather be reproached as a pedant than suffer to pass unchallenged a point of view which seemed to me so untenable as this of yours.” “ But, Herr Settembrini, I — ” THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 98 “ Per — mit me. I know what you would say: that the views you represent are not, of necessity, your own; that you have only chanced upon that one of all the possible ones there are, as it were, in the air, and you try it on, without personal responsi- bility. It befits your time of life, thus to avoid the settled con- victions of the mature man, and to make experiments with a variety of points of view. Placet experiri” he quoted, giving the Italian pronunciation to the c. “ That is a good saying. But what troubles me is that your experiment should lead you in just this direction. I doubt it it is a question of sheer chance. I fear the presence of a general tendency, which threatens to crystallize into a trait of character, unless one makes head against it. I feel it my duty, therefore, to correct you. You said that the sight of dullness and disease going hand in hand must be the most melancholy in life. I grant you, I grant you that. I too prefer an intelligent ailing person to a consumptive idiot. But I take issue where you regard the combination of disease with dullness as a sort of aesthetic inconsistency, an error in taste on the part of nature, a 4 dilemma for the human feelings,’ as you were pleased to express yourself. When you professed to regard disease as something so refined, so — what did you call it? — possessing a ‘ certain dignity ’ — that it doesn’t 4 go with ’ stupidity. That was the expression you used. Well, I say no! Disease has nothing re- fined about it, nothing dignified. Such a conception is in itself pathological, or at least tends in that direction. Perhaps I may best arouse your mistrust of it if I tell you how ancient and ugly this conception is. It comes down to us from a past seething with superstition, in which the idea of humanity had degenerated and deteriorated into sheer caricature; a past full of fears, in which well-being and harmony were regarded as suspect and emanating from the devil, whereas infirmity was equivalent to a free pass to heaven. Reason and enlightenment have banished the darkest of these shadows that tenanted the soul of man — nor entirely, for even yet the conflict is in progress. But this conflict, my dear sirs, means work, earthly labour, labour for the earth, for the honour and the interests of mankind; and by that conflict daily steeled anew, the powers of reason and enlightenment will in the end set humanity wholly free and lead it in the path of progress and civilization toward an even brighter, milder, and purer light.” 44 Lord bless us,” thought Hans Castorp, in shamefaced conster- nation. 44 What a homily! How, I wonder, did I call all that down on my head? I must say, I find it rather prosy. And why does he NECESSARY PURCHASES 99 talk so much about work all the time? It is his constant theme; not a very pertinent one up here, one would think.” Aloud he said: “ How beautifully you do talk, Herr Settembrini! What you say is very well worth hearing — and could not be more — more plastically expressed, I should think.” “ Backsliding,” continued Settembrini, as he lifted his umbrella away above the head of a passer-by, “ spiritual backsliding in the direction of that dark and tortured age, that, believe me, Engineer, is disease — a disease already sufficiently studied, to which vari- ous names have been given: one from the terminology of aesthetics and psychology, another from the domain of politics — all of them academic terms which are not to the point, and which I will spare you. But as in the spiritual life everything is interrelated, one thing growing out of another, and since one may not reach out one’s little finger to the Devil, lest he take the whole hand, and therewith the whole man; since, on the other side, a sound prin- ciple can produce only sound results, no matter which end one begins at — so disease, far from being something too refined, too worthy of reverence, to be associated with dullness, is, in itself, a degradation of mankind, a degradation painful and offensive to conceive. It may, in the individual case, be treated with consider- ation; but to pay it homage is — mark my words — an aberration, and the beginning of intellectual confusion. This woman you have mentioned to me — you will pardon me if I do not trouble to recall her name — ah, thank you, Frau Stohr — it is not, it seems to me, the case of this ridiculous woman which places the human feelings in the dilemma to which you refer. She is ill, and she is limited; her case is hopeless, and the matter is simple. There is nothing left but to pity and shrug one’s shoulders. The dilemma, my dear sir, the tragedy, begins where nature has been cruel enough to split the personality, to shatter its harmony by im- prisoning a noble and ardent spirit within a body not nt for the stresses of life. Have you heard of Leopardi, Engineer, or you, Lieutenant? An unhappy poet of my own land, a crippled, ail- ing man, bom with a great soul, which his sufferings were con- stantly humiliating and dragging down into the depths of irony — its lamentations rend the heart to hear.” And Settembrini began to recite in Italian, letting the beauti- ful syllables melt upon his tongue, as he closed his eyes and swayed his head from side to side, heedless that his hearers understood not a syllable. Obviously it was all done for the sake of impressing his companions with his memory and his pronunciation. IOO THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN “ But you don’t understand; you hear the words, yet without grasping their tragic import. My dear sirs, can you comprehend what it means when I tell you that it was the love of woman which the crippled Leopardi was condemned to renounce; that this it principally was which rendered him incapable of avoid- ing the embitterment of his soul? Fame and virtue were shadows to him, nature an evil power — and so she is, stupid and evil both, I agree with him there — he even despaired, horrible to say, he even despaired of science and progress! Here, Engineer, is the true tragedy. Here you have your ‘ dilemma for the human feel- ings,’ here, and not in the case of that wretched woman, with whose name I really cannot burden my memory. Do not, for heaven’s sake, speak to me of the ennobling effects of physical suffering! A soul without a body is as inhuman and horrible as a body without a soul — though the latter is the rule and the former the exception. It is the body, as a rule, which flourishes exceed- ingly, which draws everything to itself, which usurps the pre- dominant place and lives repulsively emancipated from the soul. A human being who is first of all an invalid is all body; therein lies his inhumanity and his debasement. In most cases he is little better than a carcass — ” “ Funny,” Joachim said, bending forward to look at his cousin, on Herr Settembrini’s farther side. “ You were saying something quite like that just lately.” “ Was I? ” said Hans Castorp. “ Yes, it may be something of the kind went through my head.” Settembrini was silent a few paces. Then he said: “ So much the better. So much the better if that is true. I am far from claim- ing to expound an original philosophy — such is not my office. If our engineer here has been making observations in harmony with my own, that only confirms my surmise that he is an in- tellectual amateur and up to the present, as is the wont of gifted youth, still experimenting with various points of view. The young man with parts is no unwritten page, he is rather one upon which all the writing has already been done, in sympathetic ink, the good and the bad together; it is the schoolmaster’s task to bring out the good, to obliterate for ever the bad, by the methods of his E rofession. — You have been making purchases? ” he asked, in a ghter tone. “ No,” Hans Castorp said. “ That is, nothing but — ” “ We ordered a pair of blankets for my cousin,” Joachim an- swered unconcernedly. “ For the afternoon cure — it’s got so beastly cold; and I am NECESSARY PURCHASES IOI supposed to do as the Romans do, up here,” Hans Castorp said, laughing and looking at the ground. “Ah ha! Blankets — the cure,” Settembrini said. “Yes, yes. In fact: placet experiri” he repeated, with his Italian pronun- ciation, and took his leave, for their conversation had brought them to the door of the sanatorium, where they greeted the lame concierge in his lodge. Settembrini turned off into one of the sitting-rooms, to read the newspapers before luncheon. He evi- dently meant to cut the second rest period. “ Bless us and keep us! ” Hans Castorp said to Joachim, as they stood in the lift. “ What a pedagogue it is! He said himself that he had the 4 pedagogic itch.’ One has to watch out with him, not to say more than one means, or he is down on you at once with all his doctrines. But after all, it is worth listening to, he talks so well; the words come jumping out of his mouth so round and appetizing — when I listen to him, I keep seeing a picture of fresh hot rolls in my mind’s eye.” Joachim laughed. “ Better not tell him that. He’d be very put out I’m sure, to hear the sort of image his words call up in your mind.” “ Think so? I’m not so sure. I get the impression that it is not simply and solely for the sake of edifying us that he talks; per- haps that’s only a secondary motive. The important one, I feel sure, is the talk itself, the way he makes his words roll out, so resilient, just like a lot of rubber balls! He is very pleased when you notice the effect. I suppose Magnus, the brewer, was rather stupid, after all, with his 4 beautiful characters ’; but I do think Settembrini might have said what the point really is in literature. I did not like to ask, for fear of putting my foot in it; I am not just clear about it, and this is the first time I have ever known a literary man. But if it isn’t the beautiful characters, then ob- viously it must be the beautiful words, and that is the impression I get from being in Settembrini’s society. What a vocabulary! and he uses the word virtue just like that, without the slightest em- barrassment. What do you make of that? I’ve never taken the word in my mouth as long as I’ve lived; in school, when the book said 4 virtus] we always just said 4 valour ’ or something like that. It certainly gave me a queer feeling in my inside, to hear him. And it makes me nervous to hear him scolding, about the cold, and Behrens, and Frau Magnus because she is losing weight, and about pretty well everything. He is a born objector, I saw that at once, down on the existing order; and that always gives me the impres- sion that the person is spoilt — I can’t help it.” 102 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN “ You say that,” Joachim answered consideringly, “ and yet he has a kind of pride about him that makes an altogether dif- ferent impression: as of a man who has great respect for himself, or for humanity in general; and I like that about him; it has some- thing good, in my eyes.” “ You are right, there,” Hans Castorp answered. “ He’s even austere; he makes one feel rather uncomfortable, as if you were — well, shall I say as if you were being taken to task? That’s not such a bad way to describe it. Can you believe it, I had the feel- ing he was not at all pleased at my buying the blankets? He had something against it, and he kept dwelling on it.” “ Oh, no,” Joachim said after reflecting, in some surprise. “ How could he have? I shouldn’t think so.” And then, ther- mometer in mouth, with sack and pack, he went to lie down, while Hans Castorp began at once to wash and change for dinner — which was rather less than an hour away. Excursus on the Sense of Time When they came upstairs after the meal, the parcel containing the blankets lay on a chair in Hans Castorp’s room; and that after- noon he made use of them for the first time. The experienced Joachim instructed him in the art of wrapping himself up, as E ractised in the sanatorium; they all did it, and each new-comer ad to learn. First the covers were spread, one after the other, over the chair, so that a sizable piece hung down at the foot. Then you sat down and began to put the inner one about you: first lengthwise, on both sides, up to the shoulders, and then from the feet up, stooping over as you sat and grasping the folded-over end, first from one side and then from the other, taking care to fit it neatly into the length, in order to ensure the greatest pos- sible smoothness and evenness. Then you did precisely the same thing with the outer blanket — it was somewhat more difficult to handle, and our neophyte groaned not a little as he stooped and stretched out his arms to practise the grips his cousin showed him. Only a few old hands, Joachim said, could wield both blankets at once, flinging them into position with three self- assured motions. This was a rare and enviable facility, to which belonged not only long years of practice, but a certain knack as well. Hans Castorp had to laugh at this, lying back in his chair with aching muscles; Joachim did not at once see anything funny in what he had said, and looked at him dubiously, but finally laughed too. EXCURSUS 103 “ There,” he said, when Hans Castorp lay at last limbless and cylindrical in his chair, with the yielding roll at the back of his neck, quite worn out with all these gymnastic exercises; “ there, nothing can touch you now, not even if we were to have ten below zero.” He withdrew behind the partition, to do himself up in his turn. That about the ten below zero Hans Castorp doubted; he was even now distinctly cold. He shivered repeatedly as he lay look- ing out through the wooden arch at the reeking, dripping damp outside, which seemed on the point of passing over into snow. It was strange that with all that humidity his cheeks still burned with a dry heat, as though he were sitting in an over-heated room. He felt absurdly tired from the practice of putting on his rugs; actually, as he held up Ocean Steamships to read it, the book shook in his hands. So very fit he certainly was not — and totally anaemic, as Hof rat Behrens had said; this, no doubt, was why he was so susceptible to cold. But such unpleasing sensations were out- weighed by the great comfort of his position, the unanalysable, the almost mysterious properties of his reclining-chair, which he had applauded even on his first experience of it, and which re- asserted themselves in the happiest way whenever he resorted to it anew. Whether due to the character of the upholstering, the inclination of the chair-back, the exactly proper width and height of the arms, or only to the appropriate consistency of the neck roll, the result was that no more comfortable provision for re- laxed limbs could be conceived than that purveyed by this ex- cellent chair. The heart of Hans Castorp rejoiced in the blessed fact that two vacant and securely tranquil hours lay before him, dedicated by the rules of the house to the principal cure of the day; he felt it — though himself but a guest up here — to be a most suitable arrangement. For he was by nature and temperament passive, could sit without occupation hours on end, and loved, as we know, to see time spacious before him, and not to have the sense of its passing banished, wiped out or eaten up by prosaic activity. At four o’clock he partook of afternoon tea, with cake and jam. Followed a little movement in the open air, then rest again, then supper — which, like all the other meal-times, afforded a certain stimulus for eye and brain, and a certain sense of strain; after that a peep into one or other of the optical toys, the stereo- scope, the kaleidoscope, the cinematograph. It might be still too much to say that Hans Castorp had grown used to the life up here; but at least he did have the daily routine at his fingers’ ends. There is, after all, something peculiar about the process of habit- THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN IO4 uating oneself in a new place, the often laborious fitting in and getting used, which one undertakes for its own sake, and of set purpose to break it all off as soon as it is complete, or not long thereafter, and to return to one’s former state. It is an interval, an interlude, inserted, with the object of recreation, into the tenor of life’s main concerns; its purpose the relief of the organism, which is perpetually busy at its task of self-renewal, and which was in dan- ger, almost in process, of being vitiated, slowed down, relaxed, by the bald, unjointed monotony of its daily course. But what then is the cause of this relaxation, this slowing-down that takes place when one does the same thing for too long at a time? It is not so much physical or mental fatigue or exhaustion, for if that were the case, then complete rest would be the best restorative. It is rather something psychical; it means that the perception of time tends, through periods of unbroken uniformity, to fall away; the percep- tion of time, so closely bound up with the consciousness of life that the one may not be weakened without the other suffering a sensible impairment. Many false conceptions are held concerning the nature of tedium. In general it is thought that the interesting- ness and novelty of the time-content are what “ make the time pass ”; that is to say, shorten it; whereas monotony and emptiness check and restrain its flow. This is only true with reservations. Vacuity, monotony, have, indeed, the property of lingering out the moment and the hour and of making them tiresome. But they are capable of contracting and dissipating the larger, the very large time-units, to the point of reducing them to nothing at all. And conversely, a full and interesting content can put wings to the hour and the day; yet it will lend to the general passage of time a weightiness, a breadth and solidity which cause the eventful years to flow far more slowly than those poor, bare, empty ones over which the wind passes and they are gone. Thus what we call te- dium is rather an abnormal shortening of the time consequent upon monotony. Great spaces of time passed in unbroken uni- formity tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop beating for fear; when one day is like all the others, then they are all like one; complete uniformity would make the longest life seem short, and as though it had stolen away from us unawares. Habitu- ation is a falling asleep or fatiguing of the sense of time; which ex- plains why young years pass slowly, while later life flings itself faster and faster upon its course. We are aware that the intercala- tion of periods of change and novelty is the only means by which we can refresh our sense of time, strengthen, retard, and rejuve- nate it, and therewith renew our perception of life itself. Such is EXCURSUS 105 the purpose of our changes of air and scene, of all our sojourns at cures and bathing resorts; it is the secret of the healing power of change and incident. Our first days in a new place, time has a youthful, that is to say, a broad and sweeping, flow, persisting for some six or eight days. Then, as one “ gets used to the place,” a gradual shrinkage makes itself felt. He who clings or, better ex- pressed, wishes to cling to life, will shudder to see how the days grow light and lighter, how they scurry by like dead leaves, until the last week, of some four, perhaps, is uncannily fugitive and fleet. On the other hand, the quickening of the sense of time will flow out beyond the interval and reassert itself after the return to ordinary existence: the first days at home after the holiday will be lived with a broader flow, freshly and youthfully — but only the first few, for one adjusts oneself more quickly to the rule than to the exception; and if the sense of time be already weakened by age, or — and this is a sign of low vitality — it was never very well developed, one drowses quickly back into the old life, and after four-and-twenty hours it is as though one had never been away, and the journey had been but a watch in the night. We have introduced these remarks here only because our young Hans Castorp had something like them in mind when, a few days later, he said to his cousin, and fixed him with his bloodshot eyes: “ I shall never cease to find it strange that the time seems to go so slowly in a new place. I mean — of course it isn’t a question of my being bored; on the contrary, I might say that I am royally enter- tained. But when I look back — in retrospect, that is, you under- stand — it seems to me I’ve been up here goodness only knows how long; it seems an eternity back to the time when I arrived, and did not quite understand that I was there, and you said: ‘ Just get out here ’ — don’t you remember? — That has nothing whatever to do with reason, or with the ordinary ways of measuring time; it is purely a matter of feeling. Certainly it would be nonsense for me to say: 4 1 feel I have been up here two months ’ — it would be silly. All I can say is 4 very long.’ ” “ Yes,” Joachim answered, thermometer in mouth, “ I profit by it too; while you are here, I can sort of hang on by you, as it were.” Hans Castorp laughed, to hear his cousin speak thus, quite .simply, without explanation. He Practises His French No, after all, he was by no means, even yet, adjusted to his sur- roundings. Neither in familiarity with the features peculiar to life io 6 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN as lived up here — a familiarity impossible to achieve in so few days, which, as he was quite aware, and had even said to Joachim, he could hardly hope to acquire in the three weeks of his stay — nor in the adaptation of his physical organism to the prevailing peculiar atmospheric conditions. For this adaptation was bitterly hard; so hard, indeed, that it looked as though it would never be a success. The daily routine was clearly articulated, carefully organized; one fell quickly into step and, by yielding oneself to the general drift, was soon proficient. After that, indeed, within the weekly round, and also within other larger divisions of time, one dis- covered the existence of certain regular variations of the pro- gramme, which showed themselves, one at a time, a second one sometimes appearing only after the first had repeated itself. But even the phenomena of everyday life held much that Hans Ca- storp had still to learn: faces and facts already noted had to be conned, new ones to be absorbed with youth’s receptivity. Those great-bellied vessels, for example, with the short necks, which he had noticed the first evening standing in the corridors before certain doors. They contained oxygen; he had asked, and Joachim informed him. That was pure oxygen, six francs the con- tainer. The reviving gas was given the dying in a last effort to kindle or reinforce their strength. They drew it up through a tube. For behind those doors where such vessels were placed lay the dying — the “ moribundi as Herr Hofrat Behrens called them when Hans Castorp met him one day in the first storey. Purple of cheek, in his white smock-frock, he rowed along the corridor, and they went down the steps together. “ Well, and how are you, you disinterested spectator, you? ” said Behrens. “ Are we finding favour in your critical eye, what? Thanks so much. Yes, yes, our summer season, it’s not too bad, there’s something to be said for it. I’ve spent a little money myself to push it. But it’s a pity you won’t be here in the winter — you’re stopping only eight weeks, I hear? Ah, three? That’s nothing but a week-end! — won’t pay you to take off your hat. Oh well, just as you think. Only it is a pity you won’t be here for the winter; that’s when the nobs come,” he said comically, “ the international nobs, down in the Platz; they don’t come except in winter — you ought to see them, if only for the sake of your education. Regular high-flyers. You ought to see the jumps they make with those skis of theirs. And then the ladies! O Lord, the ladies! Birds of paradise, I tell you, and regularly out for adventure. Well, I must go in here, to my moribundus , number twenty-seven. Last stage. HE PRACTISES HIS FRENCH 107 you know — off centre. Five dozen fiascos of oxygen he’s had all together, yesterday and to-day, the soak! But he will be going to his own place by middle-day. Well, my dear Reuter,” he was saying as he entered, “ what do you say — shall we break the neck of another bottle? ” The sound of his words died away as he closed the door. But Hans Castorp had had a moment’s glimpse into the background of the room, where on the pillow lay the waxen profile of a young man with a little chin beard, who slowly rolled his great eyeballs toward the open door. This was the nrst dying man Hans Castorp had ever seen; for his father and mother, and his grandfather too had died, so to speak, behind his back. How full of dignity the young man’s head, with the little beard thrust upward, had lain upon his pillow! How speaking the glance those unnaturally great eyes had slowly turned upon the door! Hans Castorp, still quite absorbed by that glimpse, instinctively tried to make his own eyes as large, as slowly gazing and meaningful as those of the dying man, walking on as he did so, toward the stairs, and encountering a lady who came out of a room behind him and overtook him at the landing. He did not at once realize that it was Madame Chauchat; she, on her side, smiled at the eyes he was making at her, put her hands to the braids at the back of her head, and passed before him down the stairs, soundless, supple, with her head somewhat thrust out. Acquaintances he made scarcely any in these early days, nor for a long time afterwards. The daily routine was not favourable. Hans Castorp, too, was of a retiring disposition, felt himself very much the “ disinterested spectator,” as Hofrat Behrens had called him, and was in general content with the society and conversation of his cousin Joachim. The corridor nurse, indeed, continued to crane her neck after them, until Joachim, who had already fa- voured her with a little converse now and then, introduced his cousin. She wore the ribbon of her pince-nez tucked behind her ear, and spoke with excruciating affectation. On closer acquaint- ance, indeed, one got the impression that her reason had suffered on the rack of continual boredom. It was hard to get away from her, she showed such evident distress whenever the conversation gave signs of languishing; when the cousins seemed about to go on their way, she sought to hold them by a stream of words, by glances and despairing smiles, until, for very pity, they refrained. She spoke at random, of her papa, who was a jurist, and of her cousin, who was a physician — obviously with the idea of present- ing herself in a good light and impressing them with her cultured io8 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN origin. Her present charge, she said, was the son of a Coburg doll- manufacturer, named Rotbein; the disease had attacked young Fritz’s intestinal tract. That was hard for all concerned; the gentle- men could understand how hard it was, for one who came from cultured surroundings and had the delicacy of feeling of the upper classes. And one couldn’t turn one’s back a minute. A little time ago she had just gone out a few minutes — to get some tooth- powder, in fact; when she came back, there sat her patient in bed, with a glass of stout, a salame, a thick wedge of rye bread, and a pickle before him. All these clandestine dainties his family had sent to give him strength. The next day, of course, he was more dead than alive. He was himself hastening his own end. But that would be only a mercy for him, a blessed relief. For her, Sister Berta, however — whose real name was Alfreda Schildknecht — it would mean little or nothing; she would just go on to another case, in a more or less advanced stage, either here or elsewhere; such was the prospect that opened before her — and there was no other. Yes, Hans Castorp said, her calling was a hard one, but satisfy- ing, he should think. Of course, she answered, it was. Satisfying, but very hard. Well, kind regards to the patient — and the cousins tried to take leave. But she so hung upon them, with words and looks, that it was painful to see, putting forth all her powers to hold them only a little longer — it would have been cruel not to have vouchsafed her another few minutes. “ He is asleep,” she said. “ He does not need me. I came out here for a second or so.” She began complaining about Hofrat Behrens, whose manner with her was altogether too free, considering her origin. She much preferred Dr. Krokowski, she found him so full of soul. Then she returned to her papa and her cousin, her mental resources being exhausted. In vain she struggled to hold the young men, letting her voice rise until it was almost a shriek as she saw them moving. They escaped her finally and went; she kept on looking after them awhile, her body bent forward, her gaze so avid it seemed as though she would fairly suck them back with her eyes. Her breast was wrung with a sigh as she turned and went into her patient’s room. Hans Castorp made but one other acquaintance in these days: the pale, black-clad Mexican lady he had seen in the garden, whose nickname was Tous-les-deux. It came to pass that he heard from her own lips the tragic formula; and being forearmed, preserved a suitable demeanour and was satisfied with himself afterwards. The HE PRACTISES HIS FRENCH IO9 cousins met her before the front door, as they were setting forth on their prescribed walk after early breakfast. She was restlessly ranging there, with her pacing step, her legs bent at the knee- joints, wrapped in a black cashmere shawl, a black veil wound about her disordered silver hair and tied under her chin, her ageing face, with the large writhen mouth, gleaming dead-white against her mourning. Joachim, bare-headed as usual, greeted her with a bow, which she slowly acknowledged, the furrows deepening in her narrow forehead as she looked at him. Then, seeing a new face, she paused and waited, nodding gently as they came up to her; obviously she found it of importance to learn if the stranger was acquainted with her sad case, and to hear what he would say about it. Joachim presented his cousin. She drew her hand out of her shawl and gave it to him, a veined, emaciated, yellowish hand, with many rings, as she continued to gaze in his face. Then it came: “ Tons les de , monsieur ” she said. “ Tous les de> vous servez .” “ Je le sais , madame” Hans Castorp answered gently, “ et je le regrette beaucoup .” The lax pouches of skin under her jet-black eyes were larger and heavier than he had ever seen. She exhaled a faint odour as of fading flowers. A mild and pensive feeling stole about his heart. “ Merci ” she said, with a loose, clacking pronunciation, oddly consonant with her broken appearance. Her large mouth drooped tragically at one corner. She drew her hand back beneath her mantle, inclined her head, and turned away. But Hans Castorp said as they walked on: “ You see, I didn’t mind it at all, I got on with her quite well; I always do with such people; I understand instinctively how to go at them — don’t you think so? I even think, on the whole, I get on better with sad peo- ple than with jolly ones — goodness knows why. Perhaps it’s be- cause I’m an orphan, and lost my parents early; but when people are very serious, or down in the mouth, or somebody dies, it doesn’t deject or embarrass me; I feel quite in my element, a good deal more so than when everything is going on greased wheels. I was thinking just lately that it is pretty flat of the women up here to take on as they do about death and things connected with death, so that they take such pains to shield them from contact with it, and bring the Eucharist at meal-times, and that. I call it very feeble of them. Don’t you like the sight of a coffin? I really do. I find it a handsome piece of furniture, even empty; when someone is lying in it, then, in my eyes, it is positively sublime. Funerals have something very edifying; I always think one ought to go to I IO THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN a funeral instead of to church when one feels the need of being uplifted. People have on good black clothes, and they take off their hats and look at the coffin, and behave serious and reverent, and nobody dares to make a bad joke, the way they do in ordinary life. It’s good for people to be serious, once in a way. I’ve some- times asked myself if I ought not to have become a clergyman — in a certain way it wouldn’t have suited me so badly. — I hope I didn’t make any mistake in my French? ” “ No,” Joachim answered, “ 4 Je le regrette beaucoup ’ was per- fectly right as far as it went.” Politically Suspect Regular variations in the daily routine began to discover them- selves. The first was Sunday, Sunday with a band on the terrace, which, it appeared, played there once a fortnight. Hans Castorp had arrived in the latter half of one of these periods. He had come on a Tuesday, and thus the Sunday was his fifth day up here — a day whose springlike character contrasted with the late extraor- dinary change and relapse into winter. It was mild and fresh, with pure white clouds in a pale blue sky, and gentle sunshine over vale and slopes, which displayed once more the green proper to the season, for the recent snow had been fated to speedy melting. All hands, it was plain, took pains to observe Sunday and dis- tinguish it from the rest of the week, management and guest sec- onding each other in their efforts to this end. At early breakfast there was seed-cake, and each guest had before his place a small glass with a few flowers, mountain pinks and even Alpine roses, which the gentlemen stuck in their buttonholes. Lawyer Para- vant from Dortmund had put on a black frock-coat with a spotted waistcoat, and the ladies’ toilets were suitably festal and diapha- nous. Frau Chauchat appeared in a flowing lace matinee, with open sleeves. As she entered and the glass door crashed into its lock be- hind her, she paused a second