The Magic Mountain

by Thomas Mann

  And so they walked and said nothing about the indecencies of nature. And even Joachim’s earlier agitated and angry complaints—about missing maneuvers and generally neglecting his military duties in the flatlands—had died away. And yet why, despite such great innocence, did that expression of sad shyness keep creeping back into his gentle eyes—that same unsteadiness that might have ended in victory for the head nurse, had she chanced it one more time? Was it because he knew that his cheeks looked hollow, that his eyes looked crossed? Because over these last weeks such changes were much more visible than when he had first returned from the flatlands, and his tanned face was turning more yellow and leathery from day to day. It was as if the same surroundings that had prompted Herr Albin to think of nothing but enjoying the boundless advantages of disgrace, had caused Joachim only shame and self-reproach. What or whom was he dodging when he hid his once so open gaze? How strange that a creature feels ashamed before life and slinks into its den to perish, convinced that it cannot hope to encounter any respect or reverence for its sufferings and death throes—and rightly so, for joyous birds on the wing show no honor to a sick comrade in their flock, but instead peck him angrily, disdainfully with their beaks. That is base nature’s way—but a very human, loving mercy swelled up in Hans Castorp’s breast when he saw that dark, instinctive shame in poor Joachim’s eyes. He walked on the left, made a point of doing so; and since Joachim had become somewhat unsteady on his feet, Hans Castorp was sure to offer him a hand when they were confronted with a gentle meadow slope; overcoming his customary reserve, he would put an arm around him, might even forget for a while to remove it again from Joachim’s shoulders, until his cousin shook him off in slight annoyance and said, “Say there, what’s this? We look like two drunks wandering along.”

  But there came a day when young Hans Castorp saw the sadness in Joachim’s eyes in a different light; it was in early November—the snow was already deep—and Joachim had been given orders to stay in bed. By then it was difficult for him to manage even stews and porridges, and every second bite went down the wrong way. The time had come for a strict liquid diet, and Behrens used the occasion to prescribe constant bed rest as a means of preserving the patient’s energies. It was on the eve of Joachim’s retiring to his bed for good, his last evening on his feet, that Hans Castorp happened upon him—in conversation with Marusya, with Marusya of the unwarranted giggles, the orange-scented handkerchiefs, and the externally well-formed chest. It was after supper, during the evening social, out in the lobby. Hans Castorp had been in the music room and came out to see what had become of Joachim, and he found him standing in front of the tiled stove, next to Marusya’s chair—a rocking chair and Joachim was holding onto it with his left hand, tilting it back, so that Marusya was in a reclining position, looking up out of her little, round, brown eyes into Joachim’s face, which was bent down over hers, uttering soft, disjointed phrases, to which she would occasionally respond with a smile or a nervous, disparaging shrug.

  Hans Castorp beat a hasty retreat, but not before he realized that other guests of the sanatorium, as was common here, were watching the scene with an amused eye—without Joachim’s noticing, or perhaps caring. What a sight: Joachim recklessly indulging in conversation with high-breasted Marusya, a person with whom he had never exchanged a single word during the whole time they had sat at the same table and at the mention of whose name he had always lowered his eyes and assumed a stern, reasonable, honor-loving expression, though his face had turned blotchy and pale. And it shocked Hans Castorp more than any other sign of his poor cousin’s failing strength that he had noticed over the past weeks. “Yes, he is lost,” he thought and sat quietly for a while in the music room to give Joachim time for whatever it was he was allowing himself out there in the lobby on his last evening.

  From then on Joachim assumed a permanent horizontal position, and Hans Castorp wrote to Luise Ziemssen about it—wrote to her from his splendid lounge chair that he must now add to his earlier occasional reports the news that Joachim was bedfast and that although his cousin had said nothing, one could see in his eyes that it was his wish to have his mother beside him, and that Director Behrens had expressly seconded this unspoken wish. He gently, clearly made that point as well. It was no wonder, then, that Frau Ziemssen took the earliest, fastest train she could find to join her son. She arrived only three days after this humane alert had been sent off, and Hans Castorp fetched her by sleigh from the station in Dorf—stood there in a snow flurry on the platform before the little train arrived and composed his face, so that Joachim’s mother would not be too alarmed at first glance, but would not read any false message of good cheer in it, either.

  How often must these scenes of greeting have happened here, how often had two people rushed toward one another, the traveler who had just climbed from the train urgently searching the eyes of the person who had come to greet her. Frau Ziemssen gave the impression that she had run here all the way from Hamburg. Her face was flushed, she clasped Hans Castorp’s hand and pulled it to her breast; glancing anxiously all about, she hastily posed her almost furtive questions, which Hans Castorp avoided answering by thanking her for having come so quickly—it was spiffing of her. How happy Joachim would be to see her. Yes, well, he was bedridden for now, primarily because of the liquid diet he was on, which of course could not help affecting his energies. But there were, if need be, all sorts of other expedients, intravenous feeding for example. But then, she would see for herself.

