Part 10 (1/2)

fas.h.i.+on, in his left hand, against his shoulder.

His audience rose, pushed back its chairs, and slowly began to move towards the same door, as though converging upon him from all sides, without volition, hesitatingly, yet with one accord, like the throng after the Pied Piper. Hans Castorp stood in the stream without moving, his hand on the back of his chair. I am only a guest up here, he thought. Thank G.o.d I am healthy, that business has nothing to do with me; I shan't even be here for the next lecture. He watched Frau Chauchat going out, gliding along with her head thrust forward. Did she have herself psycho-a.n.a.lysed, he wondered. And his heart began to thump. He did not notice Joachim, coming toward him among the chairs, and started when his cousin spoke.

”You got here at the last minute,” Joachim said. ”Did you go very far? How was it?”

”Oh, very nice,” Hans Castorp answered. ”Yes, I went rather a long way. But I must confess, it did me less good than I thought it would. I won't repeat it for the present.” Joachim did not ask how he liked the lecture; neither did Hans Castorp express an opinion. By common consent they let the subject rest, both then and thereafter.

Doubts and Considerations

TUESDAY was the last day of our hero's week up here, and accordingly he found his weekly bill in his room on his return from the morning walk. It was a clear and businesslike doc.u.ment, in a green envelope, with a picture of the Berghof building at the top, and extracts from the prospectus carried in a narrow column down the lefthand side of the sheet. ”Psycho-a.n.a.lytic treatment, by the most modern methods” was called attention to by means of s.p.a.ced type. The items, set down in a calligraphic hand, came to one hundred and eighty francs almost exactly: eight francs a day for his chamber, twelve for board and medical attendance, entrance fee twenty, disinfection of room ten, while small charges for laundry, beer, and the late dinner of the first evening made up the sum.

Hans Castorp went over the bill with Joachim and found naught to object to. ”Of course I made no use of the medical attendance,” he said, ”but that was my own affair. It is included in the price of pension, and I couldn't expect them to make any deduction; how could they? As regards the disinfection, they must show a neat profit there, they never could have used ten francs' worth of H2CO to smoke the American woman out. But on the whole I must say I find it cheap rather than dear, considering what they offer,” And before second breakfast they went down to the management in order that Hans Castorp might acquit himself of his debt.

The management was on the ground-floor. You reached it after pa.s.sing the hall, the garderobe, the kitchens and domestic offices; you could not miss the door, it had a porcelain s.h.i.+eld. Hans Castorp took an interest in this glimpse into the business side of the enterprise. There was a neat little office, with a typist busy at her machine and three clerks bending over desks. In an adjoining office a man who looked like a head or director was working at a desk in the middle of the room; he flung a cool and calculating glance at the clients over the top of his gla.s.ses. Their affair was dispatched at the cas.h.i.+er's window, a note changed, money received, the bill receipted; the cousins preserving throughout these transactions the solemn, discreet, almost overawed bearing which the young German's respect for authority leads him to a.s.sume in the presence of pens, ink, and paper, or anything else which bears to his mind an official stamp. But on the way to breakfast, and later in the course of the day, they talked about the direction of the Berghof sanatorium, and Joachim, in his character as inmate, answered his cousin's questions.

