The Magic Mountain

by Thomas Mann

  “And don’t break it,” he added.

  What made him say that? As if Hans Castorp intended to treat it carelessly—or worse, not give it back at all.

  Then they looked at one another and smiled, and since there was nothing more to say, they turned away, first shoulders, then backs, and walked off.

  That was all. But Hans Castorp had never been happier in all his life than during that drawing class as he sketched with Pribislav Hippe’s pencil—and before him lay the prospect of returning it to its owner in person, which came as a simple, natural part of the bargain. He even took the liberty of sharpening the pencil a little, and he kept three or four of the red-lacquered shavings in the drawer of his desk for a year or two—anyone who might have seen them would never have guessed their significance. The return of the pencil, moreover, took the simplest form possible; but that was just what Hans Castorp intended, indeed he took a special pride in it—after all, he was more than a little spoiled and blasé after his long, intimate relationship with Hippe.

  “There,” he said. “Thanks.”

  And Pribislav said nothing at all, simply gave the mechanism a quick check and shoved the holder into his pocket.

  And they never spoke another word—but just that one time, it really did happen, thanks to Hans Castorp’s enterprising spirit.

  He opened his eyes wide, confused by the depth of his trance. “I suppose I was dreaming,” he thought. “Yes, that was Pribislav. I haven’t thought of him in a long time. What ever became of those shavings? The desk is up in the attic at Uncle Tienappel’s. They must still be in that same little drawer, clear at the back on the left. I never removed them. Didn’t even pay them enough attention to throw them out. It was Pribislav, it was him all over. I never would have thought that I’d see him so clearly again. And he looked so strangely like her—that woman up here. Is that why I’ve been so intrigued by her? Or maybe that’s why I was suddenly so interested in him. What nonsense. What a lot of nonsense. I’ve got to be on my way, and I mean right now.” But he lay there a while longer, pondering and remembering. Then he sat up. “Well, fare thee well and much obliged!” he said out loud, and tears came to his eyes even as he smiled. And with that he stood up to go, and just as quickly sat back down, hat and cane in hand, forced to admit that his knees couldn’t support him. “Whoops,” he thought, “I don’t think that’s going to work. And I’m supposed to be at the lecture in the dining hall at eleven on the dot. A long walk up here can be lovely, but it has its drawbacks, too, it seems. Yes, indeed—but I can’t stay here. It’s just that I’m a little stiff from lying down; it will get better once I’m moving.” And he tried to get to his feet again—and making a concerted effort to pull himself together, he succeeded.

  But it was a miserable walk home, especially after such an optimistic start. He repeatedly had to stop to rest—the blood would suddenly drain from his face, cold sweat would break out on his brow, and his irregular heartbeat made it hard to breathe. He wearily struggled down the serpentine path, finally reaching the valley close to the spa hotel in Platz; he now realized all too clearly that he would never be able to manage the long walk back to the Berghof on his own; and since there was no tram and he didn’t see any carriages for hire, he asked the driver of a delivery wagon headed for Dorf with a load of empty boxes to let him climb aboard. Back to back with the driver, his legs dangling over the side of the wagon, half-asleep as he swayed and nodded with each jolt, he rode along, the object of the amazed sympathy of passersby. He got off at the railroad crossing, offered some money without bothering to look if it was too much or too little, and lurched headlong up the loop of the drive.

  “Dépêchez-vous, monsieur!” the French doorman said. “La conférence de Monsieur Krokowski vient de commencer.”

  And Hans Castorp tossed his hat and cane on the hallstand—and carefully, cautiously, his tongue between his teeth, he squeezed his way past the glass door, only just ajar, and entered the dining hall, where the residents were sitting in rows of chairs. To his right, at the narrow end of the room, Dr. Krokowski stood in his frock coat, behind a cloth-covered table, graced by a carafe of water—he was already speaking.

