by Thomas Mann
All the same, it was generally felt that such artificial rays did not really compensate for the year’s deficit in genuine sunlight. Two or three days of full sunshine a month—even when they burst so splendidly out of the blur of foggy gray and thick cloud cover, spreading a deep, deep velvet blue behind the white peaks, scattering sparkling diamonds, and delightfully searing your face and the back of your neck—two or three such days over the course of so many weeks were not enough to help the mood of people whose fate justified their making extraordinary demands in the way of consolation and who presumed that in return for having renounced the joys and torments of flatland humanity, they had signed on for an easy and enjoyable, if rather lifeless life—on perfectly favorable terms, until time itself was abrogated. Nor did it help for the director to remind them that even under such circumstances life at the Berghof bore little resemblance to a stay on a prison ship or in a Siberian salt mine, or for him to praise the advantages of the local air, so thin and light, which like the pure ether of the spheres lacked all earthly admixtures, good or bad, and protected them from the fumes and vapors of the plains even without the sun; gloom and protest spread, threats of wild departures were the order of the day, and some were even carried out, despite sad examples like Frau Salomon, recently returned from her willful stay in windy, wet Amsterdam, whose case had once been stubborn but not serious, but now looked very much like a life sentence.
Instead of sun, there was snow, great, colossal masses of snow, more snow than Hans Castorp had ever seen in his life. The previous winter had truly not lacked for snow, but its output had been puny in comparison with this year, which produced it in monstrous, reckless quantities, reminding you of just how bizarre and outlandish these regions were. It snowed day after day, and on through the nights, in light flurries, in heavy squalls—but it snowed. The few paths still passable were like tunnels, with snow piled man-high on both sides, forming walls like slabs of alabaster, grainy with beautiful sparkling crystals, a surface guests found useful for drawing pictures or writing messages—news, jokes, ribaldries. And between the walls, the snow was packed so thick, despite all the shoveling, that here and there you came across holes and soft spots where you could suddenly sink in, sometimes up to the knee. You had to pay close attention to keep from accidentally breaking a leg. The benches had vanished, had sunk beneath the snow—here and there the back of one might stick up out of its white grave. Down in town, street level had shifted oddly until shops had become cellars you entered by descending stairways of snow.
And more snow kept falling on top of the rest, day in, day out, drifting down softly through the moderately cold air (five to fifteen above zero), which did not freeze you to the bone—you barely noticed, it felt more like twenty or twenty-five degrees; the air was still and so dry it took the sting out. The mornings were very dark; they ate breakfast by the light of the artificial moons in the dining hall with its cheerfully stenciled arches. Outside was gloomy nothing, a world packed in grayish-white cotton, in foggy vapors and whirling snow that pushed up against the windowpanes. The mountains were invisible, although over time something of the nearest evergreen forest might come into view, heavily laden with snow, only to be quickly lost in the next flurry; now and then a fir would shake off its burden, dumping dusty white into gray. Around ten o’clock the sun would appear like a wisp of softly illumined vapor above its mountain, a pale spook spreading a faint shimmer of reality over the vague, indiscernible landscape. But it all melted into a ghostly delicate pallor, with no definite lines, nothing the eye could follow with certainty. The contours of the peaks merged, were lost in fog and mist. Expanses of snow suffused with soft light rose in layers, one behind another, leading your gaze into insubstantiality. And what was probably a weakly illumined cloud clung to a cliff, motionless, like an elongated tatter of smoke.
Around noon the sun broke halfway through, struggling to melt the fog into blue, an attempt that fell far short of success. Yet there was a momentary hint of blue sky, and even this bit of light was enough to release a flash of diamonds across the wide landscape, so oddly disfigured by its snowy adventure. Usually the snow stopped at that hour of the day, as if for a quick survey of what had been achieved thus far; the rare days of sunshine seemed to serve much the same purpose—the flurries died down and the sun’s direct glare attempted to melt the luscious, pure surface of drifted new snow. It was a fairy-tale world, childlike and funny. Boughs of trees adorned with thick pillows, so fluffy someone must have plumped them up; the ground a series of humps and mounds, beneath which slinking underbrush or outcrops of rock lay hidden; a landscape of crouching, cowering gnomes in droll disguises—it was comic to behold, straight out of a book of fairy tales. But if there was something roguish and fantastic about the immediate vicinity through which you laboriously made your way, the towering statues of snow-clad Alps, gazing down from the distance, awakened in you feelings of the sublime and holy.
