The Magic Mountain (77 page)

Joachim’s pose was growing more and more official. He tucked in his stomach and in a choked, bluff voice he said, “I have been here for a year and a half, Director Behrens. I can wait no longer. You originally told me three months, sir. My cure has been regularly extended, until another year and a quarter have now passed, and I am still not well.”

“Is that my fault?”

“No, Director Behrens. But I cannot wait any longer. I can’t wait for a total cure up here, otherwise I will miss this opportunity. I have to go back down. I need some time to outfit myself and take care of other matters.”

“Do you have your family’s approval for what you’re doing?”

“My mother approves. It’s all arranged. I will be joining the seventy-sixth as an ensign on the first of October.”

“No matter what the risk?” Behrens asked, staring at him with his bloodshot eyes.

“Yes, sir, Director Behrens, sir,” Joachim replied with trembling lips. “Well, fine, then, Ziemssen.” The director’s facial expression changed, his body relaxed, everything seemed to go slack. “Fine, then, Ziemssen. At ease. Go ahead, leave—and God be with you. I see you know what you want. Take over. The responsibility is definitely yours and not mine from the moment you do take over. Man is master of his fate. You travel at your own risk. I wash my hands. But never fear, it may turn out all right. Yours is a fresh-air profession. It may very well be that it does you good and you’ll make the grade.”

“Yes sir, Director Behrens, sir.”

“Well, and what about you, my young member of the civilian population? I suppose you want to go along?”

It was Hans Castorp’s turn to answer. He stood there as pale as he had at the examination that had ended with his being admitted one year before, was standing on the very same spot, and his heart was once again hammering visibly against his ribs. He said, “I would prefer to make that dependent on your approval, Director Behrens.”

“My approval? Fine!” And he grabbed Hans Castorp by one arm and pulled him to him. Listened and tapped. But dictated no results. It all went rather quickly. When he was done, he said, “You may leave.” Hans Castorp stammered, “You mean . . . but how can that be? Am I cured?”

“Yes, you’re cured. The spot at the upper left isn’t worth talking about. Your temperature has nothing to do with it. I can’t tell you what causes that. I assume it’s of no further importance. As far as I’m concerned, you may leave.”

“But, Director Behrens. You’re not really serious, are you?”

“Not serious? What do you mean? What would make you think that? What sort of person do you suppose I am, if I may ask? What do you take me for, the owner of a cathouse?”

It was an outburst of temper. The rush of hot blood to the director’s face turned his purple cheeks a deep violet; his skewed lip and little moustache were wrenched until upper teeth could be seen at one side of his mouth. He thrust his head forward like a bull. His bloodshot, watery eyes popped from their sockets.

“I won’t stand for it!” he shouted. “I don’t own anything here. I’m merely an employee. I’m a doctor. I am
only
a doctor, do you understand? I am not anyone’s procurer. I’m no Signor Amoroso working the Toledo in beautiful Naples, do you understand? I serve suffering humanity. And if you have formed a different opinion of me, you can go to hell, to pot, or to the dogs—take your pick.
Bon voyage!
”

And with long, even strides he walked out the door—the door leading to the X-ray waiting room—and slammed it behind him.

The cousins looked helplessly to Dr. Krokowski, but he merely buried his nose deeper in his papers. They scrambled to put on their clothes.

As they climbed the stairs, Hans Castorp said, “That was really dreadful. Have you ever seen him like that before?”

“No, never like that. But superiors throw temper tantrums. The only thing to do is maintain perfect composure and let it pass right over you. He was upset, of course, by the Polypraxios-Nölting affair. But did you see,” Joachim went on, and his joy at having fought the good fight rose visibly, making him catch his breath, “did you see how he backed off and capitulated when he realized that I was serious? All you have to do is show your spunk and not let them get the upper hand. And now I’ve been given permission more or less—he said himself that I’d probably make the grade—to leave a week from today.” And correcting himself, he added, “To be with my regiment inside of three weeks.” He did not even mention his cousin, but restricted his exuberant comments to his own fate.

