The Magic Mountain Part 36

No doubt Hans Castorp, were he wishful to do so, could without any great trouble have reckoned himself into certainty; just as the reader can, in case all this vagueness and involvedness are repugnant to his healthy sense. Perhaps our hero himself was not quite comfortable either; though he refused to give himself any trouble to wrestle clear of vagueness and involution and arrive at certainty of how much time had gone over his head since he came up here. His scruple was of the conscience-yet surely it is a want of conscientiousness most flagrant of all not to pay heed to the time! We do not know whether we may count it in his favour that circ.u.mstances advantaged his lack of inclination, or perhaps we ought to say his disinclination. When Frau Chauchat came back-under circ.u.mstances very different from those Hans Castorp had imagined, but of that in its place-when she came back, it was the Advent season again, and the shortest day of the year; the beginning of winter, astronomically speaking, was at hand. Apart from arbitrary time-divisions, and with reference to the quant.i.ty of snow and cold, it had been winter for G.o.d knows how long, interrupted, as always all too briefly, by burning hot summer days, with a sky of an exaggerated depth of blueness, well-nigh shading into black; real summer days, such as one often had even in the winter, aside from the snow-and the snow one might also have in the summer! This confusion in the seasons, how often had Hans Castorp discussed it with the departed Joachim! It robbed the year of its articulation, made it tediously brief, or briefly tedious, as one chose to put it; and confirmed another of Joachim's disgusted utterances, to the effect that there was no time up here to speak of, either long or short. The great confusion played havoc, moreover, with emotional conceptions, or states of consciousness like "still" and "again"; and this was one of the very most gruesome, bewildering, uncanny features of the case. Hans Castorp, on his first day up here, had discovered in himself a hankering to dabble in that uncanny, during the five mighty meals in the gaily stenciled dining-room; when a first faint giddiness, as yet quite blameless, had made itself felt.

Since then, however, the deception upon his senses and his mind had a.s.sumed much larger proportions. Time, however weakened the subjective perception of it has become, has objective reality in that it brings things to pa.s.s. It is a question for professional thinkers-Hans Castorp, in his youthful arrogance, had one time been led to consider it-whether the hermetically sealed conserve upon its shelf is outside of time. We know that time does its work, even upon Seven-Sleepers. A physician cites a case of a twelve-year-old-girl, who fell asleep and slept thirteen years; a.s.suredly she did not remain thereby a twelve-year-old girl, but bloomed into ripe womanhood while she slept. How could it be otherwise? The dead man-is dead; he has closed his eyes on time. He has plenty of time, or personally speaking, he is timeless. Which does not prevent his hair and nails from growing, or, all in all-but no, we shall not repeat those free-and-easy expressions used once by Joachim, to which Hans Castorp, newly arrived from the flat-land, had taken exception. Hans Castorp's hair and nails grew too, grew rather fast. He sat very often in the barber's chair in the main street of the Dorf, wrapped in a white sheet, and the barber, chatting obsequiously the while, deftly performed upon the fringes of his hair, growing too long behind his ears. First time, then the barber, performed their office upon our hero. When he sat there, or when he stood at the door of his loggia and pared his nails and groomed them, with the accessories from his dainty velvet case, he would suddenly be overpowered by a mixture of terror and eager joy that made him fairly giddy. And this giddiness was in both senses of the word: rendering our hero not only dazed and dizzy, but flighty and light-headed, incapable of distinguishing between "now" and "then," and p.r.o.ne to mingle these together in a timeless eternity.

As we have repeatedly said, we wish to make him out neither better nor worse than he was; accordingly we must report that he often tried to atone for his reprehensible indulgence in attacks of mysticism, by virtuously and painstakingly striving to counteract them. He would sit with his watch open in his hand, his thin gold watch with the engraved monogram on the lid, looking at the porcelain face with the double row of black and red Arabic figures running round it, the two fine and delicately curved gold hands moving in and out over it, and the little second-hand taking its busy ticking course round its own small circle. Hans Castorp, watching the second-hand, essayed to hold time by the tail, to cling to and prolong the pa.s.sing moments. The little hand tripped on its way, unheeding the figures it reached, pa.s.sed over, left behind, left far behind, approached, and came on to again. It had no feeling for time limits, divisions, or measurements of time. Should it not pause on the sixty, or give some small sign that this was the end of one thing and the beginning of the next? But the way it pa.s.sed over the tiny intervening unmarked strokes showed that all the figures and divisions on its path were simply beneath it, that it moved on, and on.- Hans Castorp shoved his product of the Glashutte works back in his waistcoat pocket, and left time to take care of itself.