  ANALYSIS

  Luckily there was a corner seat available near the door. He sidled down into it and put on a face as if he had been there all along. The audience was listening attentively to Dr. Krokowski’s every word and paid Hans Castorp barely any notice. And that was a good thing, because he looked dreadful. His face was as pale as linen and his suit was bloodstained, so that he looked like a murderer fresh from his awful deed. The lady in front of him did turn her head as he sat down, studying him with her narrow eyes. It was Madame Chauchat, he realized with something like indignation. What a hell of a thing to have happen! Wasn’t he ever going to be able to calm down? He had thought that, having arrived at his goal, he could sit there quietly and recover a little, and now he had to have her right in front of his nose—a coincidence that might possibly have pleased him under other circumstances, but what good did it do him in his weary, frazzled state? It only made new demands of his heart, and he would be preoccupied and tense all through the lecture. She had looked at him with eyes exactly like Pribislav’s, staring into his face and at the bloodstains—a rather impolite, brazen stare, by the way, that matched the manners of a woman who slammed doors. What awful posture she had! Not like the women in Hans Castorp’s social circle at home, who sat straight-backed at the table and turned only their heads to speak with pursed lips to gentlemen on either side. Frau Chauchat sat in a limp slouch, her back rounded, her shoulders drooping forward, and at the same time she thrust her head out so that her neck bones were visible above the collar line of her white blouse. Pribislav had held his head like that, too; but he had been a model student and led a life full of honors (although that had not been the reason why Hans Castorp had borrowed a pencil from him)—whereas it was all too clear that Frau Chauchat’s careless posture, her door-slamming, and her brazen stares were bound up with her illness, that in fact they were all expressions of that same license young Herr Albin had praised, the advantages of which, if not honorable, were at least almost endless.

  As he gazed at Frau Chauchat’s limp back, Hans Castorp’s thoughts grew jumbled, ceased being thoughts, became daydreams into which Dr. Krokowski’s drawling baritone and gently rolled r drifted from some great distance. But the stillness in the room, the profound, spellbound attention displayed all around him, had its own effect and literally roused him from his doze. He looked about—next to him sat the pianist with thinning hair, arms crossed, head thrown back, mouth hanging open as he listened. Fräulein Engelhart, the teacher, a little farther down the row, had eager eyes and downy red spots on both cheeks, a flush that Hans Castorp discovered on other ladies’ cheeks as well when he looked more closely—even Frau Salomon there, next to Herr Albin, and the wife of Magnus the brewer, the woman who was losing protein. Frau Stöhr, sitting just a little behind him, had an expression on her face revealing such ignorant ecstasy that it was pitiful to behold, while Fräulein Levi of the ivory complexion sat leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes and hands resting palms-up in her lap—and one would have taken her for a corpse if her chest had not risen and fallen with such striking regularity, although Hans Castorp thought she looked more like a mechanically driven wax figure he had once seen in a sideshow. Several people held their hands cupped to their ears; others merely held their hands up halfway, suggesting that the strain of concentration had frozen them in that pose. Prosecutor Paravant, a tanned, primally robust man, or so he appeared, first flicked at his ear with his forefinger to hear better, then pulled it forward to catch the flow of Dr. Krokowski’s words.

