Part 24 (1/2)

”When?”

”To-morrow. Apres diner.” Apres diner.”

There took place within him a feeling of general collapse. He said: ”Where?”

”Far away.”

”To Daghestan?”

”Tu n'es pas mal instruit. Peut-etre Peut-etre, pour le moment-” pour le moment-”

”Are you cured, then?”

”Quant a ca-non. But Behrens thinks there is not greatly more to be gained here, for the present. C'est pourquoi je vais risquer un pet.i.t changement d'air C'est pourquoi je vais risquer un pet.i.t changement d'air.” ”Then you are coming back!”

”That is the question. Or, rather, the question is when. Quant a moi Quant a moi, tu sais tu sais, j'aime j'aimela liberte avant tout et notamment celle de choisir mon domicile. Tu ne comprends guere ce que c'est: d'etre obsede d'independance. C'est de ma race, peut-etre.””Et ton mari au Daghestan te l'accorde-ta liberte?” avant tout et notamment celle de choisir mon domicile. Tu ne comprends guere ce que c'est: d'etre obsede d'independance. C'est de ma race, peut-etre.””Et ton mari au Daghestan te l'accorde-ta liberte?”

CHAPTER VI.

Changes WHAT is time? A mystery, a figment-and all-powerful. It conditions the exterior world, it is motion married to and mingled with the existence of bodies in s.p.a.ce, and with the motion of these. Would there then be no time if there were no motion? No motion if no time? We fondly ask. Is time a function of s.p.a.ce? Or s.p.a.ce of time? Or are they identical? Echo answers. Time is functional, it can be referred to as action; we say a thing's ”brought about” by time. What sort of thing? Change! Now is not then, here not there, for between them lies motion. But the motion by which one measures time is circular, is in a closed circle; and might almost equally well be described as rest, as cessation of movement-for the there repeats itself constantly in the here, the past in the present. Furthermore, as our utmost effort cannot conceive a final limit either to time or in s.p.a.ce, we have settled to think of them as eternal and infinite-apparently in the hope that if this is not very successful, at least it will be more so than the other. But is not this affirmation of the eternal and the infinite the logical-mathematical destruction of every and any limit in time or s.p.a.ce, and the reduction of them, more or less, to zero? Is it possible, in eternity, to conceive of a sequence of events, or in the infinite of a succession of s.p.a.ce-occupying bodies? Conceptions of distance, movement, change, even of the existence of finite bodies in the universe-how do these fare? Are they consistent with the hypothesis of eternity and infinity we have been driven to adopt? Again we ask, and again echo answers. Hans Castorp revolved these queries and their like in his brain. We know that from the very first day of his arrival up here his mind had been much disposed to such sleeveless speculation. Later, perhaps, a certain sinister but strong desire of his, since gratified, had sharpened it the more and confirmed it in its general tendency to question and to carp. He put these queries to himself, he put them to good cousin Joachim, he put them to the valley at large, lying there, as it had these months on end, deep in snow; though from none of these quarters could he expect anything like an answer, from which the least would be hard to say. For himself, it was precisely because he did not know the answers that he put the questions. For Joachim, it was hardly possible to get him even to consider them, he having, as Hans Castorp had said, in French, on a certain evening, nothing else in his head but the idea of being a soldier down below. Joachim wrestled with these hopes of his, that now seemed almost within his grasp, now receded into the distance and mocked him there; the struggle grew daily more embittered, he even threatened to end it once for all by a single bold bid for liberty. Yes, the good, the patient, the upright Joachim, so affected to discipline and the service, had been attacked by fits of rebellion, he even questioned the authority of the ”Gaffky scale”: the method employed in the laboratory-the lab, as one called it-to ascertain the degree of a patient's infection. Whether only a few isolated bacilli, or a whole host of them, were found in the sputum a.n.a.lysed, determined his ”Gaffky number,” upon which everything depended. It infallibly reflected the chances of recovery with which the patient had to reckon; the number of months or years he must still remain could with ease be deduced from it, beginning with the six months that Hofrat Behrens called a ”week-end,” and ending with the ”life sentence,” which, taken literally, often enough meant very little indeed. Joachim, then, inveighed against the Gaffky scale, openly giving notice that he questioned its authority-or perhaps not quite quite openly, he did not say so to the authorities, but expressed his views to his cousin, and even in the dining-room. ”I'm fed up with it, I won't be made a fool of any longer,” he said, the blood mounting to his bronzed face. ”Two weeks ago I had Gaffky two, a mere nothing, my prospects were the best. And to-day I am regularly infested-number nine, if you please. No talk of getting away. How the devil can a man know where he is? Up on the Schatzalp there is a man, a Greek peasant, an agent had him sent here from Arcadia, he has galloping consumption, there isn't the dimmest hope for him. He may die any day- and yet they've never found even the ghost of a bacillus in his sputum. On the other hand, that Belgian captain that was discharged cured the other day, he was simply alive with them, Gaffky ten-and only the very tiniest cavity. The devil fly away with Gaffky! I'm done, I'm going home, if it kills me!” Thus Joachim; and all