by Thomas Mann
She had been listening!
She blushed; and much relieved at seeing her embarrassment, they began to scold her in unison—until she assured them that no, no, no, they shouldn’t think such a thing of her. She had not been listening, not outside, not at the door, truly she hadn’t.
Not outside, not at the door?
“Oh, no.” But she did apologize all the same—she had been listening here in the room, after she came in. She couldn’t help that.
Could not help it? In the room?
It came in whispers. It was whispered to her what she had to do, very softly, but quite clearly and distinctly.
It was a confession, apparently. Elly felt guilty somehow, felt she had cheated. She should have told them she was not suited for such games, because everything was whispered to her. There is no earthly point in a contest where one of the competitors possesses supernatural powers. To use a term from sports, Ellen was suddenly disqualified, but in a way that made chills run up your spine when she confessed. Several voices immediately cried out for Dr. Krokowski. Someone ran to get him, and he came: he broke into a rugged, pithy smile once he had the picture, his very presence demanding their cheerful trust. They breathlessly reported this case of crass abnormality: an omniscient girl had appeared on the scene, a maiden who heard voices. —My, my, and what else? They should just calm down now. We would see. This was his native soil—marshy, soggy, unsteady footing for all, though he trod it with more steady assurance. He asked questions, heard them out. My, my, well, what had they here? “So that’s how things are with you, my child, is it?” And he laid a hand on the young girl’s head, the way everyone liked to do. Certainly something worthy of attention, but nothing to be frightened by in the least. He let his hand drift down from her head in a gentle stroke along her shoulder, to her arm, and fastening his exotic brown eyes on her bright blue ones, he submerged his gaze in hers. She returned it meekly, then more meekly still, that is, lowered her eyes more and more, as her head slipped slowly toward her chest and shoulder. When her eyes began to roll back, the physician passed his hand in a casual upward sweep in front of her face, declared everything perfectly in order, and sent the entire excited party off to evening rest cure—except for Elly Brand, with whom he said he wanted to “chat” a little.
Chat! They should have known. And yet no one felt all that easy about the word, even if it was a standard word for their cheerful comrade, Dr. Krokowski. Everyone felt the touch of an icy finger deep inside, even Hans Castorp, who was late in finding his way to his splendid lounge chair that evening; he stretched out and recalled how, as he watched Elly’s unseemly achievements and listened to her embarrassed explanation, the ground had shifted under his feet, making him feel a little queasy and anxious all over, like a slight touch of seasickness. He had never been in an earthquake, but he told himself that it most probably evoked similar sensations of unmistakable terror—quite apart from the curiosity that Ellen Brand’s disagreeable talents also awakened in him. It was a curiosity that bore within it a sense of its own ultimate hopelessness, that is, an awareness that there were regions to which his mind was forbidden the access it groped to find—giving rise to doubts whether it was simply idle, or perhaps sinful curiosity, which did not, however, prevent it from being what it was: curiosity. Like everyone else, over the course of his life Hans Castorp had heard one thing or another about arcane. natural, or supernatural, phenomena—there has already been mention made of his clairvoyant great-aunt, whose melancholy story had been passed down to him. But never had that world, to which he would not have denied theoretical and unbiased recognition, pressed in hard upon him; he had no practical experience of it, and the aversion he felt to such experiences (an aversion based on good taste, an aesthetic aversion, an aversion that came with his pride as a human being—if we can apply such pretentious terms to our thoroughly unpretentious hero) was almost equal to the curiosity they aroused in him. He could sense in advance, quite clearly, quite definitely, that however such experiences might develop, they would never seem anything but preposterous, incomprehensible, and lacking in human value. And yet he burned to taste them. He understood that “idle or sinful”—which was bad enough as an alternative—was no alternative at all, that the two coincided, and that to say something was spiritually and intellectually “hopeless” was merely the amoral way of saying it was “forbidden.” And yet the old placet experiri, planted in him by someone who would have most stoutly disapproved of any experiments of this sort, had taken firm root in Hans Castorp’s mind. By now, his morality coincided with his curiosity, probably always had. It was the unconditional curiosity of the tourist thirsty for knowledge; a curiosity that, in having tasted the mystery of personality, had perhaps not been all that far from the realms emerging here; a curiosity that displayed something of a military character by not trying to evade something forbidden if it might offer itself. And so Hans Castorp decided to be on the alert and not to step aside if Ellen Brand should have further adventures.