How make plain to the sober intelligence of the flat-land the changes that took place in the inner economy of our young adventurer? The dizzying problem of ident.i.ties grew grander in its scale. If to-day's now-even with decent goodwill-was not easy to distinguish from yesterday's, the day before's or the day before that's, which were all as like each other as the same number of peas, was it not also capable of being confused with the now which had been in force a month or a year ago, was it not also likely to be mingled and rolled round in the course of that other, to blend with it into the always? However one might still differentiate between the ordinary states of consciousness which we attached to the words "still," "again," "next," there was always the temptation to extend the significance of such descriptive words as "tomorrow," "yesterday," by which "to-day" holds at bay "the past" and "the future." It would not be hard to imagine the existence of creatures, perhaps upon smaller planets than ours, practising a miniature time-economy, in whose brief span the brisk tripping gait of our second-hand would possess the tenacious spatial economy of our hand that marks the hours. And, contrariwise, one can conceive of a world so s.p.a.cious that its time system too has a majestic stride, and the distinctions between "still," "in a little while," "yesterday," "to-morrow," are, in its economy, possessed of hugely extended significance. That, we say, would be not only conceivable, but, viewed in the spirit of a tolerant relativity, and in the light of an already-quoted proverb, might be considered legitimate, sound, even estimable. Yet what shall one say of a son of earth, and of our time to boot, for whom a day, a week, a month, a semester, ought to play such an important role, and bring so many changes, so much progress in its train, who one day falls into the vicious habit-or perhaps we should say, yields sometimes to the desire-to say "yesterday" when he means a year ago, and "next year" when he means to-morrow? Certainly we must deem him lost and undone, and the object of our just concern.

There is a state, in our human life, there are certain scenic surroundings-if one may use that adjective to describe the surroundings we have in mind-within which such a confusion and obliteration of distances in time and s.p.a.ce is in a measure justified, and temporary submersion in them, say for the term of a holiday, not reprehensible. Hans Castorp, for his part, could never without the greatest longing think of a stroll along the ocean's edge. We know how he loved to have the snowy wastes remind him of his native landscape of broad ocean dunes; we hope the reader's recollections will bear us out when we speak of the joys of that straying. You walk, and walk-never will you come home at the right time, for you are of time, and time is vanished. O ocean, far from thee we sit and spin our tale; we turn toward thee our thoughts, our love, loud and expressly we call on thee, that thou mayst be present in the tale we spin, as in secret thou ever wast and shalt be!-A singing solitude, spanned by a sky of palest grey; full of stinging damp that leaves a salty tang upon the lips.-We walk along the springy floor, strewn with seaweed and tiny mussel-sh.e.l.ls. Our ears are wrapped about by the great mild, ample wind, that comes sweeping untrammelled blandly through s.p.a.ce, and gently blunts our senses. We wander- wander-watching the tongues of foam lick upward toward our feet and sink back again. The surf is seething; wave after wave, with high, hollow sound, rears up, rebounds, and runs with a silken rustle out over the flat strand: here one, there one, and more beyond, out on the bar. The dull, pervasive, sonorous roar closes our ears against all the sounds of the world. O deep content, O wilful bliss of sheer forgetfulness! Let us shut our eyes, safe in eternity! No-for there in the foaming grey-green waste that stretches with uncanny foreshortening to lose itself in the horizon, look, there is a sail. There? Where is there? How far, how near? You cannot tell. Dizzyingly it escapes your measurement. In order to know how far that ship is from the sh.o.r.e, you would need to know how much room it occupies, as a body in s.p.a.ce. Is it large and far off, or is it small and near? Your eye grows dim with uncertainty, for in yourself you have no sense-organ to help you judge of time or s.p.a.ce.-We walk, walk. How long, how far? Who knows? Nothing is changed by our pacing, there is the same as here, once on a time the same as now, or then; time is drowning in the measureless monotony of s.p.a.ce, motion from point to point is no motion more, where uniformity rules; and where motion is no more motion, time is no longer time.

