The Magic Mountain (42 page)

“Oh, please, go ahead and look,” came Joachim’s generous reply out of the blackness. And with the floor vibrating under him and great forces crackling and blustering at play around him, Hans Castorp peered through the pale window, peered into the void of Joachim Ziemssen’s skeleton. His breastbone merged with his spine into one dark, gristly column. The ribs at the front of his rib cage overlapped those at the back, which looked paler. The collarbone curved upward on both sides, and the bones of the shoulder, the joint where Joachim’s arm began, looked lean and angular against the soft halo of flesh. The chest cavity was bright, but one could make out a web of darker spots and blackish ruffles.

“Sharp picture,” the director said. “That’s the respectable leanness of military youth. I’ve had potbellies here—impenetrable, could recognize next to nothing. They still haven’t invented rays that can get through layers of fat like those. But this is clean work. Do you see the diaphragm?” he asked, and pointed a finger at a dark curve rising and sinking inside the window. “You see this knob here, this little raised spot? That’s from when he had pleurisy at the age of fifteen. Take a deep breath!” he commanded. “Deeper! I said
deep!
” And Joachim’s diaphragm quivered and rose as high as it would go. The upper parts of the lungs were brighter now, but the director was still not content. “Unsatisfactory,” he said. “Do you see the hilum there? Do you see those adhesions? Do you see these cavities here? That’s where the toxins come from that make him so tipsy.”

But Hans Castorp was preoccupied with something that looked like a sack, or maybe a deformed animal, visible behind the middle column, or mostly to the right of it from the viewer’s perspective. It expanded and contracted regularly, like some sort of flapping jellyfish.

“Do you see his heart?” the director asked, lifting his giant right hand from his thigh again and pointing an index finger at the pulsating pendant.

Good God, it was his heart, Joachim’s honor-loving heart, that Hans Castorp saw. “I can see your heart,” he said in a choked voice.

“Please, go ahead and look,” Joachim replied again, and he was probably even smiling meekly up there in the dark. But the director ordered him to be silent and not to exchange sentimentalities. He studied the spots and lines, the blackish ruffles in the chest cavity, while his fellow viewer gazed tirelessly at Joachim’s sepulchral form, his dry bones, his bare scaffolding, his gaunt
memento mori
. He was filled with both reverence and terror.

“Yes, yes, I see it,” he said several times. “My God, I see it!” He had once heard about a woman, a long-dead forebear on the Tienappel side of the family, who was said to have been endowed or cursed with a troublesome talent that she had borne in all humility and that had caused her to see anyone who would soon die as just a skeleton. Which was exactly how good Joachim now looked to Hans Castorp, although with the aid and under the auspices of physical optics—so that it did not really mean anything and was perfectly normal, particularly since he had expressly obtained Joachim’s permission. And yet he felt some sympathy for the melancholy fate of his clairvoyant great-aunt. He was deeply moved by what he saw, or more accurately, by being able to see it, but he was also stung by secret doubts whether it might not be somehow abnormal after all, doubts about whether it was permissible to stare like this amid the quivering, crackling darkness. A deep desire to enjoy the indiscretion blended with feelings of compassion and piety.

A few minutes later he himself was standing in the stocks while the little thunderstorm raged, and Joachim, his body closed from view again, began to dress. Once again the director peered through the milky pane, but this time into Hans Castorp’s interior, and from his mutterings—ragtag curses and phrases—it appeared his findings corresponded to his expectations. In response to much begging, he was kind enough to allow his patient to view his own hand through the fluoroscope. And Hans Castorp saw exactly what he should have expected to see, but which no man was ever intended to see and which he himself had never presumed he would be able to see: he saw his own grave. Under that light, he saw the process of corruption anticipated, saw the flesh in which he moved decomposed, expunged, dissolved into airy nothingness—and inside was the delicately turned skeleton of his right hand and around the last joint of the ring finger, dangling black and loose, the signet ring his grandfather had bequeathed him: a hard thing, this ore with which man adorns a body predestined to melt away beneath it, so that it can be free again and move on to yet other flesh that may bear it for a while. With the eyes of his Tienappel forebear—penetrating, clairvoyant eyes—he beheld a familiar part of his body, and for the first time in his life he understood that he would die. And he made the same face he usually made when listening to music—a rather dull, sleepy, and devout face, his head tilted toward one shoulder, his mouth half-open.

