The Magic Mountain Part 24

"When?"

"To-morrow. Apres diner." Apres diner."

There took place within him a feeling of general collapse. He said: "Where?"

"Far away."

"To Daghestan?"

"Tu n'es pas mal instruit. Peut-etre Peut-etre, pour le moment-" pour le moment-"

"Are you cured, then?"

"Quant a ca-non. But Behrens thinks there is not greatly more to be gained here, for the present. C'est pourquoi je vais risquer un pet.i.t changement d'air C'est pourquoi je vais risquer un pet.i.t changement d'air." "Then you are coming back!"

"That is the question. Or, rather, the question is when. Quant a moi Quant a moi, tu sais tu sais, j'aime j'aimela liberte avant tout et notamment celle de choisir mon domicile. Tu ne comprends guere ce que c'est: d'etre obsede d'independance. C'est de ma race, peut-etre.""Et ton mari au Daghestan te l'accorde-ta liberte?" avant tout et notamment celle de choisir mon domicile. Tu ne comprends guere ce que c'est: d'etre obsede d'independance. C'est de ma race, peut-etre.""Et ton mari au Daghestan te l'accorde-ta liberte?"

CHAPTER VI.

Changes WHAT is time? A mystery, a figment-and all-powerful. It conditions the exterior world, it is motion married to and mingled with the existence of bodies in s.p.a.ce, and with the motion of these. Would there then be no time if there were no motion? No motion if no time? We fondly ask. Is time a function of s.p.a.ce? Or s.p.a.ce of time? Or are they identical? Echo answers. Time is functional, it can be referred to as action; we say a thing's "brought about" by time. What sort of thing? Change! Now is not then, here not there, for between them lies motion. But the motion by which one measures time is circular, is in a closed circle; and might almost equally well be described as rest, as cessation of movement-for the there repeats itself constantly in the here, the past in the present. Furthermore, as our utmost effort cannot conceive a final limit either to time or in s.p.a.ce, we have settled to think of them as eternal and infinite-apparently in the hope that if this is not very successful, at least it will be more so than the other. But is not this affirmation of the eternal and the infinite the logical-mathematical destruction of every and any limit in time or s.p.a.ce, and the reduction of them, more or less, to zero? Is it possible, in eternity, to conceive of a sequence of events, or in the infinite of a succession of s.p.a.ce-occupying bodies? Conceptions of distance, movement, change, even of the existence of finite bodies in the universe-how do these fare? Are they consistent with the hypothesis of eternity and infinity we have been driven to adopt? Again we ask, and again echo answers. Hans Castorp revolved these queries and their like in his brain. We know that from the very first day of his arrival up here his mind had been much disposed to such sleeveless speculation. Later, perhaps, a certain sinister but strong desire of his, since gratified, had sharpened it the more and confirmed it in its general tendency to question and to carp. He put these queries to himself, he put them to good cousin Joachim, he put them to the valley at large, lying there, as it had these months on end, deep in snow; though from none of these quarters could he expect anything like an answer, from which the least would be hard to say. For himself, it was precisely because he did not know the answers that he put the questions. For Joachim, it was hardly possible to get him even to consider them, he having, as Hans Castorp had said, in French, on a certain evening, nothing else in his head but the idea of being a soldier down below. Joachim wrestled with these hopes of his, that now seemed almost within his grasp, now receded into the distance and mocked him there; the struggle grew daily more embittered, he even threatened to end it once for all by a single bold bid for liberty. Yes, the good, the patient, the upright Joachim, so affected to discipline and the service, had been attacked by fits of rebellion, he even questioned the authority of the "Gaffky scale": the method employed in the laboratory-the lab, as one called it-to ascertain the degree of a patient's infection. Whether only a few isolated bacilli, or a whole host of them, were found in the sputum a.n.a.lysed, determined his "Gaffky number," upon which everything depended. It infallibly reflected the chances of recovery with which the patient had to reckon; the number of months or years he must still remain could with ease be deduced from it, beginning with the six months that Hofrat Behrens called a "week-end," and ending with the "life sentence," which, taken literally, often enough meant very little indeed. Joachim, then, inveighed against the Gaffky scale, openly giving notice that he questioned its authority-or perhaps not quite quite openly, he did not say so to the authorities, but expressed his views to his cousin, and even in the dining-room. "I'm fed up with it, I won't be made a fool of any longer," he said, the blood mounting to his bronzed face. "Two weeks ago I had Gaffky two, a mere nothing, my prospects were the best. And to-day I am regularly infested-number nine, if you please. No talk of getting away. How the devil can a man know where he is? Up on the Schatzalp there is a man, a Greek peasant, an agent had him sent here from Arcadia, he has galloping consumption, there isn't the dimmest hope for him. He may die any day- and yet they've never found even the ghost of a bacillus in his sputum. On the other hand, that Belgian captain that was discharged cured the other day, he was simply alive with them, Gaffky ten-and only the very tiniest cavity. The devil fly away with Gaffky! I'm done, I'm going home, if it kills me!" Thus Joachim; and all his company were pained to see the gentle, serious youth so overwrought. Hans Castorp, when he heard the threat, could scarcely refrain from quoting a certain opinion he had heard expressed in French, by a third party. But he was silent. Was he to set himself up to his cousin for a model of patience, as did Frau Stohr, who actually admonished Joachim not to be blasphemous, but to humble his pride, and take pattern by her, Caroline Stohr, and the faithfulness and firm resolve which made her hold out up here, instead of returning to queen it in her Cannstadt home-to the end that when she did go back it would be as a sound and healthy wife to the arms of her impatient husband? No, such language was not for Hans Castorp-since Carnival he had had a bad conscience towards his cousin. Conscience told him Joachim must surely be aware of a certain matter never referred to between them; must see in it something very like disloyalty and desertion-taken in connexion with a pair of brown eyes we know, an unwarranted tendency to laughter, and an orange-scented handkerchief, to whose influence Joachim was daily five times exposed, yet gave no ground to evil, but steadfastly fixed his eyes upon his plate. Yes, even the silent hostility which Joachim opposed to his cousin's problems and speculations on the subject of time, Hans Castorp felt as an expression of the military decorum which reproached himself. While as for the valley, that snowed-in winter valley, when Hans Castorp, lying in his excellent chair, directed upon it his inquiring metaphysical gaze, it was silent too. Its peaked summits, its domes and crests and brown-green-reddish forests stood there silent, and mortal time flowed over and about them: sometimes luminous against a deep-blue sky, sometimes shrouded in vapours, sometimes glowing rosy in the parting sun, sometimes glittering with hard, diamondlike brilliance in the magic moonlight- but always, always in snow, for six long, incredible, though scurrying months. All the guests declared they could not bear to look any more at the snow, they were sick of it; they had had their fill in the summer-time, and now these ma.s.ses and heaps and slopes and cushions of snow, day in and day out, were more than they could stand, their spirits sank under the weight of it. And they took to coloured gla.s.ses, green, yellow, and red, to save their eyes, but still more their feelings. openly, he did not say so to the authorities, but expressed his views to his cousin, and even in the dining-room. "I'm fed up with it, I won't be made a fool of any longer," he said, the blood mounting to his bronzed face. "Two weeks ago I had Gaffky two, a mere nothing, my prospects were the best. And to-day I am regularly infested-number nine, if you please. No talk of getting away. How the devil can a man know where he is? Up on the Schatzalp there is a man, a Greek peasant, an agent had him sent here from Arcadia, he has galloping consumption, there isn't the dimmest hope for him. He may die any day- and yet they've never found even the ghost of a bacillus in his sputum. On the other hand, that Belgian captain that was discharged cured the other day, he was simply alive with them, Gaffky ten-and only the very tiniest cavity. The devil fly away with Gaffky! I'm done, I'm going home, if it kills me!" Thus Joachim; and all his company were pained to see the gentle, serious youth so overwrought. Hans Castorp, when he heard the threat, could scarcely refrain from quoting a certain opinion he had heard expressed in French, by a third party. But he was silent. Was he to set himself up to his cousin for a model of patience, as did Frau Stohr, who actually admonished Joachim not to be blasphemous, but to humble his pride, and take pattern by her, Caroline Stohr, and the faithfulness and firm resolve which made her hold out up here, instead of returning to queen it in her Cannstadt home-to the end that when she did go back it would be as a sound and healthy wife to the arms of her impatient husband? No, such language was not for Hans Castorp-since Carnival he had had a bad conscience towards his cousin. Conscience told him Joachim must surely be aware of a certain matter never referred to between them; must see in it something very like disloyalty and desertion-taken in connexion with a pair of brown eyes we know, an unwarranted tendency to laughter, and an orange-scented handkerchief, to whose influence Joachim was daily five times exposed, yet gave no ground to evil, but steadfastly fixed his eyes upon his plate. Yes, even the silent hostility which Joachim opposed to his cousin's problems and speculations on the subject of time, Hans Castorp felt as an expression of the military decorum which reproached himself. While as for the valley, that snowed-in winter valley, when Hans Castorp, lying in his excellent chair, directed upon it his inquiring metaphysical gaze, it was silent too. Its peaked summits, its domes and crests and brown-green-reddish forests stood there silent, and mortal time flowed over and about them: sometimes luminous against a deep-blue sky, sometimes shrouded in vapours, sometimes glowing rosy in the parting sun, sometimes glittering with hard, diamondlike brilliance in the magic moonlight- but always, always in snow, for six long, incredible, though scurrying months. All the guests declared they could not bear to look any more at the snow, they were sick of it; they had had their fill in the summer-time, and now these ma.s.ses and heaps and slopes and cushions of snow, day in and day out, were more than they could stand, their spirits sank under the weight of it. And they took to coloured gla.s.ses, green, yellow, and red, to save their eyes, but still more their feelings.

