The Magic Mountain (69 page)

“Thanks,” Joachim said. “And now that you have explained it, you feel so satisfied that you are even satisfied with the situation itself—although in all human—no!” said he. “I’m done. Fed up. It’s beastly. The whole thing is just one tremendous, rotten, beastly sell; and I, for my part—” He went with hasty steps through the room, and shut the door angrily behind him. Unless Hans Castorp was much mistaken, there had been tears in the mild, beautiful eyes.

He left the other staggered. So long as Joachim had confined himself to putting his determination into words, his cousin had not taken it too seriously. But now that silence spoke for him, and his behaviour too, Hans Castorp was alarmed, for he saw that the military Joachim was the man to translate words into deeds—he was so alarmed that he grew pale, and his pallor was for them both. “
Fort possible qu’il va
mourir
,” he thought. And that piece of third-hand information mingled itself with an old, painful, never-quite-to-be-suppressed fear, which made him say to himself: “Is it possible he could leave me alone up here—me, who only came on a visit to him? That would be crazy, horrible; at the bare thought of it I can feel my heart flutter and my cheek pale. Because
if
I am left up here—as I shall be, if he goes down, for it is out of the question for me to go with him—
if
I am left up here, it is for ever; alone I should never find my way back. Never back down to the world again. And at the thought my heart stands still.”

Such the course of Hans Castorp’s fearful musings. But that very afternoon, certitude was vouchsafed. Joachim declared himself, the die was cast, the bridges burnt.

They went down after tea to the basement for the monthly examination. This was the beginning of September. On entering the warm air of the consulting-room, they saw Dr. Krokowski sitting at his table, and the Hofrat, very blue in the face, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, tapping his shoulder with the stethoscope, and yawning at the ceiling. “
Mahlzeit
, children,” said he, languidly. His mood was lax, resigned and melancholic, and he had probably been smoking. There were also, however, some objective grounds for his state, as the cousins had heard: international scandal of a kind only too familiar in the establishment. A certain young girl called Emmy Nolting had entered House Berghof two years before in the autumn, and after a stay of some nine months departed cured. But before September was out she had returned, saying she did not “feel well” at home. In February, with lungs from which all vestige of rhonchi had disappeared, she was sent home again—but by the middle of July was back in her place at Frau Iltis’s table. This Emmy, then, had been discovered in her room at one o’clock at night in company with another sufferer, a Greek named Polypraxios, the same whose shapely legs had attracted favourable attention the night of
mardi gras—
a young chemist whose father owned dye-works in the Piraeus. The discovery had been made through the jealousy of another young girl, a friend of Emmy, who had found her way to Emmy’s room by the same route the Greek had taken—namely, across the balconies; and, distracted by her jealous rage, had made great outcry, so that everybody came running, and the scandal became known to the sparrows on the house-tops. Behrens had to send all three of them away; and had been at the moment going over the whole unsavoury affair with Krokowski, who had had both girls under private treatment. The Hofrat, as he examined, continued to let fall remarks, in resigned and dreary tones—for he was such a master of auscultation that he could listen to a man’s inside, dictate what he heard to his assistant, and talk about something else all the time.

“Ah, yes, gentlemen,” he said, “this cursed
libido.
You can get some fun out of the thing, it’s all right for you.—Vesicular.—But a man in my position, verily I say unto you—dullness here—he hath his belly full. Is it my fault that phthisis and concupiscence go together—slight harshness here? I didn’t arrange it that way; but before you know where you are you find yourself the keeper of a stew—restricted here under the left shoulder. We have psycho-analysis, we give the noodles every chance to talk themselves out—much good it does them! The more they talk the more lecherous they get. I preach mathematics.—Better here, the rhonchi are gone.—I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh. Lawyer Paravant was a bad case; he took my advice, he is now busy squaring the circle, and gets great relief. But most of them are too witless and lazy, God help them!—Vesicular.—You see, I know it’s only too easy for young folk to go to the bad up here—I used to try to do something about these debauches. But it happened a few times that some brother or bridegroom asked me to my face what affair it was of mine—and since then I’ve stuck to my last.—Slight rales up on the right.”

