by Thomas Mann
“A gin, neat,” the dwarf repeated, spun once around completely, looking for somewhere to set down her jug and pot, which she then placed on Hans Castorp’s table, right next to his place setting, apparently not wanting to bother Herr Peeperkorn with it. She hurried off, and her patron promptly received what he wanted. The little glass was so full that the “bread” ran down on all sides and formed little puddles in his plate. He clasped it between his thumb and middle finger and raised it to the light. “And so,” he declared, “Pieter Peeperkorn will now regale himself with a schnapps.” And after first chewing it briefly, he swallowed the distilled grain. “Now,” he said, “I view you all with refreshed eyes.” And he took Frau Chauchat’s hand from where it lay on the tablecloth and lifted it to his lips, then laid it back down and let his own hand rest atop it for a while.
A peculiar man, a man of some personal authority, though rather vague—the society of the Berghof was very taken by him. He had recently retired from his colonial affairs, it was said, and was home free. They spoke of his splendid house in The Hague and his villa in Scheveningen. Frau Stöhr called him a “money magnet” and could point to a pearl necklace that Madame Chauchat had been wearing with her evening gowns since her return and that in Karoline’s opinion could hardly be considered evidence of Transcaucasian marital gallantry, but rather was the result of “shared travel expenses.” She winked as she said it; unrefined by sickness and suffering, she now pointed with her head in Hans Castorp’s direction and pulled down the corners of her mouth to parody his distress, mocking and ruthlessly exploiting his sad state. He kept his composure. He even corrected her malapropism with some wit. She had misspoken herself, he said—the word was magnate. But magnet was not all that bad, either, since Peeperkorn was obviously a very attractive man. And in response to Fräulein Engelhart, who without looking at him asked, with a dull blush and a skewed smile, how he liked their new guest, he said with perfect equanimity that Mynheer Peeperkorn was a “blurred personality”—a personality, true, but a blurred one. The precision of this characterization showed both his objectivity and his composure; it put the teacher off-balance. But in the case of Ferdinand Wehsal, who offered a twisted remark about the unexpected circumstances under which Frau Chauchat had returned, Hans Castorp proved there are glances that are every whit as unambiguous as the most precisely articulated words. “Poor wretch!” that glance said as it measured the man from Mannheim, and said it in a way that excluded even the remotest possibility of any other interpretation; and Wehsal acknowledged that glance and stomached it, even nodded and displayed his rotten teeth; but from then on, he refrained from carrying Hans Castorp’s overcoat when they went for walks with Naphta, Settembrini, and Ferge.
But good God, he could carry it himself, preferred to carry it himself, and had handed it over to the poor wretch now and then just to be friendly. But no one in our circle could fail to note that Hans Castorp had been hit hard by these totally unforeseen circumstances, which ruined all his mental preparations for greeting the partner of his carnival adventure on her return. Or better: the circumstances made preparations superfluous—that was the humiliating pan.
His intentions had been of the most delicate, prudent sort—nothing even vaguely impetuous or awkward. He had not given a thought to fetching Clavdia from the station, for instance—and a good thing the idea had not occurred to him. He had been quite uncertain whether a woman, one whose illness granted her such freedom, would even want to admit the fantastic events of that dreamy night of masquerade in a foreign language. Or would she perhaps prefer that he immediately remind her? No, nothing obtrusive, no coarse claims on her. Even if one granted that his relationship to the slant-eyed patient had by its very nature exceeded the bounds of Western reason and behavior, what had to be maintained now was very civilized formality, even, for the present, a feigned forgetfulness. A cavalier’s greeting from table to table—nothing more than that at first. On some later occasion, he might politely approach the traveler and casually inquire about how she had been doing of late. The real meeting would then follow at the appropriate time as a reward for his level-headed chivalry.
