The Magic Mountain (58 page)

One prophecy, indeed, made on that carnival evening, made in mockery, was fulfilled: Hans Castorp’s fever chart did display a sharply rising curve. He marked it down with a feeling of solemnity. Thereafter it fell a trifle, and then ran on, unchanged save for slight undulations, well above its accustomed level. It was fever, the degree and persistency of which, according to the Hofrat, was out of all proportion to the condition of his lung. “H’m, young fellow me lad, you’re more infected than one would take you for,” he said. “We’ll have to come on to the hypos. They’ll serve your turn, or I’m a Dutchman. In three or four months you ought to be as fit as a fiddle.” Thus it came about that Hans Castorp had to produce himself, twice in the week, Monday and Saturday after the morning exercise, down in the “lab,” where he was given his injections.

These were given by either physician indifferently; but the Hofrat performed the operation like a virtuoso, with a fine sweep, squeezing the little syringe at the very moment he pressed the point home. And he cared not a doit where he thrust his needle, so that the pain was often acute, and the spot hard and inflamed long afterwards. The effect of the inoculations on the entire organism was very noticeable, the nervous system reacted as after hard muscular exertion; and their strength was displayed in the heightened fever which was their immediate result. The Hofrat had said they would have this effect, and so it fell out. The whole affair, each time, took but a second; one after another, the row of patients received their dosage, in thigh or arm, and turned away. But once or twice, when the Hofrat was in a more lively mood, not depressed by the tobacco he had smoked, Hans Castorp came to speech with him, and conducted the brief conversation somewhat as follows:

“I still remember the coffee and the pleasant talk we had last autumn, Herr Hofrat,” he would say. “Only yesterday, or perhaps the day before, was it, I was reminding my cousin of how we happened to—”

“Gaffky seven,” said the Hofrat. “Last examination. The chap simply can’t part with his bacilli. And yet he keeps at me worse than ever, to let him get away so he can wear a sword tied round his middle. What a child it is! Makes me a scene over a month or so of time, as though it were aeons passing over our heads. Means to leave, whether or no—does he say the same to you? You ought to give him a pretty straight talking-to. Take it from me, you’ll have him hopping the twig if he is too previous about going down and breathing the nice damp air into his weak spot. A swordswallower like that doesn’t necessarily possess so much grey matter; but you, as the steady civilian, you ought to see to it he doesn’t make an ass of himself.”

“I do talk to him, Herr Hofrat,” Hans Castorp responded, taking the reins again into his hands. “I do, often, when he begins to kick against the pricks—and I think he will listen to reason. But the examples he has before his eyes are all the wrong kind. He is always seeing people going off on their own, without authority from you; it looks mighty gay, as though they were really leaving for good, and that is a temptation to all but the strongest characters. For instance, lately—who was it went off? A lady, from the ‘good’ Russian table, that Frau Chauchat. She’s gone to Daghestan, they say. Well, Daghestan—I don’t know the climate, it is probably better, when all is said and done, than being right down on the water. But after all, it is the flat-land, according to our ideas up here—though for aught I know it may be mountainous, geographically speaking; I am not much up on the subject. But how can a person who isn’t sound live out there, where all the proper ideas are totally lacking, and nobody has a notion of the regimen, the rest-cure, and measuring, and all that? Anyhow, she will be coming back, she told me so herself—happened to. How did we come to speak of her?—Yes, Herr Hofrat, I remember as thought it was yesterday, how we met you in the garden, or, rather, you met us, for we were sitting on a bench—I could show you the very bench, to-day, that we were sitting on—we were sitting and smoking. Or, rather, I was smoking, for my cousin doesn’t smoke, oddly enough. You were smoking too, and we exchanged our brands, I recall. Your Brazil I found excellent; but I suspect one has to go about them a little gingerly, or something may happen as it happened to you that time with the two little imported—when your bosom swelled with pride, and you nearly toddled off, you know. I may joke about it, since it turned out all right. I’ve ordered another couple of hundred of my Maria lately. I’m very dependent on her, she suits me in every respect. But the carriage and customs make the cost rather mount up—so if you have anything good to suggest, Herr Hofrat, I’m ready to have a go at the domestic product—I see some attractive weeds in the windows. Yes, we were privileged to look at your paintings, I remember the whole thing so well. And I was perfectly amazed at your oil technique, I’d never venture anything like it. You showed us the portrait you made of Frau Chauchat, simply first-class treatment of the skin—I must say I was very much struck by it. At that time I was not personally acquainted with the sitter, only by sight. But just before she went off, I got to know her.” “You don’t say!” answered the Hofrat—a little as he had that time when Hans Castorp told him, shortly before the first examination, that he had fever. He said no more.

