The Magic Mountain (57 page)

Barely twenty years old, but already graying and balding, the patient was emaciated, his skin waxen; he had large hands, large ears, a large nose; grateful to the point of tears for this diversion and their encouraging words, he actually wept a little out of weakness as he greeted them and accepted the bouquet. Almost immediately, however, in a voice close to a whisper, he turned the conversation to the European flower business and the current boom it was enjoying, especially the nurseries in Nice and Cannes, which daily exported flowers by mail and by the trainload in all directions, to wholesale markets in Paris and Berlin, even supplied Russia. For he was a businessman, and that was where his interests would remain as long as he lived. His father, who manufactured dolls in Coburg, had sent him to England for commercial training, he whispered, and it was there that he had taken ill. His fever had been diagnosed as typhoid in nature and treated accordingly, which meant a diet of broths that had caused him to lose far too much weight. They had let him eat up here, and he had certainly done so, had sat there in his bed, trying to nourish himself by the sweat of his brow. Except it had been too late; his intestine had also been infected, unfortunately, and all the tongue and smoked eel sent him from home had done no good—he could not digest a thing anymore. Now his father was on his way here from Coburg. Behrens had sent him a telegram—because they wanted to take more decisive action, a rib resection, to try it at least, although the chances for success were diminishing. Rotbein whispered all this in a very businesslike voice, viewing even the operation itself as a matter of business—as long as he lived he would regard things from that point of view. The total cost, he whispered, including the spinal anesthetic, would come to one thousand francs, since almost the entire rib cage was involved, six to eight ribs, and the question now was whether it could be seen as a promising investment. Behrens was trying to persuade him, but the doctor’s self-interest was only too clear—whereas his own interests seemed more ambiguous, and one could not be sure if it might not be wiser to die in peace with ribs intact.

It was hard to advise him. The cousins suggested that one must also take into consideration the director’s splendid talents as a surgeon. They finally agreed that the elder Rotbein, who was already chugging his way here, should have the last word. As they left, young Fritz wept a little again, and although it was only out of weakness, the tears he shed stood in curious contradiction to the dry, businesslike way he spoke and thought. He begged the gentlemen to visit him again, and they gladly promised they would—but never had the chance. The doll-manufacturer arrived that same evening, and the next morning the operation was performed, after which young Fritz was no longer able to receive visitors. Two days later, as Hans Castorp and Joachim were passing Rotbein’s room, they noticed it was being fumigated. Sister Alfreda had already packed her bag and departed from the Berghof, having received an urgent call to report to another moribund patient at a different sanatorium. Tucking the cord of her pince-nez behind her ear with a sigh, she had hurried off to nurse him—it was the only prospect that had opened up for her.

On your way to the dining hall or the outdoors, you sometimes saw an empty room, a “vacated” room, ready for fumigation, with furniture piled high and both doors flung wide open—a sight that spoke volumes, and yet was so normal that it said very little, especially when at some point you yourself had taken possession of just such a fumigated, “vacated” room and now called it home. Sometimes, however, you knew who had lived in a particular room, and that always made you stop and think—as was the case both on that occasion and eight days later, when Hans Castorp saw Leila Gerngross’s room in the same state. At first his mind rebelled against the commotion he saw inside the room. He was still standing there observing, perplexed and lost in thought, when the director happened by.

“Good day, Director Behrens. I was just standing here watching them fumigate,” Hans Castorp said. “Little Leila . . .”

“Hm yes—” Behrens replied with a shrug. After a period of silence, during which he let this gesture take effect, he added, “You did a proper bit of courting there at the end—got in just under the wire, didn’t you? I like that about you—taking on my little lung-whistlers in their cages, seeing as you’re in relatively robust health yourself. A nice trait. No, no—you cannot deny it, it’s a very pretty trait in your character. Would you like me to introduce you to some patients now and then? I’ve plenty of other caged finches here—that’s if you’re still interested. For instance I’m just about to look in on ‘Lady Overblown.’ Do you want to come along? I’ll introduce you as a fellow sufferer.”

