The Magic Mountain (15 page)

He was still arguing his case in the elevator and fell silent only when the cousins got off at last on the third floor. He rode it on up to the fourth, where, as Joachim explained, he had a small room with a view to the rear.

“He hasn’t much money, I suppose?” Hans Castorp asked as they entered Joachim’s room. It looked exactly like his own next door.

“No,” Joachim said, “probably not. Or just enough so that he can pay for his stay here. His father was a literary type himself, you know, and I believe the grandfather was, too.”

“Well, you see,” Hans Castorp said. “Is he seriously ill, then?”

“It’s not dangerous, as far as I know, but a stubborn case and it keeps recurring. He’s had it for years and has left off and on, but always returns.”

“Poor fellow. Especially since he seems to be such an enthusiast for work. He’s certainly a fantastic talker, just slips easily from one topic to the other. He was really a little fresh with that girl, I was mortified there for a moment. But then what he said about human dignity, afterward, sounded so spiffing, like formal oratory. Do you often spend time with him?”

But Joachim could provide only a garbled, impeded reply. A red leather case lined in velvet lay open on the table; from it he had extracted a little thermometer and stuck the end filled with mercury into his mouth. He held it tightly under his tongue so that the glass tube jutted up at an angle from one corner. Then he made himself comfortable, pulling on his house shoes and a tuniclike jacket, picked up a chart and a pencil from the table, plus a book of Russian grammar—he was learning Russian because, as he said, he hoped it would be of use in his career—and thus equipped, he stretched out on the balcony lounge chair, tossing the camel-hair blanket lightly over his feet.

He hardly needed it, because in the last quarter hour the layer of clouds had grown thinner and thinner, and the summer sun was breaking through—so warm and dazzling now that Joachim had to screen his face with a white canvas sunshade ingeniously fixed to one arm of the chair and adjustable to the angle of the glare. Hans Castorp praised the contraption. He wanted to wait until Joachim had finished measuring, and so in the meantime he watched how things were done, examined the fur-lined sleeping bag stored in one corner of the balcony—Joachim used it on cold days—and propping his elbows on the railing, gazed down into the garden, where the common lounging area had now filled up with recumbent patients—reading, writing, chatting. Only a small portion of the inside of the arcade, about five lounge chairs, was visible.

“And how long does that take?” Hans Castorp turned around to ask.

Joachim raised seven fingers.

“Seven minutes must be up by now.”

Joachim shook his head. After a while he took the thermometer out of his mouth, looked at it, and said, “Yes, when you pay close attention to it—time, I mean—it goes very slowly. I truly like measuring my temperature four times a day, because it makes you notice what one minute, or even seven, actually means—especially since the seven days of a week hang so dreadfully heavy on your hands here.”

“You said ‘actually.’ But ‘actually’ doesn’t apply,” Hans Castorp responded. He was sitting with one thigh hiked up on the railing; the whites of his eyes were bloodshot. “There is nothing ‘actual’ about time. If it seems long to you, then it is long, and if it seems to pass quickly, then it’s short. But how long or how short it is in actuality, no one knows.”

He was not at all used to philosophizing, and yet felt some urge to do so.

Joachim contested this. “Why is that? No. We do measure it. We have clocks and calendars, and when a month has passed, then it’s passed—for you and me and everyone.”

“But wait,” Hans Castorp said, holding up a forefinger next to one bloodshot eye. “You said that a minute is as long as it seems to you while you’re measuring your temperature, correct?”

“A minute is as long as . . . it
lasts
, as long as it takes a second hand to complete a circle.”

“But how long that takes can vary greatly—according to how we feel it! And in point of fact . . . I repeat, in point of fact,” Hans Castorp said, pressing his forefinger so firmly against his nose that its tip was folded to one side, “that’s a matter of motion, of motion in space, correct? Wait, hear me out! And so we measure time with space. But that is the same thing as trying to measure space with time—the way uneducated people do. It’s twenty hours from Hamburg to Davos—true, by train. But on foot, how far is it then? And in our minds—not even a second!”

“Listen here,” Joachim said, “what’s wrong with you? I think being up here with us is getting to you.”

