The Magic Mountain Page 4

  And indeed that was what Hans Castorp was doing, and he exclaimed, “Magnificent!”

  “You think so, do you?” Joachim asked.

  They had first taken a street that was faced by an irregular pattern of buildings and ran along the railroad tracks, following the valley’s axis, but then turned left and crossed the narrow tracks and a brook; and they were now trotting up a gently rising road in the direction of wooded slopes and a low, outcropping meadow where an elongated building stood, its façade turned to the southwest, topped by a copper cupola, and arrayed with so many balconies that, from a distance as the first lights of evening were being lit, it looked as pockmarked and porous as a sponge. Dusk was falling fast. A pale red sunset that had enlivened the generally overcast sky faded now, leaving nature under the transient sway of the lackluster, lifeless, and mournful light that immediately precedes nightfall. Lights were coming up in the long, meandering, populous valley, dotting its floor and the slopes on both sides—particularly on the swelling rise to the right, where buildings ascended a series of terraces. Paths led up the meadowed hills on their left, but were soon lost to sight in the dull black of pine forests. Behind them, the mountains in the more distant background, where the valley tapered to an end, were a sober slate blue. Now that the wind had picked up, the evening had turned noticeably cooler.

  “No, to be quite frank, I don’t find it that overwhelming,” Hans Castorp said. “Where are the glaciers and snowcapped, towering peaks? Seems to me, the ones here aren’t all that high.”

  “Oh, they’re high all right,” Joachim replied. “You can see the tree line almost everywhere, it’s really quite clearly defined; the pines come to an end, then everything else—the end, then rocks, as you can see. And over there, to the right of the Schwarzhorn, on that jagged peak there, is a glacier for you—can you still see the blue? It’s not that big, but it’s a textbook glacier, the Scaletta Glacier. And there’s Piz Michel and Tinzenhorn in that gap—you can’t see them from here, but they’re always snow-covered, year-round.”

  “Eternal snow,” Hans Castorp said.

  “Right, eternal, if you like. And they’re all very high. But we’re dreadfully high up ourselves, keep that in mind. Five thousand three hundred feet above sea level. So you don’t notice the difference in height that much.”

  “Yes, it was quite a climb. Certainly had me scared, let me tell you. Five thousand three hundred feet. Why, that’s over a mile high. I’ve never been this far up in my whole life.” And in his curiosity, Hans Castorp took a deep breath, testing the alien air. It was fresh—that was all. It lacked odor, content, moisture, it went easily into the lungs and said nothing to the soul.

  “Excellent!” he remarked politely.

  “Yes, the air is famous. But the landscape is not showing itself to its best advantage this evening. It can look better, especially in the snow. But you soon get your fill of staring at it. Believe me, all of us up here have definitely had our fill of it,” Joachim said, and his mouth wrenched in an expression of disgust that seemed both exaggerated and out of control—and once again it did not suit him.

  “You’re talking so strangely,” Hans Castorp said.

  “Strangely, am I?” Joachim asked, turning to his cousin and looking worried somehow.

  “No, no, beg your pardon, it just seemed that way to me for a moment or so,” Hans Castorp hastened to say. But what he really meant was that the phrase “us up here,” which Joachim had used three or four times already, somehow made him feel anxious and queer.

  “Our sanatorium lies at a higher altitude than the village, as you can see,” Joachim continued. “A hundred fifty feet. The brochure says ‘three hundred,’ but it’s only half that. The highest of the sanatoriums is Schatzalp, across the way, you can’t see it now. They have to transport the bodies down by bobsled in the winter, because the roads are impassable.”

  “The bodies? Oh, I see. You don’t say!” Hans Castorp cried. And suddenly he burst into laughter, a violent, overpowering laugh that shook his chest and twisted his face, stiffened by the cool wind, into a slightly painful grimace. “On bobsleds! And you can sit there and tell me that so calm and cool? You’ve become quite the cynic in the last five months.”

  “That’s not cynical at all,” Joachim replied with a shrug. “Why do you say that? It doesn’t matter to the bodies. All the same, it may well be that we do get cynical up here. Behrens is an old cynic himself—a regular brick, by the way, an old fraternity man and a brilliant surgeon, you’ll like him, seems to me. And then there’s Krokowski, his assistant—a very savvy character. They make special note of his services in the brochure. He dissects the patients’ psyches.”