  And what was Dr. Krokowski talking about? What train of thought was he pursuing? Hans Castorp gathered his wits to try to catch up, but did not succeed right away, since he had not heard the beginning and then had missed still more of it while contemplating Frau Chauchat’s rounded back. The subject was a
force, the force . . . ah yes, the subject was the force of love. But of course, the same topic as in the title of the lecture series—what should Dr. Krokowski be talking about if not his specialty? It was indeed rather odd to hear a lecture about love, since the lectures he usually attended were about things like gear transmissions in ships. How did one go about discussing such a delicate subject, something of such a private nature, here in broad daylight, before an audience of both ladies and gentlemen? Dr. Krokowski discussed it by using a hybrid terminology, a blend of poetical and academic styles, all of it uncompromisingly scientific, but in an ornate, lilting tone, which seemed rather unsuitable to Hans Castorp, but which perhaps accounted for the flush on the ladies’ cheeks and the way the gentlemen kept flicking their ears. In particular, the orator constantly used the word “love” in a gently irresolute sense, so that one was never quite sure whether he meant its sanctified or more passionate and fleshly forms—leaving one feeling slightly nauseated and seasick. Never in his life had Hans Castorp heard this word spoken so many times in a row as he did here and now; indeed, when he thought about it, it seemed to him as if he had never spoken it himself before or heard it pass anyone else’s lips. He might have been mistaken—but at least he did not think such frequent repetition did the word any good, either. On the contrary, this slippery syllable with its lingual and labial consonants and scanty vowel in the middle really began to disgust him after a while, conjuring up for him somehow images of watery milk—something whitish-blue and insipid, particularly when compared with all the robust fodder that Dr. Krokowski was serving up. Because this much was clear, that if one went about it the way he did, one could say some very stiff things without driving people from the room. It was not enough for him to speak in tactful, intoxicating tones about matters that, although generally well known, are usually left under a veil of silence. He destroyed illusions, he was merciless in giving knowledge the honor it was due, he left no room for tender faith in the dignity of silver hair or in the angelic purity of little children. Along with his frock coat, by the way, he wore his soft, floppy collar and his sandals over gray socks, which gave the impression of some fundamental idealism, although Hans Castorp found the look rather startling. Supporting his arguments with all kinds of examples and anecdotes from the books and loose pages that lay on the table before him, even reciting poetry a few times, Dr. Krokowski discussed love’s frightening forms—bizarre, agonized, eerie mutations of its symptoms and omnipotence. Of all our natural instincts, he said, it was the most unstable and exposed, fundamentally prone to confusion and perversion—and no one should be surprised at that. Because there was nothing simple about this powerful instinct. It was by its very nature composed of many elements, and however legitimate this instinct was when regarded as a whole, each of its constituent elements was a perversion. But since, and quite rightly so, Dr. Krokowski continued, one ought not conclude that the whole was itself a perversion simply because its parts were, one was therefore compelled to enlist the legitimacy of the whole, if not its whole legitimacy, and apply it to each of the perverse parts. Logic demanded it, and he begged his listeners to keep that in mind. There were counteracting and corrective psychic factors, wholesome and ordering instincts—one might almost call them bourgeois—under whose compensating and modifying effects perverse components were fused to a consistent and useful whole; and this was, all in all, a common and welcome process, whose consequences, however (as Dr. Krokowski rather superciliously remarked), were of no importance to the physician or thinker. But in other cases that process might not succeed—would not, indeed could not, succeed—and who could say, Dr. Krokowski asked, if those psyches were not perhaps the more noble, the more precious? In such a case, to be precise, the two clusters of forces, both those of the love instinct and the impulses hostile to it, among which shame and disgust were to be noted in particular, exhibited tensions and passions that exceeded all normal bourgeois bounds; and the ensuing battle between these two forces, which was now carried out in the depths of the soul, prevented wayward instincts from being restrained, steadied, and civilized in the manner necessary for a normal, harmonious, and appropriate love life. And how did it end, this clash between the forces of chastity and love—for those were indeed the forces involved? It ended to all appearances with the triumph of chastity. Fear, conventionality, aversion born of modesty, the quivering longing for purity—all these repressed love, held it chained in darkness, at best giving in only partially to its wild demands, but certainly never permitting them a conscious, active existence in all their variety and vigor. Except that chastity only apparently triumphed, its victory was a Pyrrhic victory, because the demands of love could not be fettered, or coerced; suppressed love was not dead, it continued to live on in the dark, secret depths, straining for fulfillment—and broke the bands of chastity and reappeared, though in transmuted, unrecognizable form. And in what form or mask did suppressed and unsanctioned love reappear? Dr. Krokowski looked up and down the rows as he asked this question, as if seriously expecting an answer from his listeners. But no, he would have to provide the answer himself, though he had already provided so many. No one else knew the answer, but he would be sure to know this, too—you could see it just by looking at him. With his glowing eyes, his waxen pallor, his black beard, and those monastic sandals over gray woolen socks, he seemed to symbolize in his person the battle between chastity and passion about which he had been speaking. At least this was Hans Castorp’s impression, as he sat there expectantly waiting, along with all the others, to learn in what form unsanctioned love would reappear. The women were barely breathing. Prosecutor Paravant quickly gave his ear another flick, to make sure that it would be open and receptive. And Dr. Krokowski said: In the form of illness! Any symptom of illness was a masked form of love in action, and illness was merely transformed love.

