The Magic Mountain (51 page)

“You mustn’t imagine it as all that grim,” he said. “It’s not exactly the Arctic. You don’t feel the cold that much, because the air is so dry and the wind is still. If you wrap yourself up well, you can stay out on the balcony until deep into the night without freezing. It’s all about temperature inversions above the fog line—it gets warmer at higher altitudes. People didn’t really know about that before. It feels colder, in fact, when it rains. But you have your sleeping bag now, and they’ll even turn on the heat a bit if worse comes to worst.”

And one certainly couldn’t have called it a sneak attack or a violent assault; winter arrived gently, so that at first it did not look all that different from many days that summer had brought with it. For two days the wind was from the south, the sun bore down, the valley seemed shorter and narrower somehow, the background of the Alps at its entrance looked near and stark. Then clouds pushed in from the northeast across Piz Michel and Tinzenhorn, and the valley turned dark. Heavy rains followed. Then it wasn’t just rain, but a whitish-gray mixture of snow and rain, and finally just snow that came in squalls that filled the whole valley. The snow continued for several days, and in time the temperature had fallen to the point where the snow could no longer melt. It was wet snow, but it stuck, and the valley now lay under a thin, damp, tattered garment of white that made the rugged evergreen slopes stand out black in contrast. The dining hall radiators were lukewarm by now. That was at the beginning of November, around All Souls’, and it was nothing new. It had been much like this in August, and Hans Castorp had long since disabused himself of the idea that snow was the prerogative of winter. No matter what the weather, winter was always in view, if only at a distance—remnants and traces of snow lay glistening in crevices and fissures of the craggy Rhätikon chain that seemed to block the entrance to the valley, and a constant snowy salute came from mountain majesties far to the south. But now both snow and temperature kept falling. The sky, low and pale-gray above the valley, dissolved into relentless flakes that fell without sound and in immoderate, almost disquieting abundance. It grew colder by the hour. Then came a morning when Hans Castorp found it was forty-eight degrees in his room, and the next morning it was only forty-three degrees. Winter’s icy chill had set in—in moderation, but it held. The temperature at night had been below freezing, but now it stayed there all day, from morning till evening; and with only brief interruptions, the snow continued a fourth, a fifth, a seventh day. Snow began to accumulate in earnest and present difficulties. Both the path to the bench beside the water trough and the driveway to the valley were kept shoveled clear, but were so narrow that there was no room for someone to move aside. When people met, one party had to step into the snowbank, sinking in up to the knee. All day a horse led by a man at its halter pulled a heavy stone snow-roller through the streets of the resort below; and what looked like an old-fashioned postal carriage on runners, with a plow mounted up front to push great masses of white to each side, commuted between the resort and Davos-Dorf, as the settlement to the north was known. The world—the high, remote, narrow world of the people up here—appeared padded and wrapped under heavy furs, not a post or pillar without its white bonnet. The stairs to the Berghof’s main door had vanished and were replaced by a ramp; everywhere massive, comically shaped pillows weighed down the boughs of pine, sliding off now and then in one great mass and bursting in a cloud of white mist that drifted off among the tree trunks. The mountains all around were snow-covered—a rugged blanket on the lower slopes, a softer layer across peaks jutting in various shapes above the tree line. The days were dim, the sun visible only as a wan glow behind the veil of gray. But the snow provided indirect, gentle light—a milky luster that suited this world and its people, even if noses were red under white or brightly colored woolen caps.

At all seven tables in the dining hall, the onset of winter, the “season” in these regions, was the major topic of conversation. A great many tourists and athletes, it was said, had already arrived, filling the hotels in Dorf and Platz. The snow accumulation was estimated at two feet, its consistency perfect for skiing. Across the way people were hard at work on the bobsled run—from the top of the northwest slope of Schatzalp to the valley below—and it was expected to be open within a few days; that was, if a warm foehn wind did not spoil everything. People were looking forward to the activities that healthy guests would soon be pursuing again in the valley below—organized races and contests, which they all planned to attend, even if it meant breaking the rules and playing hooky from rest cure. There was a new sport, Hans Castorp learned, an invention from the north called
skijoring
, a race in which contestants on skis were pulled by horses. That was worth playing hooky for. People talked about Christmas, too.