  “He what? Dissects their psyches? That’s disgusting!” Hans Castorp cried, and now hilarity got the better of him. He could no longer control it. Psychic dissection had finished the job, and he bent over and laughed so hard that the tears ran out from under the hand with which he had covered his eyes. Joachim laughed heartily, too—it seemed to do him good. And so the two young men were in fine good humor as they climbed down from their carriage, which had borne them at a slow trot up the steep loop of the driveway to the portal of the International Sanatorium Berghof.

  ROOM 34

  On their immediate right, between the outer and inner doors, was the desk for the concierge, and a French-looking attendant, dressed in the same livery as the limping man at the train station, was sitting by the telephone reading newspapers; he came up to them and led them across the well-lit lobby, with public rooms opening off it on the left. Hans Castorp peered in as they passed, and discovered them empty. Where were the guests? he asked, and his cousin replied, “Taking their rest cure. I was excused from it today because I wanted to meet your train. Otherwise I’d be lying out on my balcony after my evening meal, too.”

  It would not have taken much for Hans Castorp to be seized by another fit of laughter. “What? You lie out on your balcony rain or shine, night or day?” he asked, his voice wavering on the edge.

  “Yes, it’s in the rules. From eight till ten. But come on, let’s have a look at your room, and you can wash up.”

  They got on the elevator, the Frenchman operating the electric switches. As they glided upward, Hans Castorp dried his eyes.

  “I’m exhausted, I’ve laughed so hard,” he said, catching his breath through his mouth. “It’s all these crazy things you’ve been telling me. The psychic dissection was just too much, I could have done without that. Besides, I’m a little weary from the trip, I suppose. Do your feet get cold so easily, too? And at the same time your face flushes—it’s an unpleasant feeling. I assume we’ll be eating soon? I think I’m getting hungry. Do they feed you properly up here?”

  They passed soundlessly down the coconut runners of the narrow corridor. Cool light came from the milk-glass shades of lamps set in the ceiling. The walls were painted with a hard, glistening white enamel. A nurse in a white cap appeared from somewhere, a pince-nez set on her nose, its cord tucked behind one ear. She had the look of a Protestant nurse, of someone with no real devotion to her profession, but kept restless by curiosity and the burden of boredom. Some balloon-shaped objects had been set out in the corridor, beside two of the white-enameled doors—large, potbellied containers with short necks. Hans Castorp was going to ask their purpose, and just as quickly forgot the question.

  “Here you are,” Joachim said. “Number thirty-four. I’m on your right, and on your left is a Russian couple—they’re rather slovenly, and loud, I must say, but there was nothing else we could do. Well, what do you say?”

  There was a double door, with clothes hooks in the space between the two. Joachim had turned on the ceiling light, and its sharp luster revealed a room that was both cheerful and restful, with white, practical furniture; heavy, washable wallpaper, likewise white; a floor covered with spotless linoleum; and linen curtains, embroidered with a simple, cheerful pattern of modern design. The door to the balcony stood open to a glimpse of lig
hts in the valley and the sound of distant dance music. Joachim had thoughtfully placed a few wildflowers in a small vase on the dresser—some yarrow and a couple of bluebells, in their second bloom this summer, that he had picked on the slopes.

  “How kind of you,” Hans Castorp said. “What a nice room. I’ll have no trouble putting up here for a week or two.”

  “An American woman died here the day before yesterday,” Joachim said. “Behrens told me he was sure it would be all over with her before you arrived, and that you could have the room. Her fiancé was with her, an English naval officer, but he didn’t exactly keep a stiff upper lip. He kept coming out into the corridor to cry every few minutes, like a little boy. And then he’d rub his cheeks with cold cream because he’d just shaved and the tears stung. The evening before last, the American woman had two first-class hemorrhages, and that was that. But she’s been gone since yesterday morning, and of course it was all thoroughly fumigated with formalin—they say it’s very effective, you know.”

  Hans Castorp was listening to this narrative with edgy bemusement. He had rolled up his sleeves and was standing now at the large washbasin, its nickel taps sparkling under the electric light, but he cast no more than a fleeting glance at the bed’s white metal frame and fresh sheets.