Dr. Krokowski issued a strict prohibition against any more lay experiments with Fräulein Brand’s hidden talents. He placed a scientific embargo on the child, held sessions with her in his analytical dungeon, and hypnotized her, so it was said, in an attempt to develop and train the possibilities slumbering inside her and to probe her previous psychic life. Hermine Kleefeld, as a motherly friend and benefactor, did the same, and learned a few things under the seal of secrecy, which under the same seal she then spread throughout the house, not excluding the concierge desk. She learned, for example, that the person or thing that had whispered things to the girl during the game was named Holger—it was a boy named Holger, a spirit, whom little Ellen knew quite well, a deceased, ethereal creature, something like her guardian angel. —And so he had blabbed the part about the pinch of salt and Paravant’s forefinger? —Yes, his phantom lips caressing her ear, so close they tickled a little and made her smile, had whispered it all to her. —That must have been nice back in school to have had Holger whisper the answers when she hadn’t done her homework. —Ellen had made no response. But later, she said that Holger probably was not allowed to do that. He was forbidden to get mixed up in serious matters, and besides, he probably had not known many answers to school questions.
It was learned, further, that since early childhood Ellen had experienced visions, although at wide intervals, both visible and invisible. What was that supposed to mean—invisible visions? Well, for example, at age sixteen she had been sitting alone in her parents’ living room, at the round table, doing some needlework in the middle of the afternoon, and her father’s Great Dane, a bitch named Freia, had been lying on the carpet beside her. The tablecloth was like a colorful Turkish shawl, the kind that old women wear folded in a triangle, its four corners hanging catercorner down over the edges. And suddenly Ellen had seen the corner closest to her roll up—watched it roll up, silently, carefully, evenly, almost to the middle of the table, so that when it stopped it made a fairly long tube; and while this was going on, Freia had first sat up ferociously, bracing herself against her front legs, hair standing on end, and then rising up full, had bolted into the adjoining room and hid under the sofa; and for a whole year you could not get her to go into the living room.
Had it been Holger, Fräulein Kleefeld asked, who had rolled up the shawl? Little Ellen Brand did not know. And what had she thought about the incident? Well, since it had been absolutely impossible to make anything of it, really, Elly had not given it much thought. And had she told her parents about it? No. That was odd,Fräulein Kleefeld remarked. Well, even though she had not given it much thought, Elly had the feeling that she should keep the event and others like it to herself—it was a strict secret, she felt bashful about it. Had that been a heavy burden to bear? No, not particularly. What was so burdensome about a tablecloth that rolled itself up? But there had been other things that were harder for her. For example:
The previous year she had been at her parents’ house in Odense again, an
d very early one morning she left her room, which was on the ground floor, and was crossing the hall to climb the stairs to the dining room to make herself some coffee, as she normally did before her parents got up. She had almost reached the landing where the stairway turned, and there on the landing, right at the top of the stairs, she had seen her older sister Sophie, who was married and lived in America—it was her, really, physically her. She was wearing a white dress and, what seemed very strange, a wreath of marshy water lilies on her head; holding both hands clasped against one shoulder, her sister had nodded to her. “Why, Sophie—are you home?” Ellen had asked, rooted to the spot, half in terror, half in joy. Sophie had nodded once more and then vanished into thin air. First she became transparent, then visible only in the same way you see a current of hot air rising, and finally not at all—and the stairs were free again for Ellen to pass. It turned out that on that very same morning, in New Jersey, her sister Sophie had died of inflammation of the heart.
