The Magic Mountain (99 page)

“Then take the wineglass. There is only one, I will use the water-glass. It won’t insult this simple wine to drink it out of an ordinary tumbler—” He poured out the wine, with Hans Castorp’s help, as his hand trembled slightly, and drank thirstily, as though it had been water.

“That is refreshing,” he said. “Won’t you have some more? No? Permit me to fill my glass”—the second time, he spilled some wine; the turned-over sheet was stained with dark-red spots. “I repeat,” he said, with one lancelike finger reared up, “I repeat, that therein lies our duty, our sacred duty to feel. Feeling, you understand, is the masculine force that rouses life. Life slumbers. It needs to be roused, to be awakened to a drunken marriage with divine feeling. For feeling, young man, is godlike. Man is godlike, in that he feels. He is the feeling of God. God created him in order to feel through him. Man is nothing but the organ through which God consummates his marriage with roused and intoxicated life. If man fails in feeling, it is blasphemy; it is the surrender of His masculinity, a cosmic catastrophe, an irreconcilable horror—” He drank.

“Permit me to relieve you of your glass,” Hans Castorp said. “I find your train of thought highly edifying, Mynheer Peeperkorn. You are developing a theology there, in which you ascribe to man a highly honourable, if perhaps rather a one-sided religious function. There is, if I may say so, a certain austerity in your conception, it has its alarming side. Pardon me. All religious austerity is naturally somewhat alarming to people who are built on modest lines. I have no thought of criticizing the conception, I should like simply to return to your remark about certain prejudices, which, according to your observations, Herr Settembrini has on the subject of Madame. I have known Herr Settembrini for some time, more than a year, for years, in fact. And I can assure you that his prejudices, in so far as they exist, are in no case of a petty or bourgeois character. It would be absurd to think so. It can only be a question of prejudice in a general sense, impersonal, relating to certain pedagogic principles, which, in my character as a delicate child of life, Herr Settembrini has been at pains to—but that would lead us too far. It is a very complex subject, into which I could not—” “And you love Madame?” Mynheer suddenly asked. He turned toward his visitor that kingly countenance, with the sore, writhen mouth and the pale little eyes under the arabesque of lines on the brow.

Hans Castorp started. He stammered: “I—that is—I feel great respect for Frau Chauchat, certainly, in her character as—”

“Pray!” said Peeperkorn, stretching out his hand with that gesture which held back the flow of words. Having thus made a free space for what he was about to say, “Let me,” he went on, “let me repeat, that I am far from reproaching this Italian gentleman with any actual offence against the rules of chivalry. I levelled this reproach against no one—no one. But it occurs to me—Understand me, young man, I am gratified, very. Your presence rejoices my heart. At the same time, I say to myself: your acquaintance with Madame is older than ours. You were a companion of her earlier sojourn up here. And she is a woman of the rarest charms, and I am only an ailing old man. How does it happen—to-day, as I was unable to accompany her, she goes down unattended to the village to make purchases—there is no harm in that, none at all. But doubtless—am I then to ascribe it to the—what was it you said?—the pedagogic principles of Signor Settembrini that you—I beg you not to misunderstand me—” “Not at all, Mynheer Peeperkorn. Absolutely not. Not in the least. I act independently. On the contrary, Herr Settembrini has even taken occasion to—I regret to see that you have spilled wine on your sheets, Mynheer Peeperkorn. May I not—we usually put salt on while the spots are fresh—” “It does not matter,” said Peeperkorn, fixing his guest with his glance.

Hans Castorp changed colour. He said, with a hollow smile: “Everything up here is out of the ordinary. The spirit of the place, if I may put it so, is not conventional. The sufferer, whether man or woman, is privileged. The laws of chivalry are thus forced rather into the background. You are for the moment indisposed, Mynheer Peeperkorn, an acute indisposition. Your companion
is
relatively well. I think I do as Madame would wish in representing her here beside you, in her absence—in so far as there can be any talk of representing her, ha ha!—instead of representing you with her and offering to attend her into the village. How indeed should I come to be playing the cavalier to Madame? I have no title to the position, no mandate, and I have, I must admit, a strong sense of mine and thine. In short, I find my position is correct, in face of the general situation, and also the very genuine feelings I entertain for you, Mynheer Peeperkorn. You asked me, I believe, a question, and I think what I have said should be a satisfactory answer to it.”

