The Magic Mountain (14 page)

The meal was as faultlessly prepared as it was abundant. Counting 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 inferior 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 exasperated 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 exaggerated 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 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 ladylike, this hand that was putting the braids to rights; not so refined 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 schoolgirl. 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 observation 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, Fräulein 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. Blumenkohl from the room— nothing more. The mildly disgusted facial expression suddenly deepened, he looked with sadder fixity into space, then unobtrusively moved back his chair and went out. Whereupon Frau Stöhr’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 unobtrusive 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 lay and idly dreamed, his heart pounding, breathing through his mouth. On using his handkerchief 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 oppressed, 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 Stöhr, had used.

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, uncertain voice besought. Then: “Dear Herr Albin, for heaven’s sake, 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 amusing 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, 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 consciousness 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 sobbing. “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, you will return to the world, everybody will love you! But put on your 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 himself 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? Do 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 inflammation of the lungs—”

From somewhere a bass voice was audible, commanding quiet. Herr Albin gave a short laugh, a ragged, wavering laugh; then stillness reigned in the rest-hall, a stillness as of a vanished dream, a disappearing wraith. Afterwards the voices rose again, sounding 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 difficult 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.

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 tête-à-tête with the gentleman was something he was far from hankering after. Of course he was healthy, he was not included with the other inmates; 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.