Well, Hans Castorp replied, when Fräulein Kleefeld told him all this, that made some sense, it sounded plausible. A vision here, a death there—at least you could see some sort of satisfactory connection. And he agreed to take part in a spiritualistic parlor game, a séance performed with a moving glass, that the others, having lost patience with Dr. Krokowski’s jealous prohibitions concerning Ellen Brand, had decided to hold secretly behind his back.
Only a selected few were confidentially invited to this gathering, which was held in Hermine Kleefeld’s room: besides the hostess, Hans Castorp, and little Ellen Brand, there were the ladies Stöhr and Levi, plus Herr Albin, the Czech gentleman called Wenzel, and Dr. Ting-Fu. One evening, at the stroke of ten, they quietly assembled, whispering and eyeing the arrangements Hermine had made, which consisted of a bare, round, medium-size table in the middle of the room; a wineglass placed upside down on it; and around the edge of the table, at regular intervals, little ivory squares, tokens from some game or other, on which twenty-five letters of the alphabet had been drawn in ink. Fräulein Kleefeld first served tea, which was greeted with thanks, particularly by the ladies Stöhr and Levi, who, despite the childish harmlessness of the occasion, complained’ of cold hands and palpitations. Once they had all warmed themselves, they sat down at the table, and by dim pinkish light—to enhance the mood, their hostess had extinguished the ceiling light and left only the red-shaded nightstand lamp burning—each of them placed one finger of his or her right hand gently on the upturned base of the glass. This was standard procedure. They waited for the glass to set itself in motion.
That could happen easily enough—it was a smooth tabletop, the edge of the glass was nicely ground, and the pressure exerted by their trembling fingers, light as it was, would of course be uneven, more vertical here, more from the side there, so that in time it would be quite sufficient to cause the glass to leave its middle position. At the periphery of its field of movement it would then chance upon letters of the alphabet, and if those toward which it moved formed words that made some sort of sense, it would be the result of a very complex phenomenon, almost impure in its intricacy, a blend of conscious, half-conscious, and subconscious elements—assisted and driven by the wishes of each person present, whether they admitted it to themselves or not—and of a secret sanction granted by unillumined layers within the souls of them all, a subterranean cooperation for strange ends, with each individual contributing more or less of his or her own darkness, the strongest contribution probably being that of sweet little Elly. Ultimately they all knew this before they sat down, and in his chatterbox way, Hans Castorp had even blurted it out as they waited with trembling fingers. Indeed it was the same realization that caused the ladies’ cold hands and palpitations and the gentlemen’s subdued mirth. They knew they had assembled in the still of the night for an impure game with their own natures, a test of unknown components of their inner selves, knew they were waiting, frightened and curious, for pseudo- or semi-realities that are called magical. It was almost merely for form’s sake, a matter of convention, that the gathering presumed the ghosts of the departed would speak by means of a glass. Herr Albin was commissioned to act as their spokesperson and to negotiate with whatever presences might appear, since he had taken part in séances on a few occasions prior to this.
Twenty minutes passed, and more. They ran out of topics to whisper about, initial tensions eased. They supported their right elbows now with their left hands. Wenzel the Czech was about to nod off. Her dainty finger resting lightly on the glass, Ellen Brand focused her large, pure, childlike eyes beyond immediate matters and directed her gaze instead at the nightstand lamp.
Suddenly the glass tipped, gave a knock, and ran off from under their hands. They had trouble keeping their fingers on it. It slid to the edge of the table, moved along it a short distance, and then headed straight back to more or less the middle of the table. There it gave another knock and held its peace.
The start it gave them all was partly of fright, partly of joy. Frau Stöhr whimpered she wanted to stop, but it was made clear to her that she should have thought of that before and was to keep quiet. Things were under way now, or so it seemed. They stipulated that for a yes or no, the glass would not have to point to letters, but could simply reply with one or two knocks.