“A very amiable answer,” Peeperkorn responded. “I listen with involuntary pleasure, young man, to your fluent little phrases. Your tongue runs on, it springs over stock and stone, and rounds off all the sharp corners. But satisfactory—no. Your answer does not quite satisfy me—you must forgive me for disappointing you. Austere, my dear friend—you used the word with reference to some of my remarks just now. But in yours too I seem to note a certain austerity, they seem a little stiff and forced, and not in harmony with your nature, though I am acquainted with the phenomenon through your bearing in one respect and therefore recognize it now. I mean the formal manner you assume toward Madame—and toward no one else in our little circle, on our walks and excursions. And of which you owe me an explanation. It is a duty, an obligation. I am not mistaken. I have confirmed my observation too many times, and it is unlikely it has not been remarked by others as well—with the difference that these others may perhaps—or even probably—possess a key which I do not.”

Mynheer spoke with uncommon precision and clarity this afternoon, despite the exhaustion consequent upon his fever. There was scarcely a trace of his usual rhapsodic style. He half sat in his bed, his powerful shoulders and splendid head turned toward his guest; one arm was stretched out over the coverlet, with the freckled, sea-captain’s hand erect at the end of the woollen sleeve, forming the ring of precision. The lance-tipped fingers were aloft. And his lips formed the words, as precisely, as “plastically,” as Herr Settembrini himself could have wished, and rolled the
r
in his throat in words like probably and austerity.

“You smile,” he went on. “You seem to be busy searching the tablets of your memory and finding them blank. But there can be no doubt that you know what I mean. I do not say that you do not sometimes address Madame, or that you do not answer her, as occasion arises. But I repeat, you do so with a definite constraint, an evasiveness, and, in fact, an avoidance of one certain form. One gets the impression that there has been a one-sided wager; it is as though you had eaten a philippina with Madame, and made up that you will not address her with the usual form of address. In short, you never use the third person plural. You never say
She
to Madame.” “But Mynheer Peeperkorn—how absurd—what sort of philippina would that be?”

“May I mention the circumstance—you are surely aware of it yourself—that you have just grown pale to the lips?”

Hans Castorp did not look up. He bent over and busied himself with the red stains on the sheet. “It had to come to that, I suppose,” he thought. “It had to come out.— And I suppose I even helped it on myself. I can see that now. Did I really go pale? It may be. For now we’ve certainly come to grips. What will happen? Shall I keep on lying? It might still go—but I won’t. I’ll just sit tight a few minutes and look at these blood-stains—I mean wine-stains—on the sheet.” They were both silent. The stillness lasted some two or three minutes—and gave evidence how much under such circumstances these very small units of time can expand.

It was Pieter Peeperkorn who first spoke. “On the evening when I first had the pleasure of making your acquaintance,” he said, beginning in a singsong tone, and letting his voice fall at the end, as though embarked on a long recitative, “we had a little celebration, sat very late eating and drinking and making merry, and then, in an elevated mood, of spirit free and unrestrained, arm in arm we sought our beds. As we parted, here at my door, the idea came to me to ask you to salute Madame on the brow, as a good friend from her former visit up here. You bluntly refused, rejected the idea on the ground that it would be preposterous. You will not deny that the expression itself demanded an explanation—an explanation for which you have remained until now in my debt. Are you willing to absolve yourself of it?”

“Ah, so he noticed that too,” Hans Castorp thought, and bent closer over the winestains, one of which he scratched with his middle finger. “The fact is I suppose I wanted him to notice it, or I should not have said it. But what to say now? My heart is pounding. Will there be an exhibition of royal rage? Perhaps I’d best keep an eye on his fist, he may be holding it over me already. Certainly I am in a fine position— between the devil and the deep blue sea, as it were.” And suddenly he felt his right wrist grasped by the hand of Peeperkorn.

“Hullo!” he thought. “Why should I be sitting here with my tail between my legs?