Hans Castorp replied that the director had taken the words right out of his mouth, had suggested precisely what he had wanted to ask. He would gratefully accept the offer. But who was this woman, this “Lady Overblown,” and how was he supposed to take the name?

“Literally,” the director said. “No metaphors intended. You can let her tell you herself. “ A few steps, and they were at “Lady Overblown’s” room. Ordering his companion to wait, the director thrust his way through both doors. As Behrens entered, there was a burst of bright, merry laughter inside the room, but any words were broken off as the door closed. The visitor was greeted by the same laughter when, a few minutes later, he was allowed to enter and Behrens introduced him to a blond woman half sitting up in bed, with pillows stuffed behind her, her blue eyes gazing at him with curiosity. She seemed fidgety and laughed incessantly—a very high, silvery-bright, bubbly laugh that left her fighting for breath, which only made her seem that much more nervous, excited, and titillated. She also laughed at the director’s distinctive turns of phrase as he presented the visitor and then turned to leave. Waving good-bye, she called out “adieu” and “many thanks” and “see you soon” several times. She now sighed a musical sigh and laughed a silvery arpeggio, pressing her hands to her chest heaving beneath her batiste nightshirt—she was also apparently having difficulty keeping her legs still. Her name was Frau Zimmermann.

Hans Castorp knew her vaguely by sight. She had sat at the same table with Frau Salomon and the gluttonous student for a few weeks, and was always laughing. Then she had vanished without the young man’s paying much attention. She might have left the Berghof, he thought—that is, if he gave any thought at all to her disappearance. Now he found her here, under the name of “Lady Overblown”—and was still waiting for an explanation of that.

“Ha ha, ha ha,” she bubbled gleefully, her breast fluttering. “A terribly funny man, our Behrens, a fabulously funny, amusing man—laugh till your sides split. Do have a seat, Herr Kasten, Herr Carsten, or whatever your name was. You do have a funny name, ha ha, hee hee. You must excuse me. Do sit down on that chair at the foot of the bed, but pay no mind if my legs start kicking, I really can’t . . . ha ha, aaah”—she sighed with an open mouth and then went on bubbling—“really can’t seem to help it.”

She was almost pretty, had clear, rather too defined, but agreeable features and a little double chin. But her lips were bluish, and the tip of her nose had taken on the same hue, evidently from a lack of oxygen. Her hands were thin and looked very attractive against the lace cuffs of her nightshirt, but she could keep them still no more than she could her feet. Her neck was girlish, with dimples at the collarbone, and her breasts appeared soft and young under the linen sheets, kept in constant shallow motion by both laughter and the struggle for air. Hans Castorp decided he would send her a potted plant, too, or bring her a dewy, fragrant bouquet, imported from the nurseries of Nice or Cannes. With some misgivings, he joined Frau Zimmermann in her volatile, edgy good cheer.

“So you’re visiting high-ranking patients, are you?” she asked. “How amusing and kind of you, ha ha, ha ha. But you should know that I don’t rank very high on the fever chart—which is to say, I had almost none, really, until recently. Until this little adventure. Just listen, and tell me if it isn’t the funniest thing you’ve ever heard in your life.” And now, struggling for air and laughing with many a trill and grace note, she told him what had happened to her.

She had come up here only slightly ill—but ill, all the same, otherwise she would never have come; perhaps more than just
slightly
, but closer to that than seriously ill. Pneumothorax—the new surgical technique that had quickly gained such widespread popularity—had proved marvelously effective in her case. The operation had been a complete success; Frau Zimmermann’s condition had improved most gratifyingly. Her husband—for she was married, though she had no children—was told he could expect her home in three to four months. And so, just for the fun of it, she had made a little trip to Zurich—for no other reason than to amuse herself. And she had done so to her heart’s content; meanwhile, however, she became aware that she needed a refill and had entrusted a local doctor with the job. A nice, funny young man—ha ha ha, ha ha ha—and what had happened? He had overblown her! There was no other way to put it, the word itself said it all. He had meant well, too well, but had not really understood his task. The upshot was that she had come back up here in an overblown state, with constriction of the heart and shortness of breath—ha! hee hee hee—and Behrens had sworn like a trooper and sent her straight to bed. Because she was now seriously ill—not a patient of highest rank, but one whose case was botched and bungled. Ha ha ha—look at his face, what a funny face! And pointing a finger at Hans Castorp, she laughed so hard at the face he was making that her forehead began to turn purple. But the funniest thing of all, she said, had been the way Behrens had turned the air blue with his ranting and raving. From the moment she had realized she was overblown, just picturing what he would do had set her laughing. “You are literally hovering between life and death,” he had shouted, not bothering to mince words. What a bear he was—ha ha ha, hee hee hee—Herr Carsten really must excuse her.