Hofrat Behrens was not-though he gave the impression of being-owner and proprietor of the establishment. Above and behind him stood invisible powers, which to a certain extent manifested their existence in the office they had just visited. They consisted of a supervisory head and a stock company-in which it was not a bad thing to hold shares, according to Joachim, since the members of it divided a fat dividend each year. The Hofrat was a dependent, he was merely an agent, a functionary, an a.s.sociate of higher powers; the first and highest, of course, and the soul of the enterprise, with a well-defined influence upon it and upon the management itself- though of course as directing physician he was relieved of all preoccupation with the business side. He was a native of north-western Germany, and it was common knowledge that when he took the position, years ago, he had done so contrary to his previous intention and plans. He had come here on account of his wife-whose remains had long reposed in the village churchyard, that picturesque churchyard of Dorf Davos, which lay high up on the right-hand slope, nearer the entrance of the valley. She had been a charming person, to judge from her likenesses, though too large-eyed and asthenic-looking. Photographs of her stood about everywhere in the Hofrat's house; even oil portraits by his own amateur hand hung on the walls. Two children, a son and a daughter, had been born; then they had brought her up here, the fragile body already fever-smitten; a few months had seen the completion of the wasting-away process. Behrens, they said, had adored her. He was brought so low by the blow that he got very odd and melancholy; people saw him gesturing, sn.i.g.g.e.ring, and talking to himself, on the street. He did not go back to his original place, but remained where he was-in part, no doubt, because he could not tear himself away from her grave, but also for the less sentimental reason that he was himself in poor health and, in his own professional opinion, actually belonged belonged here. He had settled down as one of the physicians who are companions in suffering to the patients in their care; who do not stand above disease, fighting her in the armour of personal security, but who themselves bear her mark-an odd, but by no means isolated, case, and one which has its good as well as its bad side. Sympathy between doctor and patient is surely desirable, and a case might be made out for the view that only he who suffers can be the guide and healer of the suffering. And yet-can true spiritual mastery over a power be won by him who is counted among her slaves? Can he free others who himself is not free? The ailing physician remains a paradox to the average mind, a questionable phenomenon. May not his scientific knowledge tend to be clouded and confused by his own partic.i.p.ation, rather than enriched and morally reinforced? He cannot face disease in clear-eyed hostility to her; he is a prejudiced party, his position is equivocal. With all due reserve it must be asked whether a man who himself belongs among the ailing can give himself to the cure or care of others as can a man who is himself entirely sound. here. He had settled down as one of the physicians who are companions in suffering to the patients in their care; who do not stand above disease, fighting her in the armour of personal security, but who themselves bear her mark-an odd, but by no means isolated, case, and one which has its good as well as its bad side. Sympathy between doctor and patient is surely desirable, and a case might be made out for the view that only he who suffers can be the guide and healer of the suffering. And yet-can true spiritual mastery over a power be won by him who is counted among her slaves? Can he free others who himself is not free? The ailing physician remains a paradox to the average mind, a questionable phenomenon. May not his scientific knowledge tend to be clouded and confused by his own partic.i.p.ation, rather than enriched and morally reinforced? He cannot face disease in clear-eyed hostility to her; he is a prejudiced party, his position is equivocal. With all due reserve it must be asked whether a man who himself belongs among the ailing can give himself to the cure or care of others as can a man who is himself entirely sound.

Hans Castorp expressed some of these doubts and speculations, as he and Joachim gossiped about the Berghof and its professional head. But Joachim answered that n.o.body knew whether the Hofrat was still a patient-he was probably long since cured. It was ages ago that he had first begun to practise here; independently at first, and early winning a name for himself as an extraordinarily gifted auscultator and skilful surgeon. Then the Berghof had secured him; it would soon be ten years that he had been in intimate a.s.sociation with it. His private residence was in the end of the north-west wing of the building (Dr. Krokowski's was not far off), and that lady of the lofty lineage, the nursing sister and directress of the establishment, of whom Settembrini had made such utter fun, and whom thus far Hans Castorp had scarcely seen, presided over the small household. The Hofrat was otherwise alone, for his son was at the university and his daughter already married, to a lawyer in one of the French cantons. Young Behrens sometimes visited his father in the holidays; he had done so once during Joachim's time up here. The ladies, he related, had been quite thrilled; their temperatures had gone up, petty jealousies had led to bickering and quarrels in the rest-hall and an increase of visits to Dr. Krokowski's private office. The a.s.sistant had his own office hours, in a special room, which, together with the large examination-rooms, the laboratory, the operating-rooms and x-ray studio, was in the well-lighted bas.e.m.e.nt of the building. We call it the bas.e.m.e.nt, for the stone steps leading down to it from the ground-floor created the impression that it was such-an erroneous impression, for not only was the ground-floor somewhat elevated, but the entire building stood on a sidehill, part way up the mountain, and these ”bas.e.m.e.nt” rooms faced the front, with a view of the gardens and valley, a circ.u.mstance negatived to some extent by the fact of the steps leading down to them. One descended, as one supposed, from the ground-floor, only to find oneself at the bottom still on it, or practically so. Hans Castorp amused himself with this illusion when he accompanied his cousin one afternoon down to the ”bathing-master,” that Joachim might get himself weighed. A clinical brilliance and spotlessness reigned in this sphere. Everything was as white as white; the doors gleamed with white enamel; the one leading to Dr. Krokowski's receiving-room, with the doctor's visiting-card tacked on it, was reached by two more steps down from the corridor, which gave the room behind it an air of being more s.p.a.cious and withdrawn than the rest. This door was at the end of the corridor, on your right as you came downstairs. Hans Castorp kept his eye on it as he walked up and down waiting for his cousin. He saw a lady come out, a recent arrival, whose name he did not know: a small, dainty person, with curls on her forehead, and gold ear-rings. She bent over as she mounted the stairs, and held up her frock with one beringed hand, while with the other she pressed her tiny handkerchief to her lips and, all stooped as she was, stared up over it into nothing, with great blue, distracted eyes. She hurried with small tripping steps, her petticoat rustling, to the stairs, paused suddenly as though something had occurred to her, then went on tripping upward, and disappeared, still bending over and holding her handkerchief to her mouth.

