by Thomas Mann
“Good God, how she does go on,” Hans Castorp thought, staring in alarm into her eyes, but she returned his gaze with a kind of defiant, savage awkwardness. Then both of them fell silent for a while to recover. Hans Castorp ate, meanwhile suppressing the tremor of his head. At last he said, “And what about her husband? Doesn’t he care about her at all? Doesn’t he ever visit her up here? What does he do, actually?”
“Civil servant. An administrator for the Russian government, in some remote province, Daghestan, you know, it’s somewhere far to the east, beyond the Caucasus—he was transferred out there. No, I told you already, he’s never been seen up here once. And she’s been here now for three months this time.”
“So this is not her first time here?”
“Oh no, this is her third time already. And in between she’s somewhere else, at other places like this. It’s just the other way around—she visits him now and again, not often, once a year for a little while. They live separate lives, one might say, and she visits him now and again.”
“Well, after all, she is ill.”
“Certainly, that she is. But not all that ill. Not so seriously ill that she would have to live in sanatoriums, separated from her husband. There must be other reasons beyond that. People here generally assume there are. Perhaps she doesn’t like it out there in Daghestan beyond the Caucasus, in such a savage, remote region—there really would be nothing so surprising about that. But it must be at least partly the husband’s fault if she doesn’t like being with him. He has a French name, true, but he is a Russian official, and believe me, those are coarse people. I even saw one once—he had iron-gray whiskers and such a red face. It’s terribly easy to bribe them, and then they are all given to vodka, Russian schnapps, you know. For the sake of propriety they’ll order a little something to eat, a couple of marinated mushrooms or a piece of sturgeon, and chase it down with drink, quite to excess. And that’s what they call a snack.”
“You blame it all on him,” Hans Castorp said. “But we really don’t know if it might not be her fault that they don’t get along together. One must be fair. I just have to look at her—and then there’s the unmannerly way she slams doors, too—I certainly don’t imagine she’s an angel. Please don’t take offense, but I simply would not trust her out of my sight. But then you’re not without bias in the matter. You sit there up to your ears in prejudice in her favor.”
That is how he worked it sometimes. With a cunning that was actually foreign to him, he pretended that Fräulein Engelhart’s enthusiasm for Frau Chauchat was not in reality what he very well knew it to be, but that her enthusiasm was some neutral, droll fact that he, Hans Castorp, as an uninvolved party standing off at a cool, amused distance, could use to tease the old maid. And since he was certain that his accomplice would accept this audacious distortion and go along with it, it was not a risky tactic at all.
“Good morning,” he said. “Did you rest well? You did dream about lovely Minka, your Russian miss, didn’t you? No, look at you blush at the mere mention of her. You’re terribly infatuated, don’t try to deny it.”
And the teacher, who had indeed blushed and was now bent deep over her cup, whispered out of the left corner of her mouth, “Shame, shame, Herr Castorp. It isn’t at all nice of you to embarrass me with your insinuations. Everyone has already noticed that it’s her we’re talking about and that you’re saying things to make me blush.”
What a strange game these two tablemates were playing. Both of them knew that their lies had double and triple twists—that Hans Castorp teased the teacher just so he could talk about Frau Chauchat, but that at the same time he took unwholesome delight in flirting with the old maid; and that for her part, she welcomed all this: first, because it allowed her to play the matchmaker, and second, because she probably had become smitten with Frau Chauchat, if only to please the young man, and finally, because she took some kind of wretched pleasure in being teased and made to blush. They both knew this about themselves and each other, and they also knew that each of them knew this about themselves and one another—and that it was all tangled and squalid. But although Hans Castorp was usually repelled by tangled and squalid affairs and even felt repelled in this instance as well, he continued to splash about in these murky waters, taking consolation in the certainty that he was here only on a visit and would soon be leaving. Affecting a businesslike tone, he offered his expert opinion about the appearance of this “careless” woman, that she looked decidedly younger and prettier in full face than in profile, that her eyes were set too far apart, that her posture left a great deal to be desired, although he did have to admit that her arms were beautiful and “softly formed.” And as he was saying all this, he attempted to hide his wobbling head—and all the while he was not only aware that the teacher had spotted his futile attempts to do so, but he also realized to his profound disgust that she, too, suffered from the same tremor.
