The Magic Mountain (113 page)
Frau Chauchat and the five gentlemen clustered behind Mynheer Peeperkorn, and together they all stared at the surging waters. The others could not see Mynheer’s face, but watched as he bared his head encircled with white flames and expanded his chest in the bracing air. They communicated by glances and signs, since words, even shouted directly into the ear, would presumably be lost in the thunder of the cascade. Their lips formed unsounded words of amazement and awe. Hans Castorp, Settembrini, and Ferge nodded their way to an agreement to scale the ravine on whose floor they stood, so that they could view the water from the platform up top. It was not overly difficult; a series of steep, narrow steps hewn into the rock led up to the next story of woods, so to speak. They climbed, one behind the other, walked out onto the bridge where it hovered just above the curl of the falls, stood at the railing, and waved to their friends below. They then crossed the bridge and, taking the more arduous descent on the other side, reemerged into view across the rapids, which were spanned at this point by a second bridge.
Their signs were now directed to the matter of teatime refreshments. It was indicated from several sides that they should withdraw a little from these noisy precincts for the purpose, so that they could enjoy their picnic relieved of this racket and not as deaf-mutes. But it was apparent that this was not Peeperkorn’s pleasure. He shook his head, repeatedly thrusting one index finger at the ground, and his ragged lips parted with considerable effort to form the word “here!” What to do? In such matters of policy, he was master and commander in chief. The weight of his personality would have tipped the scales even had he not been, as always, the organizer and director of this enterprise. Stature has ever been tyrannical and autocratic, and always will be. Mynheer wished to take his tea in view of the falls, amid its thunder—that was his grand, stubborn decision, and whoever did not want to go hungry would have to stay. The majority were not happy. Herr Settembrini, who realized that all possibility of human exchange, of a democratic chat or perhaps even argument, had now been cut off, flung one hand above his head in his gesture of despair and resignation. The Malayan hurried to carry out his master’s orders. There were two folding chairs, which the servant opened and set against the rocky wall for Mynheer and Madame. He then spread out the contents of the basket on a tablecloth laid at their feet: a coffee service and glasses, thermos bottles, pastries, and wine. They all pushed forward to help themselves. They then sat down on rocks, on the railing of the bridge. Coffee cups in hand, plates of cake on their knees, they silently picnicked in the tumult.
Peeperkorn sat with his coat collar turned up and his hat on the ground beside him, drinking port from a monogrammed silver goblet, which he emptied several times. And suddenly he began to speak. What a strange man! It was impossible for him to hear his own voice, let alone for anyone else to understand a single syllable of what he expressed without expressing it. Holding his goblet in his right hand, he lifted one forefinger, stretched his left arm out, the palm raised at an angle—and his mouth formed words that remained soundless, as if spoken in an airless room. They all assumed that he would immediately cease this pointless activity, to which they responded with disconcerted smiles; but he went on holding forth in the all-devouring din. His left hand made compelling, riveting, cultured gestures that demanded their attention; his little, weary, pale eyes were opened wide under the raised creases of his brow; and he directed his gaze now at one member of his audience, now at another, so that each of them was forced to nod with mouth open and eyebrows raised and to hold one hand up to an ear, as if that would somehow improve a hopeless situation. Now he even stood up! Goblet in hand, bareheaded, the collar of his wrinkled, almost floor-length overcoat turned up, his idol-like creased brow encircled by flames of white hair—there he stood beside a boulder, and his face grew more animated as he held the ring of thumb and forefinger up to it, finger lances jutting into the air, and lectured, punctuating his vague, inaudible toast with the spellbinding token of precision. They recognized the gestures and could read the individual words they were accustomed to hear from his lips: “Agreed” and “Settled”—but nothing more. They saw his head tilt to one side, saw the ragged bitterness on his lips, the image of the Man of Sorrows. And then they saw that luxurious little dimple blossom—sybaritic roguishness, a dancing hitch of the robes, the holy lewdness of the heathen priest. He lifted his glass, passed it in a semicircle before the eyes of his guests, and downed it in two, three gulps, to the last drop, the foot of the goblet upended in the air. Then he handed it with outstretched arm to the Malayan, who received the vessel, laying a hand across his chest. Mynheer Peeperkorn now gave the signal for departure.