He finished with Joachim, thrust his stethoscope in the pocket of his smock, and rubbed his eyes with both huge hands, as was his habit when he had “backslidden” and become melancholy. Half mechanically, between yawns, he reeled off his patter: “Well, Ziemssen, just keep your pecker up, you’ll be all right yet. You aren’t like a picture in a physiology-book, there’s a hitch here and there, and you haven’t cleaned up your Gaffky, you’ve even gone up a peg or so, it’s six this time—but never mind, don’t pull a long face, you are better than you were when you came, I can hand it to you in writing. Just another five or six months—
monaths
, I mean. Did you know that is the earlier form of the word? I mean to say
monath
, after this—”

“Herr Hofrat,” Joachim began. He stood bare to the waist, heels together and chest out, with a determined bearing, and as mottled in the face as ever he had been that time when Hans Castorp first made observations on the pallor of the deeply tanned. Behrens ran on without noticing: “—and if you stop another round half year and do particular pipe-clay, why, you’ll be a made man, you can take Constantinople singlehanded; you’ll be strong enough to command a regiment of Samsons—” Who knows how much more nonsense he might have uttered if Joachim’s unflinching determination to make himself heard had not brought him to a stand.

“Herr Hofrat,” the young man said, “I should like to tell you, if you will pardon me, that I have decided to leave.”

“Do you mean what you say? You want to hop out of the frying-pan into the fire? You’re going to hook it? Don’t you call that desertion?”

“No, Herr Hofrat, I don’t look at it in that light. I must join my regiment.”

“Even though I tell you I can surely discharge you in half a year, but not before?”

Joachim’s bearing became even more correct. He took in his stomach, and replied, repressed and curt: “I have been here a year and a half, Herr Hofrat. I cannot wait any longer. Originally it was to have been three months. Since then it has been increased, first another three, then another six, and so on, and still I am not cured.” “Is that my fault?”

“My mother—yes. It is all arranged. The first of October I join the seventy-sixth regiment as cornet.”

“At all hazards?” Behrens asked, and fixed him with his bloodshot eyes. “I have the honour,” Joachim answered, his lips twitching.

“Very good, Ziemssen.” The Hofrat’s tone changed; he abandoned his position, he relaxed in every way. “Very well, then. Stir your stumps, go on, and God be with you. I see you know your own mind, and so much is certainly true, that it is your affair and not mine. Every pot stands on its own bottom. You go at your own risk, I take no responsibility. But good Lord, it may turn out all right. Soldiering is an out-of-doors job. It may do you good, you may come through all right.” “Yes, Herr Hofrat.”

“Well, and what about your cousin, the peaceful citizen over there? He wants to go along with you, does he?” This was Hans Castorp, who was supposed to answer. He stood there as pale as at that first examination, which had ended by his being admitted as a patient. Now, as then, his heart could be seen hammering against his side. He said: “I should like to be guided by your opinion, Herr Hofrat.”

“My opinion. Good.” He drew him to him by the arm and began to tap and listen. He did not dictate. It went rather fast. When he finished, he said: “You may go.” Hans Castorp stammered: “You—you mean—I am cured?”

“Yes, you are cured. The place above in the left lobe is no longer worth talking about. Your temperature doesn’t go with it. Why you have it, I don’t know. I assume it is of no further importance. So far as I am concerned, you can go “

“But—Herr Hofrat—may I ask—that is—you are perhaps not altogether serious?”

“Not serious? Why not? What do you suppose? And incidentally, what do you think of me, might I be allowed to ask? What do you take me for? A bawdy-house keeper?” He was in a towering passion. The blood flared up in his cheeks and turned their blue to violet, his one-sided lip was wrenched so high that the canines of the upper jaw were visible. He advanced his head like a steer, with staring, bloodshot watery eves “I won’t have it,” he bellowed. “In the first place, I’m not the proprietor here! I’m on hire. I’m a doctor! I’m nothing but a doctor, I would give you to understand. I’m not a pimp. I’m no Signor Amoroso on the Toledo, in
Napoti bella.
I am a servant of suffering humanity! And if either one of you should perchance have conceived a different opinion of me and my character then you can both go to the devil with my compliments—you can go to the dogs or you can turn up your toes, whichever you like, and a pleasant journey to you!”

He strode across the room and was out of the door that led to the x-ray waitingroom. It crashed behind him.

The cousins looked imploringly at Dr. Krokowski, who buried his nose in his papers. They hurried into their clothes. On the stair Hans Castorp said: “That was awful. Have you ever seen him like that before?”

