The Magic Mountain (23 page)
Immediately after breakfast, the concert began out on the terrace; all sorts of brass and woodwinds had gathered there, and alternating lively and slow pieces, they played almost until the midday meal. The rest cure was not strictly enforced during the concert. True, some people did enjoy sweet melodies from their balconies, and three or four of the chairs in the arcade were occupied; but the majority of the guests sat at little white tables placed out on the covered porch, although frivolous and fashionable society, for whom sitting on chairs was apparently too respectable, took up a position on the stone steps leading down to the garden and gave free rein to merriment—youthful patients of both sexes, most of whose faces or names Hans Castorp knew by now. Hermine Kleefeld was part of the group, as was Herr Albin, who passed around a large flowered box of chocolates from which all the others ate, whereas he did not touch them, but instead assumed a paternal air and smoked gold-tipped cigarettes. Also in the party were the thick-lipped lad from the Half-Lung Club; Fräulein Levi, looking as thin and ivory-skinned as ever; an ash-blond young man who answered to the name of Rasmussen and dangled his hands chest-high, like fins at the end of limp wrists; Frau Salomon from Amsterdam, a lady of ample proportions, who was dressed in red and had joined the young people; the tall gentleman with the thinning hair who could play selections from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and who now sat behind her, his arms hugging pointed knees, his gloomy eyes fixed on the brown hair at the nape of her neck; a red-haired young lady from Greece; another girl of unknown origin with the face of a tapir; the gluttonous adolescent with the thick, circular glasses; another fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy, who squinted through a monocle and at every cough put his little finger, its long nail shaped very much like a saltcellar spoon, to his lips—a first-class ass, it would seem; and several others.
The boy with the fingernail, Joachim explained in a low voice, had been only very slightly ill on arrival, with no temperature—his being sent up was more a precautionary measure by his father, a physician—and had been advised by the director that he would have to stay about three months. And now, after three months, with a temperature between 100 and 100.4 degrees, he was seriously ill. But he led such a reckless life that he deserved to have his ears boxed.
The cousins had a table to themselves, off to one side from the others, because Hans Castorp wanted to smoke a cigar with the dark beer he had brought out with him from breakfast—and from time to time the cigar even tasted rather good. Dazed from the beer and the music, which as always made him lay his head a little to one side with his mouth hanging open, he looked with bloodshot eyes out at the resort life around him. It came to him that all these people were subject to an inner decay that would be halted only with great difficulty and that most of them were slightly feverish, but the realization did not bother him at all—on the contrary, there was a certain special intensity and intellectual charm to the whole scene. People sat at their tables drinking sodas; someone was taking photographs down on the steps. Others were trading stamps. The red-haired young lady from Greece had been sketching Herr Rasmussen on her pad, but she refused to show him the picture now, and with a broad smile that revealed her gap teeth, she kept turning from side to side, and it was a long time before he managed to grab the pad away from her. Hermine Kleefeld sat on the steps, her eyes half-closed, and beat time to the music with a rolled-up newspaper, and simultaneously she let Herr Albin pin a little bouquet of wildflowers to her blouse. The thick-lipped lad, sitting at Frau Salomon’s feet, turned his head around, gazed up at her, and chatted away, while the pianist with the thinning hair stared resolutely at the nape of her neck.
The doctors arrived and mingled among the hotel guests—Director Behrens in his white smock, Dr. Krokowski in his black. They walked along the rows of tables, the director dispensing a casual, witty remark to almost everyone, so that a wake of mirth rippled behind him. They now moved down to the young people, where the females, with wagging heads and sidelong glances, flocked around Dr. Krokowski. In honor of the Sabbath, the director showed the gentlemen a little stunt with his lace boots: placing one huge foot on a higher step, he undid the laces, then gathered them with a special grip in one hand, and without help of the other, crisscrossed them through the hooks so deftly that everyone stood there amazed—and several lads tried the trick out themselves, with no success.
Later Settembrini appeared on the terrace. He emerged from the dining hall, stopped, and leaned on his cane; dressed today as well in his petersham coat and pale yellow trousers, he first looked about with a refined, alert, and critical air and then approached the cousins’ table with a cry of “Ah, bravo!”
