The Magic Mountain (80 page)

The consul made little jokes. The flatland spirit was still strong within him, and he made fun of the things he had been taught, just as he had made fun of the prescribed promenade after breakfast. But when he saw the calm, uncomprehending smile with which his nephew responded to his jokes, the way it perfectly mirrored this whole community’s intact self-assurance, he took alarm; and fearing the loss of his business energies, he quickly concluded that he would have that decisive conversation with the director about his nephew at once—that very afternoon if at all possible—while he still had a spirit of his own and energies from the world below with which to attack, for he could feel those energies vanishing and the spirit of the place joining forces with his own good breeding in a dangerous alliance against them.

He felt, moreover, that it had been quite unnecessary for the director to suggest he adopt the customs of the patients here because of his anemia—he would have done so all on his own. No other course of action was conceivable, or so it seemed. To what extent Hans Castorp’s calm, callous self-assurance made things seem that way, and to what extent they actually were that way, making any other course of action indeed inconceivable and impossible—that was, from the very start, something no well-bred gentleman could have decided. Nothing, then, could be more obvious than that the first rest cure would be followed by a lavish second breakfast, leading inevitably to a promenade down to Platz, whereupon Hans Castorp tied his uncle up again—tied him up, there was no other word for it—and left him lying there under an autumn sun in a lounge chair whose comfort was quite indisputable, indeed laudable, just as he himself lay there until the vibrating gong called them back into the society of patients for their midday meal, which turned out to be first-class, tip-top, and so lavish that the ensuing rest cure was more than mere custom, but a true necessity performed out of personal conviction. And so the day proceeded until the substantial supper, which was followed by a gathering in the social rooms, with optical gadgets for everyone’s amusement. How could there be any objection to the pressures of a daily schedule so gentle and so self-evident; indeed, there could have been no reason whatever to object, even if the consul’s critical abilities had not been diminished by a condition that he could not actually call sickness, but that consisted of both fatigue and agitation, accompanied by a sense of being simultaneously feverish and chilled.

Official channels were used to bring about the impatiently awaited discussion with Director Behrens; Hans Castorp commissioned the bath attendant to pass the request on to the head nurse; this resulted in Consul Tienappel’s being given an opportunity to make that eccentric lady’s acquaintance. She suddenly appeared before him as he lay on his balcony, and her exotic manners made considerable demands on the good breeding of that helpless, cylindrically wrapped gentleman. He was told to please be patient for a few days—since, man alive, the director was busy; Christian principles demanded that operations, checkups, and suffering humankind take precedence. Since he was himself ostensibly healthy, he would have to get used to the idea that he was not the number one person around here, that he had to step back and wait his turn. It would be a different matter if he wished a general examination—which would certainly not surprise her, Adriatica. And she told him to focus his eyes directly at her—yes, they definitely had a dull flicker. Just look at him lying there. It did not, on the whole, appear to her as if everything were quite as it should be, he did not seem all that “spotless” to her, if he caught her meaning—and so was he asking for an examination or for a private discussion? Why, for the latter, of course, for a private discussion, the consul assured her from his recumbent position. Well, then, he would have to wait until further notice. The director seldom had time for private discussions.

In short, everything went quite differently from how James had assumed it would, and the conversation with the head nurse was like a shove that kept him off-balance. He was too civilized to tell his nephew—whose calm indifference made it quite clear that he was in agreement with the way things were done up here—how terrifying he had found the woman, and so he simply rapped on his nephew’s door and circumspectly inquired if he did not also think the head nurse just a little odd. After first casting a fleeting, speculative glance in the air, Hans Castorp halfway assented to the idea by asking in return whether Head Nurse Mylendonk had sold him a thermometer. “No. Me? Is she in the business?” his uncle replied. But the worst part was how clearly his nephew’s face said that he would not have been surprised if what he had asked had in fact occurred. “We’re never cold” was written in that expression. The consul, however, was cold, was constantly freezing although his head was hot; and he stopped to consider that if the head nurse had offered him a thermometer, he would have refused it, and yet it would not have been the right thing to do somehow, since it would be impolite to use someone else’s, his nephew’s for example.