Hans Castorp did not reply. He said nothing about Joachim’s “permission” to leave, or about his own, although the topic might easily have been addressed. He got himself ready for his rest cure, stuck his thermometer in his mouth, put perfected skills to work and with a few deft, sure motions of the sacred art—about which no one in the flatlands had the vaguest—he wrapped his two camel-hair blankets around him to form a solid, unbroken cylinder, and lay there quietly on his splendid lounge chair, in the cold damp of the early autumn afternoon.

Rain clouds hung low; the fantasy flag had been taken down. There were still remnants of snow on the wet boughs of the silver fir. From the common lounging area below, from where he had first heard Herr Albin’s voice a little more than a year ago, the low hum of conversation now rose to him as he lay in his rest cure, his fingers and face quickly turning clammy and stiff in the cold. He was used to it and was grateful for the opportunity that the local style of life—which for him had long since become the only conceivable style—provided him to lie there safe and secure and think things through.

It was definite: Joachim would be leaving. Rhadamanthus had discharged him—not officially, not as a cured man, but with a kind of semiapproval all the same, in recognition of Joachim’s perseverance. He would take the narrow-gauge train back down to the lowlands via Landquart and Romanshorn, then pass over the wide, unfathomable lake (whose frozen surface, as legend had it, a man had ridden across on horseback), and travel the length of Germany to arrive home. He would live there in the world of the flatlands, among people who had not the vaguest about how one had to live, about thermometers, about the art of wrapping oneself, about fur-lined sleeping bags, about three promenades a day, about—it was difficult to say, difficult to enumerate all the things people down there did not know about; but the notion that Joachim, after having spent more than a year and a half up here, would now be living among such ignorant people, that notion, which applied only to Joachim—and merely from a great distance and only quite hypothetically to himself—so confused Hans Castorp that he closed his eyes and dismissed it with a gesture of his hand. “Impossible, impossible,” he murmured.

But since it was impossible, that meant he would go on living alone up here without Joachim, didn’t it? Yes. And for how long? Until Behrens discharged him as cured—in earnest, not like today. But first of all, that was a point in time so indefinite that you could only describe it, as Joachim had done on some occasion or other, with a trailing gesture of immeasurability, and second, did that make the impossible any more possible? It was more like the opposite. And to be fair, he had to admit that a hand had now been offered him, now, when the impossible was perhaps not quite so impossible as it would be later—Joachim’s wild departure could be a support, a guiding hand on the road back to the flatlands, which he would never, ever find all on his own. And what if humanistic pedagogy were to learn of this opportunity? Oh, how it would exhort him to grab that hand and accept its guidance. But Herr Settembrini was only a representative—of things and forces worth hearing about, but not without qualification, as if nothing else existed. The same applied to Joachim. He was a soldier, yes indeed. He would be departing at almost the same moment when Marusya of the prominent breasts was supposed to return (it was common knowledge that she would be back on October first); whereas for him, Hans Castorp the civilian, a departure seemed impossible, because—to put it openly and succinctly—he had to wait for Clavdia Chauchat, about whose return he had heard nothing at all. “That is not how I see it,” Joachim had said when Rhadamanthus mentioned desertion, and Joachim had doubtless interpreted it as more of the gloomy director’s hot air. But things were surely different for him as a civilian. For him—yes, no doubt about it! He had lain down here in the cold and damp today for the sole purpose of wresting this crucial insight from his mixed emotions—for him to grab this chance of a fraudulent or semifraudulent departure to the flatlands would constitute real desertion of duty, desertion from the vast responsibilities that had grown up out of his vision of the sublime image, the
homo Dei
, a betrayal of the hard, exciting duties of “playing king,” which though they might overtax his natural energies nevertheless made him wildly happy whenever he fulfilled them on his balcony or in the blue-blossoming meadow.

He pulled the thermometer from his mouth, more violently than he had ever done before, except for that first time, the day the head nurse had sold him this dainty gadget, and he gazed down at it with the same eagerness as he had then. Mercury had climbed very robustly, reaching 100 degrees, almost 100.2.

Hans Castorp threw his blankets aside, jumped up, and quickly walked the length of his room, to the door and back. Then resuming his horizontal position, he called out softly to Joachim and asked about his fever chart.

“I’m no longer measuring,” Joachim replied.

“Well, I have a temp,” Hans Castorp said, borrowing Frau Stöhr’s abridged form of the word. Joachim responded with silence from his side of the glass partition.

