The Magic Mountain (17 page)
The dinner was as splendidly prepared as it was lavish. Including the nourishing soup, it consisted of no fewer than six courses. The fish was followed by a superb roast with vegetables, which was followed by a salad, then roast fowl, a dumpling dessert in no way inferior to the one Hans had eaten the night before, and, finally, cheese and fruit. Each item was offered twice—and not without good effect. People filled their plates at all seven tables—they ate with the appetites of lions here in these vaulted spaces. Theirs was a hot hunger that it would have been a joy to observe, if its effect had not at the same time seemed somehow eerie, even repulsive. Not only the more lively among them displayed such hunger as they chatted and pelted one another with little pills of bread—no, but also the silent, gloomy ones, who between courses would put their heads in their hands and stare into space. At the next table on their left was an adolescent boy—still of school age, to judge by his appearance—whose coat sleeves were too short, and who wore thick, circular glasses; he chopped up everything heaped on his plate until it was a pasty hodgepodge, then bent over it and wolfed it down, now and then pushing his napkin up behind his glasses to dry his eyes—it was unclear whether this was to wipe away sweat or tears.
During this major meal of the day, two incidents occurred to attract Hans Castorp’s attention, insofar as his condition allowed. First, the glass door slammed shut again—just as the fish course was being served. Hans Castorp flinched in irritation and told himself indignantly that this time he really must find out who the culprit was. He didn’t merely think it—he was so in earnest that he spoke it out loud. “I have to know!” he whispered with exaggerated fervor, so that both Miss Robinson and the teacher glanced at him in amazement. And turning his whole upper body to the left, he opened his bloodshot eyes wide.
It was a lady who crossed the hall now, a young woman, a girl really, of only average height, in a white sweater and brightly colored skirt, with reddish-blond hair, which she wore in a simple braid wound up on her head. Hans Castorp saw only a little of her profile—almost nothing, in fact. In quite marvelous contrast to her noisy entrance, she walked soundlessly, with a peculiar slinking gait, her head thrust slightly forward, and proceeded to the farthest table on the left, set perpendicular to the veranda doors—the Good Russian table. As she walked she kept one hand in the pocket of her close-fitting wool jacket, while the other was busy at the back of her head, tucking and arranging her hair. Hans Castorp looked at that hand—he had a good eye and a fine critical sense for hands, and it was his habit always first to direct his gaze at them whenever he made a new acquaintance. The hand tucking up her hair was not particularly ladylike, not refined or well cared for, not in the way the ladies in young Hans Castorp’s social circle cared for theirs. It was rather broad, with stubby fingers; there was something primitive and childish about it, rather like the hand of a schoolgirl. Her nails had clearly never seen a manicure, and had been trimmed carelessly—again, like a schoolgirl’s; and the cuticles had a jagged look, almost as if she were guilty of the minor vice of nail-chewing. Hans Castorp only surmised all this, however, more than he actually saw it—she was really too far away. Her tablemates greeted the latecomer with nods; as she took her seat on the near side of the table—her back to the room and right beside Dr. Krokowski, who was presiding—she turned, her hand still at her hair, and looked back over her shoulder at the assembly. And Hans Castorp caught a fleeting glance of her broad cheekbones and narrow eyes—and at the sight, a vague memory of something or somebody brushed over him.
“But of course—a female!” Hans Castorp thought, and again muttered it so emphatically to himself that the teacher, Fräulein Engelhart, understood what he had said. The shriveled old maid smiled in sympathy.
“That is Madame Chauchat,” she said. “She’s so careless. A charming lady.” And Fräulein Engelhart’s fuzzy cheeks turned a shade rosier—which was the case, actually, whenever she opened her mouth. “French?” Hans Castorp asked sternly.
“No, she’s Russian,” said the teacher. “Perhaps her husband is French, or of French extraction, I can’t say for sure.”
Still incensed, Hans Castorp asked if
that
was her husband there, and pointed to a gentleman with hunched shoulders sitting at the Good Russian table.
“Oh no, that isn’t he,” the teacher responded. “He’s never been here even once, he’s quite unknown to us.”
“She should learn to close a door properly,” Hans Castorp said. “She always lets it slam. It’s really very impolite.”
But since the teacher meekly accepted his rebuke as if she were the guilty party, nothing more was said about Madame Chauchat.
