The Magic Mountain (5 page)

“Back down with you?” his cousin asked, turning to him with large eyes that had always had a gentle look, but that in the last five months had taken on a weary, indeed sad expression. “When do you mean?”

“Why, in three weeks.”

“Oh, I see—you’re already thinking about heading back home,” Joachim replied. “Well, wait and see, you’ve only just arrived. Three weeks are almost nothing for us up here, of course, but for you, just here on a visit and planning to stay a grand total of three weeks, for you that’s a long time. Acclimatize yourself first—and you’ll learn that’s not all that easy. Besides, the climate’s not the only unusual thing about us. You’ll see quite a few new sights here, just watch. And as for what you’ve said about me—well, I’m not in such fine feather as all that, my friend. ‘Home in three weeks,’ that’s a notion from down below. I’m nicely tanned, of course, but that’s mostly from the snow and doesn’t mean much, as Behrens is always saying, and at my last regular checkup he said that it’s fairly certain it will be another six months yet.”

“Six months? Are you crazy?” Hans Castorp cried. They were taking their seats on the hard cushions of a yellow cabriolet that had stood waiting for them on the gravel apron in front of the station, itself not much more than a shed; and as the pair of bays began to pull, Hans Castorp spun around now in vexation. “Six months? You’ve already been here for almost that long! We don’t have that much time in life!”

“Ah yes, time,” Joachim said, nodding to himself several times, paying no attention to his cousin’s honest indignation. “You wouldn’t believe how fast and loose they play with people’s time around here. Three weeks are the same as a day to them. You’ll see. You have all that to learn,” he said, and then he added, “A man changes a lot of his ideas here.”

Hans Castorp gazed steadily at his profile. “But you really have made a splendid recovery,” he said, shaking his head.

“Do you think so?” Joachim replied. “It’s true, isn’t it? I think so, too!” he said, sitting up taller against the cushioned back, but immediately slumping again a little to one side. “I am feeling better,” he explained, “but I’m not yet entirely well, either. The upper left lobe, where the rattling used to be, there’s only a little roughness there now, it’s not so bad, but the lower lobe is still
very
rough, and there are also sounds in the second intercostal.”

“How learned you’ve become,” Hans Castorp said.

“Yes, a fine sort of learning, God knows. I would gladly have unlearned it all on active duty,” Joachim retorted. “But I still have sputum,” he said with a nonchalant, but somehow vehement shrug that did not suit him at all; and now he pulled something halfway out of the nearer side pocket of his ulster, showed it to his cousin, and put it away again at once—a curved, flattened bottle of bluish glass with a metal cap. “Most of us up here have one,” he said. “We even have a name for it, a kind of nickname, a joke really. Having a look at the scenery, are you?”

And indeed that was what Hans Castorp was doing, and he exclaimed, “Magnificent!”

“You think so, do you?” Joachim asked.

They had first taken a street that was faced by an irregular pattern of buildings and ran along the railroad tracks, following the valley’s axis, but then turned left and crossed the narrow tracks and a brook; and they were now trotting up a gently rising road in the direction of wooded slopes and a low, outcropping meadow where an elongated building stood, its façade turned to the southwest, topped by a copper cupola, and arrayed with so many balconies that, from a distance as the first lights of evening were being lit, it looked as pockmarked and porous as a sponge. Dusk was falling fast. A pale red sunset that had enlivened the generally overcast sky faded now, leaving nature under the transient sway of the lackluster, lifeless, and mournful light that immediately precedes nightfall. Lights were coming up in the long, meandering, populous valley, dotting its floor and the slopes on both sides—particularly on the swelling rise to the right, where buildings ascended a series of terraces. Paths led up the meadowed hills on their left, but were soon lost to sight in the dull black of pine forests. Behind them, the mountains in the more distant background, where the valley tapered to an end, were a sober slate blue. Now that the wind had picked up, the evening had turned noticeably cooler.

“No, to be quite frank, I don’t find it that overwhelming,” Hans Castorp said. “Where are the glaciers and snowcapped, towering peaks? Seems to me, the ones here aren’t all that high.”

