The Magic Mountain Part 8

Hans Castorp and Joachim were in silent agreement about this talk of Settembrini's: they found it querulous and seditious in tone, if also highly entertaining and "plastic" in its verbal pungency 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 express 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 '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 consistent, 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 unusual. 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 answered. But now he said: "Sapristi, Engineer! You are displaying 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 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 pa.s.s unchallenged a point of view which seemed to me so untenable as this of yours." "But, Herr Settembrini, I-"

"Permit 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 responsibility. It befits your time of life, thus to avoid the settled convictions of the mature man, and to make experiments with a variety of points of view. Placet experiri Placet experiri," he quoted, giving the Italian p.r.o.nunciation 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 if 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 '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 'go with' stupidity. That was the expression you used. Well, I say no! Disease has nothing refined 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 superst.i.tion, 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 pa.s.s to heaven. Reason and enlightenment have banished the darkest of these shadows that tenanted the soul of man-not 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 purerlight."

"Lord bless us," thought Hans Castorp, in shamefaced consternation. "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 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 pa.s.ser-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 various 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 principle 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 a.s.sociated 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 consideration; 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 imprisoning a n.o.ble and ardent spirit within a body not fit for the stresses of life. Have you heard of Leopardi, Engineer, or you, Lieutenant? An unhappy poet of my own land, a crippled, ailing man, born with a great soul, which his sufferings were constantly 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 beautiful 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 p.r.o.nunciation.

"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 princ.i.p.ally was which rendered him incapable of avoiding 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 feelings,' 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 enn.o.bling 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 exceedingly, which draws everything to itself, which usurps the predominant place and lives repulsively emanc.i.p.ated from the soul. A human being who is first of all an invalid is all all body; therein lies his inhumanity and his debas.e.m.e.nt. In most cases he is little better than a carca.s.s-" body; therein lies his inhumanity and his debas.e.m.e.nt. In most cases he is little better than a carca.s.s-"

"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 claiming 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 intellectual 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 profession.-You have been making purchases?" he asked, in a lighter tone. "No," Hans Castorp said. "That is, nothing but-"

"We ordered a pair of blankets for my cousin," Joachim answered unconcernedly.

"For the afternoon cure-it's got so beastly cold; and I am 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 placet experiri," he repeated, with his Italian p.r.o.nunciation, 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 evidently 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 '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; perhaps 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 b.a.l.l.s! He is very pleased when you notice the effect. I suppose Magnus, the brewer, was rather stupid, after all, with his '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 obviously 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 embarra.s.sment. 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 'virtus,' we always just said '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 impression that the person is we always just said '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 impression that the person is

spoilt-I can't help it."

"You say that," Joachim answered consideringly, "and yet he has a kind of pride about him that makes an altogether different impression: as of a man who has great respect for himself, or for humanity in general; and I like that about him; it has something 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 feeling 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, thermometer 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 afternoon he made use of them for the first time. The experienced Joachim instructed him in. the art of wrapping himself up, as practised in the sanatorium; they all did it, and each new-comer had 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 possible 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-a.s.sured 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.

"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 part.i.tion, to do himself up in his turn.