It was also a purely political tactic, a bit of unnatural cunning, that he had called Frau Chauchat “lovely Minka,” since it allowed him to continue: “I call her ‘Minka,’ although I don’t know what her real name is, actually. I mean her first name. As infatuated as you undeniably are, you must surely know her first name.”
The teacher thought hard. “Now wait, I do know it,” she said. “Or I did know it. Isn’t her name Tatyana? No, that wasn’t it, and not Natasha, either. Natasha Chauchat? No, that’s not what I heard her called. Wait, I have it. Her name’s Avdotya. Or something of that sort. Because she’s definitely not named Katyenka or Ninotchka. It has simply slipped my mind. But I can easily ascertain it for you, if that’s of some consequence to you.” And the very next day she knew the name. She told him over dinner, just as the glass door banged shut. Frau Chauchat’s first name was Clavdia.
Hans Castorp did not understand right away. He had her repeat the name and spell it for him before he actually grasped it. Then he pronounced it a few times himself, all the while looking over at Frau Chauchat with his bloodshot eyes, trying it out on her, so to speak.
“Clavdia,” he said, “yes, that’s very likely it, the name suits her very well.” He made no secret of his delight at having acquired this intimate knowledge, and from now on he spoke only of “Clavdia” when he meant Frau Chauchat. “Your Clavdia is rolling her bread up into little pills, I just noticed. Not very refined, I’d say.”
“It all depends who’s doing it,” the teacher responded. “It’s very becoming for Clavdia.”
Yes, the meals in the dining hall with its seven tables held the greatest fascination for Hans Castorp. He regretted the end of each, but his consolation was that very soon, in two or two and a half hours, he would be sitting there again—and once he sat down it would be as if he had never stood up. What happened in the meantime? Nothing. A brief walk up to the water trough or to the English quarter, a little rest in his lounge chair. Those were no serious interruptions, no obstacles worth taking seriously. It would have been different had it been work, some worry or trouble, that interposed itself—his mind could not have overlooked or bridged that sort of thing quite so easily. But such was not the case in the cleverly and pleasantly regimented life of the Berghof. When he stood up from one communal meal, Hans Castorp was already delighting in the next—insofar as “delighting” was the right word, and not too cheery, simple, light, or common a word for the anticipation bound up with being together again with a lady as ill as Frau Clavdia Chauchat. It is possible that the reader may be inclined to see only such expressions, that is, cheery and common ones, as fitting and proper for the emotional life of a person like Hans Castorp; but we would like to remind the reader that as a young man of reason and conscience he could not simply “delight” in watching and being near Frau Chauchat; and since we must know, we can unequivocally state that had this word been suggested to him, he would have shrugged and cast it aside.
Indeed, he was getting to be very particular about how he did express himself—a characteristic well worth noting. As he walke
d around, his cheeks flushed with dry fever, he hummed to himself, sang to himself, because in his present state he was sensitive to all things musical. He hummed a little song that he had heard sung in a light soprano voice, who knew where or when, at some party or charity concert, and that had turned up now in his memory, a gentle bit of nonsense that began:
How oft it thrills me just to hear
You say some simple word,
and he was about to add:
That spoken from your lips, my dear,
Does leave my heart so stirred!
and suddenly he shrugged and said, “Ridiculous!” and cast aside the delicate little song as tasteless and insipidly sentimental—rejecting it, however, with a certain austere melancholy. Some young man who had “given his heart,” as they say, given it calmly, legitimately, and with a promising view to the future, to a healthy little goose down there in the flatlands—such a young man might have found satisfaction and taken pleasure in such a heartfelt song, abandoning himself to his legitimate, promising, reasonable, and ultimately cheerful emotions. When applied to him and his relationship with Madame Chauchat, however—and the word “relationship” must be credited to Hans Castorp, we refuse any responsibility for it—such verses were most decidedly inappropriate. Lying in his lounge chair, he found himself moved to pronounce upon them an aesthetic verdict of “Silly!”—and broke off now, turning up his nose, although he knew of nothing more suitable to replace them with.