The director said, “Spooky, isn’t it? Yes, there’s no mistaking that whiff of spookiness.”

And then he put a stop to those great forces. The floor grew quiet, the spectacle of lights faded, the magic window wrapped itself in darkness. The ceiling lamp went on. And while Hans Castorp threw on his clothes, Behrens gave the young people some information about what he had observed, though with proper regard to their abilities as laymen to comprehend it. As for Hans Castorp’s case, the optical and acoustical results corresponded as precisely as one could ever demand of science. Both the old spots and the fresh one had been visible, and there were “strands” that ran from the bronchi well down into the lung itself—“strands with nodules.” Hans Castorp would be able to verify that for himself on the X-ray plate, a copy of which he would soon be given as promised. And so: rest, patience, manly discipline, food, thermometers, sleep—just grin and bear it. He turned his back to them. They departed. First Joachim, then Hans Castorp, who glanced back over his shoulder as they left. Ushered in by the technician, Frau Chauchat was now entering the laboratory.

How did young Hans Castorp actually feel about all this? For instance, did the seven weeks he had demonstrably, indubitably spent with these people here feel like a mere seven days? Or did it seem to him just the opposite, that he had lived here now much, much longer than he really had? He asked himself those same questions, both privately of himself and formally of Joachim—but could not come to any decision. Probably both were true: looking back, the time he had spent here thus far seemed unnaturally brief and at the same time unnaturally long. It seemed everything to him, in fact, except how it really was—always presuming, of course, that time is part of nature and that it is therefore permissible to see it in conjunction with reality.

In any case, October was close at hand, might arrive any day now. Hans Castorp had no trouble figuring out that much; and besides, he heard mention made of the fact in the conversations of his fellow patients. “Do you realize that it’s only five days till the first of the month?” he heard Hermine Kleefeld say to two young men of her acquaintance, Rasmussen the student and the thick-lipped lad, whose name was Gänser. Dinner was just over, its odors still heavy in the air, and people were lingering among the tables, chatting and putting off their rest cure. “The first of October—I noticed it on the calendar in the management office. This will be the second one I’ve spent at this cozy resort. Well fine, summer, or what there was of it, is over—we’ve been cheated out of it, just as we’re cheated out of everything else in life.” And she sighed with her half a lung, shaking her head and directing her doltish, sleepy eyes at the ceiling. “Cheer up, Rasmussen,” she then said, slapping her comrade on one drooping shoulder, “and tell us some jokes!”

“I know only a few,” Rasmussen replied, his hands dangling chest-high like fins. “But I don’t tell them very well—I’m always too tired.”

“Not even a dog,” Gänser said between his teeth, “would want to go on living like this much longer.” And they laughed and shrugged.

Settembrini had been standing close by, too, a toothpick between his lips, and as they were leaving he said to Hans Castorp, “Don’t believe them, my good engineer, never believe them when they squawk—and there’s not a one who doesn’t, although they all feel very much at home here. Lead a free and easy life—and then demand you pity them. Think they have a right to bitterness, irony, cynicism. ‘At this cozy resort!’ Well, isn’t it cozy? I would certainly say it is, and in the most dubious sense of the word. ‘Cheated,’ the little minx says—‘cheated out of everything in life at this cozy resort.’ But send her back to the plains and her life down there would leave you in no doubt that her sole object was to get back up here as soon as possible. Ah yes, irony! Beware of the irony that flourishes here, my good engineer. Beware of it in general as an intellectual stance. When it is not employed as an honest device of classical rhetoric, the purpose of which no healthy mind can doubt for a moment, it becomes a source of depravity, a barrier to civilization, a squalid flirtation with inertia, nihilism, and vice. And since the atmosphere in which we live provides very favorable conditions for this swamp plant to flourish, I may hope—or perhaps I must fear—that you do understand me.”

