The Magic Mountain Part 13

He had in fact, directly he entered, taken up his new acquisition from the washhand-stand and plunged it repeatedly through the air, to obliterate the morning's record. Then he went into the balcony with the gla.s.s cigar in his mouth, like an old hand. But contrary to some rather exaggerated expectations, Mercurius climbed no further than before-though Hans Castorp kept the instrument under his tongue eight minutes for good measure. But after all, 99.6 was unquestionably fever, even though no higher than the earlier record. In the afternoon the gleaming column mounted up as far as 99.7, but declined to 99.5 by evening, when the patient was weary with the excitement of the day. Next morning it showed 99.6, climbing during the morning to the same level as before. And so arrived the hour for the main meal of the day, bringing the examination in its wake.

Hans Castorp later recalled that Madame Chauchat was wearing that day a goldenyellow sweater, with large b.u.t.tons and embroidered pockets. It was a new sweater, at least new to Hans Castorp, and when she made her entrance, tardily as usual, she had paused an instant and, in the way he knew so well, presented herself to the room. Then she had glided to her place at the table, slipped softly into it, and begun to eat and chatter to her table-mates. All this was as it happened every day, five times a day; Hans Castorp observed it as usual, or perhaps even more poignantly than usual, looking over at the "good" Russian table past Settembrini's back, as he sat at the crosswise table between. He saw the turn of her head in conversation, the rounded neck, the stooping back. Frau Chauchat, for her part, never once turned round during the whole meal. But when the sweet had been handed, and the great clock on the wall above the "bad" Russian table struck two, it actually happened, to Hans Castorp's amazement and mystification, that precisely as the hour struck, one, two, the fair patient turned her head and a little twisted her body and looked over her shoulder quite openly and pointedly at Hans Castorp's table. And not only at his table. No, she looked at himself, unmistakably and personally, with a smile about the closed lips and the narrow, Pribislav eyes, as though to say: "Well, it is time: are you going?" And the eyes said thou, for that is the language of the eyes, even when the tongue uses a more formal address. This episode shook and bewildered Hans Castorp to the depths of his being. He hardly trusted his senses, and at first gazed enraptured in Frau Chauchat's face, then, lifting his eyes, stared into vacancy over the top of her head. Was it possible she knew he was to be examined at two o'clock? It looked like it; but that was as impossible as that she should be aware of the thought that had visited his mind in the last minute; namely, that he might as well send word to the Hofrat, through Joachim, that his cold was better, and he considered an examination superfluous. This idea had presented itself to him in an advantageous light, but now withered away under that searching smile, trans.m.u.ted into a hideous sense of futility. The second after, Joachim had laid his rolled-up serviette beside his plate, signalled to his cousin by raising his eyebrows, and with a bow to the company risen from the table. Whereat Hans Castorp, inwardly reeling, though outwardly firm in step and bearing, rose too, and feeling that look and smile upon his back, followed Cousin Joachim out of the room.

Since the previous morning they had not spoken of what lay before them, andsilently now they moved down the corridor together. Joachim hastened his steps, for it was already past the appointed hour, and Hofrat Behrens laid stress on punctuality. They pa.s.sed the door of the office and went down the clean linoleum-covered stairs to the "bas.e.m.e.nt." Joachim knocked at the door facing them; it bore a porcelain shield with the word Consulting-room. Consulting-room.

"Come in," called Behrens, stressing the first word. He was standing in the middle of the room, in his white smock, holding the black stethoscope in his hand and tapping his thigh with it.

"Tempo, tempo tempo," said he, directing his goggling gaze to the clock on the wall. "Un poco piu presto poco piu presto, signori! signori! We are not here simply and solely for the honourable gentlemen's convenience." We are not here simply and solely for the honourable gentlemen's convenience."

Dr. Krokowski was sitting at the double-barrelled writing-table by the window. He wore his usual black alpaca shirt, setting off the pallor of his face; his elbows rested on the table, in one hand a pen, the other fingering his beard; while before him lay various papers, probably the doc.u.ments in reference to the patients to be examined. He looked at the cousins as they entered, but it was with the idle glance of a person who is present only in an auxiliary capacity.