It was not clear why the director’s comments had sent her into gales of laughter. Was it because he had “turned the air blue” and she did not really believe him—or that she did believe him, as she surely must, but found the state of “hovering between life and death” too funny for words? Hans Castorp had the impression that the latter was the case and that these sparkling trills and grace notes of laughter were due solely to childish giddiness and silly ignorance—and he did not approve. He sent her flowers all the same—but never saw gleeful Frau Zimmermann again, either. For after being kept under oxygen for several days, she had died in the arms of her husband, who had been called to her bedside by telegram. “A jumbo-size goose,” the director had volunteered in summary when he told Hans Castorp the news.

But even before her death, Hans Castorp—in a spirit of sympathetic enterprise and with the help of the director and the nursing staff—had made the acquaintance of other seriously ill patients in the sanatorium, and Joachim had to come along. He had to come along to visit
Tous-les-deux’s
son, the one still left her—the other’s room had long since been turned upside down and fumigated with H
₂
CO. There was also a boy named Teddy, whose condition had recently turned so serious that he had been transferred here from a boarding-school sanatorium called the “Fridericianum.” Then there was a Russo-German insurance agent named Anton Karlovitch Ferge, a good-natured martyr; and the unhappy, but very flirtatious Frau von Mallinckrodt, who like the others received flowers and whom Hans Castorp had even fed porridge on several occasions, with Joachim looking on. By now they had gained the reputation of Good Samaritans and Hospitallers.

The day came when Settembrini broached the topic with Hans Castorp. “Zounds, my good engineer. I’ve been hearing the most curious things about your behavior. You have thrown yourself into deeds of mercy? Are you pursuing justification by good works?”

“Nothing worth mentioning, Herr Settembrini. Nothing to it, really, nothing to make a fuss over. My cousin and I . . .”

“Oh, leave your cousin out of this. Though you both may have become the topic of conversation, it is you we are concerned with, that much is certain. The lieutenant is a respectable fellow, but his is a simple temperament, not prone to spiritual dangers—the sort that never perturbs a teacher. You’ll not convince me he’s in charge here. You are the more important personality—and the one in greater danger. You are, if I may put it that way, one of life’s problem children, a fellow whom others must look after. And you did once tell me that I might look after you.”

“I most certainly did, Herr Settembrini. Once and for all. It’s very kind of you. And ‘life’s problem children’ is prettily put. The things you writers come up with! I don’t rightly know if I should consider myself flattered by the term, but it does sound pretty, I must say. Yes, well, I have been concerning myself somewhat with ‘death’s children’—that’s probably what you mean. Now and then, when I have time, just in passing, as it were, and not that I neglect my own rest-cure duties, I look in on the serious and critical cases—you know, the ones who come here not for their own amusement and a loose life, but to die.”

“It is written, however: let the dead bury their dead,” the Italian said.

Hans Castorp raised his arms and made a face that said that a great many things were written, on both sides of the question, and that it was difficult to decide what was right and abide by it. But of course, the organ-grinder would voice a disruptive point of view—that was to be expected. Yet even though Hans Castorp was prepared, as he had been all along, to lend him an ear, to consider his lectures worth listening to—quite noncommittally—and to let himself be pedagogically influenced, that in no way meant that, on the basis of a strictly educational point of view, he should desist from his enterprise, which still seemed to have an important impact, to be beneficial in some vague way—despite Madame Gerngross and her talk about a “nice little fleert,” despite the businesslike personality of poor young Rotbein or the foolish trillings of Lady Overblown.