The Magic Mountain (68 page)

“—the beautiful old furniture,” Hans Castorp went on, “the
pieta
out of the fourteenth century, the Venetian lustre, the little page in livery—and such a lot of chocolate layer cake, too—he must personally be pretty well off, I should think—” “Herr Naphta,” Settembrini answered, “is, personally, as little of a capitalist as I am.”

A pause ensued. The cousins displayed the greatest astonishment. Hans Castorp cried out: “What! Good Lord!—you can’t mean it! You don’t mean to say the man is a Jesuit!” “You have guessed aright,” Herr Settembrini said with punctilio.

“I never in all my life—who would ever think of such a thing? So that is why you called him
padre!”

“That was a polite exaggeration,” Settembrini answered. “Herr Naphta is not a Father. His illness is to blame for his not having got that far. But he has finished his noviciate and taken his first vows. The state of his health obliged him to give up his theological studies, after which he spent some years in a school belonging to the Society, where he acted as prefect and preceptor of the younger pupils. That was in sympathy with his pedagogic leanings, and he continues in the same line up here, by teaching Latin at the Fridericianum. He has been here five years. When, or if, he can leave this place, remains in doubt. But he belongs to the Society, and even if the bond were a looser one than it is, he would never want for anything. As I told you, he is personally poor; that is to say, without possessions. That is the rule of the Society; which, however, commands immense riches, and, as you saw, looks well after its own.”

“Thunder and lightning!” Hans Castorp said. “And I never even knew that such things existed any more! A Jesuit! Well, well! But do tell me—if he is so well looked after by those people, why in the world does he live—I don’t mean to say a word about your lodgings, Herr Settembrini, and you are certainly charmingly fixed, at Lukaçek’s, it is so retired and cosy there; but I mean, if Naphta really has such a pile as that, to speak vulgarly, why doesn’t he take another apartment, in a better house, more stately, with a proper entrance and large rooms? There is something secret and suspicious-looking about him, there in that hole, with all that silk—”

Settembrini shrugged his shoulders.

“He is probably guided by considerations of taste and tact,” he said “I imagine he salves his anti-capitalistic conscience by living in a poor house, and indemnifies himself by living in the style he keeps. And I should say that discretion plays some role in the affair too. No use advertising to all the world how well the Devil takes care of his own. He shows an unpretentious façade, and behind it gives free rein to tastes— such as a prince of the Church—”

“Extraordinary!” Hans Castorp said. “It is all perfectly new and astonishing to me—I am free to confess. Why, Herr Settembrini we are really very much indebted to you for this new acquaintance. Many a time and oft we shall be going down to pay him a visit—I am sure of that. Such discourse does wonders in the way of enlarging the horizon—it gives one glimpses into a world the existence of which one never dreamed. A proper Jesuit! When I say proper the adjective stands for all that passes through my mind ss I say it. I mean, is he a real, actual Jesuit? I know you mean a person can’t be proper with the Devil supporting him from behind—but what
I
mean is, is he proper
as a Jesuit?
That is what I am thinking. He said certain things—you know the ones I mean—about modern communism, and the religious zeal of the proletariat, and not withholding its hand from bloodshed—I wont discuss them further, but surely your grandfather, with his citizen’s pike, was a perfect ewe lamb by comparison—please forgive my language. Is that allowed? Do his authorities stand for it? Is that the doctrine of the Roman Church, which all the religious societies all over the world propagate by means of intrigue, or so they say? Isn’t it—what is the word? —heretical, abnormal, incorrect? Those are the things I am thinking about Herr Naphta—and I should be pleased to have your opinion on them.”

Settembrini smiled. “Very simple. Herr Naphta is, of course, first of all a Jesuit. He is that always, and before everything else. But he is also a man of intellect—or I should not be seeking his society—and as such he is always searching for new combinations, new associations and adaptations, new shades of meaning proper to the time. You saw how he surprised even me by his theories. He had never gone so far with me before. I made use of the very evident stimulus of your presence to stir him up to the point of saying his last word on a certain subject. It sounded ridiculous enough, monstrous enough—”

“I only mean—look: he has a moist spot, and that hinders him from becoming a Father. But his combinations would probably have hindered him anyhow, and so, in a certain way, the spot and the combinations hang together. In his way he too is a sort of delicate child—a
joli jésuite
with a pe
tite tache humide.”

They had reached the sanatorium, but stood in a little group on the terrace before the house talking still awhile before parting, and watched by a few guests who happened to be lounging there. Herr Setrembrini said: “I repeat, my young friends—I warn you. I cannot prevent you from cultivating the acquaintance now it is made, if curiosity leads you to do so. But arm yourselves, arm your hearts and minds with suspicion, oppose him with a critical spirit. I will characterize this man for you with a single word. He is a voluptuary.”

The cousins made astonished faces. Hans Castorp asked: “A—what? But he is a member of a Society. They have to take certain vows, I have always supposed—and then he is such a poor creature physically, so—”

“You are talking rubbish, Engineer,” Settembrini interposed. “It has nothing to do with physical insufficiency; while as for the vows you speak of, there are always reservations. I was speaking in a broader, more intellectual sense, your comprehension of which I felt I might presume upon, by now. You probably remember my visiting you one day in your room—it was long ago, frightfully long ago—you had just finished your three weeks in bed, after being received into the sanatorium.”