"Well, give us your report card," the Hofrat answered to Joachim's apologies, and took the fever chart out of his hand. He looked it over, while the patient made haste to lay off his upper garments down to the waist and hang them on the rack by the door. No one troubled about Hans Castorp. He looked on awhile standing, then let himself down in a little old-fashioned easy-chair with bob-ta.s.sels on the arms, beside a small table with a carafe on it. Bookcases lined the walls, full of pamphlets and broadbacked medical works. Other furniture there was none, except an adjustable chaiselongue covered with oilcloth. It had a paper serviette spread over the pillow. "Point 7, point 9, point 8," Behrens said running through the weekly card, whereon were entered the results of Joachim's five daily "measurings." "Still a little too much lighted up, my dear Ziemssen. Can't exactly say you've got more robust just lately"- by the lately he meant during the past four weeks.-"Not free from infection," he said. "Well, that doesn't happen between one day and the next; we're not magicians." Joachim nodded and shrugged his bare shoulders. He refrained from saying that he had been up here since a good deal longer than yesterday.

"How about the st.i.tches in the right hilum, where it always sounded so sharp? Better? eh? Well, come along, let me thump you about a bit." And the auscultation began.

The Hofrat stood leaning backwards, feet wide apart, his stethoscope under his arm, and tapped from the wrist, using the powerful middle finger of his right hand as a hammer, and the left as a support. He tapped first high up on Joachim's shoulderblade at the side of the back, above and below-the well-trained Joachim lifting his arm to let himself be tapped under the arm-pit. Then the process was repeated on the left side; then the Hofrat commanded: "Turn!" and began tapping the chest; first next the collar-bone, then above and below the breast, right and left. When he had tapped to his satisfaction, he began to listen, setting his stethoscope on Joachim's chest and back, and putting his ear to the ear-piece. Then Joachim had to breathe deeply and cough-which seemed to strain him, for he got out of breath, and tears came in his eyes. And everything that the Hofrat heard he announced in curt, technical phrases to his a.s.sistant over at the writing-table, in such a way that Hans Castorp was forcibly reminded of the proceedings at the tailor's when a very correctly groomed gentleman measures you for a suit, laying the tape about your trunk and limbs and calling off the figures in the order hallowed by tradition for the a.s.sistant to take them down in his book. "Faint," "diminished," dictated Hofrat Behrens. "Vesicular," and then again "vesicular" (that was good, apparently). "Rough," he said, and made a face. "Very rough." "Rhonchi." And Dr. Krokowski entered it all in his book, just like the tailor's a.s.sistant.

Hans Castorp followed the proceedings with his head on one side, absorbed in contemplation of his cousin's torso. The ribs-thank Heaven, he had them all!-rose under the taut skin as he took deep inhalations, and the stomach fell away. Hans Castorp studied that youthful figure, slender, yellowish-bronze, with a black fell along the breastbone and the powerful arms. On one wrist Joachim wore a gold chainbracelet. "Those are the arms of an athlete," thought Hans Castorp. "I never made much of gymnastics, but he always liked them, and that is partly the reason why he wanted to be a soldier. He has always been more inclined than I to the things of the body-or inclined in a different way. I've always been a civilian and cared more about warm baths and good eating and drinking, whereas he has gone in for manly exertion. And now his body has come into the foreground in another sense and made itself important and independent of the rest of him-namely, through illness. He is all 'lit up' within and can't get rid of the infection and become healthy, poor Joachim, no matter how much he wants to get down to the valley and be a soldier. And yet look how he is developed, like a picture in a book, a regular Apollo Belvedere, except for the hair. But the disease makes him ailing within and fevered without; disease makes men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body"-his own thought startled him, and he looked quickly at Joachim with a questioning glance, that travelled from the bared body up to the large, gentle black eyes. Tears stood out in them, from the effort of the forced breathing and coughing and they gazed into s.p.a.ce with a pathetic expression as the examination went on.

