The Magic Mountain (60 page)

The cousins smiled at the deception, and for joy at the wonder before their eyes—at this timorous and lovely assumption of protective coloration, as it were, on the part of these first shy returning motions of organic life. They picked some of the flowers, studied the structure of their charming cups, and stuck them in their buttonholes; wore them home and put them in glasses on their stands; for the deathly torpor of the winter had lasted long indeed—however short it had seemed.

But that flowery snow was soon covered with real; even the blue soldanellas and red and yellow primroses that followed on suffered the same fate. What a fight that was, spring had to wage up here, before it finally conquered! It was flung back ten times before it could get a foothold—back to the next onset of winter, with icy wind, flurries of snow, and a heated house. At the beginning of May—for while we have been talking of crocuses, April has merged into May—it was real torture to write even so much as a postcard while sitting in the loggia, the fingers so stiffened in the raw, Novemberish air. The four or five shade-trees in the Platz were as bare as they would be in a valley January. It rained days on end, a whole week. Only the compensating excellence of the type of reclining-chair in use up here could render tolerable the ordeal of lying hours with wet and stiffened face, out here in the reeking mist. Yet all the while, in secret, it was a spring rain that fell; and more and more, the longer it lasted, did it betray itself as such. Under it the snow melted quite away, there was no more white, only here and there a vestige of dirty grey—and now, at long last, the meadows began to green!

What a joy that was, what a boon to the eyes, after so much white! But there was another green, surpassing in its tender softness even the hue of the new grass, and that was the green of young larch buds. Hans Castorp could seldom refrain from caressing them with his hand, or stroking his cheeks with them as he went on his walks—their softness and freshness were irresistible. “It almost tempts one to be a botanist,” he said to his companion. “It’s a fact, I could almost wish to be a natural scientist, out of sheer joy at the reawakening of nature, after a winter like this up here. That’s gentian, man, that you see up there on the cliffs; and this is a sort of little yellow violet— something I’m not familiar with. And this is ranunculus, they look just the same down below, the natural order
Ranunculaceæ:
compound, I remember, a particularly charming plant, androgynous, you can see a lot of stamens and pistils, an androecium and a gynaeceum, if I remember rightly. I really must root out some old volume of botany or other, and polish up my knowledge in this field.—My hat, how gay it’s getting to look in the world!”

“It will be even more so in June,” Joachim said. “The flowering-time in these parts is famous. But I hardly think I’ll be here for it.—That’s probably from Krokowski, that you get the idea of studying botany?”

Krokowski? What made him say that? Oh, very likely because Dr. Krokowski had been uttering himself botanically in one of his lectures of late. Yes, we shall be in error if we assume that because time has brought about many changes at the Berghof, Dr. Krokowski no longer delivers his lectures. He delivers them as before, one every two weeks, in a frock-coat, though no longer in sandals, for those he wears only in the summer, and soon will be donning them again: delivers them every second Monday, in the dining-room, as on that far-off day when Hans Castorp returned late and bloodbespattered from his walk. For three-quarters of a year now had the analyst held forth on the subject of love and disease. Never much at one time, in little chats, from half to three-quarters of an hour long, he had dealt out the treasures of his intellect; and one received the impression that he need never leave off, that he could as well go on for ever. It was a sort of half-monthly Thousand and One Nights’ Entertainment, spinning itself out at will, calculated, like the stories of Scheherazade, to gratify the curiosity of a prince, and turn away his wrath. Dr. Krokowski’s theme, in its untrammelled scope, reminded one, indeed, of the undertaking to which Settembrini had vowed himself, the Encyclopædia of Suffering. And the extent to which it offered points of departure could be seen from the circumstance that the lecturer had lately talked about botany— to be precise, about mushrooms. But he had perhaps slightly changed his theme by now. He was at present discussing love and death; finding occasion for observations in part subtly poetic in their nature, in part ruthlessly scientific. And thus it was, in this connexion, that the learned gentlemen, speaking with his drawling, typically Eastern cadence, and his softly mouthed r, came upon the subject of botany; that is to say, upon the subject of mushrooms. These creatures of the shade, luxuriant and anomalous forms of organic life, were fleshly by nature, and closely related to the animal kingdom. The products of animal metabolism, such as albumen, glycogen, animal starch, in short, were present in them. And Dr. Krokowski went on to speak of a mushroom, famous in classical antiquity and since, on account of its form and the powers ascribed to it—a fungus in whose Latin name the epithet
impudicus
occurred; and which in its form was suggestive of love, in its odour of death. For it was a striking fact that the odour of the
Impudicus
was that of animal decay: it gave out that odour when the viscous, greenish, spore-bearing fluid dripped from its bell-shaped top. Yet even to-day, among the ignorant, the mushroom passed for an aphrodisiac. All that, Lawyer Paravant found, had been a bit strong for the ladies. He was still here, having hearkened to the Hofrat’s propaganda, and stuck out the melting season. Likewise Frau Stöhr, who had shown strength of character and set her face against every temptation to unlawful departure, expressed herself at table to the effect that Krokowski had been positively “obscure” to-day, with his classical mushroom. She had actually said obscure, the poor creature, and gone on making one howler after another.