Afternoons, between two and four, Hans Castorp would lie on his balcony—wrapped up nice and warm, his head propped neither too high nor too low, but just right, against the adjustable back of his splendid lounge chair—and look out over the pillowed railing to the forests and mountains. Laden with snow, the greenish-black pine forest marched up the slopes, and between the trees every inch of ground was cushioned soft with snow. Above the forest, mountains of rock rose into whitish gray, with vast surfaces of snow broken occasionally by dark, jutting crags and ridges gently dissolving into mist. Snow was falling silently. Everything grew more and more blurred. Gazing into cottony nothing, eyes easily closed and drifted into slumber, and at just that moment a shiver passed over the body. And yet there could be no purer sleep than here in this icy cold, a dreamless sleep untouched by any conscious sense of organic life’s burdens; breathing this empty, vaporless air was no more difficult for the body than non-breathing was for the dead. And upon awakening, you found the mountains had vanished entirely in the snowy fog, with only pieces of them, a summit, a crag, emerging for a few moments and disappearing again. This soft, ghostly pantomime was extremely entertaining. You had to pay close attention to catch each stealthy change in the misty phantasmagoria. Freed of clouds, a huge, primitive segment of mountain, lacking top and bottom, would suddenly appear. But if you took your eye off it for only a minute, it had vanished again.
There were blizzards that prevented you from staying out on the balcony, when the wind drove great masses of white before it, covering the floor, furniture, everything, with a thick layer of snow. Yes, it could storm, even in this high, peaceful valley. The empty air would riot, until it was so full of whirling flakes that you could not see one step in front of you. Gusts that could suffocate you drove flurries in wild, driving, sidelong blasts, pulled snow up from the valley floor in great eddies, set it whirling in a mad dance—it was no longer snowfall, it was a chaos of white darkness, a beast. The whole region went on a monumental, unbridled rampage, and only the snow finches, which could suddenly appear in flocks, seemed to feel at home in it.
And yet Hans Castorp loved life in the snow. He found it similar in many ways to life at the shore: a primal monotony was common to both landscapes. The snow, a deep, loose, unblemished powder, played the same role here as yellowish-white sand did down below; both felt clean to the touch; you shook the dry, icy white from your shoes and clothes just as you brushed off the crushed stones and shells from the bottom of the sea—neither was dusty, neither left a trace behind. And wading through snow was just as difficult as wading through sand dunes, except when the sun melted the surface during the day and it froze hard again at night: then you moved across it as lightly as across a parquet floor—it was the same easy, pleasant feeling you got walking over the smooth, firm, springy, salt-rinsed sand at the edge of the sea.
But this year the massive accumulation from so many snowfalls had seriously limited everyone’s movement in the open—except for skiers, of course. The snowplows did their work; but they had trouble keeping open even
the town’s main street and most frequented paths, and the few free passageways, all of them ending in impassable drifts, were crowded with the traffic of the healthy and sick, locals and hotel guests from around the world; pedestrians, however, were constantly in danger of being toppled by sledders, ladies and gentlemen who came sweeping, swerving, and careering down the slopes on their childish vehicles, leaning far back, feet outstretched, yelling warnings in tones that revealed just how importantly they took the enterprise; and no sooner had they reached the bottom than they turned around, grabbed the rope, and pulled their fashionable toys back uphill.
Hans Castorp was fed up with such promenades. He had only two great wishes: the first, and stronger, was to be alone with his thoughts to “play king,” and his balcony permitted him to do that, at least perfunctorily. His other wish, however, bound up with the first, was to enjoy a freer, more active, more intense experience of the snowy mountain wilderness, for which he felt a great affinity; but as long as he remained a mere unarmed, uncharioted pedestrian, his wish could never be fulfilled; and had he attempted it, he would have found himself up over his chest in snow the moment he pressed on beyond the shoveled paths, all of which quickly came to an end.
And so one day during his second winter up here, Hans Castorp decided he would buy skis and learn how to use them—well enough at least for his practical purposes. He was no athlete, had never been interested in sports, did not pretend he was, the way many Berghof guests did—the ladies in particular, who decked themselves out in sporty outfits to match the spirit of the place. Hermine Kleefeld, for example—although her lips and the tip of her nose were blue from shallow breathing—loved to appear at lunch in woolen trousers, and after the meal she would loll about, knees spread wide, in one of the wicker chairs in the lobby. If Hans Castorp had asked the director for permission to carry out his eccentric plan, he would have been rebuffed in no uncertain terms. Athletic activities were strictly forbidden to all members of their society up here, both at the Berghof and at similar institutions; for although the air seemed to fill the lungs so easily, it made great demands on the heart; and in Hans Castorp’s case, his clever remark about “getting used to not getting used” to things was as valid as ever, and his fever, which Rhadamanthus traced to a moist spot, persisted stubbornly. Why else would he even be here? His wishes and plans were both inconsistent and prohibited. But let there be no misunderstanding here—he had no ambition to emulate fresh-air dandies and rakish athletes, who if fashion had demanded it, would have been just as fanatic about playing cards in a stuffy room. He certainly felt that he was part of a different, more restricted society, was anything but a tourist; and his more recent, broadening perspective had brought with it attenuating duties and a dignity that distanced him from others, so that he was not of a mind to join them in their romps or to roll in the snow like a fool. He was not interested in escapades, he would proceed in moderation. Rhadamanthus might very well have authorized such plans, but house rules would have required him to forbid them. And so Hans Castorp decided to proceed behind his back.