Mountain and valley, then, had been lying in deep snow for six months; nay, seven, for as we talk, time strides on-not only present time, taken up with the tale we are telling, but also past time, the bygone time of Hans Castorp and the companions of his destiny, up among the snows-time strides on, and brings changes with it. The prophecy which so glibly, so much to Herr Settembrini's disgust, Hans Castorp had made on the eve of Carnival, was in a fair way to be fulfilled. True, the solstice was not immediately at hand; yet Easter had pa.s.sed over the valley, April advanced, with Whitsuntide in plain view; spring, with the melting of the snows, would soon be here. Not all the snow would melt: on the heights to the south, and on the north in the rocky ravines of the Rhatikon, some would still remain, and through the summer months more was sure to fall, though it would scarcely lie. Yet the year revolved, and promised changes in its course; for since that night of Carnival when Hans Castorp had borrowed a lead-pencil of Frau Chauchat and afterwards returned it to her again, receiving in its stead a remembrance which he carried about with him in his pocket, since that night six weeks had pa.s.sed, twice as many as made up the original term of Hans Castorp's sojourn among those up here.

Yes, six weeks had gone by, since that evening when Hans Castorp made the acquaintance of Clavdia Chauchat, and then returned so much later to his chamber than the duty-loving Joachim to his. Six weeks since the day after, bringing her departure, her departure for the present, her temporary departure, for Daghestan, far away eastwards beyond the Caucasus. That her absence would be only temporary, that she intended to return, that she would or must return, at some date yet unspecified, of this Hans Castorp possessed direct and verbal a.s.surances, given, not during that reported conversation in the French tongue, but in a later interval, wordless to our ears, during which we have elected to intermit the flow of our story along the stream of time, and let time flow on pure and free of any content whatever. Yes, such consolatory promises must have been vouchsafed our young man before he returned to number thirty-four; for he had had no word with Frau Chauchat on the day following, had not seen her indeed, save twice at some distance: once when the gla.s.s door slammed, and she had slipped for the last time to her place at table, clad in her blue cloth skirt and white sweater. The young man's heart had been in his throat-only the sharp regard Fraulein Engelhart bent upon him had hindered him from burying his face in his hands. The other time had been at three o'clock, when he stood at a corridor window giving on the drive, a witness to her departure.