But at last Hofrat Behrens had come to an end. "Very good, Ziemssen," he said.

"Everything in order, so far as possible. Next time" (that would be in four weeks) "itis bound to show further improvement."

"And Herr Hofrat, how much longer do you think-"

"So you are going to pester me again? How do you expect to give your lads the devil down below, in the lit-up state you are in? I told you the other day to call it half a year; you can reckon from then if you like, but you must regard it as minimal. Have a little ordinary politeness! It's a decent enough life up here, after all; it's not a convict prison, nor a Siberian penal settlement! Or perhaps you think it is? Very good, Ziemssen, be off with you! Next! Step lively!" He stretched out his arm and handed the stethoscope to Dr. Krokowski, who got up and began some supernumerary tapping on Joachim's person.

Hans Castorp had sprung up. With his eyes fixed on the Hofrat, standing there with his legs apart and his mouth open, lost in thought, the young man began in all haste to make ready, with the result that he defeated his own purpose and fumbled in getting out of his shirt. But finally he stood there, blond, white-skinned, and narrow-chested, before Hofrat Behrens. Compared with Joachim, he looked distinctly the civilian type. The Hofrat, still lost in thought, let him stand. Dr. Krokowski had finished and sat down, and Joachim was dressing before Behrens finally decided to take notice. "Oh-ho!" he said, "so that's you, is it?" He gripped Hans Castorp on the upper arm with his mighty hand, pushed him away, and looked at him sharply-not in the face, as one man looks at another, but at his body; turned him round, as one would turn an inanimate object, and looked at his back. "H'm," he said. "Well, we shall see." And began tapping as before.

He tapped all over, as he had with Joachim, and several times went back and tapped

again. For some while, for purposes of comparison, he tapped by turns on the lefthand side near the collar-bone, and then somewhat lower down.

"Hear that?" he asked Dr. Krokowski. And the other, sitting at the table five paces off, nodded to signify that he did. He sunk his head on his chest with a serious mien, and the points of his whiskers stuck out.

"Breathe deep! Cough!" commanded the Hofrat, who had taken up the stethoscope again; and Hans Castorp worked hard for eight or ten minutes, while the Hofrat listened. He uttered no word, simply set the instrument here or there and listened with particular care at the places he had tapped so long. Then he stuck the stethoscope under his arm, put his hands on his back, and looked at the floor between himself and Hans Castorp.

"Yes, Castorp," he said-this was the first time he had called the young man simply by his last name-"the thing works out praeter propter praeter propter as I thought it would. I had my suspicions-I can tell you now-from the first day I had the undeserved honour of making your acquaintance; I made a pretty shrewd guess that you were one of us and that you would find it out, like many another who has come up here on a lark and gone about with his nose in the air, only to discover, one fine day, that it would be as well for him-and not only as I thought it would. I had my suspicions-I can tell you now-from the first day I had the undeserved honour of making your acquaintance; I made a pretty shrewd guess that you were one of us and that you would find it out, like many another who has come up here on a lark and gone about with his nose in the air, only to discover, one fine day, that it would be as well for him-and not only as as well, mark that-to make a more extended stay, quite without reference to the beauties of the scenery." well, mark that-to make a more extended stay, quite without reference to the beauties of the scenery."

Hans Castorp had flushed; Joachim, in act to b.u.t.ton his braces, paused as he stood, and listened.

"You have such a kind, sympathetic cousin over there," went on the Hofrat, motioning with his head in Joachim's direction and balancing himself on his heels. "Very soon, we hope, we will be able to say that he has been has been ill; but even when he gets that far, it will still be true that he ill; but even when he gets that far, it will still be true that he has been has been ill-and the fact- ill-and the fact-a priori, as the philosophers say-casts a certain light upon yourself, my dear Castorp. "But he is only my step-cousin, Herr Hofrat."

"Tut! You won't disown him, will you? Even a step-cousin is a blood relation. Onwhich side?"

"The mother's, Herr Hofrat. He is the son of a step-"

"And your mother-she's pretty jolly?"

"No, she is dead. She died when I was little."