They all bowed to thank him and made ready to obey his command. Those squatting on the ground sprang to their feet, those sitting on the bridge railing jumped down. The slight Javanese in his bowler and fur-collared coat gathered up the dishes and what was left of the meal. In the same tight order in which they had arrived, they now returned along the damp, needle-strewn path, and emerged from woods disfigured by lichen onto the road, where their carriages stood waiting.
This time Hans Castorp climbed in with the master and his companion, sitting across from the couple and beside good old Ferge, to whom all higher things were utterly foreign. Almost nothing was said during the ride home. Mynheer sat with his jaw slack, his hands palm down on the plaid traveling blanket spread over both his and Clavdia’s knees. Settembrini and Naphta got out and said their good-byes before the carriages moved on across the tracks and the little brook. Wehsal rode alone in the second carriage as it wound its way up the looping drive to the portal of the Berghof, where they all parted.
Did Hans Castorp sleep more lightly, more fitfully that night because of some inner alertness of which his soul knew nothing? Certainly the slightest deviation from the Berghof’s customary nocturnal peace, the tiniest muffled disturbance, even the barely perceptible sound of someone moving in the distance, was enough to bring him wide awake and make him sit up in bed. He had been awake for a good while when there was a knock at his door; it was shortly after two. He answered at once—energetic, fully alert, not drowsy in the least. It was the high, quavering voice of one of the nurses employed by the sanatorium, who asked that he come immediately to the second floor at Frau Chauchat’s request. With even greater energy, he declared he would obey the call; he leapt out of bed, jumped into his clothes, brushed his hair from his brow with his fingers, and walked downstairs—not slowly, not quickly, uncertain less about what the hour would demand than how it would demand it.
He found the door to Peeperkorn’s parlor open, as was the door to the Dutchman’s bedroom, where all the lights were on. Both doctors, Head Nurse von Mylendonk, Madame Chauchat, and the valet were present. The Malayan was not dressed as usual, but was got up in a kind of Javanese folk costume—a shirtlike jacket with wide stripes and long, loose sleeves, a bright-colored skirt instead of trousers, a cone-shaped hat of yellow fabric atop his head, and a necklace of amulets across his chest; there he stood, arms folded, immobile, to the left of the head of the bed, where Pieter Peeperkorn lay on his back, his arms flung wide. Entering now, Hans Castorp turned pale as he took in the scene. Frau Chauchat had her back to him. She was sitting on a low chair at the foot of the bed, elbows propped on the quilt, chin in hand, fingers clutching her lower lip, eyes fixed on her traveling companion’s face.
“Evenin’, my boy,” said Behrens, who had been engaged in a hushed conversation with Dr. Krokowski and the head nurse, and now greeted him with a melancholy nod and a skew of his little white moustache. He was wearing his clinical smock—a stethoscope stuck up out of the breast pocket—embroidered slippers, and no collar. “No go,” he added in a whisper. “Job done. Step up closer. Cast him an expert eye. You’ll have to admit it was beyond the reach of medical art.”
Hans Castorp approached the bed on tiptoe. The Malayan watched his every move without turning his head, but the whites of his eyes were clearly visible. With a quick sidelong glance of his own, he discovered that Frau Chauchat was paying him no attention, and so he stood in his usual pose beside the bed—weight on one leg, hands clasped before the abdomen, head tilted to one side—gazing down in thoughtful reverence. Under the red silk quilt, Peeperkorn lay dressed in his woolen shirt, just as Hans Castorp had so often seen him. The hands had turned a blackish blue, as had parts of the face, resulting in considerable disfigurement, although the regal features were unaffected. The eyes were closed in peace, but the idol-like tracery of creases, four or five tense horizontal lines that turned down at right angles at the temples and had been formed by the habits of a lifetime, stood out in strong relief on the high brow encircled by white flames. The pained, ragged lips were slightly open. The blue coloration indicated sudden heart congestion, a convulsive and apoplectic arrest of all vital functions.
Hans Castorp stood there piously for a while, using the time to take in the situation, hesitating to change his pose, waiting for the “widow” to address him. But when she did not, he decided not to disturb her for now and looked back over his shoulder to the group of others in attendance. The director nodded his head toward the door to the parlor. Hans Castorp followed him out.