facing the room and gracefully as it were presented herself before she glided to her table. The garment so became her that Hans Castorp’s neighbour, the Danzig school- mistress, was quite ravished. Even the barbaric pair at the “ bad ” Russian table had taken notice of the day: he by exchanging his leather jacket for a short coat, and the felt boots for leather shoes; she, though she still wore the soiled feather boa, by putting on a green silk blouse with a neck-ruche. Hans Castorp wrinkled his brows when he saw them, and coloured — he seemed, since he had been up here, to blush so easily. POLITICALLY SUSPECT I 1 1 Directly after second breakfast the concert began on the ter- race; there were all kinds of horns and wood wind, and they played by turns sprightly and sostemito , until nearly luncheon- time. The morning rest, during the concert, was not obligatory. A few guests did regale themselves with this feast for the ears, at the same time lying on their balconies; in the garden rest-hall a few chairs were occupied. But the majority sat at the small, white tables on the covered platform, while the more frivolous spirits, finding it too prim to sit upon chairs, encamped on the stone steps that led down into the garden, where they presently gave evidence of their high spirits. These were youthful patients of both sexes, most of whose names or faces Hans Castorp knew by now. There were Hermine Kleefeld, and Herr Albin — who carried about a great flowered box of chocolates, and offered them to all the guests, he himself eating none, but with a benevolent, f >aternal air smoking gold-tipped cigarettes; there were the thick- ipped youth who belonged to the Half-Lung Club, the thin and ivory-coloured Fraulein Levi, an ash-blond young man who an- swered to the name of Rasmussen and carried his hands breast-high, with the wrists relaxed, like a pair of flippers; Frau Salomon from Amsterdam, a woman of full bodily habit, in a red frock, who had attached herself to the group of young folk; the tall, thin-haired young man who could play out of the Midsummer Night's Dream sat on the step behind her, his arms about his bony knees, and gazed steadfastly down on the tanned back of her neck. There was a red-haired Greek girl, another of unknown origin with a face like a tapir’s; the voracious lad with the thick eye-glasses, and another fifteen- or sixteen-year-old youth, with a monocle stuck in his eye, who carried his little finger, with its abnormally long nail shaped like a salt-spoon, to his mouth when he coughed, and was manifestly a first-class donkey — these, and numerous others. The person with the finger-nail, Joachim related in a low voice, had been only a light case when he came. He had had no fever and had been sent up merely as a precautionary measure, by his father, who was a physician. The Hofrat had advised a stay of three months. The three months had passed, and now he had ioo to 100.5 degrees of fever and was seriously ill. But he lived so wide of all common sense that he needed his ears boxed. The cousins sat at a table by themselves, rather apart from the others, for Hans Castorp was smoking with his dark beer, which he had brought out from breakfast. From time to time his cigar gave him a little pleasure. Rendered torpid, as often, by the beer 1 1 2 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN and the music, he sat with his head on one side and his mouth slightly open, watching the gay, resortish scene, feeling, not as a disturbing influence, but rather as heightening the general singu- larity, and lending it one mental fillip the more, the fact that all these people were inwardly attacked by well-nigh resistless decay, and that most of them were feverish. They sat at the little tables drinking effervescent lemonade; the group on the steps were photo- graphing each other. Postage stamps were exchanged. The red- haired Greek girl sketched Herr Rasmussen’s portrait on a draw- ing-pad, but would not let him see it. She turned this way and that, laughing with wide-open mouth, showing her broad far- apart teeth — it was long before he could snatch it from her. Her- mine Kleefeld perched on her step, eyes half open, beating time to the music with a rolled-up newspaper; she permitted Herr Albin to fasten a bunch of wild flowers on the front of her blouse. The youth with the voluptuous lips, sitting at Frau Salomon’s feet, turned his head upwards to talk with her, while behind them the thin-haired pianist directed his unchanging gaze down the back of her neck. The physicians came and mingled with the guests of the cure, Hofrat Behrens in his white smock, Krokowski in his black. They passed along the row of tables, the Hofrat letting fall a pleasantry at nearly every one, till a wave of merriment followed in his wake; and so down the steps among the young folk, the female element of which straightway trooped up sidling and becking about Dr. Krokowski, while the Hofrat honoured the sabbath by perform- ing a “ stunt ” with his bootlaces before the gentlemen’s eyes. He rested one mighty foot upon a step, unfastened the laces, gripped them with practised technique in one hand, and without employ- ing the other, hooked them up again crosswise, with such speed and agility that the beholders marvelled, and many of them tried to emulate him, but in vain. Somewhat later Settembrini appeared on the terrace. He came out of the dining-room leaning on his cane, dressed as usual in his pilot coat and yellow check trousers, looked about him with his critical, alert, and elegant air, and approached the cousins’ table. “ Bravo! ” he said, and asked permission to sit with them. “ Beer, tobacco, and music,” he went on. “ Behold the Father- land! I rejoice to see you in your element, Engineer — you have a feeling for national atmosphere, it seems. May I bask in the sun- shine of your well-being? ” Hans Castorp looked lowering — his features took on that ex- pression directly he set eyes on the Italian. He said: “ You are late POLITICALLY SUSPECT 1 1 3 for the concert, Herr Settembrini; it must be nearly over. You don’t care for music? ” “ Not to order,” responded Settembrini. “ Not by the calendar week. Not when it reeks of the prescription counter and is doled out to me by the authorities for the good of my health. I cling to my freedom — or rather to such vestiges of freedom and personal dignity as remain to the likes of us. At these affairs I play the guest, as you do up here: I come for a quarter-hour and go away — it gives me the illusion of independence. That it is more than an illu- sion I do not claim — enough if it please me! It is different with your cousin. For him it all belongs to the service — that is the light, is it not. Lieutenant, in which you regard it? Ah, yes, I know, you have the trick of hugging your pride, even in a state of slavery. A puzzling trick; not everybody in Europe understands it. Music? You were asking if I profess to be an amateur of music? Well, when you say amateur ” (Hans Castorp could not recall say- ing anything of the sort), “ the word is perhaps not ill chosen; it has a slight suggestion of superficiality — yes, very well, I am an amateur of music — which is not to say that I set great store by it; not as I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress. — Music? It is the half- articulate art, the dubious, the irresponsible, the insensible. Perhaps you will object that she can be clear when she likes. But so can nature, so can a brook — what good is that to us? That is not true clarity, it is a dreamy, inexpressive, irresponsible clarity, without consequences and therefore dangerous, because it betrays one into soft complacence. — Let music play her loftiest role, she will thereby but kindle the emotions, whereas what concerns us is to awaken the reason. Music is to all appearance movement itself — yet, for all that, I suspect her of quietism. Let me state my point by the method of exaggeration: my aversion from music rests on political grounds.” Hans Castorp could not refrain from slapping his knee as he exclaimed that never in all his life before had he heard the like. “ Pray do not, on that account, refuse to entertain it,” Settem- brini said with a smile. “ Music, as a final incitement to the spirit of men, is invaluable — as a force which draws onward and up- ward the spirit she finds prepared for her ministrations. But litera- ture must precede her. By music alone the world would get no further forward. Alone, she is a danger. For you, personally, En- gineer, she is beyond all doubt dangerous. I saw it in your face as I came up.” Hans Castorp laughed. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 1 14 “ Oh, you shouldn't look at my face, Herr Settembrini. You can’t believe how the air up here sets me on fire. It is harder than I thought to get acclimatized.” “ I fear you deceive yourself.” “ How so? I know, at least, how deucedly hot and tired I am all the time.” “ It seems to me we should be grateful to the management for the concert,” Joachim said reflectively. “I wouldn’t contradict you, Herr Settembrini, because you look at the question from a higher point of view, so to speak, as an author. But I find one ought to be grateful, up here, for a bit of music. I am far from being particularly musical, and then the pieces they play are not exactly elevating, neither classic nor modern, but just ordinary band- music. Still, it is a pleasant change. It takes up a couple of hours very decently; I mean it breaks them up and fills them in, so there is something to them, by comparison with the other days, hours, and weeks that whisk by like nothing at all. You see an unpreten- tious concert-number lasts perhaps seven minutes, and those seven minutes amount to something; they have a beginning and an end, they stand out, they don’t so easily slip into the regular humdrum round and get lost. Besides they are again divided up by the figures of the piece that is being played, and these again into beats, so there is always something going on, and every moment has a cer- tain meaning, something you can take hold of, whereas usually — I don’t know whether I am making myself — ” “Bravo! ” cried Settembrini. “Bravo, Lieutenant! You are de- scribing very well indeed an aspect of music which has indubitably a moral value: namely, that her peculiarly life-enhancing method of measuring time imparts a spiritual awareness and value to its passage. Music quickens time, she quickens us to the finest enjoy- ment of time; she quickens — and in so far she has moral value. Art has moral value, in so far as it quickens. But what if it does the op- posite? What if it dulls us, sends us to sleep, works against action and progress? Music can do that too; she is an old hand at using opiates. But the opiate, my dear sirs, is a gift of the Devil; it makes for lethargy, inertia, slavish inaction, stagnation. There is some- thing suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.” He went on in this vein, and Hans Castorp listened without pre- cisely following; first on account of his fatigue, and second be- cause his attention was distracted by the proceedings of the light- headed young folk on the steps. Did his eyes deceive him, or was HIPPE 1 1 5 the tapir-faced girl really occupied in sewing on a button for the monocled youth — and, forsooth, on the knee-band of his knicker- bockers? She breathed asthmatically as she sewed, and he coughed and carried his little finger, with the salt-spoon-shaped nail, to his mouth. Of course they were ill — but, after all, these young folk up here did have peculiar social standards! The band played a polka. Hippe Thus Sunday passed. The afternoon was marked by drives under- taken by various groups; several times after tea a carriage and pair drove up the winding road and halted before the portal to receive its occupants — these being, for the most part, Russian ladies. “ Russians drive a great deal,” Joachim said to Hans Castorp, as they stood before the entrance and amused themselves with watch- ing the carriages move off. “ They will be going to Clavadel, or into the valley of the Fliiela, or as far as Klosters. Those are the usual objectives. We might have a drive too while you are up here, if you like. But for the present I think you have enough to do to get used to things, and don’t require more diversion.” To which Hans Castorp agreed. He had a cigarette in his mouth, and his hands in his trouser pockets; and stood so to watch the lively little old Russian lady, as she, with her lean grand-niece and two other ladies, took their seats in a carriage. The ladies were Madame Chauchat and Marusja. Madame Chauchat had put on a thin dust-cloak belted in at the back, but wore no hat. She sat down beside the old dame in the body of the carriage, while the two girls took their places behind. All four were in lively vein and chattered without stopping in their soft, spineless tongue. They chattered about the top of the carriage, which was hard for them all to get underneath, about the Russian comfits the great- aunt had brought for them to munch, in a little wooden box lined with cotton-wool and lace paper, and was already handing round. — Hans Castorp distinguished with interest Frau Chauchat’s slightly husky voice. As always whenever he set eyes on that heed- less creature, the likeness reasserted itself which had puzzled him for a while and then been revealed in a dream. But Marusja’s laugh, the expression of her round, brown eyes, staring childlike above the tiny handkerchief she held over her mouth, the full bosom, which was yet so ailing within, reminded him of something else, something which gave him a sudden thrill and made him glance cautiously at his cousin without turning his head. No, thank good- THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 1 16 ness, Joachim had not gone mottled, like that other time; his lips were not so painfully compressed. But he was gazing at Marusja, and his bearing, the expression in his eyes, was anything but mili- tary. Indeed that absorbed and yearning look could only have been characterized as typically civilian. However, he pulled him- self quickly together and stole a glance at Hans Castorp, which the latter had only just time to avoid, by turning his own eyes away and staring up into the sky. He felt his heart give a sudden beat — without rhyme or reason, of its own accord, as it had taken to doing up here. The Sunday was not further remarkable, except perhaps for the meals, which, since they could not well be more abundant than they already were, displayed greater refinement in the menu. At luncheon there was a chaud-froid of chicken, garnished with cray- fish and stoned cherries; with the ices came pastry served in bas- kets of spun sugar, and fresh pineapple besides. In the evening, after he had drunk his beer, Hans Castorp felt heavier in the limbs and more chilled and exhausted than on the day before; toward nine o’clock he bade his cousin good-night, drew his plumeau up to his chin, and slept like the dead. But next day, the first Monday spent by the guest up here, there came another regularly recurring variation in the daily routine: the lectures, one of which Dr. Krokowski delivered every other Monday morning in the dining-room, before the entire adult population of the sanatorium, with exception of the “ moribund ” and those who could not understand the language. The course, Hans Castorp learned from his cousin, consisted of a series of popular-scientific lectures, under the general title: “ Love as a force contributory to disease.” These instructive entertainments took place after second breakfast; it was not permissible, Joachim reiterated, to absent oneself from them — or, at least, absence was frowned upon. It was thus very daring of Settembrini, who surely must have more command of the language than anyone else, not only never to appear, but to refer to the entertainment in most disparaging terms. For Hans Castorp’s part, he straightway re- solved to be present, in the first place out of courtesy, but also with unconcealed curiosity as to what he should hear. Before the appointed hour, however, he did something quite perverse and ill- judged, which proved worse for him than one could possibly have guessed: he went out for a long, solitary walk. “ Now listen to me,” had been his first worls, when Joachim entered his room that morning. “ I can see that it can’t go on with me like this. I’ve had enough of the horizontal for the present; HIPPE 117 one’s very blood goes to sleep. Of course it is different with you; you are a patient, and I have no intention of tempting you. But I mean to take a proper walk after breakfast, if you don’t mind, just walking at random for a couple of hours. I’ll stick a little some- thing in my pocket for second breakfast; then I shall be inde- pendent. We shall see if I am not quite a different chap when I come back.” Joachim warmly agreed, as he saw his cousin was in earnest in his desire and his project. “ But don’t overdo it,” he said; “ that’s my advice. It’s not the same thing up here as at home. And be sure to come back in time for the lecture.” In reality young Hans Castorp had more ground than the phys- ical for his present resolve. His over-heated head, the prevailing bad taste in his mouth, the fitful throbbing of his heart, were, or so he felt, less evil accompaniments to the process of acclimatiza- tion than such things as the goings-on of the Russian pair next door, the table-talk of the stupid and afflicted Frau Stohr, the gentleman rider’s pulpy cough daily heard in the corridor, the utterances of Herr Albin, the impression he received of the man- ners and morals of the ailing young folk about him, the expression on Joachim’s face when he looked at Marusja — these and a hun- dred observations more made him feel it would be good to escape awhile from the Berghof circle, to breathe the air deep into his lungs, to get some proper exercise — and then, when he felt tired at night, he would at least know why. He took leave of Joachim in a spirit of enterprise, when his cousin addressed himself, after breakfast, to the usual round as far as the bench by the water- course; then, swinging his walking-stick, he took his own way down the road. It was about nine o’clock of a cool morning, with a covered sky. According to programme, Hans Castorp drew in deep draughts of the pure morning air, the fresh, light atmosphere that breathed in so easily, that held no hint of damp, that was without associations, without content. He crossed the stream and the nar- row-gauge road to the street, with its scattered buildings; but left this again soon to strike into a meadow path, which went only a short way on the level and then slanted steeply up to the right. The climbing rejoiced Hans Castorp’s heart, his chest expanded, he pushed his hat back on his forehead with the crook of his stick; having gained some little height he looked back, and, seeing in the distance the mirror-like lake he had passed on his journey hither, he began to sing. He sang what songs he had at his command, all kinds of send- THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 1 1 8 mental folk-ditties, out of collections of national ballads and stu- dents’ song-books; one of them, that went: Let poets all of love and wine, Yet oft of virtue sing the praises, he sang at first softly, in a humming tone, then louder, finally at the top of his voice. His baritone lacked flexibility, yet to-day he found it good, and sang on with mounting enthusiasm. When he found he had pitched the beginning too high, he shifted into fal- setto, and even that pleased him. When his memory left him in the lurch, he helped himself out by setting to the melody whatever words and syllables came to hand, heedless of the sense, giving them out like an operatic singer, with arching lips and strong pala- tal r. He even began to improvise both words and music, accom- panying his performance with theatrical gesturings. It is a good deal of a strain to sing and climb at the same time, and Hans Ca- storp found his breath growing scant, and scanter. Yet for sheer pleasure in the idea, for the joy of singing, he forced his voice and sang on, with frequent gasps for breath, until he could no more, and sank, quite out of wind, half blind, with coloured sparks be- fore his eyes and racing pulses, beneath a sturdy pine. His exalta- tion gave way on the sudden to a pervading gloom; he fell a prey to dejection bordering on despair. When, his nerves being tolerably restored, he got to his feet again to continue his walk, he found his neck trembling; indeed his head shook in precisely the same way now, at his age, in which the head of old Hans Lorenz Castorp once had shaken. The phe- nomenon so freshly called up to him the memory of his dead grandfather that, far from finding it offensive, he took a certain pleasure in availing himself of that remembered and dignified method of supporting the chin, by means of which his grandfather had been wont to control the shaking of his head, and to which the boy had responded with such inward sympathy. He mounted still higher on the zigzag path, drawn by the sound of cow-bells, and came at length upon the herd, grazing near a hut whose roof was weighted with stones. Two bearded men ap- proached him, with axes on their shoulders. They parted, a little way off him, and “ Thank ye kindly, and God be with ye,” said the one to the other, in a deep guttural voice, shifted his axe to the other shoulder, and began breaking a path through crackling pine- boughs to the valley. The words sounded strange in this lonely spot: they came dreamlike to Hans Castorp’s senses, strained and HIPPE ll 9 benumbed. He repeated them, softly, trying to reproduce the gut- tural, rustically formal syllables of the mountain tongue, as he climbed another stretch higher, above the hut. He had in mind to reach the height where the trees left off, but on glancing at his watch resisted. He took the left-hand path in the direction of the village. It ran level for some way, then led downhill, among tall-trunked pines, where, as he went, he once more began to sing, tentatively, and despite the fact that he felt his knees to tremble more than they had during the ascent. On issuing from the wood he paused, struck by the charm of the small enclosed landscape before him, a scene composed of elements both peaceful and sublime. A mountain stream came flowing in its shallow, stony bed down the right-hand slope, poured itself foaming over the terraced boulders lying in its path, then coursed more calmly toward the valley, crossed at this point by a picturesque railed wooden foot- bridge. The ground all about was blue with the bell-like blossoms of a profusely growing, bushy plant. Sombre fir-trees of even, mighty growth stood in the bed of the ravine and climbed its sides to the height. One of them, rooted in the steep bank at the side of the torrent, thrust itself aslant into the picture, with bizarre effect. The whole remote and lovely spot was wrapped in a sounding solitude by the noise of the rushing waters. Hans Castorp re- marked a bench that stood on the farther bank of the stream. He crossed the foot-bridge and sat down to regale himself with the sight of the foaming, rushing waterfall and the idyllic sound of its monotonous yet modulated prattle. For Hans Castorp loved like music the sound of rushing water — perhaps he loved it even more. But hardly had he settled himself when he was overtaken by a bleeding at the nose, which came on so suddenly he had barely time to save his clothing from soilure. The bleeding was violent and persistent, taking to stanch it nearly half an hour of going to and fro between bench and brook, snuffing water up his nostrils, rinsing his handkerchief and lying flat on his back upon the wooden seat with the damp cloth on his nose. He lay there, after the blood at length was stanched, his knees elevated, hands folded behind his head, eyes closed, and ears full of the noise of water. He felt no unpleasant sensation, the blood-letting had had a soothing effect, but he found himself in a state of extraordinarily reduced vitality, so that when he exhaled the air, he felt no need to draw it in again, and lay there moveless, for the space of several quiet heart-beats, before taking another slow ana super- ficial breath. 120 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN Quite suddenly he found himself in the far distant past, trans- ported to a scene which had come back to him in a dream some nights before, summoned by certain impressions of the last few days. But so strongly, so resistlessly, to the annihilation of time and space, was he rapt back into the past, one might have said it was a lifeless body lying here on the bench by the waterside, while the actual Hans Castorp moved in that far-away time and place — in a situation which was for him, despite its childishness, vibrant with daring and adventure. It happened when he was a lad of thirteen, in knee-breeches, in the lower third form at school. He stood in the school yard in talk with another boy of like years, from a higher form. The con- versation had been begun, rather arbitrarily, by himself and, deal- ing as it did with a narrowly circumscribed subject of a practical nature, could in no case be prolonged; yet it gave him the greatest satisfaction. It took place in the break between the last two periods, a history and a drawing hour for Hans Castorp’s form; the pupils were walking up and down, or standing about in groups, or loung- ing against the glazed abutments of the school-building wall. A murmur of voices filled the red-tiled court-yard, which was shut off from the street by a wall topped with shingles and provided with two entrance gates. Supervision was exercised by a master in a slouch hat, who munched a ham sandwich the while. He with whom Hans Castorp spoke was called Hippe, Pribislav Hippe. A peculiarity of this given name was that you were to J jronounce it as though it were spelled Pschibislav; and the singu- arity of the appellation suited the lad’s appearance, which did indeed have something exotic about it. Hippe was the son of a scholar and history professor in the gymnasium. He was, by conse- quence, a notorious model pupil, and, though not much older than Hans Castorp, already a form higher up. He came from Mecklen- burg and was in his person obviously the product of an ancient mixture of races, a grafting of Germanic stock with Slavic, or the reverse. True, his close-shorn round pate was blond; but the eyes were a grey-blue, or a blue-grey — an indefinite, ambiguous col- our, like the hue of far-distant mountain ranges — and of an odd, narrow shape; were even, to be precise, a little slanting, with strongly marked, prominent cheek-bones directly under them. It was a type of face which in this instance, far from seeming an abnormality, was distinctly pleasing, though odd enough to have won for him the nickname of “ the Kirghiz ” among his school- mates. Hippe already wore long trousers, and a blue jacket belted HIPPE 1 2 I in at the back and closed to the throat, the collar of which was usually whitened by a few scales of dandruff. Now, the thing was that Hans Castorp, for a long time, had had his eye upon this Pribislav; had chosen him out of the whole host, known and unknown, in the court-yard of the school, taken an interest in him, followed him with his eyes — shall we say admired him? — at all events observed him with peculiar sympathy. Even on the way to school he looked forward with pleasure to watch- ing him among his fellows, seeing him speak and laugh, singling out his voice from the others by its pleasantly veiled, husky qual- ity. Granted that there was no sufficient ground for his preference, unless one might refer it to Hippe’s heathenish name, his character as model pupil — this latter was, of course, out of the question — or to the “ Kirghiz ” eyes, whose grey-blue glance could some- times melt into a mystery of darkness when one caught it musing sidewise; whichever it might be, or none of these, Hans Castorp troubled not a whit to justify his feelings, or even to question by what name they might suitably be called. For, since he did not “ know ” Hippe, the relation could hardly be one of friendship. But in the first place there was not the faintest need of calling it anything; it could never be a subject of discussion; that would be out of place, and he had no desire for it; and, in the second, giving a thing a name implies, if not passing judgment on it, at least defining it; that is to say, classifying it among the familiar and habitual; whereas Hans Castorp was penetrated by the uncon- scious conviction that an inward good of this sort was above all to be guarded from definition and classification. But whether well or ill founded, and however far from being the subject of conversation, or even from being touched on in Hans Castorp ’s own mind, these feelings of his flourished there in great strength, as they had done for almost a year now — or a year as nearly as one could fix the time, for it was hard to be pre- cise about their beginnings. For about a year, then, he had carried them about in secret, which spoke for the loyalty and constancy of his character, when one reflects what a great space of time a year is at that age. But alas, every characterization of this kind involves a moral judgment, whether favourable or unfavourable — though, to be sure, each trait of character has its two sides. Thus Hans Castorp’s “ loyalty ” — upon which, be it said, he was not prone to plume himself — consisted, baldly, in a certain tempera- mental heaviness, sluggishness, and quiescence, a fundamental tendency to feel respect for conditions of duration and stability; 122 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN and the more respect, the longer they lasted. He inclined to be- lieve in the permanence of the particular state or circumstances in which he for the moment found himself; prized it for that very quality, and was not bent on change. Thus he had grown used to his silent and remote relation to Pribislav Hippe, and considered it a regular feature of his life; loved the emotions it brought in its train, the suspense as to whether he was likely to meet him that day, whether Pribislav would pass close by him, even look at him; loved the subtle and wordless satisfaction imparted by his secret, loved even the disappointments inseparable from it — the greatest of which was Pribislav’s absence from school. When this hap- pened, the school yard became a desert, the day lacked all charm, hope alone lingered. The affair had lasted a year, up to that intrepid and culminating moment; after which, thanks to Hans Castorp’s constancy of spirit, it lasted another. Then it was over. And it is a fact that he marked no more the loosening and dissolving of the bond which united him to Pribislav than he had previously marked its begin- nings. Moreover, in consequence or his father’s taking another position, Pribislav left the school and the city; but that was all one to Hans Castorp; he had already forgotten him before he went. One may put it that the figure of the “ Kirghiz ” had glided out of the mist into Hans Castorp’s life, and slowly grown vivid and tangible there, up to that moment of the greatest nearness and corporeity, in the school court; had stood awhile thus in the fore- ground, then slowly receded, and, with no pain of parting, dis- solved again into the mist. But that moment, that bold, adventurous situation, into which Hans Castorp found himself transported after all these years, the conversation — an actual conversation with Pribislav Hippe — came about thus. The drawing-lesson was the next period, and Hans Castorp found himself without a pencil. His classmates needed their own, but he had among the other pupils this and that acquaintance, of whom he might have sought a loan. Yet he found it was Pribislav who after all stood nearest to him, with whom, in secret, he had had to do; and with a joyous impulse of his entire being he determined to seize the opportunity — for so he called it — and ask Pribislav for a pencil. It was rather an odd thing to do, since he did not, in reality, “ know ” Pribislav at all; but this aspect of the affair escaped him in his recklessness, or he chose to disre- gard it. So there he stood before Pribislav Hippe, among the bustling crowd that filled the tiled court-yard; and he said to him: “ Excuse me, can you lend me a pencil? ” HIPPE l2 } And Pribislav looked at him, with his “ Kirghiz ” eyes above the prominent cheek-bones, and spoke, in his pleasantly husky voice, without any surprise, or, at least, without showing any. “ With pleasure,” he said. “ But you must be sure to give it me back, after the period.” And drew his pencil out of his pocket, a silver pencil-holder with a ring in the end, which one screwed in order to make the red lead-pencil come out. He displayed the simple mechanism, their two heads bent over it together. “ Only be careful not to break it,” he added. What made him say that? As if Hans Castorp had been intend- ing to handle it carelessly or keep it after the hour! They looked at each other, and smiled; then, as there re- mained nothing more to say, they turned, first their shoulders and then their backs, and went. That was all. But never in his life had Hans Castorp felt so su- premely content as in this drawing hour, drawing with Pribislav Hippe’s pencil, in the immediate prospect of giving it back into the owner’s hand — which followed as a matter of course out of what had gone before. He took the liberty of sharpening the pencil a little, and cherished three of the red shavings nearly a year, in an inner drawer of his desk — no one seeing them there could have guessed what significance they possessed. The return of the pencil was of the simplest formality, quite after Hans Ca- storp’s heart — indeed, he prided himself on it no little, in the vainglorious state his intimacy with Hippe produced. “ There,” he said. “ And thanks very much.” And Pribislav said nothing at all, only hastily tried the screw and stuck the pencil in his pocket. Never again did they speak to each other; but this one time, thanks to the enterprise of Hans