The Italian’s remarks were truly the sort that, if Hans Castorp had heard them down in the plains seven weeks before, would have been mere noise; but his stay up here had made his mind receptive for them—receptive in terms of intellectual understanding, though not necessarily in terms of sympathy, which perhaps is the more telling factor. For although in the depths of his soul he was glad that, despite everything that had happened, Settembrini continued to speak with him as he did, continued to teach, to warn, to try to influence him, his own perceptive powers had advanced to the point where he would criticize the remarks and withhold his agreement, at least to some extent. “How about that,” he thought, “he talks about irony in almost the same way he talks about music. The only thing missing is for him to call it ‘politically suspect’ the moment it stops being an ‘honest and classical means of instruction.’ But if ‘no healthy mind can for a moment doubt its purpose,’ what sort of irony is that for heaven’s sake, if I may ask?—assuming I am to have a say in any of this. That would just be dry pedantry!” (Such is the ingratitude of immature youth. It accepts the gift of learning, only to find fault with it.)

Nevertheless, he would have found it all too risky to put his insubordination into words. He limited himself to objecting to Herr Settembrini’s critique of Hermine Kleefeld, which seemed unjust to him—or which, for other reasons, he wanted to see as unjust.

“But the girl is ill,” he said. “She is truly, positively very ill and has every reason to be in despair. What do you want from her, really?”

“Illness and despair,” Settembrini said, “are often only forms of depravity.”

“And what about Leopardi,” Hans Castorp thought, “who explicitly despaired of science and progress? Or what about our good schoolmaster himself? He’s ill and keeps coming back up here. Carducci wouldn’t have been all that happy with him, either.” But aloud he said, “Fine fellow you are. The young lady may breathe her last any day now, and you call her depraved. You’ll have to explain that for me. If you had said that illness is sometimes a result of depravity, that would at least have been plausible, or—”

“Very plausible,” Settembrini broke in. “My word! So you would have agreed had I left it at that?”

“Or if you had said that illness sometimes is made to serve as a pretext for depravity—I would have accepted that, too.”

“
Grazie tanto!
”

“But illness as a
form
of depravity? Which means, not that it arises from depravity, but is itself depravity? Now that’s a paradox.”

“Oh, I beg you, my good engineer, do not lay that at my door. I despise paradoxes. I loathe them. You may assume that everything I said about irony also applies to paradoxes, and more besides. Paradox is the poison flower of quietism, the iridescent sheen of a putrefied mind, the greatest depravity of all. By the way, I also notice you are coming to the defense of illness yet again.”

“No, what you say interests me. It reminds me of some of the things that Dr. Krokowski lectures about on Mondays. He, too, declares illness to be a secondary phenomenon.”

“No pure idealist, he.”

“What do you have against him?”

“Precisely that.”

“Don’t you approve of analysis?”

“Not every day. It’s very bad and very good, by turns, my good engineer.”

“How am I supposed to take that?”

“Analysis is good as a tool of enlightenment and civilization—to the extent that it shakes stupid preconceptions, quashes natural biases, and undermines authority. Good, in other words, to the extent that it liberates, refines, and humanizes—it makes slaves ripe for freedom. It is bad, very bad, to the extent that it prevents action, damages life at its roots, and is incapable of shaping it. Analysis can be very unappetizing, as unappetizing as death, to which it may very well be linked—a relative of the grave and its foul anatomy.”

“Well roared, lion,” Hans Castorp could not help thinking, as he usually did when Herr Settembrini uttered something pedagogic. But now he said, “We recently participated in some illuminated anatomy downstairs on the ground floor. That’s what Behrens called it when he X-rayed us.”

“Ah, so you’ve now scaled to that level, too. Well?”

“I saw the skeleton of my own hand,” Hans Castorp said, trying to recall the emotions that had stirred in him at the sight of it. “Have you ever had him show you yours?”

“No, I’m not the least bit interested in my own skeleton. And what was the medical finding?”

“He saw strands, strands with nodules.”

“The imp of Satan!”

“You called Director Behrens that once before. What do you mean by it?”

“You may be sure that I choose the term deliberately.”

“No, you’re not being fair, Herr Settembrini. I’ll admit that the man has his weaknesses. After being here awhile, even I don’t find the way he talks that congenial; there’s something so fierce about it, especially when you think of the grief that he felt at losing his wife up here. But what an admirable, respectable man he is all in all, a benefactor to suffering humankind. I recently met him as he was coming from an operation, a rib resection, a matter of life or death. And to see him like that, coming from such a difficult, practical task, made a big impression on me. He was still flushed and had just lit a cigar to reward himself. I was envious of him.”