It took place just as other such which Hans Castorp had witnessed during his stay up here. The sleigh or carriage halted before the door, coachman and porter strapped fast the trunks, while friends gathered about to say good-bye to the departing one, who, cured or not, and whether for life or death, was off for the flat-land. Others besides friends gathered round as well, curious on-lookers, who cut the rest-cure for the sake of the diversion thus afforded. There would be a frock-coated official representing the management, perhaps even the physicians themselves; then out came the gracious recipient of the attentions paid by this little world to a departing guest; generally with a beaming face, and a bearing which the excitement of the moment rendered far more animated than usual. To-day it was Frau Chauchat who issued from the portal, in company with her concave fellow-countryman, Herr Buligin, who was to accompany her for part of the way. She wore a long, s.h.a.ggy, fur-trimmed travellingcloak, and a large hat; she was all smiles, her arms were full of flowers, she too seemed possessed by the pleasurable excitement due to the prospect of change, if to nothing else, which was common to all those who left, whatever the circ.u.mstances of their leaving, and whether with the consent of the physicans, or in sheer desperation and at their own risk. Her cheeks were flushed, and she chattered without stopping, probably in Russian, while the rug was being arranged over her knees. People presented farewell bouquets, the great-aunt gave a box of Russian sweetmeats. Numerous other guests besides Frau Chauchat's Russian companions and table-mates, stood there to see her off; among them Dr. Krokowski, showing his yellow teeth through his beard in a hearty smile, the schoolmistress, and the man from Mannheim, who gazed gloomily and furtively from a distance, and whose eyes found out Hans Castorp as he stood at his corridor window looking down upon the scene. Hofrat Behrens did not show himself-he had probably ere now taken private leave of the traveller. The horses started up, amid farewells and hand-wavings from the bystanders; and then, as Frau Chauchat sank smilingly back against the cushions of the sleigh, her eyes swept the facade of the Berghof, and rested for the fraction of a second upon Hans Castorp's face. In pallid haste he sought his loggia, thence to get a last glimpse of the sleigh as it went jingling down the drive toward the Dorf. Then he flung himself into his chair, and drew out his keepsake, his treasure, that consisted, this time, not of a few reddish-brown shavings, but a thin gla.s.s plate, which must be held toward the light to see anything on it. It was Clavdia's x-ray portrait, showing not her face, but the delicate bony structure of the upper half of her body, and the organs of the thoracic cavity, surrounded by the pale, ghostlike envelope of flesh.

How often had he looked at it, how often pressed it to his lips, in the time which since then had pa.s.sed and brought its changes with it-such changes as, for instance, getting used to life up here without Clavdia Chauchat, getting used, that is, to her remoteness in s.p.a.ce! Yet after all, this adaptation took place more rapidly than one might have thought possible; for was not time up here at the Berghof arranged and organized to the end that one should get very rapidly used to things, even if the getting used consisted chiefly in getting used to not getting used? No longer might he expect that rattle and crash at the beginning of each of the five mighty Berghof meals. Somewhere else, in some far-off clime, Clavdia was letting doors slam behind her, somewhere else she was expressing herself by that act, as intimately bound up with her very being and its state of disease as time is bound up with the motion of bodies in s.p.a.ce. Perhaps, indeed, her whole disease consisted in that, and in nothing else.-But though lost to view, she was none the less invisibly present to Hans Castorp; she was the genius of the place, whom, in an evil hour, an hour unattuned to any simple little ditty of the flat-land, yet one of pa.s.sing sweetness, he had known and possessed, whose shadowy presentment he now wore next his months-long-labouring heart. At that hour his twitching lips had stammered and babbled, in his own and foreign tongues, for the most part without his own volition, the maddest things: pleas, prayers, proposals, frantic projects, to which all consent was denied, and rightly: as, that he might be permitted to accompany the genius beyond the Caucasus; that he might follow after it; that he might await it at the next spot which its free and untrammelled spirit should select as a domicile; and thereafter never be parted from it more-these and other such rash, irresponsible utterances. No, all that our simple young adventurer carried away from that hour was his ghostly treasure trove, and the possibility, perhaps the probability, of Frau Chauchat's return for a fourth sojourn at the Berghof-sooner or later, as the state of her health might decree. But whether sooner or later-as she had said again at parting-Hans Castorp would by that time be "long since far away." It was a prophecy whose slighting note would have been harder to bear had he not known that prophecies are sometimes made in order that they may not not come to pa.s.s-as a spell, indeed, against their fulfilment. Prophecies of this kind mock the future: saying to it how it should shape itself, to the end that it shall shame to be so shaped. The genius, in the course of the conversation we have repeated, and elsewhere, called Hans Castorp a " come to pa.s.s-as a spell, indeed, against their fulfilment. Prophecies of this kind mock the future: saying to it how it should shape itself, to the end that it shall shame to be so shaped. The genius, in the course of the conversation we have repeated, and elsewhere, called Hans Castorp a "joli bourgeois au pet.i.t endroit humide," which might in some sense be considered a translation of the Settembrinian epithet "life's delicate child"; and the question thus was, which const.i.tutes of the mingled essence of his being would prove the stronger, the bourgeois or the other. The genius, though, had failed to take into consideration the fact that Hans Castorp too had come about a good deal in the world, and might easily return hither at a fitting moment-though, in all soberness, was he not sitting up here entirely in order that he might not need to return. Precisely and explicitly that was with him, as with so many others, the very ground of his continued presence.

