The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
In a word, Hans Castorp saw his silent relationship to this one careless person among all the others up here as a vacation adventure, which had no claim before the court of reason—or of his own reasonable conscience—and that was primarily because Frau Chauchat was sick, listless, feverish, and worm-eaten deep inside, a condition that was closely bound up with the dubious nature of her whole being and that itself contributed strongly to Hans Castorp’s sense of caution and need to keep his distance. No, it never entered his mind to seek out a real acquaintanceship. As for the rest, it would all be over with no consequences, for better or worse, in another week and a half, when he would enter training with Tunder and Wilms.
For the present, however, he found himself beginning to see the emotions, tensions, satisfactions, and disappointments growing from his tender relationship to this patient as the true purpose and meaning of his vacation, to live entirely for them and allow his mood to be dependent on their success. Conditions here were most beneficial for encouraging him, because people lived together in a restricted area and followed a rigid schedule mandatory for all. Granted, Frau Chauchat’s room was on a different floor—the second—from his own, and she took her rest cures, as Hans Castorp learned from Fräulein Engelhart, in the general lounging area located on the roof, the same one where Captain Miklosich had turned off the lights recently. But the possibility, indeed inevitability, of meeting her presented itself at each of the day’s five meals and on countless other routine occasions from morning till evening. And Hans Castorp thought that was marvelous—as was also the fact that life here had no cares or worries to block the view. At the same time, however, there was something suffocating about being locked up in a box together with auspicious chance.
And yet he did help things along a bit, by putting his mind to the task and figuring out how best to improve his luck. Since Frau Chauchat normally arrived late for meals, he made a point of being late himself, so that he could meet her on the way. He dawdled in his room and wasn’t ready when Joachim came by to fetch him, told his cousin to go on ahead, said he would catch up. Following the advice of instinct, he would wait the few moments he thought necessary and then hurry down to the second floor; but instead of continuing down the same set of stairs, he would follow the corridor almost to the far end, to a second stairway, which was very close to a door he had come to know quite well—room 7. And at every step of the way along this hall connecting the two sets of stairs, there was a chance that one particular door might open at any moment—and so it did, on repeated occasions, slamming shut behind Frau Chauchat, who would emerge soundlessly and glide soundlessly toward the stairs. She might precede him, tucking her hair with her hand, or Hans Castorp might precede her, and then he would feel her eyes on his back, which made his legs cramp and caused pins and needles up and down his spine. But playing the role to the hilt, he would pretend not to know she was even there, as if he led his life in solitary, stout independence. He would bury his hands in his coat pockets and roll his shoulders pointlessly or clear his throat noisily while pounding his chest with his fist—all to proclaim his indifference.
On two occasions he carried this bit of roguery even further. After taking his seat at the table, he patted himself with both hands and said in dismayed annoyance, “I knew it—I’ve forgotten my handkerchief. That means I’ll have to go back upstairs again.” Which he did—just so that he and “Clavdia” could meet head-on, which was something quite different, more dangerous and more intensely alluring than when she walked before or behind him. The first time he tried this maneuver, she measured him with her eyes, from top to bottom, quite brazenly and without the least embarrassment, while still some distance off; but as she drew nearer she turned her face away indifferently and walked right by him. He could not give the results of this meeting a very high rating. The second time, however, she looked directly at him, and not just from a distance; she looked at him the whole time, gazed firmly at him during the entire encounter, scowling just a little, and as they passed one another, she turned her head toward him—and his blood ran cold. Not that we should pity him—he had not wanted it any other way and had arranged the whole affair himself. But this meeting had a powerful effect as it was happening—and afterward, too, because only when it was all over did he see quite clearly how it had been. Never had he observed Frau Chauchat’s face so close up, with every detail plainly visible: he could have counted every strand of reddish-blond hair—each with a slight metallic sheen—that had come free from the simple braid wound around her head. Only a few handbreadths separated his face from hers, its features so extraordinary and yet familiar to him for so long now—and that face spoke to him like nothing in the world. It was both foreign and full of character (but then, only things foreign to us always seem to have character), an exotic and mysterious look of the North, demanding you probe further, for its features and proportions were not easily fathomed. Probably the most distinctive characteristic was the prominent, high cheekbones: they pushed against her unusually wide-set eyes, flattening and lifting them at a subtle slant, and at the same time they were the reason for the soft concavity of her cheeks, which was, then, the direct cause for the slightly voluptuous pout to her lips. And then there were the eyes themselves, those narrow and absolutely magical (or so they seemed to Hans Castorp), Kirghiz-shaped eyes, bluish-gray or grayish-blue like distant mountains, which from time to time, in certain sidelong glances, when gazing at nothing in particular, could darken, almost melt, to a veiled dusky look—Clavdia’s eyes, which had examined him brazenly and somewhat sternly from close up, and which in shape, color, and expression so amazingly and frighteningly resembled those of Pribislav Hippe. “Resembled” was not the right word—they were the same eyes; and the breadth of the upper half of the face, the flattened nose, everything, including the flush of the white skin, the healthy color of the cheeks—which in Frau Chauchat’s case only feigned health and as with all the people up here was merely the superficial by-product of rest cures in the open air—it was all exactly like Pribislav, who had looked no different when they had passed one another in the schoolyard.