He did take satisfaction in one thing, however, as he lay there listening to his heart, his physical heart, pounding rapidly and audibly in the stillness—the stillness that was prescribed by house rules and reigned over the entire Berghof during the main rest cure of the day. His heart was pounding insistently, urgently, the way it had done almost constantly ever since he had arrived here; and yet of late that did not upset Hans Castorp as it had the first few days. One could no longer say that it thudded on its own accord, for no reason, and without any connection to his soul. There was a connection now, or at least it would not have been difficult to establish one—a justifiable emotion could easily be assigned to his body’s overwrought activity. Hans Castorp needed only to think of Frau Chauchat—and he did think of her—and his heart had a suitable emotion to make it pound.
GROWING ANXIETY/TWO GRANDFATHERS AND A TWILIGHT BOAT RIDE
The weather was vile—in that regard Hans Castorp had no luck with his short vacation in these climes. It wasn’t snowing, exactly, but it had been raining heavily for days; ugly, thick fog filled the valley, where thunderstorms raged and rolled in knotty reverberations—absurdly superfluous, really, considering it was so cold that the heat had been turned on in the dining hall.
“What a shame,” Joachim said. “I had thought we would have breakfast up on Schatzalp or wherever at least once. But it looks as if it’s not to be. Let’s hope your last week will be better.”
But Hans Castorp replied, “No matter. I’m not itching for another excursion. My first didn’t turn out all that well. It does me more good just to live each day as it comes, without much variety. That’s for those who spend years up here. But with my three weeks, what do I need variety for?”
And that was how it was—he kept himself occupied, felt his days were full enough as things stood. Whatever hopes he might have were just as easily fulfilled or disappointed here as on some Schatzalp or other. It wasn’t boredom that bothered him; on the contrary, he began to fear that the end of his stay was winging its way toward him. His second week was passing quickly now; two-thirds of his time would soon be gone, and once the last third began, he would have to start thinking of packing. For Hans Castorp, the initial refreshment of his sense of time was long since past; the days began to fly now, and yet each one of them was stretched by renewed expectations and swollen with silent, private experiences. Yes, time is a puzzling thing, there is something about it that is hard to explain.
Is it necessary to spell out those private experiences, which both weighed down Hans Castorp’s days and gave them wings? But everyone knows them: flimsy, tender, perfectly normal experiences that would have taken the same course even in a more reasonable and promising situation, where the sentimental little song about “how oft it thrills me” would have been more applicable.
It was impossible for Madame Chauchat not to notice at least something of the threads strung between a certain table and her own; and it was definitely part of Hans Castorp’s uninhibited plan that she should notice something, indeed as much as possible. We call his plan uninhibited, because he was fully aware of just how irrational his situation was. But then, anyone in his condition, or incipient condition, will want the other side to be aware of it, even if there is no reason or common sense in doing so. That is how we humans are.