“Just be quiet. My mind is very clear today. So then, what is time?” Hans Castorp asked, bending the tip of his nose so forcefully to one side that it turned white and bloodless. “Will you please tell me that? We perceive space with our senses, with vision and touch. But what is the organ for our sense of time? Would you please tell me that? You see, you’re stuck. But how are we ever going to measure something about which, precisely speaking, we know nothing at all—cannot list a single one of its properties. We say time passes. Fine, let it pass for all I care. But in order to measure it . . . no, wait! In order for it to be measurable, it would have to flow
evenly
, but where is it written that it does that? It doesn’t do that for our conscious minds, we simply assume it does, just for the sake of convenience. And so all our measurements are merely conventions, if you please.”

“Fine,” Joachim said, “then it’s probably also just a convention that my thermometer has risen four and a half lines above normal. And because of those four little lines I have to loaf around here and can’t go on active duty—and that’s a disgusting fact all to itself.”

“Are you at ninety-nine point five?”

“It’s already going back down.” And Joachim entered it on his chart. “Yesterday evening it was almost a hundred point four—your arrival did that. Whenever anyone gets a visitor, his temperature goes up. But that’s a good thing, really.”

“And I’ll go now,” Hans Castorp said. “My head is full of all kinds of ideas about time—a whole complex of thoughts, let me tell you. But I don’t want to get you worked up over them, not when your temperature’s already too high. I’ll keep it all in mind, and we can talk about it later then, after second breakfast perhaps. You will call me when it’s time to eat? I’ll go take my rest cure now, too—it can’t hurt, thank goodness.” And with that he slipped past the glass divider across to his own balcony, where someone had placed an unfolded lounge chair and a table. He fetched his
Ocean Steamships
and his traveling blanket, a lovely plaid of dark reds and greens, and noticed that his room had been nicely tidied up. And now he stretched out.

But he soon had to put up his sunshade, the blazing glare was unbearable the moment you lay down. Still it was terribly pleasant just to lie there, Hans Castorp discovered at once to his delight—he could not remember ever having used a more comfortable lounge chair. The frame, a little old-fashioned in design—but that was only a stylish touch, really, since the chair was obviously new—was made of polished reddish-brown wood, and the mattress, covered with a soft cottonlike fabric, actually consisted of three thick cushions that reached from the foot of the chair up over the back. And then, attached to a string and slipped into an embroidered linen case was a roll for your neck, neither too firm nor too soft, and it simply worked wonders. Hans Castorp propped one elbow on the broad, smooth surface of the chair arm, and lay there blinking, not even bothering to entertain himself with
Ocean Steamships
. Seen through the arches of the balcony, the hard, barren landscape lay under the bright sun like a framed painting. Hans Castorp regarded it pensively. Suddenly it came to him—and he said aloud into the silence, “That was a dwarf who served us at breakfast.”

“Shh,” Joachim said. “You have to be quiet. Yes, a dwarf. So what?”

“Nothing. Just that we hadn’t spoken about it.”

And then he went on dreaming. It was already ten o’clock when he lay down. An hour passed. It was an ordinary hour, neither long nor short. And when it was over, a gong rang out in the building and across the garden—first distant, then nearer, then distant again.

“Breakfast,” Joachim said, and you could hear him getting up.

Hans Castorp ended his rest cure for now, too, and went back into the room to get ready. The cousins met in the corridor and went downstairs.

Hans Castorp said, “Well, that felt marvelous just lying there. What sort of chairs are those? If they’re for sale up here, I’ll take one with me back to Hamburg, they’re simply heavenly. Or do you think that Behrens has them made up according to his own specifications?”

Joachim did not know. They hung up their coats and for the second time today they entered the dining hall, where the meal was in full swing.

The room glistened with white from all the milk—a large glass at every place, a good pint of it at least.

“No,” Hans Castorp said, taking his seat again at the end of the table between the seamstress and the Englishwoman and conscientiously unfolding his napkin—although he was still weighed down by his first breakfast. “No,” he said, “God help me, but I do not drink milk, and certainly not now. Is there some porter, perhaps?” And he turned to ask this question politely and gently of the dwarf. There was no porter, unfortunately. But she promised him some Kulmbach beer, and indeed she brought it. It was thick and black, with a foamy brown head, and was an excellent substitute for porter. Hans Castorp drank thirstily from the tall pint glass. He ate cold cuts on toast. There was more oatmeal on the table and lots of butter and fruit again. He at least let his eyes pass over it all, since he was incapable of helping himself to any of it. And he observed the other guests, too—the crowd was beginning to sort itself out for him and individuals were emerging.

