The Magic Mountain (13 page)

“What I wanted to ask you—” he began. “The case in my room expired just before I arrived, you said. Have there been a lot of other deaths since you’ve been up here?”

“Several, certainly,” Joachim replied. “But they deal with them discreetly, you see, so you don’t hear about them, or only occasionally, later on. When someone dies it’s kept a strict secret, out of consideration for the other patients, in particular the ladies, who might easily go to pieces. If someone dies right next door, you don’t even notice it. The coffin is brought in early in the morning while you’re still sleeping, and then the party in question is removed only at another more suitable time—during meals, for instance.”

“Hmm,” Hans Castorp said and went on drawing. “So that quite a bit is happening backstage.”

“Yes, you can put it that way. But recently—it must have been, wait a moment—probably eight weeks ago—”

“Then you can’t call it recently,” an alert Hans Castorp remarked dryly.

“What? Well then, not so recently. You’re so precise. I was just guessing at the date. But anyway, some time ago, I had a peek backstage myself, purely by accident, but it’s as real as if it had happened today. It was the little Hujus girl, Barbara Hujus—she was Catholic—when they brought her the viaticum, the sacrament for the dying, you know, extreme unction. She was still up and about when I arrived here, and could be so playfully funny, so downright silly, a real teenager. But then it all went very fast, she couldn’t get up anymore, lay bedridden just three rooms down from me, and her parents came, and so now the priest arrived, too. He came one afternoon, when everyone was at tea, with nobody in the halls. But you have to picture it—I had overslept, had fallen asleep during my rest cure and hadn’t heard the gong and was a quarter hour late. And so at the decisive moment I happened not to be where everyone else was, but had wandered backstage, as you put it, and as I’m walking down the corridor, I see them coming toward me, in lace shirts, a cross leading the way, a gold cross with little lanterns, one of them carrying it up front like the glockenspiel in a Turkish-style military band.”

“That’s a poor comparison,” Hans Castorp said rather sternly.

“It just seemed that way to me. It automatically reminded me of it. But now listen. They’re coming toward me, left right left, double-time, three of them if I’m not mistaken, the man with the cross first, then the priest, spectacles perched on his nose, and then a boy with a censer. The priest was carrying the sacrament against his chest, it had a cover over it, and holding his head very devoutly to one side—it’s their holy of holies, after all.”

“That’s precisely it,” Hans Castorp said. “That’s the reason why I was astounded when you said what you did about the glockenspiel.”

“Yes, yes. But just wait, if you had been there, you wouldn’t know what kind of face to put on, either, thinking back on it. It was like something you might see in a dream—”

“In what way?”

“Let me tell you. So there I am, asking myself how I ought to act under the circumstances. I didn’t have a hat to take off—”

“You see!” Hans Castorp quickly interrupted yet again. “You see, a man should always wear a hat. I’ve noticed, of course, that you people up here never wear one. But you should, so that you can tip it whenever the occasion demands. But now what happened?”

“I stood back against the wall,” Joachim said, “taking up a respectful pose, and made a little bow as they came even with me—it was right in front of the little Hujus girl’s room, number twenty-eight. The priest was glad to see my response, I think, and returned my greeting very politely, doffing his cap. But by this time they have all come to a halt, and the altar boy with the censer knocks on the door, then lifts the latch, and lets his supervisor step ahead into the room. But now, just picture it, just imagine the terror I felt. The moment the priest sets a foot over the threshold, a hue and cry starts up inside, first a shriek like nothing you’ve ever heard, three or four times in a row, and then just screaming without a pause or break, like a mouth gaping wide open, I suppose, ‘Ahhh—’ and with such misery and terror and defiance in it that I can’t describe it, and such ghastly pleading mixed in, too, and then all of a sudden it turns hollow and muffled, as if it has sunk down into the earth or is coming from a deep cellar.”

Hans Castorp had turned abruptly to face his cousin. “And was that the Hujus girl?” he asked in exasperation. “But why ‘from a deep cellar’?”

“She had crawled under her blanket,” Joachim said. “Just imagine how I felt. The priest was standing just on the far side of the threshold, speaking soothing words—I can still see him—the way he constantly thrust his head forward and then jerked it back. The cross-bearer and the altar boy were stuck there at the door and couldn’t get in. But I could see between them into the room. It’s a room just like yours or mine, with the bed to the left of the door along one side, and there were people standing at its head, her family of course, her parents, directing comforting words down at the bed, where you could only see a formless mass, begging and protesting hideously and kicking its legs.”

