The Magic Mountain (100 page)

Compared to such figures, then, Mynheer Peeperkorn might seem almost colorless. And although this chapter of our story might, like an earlier one, bear the title “Someone Else,” no one need worry that yet another instigator of intellectual and pedagogic confusion has now made an appearance. No, Mynheer Peeperkorn was certainly not a man to bestow logical confusion upon the world. He was a totally different sort of fellow, as we shall see. But that he nevertheless spread great confusion over our hero can be understood from what now follows.

Mynheer Peeperkorn arrived at the station in Dorf on the evening train with Madame Chauchat and rode in the same sleigh with her to the Berghof, where he also took his evening meal with her in the restaurant. They had arrived not merely simultaneously, they had arrived
together
; and it was this companionship, which continued, for example, in seating arrangements that placed Mynheer beside the returnee at the Good Russian table, opposite the doctor’s chair, the seat from which Popóv the teacher had once put on his wild and dubious performances—it was this companionship that upset our good Hans Castorp, because he had failed to see anything of the sort coming. The director had announced the day and hour of Clavdia’s return in his own fashion. “Well, Castorp, old boy,” he had said, “it pays to be perseverant. Our little pussycat will come slinking home evening after next. Was all in her telegram.” But he had said nothing about Frau Chauchat’s not arriving alone; maybe he had not known himself that she and Peeperkorn would be traveling together—at least he pretended surprise when Hans Castorp more or less took him to task the day after their joint arrival.

“Can’t tell you where she picked him up,” he declared. “Probably met him on the trip back from the Pyrenees, I suppose. Hmm, yes, you’ll have to take him into the bargain for now, my languishing Céladon, nothing’s going to help you there. A firm friendship, you see. It appears they even share traveling expenses. From what I hear, the man is filthy rich. Retired coffee magnate, you see, Malayan valet, lives in opulence. But he’s not here just for the fun of it, by the way, because in addition to a proper mucus obstruction caused by alcohol, it appears to be a case of a malign tropical fever, intermittent, you see, protracted, chronic. You will have to be patient with him.”

“To be sure, to be sure,” Hans Castorp replied superciliously. (“And what about you?” he thought. “How are you taking this? If I’m not sadly mistaken, you can’t be all that blasé, either, given what went on before, you purple-cheeked widower with your lifelike oils. A great deal of schadenfreude in your comments, it seems to me, and yet when it comes to Peeperkorn, we’re companions in misery, so to speak.”) “Odd duck, definitely an eccentric,” he said aloud with a dismissive shrug. “Robust and spare—at least that’s the impression I got from him this morning at breakfast. Robust and yet spare at the same time, those are the adjectives one would have to use to describe him, I believe, although the two terms usually don’t go together. He’s a tall, broad-shouldered man, to be sure, and likes to stand with his legs set wide apart, his hands buried in his trouser pockets—I couldn’t help noticing they’re sewn in vertically, instead of on the slant the way yours and mine are, the way pockets generally are in the better classes. And when he stands there carrying on in his guttural Dutch way, there is something undeniably robust about him. But his beard is sparse—long, but so sparse you feel as if you could count the hairs, and his eyes are quite small and pale, too, almost colorless—I simply can’t help it. And it doesn’t do any good when he tries to open them wide, it just gives him those deep creases that first extend up toward the temples and then spread horizontally across his brow. High, red brow, you know, in a circle of white hair—cut long, but sparse all the same. His eyes are small and pale, no matter how big he tries to make them. And that vest of his adds a clerical touch, despite the checkered frock coat. Those are my impressions from this morning.”

“I see you’ve given him the once-over,” Behrens replied, “and have a good eye for his peculiarities. Very reasonable of you, because you’ll have to come to terms with his being here.”

