The Magic Mountain

by Thomas Mann

  As matters now stood, Hans Castorp had almost totally renounced such feelings, and instead it was the Italian who annoyed him with that conceited talk about “Parthians and Scythians”—without even specifying the Bad Russian table, where those students sat with heads of thick hair and not a trace of collar or cuff, arguing in their alien tongue, apparently unable to express themselves in any other, a boneless language that reminded Hans Castorp of a thorax without ribs, like the one Director Behrens had described recently. It was true—these people’s manners might very well arouse lively distaste in a humanist. They ate with their knives and made an unspeakable mess of their clothes. Settembrini claimed that one of these fellows, a medical student well advanced in his studies, had turned out to be totally ignorant of Latin and did not know, for example, what a vacuum was; and from daily first-hand knowledge, Hans Castorp was fairly sure that Frau Stöhr was not lying when she told her tablemates that the couple in room 32 were always still in bed together when the bath attendant came to give them their morning massage.

  All of which might be true—yet it was not for nothing that a clear distinction was made between “good” and “bad” tables, and Hans Castorp assured himself that he could shrug off a propagandist for the world republic and beautiful style, who so snootily and coolly—especially coolly, even though he was feverish and tipsy himself—applied the designation “Parthians and Scythians” to both the good and bad tables. Hans Castorp understood only too well how it was intended; after all, he had himself begun to understand the connection between Frau Chauchat’s illness and her “carelessness.” But the thing was, as he told Joachim one day, you began with annoyance and distaste, and suddenly “something quite different comes up” that “has nothing whatever to do with forming opinions” and then it was all over with such rigor—and suddenly you were no longer receptive to pedagogic influences of the republican and eloquent sort. But what sort of dubious experience, we now ask—much in the spirit of a Lodovico Settembrini—can so paralyze and suspend a man’s ability to form opinions, even rob him of the right to form them, or better, induce him to waive that right in a kind of insane rapture? We are not asking the precise name of that experience—since everyone knows it. We are inquiring, rather, about that experience’s moral character—and, to be frank, do not expect a very cheering answer. In Hans Castorp’s case, its character was apparent not only in the extent to which he stopped forming judgments, but also in the way he began to experiment on his own with the style of life that so bewitched him. He tried out what it was like to let his back go limp and sit slumped in his chair at meals, and found it greatly relaxed the abdominal muscles. Moreover, he tried out going through a door without troubling to latch it behind him, but merely letting it close by itself; and that proved both convenient and easy—as an expression of feeling, it corresponded to the shrug with which Joachim had greeted him that day at the train station and which since then he had often noticed people use here.

  To put it simply, our traveler had fallen head over heels in love with Clavdia Chauchat—we use the term “love,” whereas we have thus far spoken of infatuation, because we believe we have taken sufficient precautions to prevent any misunderstandings its use might cause. The constituent element of his love, therefore, was not the amiable, tender melancholy found in our little song. It was, instead, a rather reckless and unpolished variation of this folly, a fusion of frost and heat, like a man in a fever or an October day in these lofty regions. What he lacked was the emotion that might have united the two extremes. On the one hand, his love was caught up—and with such an immediacy that it could make the young man blanch and grimace—in Frau Chauchat’s knee, the contour of her leg, her back, the nape of her neck, her upper arms and the way they pressed her small breasts together, in brief, caught up in her body, her careless body, so accentuated and vastly enhanced by her illness that it was a second embodiment of her body. And on the other hand, his love was something utterly elusive and amorphous, a thought—no, a dream, the terrifying and infinitely seductive dream of a young man whose answer to certain, though subconsciously posed questions would have been only hollow silence. We have as much right as anyone to private thoughts about the story unfolding here, and we would like to suggest that Hans Castorp would not have stayed with the people up here even this long beyond his originally planned date of departure, if only some sort of satisfactory answer about the meaning and purpose of life had been supplied to his prosaic soul from out of the depths of time.

  In any case, being in love inflicted on him all the pain and all the joys that the condition brings with it the whole world over. It is a piercing pain that has something degrading about it, as does all pain, and is such a shock to the nervous system that it takes one’s breath away and can make a grown man weep bitter tears. But to do justice to the joys, they were countless, and although they arose out of trivial events, they were no less compelling than the sufferings. Almost any moment in a Berghof day might serve as their source. For example: as he is about to enter the dining hall, Hans Castorp realizes that the object of his dreams is behind him. He clearly anticipates what will happen—an exceedingly simple outcome, but one that nevertheless sends him into raptures and can even cause tears to well up. Eyes meet at close range, his own and her gray-green ones, whose slightly Asiatic shape and placement enchant his very core. He is barely conscious, but even in that state he steps to one side to allow her to precede him through the door. With half a smile and a low “merci” she avails herself of this perfectly conventional courtesy and walks past him into the dining hall. He stands there in the gentle breeze as she brushes past him, wild with the happiness of having encountered her and of knowing that the word her mouth has spoken, that little “merci,” was intended personally and solely for him. He follows her, staggers off to the right to his own table, sinks down into his chair, and realizes that as “Clavdia,” too, takes her seat, she turns around to look at him—with an expression, or so it seems to him, that says she is thinking about their encounter at the door. What an incredible adventure! What joy, what triumph, what boundless rapture! No, Hans Castorp would never have felt this intoxication of fantastic bliss if he had tried to catch the eye of some healthy little goose or other down below in the flatlands, to whom he might have “given his heart” in the legitimate, promising, calm fashion of that old song. With feverish high spirits he greets the teacher, a blush on her downy cheeks after watching it all—and now bombards Miss Robinson with English conversation of such inanity that the old maid, being inept at ecstasy, recoils and measures him with apprehensive glances.