It was thrilling in every sense of the word. Hans Castorp was inspired by this meeting, and at the same time he sensed something like a growing anxiety, much like that suffocating feeling of being locked up in a box together with auspicious chance; what was more, the fact that the long-forgotten Pribislav had reappeared up here as Frau Chauchat and had looked at him with Kirghiz eyes made him feel as if he were locked up together with something inevitable and inescapable—an inescapability that both cheered and alarmed him. It filled him with hope; and at the same time an eerie, even threatening sense of helplessness stole over young Hans Castorp, setting in motion a vague, instinctual groping, a search for help—one might say he was looking about deep inside himself for advice and support. He thought of various people, one after the other, hoping the mere thought of them might prove beneficial somehow.
There was Joachim, good, upright Joachim there at his side, whose eyes had taken on such a sad expression in these last months, and who at times would shrug in that dismissive, vehement way he had never, ever done before—Joachim with his Blue Henry in his pocket, as Frau Stöhr liked to call the item, with that willfully shameless look on her face that shocked Hans Castorp every time. There was honest Joachim, then, who pestered and badgered Director Behrens so that he could return to the “plains,” to the “flatlands”—as people up here called the world of the healthy with a gentle, but clear trace of contempt—and take up the military duties he so longed for. And both to do that and to save time (which people simply wasted up here), he had from the first been as conscientious as possible in doing his rest-cure duty—doing it, no doubt, in order to recuperate as soon as possible, but as Hans Castorp sometimes thought he could sense, doing it just a little for the sake of the cure itself, which ultimately was a sort of service like any other, since doing one’s duty was doing one’s duty. And so each evening, after perhaps fifteen mi
Hans Castorp had not been up here for two weeks, but it seemed much longer to him, and the Berghof’s daily schedule, which Joachim observed so dutifully, had begun to take on the stamp of sacred, axiomatic inviolability in his eyes as well, so that when viewed from up here, life in the flatlands below seemed strange and perverse. He had already gained great proficiency in manipulating his two blankets to form a smooth, regular package, turning himself into a veritable mummy for his cold-weather rest cures. It would not be long before he would be as skilled as Joachim in the art of wrapping them around himself in the prescribed fashion, and the thought that no one in the plains down there knew anything about the rules of the art seemed almost amazing. Yes, that was peculiar—but at the same time Hans Castorp was astonished that he found it peculiar, and the uneasy feeling that had sent him searching for advice and support rose up inside him again.
He was forced to think of Director Behrens, of the advice he had given him sine pecunia to live the life of a patient and even keep track of his temperature—and of Settembrini, who had thrown back his head and laughed out loud at the advice and then quoted something from The Magic Flute. So he gave thinking about these two men a try, just to see if that would do him any good. Director Behrens was a man whose hair had turned white, he could have been Hans Castorp’s father. He was in charge of the sanatorium, its highest authority—and Hans Castorp’s heart felt a restive longing for paternal authority. And yet try as he would, he found he could not regard the director with a child’s trust. The man had buried his wife here, the grief of it had even made him rather odd for a while, and then he had stayed on, both because he felt bound to her grave and because he had become slightly infected himself. But was he over it now? Was he healthy and single-mindedly bent on making others healthy so that they could quickly return to the flatlands and take up their duties there? His cheeks were always purple, and without doubt he looked as if he had a fever. But that might be an illusion, his color could be the result of the air up here. Hans Castorp himself had felt a dry flush, day in, day out, without having a fever—at least as far as he could judge without a thermometer. True, when you listened to the director talk you might sometimes think he had a temperature—there was something not quite right about the way he spoke, it sounded so brash and jovial and easygoing, but there was also something strange about it, something overwrought, especially when you considered those purplish cheeks and watery eyes, which looked as if he were still weeping for his wife. Hans Castorp remembered what Settembrini had said about the director’s “melancholy” and tendency to “vice,” even calling him a “confused soul.” That might have been malice or hot air; but nevertheless he did not feel particularly fortified by the thought of Director Behrens.