Christmas! No, Hans Castorp had not even given it a thought until now. He had found it easy to talk or write letters about his doctor’s discovery and having to spend the winter here with Joachim. But that also meant, as was now evident, that he would spend Christmas here, and without a doubt there was something unsettling about the idea, for he had never once spent the holidays anywhere but at home, in the bosom of his family. Good God—so that was part of the bargain, too. But he was no longer a child. Joachim seemed to have no trouble with the notion, had resigned himself to it without whining—and after all, Christmas had surely been celebrated around the world under a great variety of circumstances.

All the same, it seemed to him they were hurrying things, talking about Christmas even before the first day of Advent—it was still a good six weeks away. But people leaped right over those six weeks, devoured them there in the dining hall—a mental procedure that Hans Castorp had learned something about all on his own, although he was not yet used to practicing it with the cool grace of some of the old-timers among his fellow patients. Such junctures in the course of the year seemed to give them a hook to hang on to, functioned like a piece of gymnastic equipment for vaulting nimbly over the empty intervals in between. They were all feverish, with accelerated metabolisms, the whole physical organism working at a faster, augmented pace—which may well have had something to do with the way they drove time like a herd before them. He would not have been surprised if they had regarded Christmas as already over and started talking about New Year and Mardi Gras. But the people in the Berghof dining hall were certainly not so flippant and unsteady as all that. They pulled up short at Christmas—it was cause for worry, for racking one’s brains. They discussed the communal gift that, following an old institutional custom, would be presented to Director Behrens on Christmas Eve and for which a collection was being started. The previous year he had been given a traveling bag, according to the report of those who had spent more than one year here. There were advocates now of a new operating table, an easel, a fur-lined overcoat, a rocking chair, an ivory stethoscope with some sort of “inlay.” And when asked his opinion, Settembrini recommended a lexicographic work currently in preparation, entitled
Sociology of Suffering;
but the only person to second this suggestion was a bookdealer who had recently joined Fräulein Kleefeld’s table. There was as yet no consensus. There were difficulties in coming to an agreement with the Russian guests. The collection was now split in two—the Muscovites declaring they wanted to present Behrens a gift of their own. Frau Stöhr was in a state of terrible upset for several days because of a sum of money—ten francs—that she had been foolish enough to lend Frau Iltis to contribute, but which that lady had “forgotten” to repay. She had “forgotten” it—Frau Stöhr used a wide range of calibrated emphases when speaking the word, all of them displaying her profoundest disbelief in such forgetfulness, which apparently was weathering the storm of the many little innuendoes and delicate proddings that Frau Stöhr assured everyone she had employed. On several occasions, Frau Stöhr waived all claims, stating she would forgive Frau Iltis the debt. “I’ll pay for both myself and her,” she said. “Fine, the disgrace won’t be mine.” But at last she hit upon a way out, which she then shared with her tablemates, much to their general amusement. She had “management” refund her the ten francs and add the sum to Frau Iltis’s bill. And with that, the reluctant debtor had been outfoxed and at least that particular matter was settled.

It had stopped snowing. The overcast broke here and there; leaden-gray clouds parted to reveal glimpses of the sun, whose rays lent a bluish hue to the landscape. Then the sky turned clear. A bright, pure frost reigned, winter’s splendor settled over mid-November, and the panorama beyond the arches of the balcony was magnificent—snow-powdered forests, ravines filled with soft white, a glistening sunlit valley under a radiant blue sky. And of an evening, when the almost circular moon appeared, the world turned magical and wondrous—flickering crystals and glittering diamonds flung far and wide. The forests stood out black against white. The regions of the sky beyond the reach of moonlight were dark and embroidered with stars. The sharp, precise, intense shadows of houses, trees, and telegraph poles cast on the sparkling surface looked more real and significant than the objects themselves. Within a few hours after sunset, the temperature sank to twenty degrees, then seventeen degrees. Its natural squalor hidden, the world seemed to be under a spell of icy purity, trapped inside a fantastic dream of fatal enchantment.