  She saw, and at her side, Hans Castorp saw, too. Until that moment the changes that Joachim had undergone in the last weeks had not been so noticeable—young people do not have much of an eye for such things. But now, standing beside the mother who had rushed here from elsewhere, he looked at his cousin with her eyes, as it were, as if he had not seen him for a long time, and saw clearly and distinctly what she doubtless also recognized and Joachim certainly knew better than either of them: that he was a moribundus. Joachim grasped Frau Ziemssen’s hand with hands that were as yellow and wasted as his emaciated face, from which his ears, the one minor sorrow of his youth, stuck out more than ever; but despite that regrettable disfigurement, suffering had stamped his face with an expression of austere earnestness, even pride, and he still looked very manly—although the lips beneath his dark little moustache seemed too full now against the shadows of his hollow cheeks. Two deep creases were engraved in the yellowish skin between his eyes, which although they had sunk deep into their bony sockets, were larger and more beautiful than ever. Hans Castorp took comfort in that, because all the worry, gloom, and unsteadiness had vanished from them now that his cousin was bedfast, and only the light he had noticed early on was visible in their calm, dark—and, to be sure, ominous—depths. Joachim did not smile as he held his mother’s hand and whispered his welcome. He had not even smiled when she first entered the room; and that immobility, that immutability in his expression said everything.

  Luise Ziemssen was a brave woman. She did not go to pieces at the sight of her fine son. As composed and restrained as the almost invisible hairnet holding her hair in place, as detached and energetic as the people of her native land were known to be, she took charge of Joachim’s care, was spurred on to maternal battle by what she saw, and was firm in her faith that if anything could be done, it would be done thanks only to her energy and vigilance. And when a few days later she agreed to bring in a nurse, it was certainly not for the sake of her own comfort, but only because she knew what was fitting and proper. And Sister Berta—Alfreda Schildknecht, to be precise—was hired; carrying her black handbag, she appeared at Joachim’s bedside. But whether day or night, Frau Ziemssen’s jealous energies left Sister Berta little to do, and she had plenty of time to stand out in the hallway, the cord of her pince-nez tucked behind one ear, and keep a curious eye on things.

  She was a prosaic soul, this Protestant nurse. But one day, when left in the room with Hans Castorp and her patient, who definitely was not asleep, but lying on
his back with his eyes open, she blithely remarked, “I never would have dreamed it, either—that I would be nursing one of you gentlemen to the bitter end.”

  Hans Castorp’s face registered his horror and fury, and he shook a fist at her. But she hardly seemed to understand what he wanted—since, quite rightly, the idea would never have occurred to her that it might be more tactful to spare Joachim and she was much too businesslike to think that anyone, and certainly not a close relative, could possibly indulge in self-deception as to the nature and outcome of the case. “Here,” she said, pouring some cologne on a handkerchief and holding it under Joachim’s nose, “do something nice for yourself, Herr Lieutenant.” And indeed there was little point now in trying to pull the wool over Joachim’s eyes—except for tonic effect, as Frau Ziemssen put it when she spoke to her son about his recovery in a brisk, stirring voice. For there could be no mistaking two obvious facts: first, Joachim was approaching death with his mind clear; and second, he did so contentedly and at peace with himself. Only in his last week, at the end of November, after the weakness in his heart had become noticeable, were there times when his mind would wander and he would suddenly grow confused about his condition and speak hopefully and happily of a speedy return to his regiment and of taking part in the grand maneuvers that he obviously thought were still under way. It was at this same period, however, that Director Behrens stopped holding out any hopes whatever and told the family it was only a question of hours.

  Even the most manly men succumb to credulous, oblivious self-deception; the phenomenon is as natural as it is melancholy when the process of deterioration approaches its fatal end—natural and impersonal and beyond all individual conscious effort, much as the temptation to wander in circles overcomes someone who is lost or sleep ensnares someone freezing to death. Hans Castorp’s grief and worry did not prevent him from focusing objectively on this phenomenon, and he formulated awkward, but clearheaded observations about it in his conversations with Naphta and Settembrini, when he would report to them about his cousin’s condition; he was rebuked by the Italian, however, for observing that there was an underlying error in the conventional notion that philosophical credulity and sanguine trust in the good are expressions of health, whereas pessimism and condemnation of the world are signs of illness; because otherwise the bleak final state could not bring forth an optimism, compared to whose awful rosiness the preceding gloom seemed a coarse, but healthy expression of life. At the same time, he could also report to them, thank God, that Rhadamanthus allowed for some hope amid the hopelessness and prophesied a gentle, painless exitus despite Joachim’s youth.

  “An idyllic affair of the heart, my gracious lady,” he said, holding Luise Ziemssen’s hand in his two shovel-size mitts and gazing down at her from his protruding, watery, bloodshot blue eyes. “I’m so glad, so tremendously glad that things are taking this serene course, and that he will not have to suffer edema of the glottis and other such beastly problems—he will be spared a great many vexations. His heart is giving out rapidly, luckily for him, luckily for us. We shall do our duty, do what we can with camphor injections, with little danger of side effects. I think I can promise that he will sleep a lot toward the last and dream pleasant dreams, and if at the very end he is unable to sleep, his passing will nevertheless be swift, imperceptible—it won’t even matter much to him, you can be sure of that. It’s always that way, really. I know death, I’m one of his old employees. He’s overrated, believe me. I can assure you there’s almost nothing to him. The drudgeries that do on occasion precede death can hardly be credited to him, since they just prove that someone is alive and kicking and may lead back to life and health. But if anyone ever did come back, they could not tell you much about death, since we don’t actually meet him. We come out of darkness and return to darkness, with some experiences in between. But we don’t experience the beginning and the end, birth and death. We are not subjectively aware of them, they exist only in the world of objective events—and that’s that.”