One prophecy, indeed, made on that carnival evening, made in mockery, was fulfilled: Hans Castorp's fever chart did display a sharply rising curve. He marked it down with a feeling of solemnity. Thereafter it fell a trifle, and then ran on, unchanged save for slight undulations, well above its accustomed level. It was fever, the degree and persistency of which, according to the Hofrat, was out of all proportion to the condition of his lung. "H'm, young fellow me lad, you're more infected than one would take you for," he said. "We'll have to come on to the hypos. They'll serve your turn, or I'm a Dutchman. In three or four months you ought to be as fit as a fiddle." Thus it came about that Hans Castorp had to produce himself, twice in the week, Monday and Sat.u.r.day after the morning exercise, down in the "lab," where he was given his injections.

These were given by either physician indifferently; but the Hofrat performed the operation like a virtuoso, with a fine sweep, squeezing the little syringe at the very moment he pressed the point home. And he cared not a doit where he thrust his needle, so that the pain was often acute, and the spot hard and inflamed long afterwards. The effect of the inoculations on the entire organism was very noticeable, the nervous system reacted as after hard muscular exertion; and their strength was displayed in the heightened fever which was their immediate result. The Hofrat had said they would have this effect, and so it fell out. The whole affair, each time, took but a second; one after another, the row of patients received their dosage, in thigh or arm, and turned away. But once or twice, when the Hofrat was in a more lively mood, not depressed by the tobacco he had smoked, Hans Castorp came to speech with him, and conducted the brief conversation somewhat as follows:

"I still remember the coffee and the pleasant talk we had last autumn, Herr Hofrat," he would say. "Only yesterday, or perhaps the day before, was it, I was reminding my cousin of how we happened to-"

"Gaffky seven," said the Hofrat. "Last examination. The chap simply can't part with his bacilli. And yet he keeps at me worse than ever, to let him get away so he can wear a sword tied round his middle. What a child it is! Makes me a scene over a month or so of time, as though it were aeons pa.s.sing over our heads. Means to leave, whether or no-does he say the same to you? You ought to give him a pretty straight talking-to. Take it from me, you'll have him hopping the twig if he is too previous about going down and breathing the nice damp air into his weak spot. A swordswallower like that doesn't necessarily possess so much grey matter; but you, as the steady civilian, you ought to see to it he doesn't make an a.s.s of himself."

"I do talk to him, Herr Hofrat," Hans Castorp responded, taking the reins again into his hands. "I do, often, when he begins to kick against the p.r.i.c.ks-and I think he will listen to reason. But the examples he has before his eyes are all the wrong kind. He is always seeing people going off on their own, without authority from you; it looks mighty gay, as though they were really leaving for good, and that is a temptation to all but the strongest characters. For instance, lately-who was it went off? A lady, from the 'good' Russian table, that Frau Chauchat. She's gone to Daghestan, they say. Well, Daghestan-I don't know the climate, it is probably better, when all is said and done, than being right down on the water. But after all, it is the flat-land, according to our ideas up here-though for aught I know it may be mountainous, geographically speaking; I am not much up on the subject. But how can a person who isn't sound live out there, where all the proper ideas are totally lacking, and n.o.body has a notion of the regimen, the rest-cure, and measuring, and all that? Anyhow, she will be coming back, she told me so herself-happened to. How did we come to speak of her?-Yes, Herr Hofrat, I remember as thought it was yesterday, how we met you in the garden, or, rather, you met us, for we were sitting on a bench-I could show you the very bench, to-day, that we were sitting on-we were sitting and smoking. Or, rather, I was smoking, for my cousin doesn't smoke, oddly enough. You were smoking too, and we exchanged our brands, I recall. Your Brazil I found excellent; but I suspect one has to go about them a little gingerly, or something may happen as it happened to you that time with the two little imported-when your bosom swelled with pride, and you nearly toddled off, you know. I may joke about it, since it turned out all right. I've ordered another couple of hundred of my Maria lately. I'm very dependent on her, she suits me in every respect. But the carriage and customs make the cost rather mount up-so if you have anything good to suggest, Herr Hofrat, I'm ready to have a go at the domestic product-I see some attractive weeds in the windows. Yes, we were privileged to look at your paintings, I remember the whole thing so well. And I was perfectly amazed at your oil technique, I'd never venture anything like it. You showed us the portrait you made of Frau Chauchat, simply first-cla.s.s treatment of the skin-I must say I was very much struck by it. At that time I was not personally acquainted with the sitter, only by sight. But just before she went off, I got to know her." "You don't say!" answered the Hofrat-a little as he had that time when Hans Castorp told him, shortly before the first examination, that he had fever. He said no more.

"Yes," went on the youth, "I made her acquaintance-a thing that isn't so easy, hereabouts, you know. But Frau Chauchat and I, we managed, at the eleventh hour, we had some conversation-Ff-f!" went Hans Castorp, and drew his breath sharply through his teeth. The needle had gone in. "That was certainly a very important nerve you happened to hit on, Herr Hofrat," he said. "I do a.s.sure you, it hurt like the devil. Thanks, a little ma.s.sage does it good... Yes, we came a little closer to each other, in conversation."

"Ah? Well?" the Hofrat said. His manner was as one expecting from his own experience a very favouring reply, and expressing his agreement in antic.i.p.ation by the way he puts the question.

"I'm afraid my French was rather lame," Hans Castorp answered evasively. "I haven't had much occasion to use it. But the words somehow come into one's mind when one needs them-so we understood each other tolerably well."

"I believe you," said the Hofrat. "Well?" he repeated his inquisition; and even added, of his own motion: "Pretty nice, what?"

Hans Castorp stood, legs and elbows extended, his face turned up, b.u.t.toning his shirt-collar.