And then, of course, there was Settembrini himself—naysayer, windbag, and homo humanus, as he called himself—who had rebuked him with a lot of taut words for calling sickness and stupidity a contradiction and a dilemma for human emotions. What about him? Was it beneficial to think of him? Hans Castorp recalled quite well how in several of the exceedingly vivid dreams that filled his nights up here, he had been annoyed by the Italian’s delicate, dry smile, the mocking curl of the lip just below where the full moustache swept handsomely upward, how he had berated him as an organ-grinder because he was in the way up here. But that had been a dream, and the waking Hans Castorp was a different man, less uninhibited than in his dreams. Things might be different awake; maybe in looking for inner support he would do well to give Settembrini’s novel nature a try—rebellious and critical, though sentimental and bombastic, too. He had called himself a pedagogue, after all; apparently he wanted to exert some influence; and young Hans Castorp craved to be influenced; but, of course, that did not mean he was going to let Settembrini run his affairs—or that he was going to pack his bags and leave early as the fellow had recently suggested in all seriousness.
“Placet experiri,” he said to himself with a smile, because he understood that much Latin at least, without having to call himself a homo humanus. And so he turned an eye to Settembrini and reviewed eagerly, but cautiously and attentively, too, all the things the man had favored him with at their various encounters—on regular constitutionals to the bench on the mountain slope, or when they happened to meet on the way down to Platz, or on other occasions, too, as when, for example, Settembrini would be the first to get up after a meal, stroll through the dining hall with its seven tables, and, contrary to all customs and usages, stop to visit awhile with the cousins at their table. He would stand there in his checked trousers, a toothpick between his lips, assume his graceful pose with his ankles crossed, and chatter away, gesticulating now and then with the toothpick. Or he would pull up a chair and sit down at one corner, either between Hans Castorp and the teacher or between Hans Castorp and Miss Robinson, and watch his new tablemates consume a dessert he had apparently turned down.
“I beg admission to this noble circle,” he would say, shaking both cousins’ hands and including all the others in his bow. “It’s my beer-brewer yonder—not to mention the depressing sight of Madame Beer-brewer. But as for Herr Magnus himself—he has just delivered a lecture on ethnic psychology. Would you like to hear? ‘Our beloved Germany is one huge barracks, granted. But a great deal of hard work went into it, and I would not trade our sturdy honesty for the fine manners of other nations. What good are fine manners if I’m being cheated up one side and down the other?’ In that sort of style. I’m at the breaking point. And then across from me sits a poor creature with graveyard blossoms on her cheeks, an old maid from Transylvania, who goes on endlessly about her ‘brother-in-law,’ a gentleman whom no one knows, nor wishes to know. In short, I could not take any more—I bolted.”
“And so hastily vacated the primroses,” Frau Stöhr said. “It’s easy to see why.”
“Precisely,” Settembrini cried. “The primroses! I see there’s quite a different wind blowing here—no doubt of it, I’ve found the right shop. And so I hastily vacated them—what a way you have with words, Frau Stöhr! Might I presume to inquire as to the state of your health?”
Frau Stöhr’s affectations were dreadful to behold. “Good God,” she said, “it’s always the same, as the gentleman knows himself. One takes two steps forward and three back—and when one has served one’s five months, the boss comes and adds another six to your sentence. Ah, the tortures of Tantalus. You push and push, and you think you’ve reached the top of the hill . . .”
“Oh, how prettily you express it. You’ve finally
“It seems the gentleman is trying to reticule me.”
“Most assuredly not—I wouldn’t think of it! But please, first set my mind at rest about a certain dark side of your life, and then we can talk about reticules. I was taking a little walk yesterday evening between nine-thirty and ten, and I happened to glance up along the balconies, and the electric lamp on yours was glimmering in the darkness. You were, therefore, taking your rest cure, just as duty, reason, and regulation demand. ‘There our lovely patient lies,’ I said to myself, ‘faithfully observing the rules so that she may return speedily to the arms of Herr Stöhr.’ But what did I hear a few minutes ago? That at the same hour you were seen at the cinematographo”—Herr Settembrini accented the word on its fourth syllable—“at the cinematographo in the arcade of the Kurhaus, and afterward as well in the pastry shop, over dessert wine and some sort of meringues, and indeed . . .”