“Are you saying she was kicking with her legs?”

“For all she was worth. But it didn’t help, she had to be given the sacrament of the dying. The pastor walked over to her and the other two stepped inside as well, and then the door was closed. But just before that, I saw the Hujus girl’s head emerge for a mere second, her light blond hair, and her pale eyes, no color to them at all, gaping wide, staring at the priest—and then she ducked under the sheets again with a loud wail.”

“And you’re telling me only now?” Hans Castorp said after a pause. “I can’t understand how you didn’t bring it up yesterday evening. But, my God, she must have had a lot of strength left to fight back like that. That takes strength. You shouldn’t send for a priest until they’re very weak.”

“But she was weak,” Joachim replied. “Oh, there are lots of things I could tell you about; it’s hard to know what to pick out first. She was already weak—it was fear that gave her so much strength. She was terribly frightened, because she realized she was going to die. She was just a young girl, so it is excusable, after all. But even grown men carry on like that sometimes, which is, of course, inexcusably weak-willed of them. Behrens knows how to deal with them, he can strike just the right tone for such cases.”

“What sort of tone?” Hans Castorp asked with a scowl.

“ ‘Don’t make such a fuss!’ he says,” Joachim replied. “At least that’s what he said to one fellow recently—we heard about it from the head nurse who was present to help restrain the dying man. He was one of those types who makes a dreadful scene right at the end and absolutely refuses to die. And so Behrens simply dressed him down: ‘Would you please not make such a fuss,’ he said, and the patient quieted down at once and died quite peaceably.”

Hans Castorp slapped his thigh with one hand, threw himself back against the bench, and stared at the sky.

“Listen here, that’s weighty stuff,” he cried. “Snaps his head off and says, ‘Don’t make such a fuss!’ To a dying man. Weighty stuff. A dying man deserves a certain amount of respect. You can’t just walk up to him so calm and cool and. . . . There’s something holy about a dying man, as it were—in my opinion.”

“I won’t deny that,” Joachim said. “But if he starts carrying on in such a weak-willed way . . .”

“No,” Hans Castorp insisted with a ferocity not at all appropriate to the mild objection Joachim had offered. “I’ll not let you talk me out of it. A dying man has something nobler about him than your average rascal strolling about, laughing and making money and stuffing his belly. It won’t do.” And his voice began to waver strangely. “It just won’t do to walk up so calm and cool and . . .” But now his words were swallowed in a fit of laughter that suddenly overwhelmed him, the same laughter as yesterday, welling up from deep inside—convulsive, unbounded laughter, until he had to close his eyes for the tears.

“Psst,” Joachim said suddenly. “Quiet!” he whispered and gave his cousin, still laughing uncontrollably, a silent poke in the ribs. Hans Castorp looked up through his tears.

A stranger was coming up the path on their left, a delicate man with brown hair and a black moustache twirled at the ends; he was wearing pastel checked trousers and exchanged a good-morning with Joachim as he came up to them—his greeting was precise and melodious. And now he stopped, striking a graceful pose in front of them by propping himself on his cane and crossing his ankles.

It would have been difficult to guess his age, but it surely had to be somewhere between thirty and forty, because, although the general impression was youthful, he was already silvering at the temples and his hair was thinning noticeably, receding toward the part in two wide arcs, making the brow even higher. His outfit—loose trousers in a pastel yellow check and a wide-lapelled, double-breasted coat that was made of something like petersham and hung much too long—was far from laying any claim to elegance. The edges of his rounded high collar were rough from frequent laundering, his black tie was threadbare, and he apparently didn’t even bother with cuffs—Hans Castorp could tell from the limp way the coat sleeves draped around his wrists. All the same, he could definitely see that he had a gentleman before him—the refined expression on the stranger’s face, his easy, even handsome pose left no doubt of that. This mixture of shabbiness and charm, plus the black eyes and a handlebar moustache, immediately reminded Hans Castorp of certain foreign musicians who would appear in his hometown at Christmastime and strike up a tune, then gaze up with velvet eyes and hold out their slouch hats to catch the coins you threw them from the window. “An organ-grinder!” he thought. And so he was not surprised by the name he now heard as

Joachim got up from the bench somewhat flustered and introduced him, “Castorp, my cousin—Herr Settembrini.”

