by Thomas Mann
He skied past the shed, trying to find his way back across the open slope where it stood. But there was no way; to keep to one direction, the approximate direction of home and the valley, was more a matter of luck than sense, because although he could sometimes just make out his hand in front of his face, he never once saw the tips of his skis; and had he been able to see better, there were still plenty of other impediments to frustrate his progress: snow full in the face, a storm as an adversary that robbed you of air and constantly forced you to turn and snatch for a breath—how could any man, be he Hans Castorp or someone much stronger, have made any progress here? He stopped, gasped, blinked to squeeze the water out of his eyelashes, knocked away the coat of snowy armor that encased the front of his body—and realized that under these circumstances, it was unreasonable even to hope for progress.
Hans Castorp was making progress nonetheless—or rather, he was moving. But whether it was purposeful movement, movement in the right direction, or whether it might not have been better to stay where he was (which, however, did not seem feasible), that remained to be seen. Even theoretically, chances were against it; and from a practical point of view, Hans Castorp soon came to believe that there was something not right about the ground under his feet, that it was somehow not what it should be, by which he meant the gentle slope that he had regained only after an exhausting climb back up the ravine and that needed to be retraversed. The level stretch had been too short, the ground was rising again. Apparently the rage of the storm, coming from the southwest, from the entrance to the valley, had pushed him back. He had been making false progress for a good while now; wrapped in a vortex of white night, he had worn himself out blindly working his way ever deeper into the indifferent menace.
“Wouldn’t you know!” he said between his teeth and pulled up short. He did not choose words full of pathos, although it seemed to him at that moment as if an icy hand had gripped his heart, making it twitch and then hammer rapidly against his ribs, just as it had the day Rhadamanthus first discovered the moist spot on his lung. For he realized he had no right to grand words and gestures—he had chosen defiance and all the hazards of his present situation could be chalked up against himself alone. “Not bad,” he said and felt how his facial features, the muscles governing the expression on his face, no longer obeyed his will and were incapable of revealing anything, whether fear, rage, or disdain—they were frozen. “What now? Down across here and then straight ahead, following my nose right into the wind? Easier said than done,” he added with a choked gasp, but all the same went on speaking in a whisper as he forced himself into motion again. “But I have to do something, I can’t just sit down and wait here until I’m covered beneath hexagonal symmetry. And then when Settembrini comes to check up on me with his little horn, he’ll find me squatting here with eyes turned to glass, a snowy cap cocked to one side.” He realized he was talking to himself—and saying rather strange things at that. He reprimanded himself for it, but went right on, sotto voce, but emphatically, even though his lips were so numb that he did not bother to use them and spoke without the consonants that they helped form, which then reminded him of a previous occasion on which the same thing had happened. “Shut up and try to make some progress here,” he said. And then he added, “It seems to me you’re talking drivel, that you’re a little muddleheaded. And in certain respects, that is not good.”
And this realization—that in terms of his getting out of there this was not good—was a pure ascertainment of reason, a conclusion reached by an alien, impartial (though, granted, concerned) person. But the more physical part of him was inclined to abandon itself to the muddled state threatening to engulf him as exhaustion grew; he did take note of this tendency, however, and let his thoughts linger on it. “This is the typical mode of experience of someone lost in a mountain snowstorm, who never finds his way home,” he thought as he struggled along, the phrases emerging in tattered, breathless fragments—discretion forbade his putting it more explicitly. “Someone hearing about it later imagines how ghastly it must have been, but forgets that illness—and my present situation is more or less an illness—batters its victim until they get along with one another. The senses are diminished, a merciful self-narcosis sets in—those are the means by which nature allows the organism to find relief. And yet you have to fight against such things, because there are two sides to them, they’re really highly ambiguous. And your evaluation all depends on which side you view them from. They mean well, are a blessing really, as long as you don’t make it home; but they also mean you great harm and must be fought off, as long as there is any chance of getting home—which is my case, since I do not intend, my stormily pounding heart does not intend, to lie down and be covered by stupid, precise crystallometry.”
In reality he was already badly battered, and was struggling against his incipient sensory muddle—but in a muddled and feverish way. And when he discovered that once again he had left the level stretch much too soon, this time on the other side, it seemed, where the slope fell away, he was not as frightened as he would have been in a healthy state. For with the wind coming at him on a slant, he had set off downhill again, which he ought not to have done now—but that seemed easiest at the moment. “It’s all right,” he thought, “I’ll get my bearings again once I’m down there.” Which is what he did, or so he thought, or perhaps he was not really sure—or, what was more ominous, began not to care whether he did or not. All this came from those ambiguous attacks, which he fought off only feebly now. The familiar blend of languor and excitement—which was the constant condition of a Berghof guest whose acclimatization consisted of his getting used to not getting used to things—had grown so strong in both component parts that it was no longer even a question of his taking prudent action against such attacks. Dazed and giddy, he quivered with exhilaration, just as he often did after a colloquy with Naphta and Settembrini, except this time the feeling was incomparably stronger—which may have been how he came to excuse his own inertia in fighting off such attacks of self-narcosis by reminiscing drunkenly about their discussions. And so despite his disdain and outrage at the idea of being covered up by hexagonal symmetry, he began to babble away to himself, be it sense or nonsense: this feeling of duty that kept telling him to fight off any suspicious diminishing of his senses—it was mere ethics, just a shabby bourgeoisiosity of life, philistine irreligiosity. The desire, the temptation, to lie down and rest crept into his mind disguised as the notion that in desert sandstorms an Arab threw himself on his face and covered his head with his burnous. The only objection he could find to following that example was that he had no burnous and could not very easily pull his woolen vest up over his head—although he was certainly no child and knew from several sources pretty much how people froze to death.