The schoolmen of the Middle Ages would have it that time is an illusion; that its flow in sequence and causality is only the result of a sensory device, and the real existence of things in an abiding present. Was he walking by the sea, the philosopher to whom this thought first came, walking by the sea, with the faint bitterness of eternity upon his lips? We must repeat that, as for us, we have been speaking only of the lawful licence of a holiday, of fantasies born of leisure, of which the wellconducted mind wearies as quickly as a vigorous man does of lying in the warm sand. To call into question our human means and powers of perception, to question their validity, would be absurd, dishonourable, arbitrary, if it were done in any other spirit than to set bounds to reason, which she may not overstep without incurring the reproach of neglecting her own task. We can only be grateful to a man like Herr Settembrini, who with pedagogic dogmatism characterized metaphysics as the "evil principle," to the young man in whose fate we are interested, and whom he had once subtly called "life's delicate child." We shall best honour the memory of one departed, who was dear to us, if we say plainly that the meaning, the end and aim of the critical principle can and may be but one thing: the thought of duty, the law of life. Yes, lawgiving wisdom, in marking off the limits of reason, planted precisely at those limits the banner of life, and proclaimed it man's soldierly duty to serve under that banner. May we set it down on the credit side of Hans Castorp's account, that he had been strengthened in his vicious time-economy, his baleful traffic with eternity, by seeing that all his cousin's zeal, called doggedness by a certain melancholy bl.u.s.terer, had but the more surely brought him to a fatal end?

Mynheer Peeperkorn

MYNHEER PEEPERKORN, an elderly Dutchman, spent some time at House Berghof, that establishment which, in its prospectus, so correctly described itself as "international." Pieter Peeperkorn-such was his name, so he called himself, as for instance, 'Pieter Peeperkorn will now take unto himself a Hollands gin"-was a colonial Dutchman, a man from Java, a coffee-planter. His slightly faded nationality is scarcely sufficient ground for introducing him at this late day into our story. G.o.d knows we have had racial mixtures a-plenty in the famous cure conducted with such many-tongued efficiency by Herr Hofrat Behrens! There was the Egyptian princess who had given the Hofrat the extraordinary coffee-machine and sphinx cigarettes, a sensational person with cropped hair and beringed fingers yellow with nicotine, who went about-except at the main meal of the day, for which she made full Parisian toilet-in a sack coat and well-pressed trousers; and who scorned the world of men, to lay hot and heavy, though fitful siege to an insignificant little Roumanian Jewess called plain Frau Landauer, while Lawyer Paravant for her royal highness's beaux beaux yeux yeux neglected his mathematics and altogether played the fool for love. This princess, in addition to her own colourful personality, had among her little suite a Moorish eunuch, a weak and sickly man, who yet, despite his basic and const.i.tutional lack- upon which Caroline Stonr loved to dwell-clung to life more desperately than most, and was quite inconsolable over the conclusions Hofrat Behrens drew from the transparency they made of his dusky inside. neglected his mathematics and altogether played the fool for love. This princess, in addition to her own colourful personality, had among her little suite a Moorish eunuch, a weak and sickly man, who yet, despite his basic and const.i.tutional lack- upon which Caroline Stonr loved to dwell-clung to life more desperately than most, and was quite inconsolable over the conclusions Hofrat Behrens drew from the transparency they made of his dusky inside.

Mynheer Peeperkorn, then, compared with such phenomena, might seem well-nigh colourless. And it is true that this part of our story might, like an earlier chapter, bear the caption "A Newcomer." But the reader need not fear that in him another occasion for pedagogic strife has arrived upon the scene. No, Mynheer Peeperkorn was not the man to be the bearer of logical confusion. He was quite a different man, as we shall see. Yet he brought sore dismay and perplexity upon the hero of our tale, as will shortly be very evident.

Mynheer Peeperkorn arrived at the Dorf station by the same evening train as Frau Chauchat. They drove up in the same sleigh to House Berghof, and supped together in the restaurant. The arrival, in short, was not only coincident but concurrent, and continued in that sense, Mynheer taking his place beside the returned wanderer at the "good" Russian table, opposite the doctor's seat-the place Popoff had occupied, what time he performed his wild and equivocal antics. The companionship troubled our good Hans Castorp-that it should turn out like this had never entered his mind. The Hofrat, after his own fashion, had announced the day and hour of Clavdia's return. "Well, Castorp, old top," he said, "there's always a reward for faithful waiting. To-morrow the little puss will be slinking back-I've had a dispatch." But not a word that she might not come alone. Perhaps he did not know that she and Peeperkorn were travelling together; at least, he showed surprise when Hans Castorp, the day after, as much as took him to task.

