The Magic Mountain (54 page)

So much for pathology, the study of disease, with an emphasis on bodily pain, which at the same time was an emphasis on the body, an emphasis on its pleasures—disease was life’s lascivious form. And for its part, what was life? Was it perhaps only an infectious disease of matter—just as the so-called spontaneous generation of matter was perhaps only an illness, a cancerous stimulation of the immaterial? The first step toward evil, toward lust and death, was doubtless taken when, as the result of a tickle by some unknown incursion, spirit increased in density for the first time, creating a pathologically rank growth of tissue that formed, half in pleasure, half in defense, as the prelude to matter, the transition from the immaterial to the material. This was creation’s true Fall, its Original Sin. The second spontaneous generation, the birth of the organic from the inorganic, was only the sad progression of corporeality into consciousness, just as disease in an organism was the intoxicating enhancement and crude accentuation of its own corporeality. Life was only the next step along the reckless path of spirit turned disreputable, matter blushing in reflex, both sensitive and receptive to whatever had awakened it.

The books lay piled high on the table with the lamp, but one was on the floor mat next to his lounge chair and another, the one Hans Castorp had last been reading, lay across his stomach, its weight making it very difficult for him to breathe, although his cerebral cortex had sent no order to the appropriate muscles to remove it. He had read to the bottom of the page, until his chin rested on his chest and his eyelids fell over his ordinary blue eyes. He beheld the image of life, its voluptuous limbs, its flesh-borne beauty. She had loosened her hands from the back of her neck, and her arms—she spread them wide now, revealing the inner surface, especially the tender skin at the elbow with its blood vessels, two large bluish branching veins—her arms were of inexpressible sweetness. She bent toward him, bent down to him, over him, he sensed her organic aroma, sensed the lacelike pounding of her heart. He felt an embrace, hot and tender, around his neck. Melting with lust and dismay, he laid his hands on her upper arms, there where her grainy skin stretched taut over the triceps and was blissfully cool to the touch. He felt the moist suckle of her kiss on his lips.

Shortly after the holidays, the Austrian horseman died. Prior to that event, however, was Christmas, two days of festivities—or three, if you counted Christmas Eve—that Hans Castorp had awaited with some anxiety, shaking his head now and then, wondering what they would be like here, only to discover that they came and went like normal days with a morning, afternoon, and evening, with the usual whims of the weather (a slight thaw set in), and were indistinguishable from others of their sort, apart from a little external decoration and the mood that held sway in people’s hearts and minds for the time allotted to them, until the days moved on, becoming a recent, then distant past silted with a few novel impressions.

Director Behrens’s son, Knut by name, came for a holiday visit and lived with his father in the residential wing—a pretty young man, whose neck vertebrae already stuck out a bit too far as well. You could feel young Behrens’s presence in the air. Dressing with special care, the ladies were subject to little fits of laughter and temper, and their conversations were about encounters with Knut in the garden, in the woods, or down in the resort. He had visitors himself, several friends from his university found their way to the valley—six or seven students, who stayed in town, but took their meals at the director’s residence and roamed the region with their comrade in a closed troop. Hans Castorp avoided them. If necessary, both he and Joachim reluctantly made detours to avoid meeting these young people. A whole world separated those who belonged to the society of “people up here” from these warbling, walking-stick-swinging wanderers, and he did not want to hear or know anything about them. Besides, most of them seemed to be from the North, some even from his hometown perhaps—and Hans Castorp felt very shy about meeting anyone from Hamburg. He often wondered if someone from home might not suddenly show up at the Berghof, especially since Behrens had remarked that the city always provided the sanatorium with a handsome contingent. Perhaps there were some here already among the serious cases and the moribund, whom you never saw. Quite visible, however, was a hollow-cheeked merchant, said to be from Cuxhaven, who had been sitting at Frau Iltis’s table for a few weeks now. Whenever he spotted him, Hans Castorp was glad both that it was so difficult to come into contact with people who were not tablemates and that his hometown was a large one with many different social spheres. The merchant’s insignificant presence greatly reduced the worries he had about the possible appearance of natives of Hamburg.