His own table was full, except for the seat at the head opposite him, which, as he was told, was reserved for the doctors. Because whenever their schedules allowed, the physicians took part in communal meals, but at a different table every time—and a place was kept free for them at the head of each one. Neither of them was present at the moment; word was that they were operating. The young man with the moustache entered again, his chin pressed to his chest, and sat down with a worried, self-absorbed look on his face. The very blond, gaunt young woman took her seat and spooned down her yogurt again, as if this were the only thing she ever ate. Next to her this time was a chipper little old lady, who spoke to the silent young man in a steady flow of Russian, to which his only reply was a worried expression and a nod of the head—and that same look on his face as if he had something foul-tasting in his mouth. Across from him, on the other side of the old lady, yet another young girl was seated—she was pretty, with a rosy complexion, prominent breasts, chestnut hair nicely coiffed and waved, round, brown, childlike eyes, and a little ruby on her pretty hand. She laughed a great deal and likewise spoke Russian, only Russian. Her name was Marusya, Hans Castorp heard someone say. He also happened to notice that Joachim would lower his eyes with a stern look whenever she laughed or spoke.

Settembrini came in by way of the side entrance, and twirling his moustache all the while, he strode to his seat, which was catercorner from Hans Castorp’s. His tablemates broke into peals of laughter as he sat down—presumably he had made one of his malicious remarks. And Hans Castorp also recognized the members of the Half-Lung Club. Doltish-eyed Hermine Kleefeld shoved her way to her table, over near one of the doors opening onto the veranda, and greeted the thick-lipped lad who had hitched his jacket up so unbecomingly. At the table set crosswise on his right sat Fräulein Levi with the ivory complexion and, next to her, plump, freckled Frau Iltis and a group of others whom Hans Castorp did not know.

“Those are your neighbors,” Joachim said softly to his cousin and bent his head forward. Passing very close to Hans Castorp was a couple making for the last table on the right—the Bad Russian table, that was—where a family with an ugly boy was already seated, all of them wolfing down great mounds of oatmeal. The man was slightly built and had gray, hollow cheeks. He wore a brown leather jacket, and on his feet were boxy felt boots with clasp buckles. His wife, likewise small and slim, wore a hat with a bouncing feather and minced ahead on tiny, high-heeled boots of red Russia leather; around her neck was draped a shabby feather boa. Hans Castorp stared at the two of them with a tactlessness that was quite foreign to him and that even he found brutal—although what was really brutal about it was the sudden pleasure he took in it. His gaze was simultaneously blunt and piercing. And when at that same moment the glass door on his left slammed shut with a bang and a rattle, just as it had at first breakfast, he did not flinch as he had earlier that morning, but merely grimaced languidly. And just as he was about to turn his head to look in that direction, he suddenly found that it was simply too much trouble and not worth the effort. And so he did not determine this time, either, who it was that was so sloppy about the door.

The fact was that his breakfast beer, which normally had only a slightly befuddling effect on the young man, had completely stupefied and lamed him—it was as if he had been struck a blow across his brow. His eyelids were leaden; his tongue simply would not obey the simplest thoughts when he tried out of courtesy to chat with the Englishwoman; even shifting the direction of his eyes demanded a great struggle with himself. Added to all of which, the ghastly flush he had experienced yesterday had returned to his face in full force—his cheeks felt puffy from the heat, he was breathing heavily, his heart was pounding like a hammer wrapped in cloth. But despite it all, he was not suffering particularly—primarily because his head felt as if he had just taken two or three deep breaths of chloroform. Dr. Krokowski had appeared for breakfast and taken the seat opposite him at the head of the table; but, as if in a dream, he barely noticed the fact, although the doctor looked him in the eye, repeatedly and sharply, while carrying on a conversation in Russian with the ladies on his right, during which the younger ones—that is, Marusya with her rosy complexion and the gaunt yogurt-eater—kept their eyes cast down in meek embarrassment. It goes without saying that Hans Castorp kept his dignity, preferring to say not a word once his tongue had proved refractory and handling his knife and fork with special decorum. When his cousin nodded to him and stood up, he did the same; after bowing blindly to his tablemates, he followed Joachim, taking deliberate, careful steps as he went.