Castorp, they had spoken. He wrenched his eyes open, amazed at the depths of the trance in which he had been sunk. “ I’ve been dreaming,” he thought. “ Yes, that was Pribislav. It’s a long time since I thought of him. I wonder what became of the shavings. My desk is in the attic at Uncle Tienappel’s; they must be there yet, in the little inner back drawer. I never took them out, never thought enough about them to throw them away! That was certainly Pribislav, his very own self. I shouldn’t have thought I could remember him so clearly. How remarkably like her he looked — like this girl up here! Is that why I feel interested in her? Or was that why I felt so interested in him? What rubbish! Anyhow, I must be stirring, and pretty fast, too.” But he lay another moment, mus- ing and recalling, before he got up. “ Then thank ye kindly, and THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN I24 God be with ye,” he said — the tears came to his eyes as he smiled. And with that he would have been off, but instead sat suddenly down again with his hat and stick in his hand, being forced to the realization that his knees would not support him. “ Hullo,” he thought, “ this won’t do. I am supposed to be back in the dining- room punctually at eleven, for the lecture. Taking walks up here is very beautiful — but appears to have its difficult side. Well, well, I can’t stop here. I must have got stiff from lying; I shall be better as I move about.” He tried again to get on his legs and, by dint of great effort, succeeded. But the return home was lamentable indeed, after the high spirits of his setting forth. He had repeatedly to rest by the way, feeling the colour recede from his face, and cold sweat break out on his brow; the wild beating of his heart took away his breath. Thus painfully he fought his way down the winding path and reached the bottom in the neighbourhood of the Kurhaus. But here it became clear that his own powers would never take him over the stretch between him and the Berghof; and accord- ingly, as there was no tram and he saw no carriages for hire, he hailed a driver going toward the Dorf with a load of empty boxes and asked permission to climb into his wagon. Back to back with the man, his legs hanging down out of the end, swaying and nodding with fatigue and the jolting of the vehicle, regarded with surprise and sympathy by the passers-by, he got as far as the railway crossing, where he dismounted and paid for his ride, whether much money or little he did not heed, and hurried headlong up the drive. “ Depechez-vous , monsieur said to him the French concierge. La conference de M. Krokcnvski vient de commencerT Hans Castorp tossed hat and stick on the stand and squeezed himself with much precaution, tongue between his teeth, through the partly open glass door into the dining-room, where the society of the cure sat in rows on their chairs, and on the right-hand narrow side of the room, behind a covered table adorned with a water- bottle, Dr. Krokowski, in a frock-coat, stood and delivered his lecture. Analysis Luckily there was a vacant seat in the comer, near the door. He slipped into it and assumed an air of having been here from the beginning. The audience, hanging rapt on Dr. Krokowski’s lips, paid him no heed — which was as well, for he looked rather ghastly. His face white as a sheet, his coat spotted with blood — ANALYSIS “5 he might have been a murderer stealing from his crime. The lady in front of him did, indeed, turn her head as he sat down, and measured him with narrow eyes. With a sense of exasperation he recognized Madame Chauchat. Deuce take it — was he never to have a moment’s peace? He had thought that, having arrived at his goal, he could sit here quietly and rest a little; and now he had to have her under his nose. In other circumstances he might conceivably have found her nearness rather pleasant than other- wise. But now, worn out and harassed as he felt, what was it to him? It could only make new demands on his heart and keep him from drawing a long breath during the whole lecture. With Pribislav’s very eyes she had looked at him, and at the spots of blood on his coat; her look had been rather bold and ruthless too, as a woman’s would be who let doors bang behind her. How badly she held herself! Not like the ladies of Hans Castorp’s social sphere, who sat erect at their tables, turned their heads towards their lords and masters, and spoke with mincing correct- ness. Frau Chauchat sat all relaxed, with drooping shoulders and round back; she even thrust her head forward until the vertebra at the base of the neck showed prominently above the rounded decolletage of her white blouse. Pribislav had held his head like that. But he had been a model pupil and full of honours (which was not the reason why Hans Castorp had borrowed his pencil), whereas it was abundantly clear that Frau Chauchat’s bad car- riage, her door-slamming, and the directness of her gaze all had to do with her physical condition; yes, were even expressive of that want of restraint in which young Herr Albin rejoiced, which was not honourable at all, yet possessed boundless advan- tages all its own. Hans Castorp’s thoughts, as he sat and looked at Frau Chau- chat’s flaccid back, began to blur; they ceased to be thoughts at all and began to be a reverie, into which Dr. Krokowski’s drawl- ing baritone, with the soft-sounding r, came as from afar. But the stillness of the room, the profound attention that rapt all the rest of the audience, had the effect of rousing him too. He looked about. Near him sat the thin-haired pianist, with bent head and folded arms, listening with his mouth open. Somewhat farther on was Fraulein Engelhart, avid-eyed, with a dull red spot on each cheek; Hans Castorp saw the same signal flame on the faces of other ladies — on Frau Salomon’s, and Frau Magnus’s, the same who was wife to the brewer and lost flesh persistently. Frau Stohr sat somewhat farther back, an expression of ignorant credulity painted on her face, truly painful to behold; while the ivory-com- 126 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN E lexioned Levi, leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes, er hands lying open in her lap, would have looked like a corpse had not her breast risen and fallen with such profound and rhythmical breaths as to remind Hans Castorp of a mechanical waxwork he had once seen. Many of the guests had their hands curved behind their ears; some even held the hand in the air half-way thither, as though arrested midway in the gesture by the strength of their concentration. Lawyer Paravant, a sunburnt man who looked to have had the strength of a bull, even flicked his ear with his forefinger to make it hear better, then turned it again to catch the words that flowed from Dr. Krokowski’s lips. And what was Dr. Krokowski saying? What was his line of thought? Hans Castorp summoned his wits to discover, not im- mediately succeeding, however, since he had not heard the be- ginning and lost still more while musing on Frau Chauchat’s flabby back. It was about a power, the power which — in short, it was about the power of love. Yes, of course; the subject was already given out in the general title of the whole course, and, moreover, this was Dr. Krokowski’s special field; of what else should he be talking? It was a bit odd, to be sure, listening to a lecture on such a theme, when previously Hans Castorp’s courses had dealt only with such matters as geared transmission in ship- building. No, really, how did one go about to discuss a subject of this delicate and private nature, in broad daylight, before a mixed audience? Dr. Krokowski did it by adopting a mingled termi- nology, partly poetic and partly erudite; ruthlessly scientific, yet with a vibrating, singsong delivery, which impressed young Hans Castorp as being unsuitable, but may have been the reason why the ladies looked flushed and the gentlemen flicked their ears to make them hear better. In particular the speaker employed the word love in a somewhat ambiguous sense, so that you were never quite sure where you were with it, or whether he had reference to its sacred or its passionate and fleshly aspect — and this doubt gave one a slightly seasick feeling. Never in all his life had Hans Castorp heard the word uttered so many times on end as he was hearing it now. When he reflected, it seemed to him he had never taken it in his own mouth, nor ever heard it from a stranger’s. That might not be the case, but whether it were or no, the word did not seem to him to repay such frequent repetition. The slip- pery monosyllable, with its lingual and labial, and the bleating vowel between — it came to sound positively offensive; it sug- gested watered milk, or anything else that was pale and insipid; the more so considering the meat for strong men Dr. Krokowski ANALYSIS 127 was in fact serving up. For it was plain that when one set about it like that, one could go pretty far without shocking anybody. He was not content to allude, with exquisite tact, to certain mat- ters which are known to everybody, but which most people are content to pass over in silence. He demolished illusions, he was ruthlessly enlightened, he relentlessly destroyed all faith in the dignity of silver hairs and the innocence of the sucking babe. And he wore, with the frock-coat, his neglige collar, sandals, and grey woollen socks, and, thus attired, made an impression pro- foundly otherworldly, though at the same time not a little start- ling to young Hans Castorp. He supported his statements with a wealth of illustration and anecdote from the books and loose notes on the table before him; several times he even quoted poetry. And he discussed certain startling manifestations of the power of love, certain extraordinary, painful, uncanny variations, which the majestic phenomenon at times displayed. It was, he said, the most unstable, the most unreliable of man’s instincts, the most prone of its very essence to error and fatal perversion. In the which there was nothing that should cause surprise. For this mighty force did not consist of a single impulse, it was of its nature complex; it was built up out of components which, how- ever legitimate they might be in composition, were, taken each by itself, sheer perversity. But — continued Dr. Krokowski — since we refuse, and rightly, to deduce the perversity of the whole from the perversity of its parts, we are driven to claim, for the component perversities, some part at least, though perhaps not all, of the justification which attaches to their united product. We were driven by sheer force of logic to this conclusion; Dr. Krokowski implored his hearers, having arrived at it, to hold it fast. Now there were psychical correctives, forces working in the other direction, instincts tending to conformability and regularity — he would almost have liked to characterize them as bourgeois; and these influences had the effect of merging the perverse com- ponents into a valid and irreproachable whole: a frequent and gratifying result, which, Dr. Krokowski almost contemptuously added, was, as such, of no further concern to the thinker and the physician. But on the other hand, there were cases where this re- sult was not obtained, could not and should not be obtained; and who, Dr. Krokowski asked, would dare to say that these cases did not, psychically considered, form a higher, more exclusive type? For in these cases the two opposing groups of instincts — the compulsive force of love, and the sum of the impulses urging in the other direction, among which he would particularly men- 128 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN tion shame and disgust — both exhibited an extraordinary and ab- normal height and intensity when measured by the ordinary bourgeois standards; and the conflict between them which took place in the abysses of the soul prevented the erring instinct from attaining to that safe, sheltered, and civilized state which alone could resolve its difficulties in the prescribed harmonies of the love-life as experienced by the average human being. This con- flict between the powers of love and chastity — for that was what it really amounted to — what was its issue? It ended, apparently, in the triumph of chastity. Love was suppressed, held in dark- ness and chains, by fear, conventionality, aversion, or a tremu- lous yearning to be pure. Her confused and tumultuous claims were never allowed to rise to consciousness or to come to proof in anything like their entire strength or multiformity. But this triumph of chastity was only an apparent, a pyrrhic victory; for the claims of love could not be crippled or enforced by any such means. The love thus suppressed was not dead; it lived, it laboured after fulfilment in the darkest and secretest depths of the being. It would break through the ban of chastity, it would emerge — if in a form so altered as to be unrecognizable. But what then was this form, this mask, in which suppressed, unchartered love would reappear? Dr. Krokowski asked the question, and looked along the listening rows as though in all seriousness expecting an answer. But he had to say it himself, who had said so much else already. No one knew save him, but it was plain that he did. Indeed, with his ardent eyes, his black beard setting off the waxen pallor of his face, his monkish sandals and grey woollen socks, he seemed to symbolize in his own person that conflict between passion and chastity which was his theme. At least so thought Hans Castorp, as with the others he waited in the greatest suspense to hear in what form love driven below the surface would reappear. The ladies barely breathed. Lawyer Paravant rattled his ear anew, that the critical moment might find it open and receptive. And Dr. Krokowski answered his own question, and said: “ In the form of illness. Symptoms of disease are nothing but a disguised mani- festation of the power of love; and all disease is only love trans- formed.” So now they knew — though very probably not all of them were capable of an opinion on what they heard. A sigh passed through the assemblage, and Lawyer Paravant weightily nodded approbation as Krokowski proceeded to develop his theme. Hans Castorp for his part sat with bowed head, trying to reflect on ANALYSIS I2 9 what had been said and test his own understanding of it. But he was unpractised in such exercises, and rendered still further in- capable of mental exertion by the unhappy effect of the walk he had taken. His thoughts were soon drawn off again by the sight of Frau Chauchat’s back, and the arm appertaining, which was lift- ing and bending itself, close before Hans Castorp’s eyes, so that the hand could hold the braids of hair. It made him uncomfortable to have the hand so close beneath his eye, to be forced to look at it whether he wished or no, to study it in all its human blemishes and imperfections, as though under a magnifying-glass. No, there was nothing aristocratic about this stubby schoolgirl hand, with the badly cut nails. He was even not quite sure that the ends of the fingers were perfectly clean; and the skin round the nails was distinctly bitten. Hans Castorp made a face; but his eyes remained fixed on Madame Chauchat’s back, as he vaguely recalled what Dr. Krokowski had been saying, about counteracting influences of a bourgeois kind, which set themselves up against the power of love. — The arm, in its gentle upward curve, was better than the hand; it was scarcely clothed, for the material of the sleeve was thinner than that of the blouse, being the lightest gauze, which had the effect of lending the arm a sort of shadowed radiance, making it prettier than it might other- wise have been. It was at once both full and slender — in all prob- ability cool to the touch. No, so far as the arm went, the idea about counteracting bourgeois influences did not apply. Hans Castorp mused, his gaze still bent on Frau Chauchat’s arm. The way women dressed! They showed their necks and bosoms, they transfigured their arms by veiling them in “ illusion ”; they did so, the world over, to arouse our desire. O God, how beautiful life was! And it was just such accepted commonplaces as this that made it beautiful — for it was a commonplace that women dressed themselves alluringly, it was so well known and recognized a fact that we never consciously realized it, but merely enjoyed it with- out a thought. And yet he had an inward conviction that we ought to think about it, ought to realize what a blessed, what a well-nigh miraculous arrangement it was. For of course it all had a certain end and aim; it was by a definite design that women were per- mitted to array themselves with irresistible allure: it was for the sake of posterity, for the perpetuation of the species. Of course. But suppose a woman were inwardly diseased, unfit for mother- hood— what then? What was the sense of her wearing gauze sleeves and attracting male attention to her physical parts if these THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN x 3° were actually unsound? Obviously there was no sense; it ought to be considered immoral, and forbidden as such. For a man to take an interest in a woman inwardly diseased had no more sense than — well, than the interest Hans Castorp had once taken in Pribislav Hippe. The comparison was a stupid one; it roused memories better forgotten; he had not meant to make it, it came into his head unbidden. But at this point his musings broke off, largely because Dr. Krokowski had raised his voice and so drawn atten- tion once more upon himself. He was standing there behind his table, with his arms outstretched and his head on one side — al- most, despite the frock-coat, he looked like Christ on the cross. It seemed that at the end of his lecture Dr. Krokowski was making propaganda for psycho-analysis; with open arms he sum- moned all and sundry to come unto him. “ Come unto me,” he was saying, though not in those words, “ come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden.” And he left no doubt of his convic- tion that all those present were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke of secret suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power of the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the uncon- scious mind and explained how the abnormality was metamor- phosed into the conscious emotion; he urged them to have confi- dence; he promised relief. Then he let fall his arms, raised his head, gathered up his notes and went out by the corridor door, with his head in the air, and the bundle of papers held schoolmaster fashion, in his left hand, against his shoulder. His audience rose, pushed back its chairs, and slowly began to move towards the same door, as though converging upon him from all sides, without volition, hesitatingly, yet with one accord, like the throng after the Pied Piper. Hans Castorp stood in the stream without moving, his hand on the back of his chair. I am only a guest up here, he thought. Thank God I am healthy, that business has nothing to do with me; I shan’t even be here for the next lecture. He watched Frau Chauchat going out, gliding along with her head thrust forward. Did she have herself psycho-ana- lysed, he wondered. And his heart began to thump. He did not notice Joachim, coming toward him among the chairs, and started when his cousin spoke. “ You got here at the last minute,” Joachim said. “ Did you go very far? How was it? ” “ Oh, very nice,” Hans Castorp answered. “ Yes, I went rather a long way. But I must confess, it did me less good than I thought it would. I won’t repeat it for the present.” Joachim did not ask how he liked the lecture; neither did Hans DOUBTS AND CONSIDERATIONS I 3 I Castorp express an opinion. By common consent they let the sub- ject rest, both then and thereafter. Doubts and Considerations Tuesday was the last day of our hero’s week up here, and accord- ingly he found his weekly bill in his room on his return from the morning walk. It was a clear and businesslike document, in a green envelope, with a picture of the Berghof building at the top, and extracts from the prospectus carried in a narrow column down the left-hand side of the sheet. “ Psycho-analytic treatment, by the most modern methods ” was called attention to by means of spaced type. The items, set down in a calligraphic hand, came to one hundred and eighty francs almost exactly: eight francs a day for his chamber, twelve for board and medical attendance, en- trance fee twenty, disinfection of room ten, while small charges for laundry, beer, and the late dinner of the first evening made up the sum. Hans Castorp went over the bill with Joachim and found naught to object to. “ Of course I made no use of the medical attendance,” he said, “ but that was my own affair. It is included in the price of pension, and I couldn’t expect them to make any deduction; how could they? As regards the disinfection, they must show a neat profit there, they never could have used ten francs’ worth of H l ,CO to smoke the American woman out. But on the whole I must say I find it cheap rather than dear, considering what they offer.” And before second breakfast they went down to the man- agement in order that Hans Castorp might acquit himself of his debt. The management was on the ground-floor. You reached it after passing the hall, the garderobe, the kitchens and domestic offices; you could not miss the door, it had a porcelain shield. Hans Ca- storp took an interest in this glimpse into the business side of the enterprise. There was a neat little office, with a typist busy at her machine and three clerks bending over desks. In an adjoining office a man who looked like a head or director was working at a desk in the middle of the room; he flung a cool and calculating glance at the clients over the top of his glasses. Their affair was dispatched at the cashier’s window, a note changed, money received, the bill receipted; the cousins preserving throughout these transactions the solemn, discreet, almost overawed bearing which the young German’s respect for authority leads him to assume in the presence of pens, ink, and paper, or anything else which bears to his mind THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 132 an official stamp. But on the way to breakfast, and later in the course of the day, they talked about the direction of the Berghof sanatorium, and Joachim, in his character as inmate, answered his cousin’s questions. Hofrat Behrens was not — though he gave the impression of being — owner and proprietor of the establishment. Above and behind him stood invisible powers, which to a certain extent mani- fested their existence in the office they had just visited. They con- sisted of a supervisory head and a stock company — in which it was not a bad thing to hold shares, according to Joachim, since the members of it divided a fat dividend each year. The Hofrat was a dependent, he was merely an agent, a functionary, an associate of higher powers; the first and highest, of course, and the soul of the enterprise, with a well-defined influence upon it and upon the man- agement itself — though of course as directing physician he was re- lieved of all preoccupation with the business side. He was a native of north-western Germany, and it was common knowledge that when he took the position, years ago, he had done so contrary to his previous intention and plans. He had come here on account of his wife — whose remains had long reposed in the village churchyard, that picturesque churchyard of Dorf Davos, which lay high up on the right-hand slope, nearer the entrance of the valley. She had been a charming person, to judge from her likenesses, though too large- eved and asthenic-looking. Photographs of her stood about every- where in the Hofrat’s house; even oil portraits by his own amateur hand hung on the walls. Two children, a son and a daughter, had been born; then they had brought her up here, the fragile body alreadv fever-smitten; a few months had seen the completion of the wasting-away process. Behrens, they said, had adored her. He was brought so low by the blow that he got very odd and melancholy; people saw him gesturing, sniggering, and talking to himself, on the street. He did not go back to his original place, but remained where he was — in part, no doubt, because he could not tear himself away from her grave, but also for the less sentimental reason that he was himself in poor health and, in his own professional opinion, actually belonged here. He had settled down as one of the physicians who are companions in suffering to the patients in their care; who do not stand above disease, fighting her in the armour of personal se- curity, but who themselves bear her mark — an odd, but by no means isolated, case, and one which has its good as well as its bad side. Sympathy between doctor and patient is surely desirable, and a case might be made out for the view that only he who suffers can be the guide and healer of the suffering. And yet — can true spirit- DOUBTS AND CONSIDERATIONS 133 ual mastery over a power be won by him who is counted among her slaves? Can he free others who himself is not free? The ailing physician remains a paradox to the average mind, a questionable phenomenon. May not his scientific knowledge tend to be clouded and confused by his own participation, rather than enriched and morally reinforced? He cannot face disease in clear-evcd hostility to her; he is a prejudiced party, his position is equivocal. With all due reserve it must be asked whether a man who himself belongs among the ailing can give himself to the cure or care of others as can a man who is himself entirely sound. Hans Castorp expressed some of these doubts and speculations, as he and Joachim gossiped about the Berghof and its professional head. But Joachim answered that nobody knew whether the Hof- rat was still a patient — he was probably long since cured. It was ages ago that he had first begun to practise here; independently at first, and early winning a name for himself as an extraordinarily gifted auscultator and skilful surgeon. Then the Berghof had se- cured him; it would soon be ten years that he had been in intimate association with it. His private residence was in the end of the north-west wing of the building (Dr. Krokowski’s was not far ofiF), and that lady of the lofty lineage, the nursing sister and direc- tress of the establishment, of whom Settembrini had made such utter fun, and whom thus far Hans Castorp had scarcely seen, pre- sided over the small household. The Hofrat was otherwise alone, for his son was at the university and his daughter already married, to a lawyer in one of the French cantons. Young Behrens some- times visited his father in the holidays; he had done so once during Joachim’s time up here. The ladies, he related, had been quite thrilled; their temperatures had gone up, petty jealousies had led to bickering and quarrels in the rest-hall and an increase of visits to Dr. Krokowski’s private office. The assistant had his own office hours, in a special room, which, together with the large examination-rooms, the laboratory, the operating-rooms and x-ray studio, was in the well-lighted base- ment of the building. We call it the basement, for the stone steps leading down to it from the ground-floor created the impression that it was such — an erroneous impression, for not only was the ground-floor somewhat elevated, but the entire building stood on a sidehill, part way up the mountain, and these “ basement ” rooms faced the front, with a view of the gardens and valley, a circum- stance negatived to some extent by the fact of the steps leading down to them. One descended, as one supposed, from the ground- floor, only to find oneself at the bottom still on it, or practically THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 134 so. Hans Castorp amused himself with this illusion when he ac- companied his cousin one afternoon down to the “ bathing-mas- ter, n that Joachim might get himself weighed. A clinical brilliance and spotlessness reigned in this sphere. Everything was as white as white; the doors gleamed with white enamel; the one leading to Dr. Krokowski’s receiving-room, with the doctor’s visiting-card tacked on it, was reached by two more steps down from the cor- ridor, which gave the room behind it an air of being more spacious and withdrawn than the rest. This door was at the end of tne cor- ridor, on your right as you came downstairs. Hans Castorp kept his eye on it as he walked up and down waiting for his cousin. He saw a lady come out, a recent arrival, whose name he did not know: a small, dainty person, with curls on her forehead, and gold ear-rings. She bent over as she mounted the stairs, and held up her frock with one beringed hand, while with the other she pressed her tiny handkerchief to her lips and, all stooped as she was, stared up over it into nothing, with great blue, distracted eyes. She hurried with small tripping steps, her petticoat rustling, to the stairs, paused suddenly as though something had occurred to her, then went on tripping upward, and disappeared, still bending over and holding her handkerchief to her mouth. Behind her, when she opened the office door, it had been much darker than in the white corridor. Obviously the brilliant lighting of these lower regions did not extend so far; Hans Castorp re- marked that a shadowed dusk, a profound twilight, prevailed in Dr. Krokowski’s private sanctum. Table-Talk Young Hans Castorp noticed that the ancestral tremor brought on by his ill-advised walk continued to trouble him — he found it rather an embarrassment when in the dining-room. Almost as a regular thing now, his head would begin shaking at table; he found this impossible to prevent and hard to dissemble. He tried various devices to disguise the weakness, for he could not continually sup- port his chin on his collar; he would keep his head in action, turn- ing it to the right and left in conversation, or bear hard against the table with the left forearm when he carried a spoonful of soup to his mouth, and support his head with his hand. In the pauses he even rested his elbow on the table, this although it was in his own eyes a piece of ill breeding, which would not pass in any society save the lax abnormal one where he now found himself. But the weakness was burdensome too and went far to spoil the meal hours TABLE-TALK I 3 5 for him, which he had otherwise continued to find diverting and full of interesting episode. But the truth was — and Hans Castorp was entirely aware of it — that the absurd manifestation against which he struggled was not solely physical in its origin, not wholly to be accounted for by the air up here and the efforts his system made to adjust itself. Rather was it the outward expression of his inner stimulation, and bore directly upon those very episodes and diversions. Madame Chauchat almost invariably came late to meals. Until she came, Hans Castorp could not sit and keep his feet still, but must wait in suspense for the crashing of the glass door; he knew it would make him start and that his face would feel cold all over, and this was what regularly happened. At first he had jerked round his head infuriated and followed the offender with angry eyes to her seat at the “ good ” Russian table. He may even have muttered some abusive epithet between his teeth, some outraged cry of pro- test. But now he only bent over his plate, bit his lips, or deliber- ately turned his head away. It seemed to him that anger was no longer in place; he even had an obscure feeling that he was partly responsible, that he shared the blame with her before the others. In short, it would be no longer so true to say he was ashamed of Frau Chauchat as that he was ashamed for her — a feeling he might well have spared himself, for not a soul in the room troubled either over Frau Chauchat’s misconduct or Hans Castorp’s sensi- tiveness to it — with the possible exception of the schoolmistress, Fraulein Engelhart, on his right. This poor creature had perceived that, thanks to his sensibility in the matter of slamming doors, a certain emotional attitude toward the Russian lady was come to subsist in her young neigh- bour’s mind. Further, that the grounds of the attitude were of little moment compared to the fact of its existence; and, finally, that his assumed indifference — very poorly assumed, for Hans Castorp had neither talent nor training as an actor — did not mean a de- crease of interest, but on the contrary indicated that the affair was passing into a higher phase. Fraulein Engelhart was for her own person quite without hopes or pretensions. She therefore launched out into extravagant enthusiasm over Frau Chauchat — about which quite the most extraordinary thing was that Hans Castorp saw per- fectly how she was egging him on — not all at once, perhaps, but in the course of time — saw through it and even felt disgusted at it, yet without being the less willingly led on by her and made a fool of. “ Slam — bang! ” the old spinster said. “ That was she . No need THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 136 to look up to tell who just came in. Of course, there she goes — like a kitten to a saucer of milk — how pretty it is! I wish we might change places, so you could look at her as much as you liked. Naturally you don’t care to keep turning your head — that would flatter her far too much. She is greeting her table — you really ought to look, it is so refreshing to see her! When she smiles and talks as she is doing now, a dimple comes in one cheek, but not always, only when she likes. What a love of a woman! A spoilt child, that is why she is so heedless. Creatures like that one has to love, whether one will or no; they vex you with their heedlessness, but that is only one reason the more for loving them; it makes you so* happy to have to care for them in spite of yourself.” She whispered on, behind her hand, for his ear alone; the flush that mantled on her downy old cheek bespoke a rising tempera- ture, and the suggestiveness of her talk pierced Hans Castorp to the very marrow 7 . It did him good to hear someone else confirm his view’ that Madame Chauchat was an enchanting creature. He was a* young