He happened to speak to Herr Settembrini about his intentions. The Italian almost embraced him for joy. “Why, yes, but of course, my good engineer. For God’s sake, do it! Don’t ask anyone—just do it. Your guardian angel has been whispering in your ear. Do it at once, before the happy notion deserts you. I’ll come along, go to the shop with you; let’s be off at once to purchase those blessed utensils. I would gladly accompany you into the mountains, moving alongside you with wings on my heels, like Mercury himself—but I dare not. Ah, to dare it—and I would if it were only a matter of ‘dare not.’ But I cannot, I am a ruined man. But as for you—it most definitely cannot hurt you, not if you’re reasonable and don’t overdo it. And what if it does hurt you just a tad—it will still have been the work of your guardian angel, which . . . but I shall say no more. What an excellent plan! Here for two years and still capable of such inspiration! Oh, no, you’re solid at the core; there’s no reason to despair of you. Bravo, bravo! You shall tweak the nose of your Prince of Shades up there. Buy your racing footwear, have it sent to me or Lukaček, or to the retailer of foodstuffs downstairs. You can fetch it from there to go out and practice, and away you’ll glide.”
And that is how it was done. With Herr Settembrini looking on and playing the critical expert, although he knew absolutely nothing about sports, Hans Castorp purchased a pair of spiffing skis in a specialty shop on the main street—good solid ash, shellacked a light brown, with first-rate leather straps and pointed tips turned up slightly; he also bought poles with iron tips and snow rings, and could not be talked out of carrying it all on his shoulder to Settembrini’s quarters, where he quickly came to an agreement with the grocer about storage for his equipment. Having spent a great deal of time watching how skis were used, he began to practice on his own—but well away from the crowds on the beginners’ hill; he chose an almost treeless slope not far behind the Berghof, and he would blunder up and down it every day, occasionally with Herr Settembrini watching from a little distance, propped on his cane, his ankles charmingly crossed, greeting each improvement in skill with cries of “Bravo!” One day Hans Castorp was steering his way down the shoveled, looping path, on his way back to Dorf to return his skis to the grocer’s, when he ran into the director—but nothing came of it. Behrens did not even recognize him, although it was a bright afternoon and the beginner almost ran him down. Wrapped in a cloud of cigar smoke, the director stomped on past.
Hans Castorp discovered that you quickly learn a skill if you truly need to. He made no pretense of becoming a virtuoso. What he required to know he learned in a few days, without overheating or having to fight for breath. He worked hard at keeping his feet nicely parallel, leaving a set of even tracks, practiced how to push himself off by steering with his poles, learned to negotiate obstacles, leaping over little mounds with arms widespread, rising and falling like a ship on a stormy sea; and after about the twentieth try he no longer upended when he put on the brakes by executing a telemark turn at full speed, sticking one leg out and bending the other at the knee. He gradually increased the range of his activities. One day Herr Settembrini saw him vanish in a burst of white fog; cupping his hands and calling after him to be careful, the contented pedagogue turned homeward.
The wintry mountains were beautiful—not in a gentle, benign way, but beautiful like the wild North Sea under a strong west wind. They awakened the same sense of awe—but there was no thunder, only a deathly silence. Hans Castorp’s long, pliant footwear bore him in all directions: along the slope on the left in the direction of Clavadel or to the right on past Frauenkirch and Glaris, the shadowy ghost of the Amselfluh massif looming up out of the fog behind them; he also skied the valley of the Dischma and the hills rising behind the Berghof, in the direction of the wooded Seehorn, only the very tops of its two snow-clad peaks visible above the tree line, and toward the Drusatscha woods, behind which he could see the pale, murky outline of the Rhätikon chain buried under snow. He even took his skis in the cablecar to the top of Schatzalp to glide about happily up there, abducted into a world of shimmering, powdery slopes, sixty-five hundred feet above sea level, from where in good weather he had a glorious panorama of the scene of his adventures.
He reveled in the skill he had acquired, which opened up inaccessible worlds and almost obliterated barriers. It permitted him the solitude he sought, the profoundest solitude imaginable, touching his heart with a precarious savagery beyond human understanding. On one side might be a wooded ravine plunging into snowy mists, and on the other a rocky precipice with monstrous, cyclopean masses of snow that formed vaulted caves and humpbacked domes. When he would stop—not moving a muscle, so that he could not hear even himself—the silence was absolute, perfect, a padded soundlessness, like none ever known or perceived anywhere else in the world. There was not a breath of wind to brush softly against the trees, not a rustle, not the call of a bird. It was primal silence to which Hans Casto
rp listened as he stood there, leaning on one pole, his head tilted to the side, his mouth open; and silently, unrelentingly the snow went on falling, drifted down in a gentle hush.