“No, not like that. But the authorities sometimes get these attacks. The important thing is to behave with dignity and let them pass over. He was irritated about the business with Polypraxios and Emmy Nolting. But did you see,” Joachim went on, and the joy of having fought and won his battle mounted in him and almost took away his breath, “did you see how he gave in and showed no more fight, directly he saw I was in earnest? All one has to do is to show some pluck, and not let oneself be shouted down. Now I’ve even got a sort of leave—at least, he said himself I’ll probably pull out of it—and I’m travelling in a week—in three weeks I’ll be with the colours,” he finished, altering his phrase, and confining the joy that trembled in his voice to his own affairs, without reference to Hans Castorp’s.

The latter was silent. He spoke no word, either of Joachim’s “leave” or his own— which might equally well have been mentioned. He made his preparations for the restcure, put the thermometer in his mouth, flung the camel’s-hair rugs about him with swift, practised hand, the perfected technique of that consecrated art the flat-land knows not of; then he lay still, neat as a sausage-roll, in his excellent chair, in the chill dampness of the early autumn afternoon.

The rain-clouds hung low. Remnants of snow rested on the boughs of the silver fir. The banner of the establishment was furled round its staff. A low murmur of voices rose from the rest-hall, whence last year, at much about this time, the voice of Herr Albin had risen to Hans Castorp’s ear. The cure was going on, the patients sat there with soon-chilled faces and fingertips. To him all this was long-established habit, the inevitable course of life; he knew the gratitude of the settled patient for the blessing of being able to lie, snugly ensconced, and think everything over at leisure.

So it was settled, Joachim was to go. Rhadamanthus had released him; not
rite
, not with a clean bill of health, yet half approvingly, on the ground, and in recognition, of his constant spirit. He would go down: first with the narrow-gauge road as far as Landquart, then to Romanshorn, then across the wide, bottomless lake, over which in the legend the rider rode, across all Germany, and home. He would stop there, in the valley world, among men with no notion of the way to live, ignorant of “measuring” and of the whole ritual of rug-wrapping, of fur sleeping-sacks, of the three daily walks, of—it was hard to say, hard to count all the things of which those down below stood in blank ignorance; but the mere picture of Joachim, after a year and a half up here, living in the darkness of that flat-landish incomprehension—a picture only of Joachim, with hardly the faintest hypothetical reference to Hans Castorp himself—so bewildered the young man that he closed his eyes and waved it away with a motion of the hand, murmuring: “Impossible!”

And since it was impossible, he would live on up here, alone, without Joachim? Yes, it came to that. How long? Until Behrens discharged him cured—in earnest, that is, not as he had to-day. But that was so indefinite a time-limit that he could no more prophesy it than could Joachim, on a like occasion long ago. Again, would the impossible by then have become any more possible? On the contrary, Joachim’s rash departure did—in honesty—offer his cousin a support, now, before the impossible should become utterly so, a guide and companion on a path which of himself he would never, never find again. Ah, if one consulted humanistic pedagogy, how humanistic pedagogy would adjure him to take the hand and accept the offered guidance! But Herr Settembrini was only a representative—of things and forces worth hearing about, it was true, but not the only forces there were. And with Joachim it was the same. He was a soldier. He was leaving—almost at the very time set for the return of the high-breasted one, for it was known that she would return in October. While the departure of the civilian Hans Castorp became impossible precisely because he had to wait for Clavdia Chauchat, whose return, as yet, was not even thought of. “I don’t look at it in that light,” Joachim had answered when Rhadamanthus talked about desertion—though as far as Joachim was concerned that had probably only been some of the Hofrat’s melancholic maundering. But for him, the civilian, the thing was different. For him—ah, here was the right idea, the thought which he had set himself to evolve, as he lay out in the cold and damp—for him the real desertion would lie in his taking advantage of the occasion to dash off unlawfully—or half unlawfully—to the flat-land. It would be the abandonment of certain comprehensive responsibilities which had grown up out of his contemplation of the image called
Homo Dei;
it would be the betrayal of that appointed task of “stock-taking,” that hard and harassing task, which was really beyond the powers native to him, but yet afforded his spirit such nameless and adventurous joys; that task it was his duty to perform, here in his chair, and up there in his blue-blossoming retreat.