The second incident consisted of Dr. Blumenkohl’s leaving the room—it was no more than that. Suddenly the slightly disgusted look on his face heightened and he gazed even more worriedly at some particular point in space. Then he slid his chair back in one decisive motion and left the room. At this juncture, however, Frau Stöhr displayed her poor upbringing in the most garish light, because—apparently out of some crude satisfaction that she was less ill than Blumenkohl—she accompanied his departure with a few half-sympathetic, half-contemptuous remarks. “The poor man,” she said. “He’s on his last legs. He’s off to have a talk with his Blue Henry again.” With a stubborn, obtuse look on her face, she uttered the grotesque term “Blue Henry” without the least hesitancy, and Hans Castorp felt an urge both to laugh and to shudder as she said it. Dr. Blumenkohl, by the way, returned after a few minutes, carrying himself in the same diffident fashion as when he left, took his seat again, and went on eating. He, too, ate a great deal, and with a worried, self-absorbed look on his face mutely took a second helping from each course.
Then dinner was over; but thanks to the capable service—and their dwarf in particular was marvelously fleet of foot—it had lasted only a little more than an hour. Breathing heavily and not rightly knowing how he had got there, Hans Castorp found himself lying in the splendid lounge chair on his balcony—because there was a rest cure between dinner and tea, the most important of the day, in fact, and rigorously enforced. He lay there between the opaque glass walls that separated him from Joachim on one side and the Russian couple on the other; his heart pounded as he dozed, and he drew air in through his mouth. When he used his handkerchief, he found red traces of blood, but he did not have the energy to think much about it, although he was easily inclined to worry about himself and tended by nature to play the hypochondriac. He had lit another Maria Mancini and smoked it to the end this time, despite the taste. Feeling dizzy, anxious, and dreamy, he thought how very strangely things were going for him up here. Two or three times he felt his chest shaken by suppressed laughter at the gruesome term that Frau Stöhr had used in her ignorance.
Down in the garden the fantasy flag with the caduceus lifted now and then in a light breeze. The sky had clouded over completely again. The sun was gone, and there was an almost inhospitable chill in the air. It appeared that the lounging arcade was crowded—the area below was filled with conversations and giggles.
“I beg you, Herr Albin, do put that knife away, put it in your pocket before there’s an accident!” a high, wavering female voice fretted.
“My dear Herr Albin, spare our nerves and remove that dreadful lethal object from view!” a second voice chimed in.
And then a blond young man, sitting sideways on a lounge chair clear at the front, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, replied in a flippant voice, “Wouldn’t think of it. You ladies will surely allow me to play with my knife a little. Yes, I’ll grant, it’s a particularly sharp knife. I bought it in Calcutta from a blind magician. He would swallow it, and then his boy would immediately dig it up some fifty paces away. Would you like to see it? It’s much sharper than a razor. You only have to just touch the blade, and it goes right into the flesh as if it were butter. Wait a moment, let me show you up close.” And Herr Albin stood up. General shrieks. “No, I think I’ll go fetch my revolver,” Herr Albin said. “That would interest you all more. A damn fine weapon. Packs quite a punch. I’ll get it from my room.”
“No, Herr Albin, don’t. Herr Albin, don’t do it!” several different voices wailed. But Herr Albin was already emerging from the arcade, heading for his room—very young, with a shambling gait, a rosy childlike face, and narrow sideburns at his ears.
“Herr Albin,” a woman called after him, “you’d do better to get your coat—put it on as a favor to me. You lay bedridden with pneumonia for six weeks, and here you are sitting without an overcoat, without even a blanket, and smoking cigarettes. That’s tempting Providence, Herr Albin, I swear it is.”
But he only laughed derisively as he walked away, and within a few minutes he returned with his revolver. This aroused even more silly shrieks than before, and you could hear several ladies stumble as they tried to jump up from their chairs and got tangled in their blankets.
“Look how small and shiny it is,” Herr Albin said, “but if I press right here—it will bite.” New shrieks. “It’s loaded with live ammunition, of course,” Herr Albin continued. “There are six cartridges in this cylinder here, which moves ahead one chamber with every shot. And by the by, I don’t keep this thing just for fun,” he said, noticing that the effect was wearing off. He slipped the revolver back into his breast pocket, sat back down on his chair, crossed his legs, and lit another cigarette. “Definitely not just for fun,” he repeated, pressing his lips together.
“But why? Why do you have it, then?” several trembling voices asked with foreboding. “How horrible!” one voice suddenly cried—and Herr Albin nodded.