“Is there a spirit present?” Herr Albin inquired with a stern face, staring in the air above their heads. A hesitation—then the glass tipped and said yes.
“What is your name?” Herr Albin asked almost gruffly, reinforcing the energy of his voice with a shake of his head.
The glass stirred. It ran in a determined zigzag from token to token, but pulling back slightly toward the middle with each move; it ran to the H, to the O, to the L, after which it seemed to grow weary and confused, not to know what to do, but then it recovered, found the G, the E, and the R. Just as they thought! It was Holger in person, the spirit named Holger, the one who had known about the pinch of salt and all the rest, but who, of course, never got mixed up in any questions at school. He was there, floating in the breeze, hovering about their little circle. What should they do with him now? A certain reticence settled in. They consulted in whispers, behind their hands so to speak, about what it was they were eager to know. Herr Albin decided to ask what Holger’s status and profession had been in life. He did it, as before, in the stern tone of a cross-examination, adding a scowl.
The glass was silent for a while. Then with a tip and a stumble it headed for the P, pulled away, and moved to the O. What was it going to spell? The tension was palpable. Dr. Ting-Fu giggled and said he feared Holger had been a policeman. Frau Stöhr was overcome with hysterical laughter, which did not stop the glass in its labors, however, and it hobbled, rattled, and slid its way to the T, but then—surely it must have left out something—it returned to the middle. It had spelled “pot.”
What the—ah, so Holger had been a poet, was that it? And out of simple pride, it appeared, almost superfluously, the glass tipped and knocked once for yes. “A lyric poet?” Hermine Kleefeld asked, drawing out the first syllable till it sounded like “leer,” as Hans Castorp automatically noted. Holger seemed reluctant about specificity. He gave no new answer. He quickly, confidently, clearly spelled out the same thing again, adding the E he had forgotten before.
Fine, fine, a poet then. The embarrassment grew—an odd embarrassment that was intended for manifestations in the uncontrolled regions of their own interiors, but, given the dissembling, semi-real quality of those manifestations, was directed instead to external reality. Someone wondered if Holger felt happy and content in his state. The glass dreamily tapped out the word “serene.” Ah yes, so he felt “serene.” Well, it was not a term they would have come up with on their own, but once the glass had spelled it out, they found it probable and nicely put. And how long had Holger been in this serene state? And now came something else no one would have hit upon, something dreamily self-revealing. It was: “Hastening while.” Very good! It could just as easily have been “whili
ng haste,” it was a bit of poetic ventriloquism from the beyond; Hans Castorp thought it splendid. For Holger, the element of time was a “hastening while”—but of course, he would have to deal with his questioners in a gnomic style, would surely have forgotten how to function with earthly words and exact measurements. And so what else did they want to know from him?Fräulein Levi admitted she was curious to know what Holger looked like, or if that didn’t apply, had looked like. Had he been a handsome lad? She should ask him herself, demanded Herr Albin, who found the inquiry beneath his dignity. And so she asked him, using informal pronouns, if he had curly blond hair?
“Beautiful brown, brown locks,” the glass traced out, twice spelling out the word “brown” in full. Mirth and delight reigned around the table. The ladies candidly announced they were in love. They blew kisses angled toward the ceiling. Dr. Ting-Fu suggested with a giggle that Mr. Holger was apparently rather vain.
The glass turned angry and frantic. It ran wildly about the table to no purpose, tipped furiously, fell over, and rolled into the lap of Fräulein Stöhr, who gazed down at it pale with horror, her arms spread wide. With many apologies, they carefully put it back in its proper place. The Chinese doctor was scolded. How dare he! Just look where such impudence got you! And what if Holger were to turn heel and run now, without saying another word? They coaxed and flattered their glass. Would he not like to recite a little poem? He had been a poet after all, before he started hovering and floating in the hastening while. Ah, how they all wanted to hear some of his poetry. They would enjoy it so much.