But what surprised Hans Castorp was that his cousin should have mentioned Dr. Krokowski and his botanical allusions; for the psycho-analyst had been as little referred to between them as Clavdia Chauchat or Marusja. By common consent they had passed over his ways and works in silence. But now Joachim had mentioned him—though in an irritable tone. His saying, too, that he would not be here for the flowering season had sounded very much out of sorts. Good Cousin Joachim seemed on the way to losing his equilibrium. His voice vibrated with irritation when he talked, and the old gentleness and moderation were of the past. Was it that he missed the orange perfume? Did the way they put him off with his Gaffky number drive him to the verge of despair? Or was he of more than one mind whether he should await the autumn up here or resolve on unlawful departure?

In reality it was something besides all these that had given the shade of vexation to Joachim’s voice and made him mention the recent botanical lecture with contempt. Hans Castorp did not know this—or rather, he did not know that Joachim knew it; as for himself, he knew it well enough, did this venturesome spirit, this delicate nursling of life, this schoolmaster’s plague! In a word, Joachim had caught his cousin at his tricks again, had found him out in another species of disloyalty, not so unlike the one he had been guilty of on the evening of carnival, only possessed of a still keener point in the circumstance that of this one he made a practice. In the rhythmic monotony of time’s flow, in the well-nigh minute articulation of the normal day—that day which was ever, even unto confusion and distraction, the same day, an abiding eternity, so that it was hard to say how it ever managed to bring forth any change—in the inviolable, unbreachable regimen, we say, of that normal day, Dr. Krokowski’s routine of visits took him, as of yore, through all the rooms, or rather through all the balconies, from chair to reclining-chair, between half past three and four in the afternoon. How often had the normal day of the Berghof renewed itself, since the faroff time when Hans Castorp lay and grumbled within himself because Dr. Krokowski described an arc about him and left him on one side! The guest of that day had long become the comrade—Dr. Krokowski often thus addressed him when he made his rounds; and if, as Hans Castorp said to Joachim, the military associations of the word, with the exotic pronunciation of the r, sounded singularly inappropriate in his mouth, yet the word itself did not go so badly with his robust and hearty, confidence-inviting manner. But that again, in its turn, was belied by his blackness and pallor, so that some aura of the questionable always hung about the man.

“Well, comrade, and how goes it?” the doctor said, as, coming from the barbarian Russians, he approached the head end of Hans Castorp’s reclining-chair. The patient, hands folded on his chest, smiled daily at the blithe address, smiled with a friendly, albeit rather harassed mien, watching the doctor’s yellow teeth, that were visible through his beard. “Slept right well, did you?” Dr. Krokowski would go on. “Curve going down? Up, eh? Never mind, it will be all right before you come to get married. Good day to you.” And he would go on into Joachim’s balcony. For these afternoon rounds were merely a
coup d’œil
, no more.