"It's the old story," he said. "At a place like this, two people, or two families, can live weeks on end under one roof, without speaking. But some day they get acquainted, and take to each other, only to find that one of the parties is on the point of leaving. Regrettable incidents like that happen, I suppose. In such cases, one feels like keeping in touch by post, at least. But Frau Chauchat-" "Tut, she won't, won't she?" the Hofrat laughed.

"No, she wouldn't hear of it. Does she write to you, now and again, from where she is staying?"

"Lord bless you!" Behrens answered, "she'd never think of it. In the first place, she's too lazy, and in the second-how could she? I can't read Russian, though I can jabber it, after a fashion, when I have to, but I can't read a word-nor you either, I should suppose. And the puss can purr fast enough in French or in book German, but writing-it would floor her altogether. Think of the spelling! No, my poor young friend, we'll have to console each other. She always comes back again, sooner or later. Different people take it differently-it's a question of procedure, or of temperament. One goes off and keeps coming back, another stops long enough that he doesn't need to come back. Just put it to your cousin that if he goes off now, you're likely to be still here to see him return in state." "But Herr Hofrat, how long do you mean that I-?"

"That you? You mean that he, don't you? That he won't stop as long a time below as he has been up here, that is what I mean, and so I tell you. That's my humble opinion, and I lay it on you to tell him so from me, if you will be so kind as to undertake the commission."

Such, more or less, would be the trend of their conversation, artfully conducted by Hans Castorp, who, however, reaped nothing or less than nothing for his pains. How long one must remain in order to see the return of a person departed before her time- on that point the result was equivocal; while as for direct news of the departed fair one, he got simply none at all. No, he would have no news of her, so long as they were separated by the mystery of time and s.p.a.ce. She would never write, and no opportunity would be afforded him to do so. And when he came to think of it, how should it be otherwise? Was it not very bourgeois, even pedantic, of him, to imagine they ought to write, when he himself had been of opinion that it was neither necessary nor desirable for them to speak? Had he even spoken with her, that carnival evening- anything that might be called speaking, and not rather the utterance of a dream, couched in a foreign tongue, and very little "civilized" in its drift? Why should he write to her, on letter-paper or on postcards, setting down for her edification, as he did for that of his people at home, the fluctuations of his curve? Clavdia had been right in feeling herself dispensed from writing by virtue of the freedom her illness gave her. Speaking and writing were of course the first concern of a humanistic and republican spirit; they were the proper affair of Brunetto Latini, the same who wrote the book about the virtues and the vices, and taught the Florentines the art of language and how to guide their state according to the rules of politics.

And here Hans Castorp was reminded of Ludovico Settembrini, and flushed, as once he had when the Italian entered his sick-room and turned on the light. Hans Castorp might have applied to him with his metaphysical puzzles, if only by way of challenge or in a carping spirit, without any serious expectation of an answer from the humanist, whose concerns and interests, of course, were all of this earth. But since the carnival gaieties, and Settembrini's impa.s.sioned exit from the music-room, there had been a coolness between them, due on Hans Castorp's side to a bad conscience, on the other's to the deep wound dealt his pedagogic pride. They avoided each other, and for weeks exchanged not a single word. In the eyes of one whose view it was that all moral sanctions resided in the reason and the virtue, Hans Castorp must have ceased to be "a delicate child of life"; Herr Settembrini must by now have given him up for lost. The youth hardened his heart, he scowled and stuck out his lips when they met, and the Italian's darkly ardent gaze rested upon him in silent reproach. But his resentment dissolved on the instant, the first time Herr Settembrini spoke to him, which, as we have said, happened after weeks of silence. Even so, it was in pa.s.sing, and in the form of a cla.s.sical allusion, for the understanding of which some training in occidental culture was required. They met, after dinner, in the gla.s.s door-that door which nowadays was never guilty of banging. Settembrini overtook the young man, and in the act to pa.s.s him, said: "Well, Engineer, and how have you enjoyed the pomegranate?"

Hans Castorp smiled, overjoyed, but in confusion. He answered: "I don't quite understand, Herr Settembrini. Did we have any pomegranates? I don't recall having tasted-oh, yes, once in my life I had pomegranate juice and soda; it was too sweet." The Italian, already in front of him, turned his head to say: "G.o.ds and mortals have been known to visit the nether world and find their way back again. But in that kingdom they know that he who tastes even once of its fruits belongs to them." He pa.s.sed on, in his everlasting check trousers, and left Hans Castorp behind, presumably, and to a certain extent actually, staggered by so much allusiveness; though he was stirred to irritation at its being taken for granted, and muttered through his teeth after the departing back: "Carducci-Latini-humani-spagheti-get along, do, and leave me in peace!"

Yet he was at bottom sincerely glad to have the silence broken. For despite his keepsake, the macabre trophy he wore next his heart, he leaned upon Herr Settembrini, set great store by his character and opinions; and the thought of being cast off would have weighed upon his spirit more heavily than that remembered boyish feeling of being left behind at school and not counting any more, of enjoying, like Herr Albin, the boundless advantages of his shameful state. He did not venture, however, himself to address his mentor; who, for his part, let weeks elapse before he again approached his "delicate child."

The ocean of time, rolling onwards in monotonous rhythm, bore the Easter-tide on its billows. And they observed the season at the Berghof, as they did consistently all the recurrent feasts of the year, by way of breaking up and articulating the long stretches of time. At early breakfast there was a nosegay of violets at each place; at second breakfast each guest had a coloured egg; while sugar and chocolate hares adorned and made festive the midday table.