But, as noted, all this delicacy seemed futile now, since his actions had been robbed of their spontaneity and thus of any value. The presence of Mynheer Peeperkorn completely ruled out the possibility of any tactics except those of uttermost reserve. Hans Castorp had been sitting on his balcony on the evening of their arrival, had watched the sleigh move slowly up the looping driveway, and had seen the driver on his box, beside him the Malayan valet, a little yellow-skinned man wearing a bowler and sporting a fur collar on his overcoat—and sitting in back, at Clavdia’s side, the stranger, his hat pulled down over his eyes. Hans Castorp had not slept much that night. The next morning he had no difficulty learning the name of this unsettling fellow traveler, including the gratis news that the two of them had taken adjoining rooms on the second floor. Then had come first breakfast, during which he had sat at his place, waiting with a pale face for the glass door to slam. It did not. Clavdia’s entrance took place silently, because Mynheer Peeperkorn closed the glass door behind her; tall, broad-shouldered, the high brow of his mighty head encircled by white flames, he followed in the footsteps of his traveling companion, who, head thrust slightly forward, moved toward her table with her familiar catlike gait. Yes, it was she, unchanged. Forgetting himself and his plan, Hans Castorp held her in his sleepy gaze. That was her reddish-blond hair, no more elegantly coiffed than usual, just a simple braid wound around her head; those were her “lone-wolf eyes,” her rounded neck, her lips, which seemed fuller than they were because they were accented by cheekbones that gave a charming concavity to her cheeks. “Clavdia!” he thought with a shudder. And he looked her unexpected companion directly in the eye, not without a defiant toss of his head to mock the masklike face and the grandeur of the figure, not without challenging his own heart to make fun of this exalted personage, whose current rights of possession were cast in a very odd light by certain past events: certain past events, indeed—not dark, uncertain events from the realms of amateur portraits, which had had the power to disquiet him at one time. Frau Chauchat still had the same way of smiling and standing at attention, as if presenting herself to society before taking her seat; and Peeperkorn devotedly stood behind her and a bit to one side as she performed her little ceremony, and then took his own seat next to her at the end of the table.
Nothing came of the cavalier’s greeting from table to table. In “presenting” herself, Clavdia had let her eyes sweep right past Hans Castorp and all the farther regions of the room; nothing happened at their next meeting in the dining hall, either; and the more meals that passed without his eye meeting hers—unless you counted Frau Chauchat’s blind, sweeping, impassive gaze if she happened to turn around during a meal—the more unsuitable it would have been to attempt his cavalier’s greeting. During the brief evening social gatherings, the two traveling companions kept to the little salon. They sat side by side on the sofa surrounded by their tablemates; and Peeperkorn, whose magnificent countenance stood out bright red against the white of his flaming hair and beard, drank the rest of the bottle of red wine he had ordered for dinner. He drank a bottle at every main meal, sometimes one and a half, even two, not to mention the “bread,” with which he started every meal, including first breakfast. Apparently this regal man required unusual amounts of regalement. He likewise found regalement in extra-strong coffee, which he drank several times a day—not just in the morning, but at noon from a large cup, and not just after the meal, but during it, along with his wine. Both wine and coffee, Hans Castorp heard him say, were good for fever—quite apart from their regaling effect, they were very good for his intermittent attacks of tropical fever, one of which kept him bedfast in his room for several hours the second day after his arrival. Quartan fever, the director called it, because it struck the Dutchman down approximately every fourth day—it started with chattering teeth, then came a hot flush, and finally
the sweats. It was said that he had a swollen spleen from it as well.
VINGT ET UN
And so time passed—weeks, three or four probably, that at least is our guess, since we cannot possibly depend on Hans Castorp’s judgment and ability to gauge such matters. The weeks slipped past without bringing forth any real change; but as for our hero, they brought forth a permanent disdain for those unforeseen circumstances that demanded unrewarding reticence of him: for the circumstance that called itself Pieter Peeperkorn whenever it downed a schnapps; for the bothersome presence of this regal, imposing, and vague man—bothersome indeed and in a much cruder fashion than Herr Settembrini had “bothered” him in the old days. Deep vertical furrows of contempt and ill humor formed between Hans Castorp’s eyebrows, and from under those furrows he gazed at the returned traveler five times a day, happy at least to gaze at her, but filled with scorn for the exalted personage who had not the least notion what an odd light past events cast upon him.