And so Christmas Eve came ever nearer, until one day it was only just around the corner, and the next day it had arrived. It had been a good six weeks away when Hans Castorp had first been surprised to hear talk about the holidays—as long, if you stopped to count, as his originally scheduled stay plus the period he had spent in bed, which, as Hans Castorp looked back on it now, had seemed a very long time back then, particularly those first three weeks, whereas the same number of days now appeared to add up to very little, almost nothing. The people in the dining hall had been right, he now discovered, to have taken the interval so lightly. Six weeks—why, that was not as many as a single week had days. And what was a week, when you stopped to consider? Just a little circuit from Monday to Sunday—and then it was Monday again. You had only to keep asking about the value and meaning of the next smaller unit to realize that taken together they would not add up to a sum, but rather that such calculations led to diminishment, obliteration, shrinkage, and annihilation. What was a day, measured for instance from the moment you sat down to your midday meal to the return of that same moment twenty-four hours later? Nothing—although it was twenty-four hours. And what was an hour, spent for instance lying in rest cure or taking a walk after a meal—which more or less exhausted the possibilities for using up such a unit of time? Once again, nothing. By their very nature, the sum of these nothings was not all that serious. Things did become serious, however, when you descended to the smallest unit—those sixty seconds times seven you spent with the thermometer between your lips so that you could extend the line on your chart. Those were extremely tenacious, important seconds—they stretched out into a little eternity, leaving extraordinarily dense deposits in the scurrying shadow of grand time.

The holidays proved incapable of disturbing the daily schedule of the residents of the Berghof. A tall, handsome fir had been set up a few days beforehand at the far right end of the dining hall, next to the Bad Russian table; and its piny scent, finding its way among all the aromas of rich food, occasionally reached the noses of the diners and awakened a kind of wistful look in the eyes of some who sat at the seven tables. By suppertime on the twenty-fourth, the tree had been gaily decorated with tinsel, glass balls, gilt cones, little apples in nets, and all sorts of candies; its colorful wax candles burned during the whole meal and for a while afterward. It was said that little trees with candles had been provided for the bedridden, too—one tree per room. A great many parcels had arrived over the last few days. Even Joachim Ziemssen and Hans Castorp had received packages from their distant, low-lying homeland, carefully wrapped gifts that they had then spread out in their rooms: cleverly chosen articles of clothing, neckties, luxury items in leather and nickel, as well as an abundance of holiday pastries, nuts, apples, and marzipan, in such quantities that the cousins gazed at them dubiously, wondering when they would ever find a chance here to eat it all. Hans Castorp was well aware that Schalleen had prepared his package, had even purchased the gifts after dignified consultation with his uncles. A letter from James Tienappel was included, typewritten, but on his heavy private stationery: his uncle sent his own and his father’s holiday greetings and best wishes for a speedy recovery. He also made practical use of the occasion to add felicitations for the New Year fast approaching—a procedure that Hans Castorp had himself adopted when from his lounge chair he had penned his own Christmas letter, along with a clinical report, to Consul Tienappel.

The candles on the tree in the dining hall burned, singeing needles that crackled and gave off a scent that reminded all hearts and minds of just what day it was. People had dressed for dinner, the gentlemen in evening clothes, the ladies in jewels, some of them probably sent up from the plains below by loving husbands. Even Clavdia Chauchat had exchanged her customary sweater for a gown with a hint of whimsy, or rather patriotism. A brightly embroidered, belted peasant outfit, in a Russian, or rather Balkan, perhaps even Bulgarian style, it was trimmed with gold spangles, and its many pleats lent her figure an unusual soft fullness. It suited what Settembrini liked to call her “Tartar physiognomy” very nicely, in particular it went well with her “lone-wolf eyes.” The mood was very lively at the Good Russian table, where the first pop of a cork was heard from the champagne being served at almost all the tables. At the cousins’ table, it was the great-aunt who ordered it for her niece and Marusya, but she treated them all to some. The menu was well chosen, ending with cheese pastry and bonbons, and they finished off with coffee and liqueurs. Now and then a little spray of pine would catch fire, inspiring a moment of shrill, inordinate panic before the flames were put out. At the end of the meal, Settembrini, dressed as always and with a toothpick in his mouth, joined the cousins at their table for a while, teasing Frau Stöhr and offering a few remarks about a carpenter’s son, a rabbi to all humankind, whose make-believe birthday it was today. It was uncertain if he had ever even lived. But an idea had been born back then, which had continued to triumph down to the present, and that idea was the dignity of every individual soul, and the equality of all—in a word, individualistic democracy—and in honor of it, he would now empty the glass someone had passed to him. Frau Stöhr found his remarks “amphibious and unfeeling.” She stood up in protest, and since people were already moving to join the evening social, her tablemates followed her example.