man of not very independent judgments, and glad to be encouraged in certain feelings he had, upon which both reason and conscience united to frown. But Fraulein Engelhart, however much she would have liked to, could tell him practically nothing about Frau Chauchat. She knew 7 no more than the whole sanatorium knew, and his conver- sations w 7 ith her bore little practical fruit. She did not even know the lady to speak to, nor could she boast a single common acquaint- ance. Her only title to importance was that she lived in Konigs- berg, not very far from the Russian border; also that she knew a few scraps of Russian. These were but meagre distinctions; yet Hans Castorp w 7 as prepared to see in them something resembling an extensive personal connexion with Frau Chauchat. “ I see that she wears no ring, no wedding-ring,” he said. “ Why is that? She is a married woman, I think you told me? ” The schoolmistress was quite perturbed; she seemed to feel driven into a corner and sought for words to talk herself out again, so very responsible did she feel for Frau Chauchat. “ You must not attach importance to that,” she finally said. “ I’m positive she is married. There is no doubt of it. Of course I know some foreigners do use the Madame when they are getting a little on in years, for the sake of the greater respect people pay a married woman. But it is not the case here. Everyone knows she really has a husband, somewhere in Russia. Her maiden name was not French but Russian, something in anow or ukov — I did know it, but I have forgotten. I will ask if you like; there must be several TABLE-TALK 137 people here who know it. No, she wears no ring, I have noticed it myself. Dear me, perhaps she finds it makes her hand look too broad. Or she thinks it is too bourgeois and domestic to wear a plain gold wedding-ring. She might as well carry a key basket. No, she is built on broader lines than that — Russian women all have something free and large about them. And then, a wedding- ring seems so»prosaic, it is almost repellent! It is a symbol of posses- sion; it is always saying ‘ Hands off ’; it turns every woman into a nun. I should not be at all surprised if that is what Frau Chauchat thinks. A charming woman like her, in the bloom of youth — why should she, every time she gives a man her hand to kiss, tell him straightway that she is bound in wedlock? ” “ Good Lord,” thought Hans Castorp, “ how she does run on! ” He looked into her face, quite alarmed. But she countered his gaze with her embarrassed, half-frightened one. They were both silent awhile and sought to recover themselves. Hans Castorp ate his luncheon and supported his chin. At length he said: “ And her husband? He doesn’t trouble him- self about her? Does he never visit her up here? Do you know what he does? ” “ Official. Russian government official, in some distant province, Daghestan, you know, out beyond the Caucasus, he was ordered there. No, as I tell you, no one has ever seen him up here. And this time she has been here going on three months.” “ She was here before, then? ” “ This is the third time. And between times she goes to other places — other sanatoriums. But it is she who sometimes visits him; not often, once in the year for a little while. One may say they live separated, and she visits him now and again.” “ Well, of course, she is ill — ” “ Yes, of course — but not so ill. Not so ill as to have to live all her life in sanatoriums and apart from her husband. There must be other reasons for that. Everyone up here thinks there must be other reasons. Perhaps she does not like to live out there in Dag- hestan, the other side of the Caucasus; it would not be strange — such a wild, remote place! But there must be something about the man too, if she can’t bear to be with him. He has a French name, but after all he is a Russian official, and that is a very rough type, I do assure you. I once saw one of them, with an iron-grey beard and a red face — they are all frightfully corrupt too, and drink quantities of vodka, you know. They will eat a little something, for the look of the thing, a mushroom marine , some caviar, and then drink out of all measure and call it a light lunch.” THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 138 “ You are putting everything off on him/’ Hans Castorp said. “ But we can’t know if the responsibility is not hers, of their not living together. One ought to be just. When I look at her and see the unmannerly way she behaves about the door — I assure you she’s no angel; excuse me for saying so. I wouldn’t trust her across the street. But you are so partial. You are blinded by prejudice in her favour.” This was the line he sometimes took. With a cunning otherwise foreign to his nature he would make out that the schoolmistress’s ravings over Madame Chauchat were not what he very well knew them to be, but an independent phenomenon, of a quaint and amusing kind; about which he, Hans Castorp, made free to tease the old spinster, feeling his own withers unwrung. He risked noth- ing by this attitude, being confident that his accomplice would agree to anything he said, no matter how wide of the mark. “ Good-morning,” he greeted her, “ I hope you slept well and dreamed of your charmer? Mistress Mary, quite contrary — or whatever her name is! Upon my word, one has only to speak of her to make you blush! You have completely lost your head over her — you can’t deny it.” And the schoolmistress, who really had blushed and tucked her head down over her cup, would mumble out of the left-hand cor- ner of her mouth: “ Shame on you, Herr Castorp! It really is too bad of you to embarrass me like this. Everyone can see we are talking about her and that you have said something to make me get red.” It was an extraordinary game the two of them were playing; each perfectly aware that they lied and double-lied, each knowing that Hans Castorp teased the schoolmistress only in order to be able to talk about Frau Chauchat. He took a morbid and extrava- gant pleasure in thus trifling with Fraulein Engelhart, and she on her side reciprocated; first out of a natural instinct to be the go- between in a love-affair, secondly because to oblige Hans Castorp she had actually contrived to fall victim to Frau Chauchars charms; and finally because she felt a pathetic joy in having him tease her and make her blush. He well knew, and she well knew, all this about each other and themselves; each knew that the other knew and that the whole situation was equivocal and almost ques- tionable. Equivocal and questionable situations were, in general, repugnant to Hans Castorp’s taste, and the present one was no ex- ception. He felt disgusted, yet for all that he went on fishing in these troubled waters, quieting his conscience with the assurance that he was only up here on a visit and would soon be leaving. He TABLE-TALK 139 pronounced upon the young woman’s charms with the air of a connoisseur; said she was “ sloppy,” that she looked younger and prettier full face than profile; that her eyes were too far apart; that she carried herself in a way that left much to be desired; that her arms, on the other hand, were pretty and soft-looking. He felt his head shaking as he talked; he tried to suppress the trembling, and realized not only that the schoolmistress must see his efforts, but, with profound disgust, that her head was actually shaking too! But he went on — he had purposely called Frau Chauchat Mistress Mary, in order that he might put the question of her name; so now he said: “ I suppose her name is not Mary at all; do you know what it is? I mean her given name. You must know it, being as much smitten as you are! ” The schoolmistress reflected. “ Wait half a minute,” she said. “ I knew it, once. Was it Tatiana? No — nor Natascha. Natascha Chauchat? No, that was not it. Wait, I have it — it was Avdotia. Or at least something very like that. It was not Katienka or Nin- otschka, of that I am certain. I can’t quite get it, for the moment. But I can surely recall it if you would like to know.” And next day she actually did know the name, and uttered it the moment the glass door slammed. Frau Chauchat’s name was Clavdia. Hans Castorp did not grasp it at first. He had to have her repeat the name, even to spell it, before he understood. Then he pro- nounced it twice or thrice, turning his bloodshot eyes in Frau Chauchat’s direction, in order, as it were, to try if it suited. “ Clavdia,” he said. “ Yes, that is probably it; it fits her quite well.” He could not hide his pleasure in the degree of intimacy thus achieved, and from now on referred always to Frau Chauchat as Clavdia. “ Your Clavdia appears to be making bread pills. That’s not very elegant, I should think.” “ It depends on who does it,” the schoolmistress w ould answer. 44 Clavdia it becomes.” Yes, unquestionably the meal-times in the hall with the seven tables had great charm for Hans Castorp. He hated to have one come to an end, and his consolation was that soon, in two or three hours, he would be back again. While he was sitting there, it was as though he had never risen. And for the time in between? It was nothing. A short turn as far as the watercourse or the Platz, a little rest on his balcony: no great burden, no serious interruption. Not as though he had to look forward to some interest or effort, which would not have been so easy to overleap in spirit. Effort was not the rule in the well-regulated Berghof life. Hans Castorp, when he THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN I40 rose from one meal, could straightway by anticipation begin to rejoice in the next — if, indeed, rejoicing is not too facile, too pleas- ant and unequivocal a word for the sentiments with which he looked forward to another meeting with the afflicted fair one. The reader, on the other hand, may very likely find such adjectives the only ones suitable to describe Hans Castorp’s personality or emo- tions. But we suggest that a young man with a well-regulated con- science and sense of fitness could not, whatever else he did, simply “ rejoice in ” Frau Chauchat’s proximity. In fact, we — who must surely know — are willing to assert that he himself would have repudiated any' such expression if it had been suggested to him. It is a small detail, yet worthy of mention, that he was growing to have a contempt for certain ways of expressing himself. He went about with that dry flush on his face and hummed contin- ually under his breath — being in a state of mind when music par- ticularly appeals. He hummed a ditty heard he knew not where — in some evening company or charity concert — sung by some thread of a soprano voice; it turned up now in his memory, a soft nothing, that went: One word from thy sweet lips Can strangely thrill me. He was about to go on: Within my heart it slips And raptures fill me — but broke off instead, with a disdainful shrug. “ Idiotic! ” he said, suddenly finding the tender ditty altogether tasteless, wishy- washy, and sentimental. He put it from him with manly sobriety, almost with regret. It was the sort of thing to satisfy a young man who had “ given his heart,” as we say, given it wholly, legiti- mately, and with quite definite intentions, to some healthy little goose in the flat-land and thus might be justified in abandoning himself to his orthodox and gratifying sensations, with all the consequences they entailed. But for him and for his relations with Madame Chauchat (we are not responsible for the word relations; it was the word Hans Castorp used, not we), such songs had noth- ing to do with them. “ Silly! ” he said sententiously, and put his nose in the air. But after pronouncing this aesthetic judgment he lay silent in his deck-chair, not thinking of anything more suitable to sing in its place. One thing there was which pleased him: when he lay listening to the beating of his heart — his corporeal organ — so plainly audi- MOUNTING MISGIVINGS I 4 1 ble in the ordered silence of the rest period, throbbing loud and peremptorily, as it had done almost ever since he came, the sound no longer annoyed him. For now he need not feel that it so beat of its own accord, without sense or reason or any reference to his non-corporeal part. He could say, without stretching the truth, that such a connexion now existed, or was easily induced: he was aware that he felt an emotion to correspond with the action of his heart. He needed only to think of Madame Chauchat — and he did think of her — and lo, he felt within himself the emotion proper to the heart-beats. Mounting Misgivings . Of the T wo Grandfathers , and the Boat-ride in the Twilight The weather was vile. In this respect Hans Castorp had no luck during the brief term of his visit. It did not snow, but rained all day long, a hateful downpour; thick mist wrapped the valley, while electric storms — an absurd and uncalled-for phenomenon, considering it was so cold that the heat had been turned on — rolled and reverberated disagreeably through the valley. “ Too bad,” Joachim said. “ I thought wc might take our lunch- eons and climb up to the Schatzalp, or something like that. But it seems it is not to happen. Let us hope the last week will be better.” But Hans Castorp answered: “ Let be. I am not so anxious to undertake anything for the moment. My first excursion was no great success. I find it does me more good just to take the day as it comes, without too much variation. I leave that sort of thing to people who have been up here for years. What do I want of variety in my three weeks’ time? ” He did, indeed, find his time well taken up, just as he was. What- ever his hopes, they would come to fruition — or else they would not — here on the spot and not on any Schatzalp. Time did not hang heavy on his hands — rather he began to feel the end of his stay approach all too near. The second week was passing; soon two-thirds of his holiday would be gone; the third week would no sooner begin than it would be time to think of packing. The re- freshment of his sense of time was long since a thing of the past; the days rushed on — yes, in the mass they rushed on, though at the same time each, single day stretched out long and longer to hold the crowded, secret hopes and fears that filled it to over- flowing. Ah, time is a riddling thing, and hard it is to expound its essence! Must we put plainer name to those inward experiences which THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN I 4 2 at once both weighted and gave wings to Hans Castorp’s days? We all know them; their emotional inanity ran true to type. They would have taken no different course even had their origin been such as to make applicable the silly song on which he had pro- nounced his severe aesthetic judgment. Impossible that Madame Chauchat should know nothing of the threads that were weaving between her and a certain table. In- deed, Hans Castorp definitely, wilfully purposed that she should know something, or even a good deal. We say wilfully because his eyes were open, he was aware that reason and good sense were against it. But when a man is in Hans Castorp’s state — or the state he was beginning to be in — he longs, above all, to have her of whom he dreams* aware that he dreams, let reason and common sense say what they like to the contrary. Thus are we made. So, after it had happened twice or thrice that Madame Chau- chat, impelled by chance or magnetic attraction, had turned and looked in the direction of Hans Castorp’s table and met each time his eyes fixed upon her, she turned the fourth time with intent — and met them again. On the fifth occasion she did not catch him in flagrante; he was not at his post. Yet he straightway felt her eyes upon him, turned, and gazed so ardently that she smiled* and looked away. Rapture — and misgiving — filled him at sight of that smile. Did she take him for a child? Very well, she should see. He cast about for means to refine upon the position. On the sixth occasion, when he felt, he divined, an inner voice whispered him, that she was looking, he pretended to be absorbed in disgusted contemplation of a pimply dame who had stopped to talk with the great-aunt. He stuck to his guns for a space of two or three min- utes, until he was certain the “ Kirghiz ” eyes had been withdrawn — a marvellous piece of play-acting, which Frau Chauchat not only might, but was expressly intended to see through, to the end that she be impressed with Hans Castorp’s subtlety and self-con- trol. Then came the following episode. Frau Chauchat, between courses, turned carelessly about and surveyed the dining-room. Hans Castorp was on guard; their glances met, she peering at him with a vaguely mocking look on her face, he with a determination that made him clench his teeth. And as they looked, her serviette slipped down from her lap and was about to fall to the floor. She reached after it nervously and he felt the motion in all his limbs, so that he half rose from his chair and was about to spring wildly to her aid across eight yards of space and an intervening table — as though some dire catastrophe must ensue if the serviette were to touch the floor. She possessed herself of it just in time; then, still MOUNTING MISGIVINGS *43 stooping, holding it by the corner, and frowning in evident vexa- tion at the contretemps, for which she seemed to hold him respon- sible, she looked back once more and saw him with lifted brows, sitting there poised for a spring! Again she smiled and turned away. Hans Castorp was in the seventh heaven over this occurrence. True, he had to pay for it: for full two days — that is to say, for the space of ten meal-times, Madame Chauchat never looked his way. She even intermitted her habit of pausing on her entrance, to survey the room and, as it were, present herself to it. That was hard to bear; yet, since it undoubtedly happened on his account, it preserved the relation between them, if only on its negative side. That was something. He saw how right Joachim had been in saying that it was hard to get acquainted here, except with one’s table companions. For one brief hour after the evening meal social relations of a sort did obtain. But they often shrank to twenty minutes’ length; and al- ways Madame Chauchat spent the time, whether longer or shorter, with her own circle, in the small salon. Her friends were the hol- low-chested man, the whimsical girl with the fuzzy hair, the silent Dr. Blumenkohl, and the youth with the drooping shoulders — the “ good ” Russian table had, it seemed, pre-empted the room for its own use. Furthermore, Joachim was always urging an early withdrawal. He said it was in order to spend full time in the eve- ning cure — but there were perhaps other disciplinary reasons left unspecified, which his cousin surmised and respected. We have re- proached Hans Castorp with being “ wilful ”; but certainly, what- ever the goal toward which his wishes led, it was not that of social intercourse with Madame Chauchat. He concurred, generally speaking, in the circumstances that militated against it. The rela- tion between him and the young Russian, a tense though tenuous bond, the product of his assiduous glances, was of an extra-social sort. It entailed, and could entail, no obligations. It could subsist, in his mind, along with a degree of distaste for any social approach. It was one thing for our young friend to call “ Clavdia ” to ac- count for the beatings of his heart; but quite another for him, the grandson of Hans Lorenz Castorp, to be shaken in the smallest degree in the sure inward conviction that this door-slamming, finger-gnawing, bread-pill-making foreigner — who carried her- self so badly, who lived apart from her husband, and without a ring on her finger careered from one resort to another — that this foreigner was indubitably not a person for him to cultivate; not, that is, over and above the secret relation we have indicated. A THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN I44 deep gulf divided their two existences; he felt, he knew, that he was not up to defending her in the face of any recognized social authority. Hans Castorp was, for his own person, quite without arrogance; yet a larger arrogance, the pride of caste and tradition, stood written on his brow and in his sleepy-looking eyes, and voiced itself in the conviction of his own superiority, which came over him when he measured Frau Chauchat for what she was. It was this which he neither could, nor wished to, shake off. Strangely enough, he first became vividly conscious of his conviction on a day when he heard Frau Chauchat speaking in his native tongue. She stood in the dining-room after a meal, her hands in the pockets of her sweater, and charmingly struggled to converse in German with another patient, probably a rest-hall acquaintance. Hans Castorp felt an unwonted thrill — never before had he been so proud of his mother-tongue — yet at the same time experienced a tempta- tion to offer up his pride on the altar of quite a different feeling — the rapture which filled him at the sound of her pretty stammer- ings and manglings of his speech. In a word, Hans Castorp envisaged in this opening affair be- tween him and the heedless creature who was a member of the Berghof society no more than a holiday adventure. Before the tribunal of reason, conscience, and common sense it could make no claims to be heard; principally, of course, because when all was said and done, Frau Chauchat was an ailing woman, feeble, fevered, and tainted within; her physical condition had much to do with the questionable life she led, as also with Hans Castorp’s instinc- tive reservations. No, it simply did not occur to him to seek her society; while as for the rest — well, however the thing turned out, it would be over in one way or another inside ten days, when he would enter upon his apprenticeship at Tunder and Wilms’s. For the moment, however, he had begun to live in and for the emotions roused in him by the pretty patient: the up and down of suspense, fulfilment or disappointment, characteristic of such a state. He came to regard these feelings as the real meaning and content of his stay; his mood depended wholly upon their event. All the circumstances of life up here favoured their development. For the inviolably daily programme brought the two constantly together. True, Frau Chauchat’s chamber was on a different storey from his own, and she performed her cure, so the schoolmistress said, in the general rest-hall on the roof (the same in which Cap- tain Miklosich had lately turned off the light). But there were the five meal-times; and besides them, innumerable occasions in the daily goings and comings when not only might they meet, but it MOUNTING MISGIVINGS 145 was practically unavoidable they should. And that, Hans Castorp thought, was all to the good. So was the fact that he had little to do between one occasion and the next, except think about them. He found, indeed, something almost breathless about being thus, as it were, immured with opportunity. Which did not prevent him from employing all manner of de- vices to improve the position. His charmer came regularly late to meals; he did the same, with intent to waylay her. He dallied over his toilet, was not ready when Joachim knocked, and let his cousin go on before — he would catch up with him. He would wait until the intuition proper to his state warned him of the right moment; then he would hurry down, not by his own stair, but by the one at the end of the corridor, which would take him past a certain door — number seven — in the first storey. Every moment of the way, every step of the stair, offered a chance; any instant the door might open — and in practice it often did. Out she would slip, noiselessly, the door would slam behind her, she would glide to the stairs, she would pass down ahead of him, with her hand up to her braids of hair — or else he would be in front of her, feel her gaze in his back, and experience a thrill as from an ant crawling down it. His bearing, of course, was that of a person unaware of her presence, leading a free and independent existence of his own: he would bury his hands in his pockets, walk with a swagger, cough an entirely unnecessary cough, and strike himself on the chest — anything to manifest his utter unconcern. On two occasions he refined yet further. Already seated at the table, he felt himself with both hands, and said with a fine show of irritation: “ There, I’ve forgotten my handkerchief. That means I must trot back again to fetch it.” And went back, to the end that he and she might meet on the way, since that afforded a keener throb than when she merely walked in front of or behind him. The first time he executed this manoeuvre, she measured him with her eyes from a distance, swept him from head to foot, quite bold and unblushing. Then approaching nearer, turned away indifferently and passed him by. So that he got but little out of the demarche . The second time she stared him in the face without flinching, al- most forbiddingly, even turning her head as they crossed, to fol- low him with her look — it went through our poor young friend like a knife. We need not pity him, for was it not all his own doing? But the encounter was gripping at the moment and even more afterwards — for only in retrospect was he clear as to what had actually happened. He had never seen Frau Chauchat’s face so close, so clear in all its details. He could have counted the tiny THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 146 hairs that stood up from the braid she wore wreathed round her head — they were reddish-blond, with a metallic sheen. No more than a hands-breadth or so of space had been between his face and hers, whose outline and features, peculiar though they were, had been familiar to him as long as he could remember, and spoke to his very soul as nothing else could in all the world. It was an un- usual face, and full of character (for only the unusual seems to us to have character); its mystery and strangeness spoke of the un- known north, and it teased the curiosity because its proportions and characteristics were somehow not very easy to determine. Its keynote, probably, was the high, bony structure of the prominent cheek-bones; they seemed to compress the eyes — which were un- usually far apart and unusually level with the face — and squeeze them into a slightly oblique position; while at the same time they appeared responsible for the soft concavity of the cheek, and this, in turn, to result in the full curve of the slightly pouting lips. Then there were the eyes themselves: the narrow “ Kirghiz ” eyes, whose shape was yet to Hans Castorp a simple enchantment and whose colour was the grey-blue or blue-grey of distant moun- tains; they had the trick of sidewise, unseeing glance, which could sometimes melt them into the very hue of mystery and darkness — these eyes of Clavdia, which had gazed so forbiddingly into his very face, and which so awfully resembled Pribislav Hippe’s in shape, expression, and colour that they fairly frightened him. Resembled was not the word: they were the same eyes. The breadth, too, of the upper part of the face, the flattened nose, everything, even to the flush in the white skin, the healthy colour of the cheek — which in Frau Chauchat’s case, as in so many others, merely counterfeited health and was a superficial effect of the open-air cure — everything was precisely Pribislav, and no differently would he have looked at Hans Castorp were they to meet again as of old in the school court-yard. It had been staggering in the extreme. Hans Castorp thrilled at the encounter, yet experienced a mounting uneasiness like that he felt when he realized how narrow was the proximity that en- closed him and the fair Russian. That the long-forgotten Pribislav Hippe should appear to him in the guise of Frau Chauchat and look at him with those “ Kirghiz ” eyes — this was to be immured, not with opportunity, but with the inevitable, the unescapable, to such an extent as to fill him with conflicting emotions. It was a situation rich in hope, yet heavy with dread — it gave our young friend a feeling of helplessness, and set in motion a vague instinct to cast about, to grope and feel for help or counsel. One after an- MOUNTING MISGIVINGS 1 47 other he mentally summoned up various people, the thought of whom might serve him as some sort of mental support. There was the good, the upright Joachim, firm as a rock- yet whose eyes in these past months had come to hold such a tragic shadow, and who had never used to shrug his shoulders, as he did so often now. Joachim, with the 44 Blue Peter ” in his pocket, as Frau Stohr called the receptacle. When Hans Castorp thought of her hard, crabbed face it made him shiver. Yes, there was Joa- chim — who kept constantly at Hofrat Behrens to let him get away and go down to the longed-for service in the 44 plain ” — the 44 flat- land,” as the healthy, normal world was called up here, with a faint yet perceptible nuance of contempt. Joachim served the cure single-mindedly, to the end that he might arrive sooner at his goal and save some of the time which 44 those up here ” so wantonly flung away; served it unquestioningly for the sake of speedy re- covery — but also, Hans Castorp detected, for the sake of the cure itself, which, after all, was a service, like another; and was not duty duty, wherever performed? Joachim invariably went upstairs after only a quarter-hour in the drawing-rooms; and this military precision of his was a prop to the civilian laxity of his cousin, who would otherwise be likely to loiter unprofitably below, with his eye on the company in the small salon. But Hans Castorp was con- vinced there was another and private reason why Joachim with- drew so early; he had known it since the time he saw his cousin’s face take on the mottled pallor, and his mouth assume the pathetic twist. He perfectly understood. For Marusja was almost always there in the evening — laughter-loving Marusja, with the little ruby on her charming hand, the handkerchief with the orange scent, and the swelling bosom, tainted within — Hans Castorp com- prehended that it was her' presence which drove Joachim away, precisely because it so strongly, so fearfully drew him toward her. Was Joachim too 44 immured ” — and even worse off than him- self, in that he had five times a day to sit at the same table with Marusja and her orange-scented handkerchief? However that might be, it was clear that Joachim was preoccupied with his own troubles; the thought of him could afford his cousin no mental support. That he took refuge in daily flight was a credit to him; but that he had to flee was anything but reassuring to Hans Ca- storp, who even began to feel that Joachim’s good example of faithful service of the cure and the initiation which he owed to his cousin’s experience might have also their bad side. Hans Castorp had not been up here three weeks. But it seemed longer; and the daily routine which Joachim so piously observed THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN I48 had begun to take on, in his eyes, a character of sanctity. When, from the point of view of “ those up here,” he considered life as lived down in the flat-land, it seemed somehow queer and un- natural. He had grown skilled in the handling of his rugs and the art of making a proper bundle, a sort of mummy, of himself, when lying on his balcony on cold days. He was almost as skilful as Joa- chim — and yet, down below, there was no soul who knew aught of such an art or the practice of it! How strange, he thought; yet at the same moment wondered at himself for finding it strange — and there surged up again that uneasy sensation of groping for support. He thought of Hofrat Behrens and his professional advice, be- stowed “ sine pecunia” that he should, while he was up here, order his life like the other patients, even to the taking of his tempera- ture. He thought of Settembrini, and of how he had laughed at that same advice, and quoted something out of The Magic Flute . Did thinking of either of these two afford him any moral support? Hofrat Behrens was a white-haired man, old enough to be Hans Castorp’s father. He was the head of the establishment, the highest authority. And it was of fatherly authority that the young man now felt an uneasy need. But no, it would not do: he could not think with childlike confidingness of the Hofrat. The physician had buried his wife up here, and been brought so low by grief as almost to lose his mind; then he had stopped on, to be near her grave and because he himself was somewhat infected. Was he sound again? Was he single-mindedly bent on making his patients whole, so they could go back to service in the world below? His cheeks had a purple hue, he looked fevered. That might be only the effect of the air up here; Hans Castorp, without fever, so far as he could judge without a thermometer, felt the same dry heat in his face, day in, day out. Of course, when one heard the Hofrat talk, one might easily conclude he had fever. There was some- thing not quite right about it; it all sounded very jovial and lively, but on the whole forced, particularly when one thought of the purple cheeks and the watery eyes, which seemed to be still weep- ing for his wife. Hans Castorp recalled what Settembrini had said about the Hofrat’s vices and chronic depression — that might have been malicious; it might have been sheer windiness. But he did not find it sustained or fortified him to think of Hofrat Behrens. Then there was Settembrini himself, of course — the chronic oppositionist, the windbag, the “ homo hwmanus as he styled himself. Hans Castorp thought him well over, with his gift of the gab, his florid harangue on the combination of dullness and dis- MOUNTING MISGIVINGS I49 ease, and how he, Hans Castorp, had been taken to task for calling it a “ dilemma for the human intelligence.” What about him? Would the thought of him be anyway efficacious? Hans Castorp recalled how several times, in the extraordinarily vivid dreams that visited his sleep in this place, he had taken umbrage at the dry and subtle smile curling the Italian's lip beneath the flowing mous- tache; how he had railed at him for a hand-organ man, and tried to shove him away because he was a disturbing influence. But that was in his dreams — the waking Hans Castorp was no such matter, but a much less untrammelled person; not disinclined, either, on the whole, to try out the influence upon himself of this novel human type, with its critical animus and acumen, despite the fact that he found the Italian both carping and garrulous. After all, Settembrini had called himself a pedagogue; obviously he was anxious to exercise influence; and Hans Castorp, for his part, fairly yearned to be influenced — though of course, not to an extent which should cause him to pack his trunk and leave before his time, as Settembrini had in all seriousness proposed. “ Placet experiri ” he thought to himself, with a smile. So much Latin he had, without calling himself a homo hitmanus . The up- shot was that he kept his eye on Settembrini, listened keenly and critically to what he had to say when they met on their prescribed walks to the bench on the mountain-side, or down to the Platz, or wherever and whenever opportunity offered. Other occasions there were, too: for instance, at the end of a meal Settembrini would rise from table before anyone else and saunter across among the seven tables, in his check trousers, a toothpick between his lips, to where the cousins sat. He did this in defiance of law and custom, standing there in a graceful attitude, with his legs crossed, talking and gesticulating with the toothpick. Or he would draw up a chair and sit down at the corner of the table, between Hans Ca- storp and the schoolmistress, or between Hans Castorp and Miss Robinson, and look on while they ate their pudding, which he seemed to have forgone. “ May I beg for admission into this charmed circle? ” he would say, shaking hands with the cousins, and comprehending the rest of the table in a sweeping bow. “ My brewer over there — not to mention the despairing gaze of the breweress! — But, really, this Herr Magnus! Just now he has been delivering a discourse on folk-psychology. Shall I tell you what he said? ‘ The Fatherland, it is true, is one enormous barracks. But all the same it's got a lot of solid capacity, it’s genuine. I wouldn’t change it for the fine manners of the rest of them. What good are fine manners to me if THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 150 I’m cheated right and left? ’ And more of the same kind. I am at the end of my patience. And opposite me I have a poor creature, with churchyard roses blooming in her cheeks, an old maid from Sieben- biirgen, who never stops talking about her brother-in-law, a man we none of us either know or wish to know. I could stand it no longer, I shook their dust from my feet, I bolted.” “ You raised your flag and took to your heels,” Frau Stohr stated. ‘ Pre — cisely,” shouted Settembrini. “ I fled with my flag. Ah, what an apt phrase! I see I have come to the right place; nobody else here Knows how to coin phrases like that. — May I be per- mitted to inquire after the state of your health, Frau Stohr? ” It was frightful to see Frau Stohr preen herself. “ Good land! ” she said. “ It is always the same, you know your- self: two steps forward and three back. When you have been sit- ting here five months, along comes the old man and tucks on an- other six. It is like the torment of Tantalus: you shove and shove, and think you are getting to the top — ” “ Ah, how delightful of you, to give poor old Tantalus a new job, and let him roll the stone uphill for a change! I call that true benevolence. — But what are these mysterious reports I have been hearing of you, Frau Stohr? There are tales going about — tales about doubles, astral bodies, and the like. Up to now I have lent them no credence — but this latest story puzzles me, I confess.” “ I know you are poking fun at me.” “ Not for an instant. I beg you to set my mind at rest about this dark side of your life; after that it will be time to jest. Last night, between halt past nine and ten, I was taking a little exercise in the garden; I looked up at the row of balconies; there was your light gleaming through the dark; you were performing your cure, led by the dictates of duty and reason. ‘ Ah/ thought 1, 4 there lies our charming invalid, obeying the rules of the house, for the sake of an early return to the arms of her waiting husband.’ — And now what do I hear? That you were seen at that very hour at the Kur- haus, in the cmematograjo ” (Herr Settembrini gave the word the Italian pronunciation, with the accent on the fourth syllable) “ and afterwards in the cafe, enjoying punch and kisses, and — ” Frau Stohr wriggled and giggled into her serviette, nudged Joa- chim and the silent Dr. Blumenkohl in the ribs, winked with coy confidingness, and altogether gave a perfect exhibition of fatuous complacency. She was in the habit or leaving the light burning on her balcony and stealing off to seek distraction in the quarter be- low. Her husband, meanwhile, in Cannstadt, awaited her return. MOUNTING MISGIVINGS l 5 1 She was not the only patient who practised this duplicity. “ And,” went on Settembrini, “ that you were enjoying those kisses in the company of — whom, do you think? In the company of Captain Miklosich from Bucharest. They say he wears a corset — but that is little to the point. I conjure you, madame, to tell me! Have you a double? Was it your earthly part which lay there alone on your balcony, while your spirit revelled below, with Captain Miklosich and his kisses? ” Frau Stohr wreathed and bridled as though she were being tickled. “ One asks oneself, had it not been better the other way about,” Settembrini went on; “ you enjoying the kisses by yourself, and the rest-cure with Captain Miklosich — ” “ Tehee! ” tittered Frau Stohr. “ Have the ladies and gentlemen heard the latest? ” the Italian went on, without pausing for breath. “ Somebody has been flown away with — by the devil. Or, to speak literally, by his mama — a very determined lady, I quite took to her. It was young Schneer- mann, Anton Schneermann, who sat at Mademoiselle Kleefeld’s table. You see, his place is empty. It will soon be filled up again, I am not worried about that — but Anton is off, on the wings of the wind, in the twinkling of an eye, rapt away before he knew where he was. Sixteen years old, and had been up here a year and a half, with six months to go. But how did it happen? Who knows? Per- haps somebody dropped a little word to Madame his mother; any- how, she got wind of his goings-on, in Baccho et ceteris. She ap- pears unannounced on the scene, some three heads taller than I am, white-haired and exceeding wroth; fetches Herr Anton a couple of boxes on the ear, takes him by the collar, and puts him on the train. ‘ If he is going to the dogs,’ she says, ‘ he can do it just as well down below.’ And off they go.” “ Everybody within ear-shot laughed; Herr Settembrini had such a droll way of telling a story. Despite his contemptuous atti- tude toward the society of the place, he always knew everything that went on. He knew the name and circumstances of each pa- tient. He knew that such and such a person had been operated on for rib resection; had it on the best authority that from the autumn onward no one with a temperature of more than 101.3 0 would be admitted into the establishment. He told them how last night the little dog belonging to Madame Capatsoulias from Mitylene stepped on the button of the electric signal on his mistress’s night- table and occasioned much commotion and running hither and yon — particularly because Madame Capatsoulias had been found THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN * 5 2 not alone, but in the society of Assessor Diistmund from Fried- richshagen. Even Dr. Blumenkohl had to laugh at that. Pretty Marusja well-nigh choked in her orange-scented handkerchief, and Frau Stohr yelled with laughter, holding her breast with both hands. But to the cousins Ludovico Settembrini talked of himself and his early life; whether on the walks they took together, or during the evening in the salon, or perhaps, in the dining-room itself, after a meal, when most of the patients had left and the three sat to- gether at their end of the table, while the waitresses cleared away and Hans Castorp smoked his Maria Mancini, which in the third week had regained a little of its savour. He was critical of what he heard, and often he felt put off; yet he listened receptively to the Italian’s talk, for it opened to his understanding a world utterly new and strange. Settembrini spoke of his grandfather, a Milanese lawyer, but even more a patriot; with something of the political agitator, and orator and journalist to boot. He too, like his grandson, had al- ways been in the opposition; though he had been able to perform his role upon a larger stage than had Ludovico. The latter re- marked with some bitterness that his own activities had been con- fined to heckling and castigating the follies and frailties of the guests at the International Sanatorium Berghof, and to protesting against them in the name of the free and joyous human spirit. But his grandfather had had his finger in the forming of governments; he had conspired against Austria and the Holy Alliance, which had dismembered his native land and then held it in the heavy bond of servitude; he had been a zealous member of certain secret so- cieties that had spread over Italy — a carbonaro , Settembrini ex- plained, suddenly dropping his voice, as though it might still be dangerous to utter the word. In fact, from his grandson’s narrative, the two hearers got a picture of a dark and tempest-tossed figure, a ringleader, political agitator, and conspirator; despite all their pains, they did not quite succeed in hiding a feeling of mistrust, even repulsion. True, the circumstances had been extraordinary. What they heard had happened long ago, almost a hundred years. It was history; and they were familiar in theory — particularly from ancient history — with the traditional figure of the tyrant- hater and liberator, such as they now heard of — though they had never dreamed of being brought into actual human contact with him, like this! Settembrini’s grandfather, so they were told, united with his conspiratorial zeal a profound love for his native land, which it was his dream to see free and united: indeed, it was out MOUNTING MISGIVINGS 153 of this very combination, as a natural consequence, that his revo- lutionary activities flowed — and how strange this mingling of rebellion and patriotism seemed to the cousins, in whose minds an abiding sense of order was on an equal footing with their love of country! But they privately admitted, none the less, that at that time, and in that situation, it might have been conceivably possible that rebellion should go paired with civic virtue, and law-abiding- ness lie down with lazy indifference to the public weal. But Grandfather Giuseppe had been not only an Italian patriot. He had been fellow citizen and brother-in-arms to any people struggling for its liberties. Thus after the shipwreck of a certain plot hatched in Turin for the overthrow of the military and civil government, a plot in which he had been deeply involved, he had escaped by a hair’s breadth the clutches of Metternich’s hirelings, and spent the time of his exile fighting and bleeding, first in Spain for the cause of constitutionalism, then in Greece for the inde- pendence of the Hellenic peoples. It was in Greece that Settem- brini’s father had seen the light — which probably accounted for his being a humanist and lover of classical antiquity. His mother had been of German stock; Settembrini had married her in Switzer- land and taken her about with him in his further adventurous ca- reer. He had been allowed, after ten years of exile, to return to Milan, where he had practised his profession, without for a mo- ment ceasing to labour, with voice and pen, in verse and prose, for the establishment of a united republic, and to draw up subver- sive programmes characterized by dictatorial ardour, in which were promulgated in the clearest style the unification of the lib- erated people and the attainment of general felicity. One detail mentioned by the grandson made a profound impression upon Hans Castorp: Grandfather Giuseppe, to the day of his death, wore black — in token, he said, of his mourning for the state of the fatherland, languishing in misery and servitude. Hans Castorp, at this piece of information, thought of his own grandfather, as he had once or twice before during Settembrini’s narrative. He too, for as long as his grandson had known him, wore black clothes. But for how different a reason! Hans Lorenz Castorp had worn the quaint old fashion to indicate his oneness with a bygone time and his essential lack of sympathy with the present; worn it up to the end of his days, when he had returned in death to his true and adequate presentment — with the starched ruff. Certainly these were two strikingly different kinds of grandfather! Hans Castorp pondered, his eyes fixed in a stare, cautiously shaking his head in a way that might as well be taken for a sign of admiration for THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 1 54 Giuseppe Settembrini as for the opposite. He honourably refrained from judging what he did not understand, but simply made mental note of the contrast and let it go at that. He could see the narrow head of old Hans Lorenz, as it bent musing over the pale gold rim of the christening basin, that symbol of the passing and the abiding, of continuity through change. He had his mouth open; Hans Ca- storp knew the words great-great-great were about to issue from it, the sombre syllables which always reminded him of places where one walked with bent head and reverent gait. And then he saw Giuseppe Settembrini, with the tricolour on his arm, waving his sabre and breathing a vow to Heaven with dark gaze flung aloft, as he stormed the heights of despotism at the head of a liberty- loving host. Well, he thought, each of them had his fine and splen- did side — he made the greater effort to be fair, because he knew himself to be partisan, on personal or partly personal grounds. For Grandfather Settembrini had fought to obtain political rights; whereas the other grandfather — or his ancestors — had originally had all the rights, and the scoundrels had taken them away from him, in the course of the centuries, by violence or pettifoggery. So both grandfathers had worn mourning, the one in the north and the one in the south, and both in the same idea; namely, to put a great gulf between them and the evil present. But whereas the one had assumed it in token of his pious reverence for the past and the dead, to whom he felt himself with his whole being to belong, the other had worn it as a sign of rebellion, in the name of progress, and in a spirit of hostility toward the past. Yes, these were two different worlds. As Herr Settembrini talked, and Hans Castorp stood, as it were, between them and cast his critical eye upon one and upon the other, they called back to his conscious mind a scene from his own past life. He saw himself rowing on a lake in Hol- stein, one late summer evening; the sun was down, the almost full moon rising above the bushes that bordered the lake. He rowed alone and slowly over the quiet waters, gazing to right and left at a scene fantastic as any dream. In the west it was still broad day, with a fixed and glassy air; but in the east he looked into a moonlit land- scape, wreathed in the magic of rising mists and equally convinc- ing to his bewildered sense. The strange combination lasted some brief quarter-hour before the balance finally settled in favour of night and the moon; all that time Hans Castorp’s dazzled eyes went shifting in lively amazement from one scene to the other: from day to night and back again to day. The picture returned to him now. At the same time the thought crossed his mind that Lawyer MOUNTING MISGIVINGS 1 5S Settembrini could scarcely have been much of a jurist, consider- ing his other occupations and the extended sphere of his activities. His grandson asseverated, however, and Hans Castorp found it credible, that the grandfather had been from early childhood down to the last day of his life inspired by the fundamental prin- ciple of justice. Our hero, all heavy-headed as he was and organ- ically preoccupied by the six-course Berghof meal he had just eaten, made an effort to understand what Settembrini meant when he called this principle “ the source and fount of liberty and prog- ress.” Progress, up to now, had had to do, in Hans Castorp’s mind, with such things as the nineteenth-century development of cranes and lifting-tackle. He was accordingly gratified to learn that Grandfather Settembrini had not underestimated the importance of such matters. Of course, his own grandfather hadn’t either. The Italian paid a tribute to the native land of his two listeners, for the inventions of gunpowder — whereby the armour of feudalism had been thrown on the scrap-heap — and the printing-press, which had made possible the democratic propagation of ideas, and the propagation of democratic ideas, which were one and the same. For these good gifts he praised Germany; praised her for her past, but awarded his own country the palm, because she had been the first to unfurl the banner of freedom, culture, and enlightenment, at a time when all other lands were wrapped in the darkness of superstition and slavery. Yet in paying due honour, as upon their first meeting, at the bench by the watercourse, to commerce and technology (Hans Castorp’s own field), Settembrini apparently did so not for the sake of these forces themselves, but purely with reference to their significance for the ethical development of man- kind. For such a significance, he declared, he joyfully ascribed to them. Technical progress, he said, gradually subjugated nature, by developing roads and telegraphs, minimizing climatic differences; and by the means of communication which it created proved it- self the most reliable agent in the task of drawing together the peoples of the earth, of making them acquainted with each other, of building bridges to compromise, of destroying prejudice; of, finally, bringing about the universal brotherhood of man. Hu- manity had sprung from the depths of fear, darkness, and hatred; but it was emerging, it was moving onward and upward, toward a goal of fellow-feeling and enlightenment, of goodness and joy- ousness; and upon this path, he said, the industrial arts were the vehicle conducive to the greatest progress. But all this made a confused impression on Hans Castorp. Herr Settembrini seemed to bring together in a single breath categories which in the young THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 156 man’s mind had heretofore been as the poles asunder — for ex- ample, technology and morals! Positively, he made the statement that Christ had been the first to proclaim the principle of equality and union, that the printing-press had propagated the doctrine, and that finally the French Revolution had elevated it into a law! All which our poor young friend found very muddling, he scarce knew why — though the feeling was definite enough in all con- science, and though Herr Settembrini had couched his thought in the clearest and roundest of periods. Once, the Italian went on, once only in his life, and that in his early manhood, had his grand- father known what it was to feel profound joy. That was at the time of the Paris July Revolution. He had gone about proclaiming to all and sundry that some day men would place those three days alongside the six days of creation, and reverence them alike. Hans Castorp felt utterly dumbfounded — involuntarily he slapped the table with his hand. To compare those three summer days of the year 1830 when the Parisians had taken unto themselves a new constitution, to the six in which God had divided the land from the water and created the lights in the firmament of heaven, as well as flowers, trees, birds, and fishes, and all other living things — that seemed to him to be going too far. He talked it over later with Cousin Joachim, and gave clear expression to his opinion that it really was pretty thick, that he, Hans Castorp, for his part, found it positively offensive. But still open-minded — at least in the sense that he enjoyed the experiment he was making — he restrained the objections which his sense of fitness would have raised against the Settembrinian scheme of things. Restrained them on the theory that what seemed sedi- tion to him might to another seem dauntless courage; and what he called bad taste might have been, in that far-off time and circum- stance, but a display of the noble excesses of a high-hearted nature — for instance, when Grandfather Settembrini called the barri- cades “ the people’s throne,” and talked about “ dedicating the burgher’s pike on the altar of humanity.” Hans Castorp knew — without putting it into so many words — why he lent an ear to Herr Settembrini. Partly it was out of a sense of duty; though also out of that holiday mood of taking everything as it came, rejecting nothing, in the knowledge that in another day or so he would spread his wings and fly back to the wonted order of things. Yes, he knew it was largely the prompt- ings of conscience to which he hearkened; to be precise, the promptings of a conscience not altogether easy — as he sat listen- ing to the Italian, one leg crossed over the other, drawing at his MOUNTING MISGIVINGS I 57 Maria Mancini; or when the three of them climbed the hill from the English quarter. Two principles, according to the Settembrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual conflict for possession of the world: force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge; the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation is- suing in progress. One might call the first the Asiatic, the second the European principle; for Europe was the theatre of rebellion, the sphere of intellectual discrimination and transforming activity, whereas the East embodied the conception of quiesence and immo- bility. There was no doubt as to which of the two would finally triumph: it would be the power of enlightenment, the power that made for rational advance and development. For human progress snatched up ever more peoples with it on its brilliant course; it conquered more and more territory in Europe itself and was al- ready pressing Asia-wards. Much still remained to be done, sublime exertions were still demanded from those spirits who had received the light. Then only the day would come when thrones would crash and outworn religions crumble, in those remaining countries of Europe which had not already enjoyed the blessings of eight- eenth-century enlightenment, nor yet of an upheaval like 1789. But the day would come, Settembrini said, with his suave smile; it would come, he repeated, if not on the wings of doves, then on the pinions of eagles; and dawn would break over Europe, the dawn of universal brotherhood, in the name of justice, science, and human reason. It would bring in its train a new Holy Alliance, the alliance of the democratic peoples of Europe, in opposition to that other Holy Alliance, the thrice-infamous organ of princes and cabinets, which Grandfather Giuseppe had personally regarded as his deadly foe; in a word, it would bring in its train the republic of the world. But before that could happen, the Asiatic principle must be met and crushed in its very stronghold and vital centre; that was to say, in Vienna. Austria must be crushed, crushed and dismembered, first to take vengeance for the past, and second to lead in the new law of justice with truth on earth. Hans Castorp did not care for this last drift in Herr Settem- brini’s sonorous flow of words. He mistrusted it; it sounded too much like a personal or national animus. As for Joachim Ziemssen, whenever the Italian fell into this vein, he scowled and turned away his head, or sought to create a diversion by saying it was time for the rest-cure. Neither did Hans Castorp feel obliged to listen when the conversation took these devious paths; they clearly fell outside the limits within which his conscience prompted him THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 158 to profit by Herr Settembrini’s words. Yet conscience still urged him to continue in the effort; so clearly that often, as opportunity arose, he would even invite the Italian to discourse on the subject of his ideas. Those ideas, ideals, and efforts of the aspiring will were, Settem- brini said, traditional in his family. He inherited them. Grand- father, son, and grandson, each in his turn, had dedicated to them their entire lives and all their spiritual energy. The father in his own way had done so no less than Grandfather Giuseppe. True, he had not been a political agitator or active combatant in the cause of freedom, but a quiet and sensitive scholar, a humanist sitting at his writing-desk. But what, after all, was humanism if not love of human kind, and by that token also political activity, rebellion against all that tended to defile or degrade our concep- tion of humanity? He had been accused of exaggerating the im- portance of form. But he who cherished beauty of form did so because it enhanced human dignity; whereas the Middle Ages, in striking contrast, had been sunk not only in superstitious hostility to the human spirit, but also in a shameful formlessness. From the very beginning he had defended the right of the human being to his earthly interests, to liberty of thought and joy in life, and in- sisted that we could safely leave heaven to take care of itself. Hu- manism — had not Prometheus been the earliest humanist, and was he not identical with the Satan hymned by Carducci? Ah, if the cousins had only heard that arch-enemy of the Church, at Bologna, pouring the vials of his sarcasm upon the Christian sentimentalism of the Romanticismo! Upon Manzoni’s lnni Sacri! Upon the shadows-and-moonlight poetry of the romantic movement, which he had compared to “ Luna, Heaven’s pallid nun ”! Per Bacco , that was a joy to listen to! And they ought to have heard Carducci interpret Dante, celebrating him as the citizen of a great city- state, who had spoken out against asceticism and the negation of life, and on the side of the world-transforming and reforming deed! It was not the sickly and mystagogic figure of Beatrice which the poet had celebrated under the name of “ donna gentile e pietosa rather it had been his wife, who represented in the poem the principle of worldly knowledge and practical work- aday life. Thus Hans Castorp came to hear something about Dante, and certainly from the lips of authority. He was not too much in- clined to believe implicitly all Settembrini said; he considered him too much of a windbag for that. Still it was an interesting con- ception, this of Dante as the wide-awake citizen of a great metrop- MOUNTING MISGIVINGS *59 olis. And now Settembrini went on to speak of himself, and to explain how the tendencies of his immediate forbears, the political from his grandfather, the humanistic from his father, had united in his own person to produce the writer and independent man of letters. For literature was after all nothing else than the combina- tion of humanism and politics; a conjunction the more immediate in that humanism itself was politics and politics humanism. Hans Castorp did his best at this point to listen and comprehend, in the hope of finally learning wherein had consisted the crass ignorance of Magnus the brewer, and finding out what else literature actually was, above and beyond “ beautiful characters.” Settembrini asked his audience whether they had ever heard of Brunetto, Brunetto Latini, a Florentine notary, who about the year 1250 had written a book on the subject of the virtues and the vices. He it was who had sharpened the wits of the Florentines, taught them the art of language, and how to guide their state according to the rules of politics. “ There you have it, gentlemen, there you have it! ” Settem- brini cried with ardour, and enlarged upon the cult of the “ word,” the art of eloquence, which he called the triumph of the human genius. For the word was the glory of mankind, it alone imparted dignity to life. Not only was humanism bound up with the word, and with literature, but so also was humanity itself, man’s ancient dignity and manly self-respect (“ You heard, didn’t you,” Hans Castorp said later to his cousin, “ you heard him say that literature is a question of beautiful words? I spotted it directly”), from which it followed that politics too is bound up with the word. Or, rather, it followed directly from the union, the unity that sub- sisted between humanity and literature, for the beautiful word begets the beautiful deed. “ Two hundred years ago,” Settembrini said, “ you had a poet in your country, a magnificent old chatterbox who set great store by good handwriting because he thought it must induce a good style. He should have gone a step further and said that a good style would lead to good deeds,” Settembrini added. For writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dig- nity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics. Yes, they were all one, one and the same force, one and the same idea, and all of them could be comprehended in one single word. This word? Ah, it was already familiar to their ears; yet he would wager the cousins had never before rightly grasped its meaning i6o THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN and its majesty: the word was — civilization! And as Settembrini brought it out, he flung his small, yellow-skinned right hand in the air, as though proposing a toast. Well, all that young Hans Castorp found worth listening to; not precisely overwhelming, of a value largely experimental, but still worth listening to. He said as much to Joachim Ziemssen later; but Joachim had his thermometer in his mouth and could not reply to his cousin; nor had he afterwards leisure, when, on taking it out, he read the figure and entered it in his note-book. But Hans Ca- storp good-naturedly took cognizance of Settembrini’s point of view and tested by it his own inner experiences; from which self- examination it principally appeared that the waking man has an advantage over the sleeping and dreaming one. For whereas the sleeping Hans Castorp had more than once upbraided the organ- grinder to his face and done his utmost to drive him away because he felt him a disturbing influence, the waking one lent him an at- tentive ear and made an honest effort to minimize the opposition which his mentor’s ideas and conceptions persistently aroused in him. For it cannot be denied that there was such opposition; some of it such as he must always have felt from the very beginning, the rest arising from the particular situation and his partly vicarious, partly secret and personal experiences among “ those up here.” What a creature is man, how idly his conscience betrays him! How easy it is for him to think he hears, even in the voice of duty, a licence to passion! Hans Castorp listened to Herr Settembrini out of a sense of duty and fairness, in the idea of hearing both sides; with the best of intentions he tested the latter’s views on the sub- ject of the republic, reason and the hello stile. He was entirely receptive. And all the while he was finding it more and more per- missible to give his thoughts and dreams free rein in another and quite opposite direction. Indeed, to give expression to all that we suspect or divine, we think it not unlikely that Hans Castorp hearkened to Herr Settembrini’s discourse in order to get from his own conscience an indulgence which otherwise might not have been forthcoming. But what — or who — was it that drew down the other side of the scales, when weighed over against patriotism-, belles-lettres, and the dignity of man? It was — Clavdia Chauchat, “ Kirghiz ’’-eyed, “ relaxed,” and tainted within; when he thought of her (though thinking is far too tame a word to characterize the impulse that turned all his being in her direction), it was as though he were sitting again in his boat on the lake in Holstein, looking with dazzled eyes from the glassy daylight of the western shore to the mist and moonbeams that wrapped the eastern heavens. THE THERMOMETER 161 The Thermometer Hans Castorp’s week here ran from Tuesday to Tuesday, for on a Tuesday he had arrived. Two or three days before, he had gone down to the office and paid his second weekly bill, a modest ac- count of a round one hundred and sixty francs, modest and cheap enough, even without taking into consideration the nature of some of the advantages of a stay up here — advantages priceless in them- selves, though for that very reason they could not be included in the bill — and even without counting extras like the fortnightly concert and Dr. Krokowski’s lectures, which might conceivably have been included. The sum of one hundred and sixty francs represented simply and solely the actual hospitality extended by the Berghof to Hans Castorp: his comfortable lodgment and his five stupendous meals. “ It isn’t much, it is rather cheap than otherwise,” remarked the guest to the old inhabitant. “ You cannot complain of being over- charged up here. You need a round six hundred and fifty francs a month for board and lodging, treatment included. Let us assume that you spend another thirty francs for tips, if you are decent and like to have friendly faces about you. That makes six hundred and eighty. Good. Of course I know there are fixed fees and other sorts of small expenses: toilet articles, tobacco, drives, and excursions, now and then a bill for shoes or clothing. Very good. But all that won’t bring it up to a thousand francs, say what you like. Not eight hundred even. That isn’t ten thousand francs a year. Cer- tainly not more. That is what it costs you.” “ Mental arithmetic very fair,” Joachim said. “ I never knew you were such a shot at doing sums in your head. And how broad- minded of you to calculate it by the year like that! You’ve learned something since you’ve been up here. But your figure is too high. I don’t smoke, and I certainly don’t expect to buy any suits while I am