"Have you ever made a voyage by steamship, Tenente? Or you, Engineer?" asked Herr Settembrini, strolling up to the cousins' table, toothpick in mouth. Most of the guests were shortening the main rest-cure in honour of the day, and devoting a quarter-hour to coffee and cognac. "These rabbits and coloured eggs somehow remind me of the life on board a great oceangoing boat, where you stare at a briny waste and a bare horizon for weeks on end, and even the exaggerated ease of the life scarcely avails to make you forget its precariousness, the submerged consciousness of which continues to gnaw at the depths of your being. I still recall the spirit in which the pa.s.sengers in such an ark piously observe the feasts of terra firma: they have thoughts of the outer world, they are sensitive to the calendar. On sh.o.r.e it would be Easter today, they say; or, to-day they are celebrating the King's birthday-and we will celebrate too, as best we may. We are human beings too. Isn't that the idea?" The cousins acquiesced. It was precisely that. Hans Castorp, touched by being once more addressed, and p.r.i.c.ked by his conscience, praised Herr Settembrini's words in sounding tones; p.r.o.nounced them capital; said how spirited they were, how much the language of a literary man. He could not say too much. Undoubtedly, though only superficially, as Herr Settembrini, in his plastic way, had remarked, the comfort on board an ocean steamer did make one forget the element of risk in the circ.u.mstances. If he might venture to add anything, he would say it even induced a sort of light headedness, a tempting of fate, which the ancients-in his desire to please he quoted the cla.s.sics!-had called hubris hubris. Belshazzar, King of Babylon, and that sort of thing. In short, it came close to being blasphemous. Yet, on the other hand, the luxury of an ocean-going vessel connoted (!) a majestic triumph of the human spirit, it was an honour to human kind, to launch all this comfort and luxury upon the salt sea foam and there sustain it-man thus boldly set his foot, as it were, upon the forces of nature, controlled the wild elements; and that connoted (!) the victory of civilization over chaos-if he might make so free as to employ the phrase.

Herr Settembrini listened attentively, legs and arms crossed, daintily stroking with the toothpick his flowing moustaches.

"It is remarkable," he said. "A man cannot make general observations to any extent, on any subject, without betraying himself, without introducing his entire individuality, and presenting, as in an allegory, the fundamental theme and problem of his own existence. This, Engineer, is what you have just done. All you have just now said came from the very depths of your personality; even the present stage you have arrived at found there poetic expression, and showed itself to be still the experimental-"

"Placet experiri," Hans Castorp said, with the Italian c, laughed and nodded.

"Sicuro-if what is involved is not recklessness and loose living, but an honourable pa.s.sion to explore the universe. You spoke of hubris hubris, that was the word you employed. The hubris hubris which the reason opposes to the powers of darkness is the highest human expression, and calls down "upon it the swift revenge of envious G.o.ds-as when, which the reason opposes to the powers of darkness is the highest human expression, and calls down "upon it the swift revenge of envious G.o.ds-as when, per esempio per esempio, such an ark de luxe de luxe gets shipwrecked and goes gallantly beneath the waves. That is defeat with honour. Prometheus too was guilty of gets shipwrecked and goes gallantly beneath the waves. That is defeat with honour. Prometheus too was guilty of hubris- hubris- and his torture on the Scythian cliffs was from our point of view a holy martyrdom. But what about that other kind of and his torture on the Scythian cliffs was from our point of view a holy martyrdom. But what about that other kind of hubris hubris, which perishes in a wanton trifling with the forces of unreason and hostility to the human race? Is that-can that-be honourable? Si, o no?" Si, o no?" Hans Castorp stirred his coffee-cup, though there was nothing in it. Hans Castorp stirred his coffee-cup, though there was nothing in it.

"Engineer, Engineer," said the Italian, and nodded musingly, his black eyes fixed on s.p.a.ce, "are you not afraid of the hurricane which is the second circle of the Inferno, and which whirls and whips the offenders after the flesh, those lost unhappy ones who sacrificed their reason to their desire? Gran dio! Wh Gran dio! When I picture you, flapping about in the gale, heels over head-I could almost swoon out of sheer pity, and fall 'as a dead body falls.' "

They laughed, glad that he should be pleased to jest and talk poetry. But Settembrini added: "You remember, Engineer, on the evening of mardi gras mardi gras, as you sat over your wine, you took your leave of me-yes, in a way, it amounted to that. Well, to-day it is my turn. You see me, gentlemen, in act to bid you farewell. I am leaving House Berghof." The cousins were aghast.

"Impossible! You are joking," Hans Castorp cried, as he had cried once before, on a like occasion. He was nearly as much startled now as then.

Settembrini answered, in his turn: "Not at all. It is as I tell you. More than that, the news should be to you no news. I once explained to you that in the moment when I became aware that my hope of looking forward to a return to my work within any reasonable time was no longer tenable, in that moment I was settled to strike my tent, so far as this establishment is concerned, and seek in the village a permanent logis logis. Well-the moment has arrived. I cannot recover, that is settled. I can prolong my days, but only up here. My final sentence is for life-Hofrat Behrens with his customary vivacity has p.r.o.nounced my doom. Very well, I have drawn the inevitable inference. I have taken new quarters, and am about to remove thither my small earthly possessions, and the tools of my literary craft. It is not far from here, in the Dorf; we shall surely see each other, surely I will not lose sight of you; but as a fellow-guest of this establishment I have the honour to take my leave."