Have I done him any injury? Not in the least. Let him talk to the man in Daghestan before he does to me. And after that somebody else, and so on. And then me. And what has he to complain of about me? Nothing, so far. Then why should my heart be pounding like this? It is high time I sit up and look him in the eye—with all due respect to his personality, of course.”

He did so. The great man’s face was yellow, the eyes pale beneath the forehead’s heavy folds, a bitter expression sat on the wounded lips. They looked each other in the eye, the splendid old man and the insignificant young one, and Peeperkorn continued to hold Hans Castorp by the wrist. At last he said, gently: “You were Clavdia’s lover when she was here before.”

Hans Castorp bowed his head once more but lifted it again straightway, took a deep breath, and began: “Mynheer Peeperkorn! It is in the highest degree repugnant to me to tell you a lie. I am searching for a means of avoiding it, but this is not easy. I should be boasting if I say yes, lying if I say no. Let me explain in what sense this is to be taken. I lived a long time, oh, a very long time in this house with Clavdia—I beg pardon, with the present companion of your travels—before making her acquaintance. Our relations—or, rather, my relation to her was never the social one; I can only say of it that its beginnings are shrouded in darkness. In my thoughts I have never named Clavdia but with the thou—and never in reality either. For on the evening when, casting off certain pedagogic restraints of which we were speaking, I made bold to approach her, upon a pretext furnished me by the long-ago past, it was carnival. It was an evening of masks and freedom, an irresponsible hour, when the thou was in force, and by the power of magic and dreams, somehow had—full sway. And—it was also the eve of Clavdia’s departure.”

“Full sway,” repeated Peeperkorn. “You have put that very—very—well.” He released Hans Castorp’s hand, and began with his own huge ones to massage both sides of his own face, eyes, cheeks, and chin. Then he folded his hands upon the winebespotted sheet, and laid his head on the left shoulder, the one toward his guest, with the effect that his face was lightly turned away.

“I have given you the best answer I could, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” Hans Castorp said. “I have tried to say neither too much nor too little. I was concerned to let you see that it is in a way open to us to count that evening—when the thou had full sway, and it was the eve of Clavdia’s departure—or not to count it. It was an extraordinary occasion, almost outside the calendar, intercalated, so to speak, a twenty-ninth of February. It would have been only half a lie if I had simply denied the truth of what you said.” Peeperkorn made no answer.

“I preferred,” Hans Castorp began again, after a pause, “to tell you the truth, rather than run the risk of losing your favour, which, I openly admit, would be a sensible loss to me, I may say a blow, a real blow, comparable to the one I received when Frau Chauchat returned hither as the companion of your travels. I have risked letting this happen, because I have long wished and hoped that there might be understanding between myself and the man for whom I entertained feelings of the most extraordinary respect and reverence. It seemed finer, more ‘human’ to me—you know that is Clavdia’s favourite word, and how she pronounces it, in that enchanting, husky drawl of hers—than silence and dissimulation; and in that sense a weight was lifted from my heart when you put your question.” No answer.

“One thing more, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” Hans Castorp went on. “There was another thing that made me wish to make a clean breast of it to you: and that was the personal experience I had with the irritating effect of uncertainty, being let in for suspicions that could be neither confirmed nor dismissed. You know now who it was—before this present relationship was established which it would be absurd of me not to respect—with whom Clavdia spent—or experienced, or committed—that twenty-ninth of February. It is clear to you now. But for my part I have never been able to know—though of course I realized that anyone in my situation has to reckon with the past—by which I really mean predecessors—and though I also realized that Hofrat Behrens is an amateur portrait-painter, and had, in the course of many sittings, made a capital portrait of her, with a treatment of the skin so very lively and realistic that—between ourselves—it gave me very seriously to think. I have tormented myself no end with that riddle, and still do.”

“You still love her?” Peeperkorn asked, without changing his position, his face still turned away. The large room fell more and more into twilight.

“You will pardon me, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” answered Hans Castorp, “but my feeling for you, which is one of the highest respect and admiration, will not permit me to speak of my feeling for the present companion of your travels,”