Several days passed, four or five. The envoy’s life proceeded along the tracks laid down for him, and it seemed inconceivable it could have proceeded any other way. The consul experienced life here, gathered impressions—and we do not wish to spy on him any further. One day he happened to notice a little plate of dark glass that Hans Castorp had placed atop his chest of drawers along with several other personal items by way of decoration for his tidy room; he picked it up from the little carved wooden stand in which it rested and, holding it up against the light, discovered it was the negative of a photograph. “What’s this?” Uncle James asked, still staring at it—and an honest question it was. The portrait had no head, it was the skeleton of a human torso inside a foggy halo of flesh—the torso of a woman, he realized. “That? A souvenir,” Hans Castorp replied. And then his uncle said, “Pardon me!” put the portrait back on its stand, and quickly left the room. We mention this merely as one example of his experiences and impressions during those four or five days. He also attended one of Dr. Krokowski’s lectures, since it was unthinkable that he could excuse himself from it. And as for the private discussion he hoped to have with Director Behrens, he was granted his wish on the sixth day. He was sent for, and after breakfast he descended to the basement, determined to have a serious word with the man about his nephew and the way he was spending his time.

But when he came back upstairs, he asked in a much smaller voice, “Have you ever heard the like?”

It was clear, however, that Hans Castorp had indeed heard the like before, that this would not make him feel cold, either; and so the consul broke off and simply responded to his nephew’s rather indifferent general query by saying, “Oh, nothing, nothing.” And then he did something that was to become a habit with him: he scowled, pursed his lips, stared up and away to one side, and then violently tossed his head around and stared in exactly the opposite direction. Had the consul’s discussion with Behrens taken a different direction from what he had intended? Had it included not just the topic of Hans Castorp but of James Tienappel himself, so that as it went on it lost the character of a private discussion? To judge from the consul’s conduct, it had. He seemed to be in high spirits—he would chatter away, laugh for no reason, poke his nephew in the stomach with his fist and exclaim, “Why hello there, old boy!” But every now and then that look would come over him, and he would stare first in one direction, then in another. But his eyes were also following a more definite path, too—at the table, on their walks, at the evening socials.

The consul had at first paid no particular attention to a certain Frau Redisch, the Polish industrialist’s wife, who sat at the same table as the gluttonous student with the circular glasses and the temporarily absent Frau Salomon; and indeed she was only one of many ladies who took their rest cure in the common lounging area—a rather plump and buxom brunette, no longer all that young, graying already, but with a dainty double chin and lively brown eyes. Most assuredly, in matters of civilized behavior she could not have held a candle to Madame Tienappel down in the flatlands. But one Sunday evening in the salon after supper, the consul made a discovery, thanks to a black, very low-cut sequined gown: Frau Redisch had very feminine, soft, white, close-set breasts and a cleavage visible from a considerable distance. And this discovery had stirred the mature, refined man to the depths of his soul, thrilling him as if this were a totally new, unexpected, unheard-of phenomenon. He sought out and made Frau Redisch’s acquaintance, carried on a long conversation with her, first standing, then seated—and went to bed humming. The next day Frau Redisch was no longer wearing a black sequined gown, but a dress that covered almost all of her; the consul, however, knew what he knew and remained faithful to that first impression. He made a point of catching up with the lady on their walks, so that he could stroll beside her and chat with her, turning and bending toward her in a special, insistent, but charming way; he toasted his glass to her at dinner, and she responded with a smile, revealing several sparkling gold-capped teeth; and in a conversation with his nephew he declared her to be an absolutely “divine creature”—and at once began to hum again. Hans Castorp calmly, patiently endured it all, with a face that said this was as things were meant to be. It, however, did not exactly increase the older man’s authority and was hardly consistent with his mission.

