The Magic Mountain Page 14

  Several voices of pleading protest, including one sobbing violently: “Herr Albin, Herr Albin, put that revolver away, take it away from your temple, I can’t even watch! Herr Albin, you’re young, you’ll get well again, you’ll enjoy life again in a circle of friends who love you, I swear you will! Put on your coat now, lie down here and pull a blanket over you, it’s time for your rest cure. And don’t chase the bath attendant away again when he comes by and offers to rub you down with alcohol. And you must stop smoking, Herr Albin, do you hear? We implore you, for your own sake, for the sake of your young, precious life!”

  But Herr Albin was implacable. “No, no,” he said, “let me alone, everything’s fine, thank you all very much. I have never refused a lady’s request before now, but you’ll see—there’s no point in trying to sabotage fate. This is my third year here—and I’m fed up with it. I’m not going to play along anymore—can you blame me? Incurable, ladies. Just look at me—here I sit before you, an incurable case. The director himself hardly bothers to conceal the fact, not even for appearance’ sake. You simply must grant me the license that results from my condition. It’s much the same as in high school when you know you’ll be held back—they don’t bother to ask you questions, you don’t bother to do any work. And now I’ve finally come to just such a pretty pass again. I don’t need to do anything anymore, I’m no longer in the running—and I can laugh at the whole thing. Would you like some chocolate? Please, help yourselves. No, you won’t exhaust my supply—I’ve got scads of chocolate up in my room. I have eight boxes of assorted fudges, five bars of Gala Peter, and four pounds of Lindt nougats. The ladies of the sanatorium had them delivered to me while I was down with pneumonia.”

  From somewhere a bass voice rang out, demanding quiet. Herr Albin let out a brief laugh—a fluttery, ragged laugh. Then it grew quiet in the lounging area—as quiet as if a nightmare or a ghost had been routed. And any word spoken sounded strange in the silence. Hans Castorp listened until the last one had died away, and although he was not quite certain if Herr Albin was a phony or not, he could not help feeling a little envious of him nevertheless. That comparison taken from life at school had made an impression on him, because he had been held back in his sophomore year, and he could recall the somewhat ignominious, but humorous and pleasantly untidy state of affairs that he had enjoyed in the last quarter, once he had given up even trying and was able to laugh “at the whole thing.” But since his thought processes were dull and confused, it is difficult to be very precise about them. On the whole, however, it seemed to him that although honor had its advantages, so, too, did disgrace, and that indeed the advantages of the latter were almost boundless. He tried putting himself in Herr Albin’s shoes and imagining how it must be when one is finally free of all the pressures honor brings and one can endlessly enjoy the unbounded advantages of disgrace—and the young man was terrified by a sense of dissolute sweetness that set his heart pounding even faster for a while.

  SATANA MAKES SHAMEFUL SUGGESTIONS

  In time he lost consciousness. His pocket watch said half past three when he was awakened by a conversation behind the glass partition on his left. Dr. Krokowski, who made his rounds at this hour without the director, was speaking in Russian with the rude married couple, inquiring, so it seemed, about the husband’s state of health and checking his fever chart. But now he continued on his journey—not via the balcony, however, but by way of the hall, detouring around Hans Castorp’s room and entering Joachim’s through the door. Hans Castorp felt rather hurt that he had been circumvented and left lying there to his own devices—not that he felt any great need for a tête-à-tête with Dr. Krokowski. To be sure, he happened to be healthy, and so he wasn’t included. Because as things stood with people up here, he thought, anyone who had the honor of being healthy didn’t count and wasn’t going to be asked any questions—and that annoyed young Castorp.

  After spending two or three minutes with Joachim, Dr. Krokowski moved on down the row of balconies, and Hans Castorp heard his cousin say that they should get up now and get ready for their afternoon snack.

  “Fine,” he said and stood up. But he felt very dizzy from lying there so long, and the unrefreshing semisleep had left his face badly flushed again, although his body felt chilled all over—perhaps he had not been covered warmly enough.

