The Magic Mountain (61 page)
A little later, another note arrived, on which was written:
A party to your heart’s desire,
With maids who long to marry,
And bachelors with hearts on fire,
And hopes extraordinary!
“Bravo, bravo!” someone shouted. They were drinking their mocha now, served in little earthen-brown jugs, and some had liqueurs as well—Frau Stöhr for example, who simply loved to sip sweet spirits. People began to get up and circulate about the room. They visited one another’s tables. One group of guests had already moved on to the social rooms, while another stayed where they were in order to apply themselves to more burgundy and champagne. Settembrini came over in person now, coffee cup in hand, a toothpick between his lips, and made himself at home between Hans Castorp and the teacher.
“In the Harz Mountains,” he said, “are towns with names like Schierke and Elend—Imps and Misery. Did I exaggerate, my good engineer? Now here’s a holy mass, I do declare. But just wait, our mirth’s not yet about to fade, we’ve not yet reached our heights—let alone come to an end. To judge from what one hears, still further masquerades await us. Certain persons have already withdrawn—and therefore we are permitted to make all sorts of assumptions. You’ll see.”
And indeed new costumes arrived now: ladies in men’s clothes, their ample curves making them look as implausible as characters in an operetta, an effect accentuated by black beards drawn on their faces with burnt cork; and vice versa, gentlemen attired in women’s clothes, tripping over their skirts—including Rasmussen the student, who wore a black, jet-trimmed gown, its décolletage revealing a pimply chest and ditto back, both of which he tried to cool with a paper fan. A knock-kneed beggar appeared, leaning on a crutch. Someone had put together a Punchinello costume out of white underwear and a lady’s felt hat—the face powdered so white that the eyes looked quite unnatural, the lips emphasized in bloody-red lipstick. (It was the young fellow with the saltcellar fingernail.) A Greek from the Bad Russian table strutted about as a Spanish grandee or fairy-tale prince with a cape, paper ruff, and sword—and a pair of purple tights to show off his handsome legs. All these costumes had been hastily improvised after the meal. Frau Stöhr could no longer bear it just to sit there. She vanished, and a short time later reappeared as a cleaning lady, with apron and rolled-up sleeves, the ribbons of her paper hat tied under her chin; she was armed with bucket and broom, which she now put to use, thrusting the wet broom under the table and swabbing between people’s feet.
“And here alone comes Baubo now,” Settembrini quoted, and added the next line, too, in his clear, graphic voice—its rhyme was “sow.” Frau Stöhr heard that—called him an Italian turkey, told him to keep his “filthy jokes” to himself, and, availing herself of the license of carnival, used familiar pronouns. But then, that form of address had gained general usage during the meal. Settembrini was about to reply, when he was interrupted by the racket of loud laughter coming from the lobby. Everyone in the dining hall looked up.
Followed by other guests emerging from the social rooms, two curious figures now made their entrance—they had apparently only just finished with their costumes. The one was dressed in a deaconess’s black uniform, but with white horizontal stripes sewn onto it from collar to hem—short stripes, set close together, with a few longer ones here and there, like the markings on a thermometer. She kept one forefinger pressed to her pale lips and carried a fever chart in her right hand. The second person was costumed all in blue—eyebrows and lips tinted blue, the whole face and neck in fact painted blue, a blue woolen cap pulled down over one ear, and a case or slipcover of glazed blue linen, all one piece, pulled down over him, then tied with a string at the ankles and stuffed with pillows to round things off at the stomach. They recognized these two as Frau Iltis and Herr Albin. Both had paper signs hung around their necks, on which were written “Silent Sister” and “Blue Henry.” Paired together and moving in a kind of waddle, they circled the room.
To great applause—and clamoring cheers! Frau Stöhr, her broom tucked under one arm, put both hands on her knees and broke into unrestrained, vulgar laughter—her role as a charwoman gave her such license. Only Settembrini showed no response. He cast the winning costumes one quick glance, and then his lips grew very thin beneath the lovely upward sweep of his moustache.
Among those who had found their way back from the social rooms in the wake of Mr. Blue and Miss Silent was Clavdia Chauchat. Accompanied by frizzy-haired Tamara and her tablemate with the concave chest, a Bulgarian in evening dress, she crossed the room, moving toward the table where Gänser and Kleefeld were sitting—and brushing past Hans Castorp’s table in her new dress. She stopped now to chat, her hands behind her back, her narrow eyes laughing; her escorts, however, joined the allegorical spooks and followed them out of the room. Frau Chauchat had donned a carnival hat as well—not one she had bought, but the kind children make, a simple tricorn of folded white paper set rakishly to one side—and it looked quite marvelous on her. The skirt of her dark golden-brown silk dress reached only to her ankles and was slightly bouffant. We shall say nothing more about her arms—which were bare to the shoulder.
