The Magic Mountain (15 page)

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.

“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 clothing 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 himself? 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, and 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 possible to serve at that meal. Miss Robinson drank again her brew made of rose-hips, the grand-niece spooned up her yogurt. There 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 of an hour and a half.

He dressed conscientiously for the evening meal, and, sitting in his place between Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress, he ate: julienne soup, baked and roast meats with suitable accompaniments, 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 Stöhr 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 husband 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 fishsauces 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 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 standing 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 openings 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 incurable, sat with the corners of his mouth drawn down, and handled the cards with a supercilious, man-of-the-worldly air. In a corner sat Dr. Krokowski, absorbed in a brisk and hearty conversation with a half-circle of ladies, among them Frau Stöhr, Frau Iltis, and Fräulein Levi. The occupants of the “good” Russian table had withdrawn into a neighbouring small salon, separated from the card-room by a portière, 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 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 wedding 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 Settembrini’s face. “Perfectly idiotic. I can’t comprehend how in the world I—”

“Don’t disturb yourself, it doesn’t matter,” responded Settembrini, 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 prefer to call it.”

Settembrini smiled. “I may have taken occasion to express myself thus,” he said. “Well, and you found it amusing, this manner of existence?”

“Amusing or dull, whichever you like,” responded Hans Castorp. “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?”

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 question 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 Stöhr 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 listening. 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 I’ve 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 excitedly—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 Fräulein 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 precisely 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 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.”