  He rinsed his eyes and washed his hands, combed his hair and set his clothes to rights. He joined Joachim in the corridor. “Did you hear that Herr Albin?” he asked as they descended the stairs.

  “But of course,” Joachim said. “The man should be disciplined. Disrupting the afternoon rest period with his chatter and getting the ladies so upset that he’s set them all back for weeks. Gross insubordination. But who wants to play the informer? And besides, most people find that sort of talk entertaining.”

  “Do you really think it possible,” Hans Castorp asked, “that he’s serious about applying that foreign object, ‘slick as a whistle,’ as he puts it?”

  “Oh, indeed,” Joachim replied, “it’s certainly not impossible. That sort of thing happens up here. Two months before I arrived, a student who had been here for a long time went for his checkup—and then hanged himself out in the woods. Everyone was talking about it my first few days here.”

  Hans Castorp’s mouth gaped wide. “Well, I can’t say that I’m feeling all that well here with you,” he declared. “It’s possible I’ll not be able to stay on, that I’ll have to leave—would you be offended?”

  “Leave? What’s got into you?” Joachim exclaimed. “Nonsense. You’ve only just arrived. How can you judge after only one day?”

  “Good Lord, is this still just my first day? It seems to me as if I’d been up here with you all for a long, long time.”

  “Now don’t start in theorizing about time again,” Joachim said. “You had me all confused this morning.”

  “No, don’t worry, I’ve forgotten it all,” Hans Castorp replied. “The whole complex. And my mind isn’t the least bit clear now, that’s all over. . . . And so now it’s time for tea.”

  “Yes, and then we’ll walk up to that same bench from this morning.”

  “Good God—well, let’s hope we don’t run into Settembrini again. I’m incapable of taking part in another learned conversation today, let me tell you that ahead of time.”

  The dining hall offered every beverage one could imagine might be drunk at teatime. Miss Robinson once again drank her bloody-red rosehip tea, and the grandniece was back to spooning yogurt. There were also milk, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, even bouillon; and guests on all sides, who had spent the last two hours resting after their heavy dinner, were busy spreading butter on large slices of raisin cake.

  Hans Castorp had them bring him tea, and he dunked zwieback in it. He tried a little marmalade, too. He took a good look at the raisin cake, but the thought of eating any of it literally made him shudder. And once again—for the fourth time—he sat at his place in this hall with its simply but brightly decorated vaulted ceiling and its seven tables. A little later, around seven o’clock, he would sit there a fifth time—that would be for supper. And in the brief, worthless time in between, there was a walk to the bench up on the mountain slope, right next to the water trough—the path was teeming with patients, so that the cousins frequently had to greet people. Then it was back to the balcony for another rest cure—a fleeting, shallow hour and a half. Hans Castorp felt chilled and shivered badly.

  He dressed painstakingly for supper, and, seated between Miss Robinson and the teacher, he ate julienne soup, pot roast with vegetables, and two pieces of a torte with layers of just about everything—macaroon, buttercream, chocolate, fruit jam, and marzipan—followed by a very good cheese and pumpernickel. He again ordered a bottle of Kulmbach beer to go with it. But he had drunk only half a glass when it became obvious to him that he belonged in bed. His head was buzzing, his eyelids were like lead, his heart beat like a little kettledrum, and to add to his agony, he took a notion that pretty
Marusya, who was sitting bent forward, her face buried in the hand with the ruby ring, was laughing at him, even though he had taken considerable pains not to give her any reason to do so. Far in the distance, he could hear Frau Stöhr telling some story or making some claim that seemed so absolutely crazy that in his confusion he was not sure whether he had heard right or if what Frau Stöhr was saying had been transformed into nonsense inside his head. She was explaining that she knew how to prepare twenty-eight different sauces for fish—and she would stake her reputation on the fact, although her husband had warned her not to speak about it. “Don’t say anything about it!” he had said. “No one will believe it, and even if they do, they’ll simply find it ridiculous.” All the same, she was quite willing to confess before one and all that she could prepare a total of twenty-eight different fish sauces. This was just too horrible for poor Hans Castorp; in his dismay, he pressed his hand to his brow and simply forgot that he had a bite of pumpernickel and cheddar in his mouth, ready to be chewed and swallowed. He still had it in his mouth when everyone stood up to leave.