“Look closer now, my lad!” Hans Castorp heard Herr Settembrini say, as if from some great distance—his eyes were following her as she now left the dining hall by way of the glass door. “’Tis Lilith.”
“Who?” Hans Castorp asked.
The question delighted the man of literature. He replied, “The first wife Adam had. You’d best beware . . .”
Besides the two of them, only Dr. Blumenkohl was still in his seat, at the far end of the table. The rest of the diners, including Joachim, had moved on to the social rooms.
“You’re full of poetry and verses this evening,” Hans Castorp said. “What’s all this about Lilli? You mean Adam was married twice? That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“According to Hebrew tradition he was. Lilith then became a wraith who haunts young men by night—her beautiful hair makes her particularly dangerous.”
“Why, how disgusting! A wraith with beautiful hair. You simply can’t stomach things like that, can you? And so here you come and turn the lights back on, so to speak, so you can set young men back on the right path—isn’t that what you’re up to, Lodovico?” Hans Castorp said giddily. He had drunk quite a bit of burgundy and champagne.
“Now listen—that’s enough of that, my good engineer!” Settembrini commanded with a scowl. “You will please use forms of address appropriate to the educated West. No first names. Formal pronouns, if you please. What you are trying to do there doesn’t suit you at all.”
“But why not? It’s Mardi Gras! It’s common practice on an evening like this.”
“Yes, just to add a little uncivil excitement to things. For people to use informal pronouns or first names when they have no real reason to do so is a repulsively barbaric practice, a slovenly game, a way of playing with the givens of civilization and human progress, against both of which it is directed—shamelessly, insolently directed. Please, do not presume that in calling you ‘my lad,’ I was addressing you in that fashion. I was merely quoting a passage from the masterpiece of your national literature. I was speaking poetically, as it were.”
“So was I. And I’ll go on speaking more or less poetically, too—because the moment seems to call for it, that’s why I am speaking this way. I’m not saying I find it all that natural and easy to use familiar pronouns. On the contrary, I have to overcome my own resistance, give myself a poke just to be able to do it. But now that I’ve given myself a poke, I’ll go on using them quite happily, with all my heart.”
“With all your heart?”
“With all my heart, yes, please believe me. We’ve been up here together for so long now—seven months, if you stop to count—which isn’t all that much by our standards up here, but when viewed from down below, now that I think back on it, it’s quite a long time. Well, and so we’ve spent it here with one another, because life has brought us together here, have seen one another almost every day and had interesting conversations, some on subjects I would not have understood anything about down below. But I certainly have up here—they were very important and relevant, so that whenever we discussed something I paid strict attention. What I mean is, whenever you as a
homo humanus
were explaining things to me—because I didn’t have all that much to contribute, of course, given my previous inexperience, and could only feel that everything you said was well worth listening to. About Carducci—but that was the least of it. For instance, about how the world republic is bound up with beautiful style or how time and human progress are related—because if there were no time there couldn’t be any human progress, and the world would be just an old water hole, a stinking pond. What would I have known about all that without you! And so I’m simply addressing you with personal pronouns, I can’t really help it, you’ll have to excuse me—I didn’t know how to go about it any other way. I’m not good at that. There you sit and here I am speaking to you like this, and that’s that. You’re not just anybody, a face with a name, you’re a representative of something, Herr Settembrini, a representative here and now and at my side—that’s what you are,” Hans Castorp declared, slamming the palm of his hand on the tablecloth. “And now I want to thank you,” he went on, shoving his glass of champagne and burgundy up against Herr Settembrini’s coffee cup, as if to toast him there on the table, “to thank you for having been so kind as to look after me for the past seven months—a young donkey with all sorts of new experiences coming at me—for lending a helping hand in my exercises and experiments and trying to play a corrective role in my life, quite
sine pecunia
, sometimes with stories, sometimes more abstractly. I have the clear feeling that the moment has come to thank you for all that, and to ask for your forgiveness for the times I was a poor student, one of ‘life’s problem children,’ as you put it. I was very touched by your saying that, and it still touches me whenever I think of it. A problem child, that’s certainly what I’ve been for you and your pedagogic streak—you spoke about that the very first day. And of course, that’s one of the connections you’ve taught me about—between humanism and pedagogy. And I would come up with even more if you gave me a little time. Forgive me, then, and don’t think badly of me. To your health, Lodovico—I wish you long life. I empty my glass in honor of your literary efforts to eradicate human suffering!” he concluded, and throwing his head back, he downed his burgundy and champagne in two great gulps. “And now let’s go join the others.”