Behind her, when she opened the office door, it had been much darker than in the white corridor. Obviously the brilliant lighting of these lower regions did hot extend so far; Hans Castorp remarked that a shadowed dusk, a profound twilight, prevailed in Dr. Krokowski's private sanctum.

Table-Talk

YOUNG Hans Castorp noticed that the ancestral tremor brought on by his ill-advised walk continued to trouble him-he found it rather an embarra.s.sment when in the dining-room. Almost as a regular thing now, his head would begin shaking at table; he found this impossible to prevent and hard to dissemble. He tried various devices to disguise the weakness, for he could not continually support his chin on his collar; he would keep his head in action, turning it to the right and left in conversation, or bear hard against the table with the left forearm when he carried a spoonful of soup to his mouth, and support his head with his hand. In the pauses he even rested his elbow on the table, this although it was in his own eyes a piece of ill breeding, which would not pa.s.s in any society save the lax abnormal one where he now found himself. But the weakness was burdensome too and went far to spoil the meal hours for him, which he had otherwise continued to find diverting and full of interesting episode.

But the truth was-and Hans Castorp was entirely aware of it-that the absurdmanifestation against which he struggled was not solely physical in its origin, not wholly to be accounted for by the air up here and the efforts his system made to adjust itself. Rather was it the outward expression of his inner stimulation, and bore directly upon those very episodes and diversions.

Madame Chauchat almost invariably came late to meals. Until she came, Hans Castorp could not sit and keep his feet still, but must wait in suspense for the cras.h.i.+ng of the gla.s.s door; he knew it would make him start and that his face would feel cold all over, and this was what regularly happened. At first he had jerked round his head infuriated and followed the offender with angry eyes to her seat at the ”good” Russian table. He may even have muttered some abusive epithet between his teeth, some outraged cry of protest. But now he only bent over his plate, bit his lips, or deliberately turned his head away. It seemed to him that anger was no longer in place; he even had an obscure feeling that he was partly responsible, that he shared the blame with her before the others. In short, it would be no longer so true to say he was ashamed of Frau Chauchat as that he was ashamed for her-a feeling he might well have spared himself, for not a soul in the room troubled either over Frau Chauchat's misconduct or Hans Castorp's sensitiveness to it-with the possible exception of the schoolmistress, Fraulein Engelhart, on his right.