  They exited through the glass door on the left, that nuisance of a door that was always slamming shut and led directly into the front lobby. Almost all the guests went out this way, because it turned out that for an hour or so after supper people gathered informally in the lobby and the rooms opening off it. The majority of the patients stood about chatting in little groups. Two green folding tables had been set up for devotees of games—dominoes at the one, bridge at the other, although only young people were playing cards, among them Herr Albin and Hermine Kleefeld. In the first social room there were also a few optical gadgets for their amusement: the first, a stereoscopic viewer, through the lenses of which you stared at photographs you inserted into it—a Venetian gondolier for example, in all his bloodless and rigid substantiality; the second, a long, tubelike kaleidoscope that you put up to one eye, and by turning a little ring with one hand, you could conjure up a magical fluctuation of colorful stars and arabesques; and finally, a little rotating drum in which you placed a strip of cinematographic film and then looked through an opening on one side to watch a miller wrestle with a chimney sweep, a schoolmaster paddle a pupil, a tightrope-walker do somersaults, or a farmer and his wife dance a rustic waltz. Laying his chilled hands on his knees, Hans Castorp gazed into each of these apparatuses for a good while. He spent some time beside the bridge table, where the incurable Herr Albin, his mouth drooping at the corners, played his cards with a worldly nonchalance. Dr. Krokowski was sitting off in one corner, engaged in lively, cordial conversation with a semicircle of ladies, including Frau Stöhr, Frau Iltis, and Fräulein Levi. The occupants of the Good Russian table had withdrawn to a smaller adjoining salon that was set off from the game room by heavy curtains—they formed their own intimate clique. In addition to Madame Chauchat, this consisted of a blond-bearded, lackadaisical gentleman with a concave chest and pop-eyes; a very dark-skinned girl with an original, droll face, golden earrings, and a mop of frizzy hair; Dr. Blumenkohl, who had likewise joined them; and two hunch-shouldered youths. Madame Chauchat was wearing a blue dress with a white lace collar. The focus of the group, she was sitting on the sofa behind the round table at the far end of the small salon, her face turned toward the game room. Hans Castorp, who could not look at this ill-mannered woman without feeling some disapproval, thought to himself: “She reminds me of something, but I can’t really say what.” A tall man of about thirty and with thinning hair was sitting at a small brown piano, and he played the “Wedding March” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream—three times in a row; and when a few of the ladies begged him, he first gazed deeply and silently into the eyes of each, one after the other, and started playing the melody yet a fourth time.

  “Might I inquire how you are feeling, my good engineer, “ asked Settembrini, who had been strolling about among the guests, his hands in his pockets, and now came up to Hans Castorp. He was still wearing the same gray, petersham coat and pastel checked trousers. He smiled as he addressed him, and once again Hans Castorp felt sobered at the sight of that delicate, mocking curl of the lip under the sweep of the black moustache. All the same, he stared at the Italian with bloodshot eyes and a rather foolish, slack mouth.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “The gentleman from this morning’s walk, whom we met up there on the bench . . . next to the water trough. Of course, I recognized you at once. Would you believe,” he went on, although he was quite aware that he should not be saying this, “that at first glance this morning I took you for an organ-grinder? It was, of course, pure foolishness on my part,” he added when he saw Settembrini look at him with a cool, searching eye. “Dreadful foolishness, to be sure. It’s really totally inconceivable how of all things in the world I could have . . .”