“My good engineer, whatever has got into you?” the Italian asked, his eyes full of amazement, rising to leave the table as well. “Those sound like words of farewell.”
“No—why should it be a farewell?” Hans Castorp said, ducking the issue, not just in a metaphorical sense with his words, but also physically, swinging his upper body around in a wide curve and taking the arm of Fräulein Engelhart, who had come to fetch them. The director was personally tapping a bowl of carnival punch that had been donated by the management, she reported. The gentlemen, she said, would have to come with her at once if they hoped to have a glass of it. And so they left together.
And indeed, there in the middle of his guests, all holding out their little punch glasses to him, Director Behrens was standing beside a round table with a white tablecloth, ladling steaming liquid from a large bowl. He, too, had spruced up his appearance a little for Mardi Gras, for in addition to his white clinical smock, which, as a man ever on professional call, he wore today as always, he had donned a genuine Turkish fez, scarlet red with a black tassel dangling over one ear—costume enough to lend his already striking appearance an even more curious and outlandish look. The white smock emphasized the director’s height; and if you took into account the arched neck and pictured him instead pulled up to full height, he seemed a man almost larger than life, topped by a small, colorful head with very peculiar features. At least Hans Castorp thought that face had never looked so odd as it did this evening under its foolish headgear: that snub-nosed, flat physiognomy, purplish and hectic, with blue, watery eyes bulging beneath very blond brows, and a pale, skewed, short-cropped moustache above the hitch of his lips. Bending back from the steam eddying up from the punch bowl, he let the brown liquid—a sugary arrack punch—fall in long arcs from the ladle into the glasses held out to receive it, gushing the whole time in his high-spirited jargon, so that the process was greeted by salvos of laughter all around.
“Old Scratch himself atop them all,” Settembrini explained softly, gesturing toward the director—and then was dragged away from Hans Castorp’s side. Dr. Krokowski was on hand as well. Short, stout, and stolid, his black shiny smock draped over his shoulders so that the sleeves hung empty in domino fashion, he twisted his wrist around and held his glass up at eye-level as he chatted merrily with a group of cross-dressed masqueraders. Music was struck up. The girl with the face of a tapir played Handel’s
Largo
on the violin, accompanied on the piano by the man from Mannheim. This was followed by a Grieg sonata—salon music of a Nordic nature, which met with polite applause, even from the costumed and uncostumed patients seated now, bottles in ice-buckets at their sides, at the two bridge tables that had been set up. The doors stood open, and several guests were standing out in the lobby as well. One group next to the round punch table was watching the director, who was introducing them to a parlor game. He stood there bent down over the table, but with his head held to one side so that everyone could see that he had his eyes closed, and drew blindly with a pencil on the back side of a calling card; and without any help from his eyes, his massive hand traced an outline, the profile of a pig—more simplified and slightly idealized than realistic, but it was undoubtedly a rudimentary pig that he managed to assemble under such handicapped circumstances. It was a clever stunt, and he did it well. The little squinty eye had ended up in approximately the correct position, a little too far back from the snout, but more or less in place; and the same could be said of the pointed ear atop the head or the little legs dangling from the rounded belly; and the opposing arch of the spine continued in the charming little spiral ringlet of a tail. When he finished, people cried, “Ah!” and crowded forward to try it, eager to emulate the master. The problem was that few of them could have drawn a pig with their eyes open, let alone closed. And what monsters were born! They lacked all coherence. The eyes landed outside the head, the legs inside the paunch, which did not come close to joining the rest, and the tail spiraled off alone into nowhere—an independent arabesque, with no organic connection to the amorphous body. They laughed so hard they almost burst. Others joined the group. The cardplayers took notice and came over now, curious, still holding their cards in their hands like fans. The onlookers watched the eyelids of each contestant, making sure there was no peeking, which several were tempted to try in their helplessness; they giggled and snorted while each candidate blundered blindly at the task, then crowed with laughter when he finally opened his eyes and gazed down at his absurd botched job. Seduced by overconfidence, everyone had to try his hand. The calling card, although large, was soon so full on both sides that the abortive attempts overlapped. But the director sacrificed a second one from his case, on which Prosecutor Paravant, after thinking the task through, tried to draw his pig in one continuous line—with the result that his failure exceeded all others. The decorative design he produced did not even vaguely resemble a pig—or anything else in this world, for that matter. Hulloos, laughter, and raucous congratulations! Someone brought a menu from the dining hall, so that several people, both men and women, could try at once, and for each contestant there was an audience keeping a close eye out and someone waiting to grab the pencil being used. There were only three pencils, belonging to various guests, and people snatched them out of one another’s hands. Having introduced his parlor game and seeing that it was a hit, the director departed with his aide-de-camp in tow.