“Yes, I suppose we shall,” Hans Castorp said. It has been left to him to provide a general description of this new, unexpected guest, and he did not do a bad job of it—we could not have done all that much better ourselves. To be sure, he had observed Peeperkorn from the best possible position. As we know, during Clavdia’s absence he had moved into neighborly proximity to the Good Russian table, which, although parallel to his own, was pushed slightly forward toward the veranda door. Hans Castorp and Peeperkorn were both seated at the narrow end of their respective tables, their backs to the middle of the room, more or less beside one another, with the Dutchman a little ahead of Hans Castorp, making discreet observation easy—and he could also glance across and see Frau Chauchat in three-quarter profile. Supplemental to Hans Castorp’s accomplished sketch, we might add that Peeperkorn’s upper lip was clean-shaven, his nose large and fleshy, and his mouth equally large, with irregularly shaped lips that looked somehow ragged. His hands, moreover, were rather broad, but ended in long tapering fingernails; and he used them when he spoke (and he spoke in an almost incessant stream, although Hans Castorp could not quite comprehend what was said) in a series of exquisite gestures that riveted his listeners’ interest—the subtly nuanced, well-chosen, precise, tidy, cultured gestures of an orchestra conductor—a forefinger bent to form a circle with a thumb or a palm held out wide, but with tapering nails, to caution, to subdue, to demand attention, only to disappoint his now smiling, attentive listeners with one of his very robustly prepared, but incomprehensible phrases; or rather, he did not so much disappoint people as transform smiles into looks of delighted amazement, because the robustness, subtlety, and significance of the preparation largely compensated, even after the fact, for what he failed to say and produced a satisfying, amusing, and enriching effect all its own. Sometimes it would be followed by no utterance at all. He would gently lay one hand on the forearm of the tablemate to his left, a young Bulgarian teacher, or on Madame Chauchat’s to his right, then raise that same hand at an angle to command them all to sit in silent expectation of what he was about to say, would then gaze down at a spot on the tablecloth in the vicinity of his captive—lifting his eyebrows until the creases, which started up from the corners of his eyes and then turned in a right angle across his brow, grew even deeper and more masklike—and open his large, ragged lips as if he were about to utter something of vast import. After a moment, however, he would exhale, forgo it all, wave it aside as if to say, “At ease!” and, having accomplished nothing, turn back to his coffee, which he had them brew extra-strong for him in a machine he had brought with him.

And after he had taken a sip, he would continue as follows: restraining further conversation with one hand, he created silence the way a conductor hushes the cacophony of instruments being tuned and with a commanding, cultured gesture summons his orchestra to begin the concert; for his large head with its encircling flames of white hair, with its pale eyes, deeply creased brow, long beard, and exposed, pained lips looked so unquestionably imposing that everyone obeyed his gesture. They all fell silent, smiled, and looked at him expectantly; here and there someone would add a nod of encouragement to his smile.

In a rather low voice, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen. Fine. How very fine. That
set
-tles it. And yet you must keep in mind and never—not for a moment—lose sight of the fact that—but enough on that topic. What is incumbent upon me to say is not so much
that
, but primarily and above all
this
: that we are duty-bound, that we are charged with an inviolable—I repeat with all due emphasis—
inviolable obligation—No!
No, ladies and gentlemen, not that I—oh, how very mistaken it would be to think that I—but that
set
-tles it, ladies and gentlemen. Settles it completely. I know we are all of one mind, and so then, to the point!”

He had said nothing; but his head had looked so incontrovertibly imposing, the play of features and gestures had been so definitive, compelling, and expressive that all of them, including eavesdropping Hans Castorp, believed that they had heard something very important or, to the extent that they were aware of the lack of anything communicated and of any thought completed, they simply did not miss it. We might ask ourselves how a deaf person would have felt. Drawing a false conclusion from the expression he saw as to the content of what was expressed, he might have fretted that because of his handicap he had missed something of intellectual substance. Such people tend to be suspicious and bitter. A young Chinese fellow, however, at the other end of the table, whose knowledge of German was scant, had not understood, but had both heard and seen, and announced his own happy satisfaction by calling out “
Très bien!
”—and even applauded.

And Mynheer Peeperkorn came “to the point.” He sat up straight, expanded his broad chest, buttoned his checkered frock coat over his high-buttoned vest—and his white head was regal. He waved a dining attendant over—it was the dwarf—and although she was very busy, she instantly obeyed his forceful gesture and took a position next to his chair, milk jug and coffeepot still in hand. Even she could not help nodding encouragement to him; spellbound by those pale eyes under deep creases, a smile playing across her large, elderly face, she gazed attentively at his forefinger bent to form a circle with his thumb, the other three fingers jutting erect, each topped by a sharp fingernail lance.