  This was the director’s way of offering consolation. We shall hope it did some good with a woman as reasonable as Frau Ziemssen. And his assurances did turn out, for the most part, as predicted. In his weakened state, Joachim slept for many hours during his final days, and probably dreamed dreams he thought pleasant—of military maneuvers in the flatlands, we assume. And when he did awaken and was asked how he felt, he would always answer, though somewhat indistinctly, that he felt fine and happy—although he had hardly any pulse left and ultimately did not even notice the prick of the hypodermic. His body felt nothing; they could have burned and pinched him, it would have made no difference to Joachim at that point.

  And yet he had undergone great changes since his mother’s arrival. Shaving had become difficult for him, and although he had a heavy beard that grew rapidly, nothing had been done about it for eight or ten days, so that his waxen face with its gentle eyes was now framed by a full black beard—a warrior’s beard, the kind a soldier might grow out in the field. It looked handsome and manly on him, they all said. Yes, the beard—though not it alone—suddenly changed Joachim from a youth to a mature man. Like a clock whirring too fast, he had been living rapidly, galloping through each stage of life that time would never allow him to reach. Over his last twenty-four hours he became an old man. His weak heart caused his face to swell, giving it a strained look that made Hans Castorp think that at the least dying must be a great labor, although Joachim no longer seemed to notice it much, because his senses were diminished and he had lapses in consciousness. The swelling was worst around the lips, and the inside of his mouth was dry or numbed; together these conditions obviously made it difficult for Joachim to speak, he mumbled like a very old man and was himself quite annoyed by the impediment. If only he could speak, he said thickly, everything would be fine—it was a damn nuisance.

  What he meant by “everything would be fine” was not exactly clear—it became quite evident that his condition tended to create ambiguities, and he expressed himself equivocally more than once, seemed both to know and not to know, and at one point, apparently overcome by a wave of approaching devastation, he shook his head almost in remorse and declared that he had never felt this bad, never in all his life.

  Then his mood turned intransigent, sternly diffident, even boorish; he would not listen to any more fibs or pretty stories, refused to answer them, and stared strangely straight ahead. Especially after the young pastor—whom Luise Ziemssen had summoned and who, to Hans Castorp’s regret, had not worn a starched ruff but only Geneva bands—arrived to pray with him, his attitude grew more officially military and his wishes were only blunt commands.

  Around six in the evening he began to do something curious. He repeatedly stretched out his right arm, the one with the gold bracelet around the wrist, until it was at about his hip, then raised his hand slightly and pulled it back again along the blanket with a raking or scraping motion, as if he were collecting or gathering something.

  At seven o’clock he died—Alfreda Schildknecht was out in the hall, only his mother and cousin were present. He had slipped down too far in his bed and curtly demanded to be propped back up again. As Frau Ziemssen attempted to follow his instructions and was slipping an arm around his shoulders, he remarked rather hastily that he would have to draft and send a letter requesting his leave be extended, and no sooner had he said it than his “swift passing” took place—which Hans Castorp watched reverently by the light of the red-shaded table lamp. The gaze faltered, the unconscious strain left the features, the painful swelling vanished rapidly from the lips, a more handsome, youthful look spread across our Joachim’s silenced countenance, and it was over.

  Luise Ziemssen turned away sobbing, and so it was Hans Castorp who reached out with his ring finger to close the eyelids of the motionless form that no longer breathed, then carefully laid the hands together on the blanket. Then he stood there, too, and wept, let the tears flow down his cheeks, like those that had stung the cheeks of the
English naval officer—the colorless liquid that flows at every hour everywhere in the world, so richly and bitterly that earth’s vale has poetically been named after it: an alkaline, salty liquid that our body secretes from glands when our nerves are subjected to the shock of pain, whether physical or psychological. He knew that it also contains traces of mucin and protein.

  The director came after being notified by Sister Berta. He had been there only a half hour before to give an injection of camphor, had just missed the moment of swift passing. “Yes, well, he has it behind him,” he said simply, rising back up with his stethoscope from Joachim’s quiet breast. And then he extended a hand to each relative and added a little nod. He stood for a while together with them beside the bed, gazing at Joachim’s impassive face with its warrior’s beard. “Crazy lad, crazy fellow,” he said thrusting his head back over one shoulder at the body lying there. “Wanted to force it, you see—because of course all his duties down below were force and violence—did his duty with a fever, come hell or high water. The field of honor, you see—hightailed it for the field of honor, kicked over the traces. But honor was the death of him, or—if you turn it the other way around—death did him the honor. Crazy kid he was, crazy fellow.” And he left, taking long strides and bent forward so that his neck vertebrae protruded.