But once in a way he would stop rather longer, standing there broad-shouldered and sturdy, ever with his manly smile, chatting with the comrade of this and that: the weather, the various departures and new arrivals, the mood the patient was in, whether good or bad; sometimes about his personal affairs, origin and prospects—before he uttered the formula: “Good day to you” and passed on. Hans Castorp would shift his hands to behind his head, and reply to all he was asked, smiling in his turn. He experienced a penetrating sense of uncanniness, yes, but he answered. They spoke in low tones, so that Joachim, despite the fact that the glass partition only half separated them, could not make out what they said—indeed, made not the slightest effort to do so. He heard his cousin get up from his chair and go indoors, probably to show the doctor his curve; and the conversation seemed to be further prolonged inside the chamber, to judge from the length of time before the Assistant appeared, this time from the inside, through his room.

What did the comrades talk about? Joachim never put the question. But if one of us were to do so, an answer in general terms might be forthcoming, as that there is much matter for an exchange of views, between two comrades and fellow-men when they possess ideas in common, and one of them has arrived at the point of conceiving the material universe in the light of a downfall of the spirit, a morbid growth upon it, while the other, as physician, is wont to treat of the secondary character of organic disease. Yes, there was, we should say, much to talk about, much to say on the subject of the material as the dishonourable decay of the immaterial, of life as the impudicity of substance, or disease as an impure manifestation of life. With the current lectures for background, the conversation might swing from the subject of love as a force making for disease, from the supersensory nature of the indications, to “old” and “fresh” infected areas, to soluble toxins and love potions, to the illumination of the unconscious, to the blessings of psycho-analysis, the transference of symptoms—in short, how can we know what all they talked about, Dr. Krokowski and young Castorp, when all these are merely guesses and suppositions thrown out in response to a hypothetic question!

In any case, they talked no longer; it had lasted only a few weeks. Of late the Assistant spent no more time with this particular patient than with the others, but confined himself chiefly to the “Well, comrade?” and “Good day to you,” on his rounds. But now Joachim had made another discovery, he had fathomed the duplicity of his cousin—without, be it said, any faintest intention of so doing, without having bent his military honour to the office of spy. It happened quite simply that he had been summoned, one Wednesday, from the first rest period, to go down to the basement and be weighed by the bathing-master. He came down the clean linoleum-covered steps that faced the consulting-room door, with the x-ray cabinets on either side: on the left the organic, on the right, round the corner and one step lower down, the analytic, with Dr. Krokowski’s visiting-card tacked on the door. Joachim paused halfway down the stair, as he saw his cousin coming from the consulting-room, where he had just had an injection. He stepped hastily through the door, closed it with both hands, and without looking round, turned toward the door which had the card fastened on it with drawing-pins. He reached it with a few noiseless, crouching steps, knocked, bent to listen, with his head close to the tapping finger. And as the “Come in” in an exotic baritone sounded on the other side, Joachim saw his cousin disappear into the half-darkness of Dr. Krokowski’s analytic lair.

Hans Castorp found bluebells and yarrow on the hill-side, like the ones Joachim had put in his room to greet him when he came; and seeing them, realized how the year was rounding out. Those others had been the late blossoms of the declining summer; whereas now the tender emerald grass of the sloping meadows was thick-starred with every sort of bloom, cup-shaped, bell-shaped, star-shaped, any-shaped, filling the sunny air with warm spice and scent: quantities of wild pansies and fly-bane, daisies, red and yellow primulas, larger and finer than any Hans Castorp had ever seen down below, so far as he could recall noticing, and the nodding soldanella, peculiar to the region, with its little eye-lashed bells of rose-colour, purple, and blue.