"Don't know myself where she picked him up," he declared. "I take it they met on the return from the Pyrenees. Alas, poor Strephon! Tut, my lad, you'll have to put up with it, no use pulling a long face. They're thick as thieves, it seems, have even their luggage in common. The man's larded with money, from what I hear. Retired coffeeking, Malayan valet, plutocratic is no word for it. But he hasn't come up here for fun. A catarrhal condition due to alcoholism-and from what I can see he is threatened with tropical fever, malignant, intermittent, you know; protracted, obstinate. You'll have to be patient with him."

"Don't mention it," replied Hans Castorp, loftily. "And what about you?" he said to himself. "I wonder what your feelings are; you didn't come off scot-free either, or I miss my guess, you blue-in-the-face widower, with your oil-painting technique. Old dog in the manger! You needn't tell me: so far as Peeperkorn is concerned, I'm certain we're companions in misery."-"Quaint creature," he continued aloud, and shrugged. "An original, certainly. He's so lean-yet he's robust; that is the impression he makes, at least that's the impression I got at breakfast. Lean, and robust, those are the adjectives, I think, though they aren't commonly used together. He is certainly tall and broad, and likes to stand with his legs apart and his hands in his trouser pockets- which, I observe, are put in running up and down, not like yours and mine and most people's of our cla.s.s. And when he stands there and talks, in his guttural Dutch voice, there's something unmistakably robust about him. But he has a spa.r.s.e whisker, you could almost count the hairs; and his eyes are very small and pale, hardly any colour to them at all. He keeps trying to open them wide, and has made a lot of wrinkles, regular corrugations, that turn up on the temples and run straight across his forehead, and his forehead is high and red, with long wisps of white hair. He wears a clerical waist-coat, but his tail-coat is check. These are the impressions I got this morning." Behrens answered: "I see you've taken his number-you're right, too, for you will have to come to terms with his being here."

"Yes, I expect we shall," said Hans Castorp. We have left it to him to describe the unlooked-for guest, and he has not come badly off-we could scarcely add anything essential to the picture. He had a good view; as we know, he had in Clavdia's absence moved closer to the "good" Russian table; the one where he now sat stood parallel with hers, only rather farther away from the verandah door. Both he and Peeperkorn were on the inner and narrow side of their respective tables, and thus, in a way, neighbours, Hans Castorp being slightly in the Dutchman's rear, very advantageously placed to observe him, as also to look at the three-quarter view which Frau Chauchat's profile presented. We might round out Hans Castorp's description by a few notes: as, that the Dutchman's nose was large and fleshy, his mouth large too, and bare of moustaches, the lips of irregular shape, as though chapped. His hands were fairly broad, with long, pointed nails; he used them freely as he talked, and he talked almost continuously, though Hans Castorp failed to get his drift. Those adequate, compelling, cleanly att.i.tudes of the hands-so varied, so full of subtle nuances-possessed a technique like that of an orchestral conductor. He would curve forefinger and thumb to a circle; extend the palm, that was so broad, with nails so pointed, to hush, to caution, to enjoin attention-and then, having by such means led up to some stupendous utterance, produce an anticlimax by saying something his audience could not quite grasp. Yet this, perhaps, was less a disappointment than it was a conversion of expectancy into ecstatic amaze; for the speaking gesture made good what he did not say, and was of itself alone vastly satisfying and diverting. Sometimes, indeed, after leading up to his climax, he left it out altogether. He would lay his hand tenderly on the arm of the young Bulgarian scholar next him, or on Frau Chauchat's on the other side; then lift it obliquely for silence, create suspense for what he was about to say, wrinkling high his brows, so that the lines running upwards from the outer corners of his eyes were deepened like those on a mask; he would look down on the cloth before his neighbour's place, and from his thick, distorted lips words of the highest import seemed about to issue then, after more pause, he would breathe an outward breath, give up the struggle, nod, as though to say "As you were," and return undelivered to his coffee, which was served to him of extra strength, in his own machine.

After the draught he would proceed thus, choking off with one hand the conversation, making a silence round him, as a conductor hushes the confused sounds of tuning instruments and collects his orchestra to begin a number; mastering at will any situation, for could anything resist that regal head, with its aureole of white hair and its pallid eyes, the great folds of the brows, the long whisker and shaven raw upper lip? They were silent, they looked at him and smiled, they waited, antic.i.p.atorily nodding. He spoke.