Such was the announcement Settembrini had made, that Easter Sunday. Both cousins had shown themselves exceedingly upset. They had talked at length and repeatedly with him, on the subject of his resolve; also about how he could carry on the service of the cure even after he left the Berghof; about his taking with him and continuing the great encyclopaedic task he had set himself, that survey of the masterpieces of belles-lettres, from the point of view of human suffering and its elimination; finally, about Herr Settembrini's future lodging, in the house of a "petty chandler," as the Italian called him. The chandler, it appeared, let his upper storeys to a Bohemian ladies'-tailor, who in his turn let out lodgings. And now all these arrangements lay in the past. Time had moved steadily on, and brought more than one change in its train. Settembrini had ceased to have residence at the Berghof, he had taken up his abode with Lukacek, the ladies' tailor-and that indeed some weeks back. He had not made his exit in a sleigh, but on foot, wearing a short yellow coat, garnished spa.r.s.ely with fur at the collar and wrists, and accompanied by a man who trundled the earthly and literary baggage of the humanist on a hand-lorry. He pinched one of the dining-room girls in the cheek with the back of two fingers, and went off down the drive, swinging his stick-they watched him go. This, as we said, was well on in April, three-quarters of the month lay in the past. It was still the depth of winter-in their chambers the thermometer registered scarcely more than forty degrees; outside there were fifteen degrees of frost, and if one left one's ink-well in the loggia, it froze overnight into an icy lump, like a piece of coal. Yet one knew that spring was nigh. There were days when the sun shone, on which one felt in the air its delicate presence. The melting of the snows was at hand, and brought with it certain changes to the Berghof-despite the authority of Hofrat Behrens, despite all he could say, in dining-hall and bed-chamber, at every meal, at every visit, at every examination, to combat the prevailing prejudice against the season.

Were they, he asked, up here for the winter sports, or were they patients? And if the latter, what good on earth were snow and ice to them? Had they the notion in their heads that the melting snow was a bad time for them to be here? Nonsense!-it was the best time of all. He could show them that there were relatively fewer bedridden, in the whole valley, at this time than at any other in the year. And there was not a spot in the world that was not less favourable to lung-patients at this season than the one they were in. Anybody with a spark of common sense would stop on, and give himself the benefit of the hardening process which this sort of weather afforded. Then, provided they remained for their appointed time, they would be fully healed, staunch against any rigours of any climate in the world. And so forth. But the prejudice stuck, let him say what he would. The Berghof emptied. Perhaps it was the oncoming spring that got in their bones and upset even the steadiest-going; but at all events, the number of "wild," unauthorized departures from House Berghof increased until the situation verged upon the critical. For instance, Frau Salomon from Amsterdam, despite the pleasure she got from displaying her lace underwear at examinations, despite the fact that she was not improving, but getting steadily worse, took an entirely mad and illegitimate leave for the flat-land. Her sojourn in the valley extended much further back than Hans Castorp's; she had entered more than a year ago, with only a slight weakness, for which a three months' stay had been prescribed. Four months later the word was that she would be perfectly sound inside another six weeks. But at the end of that time there was heard no talk of a cure; she must stop for at least another four months. Thus it had gone on: certainly this was no bagnio, no Siberian penal settlement; Frau Salomon had remained, and displayed her beauteous underwear. But now, when the snows were melting, and she was prescribed, at her examination, another six months, on account of whistling sounds in the upper left lung, and unmistakable discords under the left shoulder-blade, her patience suddenly came to an end, and she left for her wet and windy Amsterdam, uttering invectives against Dorf and Platz, the far-famed climate, the doctors, and the International Sanatorium Berghof. Was that well done?

Hofrat Behrens raised shoulders and arms, and let the latter fall with a clap against his sides. At latest, he said, Frau Salomon would be back in the autumn-and for good and all. We shall be able to test the truth of his prophecy, for we are destined to spend yet much earthly time at this pleasure resort. But the Salomon case was far from being the only one of its kind. Time brought about many changes. Time always did-but more gradually, in the rule, not so strikingly. There were gaps at the tables, all seven of them, at the "good" as well as at the "bad" Russian table, and at those that stood transversely to the room. Not that this alone would have given an exact or fair picture of the situation; for there were always arrivals, as well as leave-takings, the bedrooms might be full-though there one dealt with patients whose condition had finally put an end to their exercising any choice in the matter. The gaps in the diningroom were partly due to the exercise of choice; but some of them yawned in a particularly hollow manner-as, for instance, at Dr. Blumenkohl's place-he being dead. That expression he wore, as of something bad-tasting in the mouth, had grown more and more p.r.o.nounced. Then he became permanently bedridden, and then he died-no one knew precisely when, his affair being disposed of with the usual tact and delicacy. A gap. Frau Stohr sat next it-it made her shudder, so she moved over to Joachim Ziemssen's other side, in the room of Miss Robinson, discharged cured, and opposite the schoolmistress, Hans Castorp's neighbour, still faithful to her post. The latter was sitting, for the time, alone on her side of the table, for the other three places were free. The student Rasmussen had grown daily thinner and weaker, he was now bedridden, probably moribund. The great-aunt, with her niece and the fullbreasted Marusja, had gone a journey-that was the usual way to put it, because everybody knew they would be back again. They would certainly be back by autumn, so you could hardly say they had left. The summer solstice-once Whitsuntide was past-stood immediately before them; and after the longest day in the year they would go downhill with a rush, toward winter. At that rate the great-aunt and Marusja were as good as back again-which was as it should be, for the lively Marusja was very far from being cured, and the schoolmistress knew positively that the brown-eyed one had tuberculous ulcers on her swelling bosom, which had more than once already necessitated an operation. Hans Castorp, as Fraulein Engelhart said this, gave a hasty glance at Joachim bending sedulously over his plate a face gone all mottled. The lively great-aunt had given her table-mates a farewell supper in the restaurant, to which were bidden the cousins, Frau Stohr and Fraulein Engelhart-a proper banquet, with caviar, champagne, and liqueurs. Joachim had been very silent, in fact had spoken only once or twice, and then hardly above a whisper; so that the old lady, in a burst of good feeling, had sought to cheer him up, even going so far as to set aside accepted forms and address him with the thou. "Never mind, Vaterchen Vaterchen, cheer up, eat, drink, and be merry, we'll be coming back again," she said. "Let's all eat, drink, and be merry, and begone, dull care! G.o.d will send the autumn in His own good time, before we know it-so why be sad?" Next morning she presented half the diningroom with gay boxes of confits and left, with her two charges, on their little outing. And Joachim? Did he find things easier, for that? Or did he suffer an agony of inward emptiness in view of the vacant places at table? Had his unwonted irritability, his threats of taking un-sanctified leave, anything to do with Marusja's departure? Or, on the other hand, that he had after all not not left, but lent an ear to the Hofrat's gospel of the melting snows-was that fact any way connected with the circ.u.mstance that the full-bosomed Marusja was not gone for good but only on a journey, and would be back again in five of the smallest time-units known to House Berghof? Ah, yes, they were both true, this and the other, as Hans Castorp was well aware, without ever having exchanged a syllable with Joachim on the subject-which he was as careful to refrain from doing as his cousin was, on his side, to avoid mention of another person also lately gone off for a little trip. left, but lent an ear to the Hofrat's gospel of the melting snows-was that fact any way connected with the circ.u.mstance that the full-bosomed Marusja was not gone for good but only on a journey, and would be back again in five of the smallest time-units known to House Berghof? Ah, yes, they were both true, this and the other, as Hans Castorp was well aware, without ever having exchanged a syllable with Joachim on the subject-which he was as careful to refrain from doing as his cousin was, on his side, to avoid mention of another person also lately gone off for a little trip.