One evening, however, for no particular reason, the evening social in the lobby and public rooms turned more lively than usual. There had been music, Gypsy melodies, jauntily executed on the violin by a Hungarian student; and then Director Behrens, who had likewise appeared for fifteen minutes, accompanied by Dr. Krokowski, got someone to play the melody of the “Pilgrims’ Chorus” on the bass register of the piano, while he stood close by and attacked the treble with a brush that he bounced over the keys in a parody of violin arpeggios. Bursts of laughter. Shaking his head magnanimously at his own friskiness, the director then left the social rooms amid loud applause. The convivial mood continued, more music followed, but nothing that demanded their particular attention; people gathered with their drinks for dominoes and bridge, amused themselves with the optical gadgets, and stood chatting in little groups here and there. Even the people from the Good Russian table mingled with the others in the lobby and the music room. Mynheer Peeperkorn could be seen moving about—one could not avoid seeing him, for that majestic head towered above its surroundings, overwhelming everything with royal vigor and import. And although those who now gathered around him might at first have been drawn to him merely by his rumored wealth, very soon it was his personality and it alone to which they clung. Oblivious to all else, they stood there smiling and nodding encouragement. Caught in the spell of that pallid gaze from beneath those mighty creases on his brow, held in suspense by the emphatic cultured gestures of his long-nailed hands, they were not even vaguely aware of being disappointed by the incomprehensible, fragmented, muddled, indeed useless statements that followed.
And if we look around for Hans Castorp in this setting, we will find him in the reading room, the same room where once (though this “once” is vague, since neither narrator, reader, nor hero is quite clear anymore as to the degree of pastness involved) he had been party to important disclosures concerning the organization of human progress. It was quieter here; he shared his retreat with only a few others. A man was writing at one of the double lecterns that stood beneath a dangling electric lamp. A lady with two pince-nez on her nose was sitting in front of the bookcases paging through an illustrated magazine. Hans Castorp picked up a newspaper, and moving toward the open door that led to the music room, he sat down, his back to the portieres, on the chair that happened to be there—a plush-covered Renaissance chair, with a high, straight back and no arms, for those who wish to visualize it. The young man held his paper the way one holds a newspaper to read it, but instead of reading, he tilted his head to listen to the scraps of music mingled with conversation coming from the room adjacent; but the gloom on his brow suggested that he did so with only half an ear and that his thoughts were wandering down unmusical paths, thorny paths of disappointing circumstances, which, at the end of a long wait, had made an awful fool of the young man who had gladly waited—bitter paths of disdain that before long would end in a decision and its execution: he would lay his newspaper down on this uncomfortable chair he had happened upon, walk through the far door that led to the lobby, and exchange this convivial fiasco for the frosty solitude of his balcony and the company of Maria Mancini.
“And your cousin, monsieur?” a voice asked behind him, above his head. It was an enchanting voice to his ear—an ear expressly fashioned to perceive that dry, sweet huskiness as utmost pleasure, as the essence of pleasure brought to one perfect pinnacle. It was the voice that long ago had said: “Glad to. And don’t break it”—a compelling voice, a voice of destiny; and if he had heard right, it had asked about Joachim.
He slowly lowered his newspaper and lifted his face a little higher so that his head was raised, but with only his cowlick touching the straight chairback. He even closed his eyes a little, but immediately opened them again, and without changing the position of his head directed his gaze up and to one side into nowhere. Poor fellow—one might have been tempted to say he had the look of a clairvoyant or a sleepwalker. He wanted to hear the question repeated, but that did not happen. And so he was not even certain whether she was still standing behind him, when after a considerable pause he belatedly answered in almost a whisper: “He’s dead. He did his duty down on the plains and he died.”
He noticed himself that “dead” was the first word of any importance that had been spoken between them. He also noticed at once that her lack of fluency in his language meant she had to choose simple phrases to express her sympathy.