After a fairly rapid descent and another level stretch, the path now led back uphill—a steep hill. But that was not necessarily wrong, for now and again the route to the valley would have to go uphill, too; and as for the wind, it had peevishly changed direction, since Hans Castorp now had it at his back and was glad for that, in any case. Was the wind bending him forward or was that soft white incline before him, veiled by dusky flurries, drawing him onward, pulling him down toward it? All he had to do was submit to it, lean just a little farther, and the temptation was very great—as great as he had seen it described in books, where it was termed typical and dangerous. But that in no way lessened the present, dynamic temptation, which claimed the prerogative of individuality, refusing to be relegated to the familiar and general or to be mirrored in such descriptions, and which declared itself unique and incomparably urgent—without, of course, being able to deny that it was a temptation whispered from one particular corner, the promptings of a creature in Spanish black with a snow-white, pleated ruff; and bound up with the idea and image were all sorts of gloomy, caustically Jesuitical, and misanthropic notions, the torture and corporal punishment that were such abominations to Herr Settembrini, who with his barrel orga
n and ragione could only appear ridiculous in his opposition to them.
But Hans Castorp proved to be an upright fellow, and he withstood the temptation to lean forward. He could see nothing, but he struggled and moved on—perhaps to some purpose, perhaps not, but he did his part and kept at it, despite the increasingly heavy weights the icy storm tied around his legs. And when the climb proved too steep, he turned to one side, without giving much thought to the consequences, and glided on the slant for a while. Opening his tightly clenched eyelids to peer ahead was an exertion that had proved so useless that he felt little incentive to attempt it. And yet he could see some things now and then: a gathering of firs, a brook or ditch, whose blackness, caught between overhanging layers of snow, stood out against the terrain; and when just for variety’s sake his route led him downhill again—against the wind now—he spied at some distance, as if hovering there in the storm-swept tangle of veils, the outline of a man-made edifice.
What a welcome, comforting sight! His stout heart had pulled him through, despite all adversity, and now the first human dwellings had appeared as a sign that the populated valley was near. Perhaps there were people there; maybe they would take him in, let him wait under their roof for the bad weather to end, and provide him with directions or a guide if real darkness had fallen by then. Although it took all his energy to climb against the wind, he made for that chimerical something, which often vanished entirely in the gloom, and when he finally arrived he realized—in dizzy outrage, amazement, and terror—that it was the familiar hut, the hayshed with its roof weighted down by stones, which he had now reconquered after many a detour and so much upright exertion.
What a hell of a state of affairs! From Hans Castorp’s frozen lips came formidable curses, though with the labial sounds omitted. In order to get his bearings, he stomped his way around the hut and determined that he had arrived at the back end of it after a good hour—or so he estimated—of pure, futile folly. But that’s what the books said would happen. You ran around in a circle, toiling onward, with the feeling in your heart of doing something useful, when in fact you were tracing a wide, foolish arc that led back on itself, just as the teasing year came full circle. And so you wandered around and never found your way home. Hans Castorp took a certain satisfaction in recognizing the standard phenomenon, though it frightened him, too, and he slapped his thighs in rage and astonishment that something so universal had arrived right on schedule even in his own unique, individual situation.
The isolated shed was barred, the door locked, there was no way in. But all the same, Hans Castorp decided to stay here for now, since the overhanging roof provided the illusion of some hospitality, and the side of the hut facing the mountains, which Hans Castorp now sought out, actually did offer a little protection against the storm, if you leaned back so that one shoulder touched its rough-hewn logs—since long skis made it inconvenient to press your back to it. Thrusting his poles into the snow beside him, he now propped himself at an angle, and stood there with his hands in his pockets, the collar of his woolen sweater turned up; counterbracing himself with his outside leg, he let his reeling head rest against the plank wall, closed his eyes, and squinted over his shoulder only now and then, across the ravine to the mountain wall opposite, dimly visible at times through the curtain of snow.