And he did not say anything later that day or the next, either, did not inquire about his cousin’s plans or decisions, which, given the short time involved, would be revealed all by themselves, either by actions or by the failure to act—and indeed they were, by the latter. Hans Castorp appeared to have joined the quietists, who claimed that to act was an affront to God, who alone can will to act; his activities during this week, at any rate, were limited to a visit with Behrens. Joachim was quite aware of this consultation—the subject and outcome were as plain as the nose on his face. His cousin, he was sure, had declared he would take the liberty of setting greater store by the director’s earlier and frequent warnings that his case should be completely cured so he would never have to return again, than by hasty words spoken in a moment of impatience. He had a temperature of one hundred degrees, he could not believe he had been officially discharged, unless the director’s recent remarks were to be taken as an order of expulsion, although he, the speaker, was unaware of having given any cause for such a measure; he had therefore decided, after considering the matter calmly and in conscious distinction to Joachim Ziemssen, to remain here and wait until he was completely detoxified. To which the director had surely responded, more or less verbatim, with, “Bon, fine!” and “No harm meant!” and then gone on to say that was what he called being reasonable and that he had seen right off Hans Castorp had more talent for being a patient than that trace-kicking swashbuckler. And so on.

Joachim guessed that this was the course their conversation had taken, and his guess was fairly accurate; and so he said nothing and simply observed in silence that, unlike himself, Hans Castorp was not making any preparations for departure. And dear old Joachim had enough to do just looking after himself. He really could not worry about his cousin’s whereabouts or fate. As is easy to imagine, a storm was raging in his breast. It was a good thing, perhaps, that he no longer kept track of his temperature, having—so he claimed—dropped his thermometer and broken it. Such measurements might well have brought forth disconcerting results—particularly given Joachim’s dreadfully excited state, in which he would by turns flush darkly with joy and grow pale with anticipation. He could no longer lie still; Hans Castorp heard him pacing his room four times a day, during those hours when the rest of the Berghof assumed the horizontal position. A year and a half! And now it was back down to the flatlands, back home, where he would actually join his regiment—even if only with semipermission. It was no small matter, definitely not. Listening to that restless pacing, Hans Castorp could certainly sympathize with his cousin. Joachim had lived up here for eighteen months—a year come full circle, and half again—had profoundly settled in, become accustomed to the routine, to the undeviating path of life here, had walked it seventy times seven times, in all seasons. And now he was to return home, to an alien land, to ignorant people. What difficulties in acclimatization awaited one there? Was it any wonder, then, that Joachim’s excitement consisted not just of joy but also of fear, that the anguish of saying farewell to everything familiar kept him pacing his room?—And that is without even mentioning Marusya.

But joy predominated. Dear old Joachim’s heart and words were brimming over with it; he spoke about himself, never mentioning his cousin’s future. He talked about how new and fresh everything would be—life, himself, time, each day, each hour. He would know solid time again, the slow, momentous years of youth. He spoke about his mother, Hans Castorp’s half aunt Ziemssen, who had those same gentle, black eyes and whom he had not seen during all his time in the mountains, because, like her son, she had been put off from month to month, season to season, and so could never actually decide to pay him a visit. He smiled and spoke enthusiastically about the oath he would soon be taking—in a solemn ceremony he would stand beneath the flag and swear his allegiance to it, to the banner. “What’s that?” Hans Castorp asked. “Are you serious? To a flagpole? To a scrap of cloth?” Yes, indeed; and in the artillery the oath was sworn, symbolically, to a cannon. Well, the civilian remarked, those were certainly fervent customs, something for emotional fanatics, one might say. To which Joachim simply nodded with happy pride.

He was caught up in preparations; he paid his final bill in full at the office and began packing his bags days ahead of time. He packed summer and winter clothes, gave his fur-lined sleeping bag and camel-hair blankets to the porter to have them sewn into linen sacks—he might have use for them sometime on maneuvers. He began to say his good-byes. He paid a farewell visit to Naphta and Settembrini—alone, his cousin did not join him, did not even ask what Settembrini had said about Joachim’s imminent departure or Hans Castorp’s imminent non-departure, whether he had said, “I see, I see,” or “Yes, yes,” or both, or “
Poveretto
.” It was all of no interest to Hans Castorp, apparently.