  And so now they knew, even if not all of them were able fully to appreciate the knowledge. A sigh went through the room, and Prosecutor Paravant nodded his weighty approval while Dr. Krokowski continued to elaborate his thesis. For his part, Hans Castorp lowered his head to think about what he had heard and to explore whether he really understood it. But being unpracticed in such discursive reasoning and anything but intellectually alert after his unsalutary walk, he was easily diverted, and was in fact diverted almost immediately by the round back in front of him and by the arm extending from it, which lifted and reached back, so that the hand—now right before Hans Castorp’s eyes—could tuck at the braid of hair.

  It was almost suffocating to have that hand so close to his eyes—you had to look at it, whether you wanted to or not, to study its inherent humanness and all its defects, as if you were holding a magnifying glass to it. No, it had nothing at all aristocratic about it, this stubby, school-girlish hand with the carelessly trimmed nails—you couldn’t be certain whether the knuckles toward the tips were even clean, and the cuticles were gnawed, there could no longer be any doubt about that. Hans Castorp grimaced, but his eyes remained fixed on Madame Chauchat’s hand, and a vague, halfhearted recollection passed through his mind of something Dr. Krokowski had said about corrective bourgeois forces that counteracted love. . . . But this arm was more beautiful, this arm bent gently behind the head—and was barely clad, because the fabric of the sleeve was thinner than that of the blouse, the flimsiest gossamer, which lent the arm just a hint of delicate illusion, making it even prettier than it probably would have been without any covering. It was both tender and full at the same time—and cool, one could only presume. There could be no question whatever of any counteracting bourgeois forces.

  Hans Castorp began to daydream, his eyes directed at Frau Chauchat’s arm. The way women dressed! They displayed this or that portion of their necks and breasts, lent their arms a radiant illusion with transparent gossamer. They did it all over the world, just to arouse our ardent desires. My God, but life was beautiful! And one of the things that made it so beautiful was that women dressed so enticingly, simply as a matte
r of course. It was second nature to them, and such a universally accepted practice that you hardly even thought about it, just accepted it unconsciously, without further ado. But if you wanted truly to enjoy life, Hans Castorp told himself, you really should keep the custom in mind and never forget how exhilarating and, ultimately, almost magical it was. Granted, there was a very definite reason why women were allowed to dress in that exhilarating, magical way, without at the same time offending propriety. It all had to do with the next generation, the propagation of the human species, yes indeed. But what happened when the woman was sick deep inside, so that she was not at all suited for motherhood—what then? Was there any point in her wearing gossamer sleeves so that men would be curious about her body—about her diseased body? There was obviously no point in that whatever, and it ought to be considered improper, to be forbidden. Because for a man to be interested in a sick woman was certainly no more reasonable than . . . well, than for Hans Castorp to have pursued his silent interest in Pribislav Hippe back then. A stupid comparison, a rather embarrassing memory. But it had just come to him, insinuating itself all on its own. His daydreams broke off at that point, primarily because his attention was directed again to Dr. Krokowski, whose voice had risen noticeably now. And in fact, as he stood there behind the table, arms spread wide, head tilted to one side, he looked—despite his frock coat—almost like Jesus on the cross!