After Frau Chauchat had turned toward his table two or three times at meals, drawn either quite by chance or by some magnetic effect, and each time found her eyes met by Hans Castorp’s, she looked his way a fourth time on purpose—and met his eyes again. The fifth time, she did not catch him looking at her; he was not on guard at just that moment. And yet he immediately felt she was looking at him and turned his gaze so eagerly to her that she smiled and glanced away. Her smile filled him with apprehension and delight. If it meant she thought him childish, she was mistaken. But he definitely had to refine his tactics. And so at the sixth opportunity, when he felt, sensed, knew somewhere deep within, that she was looking his way, he pretended to stare with emphatic distaste at a pimply lady who had stepped up to his table to chat with the great-aunt; he held his eyes fixed on her for a good two or three minutes, never yielding until he was certain that the Kirghiz eyes across the way had given up—a strange bit of playacting that Frau Chauchat could easily have seen through, indeed was meant to see through, so that Hans Castorp’s refinement and self-control would give her pause. But something happens now: in a break between courses, Frau Chauchat turns around nonchalantly to survey the room. Hans Castorp has been on guard. Their eyes meet. And as they look at each other—the sick woman peering at him with vague mockery, Hans Castorp staring back fiercely, even clenching his teeth as he holds firm—her napkin begins to slip from her lap to the floor. With an anxious start, she reaches for it; he, too, is unnerved, is pulled up halfway from his chair, and is about to dash blindly across eight yards and around an intervening table to come to her aid, as if it would be a catastrophe for her napkin to touch the ground. She manages to grab it just before it reaches the stone tiles. But in that stretched and bent position and still holding the napkin by one corner, she scowls, evidently annoyed at her unreasonable little burst of panic, for which she apparently blames him. Now she glances his way again, notices his wide eyes and the way he is poised to leap—and she turns away with a smile.
The event left Hans Castorp triumphant, absolutely exuberant. But it came not without its setback, because Madame Chauchat did not turn his way even once for two whole days, for ten long meals—indeed, refrained from her custom of “presenting” herself to her audience as she entered the dining hall. That was hard. But since such acts of omission were without doubt committed for his sake, there was clearly a connection between the two of them now, even if it had taken a negative form; and that would have to suffice.
He had come to realize that Joachim had been quite right when he said that it was not all that easy to make acquaintances here, except for tablemates. During the one brief hour after supper—and sometimes that shrank to a mere twenty minutes—when there was some regular social interchange, without exception Madame Chauchat would take her seat at the back of the little salon, an area reserved apparently for the Good Russian table, where she was joined by the gentleman with the concave chest, the droll frizzy-haired girl, silent Dr. Blumenkohl, and the two hunch-shouldered youths. And Joachim was always trying to urge an early departure so as not to cut short his evening rest cure, as he said, and perhaps for other reasons of regimen, which he did not go into but which Hans Castorp guessed and respected. We accuse
d Hans Castorp before of being uninhibited, but whatever the aim of his desires, a social acquaintance with Frau Chauchat was not what he had in mind, and he was in fundamental agreement with those circumstances that worked against it. The vague, tense connection that his looks and actions had established between him and the Russian woman was of an extrasocial nature, entailing no obligations, indeed intended not to entail them. From his standpoint, a considerable amount of social distance suited their connection, but the fact that thoughts of “Clavdia” set his heart pounding was certainly not a sufficient reason for a grandson of Hans Lorenz Castorp to have his firmly held convictions shaken. In reality—that is, in any sense beyond this secret connection with her—he could not possibly have anything to do with a strange woman who lived her life at various resorts, separated from her husband and yet never wearing a wedding ring, who had bad posture, slammed doors behind her, rolled her bread into little pills, and doubtless chewed her fingernails; deep chasms separated her existence from his, and he could never have defended her against criticisms that he himself acknowledged. Quite understandably, Hans Castorp was a man without any personal arrogance; but an arrogance of a more general and traditional sort was written on his face and in the drowsy look in his eyes. It was the source of the sense of superiority that he could not and would not throw off when considering Frau Chauchat’s character and person. Strangely enough, it was the day he heard Frau Chauchat speak German that this general sense of superiority became especially vivid, that he was perhaps even conscious of it for the first time. It was after a meal, she was standing in the dining room with both hands in the pockets of her sweater, trying to carry on a conversation with another patient, an acquaintance from the lounging arcade presumably, struggling in a most charming way, as Hans Castorp could hear, to speak German; and he suddenly discovered a pride in his own mother tongue that he had never known before—and, simultaneously, an urge to sacrifice that pride to the enchantment that filled him at the sound of her winsomely bungled, broken stammering.