The Magic Mountain (22 page)

These remarks are inserted here only because young Hans Castorp had something similar in mind when, after a few days, he said to his cousin (while gazing at him with bloodshot eyes), “I’ve always found it odd, still do, how time seems to go slowly in a strange place at first. What I mean is, of course there’s no question of my being bored here, quite the contrary—I can assure you that I’m amusing myself royally. But when I look back, retrospectively as it were—you know what I mean?—it seems as if I’ve been up here for who knows how long already, and that it’s been an eternity since I first arrived and didn’t quite understand right off that I actually had, until you said, ‘This is where you get off!’—do you remember? It has absolutely nothing to do with reason or with measurements of time—it’s purely a matter of feeling. Of course it would be absurd to say, ‘It’s as if I’d been here two months already’—that would be pure nonsense. All I really can say is ‘a very long time.’ ”

“Yes,” Joachim replied, a thermometer in his mouth, “it’s good for me, too. Since you’ve been here, I feel as if I have you to hold on to, so to speak.” And Hans Castorp laughed at the way Joachim said this so straight-out, without any explanation.

No, he had not actually settled in yet, neither in terms of his intimacy with life here in all its peculiarities—an intimacy it would be impossible to gain in so few days, or as he told himself (and admitted quite candidly to Joachim), in three weeks, sad to say—nor as regarded the adaptation of his organism to the very peculiar atmospheric conditions found among “the people up here,” because it seemed to him that his physical adjustment was proceeding only painfully, very painfully, if indeed at all.

The normal day was carefully organized and neatly divided into its

constituent parts; one quickly fell in with the routine and learned to move with its turning gears. In the framework of a week or larger units of time, however, there were certain recurring deviations that made their appearance little by little—one variation might appear, for instance, only after another had already repeated itself. And even in terms of the objects and faces that made up the details of a day, Hans Castorp had to learn at every step to take a closer, less casual look at accustomed facts and faces and assimilate new things with youthful receptivity.

Those balloon-shaped containers with short necks, for example, which were set out beside the doors in the corridor and which had caught his eye on the evening of his arrival—Joachim explained about them when he asked. They held pure oxygen, for six francs the demijohn, and the stimulating gas was provided to dying patients in order to help preserve their energies and rouse them one last time—it was sipped through a rubber hose. And behind the doors where these potbellied containers stood lay the dying or the
moribundi
, as Director Behrens called them one day, when Hans Castorp chanced to meet him on the second floor—just as the purple-cheeked director in his white smock came rowing down the corridor. They walked down to the next floor together.

“Well, my innocent bystander,” Behrens said, “what are you up to, have we found favor in your searching eyes? We are honored, we are honored. Yes, our summer season’s quite the thing, of very good parentage. It cost me a pretty penny to puff it a bit, too. But what a shame, really, that you don’t want to stay through the winter with us—want to spend a mere eight weeks, I’ve heard, correct? Oh, three? But that’s just dropping by, not even worth taking off your hat and coat. Well, just as you like. But it really is a shame that you’ll not be spending the winter, because the crème de la crème”—he made a joke of his outrageous pronunciation—“the international crème de la crème down in Platz doesn’t arrive until winter, and you really must see them, just for educational purposes. Split your sides, watching these lads leaping about on planks tied to their feet. And the ladies—Lord, Lord, the ladies! Regular birds of paradise, I tell you, and eminently amorous. Well, now I have to attend to my
moribundus
,” he said, “in room twenty-seven here. Last stage, you know. Exit up center. He’s downed five dozen fiascoes between yesterday and today, the guzzler. But he will probably be joining his ancestors by noon. Well, my dear Reuter,” he said, stepping into the room, “how would it be if we crack another bottle . . .” His words were lost behind the door as he closed it. But for a moment Hans Castorp could see across the room to a waxen profile against pillows, a young man with a sparse goatee, who slowly rolled his very large eyes toward the door.