In rather a low voice he said: "Ladies and gentlemen. Very well. Very well indeed. Very. Settled. But will you keep in mind, and-not for one moment-not one moment-lose sight of the fact-but no more. On this point not another word. What is inc.u.mbent upon me to say is not so much-it is in the first place simply this: it is our duty-we lie under a solemn-an inviolable No! No, ladies and gentlemen! It was not thus-it was not thus that I-how mistaken to imagine that I-quite right, ladies and gentlemen! Set-tled. Let us drop the subject. I feel we understand each other, and now-to the point!"

He had said absolutely nothing. But look, manner, and gestures were so peremptory, perfervid, pregnant, that all, even Hans Castorp, were convinced they had heard something of high moment; or, if aware of the total lack of matter and sequence in the speech, certainly never missed it. We wonder how it might appear to a deaf person. Perhaps the impressiveness of what he saw would make him draw an altogether wrong conclusion as to what he might have heard but for his infirmity- and cause him to suffer accordingly. Such people incline to mistrust and bitterness. On the other hand, a young Chinaman at the other end of the table, who possessed too little of the language to understand what had been said, but had yet a.s.siduously listened and looked, clapped his hands and called out: "Tres bien, tres bien tres bien." And Mynheer Peeperkorn came "to the point." He drew himself up, swelled his broad chest, b.u.t.toned the check frock-coat over the clerical waistcoat; the pose of his white head was regal. He beckoned to a "dining-room girl"-it was the dwarf-and though busily engaged, she at once obeyed his weighty summons, and stood, milk jug and coffee-pot in hand, by his chair. She too felt drawn to look at him with an ingratiating smile on her large, old face; she too was rapt by the pallid gaze beneath the deep-wrinkled brow; by the lifted hand, whose thumb and forefinger were joined in an O, while the other three with their lanceolate nails stood stiffly up.

"My child," said he, "very well. Very well indeed-very. You are small-what is that to me? On the contrary. I find it a positive good, I thank G.o.d, that you are as you are; I thank G.o.d you are so small and full of character. What I want of you is also small and full of character. But in the first place, what is your name?" She said, smiling and stammering, that her name was Emerentia.

"Splendid," cried Peeperkorn, throwing himself back in his chair and stretching out his arm toward her. He cried it in the tone of one who would say "Wonderful! Is not everything wonderful?"-"My child," he went on, with a perfectly serious face, almost sternly, "you surpa.s.s all my expectations. Emerentia! You utter it so modestly-yet, taken with your person, it holds out such boundless possibilities. Beautiful. Worth dwelling upon, communing with in the depths of one's-in order to-understand me, my child: as a term of endearment-the pet name. It might be Rentia. Though Emchen would equally warm and fortify the heart-in short, for the moment, I will abide by Emchen. Emchen, then, 'Emchen my child, attend. A little bread, my love. But hold! Let no misunderstanding come between us-for in your somewhat over life-size face I seem to read-bread, Renzchen, bread; yet not baker's bread, of which in this place we have enough and to spare, in all conceivable forms. Not corn that is baked, my angel, but corn that is burnt-in other words, distilled. Bread of G.o.d, bread of sunshine, little pet name; bread for the laving of man's weary spirit. But I still have misgivings-whether the sense of this word I would even consider subst.i.tuting for it another, the beautiful word cordial-if here we did not encounter a new danger, that it might be understood in the ordinary thoughtless sense-No more, Rentia. Settled. Set-tled, and out of the question. Rather would I, in consideration of the debt of honour I acknowledge, right cordially to rejoice your characteristic smallness-a gin, love, and haste thee. A Schiedamer, Emerentia. Bring me one hither."

"A geneva, sir," repeated the dwarf, and spun three times round on herself, seeking a place for her jugs, which she finally deposited on Hans Castorp's table, quite near him, obviously not wishing to burden Herr Peeperkorn with the same. She put wings to her feet, and he soon received his desire. The little gla.s.s was so full that the "bread" overflowed and bedewed the plate. He took the grain distillation between thumb and middle finger, and held it toward the light. "Pieter Peeperkorn," he declared, "will now take unto himself a gla.s.s of Hollands." He appeared to chew the liquid somewhat, then swallowed it down; "And now," he said, "I look on you all with new eyes." He lifted Frau Chauchat's hand from the cloth, carried it to his lips and laid it back, letting his own rest for some while upon it.