“Suicide?” he asked in a low, businesslike voice.
“You said it,” Behrens replied with a dismissive gesture, and then added, “Top to bottom. Superlative job. Have you ever seen anything like this in the notions department?” he asked, reaching into his smock pocket and pulling out an oddly shaped etui, from which he extracted a small object that he now presented to the young man. “I never have. But it’s worth a look. Never too old to learn. Whimsical and inventive. I took it from his hand. Careful. Just a drop on bare skin leaves blisters.”
Hans Castorp turned the puzzling object between his fingers. It was made of steel, ivory, gold, and rubber—curious handiwork. It had two curved, shiny steel tines with extremely sharp points, between them a coiled segment of gold-inlaid ivory with tines of its own, which were more pliant or flexible to some degree and could be bent inward. The whole thing ended in a bulb of semihard black rubber. It was only a few inches long.
“What is it?” Hans Castorp asked.
“That,” Behrens replied, “is a well-constructed hypodermic syringe. Or, to put it another way, a mechanical copy of the dentures of the spectacled cobra. Do you understand? You don’t look as if you understand,” he said, while Hans Castorp continued to stare in dazed amazement at the bizarre instrument. “Those are the fangs. They are not that massive, but they come equipped with a capillary, a very tiny channel, that emerges here, as you can clearly see, just above the tip. And of course, these channels have an opening at the root of the fang as well, which is connected to the rubber gland by a duct running through this ivory middle section. When the bite is made, the other teeth are pushed back a little, as you can clearly see, and exert pressure on the reservoir, pressing its contents into the channels, so that the moment the fangs enter the flesh, the dose is injected into the bloodstream. It’s quite simple, once you can actually see it. Someone just has to come up with the idea. It was probably produced according to his own specifications.”
“I’m sure it was,” Hans Castorp said.
“The dose cannot have been all that large,” the director went on. “But what is lacking in quantity, can be made up for in—”
“Dynamics,” Hans Castorp finished the sentence for him.
“There you have it. What it was exactly, we’ll have to investigate. I am looking forward to the results with some curiosity, there is doubtless much we shall learn. What do you want to bet that our exotic on guard duty in there—who just happened to don his best for tonight—could tell us exactly what’s what? I assume what we have here is a mixture of animal and vegetable material—good stuff, indeed, the best, since it must pack one thundering wallop. By all indications, it must have taken his breath away at once, paralysis of the respiratory system, you know, rapid suffocation, presumably without great pain or agony.”
“God grant it was so,” Hans Castorp said piously, handing the eerie little implement back to the director with a sigh. He returned to the bedroom.
Only the Malayan and Madame Chauchat were there now. Clavdia raised her head this time as the young man approached the bed again. “You had a right to be called,” she said.
“Very kind of you,” he said, adopting formal pronouns himself, “and it was the correct thing to do. He offered me the brotherhood of informal pronouns. I am so deeply ashamed now to say that I was embarrassed to acknowledge it in front of the others and used circumlocutions. Were you with him in the last moments?”
“His valet notified me after it was all over,” she answered.
“He was a man of such stature,” Hans Castorp began again, “that, for him, the failure of feeling in the face of life was a cosmic catastrophe, a divine disgrace. For you should know that he regarded himself as God’s instrument of marriage. That was a bit of royal foolishness. But when one is deeply moved, one has the courage to say things that may sound crass and irreverent, but are more solemn than authorized words of piety.”
“
C’est une abdication
,” she said. “He knew of our folly, didn’t he?”
“It was impossible for me to dispute it. He had guessed it from my refusal to kiss you on the brow in his presence. His presence is more symbolic than real at this moment, but will you permit me to do so now?” She thrust her head slightly toward him, eyes closed, as if just blinking. He put his lips to her brow. The Malayan watched this little scene, rolling his brown animal eyes to one side until the whites showed.
Yet once more we hear Director Behrens’s voice—let us listen closely. We are hearing it for perhaps the last time. At some point even this story will end; it has lasted quite a long time—or rather, its content-time is rolling along so fast that there is no stopping it now and even its musical time is running out. Perhaps there will be no further opportunity to lend an ear to the cheerful cadences of our idiomatic Rhadamanthus.