His position was relatively cozy. “I can stand here all night if need be,” he thought. “That is, if I change legs now and then, turn over on my other side, so to speak, and of course move around a little every once in a while—that’s indispensable. Even if I’m clammy on the outside, I’ve garnered some inner warmth by all the moving around I’ve done, and so my excursion wasn’t totally useless, even if I did pass on, round and round, from hut to hut. ‘Pass on’—what sort of an expression is that? It’s never used, or at least hardly ever, for what’s been happening to me. I used it quite arbitrarily, simply because my head is a little muddled. And yet, in its way it’s an apt expression, seems to me. It’s a good thing I’m able to hold out, because all this bustling about in the bustling snow is a bustling nuisance that can easily last till morning, and even if it lasts only until nightfall, that’s bad enough, because there’s just as great a danger of passing on, or passing round and round in circles, in the dark as there is in a snowstorm. It must be evening by now, close to six—to think of all the time I’ve wasted passing on. Just how late is it, really?” And so he looked at his watch—although it wasn’t easy to fish it out of his clothes with fingers so numb that they couldn’t feel anything—at his gold watch with the monogrammed spring case, which was still doing lively, faithful duty here in this lonely wasteland, just as was his heart, his touching human heart tucked inside the organic warmth of his rib cage.
It was half past four. What the devil—it had been almost that late when the storm first broke. Was he supposed to believe that his confused wanderings had lasted barely one quarter of an hour? “Time has slowed down for me,” he thought. “Passing on is boring, it seems. But it will be fully dark by five or five-thirty, that much is certain. Will it stop before then, stop in time to keep me from passing on even more? I could drink a sip of port to that—just to fortify myself a little.”
The only reason he had pocketed a bottle of this amateurish drink was that it was available for purchase in little flasks at the Berghof, intended for guests going on excursions, but certainly never for anyone illicitly wandering off and getting lost in the snow and frost of the mountains and then waiting for night to fall. Had his mind been less muddled, he would have had to admit that in terms of getting back home this was perhaps the worst thing he could have done; and indeed he told himself as much after he had taken a few sips, which produced an immediate effect, much the same effect as that caused by Kulmbach beer his first evening up here, when with a lot of loose, disreputable talk about fish sauces and the like he had offended Settembrini—Herr Lodovico, the pedagogue, who could keep madmen from letting themselves go, return them to reason with just a glance, and whose melodious little horn Hans Castorp now heard in the air around him, the signal that his oratorical teacher was now approaching at a forced march to free his troublesome pupil, life’s problem child, from his mad situation and lead him home. Which was pure nonsense of course, it was the Kulmbach beer he had drunk by mistake that made him think that. Because firstly, Herr Settembrini did not have a little horn, but only his barrel organ, which had a folding leg so he could set it up on the cobblestones and cast a humanistic eye up at the houses as it played its familiar songs; and secondly, he knew nothing about what was going on, since he no longer lived at Berghof Sanatorium, but at Lukaček’s, in his little garret with a water carafe, just above Naphta’s silken cell—and had no right, and no opportunity, either, to interfere, just as he had had no such right to do so on Mardi Gras night, when Hans Castorp had found himself in a position equally as mad and difficult, when he had given son crayon, his pencil, Pribislav Hippe’s pencil, back to the ailing Clavdia Chauchat. But what was that about “position”? Was that a horizontal position? But that meant you had to be lying down, that was the only way the word achieved its true and special meaning, rather than remaining merely metaphorical. Horizontal, that was the position appropriate to long-term members of “society up here.” Was he not accustomed to lying down in the open air, in the snow and frost, by night as well as by day? And he was about to sink down to rest, when the realization suddenly came to him, grabbed him by the collar, so to speak, that these babbling thoughts about his “position” could likewise be due only to the effects of Kulmbach beer, had arisen solely from an impersonal desire to lie down and sleep, the same typical and dangerous desire you found discussed in books, a desire that was trying to delude him with its sophistries and puns.
“That was a major blunder,” he admitted. “The port was not the right thing—just a few sips and my head feels much too heavy, it’s all I can do to hold it up. And my thoughts are all muddled, and I end up making insipid plays on words that I dare not trust—and n
ot just the basic idea that first occurs to me, but the second one, too, which is a critique of the first, that’s where I get into trouble. ‘Son crayon’! In this case that means ‘her’ pencil, not ‘his,’ and you only say ‘son’ because ‘crayon’ is masculine—all the rest is just a vapid joke. Why am I even bothering with this, when there are much more urgent matters at hand—for example, the leg I’m using to brace myself bears a striking resemblance to the wooden folding leg on Settembrini’s barrel organ, which he nudges with his knee so that he can move across the cobblestones and get closer to the window and hold out his velvet hat, so that the lass upstairs can throw something down to him. And all the while there’s this impersonal force tugging at my hands to get me to lie down in the snow. Movement is the only thing that can help. I have to move, to make up for that Kulmbach beer and limber up my wooden leg.”
He pushed off with his shoulder. But he had no sooner moved away from the shed and taken a step forward than the wind swung its scythe at him and drove him back to the protection of the wall. This was doubtless the spot assigned to him, and he would have to get used to it for now, although he was free to vary his position by leaning against his left shoulder and bracing himself with his right leg, while shaking his left to bring it back to life. “Never leave the house in weather like this,” he thought. “Moderate variety is allowed, but no wild innovation or picking quarrels with the bride of the wind. Keep still and just let your head hang low if it’s so heavy. It’s a good wall, good logs that seem to give off a certain warmth, to the extent you can speak of warmth in this case—the discreet, peculiar warmth of wood, though it may be more a matter of mood, more subjective. Ah, all those trees! Ah, the living climate of the living! And the fragrance!”