An odd man, and of great personal weight, though incoherent. The population of the Berghof were enthusiastic over him. It was reported that he had only lately retired from his colonial interests and transferred them to the continent. He was said to have a magnificent house at The Hague, and another at Scheveningen. Frau Stohr called him a money magnet (the unhappy woman meant magnate) and indicated the string of pearls Frau Chauchat had worn in the evening since her return to the Berghof. These pearls, Frau Stohr considered, were scarcely a token of affection from the transCaucasian husband; more likely they came out of the common travelling-trunk. She winked and jerked her head in the direction of Hans Castorp, whose discomfiture she parodied with her mouth drawn down-no, illness and affliction had had no power to refine Caroline Stohr; her jeers over the young man's disappointment positively went beyond bounds. He preserved his composure, and corrected her blunder, not unadroitly. It was magnate, not magnet she had meant to say, he told her. Moneymagnate. But magnet was not so bad after all-certainly Herr Peeperkorn had a good deal that was attractive about him. The schoolmistress, Fraulein Engelhart, with a wry smile, flushing dully, but not looking at him as she spoke, asked how he liked the new guest. He replied, quite calmly, that he found Mynheer Peeperkorn a "blurred personality"; a personality, that is, undoubtedly, though blurred. The precision of the characterization showed objectivity and poise; it dislodged the schoolmistress from her position. Ferdinand Wehsal, too, made oblique reference to the unexpected circ.u.mstances of Frau Chauchat's return; and got from Hans Castorp proof that a look may be every whit as telling and unequivocal as the articulate word. "You paltry wretch," said the stare with which Hans Castorp measured the Mannheimer-said it without the shadow of a doubt of its meaning. Wehsal understood that look, and pocketed it up; even nodded and showed his bad teeth; but from that time forward he ceased to carry Hans Castorp's overcoat, when they went their walks with Naphta, Settembrini, and Ferge. But dear me, Hans Castorp could carry his own coat, couldn't he-and much preferred to; he had only let the poor creature take it now and then out of sheer good feeling. However, there was no doubt everybody in the circle knew that Hans Castorp was hard hit by the wholly unforeseen circ.u.mstance, which frustrated all the hopes he had cherished against the return of his carnival partner. It would be putting it even better to say that she had rendered nugatory all his hopes; that, precisely, was the mortifying fact.

His designs had been of the most discreet and delicate, he had meant nothing clumsy or abrupt. He would not even fetch her from the station-what a mercy, indeed, he had not thought of doing so! Uncertain whether a woman-upon whom illness had conferred such a degree of freedom-uncertain whether she would even admit the fantastic adventures of a dream dreamed on carnival night, in a foreign tongue to boot! Whether she would even wish in the first instance to be reminded of them. No, there would be no exigence, no clumsy pressing of claims. Admitted that his relations with the slant-eyed sufferer went beyond the limits prescribed by the traditions of the Occident; the uttermost formality of civilization, even for the moment apparent forgetfulness-was indicated as the suitable procedure. A respectful greeting from table to table-only that, for the time, no more. A courtly approach as occasion indicated, an easy inquiry after the health of the traveller. The actual meeting would follow in good time, as a reward for his chivalrous reserve.

All this fine feeling, now, had become null and void-Hans Castorp's conduct being deprived of choice, and therewith of merit. The presence of Mynheer Peeperkorn effectively disposed of any tactics save utter aloofness. On the evening of the arrival, Hans Castorp had seen from his loge the sleigh come up the winding drive. On the box next the coachman sat the Malayan valet, a yellow little man with a fur collar to his overcoat, and a bowler hat. At the back, his hat over his brows, sat the stranger, beside Clavdia. That night Hans Castorp got little sleep. Next morning he heard for the asking the name of the mysterious new arrival; heard likewise that the two travellers occupied neighbouring suites on the first floor. He was early at breakfast, and sat in his place erect but pale, awaiting the slamming of the gla.s.s door. It did not come. Clavdia's entrance was noiseless; for Mynheer Peeperkorn closed the door behind her-tall and broad, his white hair flaring above his lofty brow, he followed the familiar gliding tread of his companion, as with head stuck out before her she slipped to her chair. Yes, she was unchanged. Regardless of his programme, Hans Castorp devoured her, with his sleep-weary eyes. There was the red-blond hair, no more elaborately dressed than of yore, wound in the same simple braid about her head; there were the "prairie-wolf's eyes," the rounding neck, the lips that seemed fuller than they actually were, thanks to the prominent cheek-bones, which gave the cheeks that exquisite flat or slightly concave look.-Clavdia! he thought, and thrilled. He fixed his eyes on the unexpected guest; not without a toss of the head for the splendid masklike impression the person made; not without summoning a sneer at pretensions which, however justified by present possession, were invalidated by the past-by certain very definite events in the past-for instance in the field of amateur portraiture. Hans Castorp knew, for had not those events visited himself with justifiable pangs?-Even her way of turning, before she sat down, to present herself, as it were, to the room, she had as of yore. Mynheer Peeperkorn a.s.sisted at the little ceremony, standing behind her while it took place, and then seating himself at Clavdia's side.