here, thank you.” “ Then it would be lower still,” Hans Castorp answered, rather confused. Why, indeed, he should have included tobacco and a new wardrobe in his calculation of Joachim’s expenses is a puzzle. But for the rest, his brilliant display of arithmetic had simply been so much dust thrown in his cousin’s eyes; for here, as elsewhere, his mental processes were rather slow than fast, and the truth is that a previous calculation with pencil and paper underlay his pres- ent facility. One night on his balcony (for he even took the eve- ning cure out of doors now, like the rest) a sudden thought had struck him and he had got out of his comfortable chair to fetch THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN l62 pencil and paper. As the result of some simple figuring, he con- cluded that his cousin — or, speaking generally, a patient at the Berghof — would need twelve thousand francs a year to cover the sum total of his expenses. Thus he amused himself by establishing the fact that he, Hans Castorp, could amply afford to live up here, if he chose, being a man of eighteen or nineteen thousand francs yearly income. He had, as we have said, paid his second weekly bill three days before, and accordingly found himself in the middle of the third and last week of his appointed stay. The coming Sunday, as he re- marked to himself and to his cousin, would see the performance of another of the fortnightly concerts, and the Monday another lecture by Dr. Krokowski; then, on Tuesday or Wednesday, he would be off, and Joachim would be left up here alone — poor Joachim, for whom Rhadamanthus would prescribe God knew how many more months! Already there came a shade over his f entle black eyes whenever Hans Castorp’s swiftly approaching eparture was spoken of. Where, in Heaven’s name, had the holi- day gone? It had rushed past, it had flown — and left one wonder- ing how. For, after all, three weeks, twenty-one days, is a con- siderable stretch of time, too long, at least, for one to see the end at the beginning. And now, on a sudden, there remained of it no more than a miserable three or four days, nothing worth mention- ing. They would, it was true, comprehend the lecture and the con- cert, those two recurrent variations in the weekly programme, and, thus weighted, might move a little more slowly. But on the other hand, they would be taken up with packing and leave-tak- ing. Three weeks up here was as good as nothing at all; they had all told him so in the beginning. The smallest unit of time was the month, Settembrini had said; and as Hans Castorp’s stay was less than that, it amounted to nothing; it was a “ week-end visit,” as Hofrat Behrens put it. Had the swift flight of time up here any- thing to do with the uniformly accelerated rate of organic com- bustion? At any rate, here was a consoling thought for Joachim during his five remaining months — in case he really got off with five. But Hans Castorp felt that during these three weeks they ought to have paid more attention, to have kept better watch, as Joachim did in his daily measurings, during which the seven min- utes seemed like a quite considerable stretch of time. Hans Castorp grieved for his cousin, reading in his eyes his pain at the approach- ing parting. He felt the strongest possible sympathy at the thought of the poor chap’s having to stop on up here when he himself was down in the flat-land, helping bring the nations together through THE THERMOMETER 163 the development of commerce and communications. His own re- gret was at times so lively as to burn in his breast and cause him to doubt whether he would have the heart, when the time came, to leave Joachim alone; and this vicarious suffering was probably the reason why he himself referred less and less to his impending departure. It was Joachim who came back to it; for Hans Castorp, moved by native tact and delicacy, seemed to wish to forget it up to the last moment. “ At least,” Joachim said more than once in these days, “ let us hope it has done you good to be up here, and that you will feel the benefit when you are at home again.” “ I’ll remember you to everybody,” Hans Castorp responded, “ and say you are coming back in five months at the outside. Done me good? If it has done me good to be up here? I should like to think so; some improvement must surely have taken place, even in this short time. I have received a great many new impressions, new in every sense of the word; very stimulating, but a good deal of strain too, physically and mentally. I have not at all the feel- ing of having really got acclimatized — which would certainly be the first necessary step toward improvement. Maria, thank good- ness, is her old self; for several days now, I have been able to get the aroma. But my handkerchief still becomes red from time to time when I use it — and this damned heat in my face, and these idiotic palpitations, I shall apparently have them up to the last minute. No, it seems I can’t talk about being acclimatized — how could I, either, in so short a time? It would take longer than this to overcome the change of atmosphere and adjust oneself perfectly to the unusual conditions, so that a real recovery could begin and I should commence to put on flesh. It is too bad. It was certainly a mistake not to have given myself more time — for of course I could have had it. I have the feeling that once I am at home again I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I’ve had! That shows you how tired I sometimes feel. And now, to cap the climax, I get this catarrh — ” It looked, in fact, as though Hans Castorp would return home in possession of a first-class cold. He had caught it, probably, in the rest-cure, and, again probably, in the evening rest-cure — which for almost a week now he had been taking in the balcony, despite the long spell of cold, wet weather. He was aware that weather of this kind was not recognized as bad; such a conception hardly existed up here, where the most inclement conceivable went unheeded and had no terrors for anyone. With the easy adaptability of youth, which suits itself to any environment, Hans THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 164 Castorp had begun to imitate this indifference. It might rain in bucketfuls, but the air was not supposed to be the more damp for that — nor was it, in all probability, for the dry heat in the face persisted, as though after drinking wine, or sitting in an over- heated room. And however cold it got, the radiators were never heated unless it snowed, so it was of no avail to take refuge in one’s chamber, since it was quite as comfortable on the balcony, when one lay in one’s excellent chair, wrapped in a paletot and two good camel’s-hair rugs put on according to the ritual. As comfortable? It was incomparably more so. It was, in Hans Castorp’s reasoned judgment, a state of life which more appealed to him than any in all his previous experience, so far as he could remember. He did not propose to be shaken in this view for any carbonaro or quill-driver in existence, no matter how many malicious and equivocal jokes he made on the subject of the “ horizontal.” Especially he liked it in the evening, when with his little lamp on the stand beside him and his long-lost and now restored Maria alight between his lips he enjoyed the ineffable excellencies of his reclining-chair. True, his nose felt frozen, and the hands that held his book — he was still reading Ocean Steamships — were red and cramped from the cold. He looked through the arch of his loggia over the darkening val- ley, jewelled with clustered or scattering lights, and listened to the music that drifted up nearly every evening for almost an hour. There was a concert below, and he could hear, pleasantly subdued by the distance, familiar operatic selections, snatches from Carmen, II Trovatore , Freischiitz; or well-built, facile waltzes, marches so spirited that he could not help keeping time with his head, and c^ay mazurkas. Mazurka? No, Marusja was her name, Marusja of the little ruby. And in the next loggia, behind the thick wall of milky glass, lay Joachim, with whom Hans Castorp exchanged a word now and then, low-toned, out of consideration for the other hori- zontallers. Joachim was as well off in his loggia as Hans Castorp in his, though, being entirely unmusical, he could not take the same pleasure in the concerts. Too bad! He was probably study- ing his Russian primer instead. But Hans Castorp let Ocean Steam- ships fall on the coverlet and gave himself up to the music; he con- templated with such inward gratification the translucent depth of a muscial invention full of individuality and charm that he thought with nothing but hostility of Settembrini and the irritating things he had said about music — that it was politically suspect was the worst, and little better than the remark of Grandfather Giuseppe about the July Revolution and the six days of creation. Joachim, though he could not partake of Hans Castorp’s pleas- THE THERMOMETER 165 ure in the music, nor the pungent gratification purveyed by Maria, lay as snugly ensconced as his cousin. The day was at an end. For the time everything was at an end; there would be no more emo- tional alarums, no more strain on the heart-muscles. But equally there was the assurance that to-morrow it would begin all over again, all the favouring probabilities afforded by propinquity and the household regimen. And this pleasing combination of snug- ness and confident hope, together with the music and the restored charms of Maria, made the evening cure a state almost amounting to beatification for young Hans Castorp. All which had not prevented the guest and novice from catch- ing a magnificent cold, either in the evening rest-cure or else- where. He felt the onset of catarrh, with oppression in the frontal sinus, and inflamed uvula; he could not breathe easily through the passage provided by nature; the air struck cold and painfully as it struggled through, and caused constant coughing. His voice took on overnight the tonal quality of a hollow bass the worse for strong drink. According to him, he had not closed an eye, his parched throat making him start up every five minutes from his pillow. “ Very vexatious,” Joachim said, “ and most unfortunate. Colds, you know, are not the thing at all, up here; they are not regus . The authorities don’t admit their existence; the official attitude is that the dryness of the air entirely prevents them. If you were a patient, you would certainly fall foul of Behrens, if you went to him and said you had a cold. But it is a little different with a guest, — you have a right to have a cold if you want to. It would be good if we could check the catarrh. There are things to do, down below, but here — I doubt if anyone would take enough interest in it. It is not advisable to fall ill up here; you aren’t taken any notice of. It’s an old story — but you are coming to hear it at the end. When I was new up here, there was a lady who complained of her ear for a whole week and told everybody how she suffered. Behrens finally looked at it. ‘ Make yourself quite easy, madame,’ he said; ‘ it is not tubercular.’ That was an end of the matter! Well, we must see what can be done. I will speak to the bathing- master early to-morrow morning, when he comes to my room. Then it will go through the regular channels, and perhaps some- thing will come of it.” Thus Joachim; and the regular channels proved reliable. On Friday, after Hans Castorp returned from the morning round, there was a knock at his door, and he was vouchsafed the pleasure of personal acquaintance with Fraulein von Mylendonk — Frau THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 1 66 Director, as she was called. Up to now he had seen this over-occu- pied person only from a distance, crossing the corridor from one patient’s room to another, or when she had popped up for a mo- ment in the dining-room and he had been aware of her raucous voice. But now he himself was the object of her visit. His catarrh had fetched her. She knocked a short, bony knock, entered almost before he had said come in, and then, upon the threshold, bent round to make sure of the number of the room. “ Thirty-four,” she croaked briskly. “ Right. Well, young ’un, cm me dit , que vous avez pris froid. Wy , kas chets ja , prostudilis ] , Lei e raffreddato , I hear you have caught a cold. What language do you speak? Oh, I see, you are young Ziemssen’s guest. I am due in the operating-room. Somebody there to be chloroformed, and he has just been eating bean salad. I have to have my eyes every- where. Well, young ’un, so you have a cold? ” Hans Castorp was taken aback by this mode of address, in the mouth of a dame of ancient lineage. In her rapid speech she slurred over her words, all the time restlessly moving her head about with a circular action, the nose sniffingly in the air — the motion of a caged beast of prey. Her freckled right hand, loosely closed with the thumb uppermost, she held in front of her and waved it to and fro on the wrist, as though to say: “ Come, make haste, don’t at- tend to what I say, but say what you have to and let me be off! ” She was in the forties, of stunted growth, without form or comeli- ness, clad in a belted pinaforish garment of clinical white, with a garnet cross on her breast. Sparse, reddish hair showed beneath the white coif of her profession; her eyes were a waterly blue, with inflamed lids, and one of them, as a finishing touch, had a stye in a well-advanced stage of development in the corner. Their glance was unsteady and flickering. Her nose was turned up, her mouth like a frog’s, and furnished to boot with a wry and protruding lower lip, which she used like a shovel to get her words out. Hans Castorp looked at her, and all the modest and confiding friendli- ness native to him spoke in his eyes. “ What sort of cold is it, eh? ” repeated the Directress. She seemed to try to concentrate her gaze and make it penetrate; but it slipped aside. “We don’t care for such colds. Are you subject to them? Your cousin has been too, hasn’t he? How old are you? Twenty-four? Yes, it’s the age. And so you come up here and get a cold? There ought not to be any talk about colds up here; that sort of twaddle belongs down below.” It was fearsome to see how she shovelled out this word with her lower lip. “ You have a beau- tiful bronchial catarrh, that is plain — ” again she made that curious THE THERMOMETER 167 effort to pierce him with her gaze, and again she could not hold it steady. “ But catarrhs are not caused by cold; they come from an infection, which one takes from being in a receptive state. So the question is, are we dealing with a harmless infection or with something more serious? Everything else is twaddle. It is possible that your receptivity inclines to the harmless kind,” she went on, and looked at him with her over-ripe stye, he knew not how. “ Here, I will give you a simple antiseptic — it may do you good,” and she took a small packet out of the leather bag that hung from her girdle. It was formamint. “ But you look flushed — as though you had fever.” She never stopped trying to fix him with her gaze, and always the eyes glided off to one side. “ Have you measured? ” He answered in the negative. “ Why not? ” she asked, and her protruding lower lip hung in the air after she spoke. He made no answer. The poor youth was still young; he had never got over his schoolboy shyness. He sat, so to speak, on his bench, did not know the answer and took refuge in dumbness. “ Perhaps you never do take your temperature? ” “ Oh, yes, Frau Director, when I have fever.” “ My dear child, one takes it in the first instance to see whether one has fever. According to you, you have none now? ” “ I can’t tell, Frau Director. I cannot really tell the difference. Ever since I came up here, I have been a little hot and shivery.” “ Aha! And where is your thermometer? ” “ I haven’t one with me, Frau Director. Why should I, I am not ill; I am only up here on a visit.” “ Rubbish! Did you send for me because you weren’t ill? ” “ No,” he laughed politely, “ it was because I caught a little “ Cold. We’ve often seen such colds. Here, young ’un,” she said, and rummaged again in her bag. She brought out two longish leather cases, one red and one black, and put them on the table. “ This one is three francs fifty, the other five. The five- franc one is better, of course. It will last you a lifetime if you take care of it.” Smiling he took up the red case and opened it. The glass instru- ment lay like a jewel within, fitted neatly into its red velvet groove. The degrees were marked by red strokes, the tenths by black ones; the figures were in red and the tapering end was full of glittering quicksilver. The column stood below blood-heat. Hans Castorp knew what was due to himself and his upbring- THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 1 68 ing. “ I will take this one,” he said, not even looking at the other. “ The one at five francs. May I — ” “ Then that’s settled,” croaked the Directress. “ I see you don’t niggle over important purchases. No hurry, it will come on the bill. Give him to me. We’ll drive him right down — ” She took the thermometer out of his hand and plunged it several times through the air, until the mercury stood below 95 °. He’ll soon climb up again! ” she said. “ Here is your new acquisition. You know how we do it up here? Straight under the tongue, seven minutes, four times a day, and shut the lips well over it. Well, young ’un, I must get on. Good luck! ” And she was out at the door. Hans Castorp bowed her out, then stood by the table, staring from the door through which she had disappeared to the instru- ment she had left behind. “ So that,” he thought, “ was Directress von Mylendonk. Settembrini doesn’t care for her, and certainly she has her unpleasant side. The stye isn’t pretty — but of course she does not have it all the time. But why does she call me ‘ young ’un,’ like that? Rather rude and familiar, seems to me. So she has sold me a thermometer — I suppose she always has one or two in her pocket. They are to be had everywhere here, Joachim said, even in shops where you would least expect it. But I didn’t need to take the trouble to buy it; it just fell into my lap.” He took the article out of its case, looked at it, and walked restlessly up and down the room. His heart beat strong and rapidly. He looked toward the open balcony door, and considered seeking counsel of Joachim, but thought better of it and paused again by the table. He cleared his throat by way of testing his voice; then he coughed. “ Yes,” he said. “ I must see if I have the fever that goes with the cold.” Quickly he put the thermometer in his mouth, the mer- cury beneath the tongue, so that the instrument stuck slantingly upwards from his lips. He closed them firmly, that no air might get in. Then he looked at his wrist-watch. It was six minutes after the half-hour. And he began to wait for the seven minutes to pass. “ Not a second too long,” he thought, “ and not one too short. They can depend on me, in both directions. They needn’t give me a ‘ silent sister,’ like that Ottilie Kneifer Settembrini told us of.” He walked about, pressing down the thermometer with his tongue. The time crept on; the term seemed unending. When he looked at his watch, two and a half minutes had passed — and he had feared the seven minutes were already more than up. He did a thousand things: picked up objects about the room and set them down again, walked out on the balcony — taking care that his cousin THE THERMOMETER 169 should not notice his presence — and looked at the landscape of this high valley, now so familiar to him in all its phases; with its horns, its crests and walls, with the projecting wing of the “ Brem- biihl,” the ridge of which sloped steeply down to the valley, its flanks covered with rugged undergrowth, with its formations on the right side of the valley, whose names were no less familiar than the others, and the Alteinwand, which from this point appeared to close in the valley on the south. He looked down on the garden beds and paths, the grotto and the silver fir; he listened to the mur- mur that rose from the rest-hall; and he returned to his room, settling the thermometer under his tongue. Then, with a motion of the arm which drew away the sleeve from his wrist, he brought the forearm before his eyes and found that by dint of pushing and shoving, pulling and hauling, he had managed to get rid of full six minutes. The last one he spent standing in the middle of the room — but then, unfortunately, he let his thoughts wander and fell into a “ doze,” so that the sixty seconds flew by on the wings of the wind; and, when he looked again, the eighth minute was already past its first quarter. “ It doesn’t really matter, so far as the result is concerned,” he thought, and tearing the instrument out of his mouth, he stared at it in confusion. He was not immediately the wiser. The gleam of the quick- silver fell with the reflection of the glass case where the light struck it, and he could not tell whether the mercury had ascended the whole length of the column, or whether it was not there at all. He brought the instrument close to his eyes, turned it hither and thither — all to no purpose. But at last a lucky turn gave him a clearer view; he hastily arrested his hand and brought his intelli- gence to bear. Mercurius, in fact, had climbed up again, just as the Frau Directress said. The column was perceptibly lengthened; it stood several of the black strokes above normal. Hans Castorp had 99.6°. Ninety-nine and six tenths degrees in broad daylight, between ten and half past in the morning. That was too much; it was “ tem- perature.” It was fever consequent on an infection, for which his system had been eager. The question was now, what kind of in- fection? 99.6° — why, Joachim had no more, nor anyone else up here, except the moribund and bedridden. Not Fraulein Kleefeld with her pneumothorax, nor — nor Madame Chauchat. Naturally, in his case it was not the same kind, certainly not; he had what would have been called at home a feverish cold. But the distinction was not such a simple one to make. Hans Castorp doubted whether the fever had only come on when the cold did, and he regretted THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 170 not having consulted a thermometer at the outset, when the Hofrat suggested it. He could see now that this had been very reasonable advice; Settembrini had been wrong to sneer at it as he had — Set- tembrini, with his republic and his bello stile . Hans Castorp loathed and contemned the republic and the bello stile as he stood there consulting his thermometer; he kept on losing the mark and turn- ing the instrument this way and that to find it again. Yes, it regis- tered 99.6° — and this in the early part of the day! He was thoroughly upset. He walked the length of the room twice or thrice, the thermometer held horizontally in his hand, so as not to jiggle it and make it read differently. Then he carefully deposited it on the wash-hand-stand, and went with his overcoat and rugs into the balcony. Sitting down, he threw the covers about him, with practised hand, first from one side, then from the other, and lay still, waiting until it should be time for Joachim to fetch him for second breakfast. Now and then he smiled — it was pre- cisely as though he smiled at somebody. And now and then his breast heaved as he caught his breath and was seized with his bronchial cough. Joachim found him still lying when he entered at eleven o’clock, at sound of the gong for second breakfast. “ Well? ” he asked in surprise, coming up to his cousin’s chair. Hans Castorp sat awhile without answering, looking in front of him. Then he said: “ Well, the latest is that I have some fever.” “ What do you mean? ” Joachim asked. “ Do you feel fever- ish? ” Again Hans Castorp let him wait a little for the answer, then delivered himself airily as follows: “ Feverish, my dear fellow, I have felt for a long time — all the time I have been up here, in fact. But at the moment it is not a matter of subjective emo- tion, but of fact. I have taken my temperature.” “ You’ve taken your temperature? What with? ” Joachim cried, startled. “ With a thermometer, naturally,” answered Hans Castorp, not without a caustic tinge to his voice. “ Frau Director sold me one. Why she should call me young ’un I can’t imagine. It is distinctly not comrne il faut . But she lost no time in selling me an excellent thermometer; if you would like to convince yourself, you can; it is there on the wash-hand-stand. It is only slight fever.” Joachim turned on his heel and went into the bedroom. When he came back, he said hesitatingly: “ Yes, it is 99 .5% °.” “ Then it has gone down a little,” his cousin responded hastily. “ It was six.” THE THERMOMETER 171 “ But you can’t call that slight fever,” Joachim said. “ Certainly not for the forenoon. This is a pretty how-d’ye-do! ” And he stood by his cousin’s side as one stands before a how-d’ye-do, arms akimbo and head dropped. “ You’ll have to go to bed.” Hans Castorp had his answer ready. “ I can’t see,” he remarked, “ why I should go to bed with a temperature of 99.6° when the rest of you, who haven’t any less, can run about as you like.” “ But that is different,” Joachim said. “ Your fever is acute and harmless, the result of a cold.” “ In the first place,” said Hans Castorp, speaking with dignity and dividing his remarks into categories, “ I cannot comprehend why, with a harmless fever — assuming for the moment, that there is such a thing — one must keep one’s bed, while with one that is not harmless you needn’t. And secondly, I tell you the fever has not made me hotter than I was before. My position is that 99.6° is 99.6°. If you can run about with it, so can I.” “ But I had to lie for four weeks when I first came,” objected Joachim, “ and they only let me get up when it was clear that the fever persisted even after I had lain in bed.” Hans Castorp smiled. “ Well, and — ? ” he asked. “ I thought it was different with you. It seems to me you are contradicting your- self; first you say our cases are different; then you say they are alike. That seems sheer twaddle to me.” Joachim made a right-about turn. When he turned round again, his sun-tanned visage showed an even darker shade. “ No,” he said, “ I am not saying they are alike; you’re getting muddled. I only mean that you’ve a very nasty cold. I can hear it in your voice, and you ought to go to bed, to cut it short, if you mean to go home next week. But if you don’t want to — I mean go to bed — why, don’t. I am not prescribing for you. Any- how, let’s go to breakfast. Make haste, we are late already.” “ Right-oh! ” said Hans Castorp, and flung off his covers. He went into his room to run the brush over his hair, and Joachim looked again at the thermometer on the wash-hand-stand. Hans Castorp watched him. They went down, silently, and took their places in the dining-room, which, as always at this hour, shim- mered white with milk. The dwarf waitress brought Hans Castorp his Kulmbacher beer, as usual, but he put on a long face and waved it away. He would drink no beer to-day; he would drink nothing at all, or at most a swallow of water. The attention of his table-mates was attracted; they wanted to know the cause of his caprice. Hans Castorp said carelessly that he had a little fever — really minimal: 99.6°. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 172 Then how altogether ludicrous it was to see them! They shook their fingers at him, they winked maliciously, they put their heads on one side, crooked their forefingers beside their ears and wag- gled them in a pantomime suggestive of their delight at having found him out, who had played the innocent so long. “ Aha,” said the schoolmistress, the flush mounting in her an- cient cheek, “ what sort of scandal is this? ” And “ Aha, aha! ” went Frau Stohr too, holding her stumpy finger next her stumpy nose. “ So our respected guest has some temperament too! Foxy-loxy is in the same boat with the rest of us after all! ” Even the great-aunt, when the news travelled up to her end of the table, gave him a meaningful glance and smile; pretty Ma- rusja, who had barely looked at him up to now, leaned over and stared, with her round brown eyes, her handkerchief to her lips — and shook her finger too. Frau Stohr whispered the news to Dr. Blumenkohl, who could hardly do otherwise than join in the game, though without looking at Hans Castorp. Only Miss Robin- son sat as she always did and took no share in what was going on. Joachim kept his eyes on the table-cloth. It flattered Hans Castorp’s vanity to be taken so much notice of; but he felt that modesty required him to disclaim their atten- tions. “ No, no,” he said. “ You are all mistaken, my fever is the most harmless thing in the world; I simply have a cold, my eyes run, and my chest is stopped up. I have coughed half the night; it is thoroughly unpleasant of course.” — But they would not listen; they laughed and flapped their hands at him. “ Yes, of course, we know all about it — we know these colds; they are all gammon — you can’t fool us! ” and with one accord they challenged Hans Castorp to an examination on the spot. The news excited them. Throughout the meal their table was the liveli- est among the seven. Frau Stohr became almost hysterical. Her peevish face looked scarlet above her neck-ruche, and tiny pur- ple veins showed in the cheeks. She began to talk about how fascinating it was to cough. It was a solid satisfaction, when you felt a tickling come in your chest, deep down, and grow and grow, to reach down after it, and get at it, so to say. Sneezing was much the same thing. You kept on wanting to sneeze until you simply couldn’t stand it any longer; you looked as if you were tipsy; you drew a couple of breaths; then out it came, and you forgot everything else in the bliss of the sensation. Sometimes the ex- plosion repeated itself two or three times. That was the sort of THE THERMOMETER pleasure life gave you free of charge. Another one was the joy of scratching your chilblains in the spring, when they itched so gorgeously; you took a furious pleasure in scratching till the blood came; and if you happened to look in the glass you would be astonished to see the ghastly face you made. The coarse creature regaled the table with these repulsive de- tails throughout the brief but hearty meal. When it was over, the cousins walked down to the Platz; Joachim seemed preoccupied; Hans Castorp was in an agony of snuffles and cleared his rasping throat continually. On the way home Joachim said: “I’ll make you a suggestion. To-morrow, after midday meal, I have my regular monthly ex- amination. It is not the general; Behrens just auscultates a little and has Krokowski make some notes. You might come along and ask them to listen to you a bit. It is too absurd — if you were at home, you would send for Heidekind, and up here, with two specialists in the house, you run about and don’t know where you are, nor how serious it is, and if it would not be better for you to go to bed.” “ Very good,” said Hans Castorp. “ It’s as you say, of course. I can do that. And it will be interesting to see an examination.” Thus it was settled between them, and it fell out that as they arrived before the sanatorium, they met the Hofrat himself, and took the occasion to put their request at once. Behrens came out of the vestibule, tall and stooped, a bowler hat on the back of his head, a cigar in his mouth; purple-cheeked, watery-eyed, in the full flow of his professional activities. He had just come from the operating-room, so he said, and was on his way to private practice in the village. “ Morning, gentlemen, morning,” he said. “ Always on the jump, eh? How’s everything in the big world? I’ve just come from an unequal duel with saw and scalpel — great thing, you know, resection of ribs. Fifty per cent of the cases used to be left on the table. Nowadays we have it down finer than that; but even so it’s a good plan to get the mortis causa fixed up beforehand. The chap to-day knew how to take the joke — put up a good fight for a minute or so. — Crazy thing, a human thorax that’s all gone; pulpy, you know, nothing to catch hold of — slight confusion of ideas, so to speak. Well, well — and how are your constitutionalities? Sanctified metabolisms functioning O.K., doing their duty in the sight of the Lord? The walks go better in company, Ziemssen, old fellow, what? Hello, what are THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN *74 you crying about, Mr. Tripper? ” He suddenly turned on Hans Castorp. “ It’s against the rules to cry in public — they might all start! ” “It’s only my cold, Herr Hofrat,” answered Hans Castorp. “ I don’t know how I did it, but I’ve a simply priceless catarrh. It’s right down on my chest, and I cough a good deal too.” “Indeed! ” Behrens remarked. “You ought to consult a re- liable physician.” Both cousins laughed, and Joachim answered, heels together: “We were just going to, Herr Hofrat. I have my examination to-morrow, and we wanted to ask if you would be so kind as to look my cousin over as well. The question is whether he will be well enough to travel on Tuesday.” “ A. Y. S.,” said Behrens. “ At your service. With all the pleas- ure in life. Ought to have done it long ago. Once you are up here, why not? But one doesn’t like to seem forth-putting. Very good then, to-morrow at two — directly after grub.” “ I have a little fever too.” Hans Castorp further observed. “You don’t say! ” Behrens cried out. “I suppose you think you are telling me news? Do you think I’ve no eyes in my head? ” He pointed with his great index finger to his goggling, bloodshot, watery eyes. “ Well, and how much? ” Hans Castorp modestly mentioned the figure. “ Forenoon, eh? H’m, that’s not so bad. Not bad at all, for a beginner — shows talent. Very good then, the two of you, to- morrow at two. Very much honoured. Well, so long — enjoy yourselves! ” He paddled away downhill, his knees bent, leaving a long streamer of cigar smoke behind him. “ Well, that came out just as you wanted it to,” Hans Castorp