“Yes,” went on the youth, “I made her acquaintance—a thing that isn’t so easy, hereabouts, you know. But Frau Chauchat and I, we managed, at the eleventh hour, we had some conversation—Ff—f!” went Hans Castorp, and drew his breath sharply through his teeth. The needle had gone in. “That was certainly a very important nerve you happened to hit on, Herr Hofrat,” he said. “I do assure you, it hurt like the devil. Thanks, a little massage does it good… Yes, we came a little closer to each other, in conversation.”

“Ah? Well?” the Hofrat said. His manner was as one expecting from his own experience a very favouring reply, and expressing his agreement in anticipation by the way he puts the question.

“I’m afraid my French was rather lame,” Hans Castorp answered evasively. “I haven’t had much occasion to use it. But the words somehow come into one’s mind when one needs them—so we understood each other tolerably well.”

“I believe you,” said the Hofrat. “Well?” he repeated his inquisition; and even added, of his own motion: “Pretty nice, what?”

Hans Castorp stood, legs and elbows extended, his face turned up, buttoning his shirt-collar.

“It’s the old story,” he said. “At a place like this, two people, or two families, can live weeks on end under one roof, without speaking. But some day they get acquainted, and take to each other, only to find that one of the parties is on the point of leaving. Regrettable incidents like that happen, I suppose. In such cases, one feels like keeping in touch by post, at least. But Frau Chauchat—” “Tut, she won’t, won’t she?” the Hofrat laughed.

“No, she wouldn’t hear of it. Does she write to you, now and again, from where she is staying?”

“Lord bless you!” Behrens answered, “she’d never think of it. In the first place, she’s too lazy, and in the second—how could she? I can’t read Russian, though I can jabber it, after a fashion, when I have to, but I can’t read a word—nor you either, I should suppose. And the puss can purr fast enough in French or in book German, but writing—it would floor her altogether. Think of the spelling! No, my poor young friend, we’ll have to console each other. She always comes back again, sooner or later. Different people take it differently—it’s a question of procedure, or of temperament. One goes off and keeps coming back, another stops long enough that he doesn’t need to come back. Just put it to your cousin that if he goes off now, you’re likely to be still here to see him return in state.” “But Herr Hofrat, how long do you mean that I—?”

“That you? You mean that he, don’t you? That he won’t stop as long a time below as he has been up here, that is what I mean, and so I tell you. That’s my humble opinion, and I lay it on you to tell him so from me, if you will be so kind as to undertake the commission.”

Such, more or less, would be the trend of their conversation, artfully conducted by Hans Castorp, who, however, reaped nothing or less than nothing for his pains. How long one must remain in order to see the return of a person departed before her time— on that point the result was equivocal; while as for direct news of the departed fair one, he got simply none at all. No, he would have no news of her, so long as they were separated by the mystery of time and space. She would never write, and no opportunity would be afforded him to do so. And when he came to think of it, how should it be otherwise? Was it not very bourgeois, even pedantic, of him, to imagine they ought to write, when he himself had been of opinion that it was neither necessary nor desirable for them to speak? Had he even spoken with her, that carnival evening— anything that might be called speaking, and not rather the utterance of a dream, couched in a foreign tongue, and very little “civilized” in its drift? Why should he write to her, on letter-paper or on postcards, setting down for her edification, as he did for that of his people at home, the fluctuations of his curve? Clavdia had been right in feeling herself dispensed from writing by virtue of the freedom her illness gave her. Speaking and writing were of course the first concern of a humanistic and republican spirit; they were the proper affair of Brunetto Latini, the same who wrote the book about the virtues and the vices, and taught the Florentines the art of language and how to guide their state according to the rules of politics.