As for that courtly salute from table to table-nothing came of it. Clavdia's eyes, when she presented herself, had pa.s.sed over Hans Castorp's person and his whole vicinity, and rested upon the far corner of the room. At the next meal it was the same. And the more meals pa.s.sed without any response to his gaze than this blank and indifferent pa.s.sing-over, the more impracticable became the project of the courtly salute. After supper the two travelling-companions sat in the small salon, on the sofa together, surrounded by their table-mates; and Peeperkorn, his magnificent visage flaming against the flashing white of hair and beard, drank out the bottle of red wine he had ordered at table. At each of the main meals he drank one, or two, or two and a half bottles, in addition to the "bread" which he took even at early breakfast. Obviously the system of this kingly man stood in more than common need of moistening. He took in fluid likewise in the form of extra-strong coffee, many times a day, drinking it out of a large cup, even after dinner-or rather, he drank it during dinner, along with the wine. Wine and coffee, Hans Castorp heard him say, were both good for fever-quite aside from their cordial and refreshing properties-very good against the intermittent tropical fever which had kept him in bed for several hours the second day after he arrived. The Hofrat called it quartan fever: it took the Dutchman about every fourth day, first with a chill, then with a fever, then with a mighty sweat. He was said to have also an inflamed spleen, from the same cause.

Vingt Et Un

A LITTLE time pa.s.sed, some three or four weeks-this on our own reckoning, since on Hans Castorp's we cannot depend. They brought no great change. On our hero's part they witnessed an abiding scorn of the unforeseen circ.u.mstances which kept him in undeserved exile, of, in particular, that circ.u.mstance which called itself Pieter Peeperkorn, when it took unto itself a gla.s.s of gin-the disturbing presence of that kingly, incoherent man, which upset Hans Castorp far more than had the presence of the "organ-grinder" in the old days. His brows took on two querulous vertical wrinkles, and five times daily he contracted them as he sat and looked at the returned traveller-glad despite himself to be able to look at her-and at the high-and-mighty presence sitting there all unaware what a poor light past events shed on his present pretensions.

One evening the social hour happened to be livelier than usual-which it might be at any time without especial cause. A Hungarian student played spirited gipsy waltzes on his fiddle; and Hofrat Behrens, who chanced to be present for a quarter-hour with Dr. Krokowski, got somebody to play the melody of the "Pilgrims' Chorus" on the ba.s.s notes of the piano, while he himself operated in a skipping movement with a brush over the treble, and parodied the violin counterpoint. Everybody laughed; and the Hofrat, nodding benevolent approval of his own sprightly performance, withdrew amid applause. The gaiety prolonged itself, there was more music, people sat down with drinks beside them to dominoes and bridge, trifled with the optical instruments, or stood in groups talking. Even the Russian circle mingled with the others in hall and music-room. Mynheer Peeperkorn was to be seen among them-or rather, he could not but be seen, wherever he was, his kingly head towering high above any scene, and dwarfing it by the sheer weight and majesty of his person. Those who stood about him, drawn first by the reports of the man's wealth, soon hung absorbed upon his personality. Forgetful of all else, they stood laughing and nodding, spellbound by the pallid eye, by the brow's mighty folds, by the compulsion of the gestures his longnailed hands performed. And never, for one moment, were they conscious of any lack in his incoherent, rhapsodic, literally futile remarks.