said. “ We couldn’t have struck it luckier, and now I am in for it. He won’t be able to do much, of course — he may prescribe some sort of pectoral syrup or some cough lozenges. How- ever, it is good to have a little encouragement when you feel the way I do. But for heaven’s sake what makes him rattle on so? It struck me as funny at first, but in the long run I can’t say I like it. ‘ Sanctified metabolism ’ — what sort of gibberish is that? If I understand what he means by metabolism, it is nothing but physiology, and to talk about its being sanctified — irreverent, I call it. I don’t enjoy seeing him smoke, either; it distresses me, because I know it is not good for him and gives him melan- cholia. Settembrini said his joviality is forced, and one must admit that Settembrini has his own views and knows whereof he speaks. I probably ought to have more opinions of my own. THE THERMOMETER l 75 as he says, and not take everything as it comes, the way I do. But sometimes one starts out with having an opinion and feeling right- eous indignation and all that, and then something comes up that has nothing to do with judgments and criticism, and then it is all up with your severity, and you feel disgusted with the republic and the bello stile — ” He rambled on incoherently, not clear himself as to what he wanted to say. His cousin merely gave him a side glance, then turned away with an ctu revoir , and each betook him to his own balcony. “ How much? ” asked Joachim softly, after a while — as though he had seen Hans Castorp consult his thermometer. And the latter answered indifferently: “ Nothing new.” He had in fact, directly he entered, taken up his new acquisi- tion from the wash-hand-stand and plunged it repeatedly through the air, to obliterate the morning’s record. Then he went into the balcony with the glass cigar in his mouth, like an old hand. But contrary to some rather exaggerated expectations, Mercurius climbed no further than before — though Hans Castorp kept the instrument under his tongue eight minutes for good measure. But after all, 99.6° was unquestionably fever, even though no higher than the earlier record. In the afternoon the gleaming col- umn mounted up as far as 99.7 °, but declined to 99.5 0 by evening, when the patient was weary with the excitement of the day. Next morning it showed 99.6°, climbing during the morning to the same level as before. And so arrived the hour for the main meal of the day, bringing the examination in its wake. Hans Castorp later recalled that Madame Chauchat was wear- ing that day a golden-yellow sweater, with large buttons and em- broidered pockets. It was a new sweater, at least new to Hans Castorp, and when she made her entrance, tardily as usual, she had paused an instant and, in the way he knew so well, presented herself to the room. Then she had glided to her place at the table, slipped softly into it, and begun to eat and chatter to her table- mates. All this was as it happened every day, five times a day; Hans Castorp observed it as usual, or perhaps even more poign- antly than usual, looking over at the “ good ” Russian table past Settembrini’s back, as he sat at the crosswise table between. He saw the turn of her head in conversation, the rounded neck, the stooping back. Frau Chauchat, for her part, never once turned round during the whole meal. But when the sweet had been handed, and the great clock on the wall above the “ bad ” Russian table struck two, it actually happened, to Hans Castorp’s amaze- THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 176 ment and mystification, that precisely as the hour struck, one, two, the fair patient turned her head and a little twisted her body and looked over her shoulder quite openly and pointedly at Hans Castorp’s table. And not only at his table. No, she looked at himself, unmistakably and personally, with a smile about the closed lips and the narrow, Pribislav eyes, as though to say: “ Well, it is time: are you going? ” And the eyes said thou, for that is the language of the eyes, even when the tongue uses a more formal address. This episode shook and bewildered Hans Castorp to the depths of his being. He hardly trusted his senses, and at first gazed enraptured in Frau Chauchat’s face, then, lifting his eyes, stared into vacancy over the top of her head. Was it possible she knew he was to be examined at two o’clock? It looked like it; but that was as impossible as that she should be aware of the thought that had visited his mind in the last minute; namely, that he might as well send word to the Hofrat, through Joachim, that his cold was better, and he considered an examination superfluous. This idea had presented itself to him in an advantageous light, but now withered away under that searching smile, transmuted into a hideous sense of futility. The second after, Joachim had laid his rolled-up serviette beside his plate, signalled to his cousin by raising his eyebrows, and with a bow to the company risen from the table. Whereat Hans Castorp, inwardly reeling, though out- wardly firm in step and bearing, rose too, and feeling that look and smile upon his back, followed Cousin Joachim out of the room. Since the previous morning they had not spoken of what lay before them, and silently now they moved down the corridor to- gether. Joachim hastened his steps, for it was already past the appointed hour, and Hofrat Behrens laid stress on punctuality. They passed the door of the office and went down the clean linoleum-covered stairs to the “ basement.” Joachim knocked at the door facing them; it bore a porcelain shield with the word Consulting-room. “ Come in,” called Behrens, stressing the first word. He was standing in the middle of the room, in his white smock, holding the black stethoscope in his hand and tapping his thigh with it. “ Tempo , tempo ” said he, directing his goggling gaze to the clock on the wall. “ Un poco piu presto , signori! We are not here simply and solely for the honourable gentlemen’s con- venience.” Dr. Krokowski was sitting at the double-barrelled writing-table by the window. He wore his usual black alpaca shirt, setting off THE THERMOMETER 177 the pallor of his face; his elbows rested on the table, in one hand a pen, the other fingering his beard; while before him lay various papers, probably the documents in reference to the patients to be examined. He looked at the cousins as they entered, but it was with the idle glance of a person who is present only in an auxiliary capacity. “ Well, give us your report card,” the Hofrat answered to Joa- chim’s apologies, and took the fever chart out of his hand. He looked it over, while the patient made haste to lay off his upper garments down to the waist and hang them on the rack by the door. No one troubled about Hans Castorp. He looked on awhile standing, then let himself down in a little old-fashioned easy- chair with bob-tassels on the arms, beside a small table with a carafe on it. Bookcases lined the walls, full of pamphlets and broad-backed medical works. Other furniture there was none, except an adjustable chaise-longue covered with oilcloth. It had a paper serviette spread over the pillow. “ Point 7, point 9, point 8,” Behrens said running through the weekly card, whereon were entered the results of Joachim’s five daily “ measurings.” “ Still a little too much lighted up, my dear Ziemssen. Can’t exactly say you’ve got more robust just lately ” — by the lately he meant during the past four weeks. — “ Not free from infection,” he said. “ Well, that doesn’t happen between one day and the next; we’re not magicians.” Joachim nodded and shrugged his bare shoulders. He refrained from saying that he had been up here since a good deal longer than yesterday. “ How about the stitches in the right hilum, where it always sounded so sharp? Better? eh? Well, come along, let me thump you about a bit.” And the auscultation began. The Hofrat stood leaning backwards, feet wide apart, his stetho- scope under his arm, and tapped from the wrist, using the power- ful middle finger of his right hand as a hammer, and the left as a support. He tapped first high up on Joachim’s shoulder-blade at the side of the back, above and below — the well-trained Joa- chim lifting his arm to let himself be tapped under the arm-pit. Then the process was repeated on the left side; then the Hofrat commanded: “Turn! ” and began tapping the chest; first next the collar-bone, then above and below the breast, right and left. When he had tapped to his satisfaction, he began to listen, setting his stethoscope on Joachim’s chest and back, and putting his ear to the ear-piece. Then Joachim had to breathe deeply and cough — which seemed to strain him, for he got out of breath, and tears THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 178 came in his eyes. And everything that the Hofrat heard he an- nounced in curt, technical phrases to his assistant over at the writing-table, in such a way that Hans Castorp was forcibly re- minded of the proceedings at the tailor’s when a very correctly groomed gentleman measures you for a suit, laying the tape about your trunk and limbs and calling off the figures in the order hallowed by tradition for the assistant to take them down in his book. “ Faint,” “ diminished,” dictated Hofrat Behrens. “ Vesicu- lar,” and then again “vesicular” (that was good, apparently). “ Rough,” he said, and made a face. “ Very rough.” “Rhonchi.” And Dr. Krokowski entered it all in his book, just like the tailor’s assistant. Hans Castorp followed the proceedings with his head on one side, absorbed in contemplation of his cousin’s torso. The ribs — thank Heaven, he had them all! — rose under the taut skin as he took deep inhalations, and the stomach fell away. Hans Castorp studied that youthful figure, slender, yellowish-bronze, with a black fell along the breastbone and the powerful arms. On one wrist Joachim wore a gold chain-bracelet. “ Those are the arms of an athlete,” thought Hans Castorp. “ I never made much of gymnastics, but he always liked them, and that is partly the reason why he wanted to be a soldier. He has always been more in- clined than I to the things of the body — or inclined in a different way. I’ve always been a civilian and cared more about warm baths and good eating and drinking, whereas he has gone in for manly exertion. And now his body has come into the foreground in another sense and made itself important and independent of the rest of him — namely, through illness. He is all ‘ lit up ’ within and can’t get rid of the infection and become healthy, poor Joachim, no matter how much he wants to get down to the valley and be a soldier. And yet look how he is developed, like a picture in a book, a regular Apollo Belvedere, except for the hair. But the disease makes him ailing within and fevered without; disease makes men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body ” — his own thought startled him, and he looked quickly at Joachim with a questioning glance, that travelled from the bared body up to the large, gentle black eyes. Tears stood out in them, from the effort of the forced breathing and coughing, and they gazed into space with a pathetic expression as the examination went on. But at last Hofrat Behrens had come to an end. “ Very good, Ziemssen,” he said. “ Everything in order, so far as possible. Next time ” (that would be in four weeks) “ it is bound to show further improvement.” THE THERMOMETER 179 “ And Herr Hofrat, how much longer do you think — ” “ So you are going to pester me again? How do you expect to give your lads the devil down below, in the lit-up state you are in? I told you the other day to call it half a year; you can reckon from then if you like, but you must regard it as minimal. Have a little ordinary politeness! It’s a decent enough life up here, after all; it’s not a convict prison, nor a Siberian penal settlement! Or perhaps you think it is? Very good, Ziemssen, be off with you! Next! Step lively! ” He stretched out his arm and handed the stethoscope to Dr. Krokowski, who got up and began some super- numerary tapping on Joachim’s person. Hans Castorp had sprung up. With his eyes fixed on the Hofrat, standing there with his legs apart and his mouth open, lost in thought, the young man began in all haste to make ready, with the result that he defeated his own purpose and fumbled in getting out of his shirt. But finally he stood there, blond, white-skinned, and narrow-chested, before Hofrat Behrens. Compared with Joa- chim, he looked distinctly the civilian type. The Hofrat, still lost in thought, let him stand. Dr. Krokowski had finished and sat down, and Joachim was dressing before Behrens finally decided to take notice. “ Oh-ho! ” he said, “ so that’s you, is it? ” He gripped Hans Castorp on the upper arm with his mighty hand, pushed him away, and looked at him sharply — not in the face, as one man looks at another, but at his body; turned him round, as one would turn an inanimate object, and looked at his back. “ H’m,” he said. “ Well, we shall see.” And began tapping as before. He tapped all over, as he had with Joachim, and several times went back and tapped again. For some while, for purposes of comparison, he tapped by turns on the left-hand side near the collar-bone, and then somewhat lower down. “ Hear that? ” he asked Dr. Krokowski. And the other, sitting at the table five paces off, nodded to signify that he did. He sunk his head on his' chest with a serious mien, and the points of his whiskers stuck out. “ Breathe deep! Cough! ” commanded the Hofrat, who had taken up the stethoscope again; and Hans Castorp worked hard for eight or ten minutes, while the Hofrat listened. He uttered no word, simply set the instrument here or there and listened with particular care at the places he had tapped so long. Then he stuck the stethoscope under his arm, put his hands on his back, and looked at the floor between himself and Hans Castorp. “Yes, Castorp,” he said — this was the first time he had called i8o THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN the young man simply by his last name — “ the thing works out pr<eter propter as I thought it would. I had my suspicions — I can tell you now — from the first day I had the undeserved honour of making your acquaintance; I made a pretty shrewd guess that you were one of us and that you would find it out, like many another who has come up here on a lark and gone about with his nose in the air, only to discover, one fine day, that it would be as well for him — and not only as well, mark that — to make a more extended stay, quite without reference to the beauties of the scenery.” Hans Castorp had flushed; Joachim, in act to button his braces, paused as he stood, and listened. “ You have such a kind, sympathetic cousin over there,” went on the Hofrat, motioning with his head in Joachim’s direction and balancing himself on his heels. “ Very soon, we hope, we will be able to say that he has been ill; but even when he gets that far, it will still be true that he has been ill — and the fact — a priori , as the philosophers say — casts a certain light upon yourself, my dear Castorp.” “ But he is only my step-cousin, Herr Hofrat.” “ Tut! You won’t disown him, will you? Even a step-cousin is a blood relation. On which side? ” “ The mother’s, Herr Hofrat. He is the son of a step — ” “And your mother — she’s pretty jolly? ” “ No, she is dead. She died when I was little.” “ And of what? ” “ Of a blood-clot, Herr Hofrat.” “ A blood-clot, eh? Well, that’s a long time ago. And your father? ” “ He died of pneumonia,” Hans Castorp said; “ and my grand- father too,” he added. “ Both of them, eh? Good. So much for your ancestors. Now about yourself — you have always been rather chlorotic, haven’t you? But you didn’t tire easily at physical or mental work. Or did you — what? A good deal of palpitation? Only of late? Good. And a strong inclination to catarrhal and bronchial trouble? — Did you know you have been infected before now? ” “I?” “ Yes, you — I have you personally in mind. Can you hear any difference? ” The Hofrat tapped by turns on Hans Castorp’s left side, first above and then lower down. “ It sounds rather duller there,” said Hans Castorp. “ Capital. You ought to be a specialist. Well, that is a dullness, THE THERMOMETER 1 8 1 and such dullnesses are caused by the old places, where fibrosis has supervened. Scars, you know. You are an old patient, Castorp, but we won’t lay it up against anybody that you weren’t found out. The early diagnosis is very difficult — particularly for my colleagues down below; I won’t say we have better ears — though the regular practice does do something. But the air helps us, helps us hear, if you understand what I mean, this thin, dry air up here.” “ Certainly, of course,” Hans Castorp said. “ Very good, Castorp. And now listen, young man, to my words of wisdom. If that were all the trouble with you, if it was a case of nothing but the dullness and the scars on your bagpipe in there, I should send you back to your lares and penates and not trouble my head further about you. But as things stand, and according to what we find, and since you are already up here — well, there is no use in your going down, for you’d only have to come up again.” Hans Castorp felt the blood rush back to his heart; it ham- mered violently; and Joachim still stood with his hands on his back buttons, his eyes on the floor. “ For besides the dullness,” said the Hofrat, “ you have on the upper left side a rough breathing that is almost bronchial and undoubtedly comes from a fresh place. I won’t call it a focus of softening, but it is certainly a moist spot, and if you go down below and begin to carry on, why, you’ll have the whole lobe at the devil before you can say Jack Robinson.” Hans Castorp stood motionless. His mouth twitched fearfully, and the hammering of his heart against his ribs was plain to see. He looked across at Joachim, but could not meet his cousin’s eye; then again in the Hofrat’s face, with its blue cheeks, blue, goggling eyes, and little, crooked moustache. “ For independent confirmation,” Behrens continued, “ we have your temperature of 99 .6° at ten o’clock in the morning, which corresponds pretty well to the indications given by the auscultation.” “ I thought,” Hans Castorp said, “ that the fever came from my cold.” “ And the cold,” rejoined the Hofrat, “ where does that come from? Listen, Castorp, let me tell you something, and mark my words — for so far as I can tell, you’ve all the cerebral convolu- tions a body needs. Now: our air up here is good for the disease — I mean good against the disease, you understand — you think so, don’t you? Well, it is true. But also it is good for the disease; it begins by speeding it up, in that it revolutionizes the whole body; THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 182 it brings the latent weakness to the surface and makes it break out. Your catarrh, fortunately for you, is a breaking-out of that kind. I can’t tell if you were febrile down below; but it is certainly my opinion that you have been from your first day up here, and not merely since you had your catarrh.” “ Yes,” Hans Castorp said, “ I think so too.” “You were probably fuddled right from the start, in my opinion,” the Hofrat confirmed him. “ Those were the soluble toxins thrown off by the bacteria; they act like an intoxicant upon the central nervous system and give you a hectic flush. Now, Castorp, we’ll stick you into bed and see if a couple of weeks’ rest will sober you up. What follows will follow. We’ll take a handsome x-ray of you — you’ll enjoy seeing what goes on in your own inside. But I tell you straightaway, a case like yours doesn’t get well from one day to the next: it isn’t a question of the miracle cures you read about in advertisements. I thought when I first clapped eyes on you that you would be a better patient than your cousin, with more talent for illness than our brigadier-general here, who wants to clear out directly he has a couple of points less fever. As if ‘ lie down ’ isn’t just as good a word of command as ‘ stand up ’! It is the citizen’s first duty to be calm, and im- patience never did any good to anyone. Now, Castorp, watch out you don’t disappoint me and give the lie to my knowledge of human nature! Get along now, into the caboose with you — march! ” With that Hofrat Behrens closed the interview and sat down at the writing-table; this man of many occupations began to fill in his time with writing until the advent of the next patient. But Dr. Krokowski arose from his place and strode up to Hans Ca- storp. With his head tipped back sideways, and one hand on the young man’s shoulder, smiling so heartily that the yellowish teeth showed in his beard, he shook him warmly by the hand. CHAPTER V Soup-Everlasting And now we are confronted by a phenomenon upon which the author himself may well comment, lest the reader do so in his stead. Our account of the first three weeks of Hans Castorp’s stay with “ those up here ” — twenty-one midsummer days, to which his visit, so far as human eye could see, should have been confined — has consumed in the telling an amount of time and space only too well confirming the author’s half-confessed ex- pectations; while our narrative of his next three weeks will scarcely cost as many lines, or even words and minutes, as the earlier three did pages, quires, hours, and working-days. We apprehend that these next three weeks will be over and done with in the twinkling of an eye. Which is perhaps surprising; yet quite in order, and conform- able to the laws that govern the telling of stories and the listen- ing to them. For it is in accordance with these laws that time seems to us just as long, or just as short, that it expands or con- tracts precisely in the way, and to the extent, that it did for young Hans Castorp, our hero, whom our narrative now finds visited with such an unexpected blow from the hand of fate. It may even be well at this point to prepare the reader for still other surprises, still other phenomena, bearing on the mysterious ele- ment of time, which will confront us if we continue in our hero’s company. For the moment we need only recall the swift flight of time — even of a quite considerable period of time — which we spend in bed when we are ill. All the days are nothing but the same day repeating itself — or rather, since it is always the same day, it is incorrect to speak of repetition; a continuous present, an identity, an everlastingness — such words as these would better convey the idea. They bring you your midday broth, as they brought it yes- terday and will bring it to-morrow; and it comes over you — but whence or how you do not know, it makes you quite giddy to see THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 184 the broth coming in — that you are losing a sense of the demarca- tion of time, that its units are running together, disappearing; and what is being revealed to you as the true content of time is merely a dimensionless present in which they eternally bring you the broth. But in such a connexion it would be paradoxical to speak of time as passing slowly; and paradox, with reference to such a hero, we would avoid. Hans Castorp, then, went to bed on the Saturday afternoon, as it had been ordained by Hofrat Behrens, the highest authority in our little world. There he lay, in his night-shirt with the em- broidered monogram on the pocket, his hands clasped at the back of his head, in his cleanly white bed, the death-bed of the Ameri- can woman and in all probability of many another person; lay there with his confiding blue eyes, somewhat glassy with his cold, directed toward the ceiling, and contemplated the singularity of his fate. This is not to say that, if he had not had a cold, his gaze would have been any clearer or more single-minded. No, just as it was, it accurately mirrored his inner state, and that, what- ever its simplicity, was full of troubled, involved, dubious, not quite ingenuous thoughts. For as he lay, he would be shaken from deep within him by a frantic burst of triumphant laughter, while his heart stood still with an anguish of extravagant anticipation like nothing he had ever known before; again, he would feel such a shudder of apprehension as sent the colour from his cheek, and then it was conscience itself that knocked, in the very throbs of his heart as it pulsed against his ribs. On that first day Joachim left him to his rest, avoiding all dis- cussion. He went two or three times tactfully into the sickroom, nodded to the patient, and inquired if he could do anything. It was easy for him to understand and respect Hans Castorp’s reserve — the more in that he shared it, even feeling his own posi- tion to be more difficult than the other’s. But on Sunday forenoon, when he came back from the walk which for the first time in weeks had been solitary, there was no putting it off any longer; they must take counsel together over the necessary next step. He sat down by the bed and said, with a sigh: “ Yes, it’s no good; we must act — they are expecting you down home.” “ Not yet,” Hans Castorp answered. “ No, but inside the next few days, Wednesday or Thursday.” “ Oh, they aren’t expecting me so precisely on a particular day,” Hans Castorp said “ They have other things to do besides counting the days until I get back. I’ll be there when I get there, SOUP-EVERLASTING 185 and Uncle Tienappel will say: ‘ Oh, there you are again,’ and Uncle James: ‘ Well, had a good time? ’ And if I don’t arrive, it will be some time before they notice it, you may be sure of that. Of course, after a while we’d have to let them know.” “ You can see how unpleasant the thing is for me,” Joachim said, sighing again. “ What is to happen now? I feel in a way respon- sible. You come up here to pay me a visit, I take you in, and here you are, and who knows when you can get away and go into your position down below? You must see how extremely painful that is to me.” “Just a moment,” said Hans Castorp, without removing his hands from their clasped position behind his neck. “ Surely it is unreasonable for you to break your head over it. Did I come up here to visit you? Well, of course in a way I did; but after all, the principal reason was to get the rest Heidekind prescribed. Well, and now it appears I need more of a rest than he or any of us dreamed. I am not the first who thought of making a flying visit up here for whom it fell out differently. Remember about Tous- les-deux’s second son, and how it turned out with him — I don’t know whether he is still alive or not; perhaps they have fetched him away already, while we were sitting at our meal. That I am somewhat infected is naturally a great surprise to me; I must get used to the idea of being a patient and one of you, instead of just a guest. And yet in a way I am scarcely surprised, for I never have been in such blooming health, and when I think how young both my parents were when they died, I realize that it was natural I shouldn’t be particularly robust! We can’t deny that you had a weakness that way; we make no bones of it, even if it is as good as cured now, and it may easily be that it runs a little in the family, as Behrens suggested. Anyhow, I have been lying here since yester- day thinking it all over, considering what my attitude has been, how I felt toward the whole thing, to life, you know, and the de- mands it makes on you. A certain seriousness, a sort of disinclina- tion to rough and noisy ways, has always been a part of my nature; we were talking about that lately, and I said I sometimes should have liked to be a clergyman, because I took such an interest in mournful and edifying things — a black pall, you know, with a sil- ver cross on it, or R. I. P . — requiescat in pace , you know. That seems to me the most beautiful expression — I like it much better than ‘ He’s a jolly good fellow,’ which is simply rowdy. I think all that comes from the fact that I have a weakness myself, and always felt at home with illness — the way I do now. But things being as they are, I find it very lucky that I came here, and that I THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 1 86 was examined. Certainly you have no call to reproach yourself. You heard what he said: if I were to go down and continue as I have been, I should have the whole lobe at the devil before I could say Jack Robinson.” “ You can’t tell,” Joachim said. “ That is just what you never can tell. They said you had already had places, of which nobody took any notice and they healed of themselves, and left nothing but a few trifling dullnesses. It might have been the same way with the moist spot you are supposed to have now, if you hadn’t come up here at all. One can never know.” “ No, as far as knowing goes, we never can. But just for that reason, we have no right to assume the worst — for instance with regard to how long I shall be obliged to stop here. You say nobody knows when I shall be free to go into the ship-yard; but you say it in a pessimistic sense, and that I find premature, since we cannot know. Behrens did not set a limit; he is a long-headed man, and doesn’t play the prophet. There are the x-ray and the photo- graphic plate yet to come before we can definitely know the facts; who knows whether they will show anything worth talking about, and whether I shall not be free of fever before that, and can say good-bye to you. I am all for our not striking before the time and crying wolf to the family down below. It is quite enough for the present if we write and say — I can do it myself with the fountain- pen if I sit up a little — that I have a severe cold and am febrile, that I am stopping in bed, and shall not travel for the present. The rest will follow.” “ Good,” said Joachim. “ We can do that for the present. And for the other matters we can wait and see.” “ What other matters? ” “ Don’t be so irresponsible! You only came for three weeks, and brought a steamer trunk. You will need underwear and linen, and winter clothes — and more footwear. And anyhow, you will want money sent.” “ If,” said Hans Castorp, “ if I need it.” “ Very well, we’ll wait and see. But we ought not ” — Joachim E aced up and down the room as he spoke, “ we ought not to be- ave like ostriches. I have been up here too long not to know how things go. When Behrens says there is a rough place, almost rhonchi — oh well, of course, we can wait and see.” There, for the time, the matter rested; and the weekly and fort- nightly variations of the normal day set in. Hans Castorp could partake of them even in his present state, if not at first hand, then SOUP-EVERLASTING I 8 J through the reports Joachim gave when he came and sat by the bedside for fifteen minutes. His Sunday morning breakfast-tray was adorned with a vase of flowers; and they did not fail to send him his share of the Sunday pastries. After luncheon the sounds of social intercourse floated up from the terrace below, and with tantara and squealing of clarinets the fortnightly concert began. During its progress Joachim en- tered, and sat down by the open balcony door; his cousin half re- clined in his bed, with his head on one side, and his eyes swimming with pious enjoyment as he listened to the mounting harmonies, and bestowed a momentary metaphorical shoulder-shrug upon Settembrini’s twaddle about music being “ politically suspect.” And, as we have said, he had Joachim post him upon the sights and events of the sanatorium life. Had there, he asked, been any toilets made in honour of the day, lace matinees or that sort of thing? — though for lace matinees the weather was too cold. Whether there were people going driving (certain expeditions had in fact been undertaken, among others by the Half-Lung Club, which had gone in a body to Clavadel). On the next day, Monday, he demanded to hear all about Dr. Krokowski’s lecture, when Joa- chim came from it and looked in upon his cousin on his way to the rest-cure. Joachim did not feel like talking, he appeared dis- inclined to make a report. He would have let the subject drop, as it had after the previous lecture, had not Hans Castorp persisted, and demanded to hear details. “ I am lying up here,” he said, “ paying full pension. I am en- titled to have all that is going.” He recalled the Monday of two weeks ago, and his solitary walk, which had done him so little good; and committed himself to the view that it was that walk which had revolutionized his system and brought to the surface the latent infection. “ But what a stately and solemn way the peo- ple hereabout have of talking,” he said, “ I mean the common people; almost like poetry. ‘ Then thank ye kindly and God be with ye,’ ” he repeated, giving the words the woodman’s intona- tion. “ I heard that up in the woods, and I shall remember it all my life. You get to associate a thing like that with other memories and impressions, you know, and you never forget it as long as you live. — Well, so Krokowski held forth again on the subject of love, did he? What did he say about it to-day? ” “ Oh, nothing in particular. You know from the other time how he talks.” “ But what did he offer that was new? ” THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN I 88 “ Nothing different. — Oh, well, the stuff to-day was pure chemistry,” Joachim unwillingly condescended to enlighten his cousin. It seemed there was a sort of poisoning, an auto-infection of the organisms, so Dr. Krokowski said; it was caused by the dis- integration of a substance, of the nature of which we were still ignorant, but which was present everywhere in the body; and the products of this disintegration operated like an intoxicant upon the nerve-centres of the spinal cord, with an effect similar to that of certain poisons, such as morphia, or cocaine, when introduced in the usual way from outside. “ And so you get the hectic flush,” said Hans Castorp. “ But that’s all worth hearing. What doesn’t the man know! He must have simply lapped it up. You just wait, one of these days he will discover what that substance is that exists everywhere in the body and sets free the soluble toxins that act like a narcotic on the nerv- ous system; then he will be able to fuddle us all more than ever. Perhaps in the past they were able