“Oh, they’re high all right,” Joachim replied. “You can see the tree line almost everywhere, it’s really quite clearly defined; the pines come to an end, then everything else—the end, then rocks, as you can see. And over there, to the right of the Schwarzhorn, on that jagged peak there, is a glacier for you—can you still see the blue? It’s not that big, but it’s a textbook glacier, the Scaletta Glacier. And there’s Piz Michel and Tinzenhorn in that gap—you can’t see them from here, but they’re always snow-covered, year-round.”

“Eternal snow,” Hans Castorp said.

“Right, eternal, if you like. And they’re all very high. But we’re dreadfully high up ourselves, keep that in mind. Five thousand three hundred feet above sea level. So you don’t notice the difference in height that much.”

“Yes, it was quite a climb. Certainly had me scared, let me tell you. Five thousand three hundred feet. Why, that’s over a mile high. I’ve never been this far up in my whole life.” And in his curiosity, Hans Castorp took a deep breath, testing the alien air. It was fresh—that was all. It lacked odor, content, moisture, it went easily into the lungs and said nothing to the soul.

“Excellent!” he remarked politely.

“Yes, the air is famous. But the landscape is not showing itself to its best advantage this evening. It can look better, especially in the snow. But you soon get your fill of staring at it. Believe me, all of us up here have definitely had our fill of it,” Joachim said, and his mouth wrenched in an expression of disgust that seemed both exaggerated and out of control—and once again it did not suit him.

“You’re talking so strangely,” Hans Castorp said.

“Strangely, am I?” Joachim asked, turning to his cousin and looking worried somehow.

“No, no, beg your pardon, it just seemed that way to me for a moment or so,” Hans Castorp hastened to say. But what he really meant was that the phrase “us up here,” which Joachim had used three or four times already, somehow made him feel anxious and queer.

“Our sanatorium lies at a higher altitude than the village, as you can see,” Joachim continued. “A hundred fifty feet. The brochure says ‘three hundred,’ but it’s only half that. The highest of the sanatoriums is Schatzalp, across the way, you can’t see it now. They have to transport the bodies down by bobsled in the winter, because the roads are impassable.”

“The bodies? Oh, I see. You don’t say!” Hans Castorp cried. And suddenly he burst into laughter, a violent, overpowering laugh that shook his chest and twisted his face, stiffened by the cool wind, into a slightly painful grimace. “On bobsleds! And you can sit there and tell me that so calm and cool? You’ve become quite the cynic in the last five months.”

“That’s not cynical at all,” Joachim replied with a shrug. “Why do you say that? It doesn’t matter to the bodies. All the same, it may well be that we do get cynical up here. Behrens is an old cynic himself—a regular brick, by the way, an old fraternity man and a brilliant surgeon, you’ll like him, seems to me. And then there’s Krokowski, his assistant—a very savvy character. They make special note of his services in the brochure. He dissects the patients’ psyches.”

“He what? Dissects their psyches? That’s disgusting!” Hans Castorp cried, and now hilarity got the better of him. He could no longer control it. Psychic dissection had finished the job, and he bent over and laughed so hard that the tears ran out from under the hand with which he had covered his eyes. Joachim laughed heartily, too—it seemed to do him good. And so the two young men were in fine good humor as they climbed down from their carriage, which had borne them at a slow trot up the steep loop of the driveway to the portal of the International Sanatorium Berghof.

On their immediate right, between the outer and inner doors, was the desk for the concierge, and a French-looking attendant, dressed in the same livery as the limping man at the train station, was sitting by the telephone reading newspapers; he came up to them and led them across the well-lit lobby, with public rooms opening off it on the left. Hans Castorp peered in as they passed, and discovered them empty. Where were the guests? he asked, and his cousin replied, “Taking their rest cure. I was excused from it today because I wanted to meet your train. Otherwise I’d be lying out on my balcony after my evening meal, too.”

It would not have taken much for Hans Castorp to be seized by another fit of laughter. “What? You lie out on your balcony rain or shine, night or day?” he asked, his voice wavering on the edge.

“Yes, it’s in the rules. From eight till ten. But come on, let’s have a look at your room, and you can wash up.”

They got on the elevator, the Frenchman operating the electric switches. As they glided upward, Hans Castorp dried his eyes.