And here Hans Castorp was reminded of Ludovico Settembrini, and flushed, as once he had when the Italian entered his sick-room and turned on the light. Hans Castorp might have applied to him with his metaphysical puzzles, if only by way of challenge or in a carping spirit, without any serious expectation of an answer from the humanist, whose concerns and interests, of course, were all of this earth. But since the carnival gaieties, and Settembrini’s impassioned exit from the music-room, there had been a coolness between them, due on Hans Castorp’s side to a bad conscience, on the other’s to the deep wound dealt his pedagogic pride. They avoided each other, and for weeks exchanged not a single word. In the eyes of one whose view it was that all moral sanctions resided in the reason and the virtue, Hans Castorp must have ceased to be “a delicate child of life”; Herr Settembrini must by now have given him up for lost. The youth hardened his heart, he scowled and stuck out his lips when they met, and the Italian’s darkly ardent gaze rested upon him in silent reproach. But his resentment dissolved on the instant, the first time Herr Settembrini spoke to him, which, as we have said, happened after weeks of silence. Even so, it was in passing, and in the form of a classical allusion, for the understanding of which some training in occidental culture was required. They met, after dinner, in the glass door—that door which nowadays was never guilty of banging. Settembrini overtook the young man, and in the act to pass him, said: “Well, Engineer, and how have you enjoyed the pomegranate?”

Hans Castorp smiled, overjoyed, but in confusion. He answered: “I don’t quite understand, Herr Settembrini. Did we have any pomegranates? I don’t recall having tasted—oh, yes, once in my life I had pomegranate juice and soda; it was too sweet.” The Italian, already in front of him, turned his head to say: “Gods and mortals have been known to visit the nether world and find their way back again. But in that kingdom they know that he who tastes even once of its fruits belongs to them.” He passed on, in his everlasting check trousers, and left Hans Castorp behind, presumably, and to a certain extent actually, staggered by so much allusiveness; though he was stirred to irritation at its being taken for granted, and muttered through his teeth after the departing back: “
Carducci-Latini-humani-spagheti—
get along, do, and leave me in peace!”

Yet he was at bottom sincerely glad to have the silence broken. For despite his keepsake, the macabre trophy he wore next his heart, he leaned upon Herr Settembrini, set great store by his character and opinions; and the thought of being cast off would have weighed upon his spirit more heavily than that remembered boyish feeling of being left behind at school and not counting any more, of enjoying, like Herr Albin, the boundless advantages of his shameful state. He did not venture, however, himself to address his mentor; who, for his part, let weeks elapse before he again approached his “delicate child.”

The ocean of time, rolling onwards in monotonous rhythm, bore the Easter-tide on its billows. And they observed the season at the Berghof, as they did consistently all the recurrent feasts of the year, by way of breaking up and articulating the long stretches of time. At early breakfast there was a nosegay of violets at each place; at second breakfast each guest had a coloured egg; while sugar and chocolate hares adorned and made festive the midday table.

“Have you ever made a voyage by steamship, Tenente? Or you, Engineer?” asked Herr Settembrini, strolling up to the cousins’ table, toothpick in mouth. Most of the guests were shortening the main rest-cure in honour of the day, and devoting a quarter-hour to coffee and cognac. “These rabbits and coloured eggs somehow remind me of the life on board a great oceangoing boat, where you stare at a briny waste and a bare horizon for weeks on end, and even the exaggerated ease of the life scarcely avails to make you forget its precariousness, the submerged consciousness of which continues to gnaw at the depths of your being. I still recall the spirit in which the passengers in such an ark piously observe the feasts of terra firma: they have thoughts of the outer world, they are sensitive to the calendar. On shore it would be Easter today, they say; or, to-day they are celebrating the King’s birthday—and we will celebrate too, as best we may. We are human beings too. Isn’t that the idea?” The cousins acquiesced. It was precisely that. Hans Castorp, touched by being once more addressed, and pricked by his conscience, praised Herr Settembrini’s words in sounding tones; pronounced them capital; said how spirited they were, how much the language of a literary man. He could not say too much. Undoubtedly, though only superficially, as Herr Settembrini, in his plastic way, had remarked, the comfort on board an ocean steamer did make one forget the element of risk in the circumstances. If he might venture to add anything, he would say it even induced a sort of light headedness, a tempting of fate, which the ancients—in his desire to please he quoted the classics!—had called
hubris
. Belshazzar, King of Babylon, and that sort of thing. In short, it came close to being blasphemous. Yet, on the other hand, the luxury of an ocean-going vessel connoted (!) a majestic triumph of the human spirit, it was an honour to human kind, to launch all this comfort and luxury upon the salt sea foam and there sustain it—man thus boldly set his foot, as it were, upon the forces of nature, controlled the wild elements; and that connoted (!) the victory of civilization over chaos—if he might make so free as to employ the phrase.