his company were pained to see the gentle, serious youth so overwrought. Hans Castorp, when he heard the threat, could scarcely refrain from quoting a certain opinion he had heard expressed in French, by a third party. But he was silent. Was he to set himself up to his cousin for a model of patience, as did Frau Stohr, who actually admonished Joachim not to be blasphemous, but to humble his pride, and take pattern by her, Caroline Stohr, and the faithfulness and firm resolve which made her hold out up here, instead of returning to queen it in her Cannstadt home-to the end that when she did go back it would be as a sound and healthy wife to the arms of her impatient husband? No, such language was not for Hans Castorp-since Carnival he had had a bad conscience towards his cousin. Conscience told him Joachim must surely be aware of a certain matter never referred to between them; must see in it something very like disloyalty and desertion-taken in connexion with a pair of brown eyes we know, an unwarranted tendency to laughter, and an orange-scented handkerchief, to whose influence Joachim was daily five times exposed, yet gave no ground to evil, but steadfastly fixed his eyes upon his plate. Yes, even the silent hostility which Joachim opposed to his cousin's problems and speculations on the subject of time, Hans Castorp felt as an expression of the military decorum which reproached himself. While as for the valley, that snowed-in winter valley, when Hans Castorp, lying in his excellent chair, directed upon it his inquiring metaphysical gaze, it was silent too. Its peaked summits, its domes and crests and brown-green-reddish forests stood there silent, and mortal time flowed over and about them: sometimes luminous against a deep-blue sky, sometimes shrouded in vapours, sometimes glowing rosy in the parting sun, sometimes glittering with hard, diamondlike brilliance in the magic moonlight- but always, always in snow, for six long, incredible, though scurrying months. All the guests declared they could not bear to look any more at the snow, they were sick of it; they had had their fill in the summer-time, and now these ma.s.ses and heaps and slopes and cus.h.i.+ons of snow, day in and day out, were more than they could stand, their spirits sank under the weight of it. And they took to coloured gla.s.ses, green, yellow, and red, to save their eyes, but still more their feelings. openly, he did not say so to the authorities, but expressed his views to his cousin, and even in the dining-room. ”I'm fed up with it, I won't be made a fool of any longer,” he said, the blood mounting to his bronzed face. ”Two weeks ago I had Gaffky two, a mere nothing, my prospects were the best. And to-day I am regularly infested-number nine, if you please. No talk of getting away. How the devil can a man know where he is? Up on the Schatzalp there is a man, a Greek peasant, an agent had him sent here from Arcadia, he has galloping consumption, there isn't the dimmest hope for him. He may die any day- and yet they've never found even the ghost of a bacillus in his sputum. On the other hand, that Belgian captain that was discharged cured the other day, he was simply alive with them, Gaffky ten-and only the very tiniest cavity. The devil fly away with Gaffky! I'm done, I'm going home, if it kills me!” Thus Joachim; and all his company were pained to see the gentle, serious youth so overwrought. Hans Castorp, when he heard the threat, could scarcely refrain from quoting a certain opinion he had heard expressed in French, by a third party. But he was silent. Was he to set himself up to his cousin for a model of patience, as did Frau Stohr, who actually admonished Joachim not to be blasphemous, but to humble his pride, and take pattern by her, Caroline Stohr, and the faithfulness and firm resolve which made her hold out up here, instead of returning to queen it in her Cannstadt home-to the end that when she did go back it would be as a sound and healthy wife to the arms of her impatient husband? No, such language was not for Hans Castorp-since Carnival he had had a bad conscience towards his cousin. Conscience told him Joachim must surely be aware of a certain matter never referred to between them; must see in it something very like disloyalty and desertion-taken in connexion with a pair of brown eyes we know, an unwarranted tendency to laughter, and an orange-scented handkerchief, to whose influence Joachim was daily five times exposed, yet gave no ground to evil, but steadfastly fixed his eyes upon his plate. Yes, even the silent hostility which Joachim opposed to his cousin's problems and speculations on the subject of time, Hans Castorp felt as an expression of the military decorum which reproached himself. While as for the valley, that snowed-in winter valley, when Hans Castorp, lying in his excellent chair, directed upon it his inquiring metaphysical gaze, it was silent too. Its peaked summits, its domes and crests and brown-green-reddish forests stood there silent, and mortal time flowed over and about them: sometimes luminous against a deep-blue sky, sometimes shrouded in vapours, sometimes glowing rosy in the parting sun, sometimes glittering with hard, diamondlike brilliance in the magic moonlight- but always, always in snow, for six long, incredible, though scurrying months. All the guests declared they could not bear to look any more at the snow, they were sick of it; they had had their fill in the summer-time, and now these ma.s.ses and heaps and slopes and cus.h.i.+ons of snow, day in and day out, were more than they could stand, their spirits sank under the weight of it. And they took to coloured gla.s.ses, green, yellow, and red, to save their eyes, but still more their feelings.