“I’m exhausted, I’ve laughed so hard,” he said, catching his breath through his mouth. “It’s all these crazy things you’ve been telling me. The psychic dissection was just too much, I could have done without that. Besides, I’m a little weary from the trip, I suppose. Do your feet get cold so easily, too? And at the same time your face flushes—it’s an unpleasant feeling. I assume we’ll be eating soon? I think I’m getting hungry. Do they feed you properly up here?”

They passed soundlessly down the coconut runners of the narrow corridor. Cool light came from the milk-glass shades of lamps set in the ceiling. The walls were painted with a hard, glistening white enamel. A nurse in a white cap appeared from somewhere, a pince-nez set on her nose, its cord tucked behind one ear. She had the look of a Protestant nurse, of someone with no real devotion to her profession, but kept restless by curiosity and the burden of boredom. Some balloon-shaped objects had been set out in the corridor, beside two of the white-enameled doors—large, potbellied containers with short necks. Hans Castorp was going to ask their purpose, and just as quickly forgot the question.

“Here you are,” Joachim said. “Number thirty-four. I’m on your right, and on your left is a Russian couple—they’re rather slovenly, and loud, I must say, but there was nothing else we could do. Well, what do you say?”

There was a double door, with clothes hooks in the space between the two. Joachim had turned on the ceiling light, and its sharp luster revealed a room that was both cheerful and restful, with white, practical furniture; heavy, washable wallpaper, likewise white; a floor covered with spotless linoleum; and linen curtains, embroidered with a simple, cheerful pattern of modern design. The door to the balcony stood open to a glimpse of lights in the valley and the sound of distant dance music. Joachim had thoughtfully placed a few wildflowers in a small vase on the dresser—some yarrow and a couple of bluebells, in their second bloom this summer, that he had picked on the slopes.

“How kind of you,” Hans Castorp said. “What a nice room. I’ll have no trouble putting up here for a week or two.”

“An American woman died here the day before yesterday,” Joachim said. “Behrens told me he was sure it would be all over with her before you arrived, and that you could have the room. Her fiancé was with her, an English naval officer, but he didn’t exactly keep a stiff upper lip. He kept coming out into the corridor to cry every few minutes, like a little boy. And then he’d rub his cheeks with cold cream because he’d just shaved and the tears stung. The evening before last, the American woman had two first-class hemorrhages, and that was that. But she’s been gone since yesterday morning, and of course it was all thoroughly fumigated with formalin—they say it’s very effective, you know.”

Hans Castorp was listening to this narrative with edgy bemusement. He had rolled up his sleeves and was standing now at the large washbasin, its nickel taps sparkling under the electric light, but he cast no more than a fleeting glance at the bed’s white metal frame and fresh sheets.

“Fumigated, that’s spiffing,” he said glibly and somewhat incongruously while he washed and dried his hands. “Yes, methyl aldehyde, even the toughest bacteria can’t take that—H
₂
CO, but it does burn in your nose, doesn’t it? It’s obvious, of course, that strict cleanliness is essential.” His accent, particularly his it’s, betrayed his Hamburg origins, whereas starting back in his student days, his cousin had adopted more standard pronunciation. Feeling much chattier now, he rambled on, “What I was going to say was . . . that naval officer probably used a safety razor, that’s what I think, it’s easier to cut yourself with those things than with a well-stropped straight razor, that’s been my experience at least, so I alternate between the two. And, of course, salt water does smart on chafed skin, so he probably got in the habit of using cold cream while he was in the service, that doesn’t seem at all peculiar to me.” And he chatted away, telling about how he had packed two hundred Maria Mancinis—his cigars—in his trunk, but that getting through customs had been easy as pie. And then he extended greetings from various people back home. “Don’t they heat the rooms?” he suddenly exclaimed and ran over to put his hand on the radiator.

“No, they keep it rather cool,” Joachim answered. “The weather would have to turn really bad before they would turn on the heat in August.”

“August, August,” Hans Castorp said. “But I’m freezing! I’m ab-so-lute-ly freezing, I mean my body is, although my face feels awfully flushed—here, feel it, it’s burning up.”

The suggestion that someone feel his face was not at all typical of Hans Castorp, and even he was embarrassed by it. Joachim did not acknowledge it, but merely said, “It’s the air here, it doesn’t mean anything. Behrens himself walks around with purple cheeks all day. Some people never get used to it. Well, come on now, or we’ll not get anything to eat.”