Hans Castorp had also stood up by way of greeting, traces of excess merriment still on his face. But the Italian politely remarked that he did not wish to disturb them and urged them to take their seats, whereas he remained standing in his becoming pose. He stood there, smiling and observing the cousins, particularly Hans Castorp, and the delicate line at one corner of his mouth, the mocking curl of the lip just below where his full moustache swept handsomely upward, had a peculiar effect—somehow it exhorted one to be alert and clearheaded, and in a flash so sobered the inebriated Hans Castorp that he felt ashamed of himself.

Settembrini said, “The gentlemen are in high spirits—and with good cause, good cause. A splendid morning! The sky is blue, the sun is smiling.” And with an easy, felicitous wave of his arm he lifted his little, yellowish hand toward the heavens and simultaneously cast an oblique glance in the same upward direction. “One could in fact forget completely just where one is.”

He spoke without any accent—at most one might have recognized him as a foreigner from the precision in the way he shaped his sounds. His lips took a certain delight in forming the words. It was a pleasure to listen to him. “And your journey, sir, to join us here was pleasant, I hope?” he asked, turning to Hans Castorp. “And is one already in possession of the verdict? I mean—has the gloomy ceremony of the first examination taken place yet?” Had he cared for an answer, he would have fallen silent and waited—for he had asked a question and Hans Castorp was about to reply. But the stranger went right on with his inquiries: “And did it go well? Given your hilarity”—he fell silent for a moment and the furrowed curl at the corner of his mouth deepened—“one could draw contradictory conclusions. How many months have our Minos and Rhadamanthus saddled you with?” The phrase “saddled you with” sounded particularly droll coming from him. “Shall I guess? Six? Or nine, right off? They’re not stingy, you know . . .”

Hans Castorp laughed in surprise—meanwhile trying to recall who Minos and Rhadamanthus were, exactly. He answered, “How do you mean? No, you’re mistaken, Herr Septem—”

“Settembrini,” the Italian corrected him with particular verve, accompanied by a facetious bow.

“Herr Settembrini—beg your pardon. No, you are mistaken. I am not sick at all. I’m merely visiting my cousin Ziemssen for a few weeks and using the occasion for a little relaxation myself.”

“Great Scott! You are not one of us? You are healthy, you are merely stopping over, as it were, like Odysseus in the realm of shades? How bold of you to descend into the depths, where the futile dead live on without their wits—”

“Into the depths, Herr Settembrini? But I beg your pardon—I climbed a good five thousand feet to join you up here.”

“It only seemed that way to you. Upon my word—it was an illusion,” the Italian said with a decisive gesture of one hand. “We are creatures who have fallen to great depths, are we not, lieutenant?” he asked, turning to Joachim, who took considerable delight in the title, but tried to hide the fact in a sober reply.

“We do become rather tedious, I suppose. But one can always pull oneself together again.”

“Yes, I trust you shall; you’re an upstanding fellow,” Settembrini said. “Yes, yes, yes,” he repeated, hissing the
s
all three times. Turning again to Hans Castorp, he clicked his tongue softly an equal number of times. “I see, I see, I see,” he now said in another triplet of sharp
s
’s, gazing at the newcomer so steadily that his eyes took on a fixed, vacant look; but then life returned to them again and he went on, “You’ve joined us up here quite voluntarily so that we downsliders may enjoy the pleasure of your company for a while. Well, how lovely. And what sort of a time period do you have in mind? I mean that not as a subtle question—I am simply intrigued to know how long the sentence is when it is pronounced by oneself and not by Rhadamanthus.”

“Three weeks,” Hans Castorp said with a kind of breezy self-complacency, realizing he was the object of envy.

“
O Dio
, three weeks! Did you hear, lieutenant? Is there not something impertinent about saying: I’m coming here for three weeks and then moving on? We do not know the week as a unit of measurement, sir, if I may be permitted to instruct you. Our smallest unit of time is the month. We measure on a grand scale—it is one of the privileges of shades. We have others as well, all of equal quality. Might I ask what profession you pursue down below—or more correctly, for what profession you are preparing yourself? You see, our curiosity knows no bounds—we count curiosity among our privileges, too.”