"And of what?"

"Of a blood-clot, Herr Hofrat."

"A blood-clot, eh? Well, that's a long time ago. And your father?"

"He died of pneumonia," Hans Castorp said; "and my grandfather too," he added.

"Both of them, eh? Good. So much for your ancestors. Now about yourself-you have always been rather chlorotic, haven't you? But you didn't tire easily at physical or mental work. Or did you-what? A good deal of palpitation? Only of late? Good. And a strong inclination to catarrhal and bronchial trouble?-Did you know you have been infected before now?" "I?"

"Yes, you-I have you personally in mind. Can you hear any difference?" The Hofrat tapped by turns on Hans Castorp's left side, first above and then lower down. "It sounds rather duller there," said Hans Castorp.

"Capital. You ought to be a specialist. Well, that is a dullness, and such dullnesses are caused by the old places, where fibrosis has supervened. Scars, you know. You are an old patient, Castorp, but we won't lay it up against anybody that you weren't found out. The early diagnosis is very difficult-particularly for my colleagues down below; I won't say we have better ears-though the regular practice does do something. b.u.t.the air helps us, helps us hear, if you understand what I mean, this thin, dry air uphere."

"Certainly, of course," Hans Castorp said.

"Very good, Castorp. And now listen, young man, to my words of wisdom. If that were all the trouble with you, if it was a case of nothing but the dullness and the scars on your bagpipe in there, I should send you back to your lares and penates and not trouble my head further about you. But as things stand, and according to what we find, and since you are already up here-well, there is no use in your going down, for you'd only have to come up again."

Hans Castorp felt the blood rush back to his heart; it hammered violently; and Joachim still stood with his hands on his back b.u.t.tons, his eyes on the floor. "For besides the dullness," said the Hofrat, "you have on the upper left side a rough breathing that is almost bronchial and undoubtedly comes from a fresh place. I won't call it a focus of softening, but it is certainly a moist spot, and if you go down below and begin to carry on, why, you'll have the whole lobe at the devil before you can say Jack Robinson."

Hans Castorp stood motionless. His mouth twitched fearfully, and the hammering of his heart against his ribs was plain to see. He looked across at Joachim, but could not meet his cousin's eye; then again in the Hofrat's face, with its blue cheeks, blue, goggling eyes, and little, crooked moustache.

"For independent confirmation," Behrens continued, "we have your temperature of 99.6 at ten o'clock in the morning, which corresponds pretty well to the indications given by the auscultation." "I thought," Hans Castorp said, "that the fever came from my cold."

"And the cold," rejoined the Hofrat, "where does that come from? Listen, Castorp, let me tell you something, and mark my words-for so far as I can tell, you've all the cerebral convolutions a body needs. Now: our air up here is good for the disease-I mean good against against the disease, you understand-you think so, don't you? Well, it is true. But also it is good the disease, you understand-you think so, don't you? Well, it is true. But also it is good for for the disease; it begins by speeding it up, in that it revolutionizes the whole body; it brings the latent weakness to the surface and makes it break out. Your catarrh, fortunately for you, is a breaking-out of that kind. I can't tell if you were febrile down below; but it is certainly my opinion that you have been from your first day up here, and not merely since you had your catarrh." "Yes," Hans Castorp said, "I think so too." the disease; it begins by speeding it up, in that it revolutionizes the whole body; it brings the latent weakness to the surface and makes it break out. Your catarrh, fortunately for you, is a breaking-out of that kind. I can't tell if you were febrile down below; but it is certainly my opinion that you have been from your first day up here, and not merely since you had your catarrh." "Yes," Hans Castorp said, "I think so too."