  “Fumigated, that’s spiffing,” he said glibly and somewhat incongruously while he washed and dried his hands. “Yes, methyl aldehyde, even the toughest bacteria can’t take that—H2CO, but it does burn in your nose, doesn’t it? It’s obvious, of course, that strict cleanliness is essential.” His accent, particularly his it’s, betrayed his Hamburg origins, whereas starting back in his student days, his cousin had adopted more standard pronunciation. Feeling much chattier now, he rambled on, “What I was going to say was . . . that naval officer probably used a safety razor, that’s what I think, it’s easier to cut yourself with those things than with a well-stropped straight razor, that’s been my experience at least, so I alternate between the two. And, of course, salt water does smart on chafed skin, so he probably got in the habit of using cold cream while he was in the service, that doesn’t seem at all peculiar to me.” And he chatted away, telling about how he had packed two hundred Maria Mancinis—his cigars—in his trunk, but that getting through customs had been easy as pie. And then he extended greetings from various people back home. “Don’t they heat the rooms?” he suddenly exclaimed and ran over to put his hand on the radiator.

  “No, they keep it rather cool,” Joachim answered. “The weather would have to turn really bad before they would turn on the heat in August.”

  “August, August,” Hans Castorp said. “But I’m freezing! I’m ab-so-lute-ly freezing, I mean my body is, although my face feels awfully flushed—here, feel it, it’s burning up.”

  The suggestion that someone feel his face was not at all typical of Hans Castorp, and even he was embarrassed by it. Joachim did not acknowledge it, but merely said, “It’s the air here, it doesn’t mean anything. Behrens himself walks around with purple cheeks all day. Some people never get used to it. Well, come on now, or we’ll not get anything to eat.”

  In the corridor they ran into the nurse again, who squinted with nearsighted curiosity as she watched them pass. They had reached the second floor, when Hans Castorp suddenly stopped in his tracks, mesmerized by a perfectly ghastly noise he heard coming from beyond a dogleg in the hall—not a loud noise, but so decidedly repulsive that Hans Castorp grimaced and stared wide-eyed at his cousin. It was a cough, apparently—a man’s cough, but a cough unlike any that Hans Castorp had ever heard; indeed, compared to it, all other coughs with which he was familiar had been splendid, healthy expressions of life—a cough devoid of any zest for life or love, which didn’t come in spasms, but sounded as if someone were stirring feebly in a terrible mush of decomposing organic material.

  “Yes,” Joachim said, “it looks bad. An Austrian aristocrat—you know, an elegant fellow, your born horseman. And now it’s come to this. Although he’s still up and about.”

  As they walked on, Hans Castorp remarked, referring to the horseman’s cough, “You must realize that I’ve never heard anything like it, that it’s all quite new to me, and that it does make an impression. There are so many kinds of coughs, dry ones, loose ones, and loose ones are healthier, people say, better than dry barks. Back in my youth”—he actually said “in my youth”—“I caught the croup, and it had me barking like a wolf, and everyone was happy when it loosened up, I still remember it quite well. But a cough like that—that’s something new, to me at least—it’s not even human. It’s not dry, but you can’t call it loose, either, there’s no word for it. It’s as if you were looking right down inside and could see it all—the mucus and the slime . . .”

  “Well,” Joachim said, “I hear it every day, so you don’t need to describe it for me.”

  But Hans Castorp could not get the cough he had heard out of his mind and kept repeating that it was literally like looking down inside the horseman; and as they entered the restaurant, his eyes, weary from the trip, had taken on a glint of nervous excitement.

  IN THE RESTAURANT

  The restaurant was well lit, elegant, and comfortable. It was to the right of the lobby, directly across from the social rooms, and was used, as Joachim explained, primarily for new arrivals or residents who either had missed a regularly scheduled meal or had visitors. But birthdays or imminent departures were celebrated there, too, as were favorable results of a general checkup. Things could get very lively in the restaurant on occasion, Joachim said; they even served champagne. There was no one there now except one lady, perhaps thirty years old, sitting alone and reading—humming to herself the whole time while drumming softly on the tabletop with the middle finger of her left hand. When the young gentlemen had seated themselves, she changed places, so that her back was to them now. She was standoffish, Joachim explained in a low voice, and always ate in the restaurant with just her book. Rumor had it that she had entered a tuberculosis sanatorium as a very young girl and had never lived in the outside world since.