That about the ten below zero Hans Castorp doubted; he was even now distinctly cold. He s.h.i.+vered repeatedly as he lay looking out through the wooden arch at the reeking, dripping damp outside, which seemed on the point of pa.s.sing 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 Steams.h.i.+ps Ocean Steams.h.i.+ps to read it, the book shook in his hands. So very fit he certainly was not-and totally anaemic, as Hofrat Behrens had said; this, no doubt, was why he was so susceptible to cold. But such unpleasing sensations were outweighed by the great comfort of his position, the una.n.a.lysable, the almost mysterious properties of his reclining-chair, which he had applauded even on his first experience of it, and which rea.s.serted 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 relaxed limbs could be conceived than that purveyed by this excellent 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sive, could sit without occupation hours on end, and loved, as we know, to see time s.p.a.cious before him, and not to have the sense of its pa.s.sing 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 stereoscope, 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. to read it, the book shook in his hands. So very fit he certainly was not-and totally anaemic, as Hofrat Behrens had said; this, no doubt, was why he was so susceptible to cold. But such unpleasing sensations were outweighed by the great comfort of his position, the una.n.a.lysable, the almost mysterious properties of his reclining-chair, which he had applauded even on his first experience of it, and which rea.s.serted 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 relaxed limbs could be conceived than that purveyed by this excellent 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sive, could sit without occupation hours on end, and loved, as we know, to see time s.p.a.cious before him, and not to have the sense of its pa.s.sing 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 stereoscope, 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 habituating 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 danger, 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 perception 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 interestingness and novelty of the time-content are what "make the time pa.s.s"; 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 timeunits, 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.ses and they are gone. Thus what we call tedium is rather an abnormal shortening of the time consequent upon monotony. Great s.p.a.ces of time pa.s.sed in unbroken uniformity 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. Habituation is a falling asleep or fatiguing of the sense of time; which explains why young years pa.s.s slowly, while later life flings itself faster and faster upon its course. We are aware that the intercalation of periods of change and novelty is the only means by which we can refresh our sense of time, strengthen, r.e.t.a.r.d, and rejuvenate it, and therewith renew our perception of life itself. Such is 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 expressed, 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 rea.s.sert 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 entertained. But when I look back-in retrospect, that is, you understand-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: 'I feel I have been up here two months'-it would be silly. All I can say is '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 surroundings. Neither in familiarity with the features peculiar to life 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 discovered the existence of certain regular variations of the programme, 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 Castorp 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 container. 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 n.o.bs come," he said comically, "the international n.o.bs, 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 moribundus, number twenty-seven. Last stage, 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s toward the open door.

This was the first 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 pa.s.sed 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 favoured 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 acquaintance, 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 languis.h.i.+ng; 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 presenting herself in a good light and impressing them with her cultured 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 gentlemen could understand how hard it was, for one who came from cultured surroundings and had the delicacy of feeling of the upper cla.s.ses. 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 toothpowder, in fact; when she came back, there sat her patient in bed, with a gla.s.s 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 satisfying, 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 pa.s.s that he heard from her own lips the tragic formula; and being forearmed, preserved a suitable demeanour and was satisfied with himself afterwards. The 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: "Tous les de, monsieur monsieur," she said. "Tous les de, vous savez vous savez."

"Je le sais, madame 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 pensivefeeling stole about his heart.

"Merci," she said, with a loose, clacking p.r.o.nunciation, 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 people than with jolly ones-goodness knows why. Perhaps it's because 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 embarra.s.s 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 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 n.o.body 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 sometimes 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, " 'Je le regrette beaucoup' was perfectly right as far as it went."

Politically Suspect

REGULAR variations in the daily routine began to discover themselves. 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 extraordinary change and relapse into winter. It was mild and fresh, with pure white clouds in a pale blue sky, and gentle suns.h.i.+ne 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 distinguish it from the rest of the week, management and guest seconding each other in their efforts to this end. At early breakfast there was seed-cake, and each guest had before his place a small gla.s.s with a few flowers, mountain pinks and even Alpine roses, which the gentlemen stuck in their b.u.t.tonholes. Lawyer Paravant from Dortmund had put on a black frock-coat with a spotted waistcoat, and the ladies' toilets were suitably festal and diaphanous. Frau Chauchat appeared in a flowing lace matinee, with open sleeves. As she entered and the gla.s.s door crashed into its lock behind 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 schoolmistress, 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.

Directly after second breakfast the concert began on the terrace; there were all kinds of horns and woodwind, and they played by turns sprightly and sostenuto sostenuto, 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 s.e.xes, 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, paternal air smoking gold-tipped cigarettes; there were the thick-lipped youth who belonged to the Half-Lung Club, the thin and ivory-coloured Fraulein Levi, an ash-blond young man who answered 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 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-gla.s.ses, 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-cla.s.s donkey-these, and numerous others. 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-gla.s.ses, 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-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed, and now he had 100 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 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 singularity, 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 photographing each other. Postage stamps were exchanged. The red-haired Greek girl sketched Herr Rasmussen's portrait on a drawing-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 s.n.a.t.c.h it from her. Hermine 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 pa.s.sed 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 performing 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 employing 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 diningroom 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.