This was the first
moribundus
that Hans Castorp had ever seen in his life, inasmuch as both his parents and his grandfather had died behind his back, so to speak. What dignity in the way the young man laid his head against the pillows, his goatee jutting upward. What meaning in the gaze of those huge eyes as he turned them slowly toward the door. Returning to the stairway now, still absorbed in that fleeting glimpse, Hans Castorp instinctively tried to make the same large, meaningful, and deliberate eyes as those:-of the dying man; and it was with that look that he greeted a lady who had emerged from a door behind him and caught up with him now at the head of the stairs. He did not realize at once that it was Madame Chauchat. She smiled wanly at the eyes he was making, put a hand to the braid at the back of her head, and preceded him down the stairs—soundlessly, supplely, her head thrust slightly forward.

He made almost no new acquaintances in those first days, and not for some time afterward, either. On the whole, the daily routine was not conducive to it. Reserved by nature in any case, Hans Castorp felt that he was merely a visitor here, an “innocent bystander,” as Director Behrens had put it, and so for the most part he was quite content with Joachim’s conversation and company. To be sure, the nurse on their corridor kept craning her neck as they passed, until Joachim, who had stopped to chat with her on occasion before, introduced her to his cousin. The cord of her pince-nez tucked behind her ear, she spoke with an affectation that was absolutely excruciating, and from up close, one had the impression of a woman whose reason had long suffered the tortures of boredom. It was very difficult to get away from her, because she displayed an almost pathological fear of a conversation’s drawing to a close; and as soon as the young men assumed an air of wanting to move on, she would cling to them with hasty words and looks and a desperate little smile, until they took pity on her and stood there a while longer. She spoke at great length about her papa, the lawyer, and her cousin, the doctor—apparently to cast herself in a favorable light and to indicate that she came from the educated strata of society. As for the patient she tended behind the closed door there, he was the son of a doll-manufacturer in Coburg, Rotbein was the name—and recently it had spread to young Fritz’s intestines as well. That made things hard for everyone involved, as she was sure the gentlemen could well understand, particularly hard if one came from an academic household and possessed the sensitivities of the upper classes. One dared not turn one’s back for a moment. And recently, if the gentlemen could believe it, when she returned from having gone out for just a moment, merely to purchase some tooth powder, she found her patient sitting up in bed, with a glass of dark, heavy beer, a salami, a piece of coarse rye bread, and a pickle, all spread out before him. His relatives had sent him these homey delicacies to help him build up some strength. But the next day, of course, he had been more dead than alive. He was hastening his own demise. And that would in fact be a release, but only for him, not for her—Sister Berta was her name, by the way, or more accurately, Alfreda Schildknecht—because
she
would only move on then to another patient in a more or less advanced stage of the illness, here or at some other sanatorium. Such were her prospects, and no others would ever open before her.

Yes, Hans Castorp said, her profession was certainly difficult, but it did have its satisfactions, or so he would presume.

Certainly, she replied, there were satisfactions, although it was very difficult.

Well, their best wishes for Herr Rotbein. And the cousins made to go.

But she clung to them with words and looks, and her exertions, as she tried to hold on to the young men for just a while longer, were so pitiful to watch that it would have been cruel not to grant her a little more time.

“He’s sleeping,” she said. “He doesn’t need me. I stepped into the hall for just a few minutes.” And she began to complain about Director Behrens and the tone of voice he used with her—all too offhand, considering her background. She much preferred Dr. Krokowski—she found him so full of soul. Then she came back around to her papa and her cousin. Her brain would yield nothing more. In vain she grappled to find something to hold the cousins still longer, and as they started to go, she suddenly made another running leap at them, raising her voice almost to a shriek—they escaped and went their way. But the nurse gazed after them for a long time, her body bent forward, her eyes following them as if she hoped to suck them back to her. Then she heaved a great sigh and returned to her patient in his room.

The only other person whom Hans Castorp met during these first days was the pale lady in black, the Mexican woman, whom he had seen in the garden and who was known as
Tous-les-deux
. And indeed it came to pass that he himself heard her lips form the mournful phrase that had become her nickname. But since he was now prepared for it, he maintained his demeanor and afterward found he was quite satisfied with his behavior. The cousins met her at the front door as they stepped out after early breakfast for their morning constitutional. Veiled in a black cashmere scarf, her knees slightly bent, she was strolling aimlessly in long, restless strides; and her aging face, with its large, careworn mouth, shimmered dull white against the black veil she had wound around her silver-streaked hair and tied beneath her chin. Joachim, bareheaded as usual, greeted her with a bow, and she looked up and slowly acknowledged him while the long creases deepened on her narrow brow. Noticing a new face, she stopped, and gently nodding her head, she waited for the young men to approach, because she apparently felt it necessary to learn whether the stranger knew of her fate and to accept his condolences. Joachim presented his cousin. From under her mantilla she extended a hand to the visitor—a skinny, yellowish, heavily veined hand, adorned with rings—and went on looking at him and nodding.