“Of course. You came in at dusk, and turned on the light—I remember it as if it were yesterday—”

“Good. We fell into talk, as we have often done, I rejoice to say, and upon somewhat elevated subjects. We spoke, I believe, of life and death: of the dignity of death in so far as it is the condition and appurtenance of life, and the grotesqueness into which it declines so soon as the mind erects it into an independent principle. Young men,” went on Herr Settembrini, standing close to the two, with the thumb and middle finger of his left hand splayed out like a fork, as if to collect their attention, while he raised the forefinger of his right in warning, “imprint it upon your minds: the mind is sovereign. Its will is free, it conditions the moral world. Let it once dualistically isolate death, and death will become, in actual fact,
actu
, by this mental act of will, you understand me, a power in itself, the power opposed to life, the inimical principle, the great temptation; whose kingdom is the kingdom of the flesh. You ask me why of the flesh? I answer you: because it unlooses and delivers, because it is deliverance—yet not deliverance from evil, but deliverance by evil. It relaxes manners and morals, it frees man from discipline and restraint, it abandons him to lust. If I warn you against this man, whose acquaintance with you I have unwillingly brought about, if I exhort you to go thrice-armed with a critical spirit in all your dealings with him, it is because all his thoughts are voluptuous, and stand under the ægis of death—and death is the most dissolute of powers, as I told you then, Engineer—I well remember my words, for I never fail to retain in my mind any good and telling phrase I may have chanced to avail myself of—a power hostile to civilization and progress, to work and to life, against whose mephitic breath it is the noblest task of the teacher to shield the mind of youth.”

Who could talk more beautifully than Herr Settembrini, who clearer, or in betterrounded periods? Hans Castorp and Joachim Ziemssen thanked him most warmly for all he had said, and mounted the Berghof steps, while Herr Settembrini betook himself once more to his humanistic writing-desk, in the storey above Naphta’s silken cell. This first visit of the cousins to Naphta, whose course we have described, was followed by two or three others; one, even, in the absence of Herr Settembrini. All of them afforded young Hans Castorp much food for thought, when, in his blueblossoming retreat, with the image of the human form divine, called
Homo Dei
, hovering before his mind’s eye, he sat and “took stock.”

Thus also on Hans Castorp’s anniversary. She may have even tried to nod at him meaningfully, at table; but encountering a vacant stare dexterously withdrew. Joachim too had kept silence, though he probably had clearly in mind the date on which he had fetched the guest from the Dorf station. Joachim was ever by nature taciturn; had always talked less than his cousin, even before they came up here—there had never been any comparison between him and the humanists and controversialists of their acquaintance—and in these days his silence had assumed heroic proportions, only monosyllables passed his lips. His manner, however, spoke volumes. It was plain that in his mind the Dorf station was associated with another order of ideas than those of arrival or meeting people. He was conducting a lively correspondence with the flatland; his resolve was ripening, his preparations drawing to a head.

July had been warm and bright. But with August bad weather set in, cloudy and damp; with first a sleety drizzle and then actual snow. And it lasted—with interludes of single resplendent days—all through the month, and on into September. At first the rooms held the warmth of the summery period just past: they stood at fifty degrees, which passed for comfortable. But it grew rapidly colder; there were rejoicings when the snowfall whitened the valley, for the sight of it—the sight alone, for the mere drop of the temperature would not have sufficed—compelled the management to heat, first the dining-room, then the chambers as well; so that when one rolled out of the rugs, at the end of a rest period, and re-entered one’s chamber, one might warm one’s stiffened fingers against the hot pipes, though the dry air these gave out did accentuate the burning in the cheeks.

Was it winter again? Almost the senses thought so. On every hand were loud complaints, that they had been cheated out of their summer; though they had really cheated themselves, abetted by conditions both natural and artificial, and by a consumption of time-units reckless alike within and without. Reason was aware that fine autumnal weather was certain to follow, there would be a succession of brilliant days each outvying the other, and so fine that one might still honour them with the name of summer, save for the flatter arc the sun made in its course, and its earlier setting. But the effect of the winter landscape on the spirit was stronger than the power of such consolatory thoughts. The cousins would stand at the closed door into the balcony, and look out with loathing into the whirl of flakes—it was Joachim who stood thus, and in a suppressed voice he said: “So that’s to begin all over again, is it?” From behind him in the room Hans Castorp responded: “That would be rather early—surely it can’t be settling down to winter already—but it has a terribly final look. If winter consists in darkness and cold, snow and hot pipes, then there’s no denying it’s winter again. And when you think we’d just finished with it and that the snow only just melted—at least, it seems that way, doesn’t it, as though spring were only just over—well, it gives one a turn, I will say. It is actually a blow to one’s love of life—let me explain to you how I mean. I mean the world as normally arranged is conducive to man’s needs and his pleasure in life—isn’t that so? I won’t go so far as to say that the whole natural order of things, for instance the size of the earth, the time it takes to revolve on its axis and about the sun, the division between day and night, summer and winter—in short, the whole cosmic rhythm, if you like to call it that— was especially arranged for our use and behoof; that would be cheek, I suppose, and simple-minded into the bargain. It would be teleological reasoning, as the philosophers express it. No, it would be truer to say that our needs are—thank God that it should be so—in harmony with the larger, the fundamental facts of nature. I say thank God, for it is really ground for praising Him. Now, when summer or winter comes along down below, the past summer or winter is far enough in the past to make one glad to see it again—and therein lies some of the joy we have in life. But up here this order and harmony are destroyed: first because there are no proper seasons, as you yourself said when I first came, but only summer days and winter days all mixed up together; and secondly, because what we spend up here isn’t time at all, and the new winter, when it comes, isn’t new, but the same old winter all the time. All that explains perfectly the disgust you feel when you look out at the window.”