The meal at which he toasted Frau Redisch with his glass—twice in fact, once over fish ragout and then later over sorbet—was a meal at which Director Behrens was seated at the same table as Hans Castorp and his guest, for he regularly worked his way around all seven and there was always a place set for him at the upper end of each. He was seated between Herr Wehsal and the hunchbacked Mexican, with whom he spoke Spanish—because he was a master of many languages, including Turkish and Hungarian—and folding his gigantic hands before his plate and hitching his moustache more askew, he watched with protruding, bloodshot, blue eyes as Consul Tienappel raised his glass of bordeaux to Frau Redisch at her table. Later in the course of the meal, the director gave a little lecture, having been prodded to do so when, from the other end of the table, James had asked him out of the blue what happened, exactly, when, a body decayed—the director had studied anatomy, and the human body was most decidedly his business, he was, so to speak, a prince of the body, if one could put it that way, and so would he now please explain the process by which the body decomposed.

“First of all, your guts burst,” the director replied, propping his elbows on the table and leaning forward over his folded hands. “There you are lying on your wood shavings and sawdust, and the gases, you see, swell you up, blow you up until you’re immense, the way frogs look when naughty boys blow air into them, until you’re a regular balloon, and then your abdomen can no longer take the pressure and bursts. Bang! You relieve yourself noticeably—the same thing happens to you that happened to Judas Iscariot when he fell headlong from the bough—your bowels gush out. Yes, and after that you’re actually socially acceptable again. If granted a holiday, you could visit your heirs without causing much offense. You stink yourself out, so to speak. And if you were to go for a stroll, you’d be quite the fine fellow, much like the citizens of Palermo who are hung up in the Capuchin catacombs near the Porta Nuova. There they hang dry and elegant, enjoying universal respect. All you have to do first is stink yourself out.”

“To be sure,” the consul said. “Much obliged.” And the next morning he had vanished.

He was gone, had left with the earliest narrow-gauge train for the plains below—not without first having settled his affairs, of course. The very idea! He had paid his bill in full, including the fee for a complete physical examination; then, without so much as a word to his nephew, he had quietly packed his two bags—probably that very evening or early the next morning while everyone was still asleep. And when Hans Castorp entered his uncle’s room to fetch him for first breakfast, he found it empty.

He stood there arms akimbo and said, “I see, I see.” It was at this point that the melancholy smile spread over his face. “Ah, yes,” he said and nodded. So he had turned tail and run, head over heels, in silent haste, as if he had seized the resolve of the moment, dared not for the life of him let that moment pass, had thrown his things into his bags and off he had gone. Alone, not with his nephew, not in fulfillment of his honorable mission, but overjoyed at having escaped, even if it was all alone—the upright citizen and deserter to the flag of the flatlands, Uncle James. Well,
bon voyage
.

Hans Castorp did not let on to anyone that he had not known about his relative’s imminent departure, particularly not to the limping porter, who had accompanied the consul to the station. A postcard arrived from Lake Constance, in which James Tienappel wrote that he had received a telegram requiring his immediate return to the plains on business. He had not wanted to disturb his nephew—a white lie. “Best wishes for a continued pleasant stay.” Was that meant to mock him? If so, Hans Castorp thought it was very forced mockery, because his uncle had definitely not been in a mood for jests or mockery when he rushed off like that, but rather had come to the profound realization—and had turned pale with fright picturing it to himself—that upon his return to the flatlands, after a stay of only eight days, everything down there would seem totally false, unnatural, and wrong for a good while, that instead of heading off to his office after breakfast, he ought to take a short constitutional, then ritually wrap himself in blankets, and assume a horizontal position in the open air. It was this terrifying realization that had been the direct cause of his flight.

And that was the end of the attempt by the flatlands to reclaim Hans Castorp. The young man admitted quite openly to himself that such total failure, which he had seen coming, was of decisive importance for his relationship to the people down there. For the flatlands it meant a final shrug, the abandonment of any claim; for him, however, it meant freedom finally won, and by now his heart no longer fluttered at the thought.