"You were probably fuddled right from the start, in my opinion," the Hofrat confirmed him. "Those were the soluble toxins thrown off by the bacteria; they act like an intoxicant upon the central nervous system and give you a hectic flush. Now, Castorp, we'll stick you into bed and see if a couple of weeks' rest will sober you up. What follows will follow. We'll take a handsome x-ray of you-you'll enjoy seeing what goes on in your own inside. But I tell you straightaway, a case like yours doesn't get well from one day to the next: it isn't a question of the miracle cures you read about in advertis.e.m.e.nts. I thought when I first clapped eyes on you that you would be a better patient than your cousin, with more talent for illness than our brigadiergeneral here, who wants to clear out directly he has a couple of points less fever. As if 'lie down' isn't just as good a word of command as 'stand up'! It is the citizen's first duty to be calm, and impatience never did any good to anyone. Now, Castorp, watch out you don't disappoint me and give the lie to my knowledge of human nature! Get along now, into the caboose with you-march!"

With that Hofrat Behrens closed the interview and sat down at the writing-table; this man of many occupations began to fill in his time with writing until the advent of the next patient. But Dr. Krokowski arose from his place and strode up to Hans Castorp. With his head tipped back sideways, and one hand on the young man's shoulder, smiling so heartily that the yellowish teeth showed in his beard, he shook him warmly by the hand.

CHAPTER V.

Soup-Everlasting AND now we are confronted by a phenomenon upon which the author himself may well comment, lest the reader do so in his stead. Our account of the first three weeks of Hans Castorp's stay with "those up here"-twenty-one midsummer days, to which his visit, so far as human eye could see, should have been confined-has consumed in the telling an amount of time and s.p.a.ce only too well confirming the author's halfconfessed expectations; while our narrative of his next three weeks will scarcely cost as many lines, or even words and minutes, as the earlier three did pages, quires, hours, and working-days. We apprehend that these next three weeks will be over and done with in the twinkling of an eye.

Which is perhaps surprising; yet quite in order, and conformable to the laws that govern the telling of stories and the listening to them. For it is in accordance with these laws that time seems to us just as long, or just as short, that it expands or contracts precisely in the way, and to the extent, that it did for young Hans Castorp, our hero, whom our narrative now finds visited with such an unexpected blow from the hand of fate. It may even be well at this point to prepare the reader for still other surprises, still other phenomena, bearing on the mysterious element of time, which will confront us if we continue in our hero's company.

For the moment we need only recall the swift flight of time-even of a quite considerable period of time-which we spend in bed when we are ill. All the days are nothing but the same day repeating itself-or rather, since it is always the same day, it is incorrect to speak of repet.i.tion; a continuous present, an ident.i.ty, an everlastingness-such words as these would better convey the idea. They bring you your midday broth, as they brought it yesterday and will bring it to-morrow; and it comes over you-but whence or how you do not know, it makes you quite giddy to see the broth coming in-that you are losing a sense of the demarcation of time, that its units are running together, disappearing; and what is being revealed to you as the true content of time is merely a dimensionless present in which they eternally bring you the broth. But in such a connexion it would be paradoxical to speak of time as pa.s.sing slowly; and paradox, with reference to such a hero, we would avoid.

Hans Castorp, then, went to bed on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon, as it had been ordained by Hofrat Behrens, the highest authority in our little world. There he lay, in his nightshirt with the embroidered monogram on the pocket, his hands clasped at the back of his head, in his cleanly white bed, the death-bed of the American woman and in all probability of many another person; lay there with his confiding blue eyes, somewhat gla.s.sy with his cold, directed toward the ceiling, and contemplated the singularity of his fate. This is not to say that, if he had not had a cold, his gaze would have been any clearer or more single-minded. No, just as it was, it accurately mirrored his inner state, and that, whatever its simplicity, was full of troubled, involved, dubious, not quite ingenuous thoughts. For as he lay, he would be shaken from deep within him by a frantic burst of triumphant laughter, while his heart stood still with an anguish of extravagant antic.i.p.ation like nothing he had ever known before; again, he would feel such a shudder of apprehension as sent the colour from his cheek, and then it was conscience itself that knocked, in the very throbs of his heart as it pulsed against his ribs.

On that first day Joachim left him to his rest, avoiding all discussion. He went two or three times tactfully into the sickroom, nodded to the patient, and inquired if he could do anything. It was easy for him to understand and respect Hans Castorp's reserve-the more in that he shared it, even feeling his own position to be more difficult than the other's.