to do that very thing. When I listen to him, I could almost think there is some truth in the old legends about love potions and the like. — Are you going? ” “ Yes,” Joachim said, “ I must go lie down. My curve has been rising since yesterday. This affair of yours has had its effect on me. That was the Sunday, and the Monday. The evening and the morning made the third day of Hans Castorp’s sojourn in the “ caboose.” It was a day without distinction, an ordinary week- day, that Tuesday — but after all, it was the day of his arrival in this place, he had been here a round three weeks, and time pressed; he would have to send a letter home and inform his uncle of the state of affairs, even though cursorily and without reference to their true inwardness. He stuffed his down quilt behind his back, and wrote upon the note-paper of the establishment, to the effect that his departure was being delayed beyond the appointed time. He was in bed with a feverish cold, which Hofrat Behrens — over- conscientious as he probably was — refused to take lightly; insist- ing on regarding it as immediately connected with his (Hans Ca- storp’s) constitution and general state of health. The physician had perceived directly he saw him that he was decidedly anaemic; and take it all in all, it seemed as though the limit he had originally set for his stay was not regarded by the authorities as long enough for a full recovery. He would write again as soon as he could. — That’s the idea, thought Hans Castorp; not too much or too little; and whatever the issue, it will satisfy them for a while. The letter was given to the servant, with instructions that it be taken direct SOUP-EVERLASTING 189 to the station and sent off by the earliest possible train, instead of being posted in the usual way in the house letter-box, with con- sequent delays. Our adventurous youth felt much relieved to have set affairs in such good train — if likewise a good deal plagued by his cough and the heavy-hcadedness caused by his catarrh — and now he began to live each day as it came — a day which never varied, which was always broken up into a number of sections, and which, in its abiding uniformity, could not be said either to pass too fast or to hang too heavy on the hands. In the morning the bathing- master would give a mighty thump on the door and enter — a nervous individual named Turnherr, who wore his sleeves rolled up, and had great standing veins upon his forearms, and a gurgling, impeded speech. He addressed Hans Castorp, as he did all the pa- tients, by the number of his room, and rubbed him with alcohol. Not long after he left, Joachim would appear ready dressed, to greet his cousin, inquire after his seven o’clock temperature, and communicate his own. While he breakfasted below, Hans Castorp did the same above, his down quilt tucked behind his back, in en- joyment of the good appetite a change engenders. He was scarcely disturbed by the bustling and businesslike entrance of the two physicians, whojit this hour made a hurried round of the dining- hall and the rooms of the bedridden and moribund. Hans Castorp, with his mouth full of jam, announced himself to have slept “ splen- didly ” and looked over the rim of his cup at the Hofrat, who leaned with his fists on the centre table, and hastily scanned the fever chart. Both physicians wished him good-morning, and he responded in an unconcerned drawl as they went out. Then he lighted a cigarette, and beheld Joachim returning from the morn- ing walk, almost before he realized his departure. Again they chatted of this and that; Joachim went to lie down until second breakfast, and the interval seemed so short that even the emptiest- headed could hardly have felt bored. Hans Castorp, indeed, had so much food for thought in the events of the past three weeks, so much to ponder in his present state and what might come of it, that although two bound volumes of an illustrated periodical from the Berghof library lay upon his night-table, he had no need to resort to them. It was no different with the brief hour during which Joachim took his regular walk down to the Platz. He came in to Hans Ca- storp afterwards, told him whatever of interest he had seen, and sat or stood a few minutes by the sick-bed before he withdrew to his own balcony for the midday rest. And how long did that THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 190 last? Again, only a brief hour. It seemed to Hans Castorp he had barely settled to commune a little with his own thoughts, hands folded behind his head and eyes directed upon the ceiling, before the gong droned through the house, summoning all those not bed- ridden or moribund to prepare for the principal meal of the day. Joachim went down, and the “ midday broth ” was brought — “ broth ” in a symbolic sense merely, considering in what it con- sisted. Hans Castorp was not on sick-diet. He lay there and paid full pension, and what they brought him in the abiding present of that midday hour was by no means broth, it was the full six- course Berghof dinner, in all its amplitude, with nothing left out. Even on week-days this was a sumptuous meal; on Sundays it was a gala banquet and “ gaudy,” prepared by a cosmopolitan chef in the kitchens of the establishment, which were precisely those of a European hotel de luxe . The “ dining-room girl ” whose duty it was to serve the bedridden brought it to him in dainty cook- pots under nickel-plated dish-covers. She produced an invalid- table, a marvel of one-legged equilibrium, adjusted it across his bed, and Hans Castorp banqueted like the tailor’s son in the fairy-story. As he finished, Joachim would return, and it might be as late as half past two before the latter went into his loggia, and the hush of the main rest period fell upon the Berghof. Not quite, perhaps; perhaps it would be nearer the truth to call it a quarter after, but these odd quarter-hours outside the round figures do not count, they are swallowed up unregarded, in places where one reckons time in large units — on long train journeys of many hours on end, or wherever one is in a state of vacant suspense, with all one’s being concentrated on pulling the time behind one. A quarter past two will pass for half past, will even pass for three, on the theory that it is already well on the way toward it. The thirty minutes are taken as a sort of onset to the full hour from three to four, and inwardly discounted. In this wise the duration of the main rest E eriod was finally reduced to no more than an hour; and even this our was lopped off at its latter end, elided, as it were. Dr. Kro- kowski played the part of apostrophe. Yes, nowadays when Dr. Krokowski went his independent af- ternoon round, he no longer made a circle round Hans Castorp; our young man was no longer an interval and hiatus, he counted as much as the others, he too was a patient. He was questioned, not ignored, as had so long been the case, to his slight and con- cealed but daily recurring annoyance. It was on Monday that Dr. Krokowski for the first time manifested himself in the room — SOUP-EVERLASTING 191 manifested being the only proper word for the phenomenon as Hans Castorp, with an involuntary start, perceived it. He lay in half — or quarter — slumber, and became aware that the As- sistant was beside him, having entered not through the door, but approaching from outside. His round at this time lay not through the corridor, but along the balconies, and he had come through the open door of the loggia with an effect of having flown through the air. There he stood at Hans Castorp’s bedside, in all his pallor and blackness, broad-shouldered and squat, his lips parted in a manly smile that showed the yellowish teeth through his beard — the apostrophe! “ You seem surprised to see me, Herr Castorp,” he said, mildly baritone, drawling, unquestionably rather affected: he gave the r a foreign, palatal sound, not rolled, but pronounced with a single impact of the tongue against the upper front teeth. “ But I am only performing my pleasant duty, in seeing after your welfare. Your relations with us have entered upon a new phase. Overnight the guest has become the comrade.” His patient was rather alarmed by the word comrade. — “ Who would have thought it? ” he jested fraternally. “ Who would have thought it on that evening when I had the honour of making your acquaintance, and you replied to my mistaken supposition — at that time mistaken — with the explanation that you were perfectly healthy? I believe I ex- pressed some doubt, but I assure you I did not mean it in that sense. I will not pretend to being more sharp-sighted than I am. I was not thinking of a moist spot. My remark was meant only in the general, philosophical sense, as a doubt whether the two concep- tions, man and perfect health, were after all consistent one with the other. Even to-day, after the examination, I confess that I per- sonally, as distinguished from my honoured chief, cannot regard the moist spot as the most important factor in the situation. It is, for me, a secondary phenomenon — the organic is always second- ary — ” Hans Castorp drew a short breath. “ — and thus your catarrh is, in my view, a third-line phe- nomenon,” Dr. Krokowski concluded, very softly. “ How is it? The rest in bed will undoubtedly be efficacious, in this respect. What have you measured to-day? ” And from then on the Assist- ant’s visit was in the key of an ordinary professional call, to which it kept during the following days and weeks. Dr. Krokowski would enter by the open balcony door at a quarter to four or earlier, greet the patient with manly readiness, put the usual professional questions, with perhaps a little personal touch as well, a jest or two THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 192 — and if all this had a slight aura of the questionable about it, yet one can get used even to the questionable, provided it keeps within bounds. It was not long before Hans Castorp forgot any feeling he may have had about Dr. Krokowski’s visits. They took their place in the programme of the normal day, and performed, as it were, an elision in the latter end of the main rest period. The Assistant would return along the balconies at four o’clock or thereabouts, that is to say mid-afternoon. Yes, thus suddenly, before one realized it, there one was, in the very deep of the after- noon, and steadily still deepening on toward twilight. Before tea was finished drinking, up above and down below, it was well on the way toward five o’clock; and by the time Joachim returned from his third daily round and looked in on his cousin, it would be near enough to six to reduce the remaining rest period to no more than a single hour — reckoned always in round numbers. It was an easy matter to kill that much time, if one had ideas in one’s head, and a whole or bis pictus on the table to boot. Joachim, on his way to the evening meal, stopped to say good- bye. Hans Castorp’s tray was brought. The valley had long since filled with shadow, and darkened apace as he ate. When he had done, he leaned back against his down quilt, with the magic table cleared before him, and looked into the growing dusk, to-day’s dusk, yet scarcely distinguishable from the dusk of yesterday or last week. It was evening — and had just been morning. The day, artificially shortened, broken into small bits, had literally crumbled in his hands and was reduced to nothing: he remarked it to him- self with a start — or, at any rate, he did at least remark; for to shudder at it was foreign to his years. It seemed to him that from the beginning of time he had been lying and looking thus. One day — some ten or twelve had passed since Hans Castorp retired to bed — there was a knock on his door at about this hour, before Joachim had returned from dinner and the social half-hour. Upon Hans Castorp’s inquiring “ Come in,” it opened, and Ludo- vico Settembrini appeared — and lo, on the instant the room was flooded with light. For the visitor’s first motion, while still on the threshold, had been to turn on the electric light, which filled the room in a trice with vibrating brilliance, and reverberated from the gleaming white ceiling and furniture. The Italian had been the only one of the guests after whom Hans Castorp had expressly asked in these days. Joachim indeed, when he stood or sat by his cousin for ten or fifteen minutes — and that happened ten times in the course of the day — would relate what- ever there was of interest or variation in the daily life of the com- SOUP-EVERLASTING 193 munity; and Hans Castorp’s questions, whenever he put any, had been of a general nature. The exile wished to know whether there were new guests, or if any of the familiar faces were absent; it seemed to gratify him that only the former was the case. There was one new-comer, a hollow-cheeked, green-complexioned young man, who had been given a place at the next table on the right with Frau litis and the ivory-skinned Levi. Hans Castorp might look forward to the pleasure of seeing him. So no one had left? Joachim answered in a curt negative, his eyes on the ground. But he had to reply to this question every day or so, until at last he became restive and sought to answer once for all by saying that, so far as he knew, no one was purposing to leave — nobody did leave very much, up here, as a matter of fact. But Hans Castorp had asked after Settembrini by name, and de- sired to hear what he had “ said to it.” To what? “ Why, that I am in bed and supposed to be ill.” Settembrini, it seemed, had ex- pressed himself on the subject, though briefly. On the very day of Hans Castorp’s disappearance he had come to find out his where- abouts of Joachim, obviously prepared to hear that the guest had departed; and on learning the explanation had responded only in Italian: first “ Ecco! ” and then “ Poveretto! ” — as much as to say: “ There you are, poor chap! ” — It needed no more Italian than the cousins could boast to understand the sense in which he uttered the words. “ Why 4 poveretto ’? ” Hans Castorp inquired. “ He sits up here with his literature made of politics and humanism and he is very little good for the ordinary interests of life. He needn’t look down his nose and pity me like that, I shall get down to the flat-land before he does.” And now Herr Settembrini stood here in the suddenly illumi- nated room — Hans Castorp, who had raised himself on his elbow and turned blinking toward the door, recognized him and flushed. Settembrini wore, as usual, his thick coat with the wide lapels, a frayed turnover collar, and the check trousers. As he came from supper, he was armed with the usual wooden toothpick. The cor- ner of his mouth, beneath the beautiful curve of his moustache, displayed the familiar fine, dry, critical smile. “ Good-evening, Engineer! May I be permitted to look in on you? If so, I need light — you will pardon my taking it upon my- self — ” and he waved his small hand toward the lamp in the ceil- ing. 44 You were absorbed in contemplation, I should not wish to disturb you. A tendency to meditate is surely natural under the circumstances, and if you want to talk, you have your cousin. You see, I am well aware that I am superfluous. But even so — we live THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 194 here close together, a sympathy springs up between man and man, intellectual and emotional sympathy. — It has been a full week that we have not seen you. I began to think you had left, as I saw your place empty down in the refectory. The Lieutenant told me better — or should we say worse, if that would not sound impolite? Well, and how are you? How do you feel? Not too much cast down, I hope? ” “Ah, that is you, Herr Settembrini! How friendly of you! Refectory — oh, I say, that is good! Always at your jokes — but do sit down. You are not disturbing me in the least. I was lying there musing — no, musing is too much to say. I was simply too lazy to turn on the light. Thanks very much, I am subjectively as good as normal, and my cold is much better from lying in bed. But it was a secondary phenomenon, so everybody tells me. My tem- perature is still not what it should be, I have 99.5 0 to 99.7 °, all the time.” “ You take your temperature regularly? ” “ Yes, six times a day, like the rest of you. Pardon me, I am still laughing at your calling our dining-hall a refectory. That is what they are called in a cloister, isn’t it? After all, there is some resem- blance — not that I have been in a cloister, but I imagine they are something like this. And I have the ‘ Rule ’ at my fingers’ ends, and observe it faithfully.” “ As a pious brother should. One might say that your noviciate is at an end and you have made your profession. My formal con- gratulations. You even say ‘ our 5 dining-hall. But, without mean- ing to affront your manly dignity, you remind me more of a young nun than a monk, a regular new-shorn, innocent bride of Christ, with great martyrlike eyes. I have seen such lambs, here and there about the world; never without a certain — a certain access of sensibility. Yes, your cousin has told me about it. So you had your- self examined after all, at the eleventh hour.” “ Since I was febrile — of course, Herr Settembrini. What do you want? If I had been at home, I should have consulted a physi- cian. And here, at the source and fount so to speak, with two specialists in the house — it would have been very strange — ” “ Of course, of course. And you took your temperature, too, before they told you to. But they did recommend it, from the be- ginning. And the Mylendonk slipped you the thermometer? ” “ Slipped me — ? Since the occasion arose, I bought one from her.” “ I understand. An irreproachable transaction. And how many months did the chief knock you down for? Good heavens, I have SOUP-EVERLASTING 1 95 asked you that before! Do you remember? You had just come. You answered with such assurance — ” “ Of course I remember. I have had many new experiences since that time, but that I remember as though it were yesterday. You were so amusing, and spoke of Behrens as the judge of the lower regions — Radames, was it? No, wait, that is something else.” “ Rhadamanthus? Yes, I may have called him that. I am afraid I do not remember every phrase that happens to well up to my lips.” “ Rhadamanthus, of course. Minos and Rhadamanthus. And you spoke to us of Carducci at the same time — ” “ Pardon me, my dear young friend, we will, if you please, leave him out. The name, at this moment, sounds too strange upon your tongue.” “ That’s good too,” laughed Hans Castorp. “ But I have learned a good deal about him through you. — Yes, at that time I had not the faintest suspicion, I answered you that I was here for three weeks, I did not know any different. The Kleefeld girl had just been whistling at me with her pneumothorax, I hardly knew where I was. But I was feeling febrile even then — for the air up here is not only good against the illness, you know, it is also good for it, it sometimes brings it to the surface — which is of course a neces- sary step in the cure.” “ An alluring hypothesis. And has Hofrat Behrens also told you about the German-Russian woman we had here last year — no, year before last — for five months? He did not? He should have. A charming woman, of Russo-German origin, married, a young mother. She came from the Baltic provinces somewhere — lymphatic, anaemic, but probably some more serious trouble as well. She spent a month here and complained that she felt ill all the time. They told her to be patient. Another month passes, she continues to assert that she is actually worse instead of better. They point out to her that only the physician can judge how she is — she herself only knows how she feels; which does not signify. They are satisfied with the condition of her lung. Good. She says no more, she goes on with the cure, and loses weight by the week. The fourth month she faints during the examination. That is noth- ing, says Behrens, her lung is perfectly satisfactory. But by the fifth month she cannot get about, she goes to bed and writes to her husband, out in the Baltic provinces; Behrens gets a letter from him marked ‘ personal ’ and ‘ urgent ’ in a very firm hand — I saw it myself. Yes, says Behrens, and shrugs his shoulders, it seems to be indicated that she certainly cannot stand the climate up here. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 196 The woman was beside herself. He ought to have said that before, she had felt it from the beginning, she declared — they had killed her among them. Let us hope she recovered her strength when she went back to her husband.’’ “ Oh, that’s good, that’s very good! You do tell stories capitally, Herr Settembrini; every word is so plastic. And that story about the girl that went bathing in the lake, the one they gave the ‘ silent sister ’ to take her temperature with — I have often laughed at it, all by myself. Yes, what strange things do happen. One lives and learns. But my own case is still quite uncertain. The Hofrat is supposed to have discovered a trifling weakness, places where I was infected long ago, I heard them myself when he tapped me, and some fresh places he can hear now — what a funny word fresh is to use in such a connexion! But so far there are only the acoustic indications; real diagnostic certainty we shall only arrive at when I am about again, and the x-ray and photography have taken place. Then we shall have positive knowledge.” “ You think so? You know that the photographic plate often shows spots that are taken for cavities when there are none there? And that, sometimes, it shows no spots although there is some- thing there? Mado?ina — the photographic plate! There was a young numismatician up here, with fever; and since he had fever, there were cavities plain to be seen on the plate. They could even hear them. They treated him for phthisis, and he died. The post- mortem showed his lung to be sound; the cause of his death was some coccus or other.” “ Oh, come, Herr Settembrini. Talking about post-mortems al- ready. I haven’t got that far yet, I assure you.” “ Engineer, you are a wag.” “ And you are an out-and-out critic and sceptic, I must say. You do not even believe in science. Can you see spots on your plate, Herr Settembrini? ” “ Yes, it shows some spots.” “ And you really are ill too? ” “ Yes, I am unfortunately rather ill,” replied Settembrini, and his head drooped. There was a pause, in which he gave a little cough. Hans Castorp, from his bed, regarded his guest, whom he had reduced to silence. It seemed to him that with his two simple inquiries he had refuted Settembrini’s whole position, even the republic and the hello stile . And he did nothing on his side to re- sume the conversation. After a while Herr Settembrini straightened himself, with a smile. SOUP-EVERLASTING 1 9 7 “ Tell me, Engineer,” he said, “ how have your family taken the news? ” “ What news do you mean? Of my delayed return? Oh, my family, you know, consists of three uncles, a great-uncle and his two sons, who are more like my cousins. Other family I have none, I was doubly orphaned when I was very small. As to how they took it — they know as much, and as little, as I myself. At first, when I had to go to bed, I wrote that I had a severe cold, and could not travel. Yesterday, as it seemed rather long after all, I wrote again, saying that my catarrh had drawn Hofrat Behren’s attention to the condition of my chest, and that he insisted I should remain until he is clear what the condition is. You may be per- fectly sure they took it calmly — it didn’t upset them.” “ And your position? You spoke of a sphere of practical activ- ity, where you were intending to enter shortly on certain duties.” “ Yes, as volunteer apprentice. I have asked them to excuse me for the present. You must not imagine they are in despair over my defection. They can carry on indefinitely without an assistant.” “ Good. Everything is in order, then, in that direction. Perfect equanimity all along the line. It is a phlegmatic race of people in your part of the country, is it not? But energetic, certainly? ” “ Oh, yes, very energetic,” said Hans Castorp. He mentally assayed the temper of his native city, and found that his inter- locuter had characterized it justly. “ Phlegmatic and energetic, yes, I should say they are.” “ I assume,” continued Herr Settembrini, “ in case your stay is prolonged, we shall make the acquaintance of your uncle — I mean your great-uncle — shall we not? He will undoubtedly come up to ascertain your condition.” “ Out of the question,” cried Hans Castorp. “ Under no con- ceivable circumstances. Wild horses could not drag him up here. My uncle is apoplectic, you understand; he has almost no neck at all. No, he has to have a reasonable atmospheric pressure; it would be worse for him up here than it was for your lady from the Baltic provinces — he would be in a dreadful way.” “ I am disappointed. And apoplectic? Energy and phlegm are not much use under those circumstances. — Your uncle is rich, I suppose? You are all rich down your way? ” Hans Castorp smiled at Herr Settembrini’s literary generaliza- tions. And again, from his distant couch, he cast a metaphorical eye upon the sphere from which he had been snatched. He called up memories, he made an effort to judge objectively, and found that distance enabled him to do so. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 198 He answered: “ One is rich — or else one isn’t. And if not, so much the worse. I myself am no millionaire, but what I have is secured to me, I have enough to live on and be independent. But personalities aside — well, if you had said one must be rich, I should have agreed with you. If you aren’t rich, or if you leave off being, then woe be unto you. ‘ Oh, he? 9 they will say about this or that person. ‘ He hasn’t any money, has he? 9 Literally that, and making just such a face; I have often heard them, and I see now it made an impression on me — which it would not have done, of course, un- less it had struck me as strange. Or don’t you think that follows? No, I don’t think you, for instance, as homo humanus , would feel very comfortable down there; it often struck me that it was pretty strong, as I can see now, though I am a native of the place and for myself have never had to suffer from it. If a man does not serve the best and dearest wines at his dinners, people don’t go, and his daughters are left on his hands. That is what they are like. Lying here and looking at it from this distance, I find it pretty gross. What were the words you used — phlegmatic and — and energetic. That’s very good. But what does it mean? It means hard, cold. And what do hard and cold mean? They mean cruel. It is a cruel atmosphere down there, cruel and ruthless. When you lie here and look at it, from a distance, it makes you shudder.” Settembrini listened, and nodded; nodded after Hans Castorp had come to an end, for the present, of his pronouncement and fallen silent. Then he took a breath and said: “ I will not seek to extenuate the specific forms which life’s normal cruelty assumes in your native sphere. It is all one — for the reproach of cruelty rests upon somewhat sentimental grounds. You would scarcely even have levelled it, while you were in that atmosphere, for fear of being ridiculous in your own eyes. You left it to the drones to make, and rightly. That you make it now bears witness to a certain estrange- ment, which I should be sorry to see increase; since he who falls in the habit of making it is in danger of being lost to life, to the manner of life to which he was born. Do you know, Engineer, what I mean by being lost to life? I, I know it, I see it here every day. Six months at most after they get here, these young people — and they are mostly young who come — have lost every idea they had, except flirtation and temperature. And if they remain a year, they will have lost the power of grasping any other; they will find any other ‘ cruel ’ — or, more precisely, ignorant and in- adequate. You are fond of anecdote — I could serve your turn. I could tell you of a young man I know, a husband and son, who SOUP-EVERLASTING 199 was up here for eleven months. He was a little older than you, yes, rather older. They let him go home, provisionally, as much im- proved; he returned to the bosom of his family — not uncles, you understand, but his wife and his mother. The whole day he lay with the thermometer in his mouth, he took no interest in any- thing else. ‘ You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘ No one understands who has not lived up there. Down here the fundamental concep- tion is lacking.’ In the end it was the mother who settled it. ‘ Go back,’ she said. 4 There is nothing to be done with you any more.’ He went back, went back 4 home ’ — you know, don’t you, that they call this home when they have once lived here? He was en- tirely estranged from his young wife, she lacked the fundamental conception, and she gave up trying to get it. It was borne in upon her that he would find a mate up here who had it, and that he would stop with her.” Hans Castorp seemed to be only half listening. He went on staring into the incandescent brilliance of his white room, as into far space. He laughed belatedly, and said: “ He called it home? That is sentimental, as you say. You know no end of stories. I was still thinking of what we said about hardness and cruelty; the same idea has gone through my head a number of times in these days. You see, a person has to have a rather thick skin to find it natural, the way they have of thinking and talking down there, the 4 has he got any money? ’ and the face they make when they say it. It never came quite natural to me, though I am no homo hmnanus. I can see, now I look back, that I always struck by it. Perhaps that had to do with my tendency to illness, though I did not know about it at the time — those old places which I heard myself the other day. And now Behrens has found a fresh place. That, I must say, was a surprise to me — and yet, in a way, I don’t know that it was, after all. I never have felt myself as firm as a rock, and my parents, both of them, dying so young — for I have been doubly orphaned from youth up, you know — ” Herr Settembrini described a single gesture, with head, hand, and shoulders. Pleasantly, courteously, it put the question: “ Well, and what of it? ” “ You are an author,” Hans Castorp said, “ a literary man. It must be easy for you to understand a thing like that; you can feel how under those circumstances a man might not be of tough enough fibre to find that sort of cruelty quite natural, the cruelty of ordinary people, who go about joking and making money and filling their bellies. — I don’t know if I am expressing myself — ” 200 THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN Settembrini bowed. “ You mean,” he interrupted, “ that the early and repeated contact with death developed in you a tend- ency which made you sensitive to the harshness and crudity, let us say the cynicism, of our everyday, worldly existence.” “ Precisely! ” cried Hans Castorp, in honest enthusiasm. “ You have expressed it to a T, Herr Settembrini. Contact with death! I was sure that you, as a literary man — ” Settembrini put out his hand, laid his head on one side, and closed his eyes. It was a mild and beautiful gesture, a plea for silence and further hearing. He held it some seconds, even after Hans Castorp had ceased to speak and was waiting in suspense for what was to come. But at length he opened his black eyes, organ-grinder eyes, and spoke: “Permit me. Permit me, Engi- neer, to say to you, and to bring it home to you, that the only sane, noble — and I will expressly add, the only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and with the emotions, as the inviolable condition of life. It is the very opposite of sane, noble, reasonable, or religious to divorce it in any way from life, or to play it off against it. The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage, as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis. Sev- ered from life, it becomes a spectre, a distortion, and worse. For death, as an independent power, is a lustful power, whose vicious attraction is strong indeed; to feel drawn to it, to feel sympathy with it, is without any doubt at all the most ghastly aberration to which the spirit of man is prone.” Herr Settembrini left off speaking. He finished with this gen- eralization, and made it the definite period of his discourse. He had spoken in a very serious vein and by no means with conver- sational intent; he even refrained from giving Hans Castorp the opportunity for a rejoinder; but simply dropped his voice at this point and concluded his remarks. He sat now with his lips closed, his hands folded in his lap, one leg in its check trouser flung over the other, slightly swinging the foot, which he regarded with an austere expression. Hans Castorp too preserved silence. He leaned back in his plu- meau , turned his head to the wall, and drummed with his finger- ends on the coverlet. He felt set to rights, chidden, corrected; in his silence there was no little childish obstinacy. The pause lasted some time. SOUP-EVERLASTING 201 At length Herr Settembrini lifted his head, and said with a smile: “ You very likely recall, Engineer, that we have had a similar discussion once before — one might say the same discussion. We were talking about disease and dullness — I think we were taking a walk — and you found the combination a paradox, on the ground of your reverence for ill health. I called that reverence a dismal fancy which dishonoured human thought; and I was grati- fied to find you not disinclined to entertain my plea. We spoke of the neutrality and the intellectual indecision of youth, of its liberty of choice, of its inclination to play with all possible points of view, and that one should not — or need not — regard these ex- perimentations as final and definite elections. Will you permit me ” — Herr Settembrini smiled and bent forward as he sat, his feet close together on the floor, his hands between his knees, his head stretched out and a little on one side — “ will you permit me ” — and his voice had the faintest