Then it happened: “
Tous les dé, monsieur,
” she said. “
Tous les dé vous savez
. . .”

“
Je le sais, madame,
” Hans Castorp replied in a muted voice. “
Et je le regrette beaucoup.
”

The drooping bags of skin under her jet-black eyes were larger and heavier than any he had ever seen. A faint, wilted odor came from her. A mild, grave warmth stole over his heart.

“
Merci
,” she said with a clanking accent that stood in strange contrast to her fragility, and one corner of her large mouth drooped tragically low. Then she pulled her hand back up under the mantilla, nodded, and turned to take up her wanderings again.

As they walked on, Hans Castorp said, “You see, it didn’t bother me at all. I managed very nicely with her. I can handle people like that very nicely in general. I believe I have a natural understanding of how to deal with them—don’t you think so, too? I even think that on the whole I get along with sad people better than with happy ones—God only knows why, perhaps because I am an orphan and lost my parents so early on. But when people are serious and sad or if death is involved, it doesn’t really depress or embarrass me. Instead, I feel in my element somehow, or at least better than when things are just chugging right along—I’m less good at that. I was thinking only recently that it’s really foolish the way the local ladies carry on about death and things connected with it, that everyone is so skittish, protecting them and making sure the last rites are brought while they’re downstairs eating. No, phooey! That’s silly. Don’t you love to look at coffins? I’ve always enjoyed looking at one now and then. I think of a coffin as an absolutely lovely piece of furniture, even when it’s empty, and if there’s someone lying in it, it’s really quite sublime in my eyes. There’s something so edifying about funerals—I’ve sometimes thought that when we need a little spiritual uplift, we should attend funerals rather than church. People wear their best black clothes and take their hats off and gaze at the coffin and seem so serious and devout—and no one dares make bad jokes, the way they normally do. I really do like it for people to be a little more devout once in a while. Sometimes I’ve asked myself if I shouldn’t have been a pastor—in some ways I don’t think I would have made a bad one. . . .I hope there weren’t any mistakes in my French when I answered—were there?”

“No,” Joachim said. “ ‘
Je le regrette beaucoup
’ was quite correct as far as that goes.”

Deviations from the normal schedule occurred regularly. First of all, there was Sunday—a Sunday with a band concert on the terrace, offered every fourteen days as a way of marking the passage of two weeks; and it was in the middle of week number two when Hans Castorp entered from the outside world. He had arrived on a Tuesday and so it was his fifth day, an almost springlike day after the bizarre turn in the weather that had thrown them back into winter—mild, yet fresh, with tidy clouds in a bright blue sky and a sun shining gently on the slopes and valley, which now had returned to their proper summer green, because the recent snowfall had been doomed to melt quickly.

It was clear that everyone took pains to dignify and honor Sunday; both management and residents supported one another in the effort. There was crumb cake at early breakfast, and beside each setting was a little vase with a few flowers, wild mountain pinks and even Alpine roses, which the gentlemen then took as boutonnières. Prosecutor Paravant went so far as to don a black swallowtail coat with a dotted vest, and the ladies’ attire had a diaphanous and festive look. Frau Chauchat appeared at breakfast in a flowing open-sleeved lace peignoir, and stood there at attention—having first slammed the glass door—and charmingly presented herself, as it were, to the dining hall, before proceeding in her slinking gait to her table; and her attire suited her so splendidly that Hans Castorp’s neighbor, the teacher from Königsberg, expressed her unequivocal enthusiasm. Even the barbaric couple from the Bad Russian table gave the Sabbath its due, the male portion having exchanged leather jacket and felt boots for a kind of short frock coat and leather shoes; whereas
she
still wore her shabby boa, but beneath it was a green silk blouse with a ruffled collar. Hans Castorp scowled as he spotted the two of them, and blushed—something he tended to do often here.