Mountain and valley, then, had been lying in deep snow for six months; nay, seven, for as we talk, time strides on-not only present time, taken up with the tale we are telling, but also past time, the bygone time of Hans Castorp and the companions of his destiny, up among the snows-time strides on, and brings changes with it. The prophecy which so glibly, so much to Herr Settembrini's disgust, Hans Castorp had made on the eve of Carnival, was in a fair way to be fulfilled. True, the solstice was not immediately at hand; yet Easter had pa.s.sed over the valley, April advanced, with Whitsuntide in plain view; spring, with the melting of the snows, would soon be here. Not all the snow would melt: on the heights to the south, and on the north in the rocky ravines of the Rhatikon, some would still remain, and through the summer months more was sure to fall, though it would scarcely lie. Yet the year revolved, and promised changes in its course; for since that night of Carnival when Hans Castorp had borrowed a lead-pencil of Frau Chauchat and afterwards returned it to her again, receiving in its stead a remembrance which he carried about with him in his pocket, since that night six weeks had pa.s.sed, twice as many as made up the original term of Hans Castorp's sojourn among those up here.

Yes, six weeks had gone by, since that evening when Hans Castorp made the acquaintance of Clavdia Chauchat, and then returned so much later to his chamber than the duty-loving Joachim to his. Six weeks since the day after, bringing her departure, her departure for the present, her temporary departure, for Daghestan, far away eastwards beyond the Caucasus. That her absence would be only temporary, that she intended to return, that she would or must return, at some date yet unspecified, of this Hans Castorp possessed direct and verbal a.s.surances, given, not during that reported conversation in the French tongue, but in a later interval, wordless to our ears, during which we have elected to intermit the flow of our story along the stream of time, and let time flow on pure and free of any content whatever. Yes, such consolatory promises must have been vouchsafed our young man before he returned to number thirty-four; for he had had no word with Frau Chauchat on the day following, had not seen her indeed, save twice at some distance: once when the gla.s.s door slammed, and she had slipped for the last time to her place at table, clad in her blue cloth skirt and white sweater. The young man's heart had been in his throat-only the sharp regard Fraulein Engelhart bent upon him had hindered him from burying his face in his hands. The other time had been at three o'clock, when he stood at a corridor window giving on the drive, a witness to her departure.

It took place just as other such which Hans Castorp had witnessed during his stay up here. The sleigh or carriage halted before the door, coachman and porter strapped fast the trunks, while friends gathered about to say good-bye to the departing one, who, cured or not, and whether for life or death, was off for the flat-land. Others besides friends gathered round as well, curious on-lookers, who cut the rest-cure for the sake of the diversion thus afforded. There would be a frock-coated official representing the management, perhaps even the physicians themselves; then out came the gracious recipient of the attentions paid by this little world to a departing guest; generally with a beaming face, and a bearing which the excitement of the moment rendered far more animated than usual. To-day it was Frau Chauchat who issued from the portal, in company with her concave fellow-countryman, Herr Buligin, who was to accompany her for part of the way. She wore a long, s.h.a.ggy, fur-trimmed travellingcloak, and a large hat; she was all smiles, her arms were full of flowers, she too seemed possessed by the pleasurable excitement due to the prospect of change, if to nothing else, which was common to all those who left, whatever the circ.u.mstances of their leaving, and whether with the consent of the physicans, or in sheer desperation and at their own risk. Her cheeks were flushed, and she chattered without stopping, probably in Russian, while the rug was being arranged over her knees. People presented farewell bouquets, the great-aunt gave a box of Russian sweetmeats. Numerous other guests besides Frau Chauchat's Russian companions and table-mates, stood there to see her off; among them Dr. Krokowski, showing his yellow teeth through his beard in a hearty smile, the schoolmistress, and the man from Mannheim, who gazed gloomily and furtively from a distance, and whose eyes found out Hans Castorp as he stood at his corridor window looking down upon the scene. Hofrat Behrens did not show himself-he had probably ere now taken private leave of the traveller. The horses started up, amid farewells and hand-wavings from the bystanders; and then, as Frau Chauchat sank smilingly back against the cus.h.i.+ons of the sleigh, her eyes swept the facade of the Berghof, and rested for the fraction of a second upon Hans Castorp's face. In pallid haste he sought his loggia, thence to get a last glimpse of the sleigh as it went jingling down the drive toward the Dorf. Then he flung himself into his chair, and drew out his keepsake, his treasure, that consisted, this time, not of a few reddish-brown shavings, but a thin gla.s.s plate, which must be held toward the light to see anything on it. It was Clavdia's x-ray portrait, showing not her face, but the delicate bony structure of the upper half of her body, and the organs of the thoracic cavity, surrounded by the pale, ghostlike envelope of flesh.