  “Well then, compared to her you’re a mere novice with your five months, and still will be with a whole year to your credit,” Hans Castorp said to his cousin; to which Joachim merely gave his new, uncharacteristic shrug and reached for the menu.

  They had taken the raised table beside a window hung with cream-colored curtains—the nicest table in the room. They sat opposite one another, their faces illumined by an electric table lamp with a red shade. Hans Castorp clasped his freshly washed hands together and rubbed them in congenial expectation, a habit of his whenever he sat down to eat—perhaps because his forebears had prayed before every meal. They were waited on by a friendly girl in a black dress and white apron, whose large face glowed with robust health and who spoke in a guttural dialect. To his great amusement, Hans Castorp was instructed that waitresses here were called “dining attendants.” They ordered a bottle of Gruaud Larose, which Hans Castorp sent back to be brought to room temperature. The food was excellent. There was asparagus soup, followed by stuffed tomatoes, a roast with several vegetables, an especially well done dessert, and a tray of cheese and fruit. Hans Castorp ate heartily, although with not quite the lively appetite he had expected. But he was accustomed to eating large meals—even when he wasn’t hungry—purely out of self-respect.

  Joachim did not do much credit to his meal. He had had enough of the cooking here, he said, everyone up here had, and it was customary to disparage the food, because when you had to sit up here forever and a day . . . But he did enjoy drinking, taking to the wine with something like abandon; and while carefully avoiding all sentiment-laden phrases, he repeatedly expressed his satisfaction that at last someone was here with whom it was possible to have a rational conversation.

  “Yes, it’s top-notch, your having come,” he said, and there was feeling in his nonchalant voice. “And let me tell you it’s quite an event for me. First of all, just the variety of it—I mean, it’s an interrupt
ion, a break in the everlasting, endless monotony.”

  “But I would think time ought to pass quickly for you all,” Hans Castorp suggested.

  “Quickly and slowly, just as you like,” Joachim replied. “What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t really pass at all, there is no time as such, and this is no life—no, that it’s not,” he said, shaking his head and reaching again for his glass.

  Hans Castorp drank as well, although his face was burning like fire by now. But his body still seemed cold, and he felt a pleasurable and yet somehow annoying restlessness in his joints. Words tumbled out, he misspoke himself several times, but went right on with a dismissive wave of his hand. Joachim was likewise in a lively mood, and after the humming, drumming lady suddenly stood up and departed, their conversation turned even more candid and high-spirited. They gesticulated with their forks as they ate, tucked bites of food in their cheeks, looked important, laughed, nodded, shrugged, and went right on talking without even first swallowing their food properly. Joachim wanted to hear about Hamburg and brought the conversation around to plans for making the Elbe more navigable.

  “Epoch-making!” Hans Castorp said. “An epoch-making development for our maritime commerce—simply not to be overestimated. We’ve added a line in our budget for an immediate payment of fifty million, and you can be sure that we know exactly what we’re doing.”

  But then, despite the importance he attached to navigation on the Elbe, he at once abandoned the topic and demanded that Joachim tell him more about life “up here” and about the guests; which Joachim proved ready and willing to do, happy to open his heart and unburden himself. He had to repeat the part about the bodies being sent down by bobsled and once again asserted unequivocally that he knew it to be true. And when Hans Castorp was taken by another fit of laughter, Joachim joined in, seeming heartily to enjoy the opportunity, and then told more comic stories, just to add fuel to the general merriment. There was a lady who sat at his table, Frau Stöhr was her name, and quite ill by the way, the wife of a musician from Cannstatt—and she was the most illiterate person he had ever met. She said things like “decentfiction”—in all seriousness. And Krokowski, the assistant—she called him the “eighty camp.” You had to sit there and swallow it, without a trace of a smile. And she was a gossip, besides, as were most people up here, by the by, and she claimed that another lady, Frau Iltis, carried a “stirletto” around with her. “She calls it a stirletto—isn’t that capital!” And throwing themselves back in their chairs, half lying, half leaning, they laughed so hard that they shook until they both began to hiccough at almost the same time.