Hans Castorp stayed out on his balcony, looking down on the bewitched valley until late into the night, even though Joachim went back in around ten, or a little after. His splendid lounge chair with its three cushions and neck roll had been pulled up close to the wooden railing, topped along its full length by a little pillow of snow; on the white table at his side stood a lighted electric lamp, a pile of books, and a glass of creamy milk, the “evening milk” that was served to all the residents of the Berghof in their rooms at nine each night and into which Hans Castorp would pour a shot of cognac to make it more palatable. By now he was availing himself of every possible means of protection against the cold, the whole paraphernalia. The fur-lined sleeping bag he had purchased in an appropriate shop down in town was buttoned all the way up his chest, and he had ritually wrapped himself in his two camel-hair blankets. He wore a short fur jacket over his winter suit, had a woolen cap on his head, felt boots on his feet, and thickly lined gloves on his hands, although those did not prevent his fingers from turning numb.

What kept him out there so long, until midnight and even later (long after the Bad Russian couple had left the adjacent balcony), was in part the magic of the winter night, particularly since until eleven it was interwoven with music drifting up, now near, now far, from the valley—but primarily it was languor and excitement, both at once and in combination: the languor and weary inertia of his body and the busy excitement of a mind that could find no rest in its preoccupation with the new and fascinating studies the young man had recently taken up. The weather was hard on him, the frost exacted a toll on his physical organism. He ate a great deal, attacking the sumptuous Berghof meals—a roast beef course followed by a roast goose course—with an immense appetite not all that uncommon here, particularly in winter it seemed. At the same time he was subject to fits of drowsiness, so that whether by broad daylight or on moonlit evenings he would often drop off as he thumbed through his books (of which more later), and after a few minutes of unconsciousness, resume his research where he had left off. And when he and Joachim would take their constitutionals in the snow, their lively conversations exhausted him—and he tended here, more than ever had been the case down in the flatlands, to get caught up in his own hasty, unrestrained, even loose chatter. Shivering and dizzy, he would be overcome with a kind of numb intoxication that left his head flushed and hot. Since the onset of winter, his fever chart had been curving upward, and Director Behrens had mentioned something about injections that he liked to give for chronic high temperature and which two-thirds of the guests, including Joachim, regularly received. But Hans Castorp was certain his body was generating increased warmth because of the mental excitement and turmoil that kept him sitting in his lounge chair until very late every sparkling, frosty night. Indeed, the books he was reading with such fascination suggested much the same explanation.

Quite a bit of reading went on at the International Sanatorium Berghof, both in the common lounging areas and on private balconies—this was particularly true of newcomers and short-termers, since residents of many months or even years had long since learned how to ravage time without diverting or employing their minds, had become virtuosi at putting time behind them, and declared openly that only clumsy bunglers in the art needed a book to hang on to. At most they might leave a book lying on their lap or within reach on a table—that sufficed for them to feel their reading needs were taken care of. The sanatorium library was a polyglot affair with many illustrated works—an expanded version of the sort of thing that serves to entertain patients in a dentist’s waiting room—and offered its services free of charge. People exchanged novels from the lending library down in Platz. Now and then a book or publication would appear that everyone fought over, and even those who had given up reading would grab for it, with only pretended disinterest. At the period we are describing here,
The Art of Seduction
, a badly printed booklet that Herr Albin had introduced, was making the rounds. It was translated almost word for word from the French, with even the original syntax perfectly preserved, lending a certain demeanor and titillating elegance to its exposition of a philosophy of physical love and debauchery, all in a spirit of worldly, life-affirming paganism. Frau Stöhr had soon read it and found it “stunning.” Frau Magnus—the woman who was losing protein—supported her unconditionally. Her husband, the brewer, claimed personally to have profited from reading it, but regretted that his wife had imbibed, since that sort of thing only “spoiled” women and gave them immodest ideas. His remarks significantly increased demand for the publication. Two ladies from the lower common lounging area, Frau Redisch, the wife of a Polish industrialist, and a certain widow Hessenfeld from Berlin, both of them recent October arrivals, became involved in a rather unedifying scene after supper; indeed they came to blows and one of them began screaming hysterically (it might have been Redisch, but could just as easily have been Hessenfeld), and finally, simply sick with rage, had to be taken to her room—all because each claimed she was first in line for the book. Hans Castorp observed the incident from his balcony. Young people were quicker to get hold of the tract than patients of more advanced years. They would study it, sometimes in groups, up in their rooms after supper. Hans Castorp watched the lad with the saltcellar fingernail pass it on to a young lady with blond hair parted neatly in the middle—Fränzchen Oberdank, a lady’s companion and housemaid, who was not all that ill and had only recently been brought up here by her mother.