He asked permission to join them. “Beer, tobacco, and music,” he said. “Behold the Fatherland. I see you’re caught up in the patriotic mood, my good engineer. I’m happy to see you in your element. Permit me, please, to take some part in your harmonious state.”
Hans Castorp ordered his facial expression—had, in fact, already done so the moment he spotted the Italian. He said, “You’re late for the concert, Herr Settembrini. It will soon be over, I fear. Don’t you enjoy listening to music?”
“Not when I’m ordered to do so,” Settembrini replied. “Not if it’s decreed by the day of the week. Not when it has a pharmaceutical odor and is prescribed from on high for reasons of health. I have some little regard for my freedom or what is left to us of our freedom and human dignity. On such occasions I am merely a visitor, much as you play the full-time visitor. I drop by for fifteen minutes and then go my way. It gives me the illusion of independence. I’m not saying it is anything more than an illusion, but who can object if it gives me a certain satisfaction? It’s quite different with your cousin. For him it is a duty. You do regard this as one of your duties here, am I not right, lieutenant? Oh, I know, you’ve learned the trick of keeping your pride, even in slavery. A puzzling trick. Not everyone in Europe knows how to pull it off. Music? You asked if I consider myself a fancier of music, did you not? Well, when you say ‘fancier’ ” (actually, Hans Castorp did not recall putting it that way) “that’s not a bad word for it—it has a hint of delicate frivolity. So then, fine, I’ll accept your term. Yes, I am a fancier of music—which is not to say that I particularly revere it—not, for instance, as I love and revere the written word, the bearer of the human intellect, the tool, the shining plow of progress. Music . . . there is something only semi-articulate about it, something dubious, irresponsible, indifferent. You will object, I presume, that it can also be quite clear. But nature can be clear as well—a brook can be clear, but what good does that do us? It is not true clarity, but a dreamy, empty clarity that demands nothing of us, a clarity without consequences, and therefore dangerous, because it seduces us to take our ease beside it. But, if you like, let music assume its most high-minded pose. Fine! And then our emotions are inflamed. And yet the real point should be to inflame our reason. Music, it would appear, is movement for its own sake—although I suspect it of quietism. Let me overstate my case: my distaste for music is political.”
At this point Hans Castorp could not help slapping his knee and exclaiming that he had never heard anything like that in all his life.
“Please consider it, nevertheless,” Settembrini said with a smile. “Music is invaluable as the ultimate means for awakening our zeal, a power that draws the mind trained for its effects forward and upward. But literature must precede it. By itself, music cannot draw the world forward. By itself, music is dangerous. And for you in particular, my good engineer, it is absolutely dangerous. I read that at once from your face as I arrived just now.”
Hans Castorp laughed. “Ah, you mustn’t even look at my face, Herr Settembrini. You can’t imagine how your air up here plays havoc with me. I find it much more difficult to get acclimatized than I thought I would.”
“I’m afraid you’re deluding yourself.”
“No, what do you mean? Damn if I’m not more tired and flushed than I’ve ever been.”
“It seems to me, however, that we should be grateful to the management for these concerts,” Joachim said circumspectly. “You are viewing the matter from a higher standpoint, Herr Settembrini, as a writer, so to speak, and I would not want to contradict you there. It seems to me, however, that we should be grateful for this bit of music here. I am not particularly musical myself, and there’s nothing remarkable about the pieces as such—neither classical nor modern—especially the way they’re playing them, merely a little band music. But it is an enjoyable change. It fills a few hours up so nice and properly, I think. It divides them up and gives some content to each, so that there’s something to them after all—whereas normally the hours and days and weeks hang so awfully heavy on one’s hands. Such an unpretentious concert piece lasts perhaps seven minutes, am I correct? And each piece is something all to itself, has a beginning and an end, stands out in contrast to the rest, and that is what keeps them, in some sense, from being swallowed up in the general routine. And, besides, each is then divided up into several parts itself—into melodic phrases, and those by the rhythm itself—so that something’s always going on and every moment takes on a certain meaning that a person can hold on to, whereas otherwise—I don’t know if I’m putting it right, but . . .”