This evening their gathering was given added dignity and vitality by the presentation of the gift to the director, who stopped by for half an hour with Knut and Head Nurse Mylendonk. The ceremony took place in the social room with the optical toys. The Russians’ special present consisted of a very large, round silver plate with the recipient’s monogram engraved in the middle—an object whose utter uselessness was immediately obvious. One could at least lie down on the chaise longue the other guests had given him, although it was covered with just a cloth, since it still lacked both cushions and upholstery. But the headrest was adjustable, and Behrens tried it for comfort, stretching out on it with his useless plate still under one arm; pretending to be Fafnir guarding his treasure, he began to snore like a sawmill. Cheers on all sides. Even Frau Chauchat laughed very hard at this performance, so that her mouth stood open and her eyes drew close together, exactly like Pribislav Hippe’s whenever he laughed—or so it seemed to Hans Castorp.

No sooner had the director departed than people sat down at the card tables. The Russian group withdrew, as usual, to their little salon. A few guests stood around the dining hall Christmas tree, nibbling at the ornaments and watching the stubs of candles flicker out in their little metal jackets. Widely scattered among the tables already set for breakfast, a few solitary souls sat, each frozen in a distinctive pose and private silence.

Christmas Day was damp and foggy. They were sitting in clouds, Behrens said—there was no such thing as fog up here. But whether clouds or fog, the damp was penetrating. The surface of the snowpack began to thaw, turn porous and slushy. During rest cure, the numbness in face and hands was much more painful than on sunny cold days.

The evening of Christmas Day was marked by a musical presentation, a real concert with rows of chairs and printed programs, just for “people up here” at the Berghof. It was an evening of lieder, presented by a local professional soprano who also gave lessons. Two medallions were pinned at either side of the décolletage of her ball gown; she had arms like sticks and a voice whose unique toneless quality sadly revealed the reason why she resided up here. She sang:

I bear my song of love
Within my heart.

The accompanist was likewise local. Frau Chauchat sat in the first row, but disappeared at intermission, so that from that point on Hans Castorp could listen to the music (and it was music, despite the circumstances) with a peaceful heart, reading the text printed in the program as each song was sung. Settembrini sat off to one side for a while, but he also vanished, after first making a few graphic, taut comments about the local’s tedious bel canto and adding a satirical remark about how delightful it was that they were all so cozy and snug here together this evening. Truth to tell, Hans Castorp was relieved that the two of them—the narrow-eyed woman and the pedagogue—were gone, and he was free to devote his full attention to the songs. He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings—probably even on polar expeditions.

The second day of Christmas differed not at all from a Sunday or even a normal weekday, except for the faint awareness of its presence; but once it was over, the Christmas holidays were part of the past—or, just as correctly, lay in the distant future, a year away. It would take twelve months until they would return anew, the circle complete—and after all, that was only seven months more than Hans Castorp had already spent here.

But, as noted, shortly after Christmas, even before New Year, the Austrian horseman died. The cousins learned about it from Alfreda Schildknecht, or Sister Berta as she was known, who tended poor Fritz Rotbein and stopped them in the corridor to inform them of the discreet event. Hans Castorp took profound interest in it all, partly because the signs of life he had heard from the horseman were among his first impressions up here—the first of several, or so it seemed to him, to contribute to the hot flush in his face, which had never left it since—but partly, too, for moral, or one might say, spiritual reasons. He kept Joachim there for a long while as he talked with the nurse, who hung with happy gratitude on his every remark and question. It was a miracle, she said, that the horseman had lived to see the holidays. He had long since proved what a tough cavalier he was—it was hard to know what he had used to breathe with toward the end. True, for days he had kept himself going only with the help of massive amounts of oxygen; had used forty demijohns yesterday alone, at six francs a bottle. That must have run into some money, as the gentlemen could well imagine, especially since his wife, in whose arms he had passed away, had been left quite penniless. Joachim expressed disapproval of such expense. What was the point of these tortures, of clinging to life in such an expensive, artificial way, when the case was hopeless? One could not blame the man for blindly consuming expensive gas keeping him alive, when they had forced it on him. But those treating him ought to have acted more reasonably and have let him walk the inevitable path, for God’s sake—regardless of the question of resources, or better, with considerable regard to them. The living had their rights, too, and so on. Hans Castorp disputed this emphatically—his cousin was talking almost like Settembrini, with no respect or reverence for suffering. The horseman had died in the end, and there was nothing funny about that; you could only show your concern, and a dying man deserved every kindness, every honor that could be bestowed on him, Hans Castorp insisted on that. He could only hope Behrens had not screamed at the man at the end and scolded him irreverently—he hadn’t, had he? No need to worry, Nurse Schildknecht declared. The horseman had made only one small, imprudent attempt to escape at the very end, by trying to jump out of bed; but a gentle reminder of the pointlessness of his intention had sufficed to keep him from attempting anything of the sort again.