“My child,” he said, “—fine. Very fine, so far. You are small—but what is that to me? On the contrary! I take it as something positive. I thank God you are the way you are, and that by your smallness, which betrays such character—well, fine. What I desire of you is likewise small, small and full of character. But first, what is your name?”

She smiled and stammered and finally said that her name was Emerentia.

“Splendid!” Peeperkorn cried, throwing himself against the back of his chair and stretching one arm out to the dwarf. The tone of his cry seemed to say, “Well, who could object to that! It’s all so wonderful!”—“My child,” he continued now in an earnest, almost stern voice, “that exceeds my every expectation. Emerentia—you pronounce it with modesty, but the name—and taken together with your person—in short, it reveals the loveliest possibilities. ‘Tis well worth musing upon, giving rein to all the emotions that well up in one’s chest, so that one may—but as a nickname, you must understand, my child, as a
nick
name—it might be Rentia, or even Emchen would cheer the heart—but for the moment I shall without hesitation hold fast to Emchen. So then, Emchen my child, listen well: a little bread, my dear. Wait! Stay! Let there be no misunderstanding. I can read from your relatively broad face that there is the danger of—bread,

Renzchen, but not baked bread, of that we have a sufficiency, in all shapes and sizes. Not baked, but distilled, my angel. The bread of God, clear as crystal, my little Nickname, that we may be regaled. I am uncertain whether what I intend by using that term—I might suggest ‘a cordial for the heart’ as an alternative, if that term did not likewise run the danger of being taken in a more common, thoughtless sense—but that
set
-tles it, Rentia. Settles it, over and done! Or rather, in light of our duty, our holy obligation—for example, the debt of honor incumbent upon me to turn with a most cordial heart to you, so small but full of character—a gin, my love! To gladden my heart, might I say. A gin, a Schiedam gin, my Emerenzchen. Make haste to bring it to me.”

“A gin, neat,” the dwarf repeated, spun once around completely, looking for somewhere to set down her jug and pot, which she then placed on Hans Castorp’s table, right next to his place setting, apparently not wanting to bother Herr Peeperkorn with it. She hurried off, and her patron promptly received what he wanted. The little glass was so full that the “bread” ran down on all sides and formed little puddles in his plate. He clasped it between his thumb and middle finger and raised it to the light. “And so,” he declared, “Pieter Peeperkorn will now regale himself with a schnapps.” And after first chewing it briefly, he swallowed the distilled grain. “Now,” he said, “I view you all with refreshed eyes.” And he took Frau Chauchat’s hand from where it lay on the tablecloth and lifted it to his lips, then laid it back down and let his own hand rest atop it for a while.

A peculiar man, a man of some personal authority, though rather vague—the society of the Berghof was very taken by him. He had recently retired from his colonial affairs, it was said, and was home free. They spoke of his splendid house in The Hague and his villa in Scheveningen. Frau Stöhr called him a “money magnet” and could point to a pearl necklace that Madame Chauchat had been wearing with her evening gowns since her return and that in Karoline’s opinion could hardly be considered evidence of Transcaucasian marital gallantry, but rather was the result of “shared travel expenses.” She winked as she said it; unrefined by sickness and suffering, she now pointed with her head in Hans Castorp’s direction and pulled down the corners of her mouth to parody his distress, mocking and ruthlessly exploiting his sad state. He kept his composure. He even corrected her malapropism with some wit. She had misspoken herself, he said—the word was magnate. But magnet was not all that bad, either, since Peeperkorn was obviously a very attractive man. And in response to Fräulein Engelhart, who without looking at him asked, with a dull blush and a skewed smile, how he liked their new guest, he said with perfect equanimity that Mynheer Peeperkorn was a “blurred personality”—a personality, true, but a blurred one. The precision of this characterization showed both his objectivity and his composure; it put the teacher off-balance. But in the case of Ferdinand Wehsal, who offered a twisted remark about the unexpected circumstances under which Frau Chauchat had returned, Hans Castorp proved there are glances that are every whit as unambiguous as the most precisely articulated words. “Poor wretch!” that glance said as it measured the man from Mannheim, and said it in a way that excluded even the remotest possibility of any other interpretation; and Wehsal acknowledged that glance and stomached it, even nodded and displayed his rotten teeth; but from then on, he refrained from carrying Hans Castorp’s overcoat when they went for walks with Naphta, Settembrini, and Ferge.