  On another occasion they are sitting at supper and the rays of a brilliant sunset fall directly on the Good Russian table. The curtains have been drawn across the windows and the doors to the veranda, but there is a gap somewhere. Cool, but dazzling red light has found a way through it and now lands precisely on Frau Chauchat’s head, so that while engaging her concave fellow countryman in conversation she has to raise her right hand to shield herself against it. It is a nuisance, nothing more; no one pays much attention, and the lady herself is probably not even aware of her discomfort. But Hans Castorp notices from across the dining hall—and he gazes at her for a while. He examines the situation and, following the ray, discovers its source at the arched window in the far corner on the right, between a veranda door and the Bad Russian table, some distance from Frau Chauchat’s seat and an almost equal distance from Hans Castorp’s own chair. And he comes to a decision. Without saying a word, he stands up. Still holding his napkin and working his way between tables, he walks across the room to the cream-colored curtains, folds one nicely over the other, satisfies himself with a glance over his shoulder that the sunset has been shut out and Frau Chauchat set free—and with a display of great composure, he starts back to his place.

  An attentive young man, who did what needed to be done, since no one else noticed to do it. Only a very few people had paid attention to his meddling, but Frau Chauchat had felt the benefit
at once and turned around—and held that pose until Hans Castorp had reached his chair again. Turning to look at her as he sat down, he saw her thank him with a smile of friendly surprise and a nod, or better, a thrust of her head. He responded with a little bow. His heart was inert, seemed not to be beating at all. Only after it was all over did his heart begin to pound again, and only then, too, did he notice that Joachim was keeping his eyes directed at his plate—and only afterward did it strike him that Frau Stöhr had nudged Dr. Blumenkohl and suppressed a giggle, while her eyes roamed over her own table and others in search of knowing glances and smiles.

  We are describing everyday events; but even everyday events look peculiar if they grow in peculiar soil. There were moments of tension and of gratifying release of tension between the two of them—or if not between them (because to what extent Madame Chauchat was affected remains to be seen), then at least in Hans Castorp’s own fantasies and emotions. The beautiful weather held, and the majority of the hotel residents had got into the habit of moving from the dining hall out onto the veranda after their midday meal, to spend a quarter hour together there in the sun; and what went on was very like the scene at the band concerts held every other Sunday. The young people—totally languid, stuffed with roasts and desserts, all slightly feverish—chatted, joked, and flirted with their eyes. Frau Salomon from Amsterdam might sit on the balustrade—hard-pressed on one side by the knees of thick-lipped Gänser and on the other by the Swedish bruiser, who, although completely well now, had extended his stay for a little extra therapy. Frau Iltis had apparently become a widow—in any case, she had of late been enjoying the company of a “fiancé,” who had a melancholy, subservient look about him, and whose presence did not prevent her from simultaneously receiving the attentions of Captain Miklosich, a man with a hooknose, waxed moustaches, swelling chest, and menacing eyes. There were other ladies of various nationalities who took their rest cure in the common lounging areas—among them some new faces that had appeared since the first of October and that Hans Castorp would have had difficulty putting a name to. Mingling with them were cavaliers of Herr Albin’s sort: seventeen-year-olds with monocles; a young Dutchman with lots of diamonds, a pink face, and a mania for philately; various Greeks, with slicked-down hair and almond eyes, who tended to reach for things at meals; two almost inseparable dandies, nicknamed “Max and Moritz,” who were reputed to be great breakers of house rules. The hunchbacked Mexican, who, because he knew none of the languages represented here, wore the expression of a deaf-mute, was forever taking photographs—a comical figure nimbly dragging his tripod from one point on the terrace to another. Even the director might make an appearance in order to do his bootlace trick. The religious fanatic from Mannheim would be slinking about alone in the crowd somewhere, his profoundly sad eyes cast furtively in a certain direction—much to Hans Castorp’s disgust.