But on Sunday forenoon, when he came back from the walk which for the first time in weeks had been solitary, there was no putting it off any longer; they must take counsel together over the necessary next step.

He sat down by the bed and said, with a sigh: "Yes, it's no good; we must act-theyare expecting you down home."

"Not yet," Hans Castorp answered.

"No, but inside the next few days, Wednesday or Thursday."

"Oh, they aren't expecting me so precisely on a particular day," Hans Castorp said. "They have other things to do besides counting the days until I get back. I'll be there when I get there and Uncle Tienappel will say: 'Oh, there you are again,' and Uncle James: 'Well, had a good time?' And if I don't arrive, it will be some time before they notice it, you may be sure of that. Of course, after a while we'd have to let them know."

"You can see how unpleasant the thing is for me," Joachim said, sighing again. "What is to happen now? I feel in a way responsible. You come up here to pay me a visit, I take you in, and here you are, and who knows when you can get away and go into your position down below? You must see how extremely painful that is to me." "Just a moment," said Hans Castorp, without removing his hands from their clasped position behind his neck. "Surely it is unreasonable for you to break your head over it. Did I come up here to visit you? Well, of course in a way I did; but after all, the princ.i.p.al reason was to get the rest Heidekind prescribed. Well, and now it appears I need more of a rest than he or any of us dreamed. I am not the first who thought of making a flying visit up here for whom it fell out differently. Remember about Tousles-deux's second son, and how it turned out with him-I don't know whether he is still alive or not; perhaps they have fetched him away already, while we were sitting at our meal. That I am somewhat infected is naturally a great surprise to me; I must get used to the idea of being a patient and one of you, instead of just a guest. And yet in a way I am scarcely surprised, for I never have been in such blooming health, and when I think how young both my parents were when they died, I realize that it was natural I shouldn't be particularly robust! We can't deny that you had a weakness that way; we make no bones of it, even if it is as good as cured now, and it may easily be that it runs a little in the family, as Behrens suggested. Anyhow, I have been lying here since yesterday thinking it all over, considering what my att.i.tude has been, how I felt toward the whole thing, to life, you know, and the demands it makes on you. A certain seriousness, a sort of disinclination to rough and noisy ways, has always been a part of my nature; we were talking about that lately, and I said I sometimes should have liked to be a clergyman, because I took such an interest in mournful and edifying things-a black pall, you know, with a silver cross on it, or R. I. P.-requiescat in pace pace, you know. That seems to me the most beautiful expression-I like it much better than 'He's a jolly good fellow,' which is simply rowdy. I think all that comes from the fact that I have a weakness myself, and always felt at home with illness-the way I do now. But things being as they are, I find it very lucky that I came here, and that I was examined. Certainly you have no call to reproach yourself. You heard what he said: if I were to go down and continue as I have been, I should have the whole lobe at the devil before I could say Jack Robinson."

"You can't tell," Joachim said. "That is just what you never can tell. They said you had already had places, of which n.o.body took any notice and they healed of themselves, and left nothing but a few trifling dullnesses. It might have been the same way with the moist spot you are supposed to have now, if you hadn't come up here at all. One can never know."

"No, as far as knowing goes, we never can. But just for that reason, we have no right to a.s.sume the worst-for instance with regard to how long I shall be obliged to stop here. You say n.o.body knows when I shall be free to go into the ship-yard; but you say it in a pessimistic sense, and that I find premature, since we cannot know. Behrens did not set a limit; he is a long-headed man, and doesn't play the prophet. There are the x-ray and the photographic plate yet to come before we can definitely know the facts; who knows whether they will show anything worth talking about, and whether I shall not be free of fever before that, and can say good-bye to you. I am all for our not striking before the time and crying wolf to the family down below. It is quite enough for the present if we write and say-I can do it myself with the fountainpen if I sit up a little-that I have a severe cold and am febrile, that I am stopping in bed, and shall not travel for the present. The rest will follow."

"Good," said Joachim. "We can do that for the present. And for the other matterswe can wait and see."