“I see you’re beginning to understand,” he said. “And in fact, that is why I keep it handy,” he went on lightly, after first inhaling and then exhaling a great quantity of smoke, despite his recent bout with pneumonia. “I keep it at the ready for the day when all this malarkey here gets too boring and I shall have the honor of paying my final regards. It really is very simple. I’ve studied the matter at some length, and I have a very clear idea about how best to pull it off.” (Another shriek in response to the words “pull it off.”) “The region of the heart is out of the question—it’s rather awkward to aim there. And besides, I prefer snuffing out the conscious mind on the spot, and can do so by applying one of these pretty little foreign objects to this interesting organ . . .” And Herr Albin pointed with his index finger to his close-cropped blond head. “One aims here”—Herr Albin pulled the nickel-plated revolver from his pocket again and tapped the barrel against one temple—“here, just above the artery. Slick as a whistle, even without a mirror.”
Several voices of pleading protest, including one sobbing violently: “Herr Albin, Herr Albin, put that revolver away, take it away from your temple, I can’t even watch! Herr Albin, you’re young, you’ll get well again, you’ll enjoy life again in a circle of friends who love you, I swear you will! Put on your coat now, lie down here and pull a blanket over you, it’s time for your rest cure. And don’t chase the bath attendant away again when he comes by and offers to rub you down with alcohol. And you must stop smoking, Herr Albin, do you hear? We implore you, for your own sake, for the sake of your young, precious life!”
But Herr Albin was implacable. “No, no,” he said, “let me alone, everything’s fine, thank you all very much. I have never refused a lady’s request before now, but you’ll see—there’s no point in trying to sabotage fate. This is my third year here—and I’m fed up with it. I’m not going to play along anymore—can you blame me? Incurable, ladies. Just look at me—here I sit before you, an incurable case. The director himself hardly bothers to conceal the fact, not even for appearance’ sake. You simply must grant me the license that results from my condition. It’s much the same as in high school when you know you’ll be held back—they don’t bother to ask you questions, you don’t bother to do any work. And now I’ve finally come to just such a pretty pass again. I don’t need to do anything anymore, I’m no longer in the running—and I can laugh at the whole thing. Would you like some chocolate? Please, help yourselves. No, you won’t exhaust my supply—I’ve got scads of chocolate up in my room. I have eight boxes of assorted fudges, five bars of Gala Peter, and four pounds of Lindt nougats. The ladies of the sanatorium had them delivered to me while I was down with pneumonia.”
From somewhere a bass voice rang out, demanding quiet. Herr Albin let out a brief laugh—a fluttery, ragged laugh. Then it grew quiet in the lounging area—as quiet as if a nightmare or a ghost had been routed. And any word spoken sounded strange in the silence. Hans Castorp listened until the last one had died away, and although he was not quite certain if Herr Albin was a phony or not, he could not help feeling a little envious of him nevertheless. That comparison taken from life at school had made an impression on him, because he had been held back in his sophomore year, and he could recall the somewhat ignominious, but humorous and pleasantly untidy state of affairs that he had enjoyed in the last quarter, once he had given up even trying and was able to laugh “at the whole thing.” But since his thought processes were dull and confused, it is difficult to be very precise about them. On the whole, however, it seemed to him that although honor had its advantages, so, too, did disgrace, and that indeed the advantages of the latter were almost boundless. He tried putting himself in Herr Albin’s shoes and imagining how it must be when one is finally free of all the pressures honor brings and one can endlessly enjoy the unbounded advantages of disgrace—and the young man was terrified by a sense of dissolute sweetness that set his heart pounding even faster for a while.
In time he lost consciousness. His pocket watch said half past three when he was awakened by a conversation behind the glass partition on his left. Dr. Krokowski, who made his rounds at this hour without the director, was speaking in Russian with the rude married couple, inquiring, so it seemed, about the husband’s state of health and checking his fever chart. But now he continued on his journey—not via the balcony, however, but by way of the hall, detouring around Hans Castorp’s room and entering Joachim’s through the door. Hans Castorp felt rather hurt that he had been circumvented and left lying there to his own devices—not that he felt any great need for a tête-à-tête with Dr. Krokowski. To be sure, he happened to be healthy, and so he wasn’t included. Because as things stood with people up here, he thought, anyone who had the honor of being healthy didn’t count and wasn’t going to be asked any questions—and that annoyed young Castorp.