If we look about for our friend Hans Castorp, we shall find him in the reading- and writing-room, where once (but that "once" is vague, not the teller nor the reader of this story, nor yet its hero, being any longer clear upon the degree of its "onceness")-where once he had received certain very important communications touching the history of human progress. It was quiet here-only two or three other persons shared his retreat. At one of the double tables, under the electric light, a man was writing; and a lady with two pairs of gla.s.ses on her nose sat by the bookshelves and turned over the leaves of an ill.u.s.trated magazine. Hans Castorp sat near the open door to the music-room, with his back to the portieres, on a chair that happened to be standing there, a plush-covered chair in Renaissance style, with a high straight back, and no arms. He held a newspaper as though to read it, but instead was listening with his head on one side to the s.n.a.t.c.hes of music and talk from the next room. His brows were dark, his thoughts seemed not on harmonies bent, but rather on the th.o.r.n.y path of his present disillusionment. Bitter, bitter was the weird of our young man, who had borne out the long waiting only to be gulled at the end. Indeed he seemed not far from a sudden determination to fling his paper upon the chair he sat in, to escape by the hall door and exchange the empty gaieties of the salon for the frosty solitude of his balcony, and the society of his Maria.

"And your cousin, Monsieur?" a voice suddenly asked above and behind his shoulder. It was a voice enchanting to his ear; it seemed his senses had been expressly contrived to perceive its sweet-and-bitter huskiness as the very height and summit of earthly harmonies; it was the voice that once had said to him: "Certainly. But be careful not to break it"-a compelling, fateful voice. And if he heard aright, it had asked him about Joachim.

Slowly he let his newspaper fall, and turned his face up a little, so that the crown of his head came against the straight back of his chair. He even closed his eyes, but quickly opened them, and gazed somewhere into s.p.a.ce-the expression on the poor wight's face was well-nigh that of a sleep-walker, or clairvoyant. He wished she might ask again, but she did not, he was not even sure she still stood behind him, when, after all that pause, so tardily and with scarce audible voice he answered: "He is dead. He went down below to the service, and he died."

He realized that this "dead" was the first word to fall between them; likewise, simultaneously, that she was not sure of expressing herself in his tongue, and chose short and easy phrases to condole in. Still standing behind and above him, she said: "Oh, woe, alas! That is too bad! Quite dead and buried? Since when?"

"Some time ago. His mother came and took him back with her. He had grown a beard, a soldier's beard. They fired three salvoes over his grave."

"He deserved them. He was a very good young man. Far better than most other people-than some others one knows."

"Yes, he was good and brave. Rhadamanthus always talked about his doggedness. But his body would have it otherwise. Rebellio carnis Rebellio carnis, the Jesuits call it. He always set store by his body-in the highest sense. However, his body thought otherwise, and snapped its fingers at doggedness. But it is more moral to lose your life than to save it."

"Monsieur is still the philosophizing faineant faineant, I see. But Rhadamanthus? Who isthat?"

"Behrens. That is Settembrini's name for him."

"Ah, Settembrini. Him I know. That Italian who-whom I did not like. He was not hu-ma hu-man. He had-arrogance." The voice dwelt on the word human-dreamily, fanatically; and accented arrogance on the final syllable. "He is no longer here? And I am so stupid, I do not know what is Rhadamanthus."

"A humanistic allusion. Settembrini has moved away. We've philosophized a lot oflate, he and I and Naphta."

"Who is Naphta?"

"His adversary."

"If he is that, then I would gladly make his acquaintance.-Did I not tell you your cousin would die if he went down to be a soldier?"

And Hans Castorp answered as he had vowed and dreamed: "Tu l'as su," he said. "What are you thinking of?" she asked him.

There was a long pause. He did not retract, he waited, with the crown of his head pressed against the chair-back, and his gaze half tranced, to hear her voice again; and again he was not sure she was still there, again he was afraid the broken music might have drowned her departing footsteps. At last it came again: "And Monsieur did not go down to his cousin's funeral?"

He replied: "No, I bade him adieu up here, before they shut him away, when he hadbegun to smile in his beard. His brow was cold-tu sais comme les fronts des mortssont froids?"

"Again! What a way is that to address a lady whom one hardly knows!"

"Must I speak not humanly, but humanistically?"

"Quelle blague! You were here all the time?" You were here all the time?"

"Yes. I waited."

"Waited-for what?"

"For thee!"

A laugh came from above him, a word that sounded like "Madman!"-"For me? How absurd it is-ils ne t'auraient pas laisse partir."

"Oh, yes, Behrens would have, once-he was furious. But it would have been folly.I have not only the old scars that come from my school-days, but the fresh places thatgive me my fever."

"Still fever?"