The Magic Mountain (10 page)

“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 silvermounted walking-stick. There were other things he wanted to know.

“What I meant to ask you,” he began, “the case in my room 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, especially 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 remember it as if it were yesterday. It was when they brought the Sacrament to little Hujus, Barbara Hujus—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 hilarious, 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 afternoon 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 his head bent on one side and looked very sanctified—it 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 twentyeight. The priest seemed to be pleased that I saluted; he acknowledged very courteously 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 hollowsounding, 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. “Imagine how I felt! The priest stood on the threshold and spoke soothingly, 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 relatives of course, the parents, talking soothingly at the bed, where you could see nothing but a formless mass that was begging and protesting horribly, and kicking about with its legs.” “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.” “What kind of tone?” Hans Castorp asked with drawn brows.

” ‘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: ‘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. “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!”

“I don’t deny it,” said Joachim. “But when one behaves as feebly as that—”

“No,” persisted Hans Castorp, with a violence out of proportion to the opposition he met, “I insist that a dying man is above any chap that is going about and laughing and earning his living 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, illimitable, body-shaking laughter, that shut up his eyes and made tears well from beneath their lids.

“Sh-h!” went Joachim, suddenly. “Keep quiet,” he whispered, 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.

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 reminded of certain foreign musicians who used to come to Hamburg 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 embarrassment presented him: “My cousin Castorp, Herr Settembrini.”

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 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 smiling 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 betrayed 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 Rhadamanthus 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 remember who Minos and Rhadamanthus were. He answered: “Not at all—no, really, you are under a misapprehension, Herr Septem—”

“Settembrini,” corrected the Italian, clearly and with emphasis, 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 opportunity 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—”

“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 ourselves together, afterwards, if we try.”

“At least,
you
can, I’m sure—you are an upright man,” Settembrini 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 newcomer 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 interested to know what the length of a man’s sojourn would be when it is himself and not Rhadamanthus who prescribes the limit.”