  But to return to some examples of “tension and release of tension,” it could happen on such occasions that Hans Castorp might be sitting on an enameled garden chair, his back to the wall, conversing with Joachim, who had been forced to come along against his will, and there would be Frau Chauchat standing at the railing directly opposite, smoking a cigarette with a tablemate. He would speak loudly enough for her to hear him. She would turn her back on him. As is obvious, we have a particular occasion in mind. . . . Conversation with his cousin had not satisfied his chatty affectation, and so he had intentionally struck up a new acquaintance. And with whom? With Hermine Kleefeld. As if quite by chance, he directed a remark to the young lady, and introducing both himself and Joachim to her by name, he pulled over a third enameled chair for her—the better for him to put on his show. Did she know, he asked, what a devilish fright she had given him that day when he had first encountered her while out taking a morning stroll? Yes, he was the one at whom she had whistled her heartwarming welcome. And she had achieved her purpose—he was perfectly willing to admit that he had felt as if he had been clubbed from behind, she needed only to ask his cousin. Ha, ha, whistling with her pneumothorax to frighten a harmless wanderer. A wicked game, that was what he called it—downright sinful abuse, if he did say so. He had every reason to be outraged.

  Joachim sat there with his eyes cast down, well aware of his utilitarian role in all this, and Mademoiselle Kleefeld for her part took increasing offense as she realized from Hans Castorp’s roving, blank glaze that she was only a means to some other end—and all the while Hans Castorp sulked and played coy and turned fancy phrases and made his voice as melodious as possible, until he finally achieved his goal, and Frau Chauchat turned to look directly at the conversational exhibitionist, but only for a moment. And what a look it was: her Pribislav eyes glided quickly over him as he sat there with his legs crossed and came to rest briefly on his yellow boots with an expression of deliberate indifference that looked very much like disdain, precisely like disdain—and then those same eyes turned indolently away, with perhaps a trace of a smile in their depths.

  A dreadful, dreadful calamity! Hans Castorp went on speaking feverishly for a while; but when he finally grasped the meaning of that glance at his boots, he broke off, almost in the middle of a word, and fell into silent grief. Bored and offended, Hermine Kleefeld went her way. Not without a certain petulance in his voice, Joachim remarked that they could probably go take their rest cure now. And a broken man with pale lips responded: Yes, they could.

  The incident threw Hans Castorp into cruel agony for two long days, during which nothing happened that might serve as a balm for his smarting wound. Why that look? In God’s good name, why had she shown him such disdain? Did she see him as some healthy nitwit from down below, whose susceptibilities were of the most harmless sort? As some innocent from the country, an average fellow who strolled about laughing, stuffing his belly, and earning money—a model pupil in the school of life, who could conceive of nothing except the boring advantages of respectability? Was he just a shallow three-week visitor, a nonparticipant in her world? But had he not taken vows as a result of a moist spot? Was he not in their ranks now, one of them, one of “us up here,” with a good two months to his credit, and had not Mercury climbed to one hundred degrees again yesterday evening? But that, in fact, was what made his agony perfectly dreadful—Mercury was no longer climbing! Two terrible days of depression had a chilling, sobering, slackening effect on Hans Castorp’s nature, which, to his bitter humiliation, manifested itself in a very low temperature, barely above normal, and he came to the cruel realization that his worry and grief had accomplished nothing except to place even greater distance between himself and Clavdia’s being and nature.

  The third day, the morning of the third day, brought with it gentle release. It was a splendid autumn morning, sunny and fresh, with silver-gray webs spun over the meadows. The sun and the waning moon both stood rather high in the pure blue. The cousins had arisen earlier than usual in order to honor the morning by extending their constitutional a little beyond its normal limits and continuing along the forest path beyond the bench beside the water trough. Joachim, whose temperature had likewise shown a welcome decline, had seconded this invigorating change of schedule and had not disagreed with Hans Castorp’s suggestion. “We’re recovered patients,” he had said, “rid of fever and toxins, practically ripe for the flatlands. Why shouldn’t we buck like colts?” And so, planting their walking sticks firmly, they strolled off bareheaded—because since taking vows, Hans Castorp had, for God’s sake, complied with the local custom of not wearing a hat, despite his strong feelings at the beginning about how the practice contradicted his own civilized style of life. They had not yet covered the initial steep rise of the reddish path and were only at about the point where the novice had first encountered the pneumothoracic crew, when they caught sight of Frau Chauchat climbing very slowly some distance ahead—Frau Chauchat in white, in a white sweater, white flannel skirt, and even white shoes, her reddish hair glistening in the morning sunlight. More precisely, Hans Castorp had recognized he
r. Joachim was not aware of the situation until he felt the unpleasant sensation of being tugged or pulled along, the result of his companion’s having suddenly picked up the pace and moving ahead swiftly, after first having checked his step abruptly, almost coming to a halt. Joachim did not like being hurried, found it annoying and intolerable; he was soon short of breath, and he coughed. But Hans Castorp, with his eye on his goal and his lungs apparently working superbly, did not let that bother him much. And once Joachim became aware of the actual situation, he merely scowled, said not a word, and kept pace with his cousin—he certainly could not allow him to march ahead alone.