From behind and above him, she said, “How sad. What a pity. Quite dead and buried? Since when?”
“It’s been some time now. His mother took him back down with her. He even grew a warrior’s beard. They fired three salvos above his grave.”
“He had earned them. He was a very fine man. A much finer man than most—than certain people.”
“Yes, he was a fine fellow. Rhadamanthus always talked about his being a zealot. But his body wanted things otherwise. Rebellio carnis is what the Jesuits call it. He was always concerned about his body, in an honorable way, I mean. But his body let something dishonorable invade it, played a trick on his zealotry. But, then, it is more moral to lose oneself or let oneself be ruined than to save oneself.”
“I see monsieur is still a philosophical ne’er-do-well. Rhadamanthus? Who is that?”
“Behrens. Settembrini calls him that.”
“Ah, Settembrini, I know—that’s the Italian fellow. I did not like him. He was not a humane person.” (The voice pronounced the word “humane,” with the accent on the first syllable and drew it out in an indolent, fanciful sort of way.) “He was arrogant.” (The accent was on the second syllable.) “He is no longer here? I am stupid. I do not know what that means—Rhadamanthus.”
“It’s a humanistic thing. Settembrini has moved out. We’ve done some extensive philosophizing in the meantime. He and Naphta and I.”
“Who is Naphta?”
“His adversary.”
“If he is his adversary, then I would like to make his acquaintance. But did I not say that your cousin would die if he tried to be a soldier down on the plains?”
“Yes, you did, Clavdia.”
“Let us have none of that, monsieur!”
A long period of silence. He did not apologize. He waited, his spine pressed against the high chairback, his gaze clairvoyant at hearing that voice anew; but he was once again uncertain whether she was still behind him, afraid that the scraps of music from the next room might have drowned out her departing footsteps. But there it was again at last.
“And monsieur did not even go to his cousin’s funeral?”
“No,” he replied, “I said my good-byes to him here before they closed the casket—he was starting to smile. You can’t believe how cold his brow was, Clavdia.”
“Again! Is that any way to talk to a lady whom you hardly know?”
“Should my words be humanistic rather than humane?” (And automatically he drawled the last word out sleepily, as if he were stretching and yawning.)
“Quelle blague!—You’ve been here the whole time?”<
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“Yes. I’ve been waiting.”
“For what?”
“For you, Clavdia.”
A laugh above his head—and with it a trumpeted word: “Fool!”—“For me? They just wouldn’t let you out of here, that’s all.”
“Oh yes they would. Behrens discharged me once in a fit of temper. But it would only have been a wild departure. Because in addition to the old scars from long ago, from my school days, you know, Behrens has found a fresh spot and that’s what causes my fever.”
“There’s still a fever?”
“Yes, always a little. Almost always. It varies. But it’s not an intermittent fever.”
“Des allusions?”
He did not reply. He scowled and looked clairvoyant. After a while he asked, “And where were you, Clavdia?”
A hand slapped the back of his chair.
“Mais c’est un sauvage!—Where was I? Everywhere. In Moscow”—the voice pronounced it “Muoscow,” drawing the word out in the same indolent way it did “humane”—“in Baku, in German spas, in Spain.”
“Oh, in Spain. How was it?”
“So-so. Travel is difficult. The people are half Moors. Castile is very dry and hard. The Kremlin is more beautiful than that castle or monastery there at the foot of the mountains . . .”
“The Escorial.”
“Yes, Philip’s castle. An inhumane castle. I liked a folk dance in Catalonia better, the sardana—to bagpipes. I danced along with them. Everyone joins hands and moves in a circle. The whole town square is full. C’est charmant. It is humane. I bought a little blue cap, the kind that all the local men and boys wear, almost a fez, a boina. I wear it for my rest cure and at other times, too. Monsieur will have to judge whether it suits me.”
“Which monsieur?”
“The one here in this chair.”
“I thought, perhaps, Mynheer Peeperkorn.”