This poor creature had perceived that, thanks to his sensibility in the matter of slamming doors, a certain emotional att.i.tude toward the Russian lady was come to subsist in her young neighbour's mind. Further, that the grounds of the att.i.tude were of little moment compared to the fact of its existence; and, finally, that his a.s.sumed indifference-very poorly a.s.sumed, for Hans Castorp had neither talent nor training as an actor-did not mean a decrease of interest, but on the contrary indicated that the affair was pa.s.sing into a higher phase. Fraulein Engelhart was for her own person quite without hopes or pretensions. She therefore launched out into extravagant enthusiasm over Frau Chauchat-about which quite the most extraordinary thing was that Hans Castorp saw perfectly how she was egging him on-not all at once, perhaps, but in the course of time-saw through it and even felt disgusted at it, yet without being the less willingly led on by her and made a fool of.

”Slam-bang!” the old spinster said. ”That was she she. No need to look up to tell who just came in. Of course, there she goes-like a kitten to a saucer of milk-how pretty it is! I wish we might change places, so you could look at her as much as you liked. Naturally you don't care to keep turning your head-that would flatter her far too much. She is greeting her table-you really ought to look, it is so refres.h.i.+ng to see her! When she smiles and talks as she is doing now, a dimple comes in one cheek, but not always, only when she likes. What a love of a woman! A spoilt child, that is why she is so heedless. Creatures like that one has to love, whether one will or no; they vex you with their heedlessness, but that is only one reason the more for loving them; it makes you so happy to have to care for them in spite of yourself.”

She whispered on, behind her hand, for his ear alone; the flush that mantled on her downy old cheek bespoke a rising temperature, and the suggestiveness of her talk pierced Hans Castorp to the very marrow. It did him good to hear someone else confirm his view that Madame Chauchat was an enchanting creature. He was a young man of not very independent judgments, and glad to be encouraged in certain feelings he had, upon which both reason and conscience united to frown.

But Fraulein Engelhart, however much she would have liked to, could tell him practically nothing about Frau Chauchat. She knew no more than the whole sanatorium knew, and his conversations with her bore little practical fruit. She did not even know the lady to speak to, nor could she boast a single common acquaintance. Her only t.i.tle to importance was that she lived in Konigsberg, not very far from the Russian border; also that she knew a few sc.r.a.ps of Russian. These were but meagre distinctions; yet Hans Castorp was prepared to see in them something resembling an extensive personal connexion with Frau Chauchat.

”I see that she wears no ring, no wedding-ring,” he said. ”Why is that? She is a married woman, I think you told me?”

The schoolmistress was quite perturbed; she seemed to feel driven into a corner and sought for words to talk herself out again, so very responsible did she feel for Frau Chauchat.

”You must not attach importance to that,” she finally said. ”I'm positive she is married. There is no doubt of it. Of course I know some foreigners do use the Madame when they are getting a little on in years, for the sake of the greater respect people pay a married woman. But it is not the case here. Everyone knows she really has a husband, somewhere in Russia. Her maiden name was not French but Russian, something in anow anow or or ukov- ukov-I did know it, but I have forgotten. I will ask if you like; there must be several people here who know it. No, she wears no ring, I have noticed it myself. Dear me, perhaps she finds it makes her hand look too broad. Or she thinks it is too bourgeois and domestic to wear a plain gold wedding-ring. She might as well carry a key basket. No, she is built on broader lines than that-Russian women all have something free and large about them. And then, a wedding-ring seems so prosaic, it is almost repellent! It is a symbol of possession; it is always saying 'Hands off'; it turns every woman into a nun. I should not be at all surprised if that is what Frau Chauchat thinks. A charming woman like her, in the bloom of youth-why should she, every time she gives a man her hand to kiss, tell him straightway that she is bound in wedlock?”

”Good Lord,” thought Hans Castorp, ”how she does run on!” He looked into her face, quite alarmed. But she countered his gaze with her embarra.s.sed, half-frightened one. They were both silent awhile and sought to recover themselves. Hans Castorp ate his luncheon and supported his chin.

At length he said: ”And her husband? He doesn't trouble himself about her? Does he never visit her up here? Do you know what he does?”

”Official. Russian government official, in some distant province, Daghestan, you know, out beyond the Caucasus, he was ordered there. No, as I tell you, no one has ever seen him up here. And this time she has been here going on three months.” ”She was here before, then?”