In the mean time, who was sitting at Settembrini's table, in the place vacated by the Italian and in the company of certain Dutchmen who were possessed of such mighty appet.i.tes that every day, before the five-course Berghof dinner, even before the soup, each one of them ordered and ate three fried eggs? Who, we say, but Anton Karlowitsch Ferge, the same who had experienced the h.e.l.lish torment of the pleurashock! Yes, Herr Ferge was out of bed. Without the aid of the pneumothorax he had so improved as to be able to spend most of the day up and dressed, and even to a.s.sist at the Berghof meals, with his bushy, good-natured moustaches, and his exaggerated Adam's apple, just as good-natured. The cousins chatted with him sometimes, in dining-room or salon, or even inclined their hearts unto that simple sufferer, and took him with them on the daily walks. Elevated discourse was beyond him; but within his limits he could talk very acceptably about the manufacture of galoshes, and about distant parts of the Russian empire, Samara, Georgia and so on, as they plodded through slush and fog.

For the roads were really hardly pa.s.sable. They streamed with water and reeked with mist. The Hofrat, indeed, said it was not mist, only cloud; but in Hans Castorp's judgment this was quibbling. The spring fought out a bitter struggle, with a hundred setbacks into the depth of winter; the battle lasted months long, well into June. There were times in March when the heat was almost unendurable, as one lay, in the lightest of clothing, in the reclining-chair on the balcony, with the little parasol erected against the sun. In those days some of the ladies plumped for summer, and arrayed themselves in muslins for early breakfast-excusably, perhaps, in view of the singularity of the climate up here, which was favourable to illusion on the score of weather, jumbling, as it did, all the seasons together. Yet their forehandedness was but short-sightedness after all, showing paucity of imagination, the stupidity which cannot conceive anything beyond the present moment; even more was it an avidity for change, a time-devouring restlessness and impatience. It was March by the calendar, therefore it was spring, which meant as good as summer; and they pulled out their summer clothes, to appear in them before autumn should overtake them. Which, in fact, it did. With April, cold, wet, cloudy weather set in. A long spell of rain turned at length into flurries of fresh snow. Fingers were stiff in the loggia, both camel's-hair rugs were called into service, it did not lack much of putting the fur sleeping-sack in requisition anew; the management brought itself to turn on the heat, and on all hands were heard bitter complainings-the spring had betrayed them. Toward the end of the month the valley lay deep in snow; but then it thawed, just as certain experienced or weather-sensitive among the guests had prophesied it would: Frau Stohr, the ivory Levi, but equally the Widow Hessenfeld, smelt and felt it simultaneously, before ever the smallest little cloud showed itself over the top of the granite formation to the south. Frau Hessenfeld got colic, Fraulein Levi became bedridden, and Frau Stohr, drawing back her lips from her ratlike teeth with the churlish expression she had, daily and hourly gave utterance to her superst.i.tious fear of a haemorrhage-for it was common talk that the thaw brought them about, or at least favoured them. It became unbelievably warm. The heat was turned off, balcony doors were left open all night, and still it was over fifty degrees in the morning. The snow melted apace, it turned grey, became porous and saturated; the drifts shrank together, and seemed to sink into the earth. There was a gurgling, a trickling and oozing, all abroad. The trees dripped, their ma.s.ses of snow slid off; the shovelled-up barricades in the streets, the pallid layers carpeting the meadows, disappeared alike, though not all at once, they had lain too heavy for that. Then what lovely apparitions of the springtime revealed themselves! It was unheard-of, fairylike. There lay the broad meadows, with the coneshaped summit of the Schwarzhorn towering in the background, still in snow, and close in on the right the snow-buried Skaletta glacier. The common scene of pasture and hayrick was still snow-clad, though with a thin and scanty coat, that everywhere showed bare patches of dark earth or dry gra.s.s sucking through. Yet after all, the cousins found, what a curious sort of snow it was! Thick in the distance, next the wooded slopes, but in the foreground a mere sprinkling at most; the stretches of discoloured and winter-killed gra.s.s were dappled or sprigged with white. They looked closer, they bent down surprised-it was not snow, it was flowers: snow-flowers, a snow of flowers, short-stemmed chalices of white and palest blue. They were crocuses, no less; sprung by millions from the soggy meadow-bottom, and so thick that one actually confused them with the snow into which they merged.

The cousins smiled at the deception, and for joy at the wonder before their eyes-at this timorous and lovely a.s.sumption 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 b.u.t.tonholes; wore them home and put them in gla.s.ses 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!