The Magic Mountain (30 page)

He was not immediately the wiser. The gleam of the quicksilver 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 intelligence 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 “temperature.” It was fever consequent on an infection, for which his system had been eager. The question was now, what kind of infection? 99.6°—why, Joachim had no more, nor anyone else up here, except the moribund and bedridden. Not Fräulein 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 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—Settembrini, 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 turning the instrument this way and that to find it again. Yes, it registered 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 precisely 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 feverish?”

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 emotion, 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
comme 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 99.5½°.”

“Then it has gone down a little,” his cousin responded hastily. “It was six.”

“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 yourself; 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. Anyhow, 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 washhand-stand. Hans Castorp watched him. They went down, silently, and took their places in the dining-room, which, as always at this hour, shimmered 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°.

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 waggled 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 ancient cheek, “what sort of scandal is this?”

And “Aha, aha!” went Frau Stöhr 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 Marusja, 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 Stöhr whispered the news to Dr. Blumenkohl, who could hardly do otherwise than join in the game, though without looking at Hans Castorp. Only Miss Robinson 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 attentions. “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 liveliest among the seven. Frau Stöhr became almost hysterical. Her peevish face looked scarlet above her neck-ruche, and tiny purple 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 explosion repeated itself two or three times. That was the sort of 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 details 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 examination. 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 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 reliable 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 pleasure 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, tomorrow 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. However, 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 melancholia. 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, 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 righteous 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
au revoir
, and each betook him to his own balcony.