  “Please, don’t trouble yourself over it—it doesn’t matter,” Settembrini responded, after first silently regarding the young man for another moment. “And how did you spend your day—the first one of your stay at our cozy resort here?”

  “Thanks for asking. Quite as per regulation,” Hans Castorp answered. “Primarily in the ‘horizontal fashion,’ as I’ve been told you like to put it.”

  Settembrini smiled. “It may be that I have described it that way on occasion,” he said. “Well, and did you find it diverting to live horizontally?”

  “Diverting and dull, both, just as you please,” Hans Castorp replied. “It is at times hard to differentiate, you see. I certainly haven’t been bored—there’s all too much hustle and bustle up here among you for that. There are so many new and remarkable things to see and hear. And yet, on the other hand, it’s as if I had been here not for just a day, but considerably longer—almost as if I had grown older and wiser, it seems to me.”

  “Wiser, as well?” Settembrini said and raised his eyebrows. “Might I be permitted a question: how old are you really?”

  And of all things—Hans Castorp didn’t know! For the moment at least, he didn’t know how old he was, despite intense, indeed desperate attempts to collect his thoughts. And to win some time, he asked for the question to be repeated, and then he said: “Me . . . how old am I? I’m in my twenty-fourth year, of course. That is, I’ll be twenty-four soon. Forgive me, I’m very tired,” he said. “ ‘Tired’ isn’t the word for it. You know what it’s like when you’re dreaming and know that you’re dreaming, and try to wake up, but can’t? Well, that’s just how I feel right now. I definitely have a fever, there’s no other explanation. Would you believe it—my feet are cold all the way up to my knees. If you can put it that way, since knees aren’t part of your feet, of course. You must excuse me—I’m absolutely groggy, but then that’s no wonder, really, when first thing in the morning you get whistled at by a pneumothorax and afterward have to listen to that Herr Albin talking, and from the horizontal position, to boot. Just imagine—it’s as if I can no longer trust my five senses, and I must say I find that bothers me more than a flushed face and cold feet. Tell me quite frankly—do you think it’s possible that Frau Stöhr knows how to make twenty-eight sauces for fish? I don’t mean whether she can actually make them—that’s out of the question, I’m sure—but whether she really claimed she could while we were sitting at the table just now, or if I just imagined she did. That’s all I want to know.”

  Settembrini stared at him. He hadn’t seemed to listen; his eyes had “set” again, taking on that same fixed, vacant look. Just as he had earlier that morning, he repeated a threefold “yes, yes, yes” and “I see, I see, I see” with hissing, deliberately ironic s’s.

  “Twenty-four, you say?” he then asked.

  “No, twenty-eight,” Hans Castorp said. “Twenty-eight sauces for fish. Not just sauces in general, but sauces specifically for fish—that’s what’s so monstrous about it.”

  “My good engineer,” Settembrini said, angrily admonishing him, “pull yourself together and leave me out of such depraved nonsense. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t want to know. I
n your twenty-fourth year, you say? Hmm . . . please permit me one more question, or if you will, a modest suggestion. Since your stay here appears not to be good for you—neither physically nor, if I am not mistaken, mentally—how would it be, if you were to forgo the pleasure of growing older here, in short, if you were to pack your things tonight and be on your way with one of the scheduled express trains tomorrow morning?”

  “You mean I should leave?” Hans Castorp asked. “When I’ve only just arrived? But no, how can I possibly decide about that after only one day?”

  And as he said it, quite by chance he caught a glimpse of Frau Chauchat in the next room, head-on—her narrow eyes and broad cheekbones. “What is it,” he thought, “what or who is it that she reminds me of, for heaven’s sake?” But try as he might, his weary brain could find no answer.

  “Of course I’m not finding it all that easy to get acclimatized up here,” he went on, “but that was to be expected. If I were to throw in the towel so soon, simply because I’ll be a little confused and flushed for a few days—why I’d be ashamed of myself, I’d feel like a coward. And besides, it would be quite counter to reason—no, you must admit . . .”