“Bravo!” Settembrini cried. “Bravo, lieutenant. You have described very nicely an indubitably moral element in the nature of music: to wit, that by its peculiar and lively means of measurement, it lends an awareness, both intellectual and precious, to the flow of time. Music awakens time, awakens us to our finest enjoyment of time. Music awakens—and in that sense it is moral. Art is moral, in that it awakens. But what if it were to do the opposite? If it were to numb us, put us asleep, counteract all activity and progress? And music can do that as well. It knows all too well the effect that opiates have. A devilish effect, gentlemen. Opiates are the Devil’s tool, for they create dullness, rigidity, stagnation, slavish inertia. There is something dubious about music, gentlemen. I maintain that music is ambiguous by its very nature. I am not going too far when I declare it to be politically suspect.”
He went on speaking in these terms for a while, and Hans Castorp listened, too, but was unable to follow the argument very well—not only because of his weariness, but also because he was distracted by the conviviality among the flighty young people down on the steps. Was he seeing right—or what was that exactly? The girl with the face of a tapir was busy sewing on a button at the knee of the knickerbockers worn by the boy with the monocle. But she was panting hot and hard because of her asthma, and all the while he coughed and held his saltcellar-spoon fingernail to his lips. They were ill, both of them—all the same, it certainly showed what peculiar social customs young people had up here. The band was playing a polka.
And so Sundays stood out—including the afternoons, which were marked by carriage rides undertaken by various groups of guests. After tea, several pairs of horses trotted up the loop of the drive, pulling carriages that stopped outside the front door for those who had ordered them—mainly Russians, particularly Russian ladies.
“Russians love to go for rides,” Joachim told Hans Castorp as they stood together at the front door and amused themselves by watching people depart. “And now they’ll ride to Clavadel or to the lake or to Flüela Valley or Klosters, those are the usual destinations. We could take a ride ourselves sometime while you’re here, if you like. But I think you’ve probably got enough to do for right now just getting settled in, and don’t need any adventures.”
Hans Castorp agreed. He had a cigarette in his mouth and his hands in his trouser pockets. He watched as the chipper little old Russian lady and her skinny niece took their seats in the carriage and were joined by two other ladies—Marusya and Madame Chauchat. The latter was wearing a light duster, belted across the back, but no hat. She sat down next to the old woman at the front, with the two young girls on the backseat. All four were in a merry mood and their mouths worked ceaselessly at their soft, rather boneless language. They talked and laughed about the difficulty of fitting under the blanket, about the wooden box of Russian candies, wrapped in paper and bedded in cotton, which the great-aunt had brought along as provisions and now offered around. Hans Castorp was pleased to discover that he could pick out Frau Chauchat’s opaque voice. As always when he set eyes on this careless woman, he was reminded of the resemblance that he had been trying to recall for some time now and that had flashed across his dream. Marusya’s laugh, however, the sight of her round, brown eyes, blinking childishly out over the handkerchief with which she covered her mouth, and her full, prominent chest—said to be more than a little ill on the inside—reminded him of something else that had shaken him when he had noticed it recently, and so without turning his head, he glanced cautiously toward Joachim. No, thank God, Joachim’s face wasn’t turning blotchy as it had that day, and his lips were not in their woeful grimace. But he was watching Marusya—and in a pose, with a look in his eyes, that could not possibly be called military, but rather so gloomy and self-absorbed that one would have to term it downright civilian. He pulled himself together, all the same, and quickly peered at Hans Castorp, who just had time to pull his own eyes away and gaze off vaguely into the air. As he did, he felt his heart pounding—for no reason, all of its own accord, as it had taken to doing up here.
In other respects Sunday offered nothing out of the ordinary, apart perhaps from the meals, which, since they could hardly be more sumptuous, were at least marked by a refinement in the cuisine. (Dinner included a
chaudfroid
of chicken, garnished with shrimps and halved cherries; ices with pastries in little baskets of spun sugar; even fresh pineapple.) After drinking his beer that evening, Hans Castorp felt more exhausted, chilled, and torpid than on any day thus far; he said good night to his cousin a little before nine, quickly slipped in under his comforter, pulling it up over his chin, and fell dead asleep.