How often had he looked at it, how often pressed it to his lips, in the time which since then had pa.s.sed and brought its changes with it-such changes as, for instance, getting used to life up here without Clavdia Chauchat, getting used, that is, to her remoteness in s.p.a.ce! Yet after all, this adaptation took place more rapidly than one might have thought possible; for was not time up here at the Berghof arranged and organized to the end that one should get very rapidly used to things, even if the getting used consisted chiefly in getting used to not getting used? No longer might he expect that rattle and crash at the beginning of each of the five mighty Berghof meals. Somewhere else, in some far-off clime, Clavdia was letting doors slam behind her, somewhere else she was expressing herself by that act, as intimately bound up with her very being and its state of disease as time is bound up with the motion of bodies in s.p.a.ce. Perhaps, indeed, her whole disease consisted in that, and in nothing else.-But though lost to view, she was none the less invisibly present to Hans Castorp; she was the genius of the place, whom, in an evil hour, an hour unattuned to any simple little ditty of the flat-land, yet one of pa.s.sing sweetness, he had known and possessed, whose shadowy presentment he now wore next his months-long-labouring heart. At that hour his twitching lips had stammered and babbled, in his own and foreign tongues, for the most part without his own volition, the maddest things: pleas, prayers, proposals, frantic projects, to which all consent was denied, and rightly: as, that he might be permitted to accompany the genius beyond the Caucasus; that he might follow after it; that he might await it at the next spot which its free and untrammelled spirit should select as a domicile; and thereafter never be parted from it more-these and other such rash, irresponsible utterances. No, all that our simple young adventurer carried away from that hour was his ghostly treasure trove, and the possibility, perhaps the probability, of Frau Chauchat's return for a fourth sojourn at the Berghof-sooner or later, as the state of her health might decree. But whether sooner or later-as she had said again at parting-Hans Castorp would by that time be ”long since far away.” It was a prophecy whose slighting note would have been harder to bear had he not known that prophecies are sometimes made in order that they may not not come to pa.s.s-as a spell, indeed, against their fulfilment. Prophecies of this kind mock the future: saying to it how it should shape itself, to the end that it shall shame to be so shaped. The genius, in the course of the conversation we have repeated, and elsewhere, called Hans Castorp a ” come to pa.s.s-as a spell, indeed, against their fulfilment. Prophecies of this kind mock the future: saying to it how it should shape itself, to the end that it shall shame to be so shaped. The genius, in the course of the conversation we have repeated, and elsewhere, called Hans Castorp a ”joli bourgeois au pet.i.t endroit humide,” which might in some sense be considered a translation of the Settembrinian epithet ”life's delicate child”; and the question thus was, which const.i.tutes of the mingled essence of his being would prove the stronger, the bourgeois or the other. The genius, though, had failed to take into consideration the fact that Hans Castorp too had come about a good deal in the world, and might easily return hither at a fitting moment-though, in all soberness, was he not sitting up here entirely in order that he might not need to return. Precisely and explicitly that was with him, as with so many others, the very ground of his continued presence.

One prophecy, indeed, made on that carnival evening, made in mockery, was fulfilled: Hans Castorp's fever chart did display a sharply rising curve. He marked it down with a feeling of solemnity. Thereafter it fell a trifle, and then ran on, unchanged save for slight undulations, well above its accustomed level. It was fever, the degree and persistency of which, according to the Hofrat, was out of all proportion to the condition of his lung. ”H'm, young fellow me lad, you're more infected than one would take you for,” he said. ”We'll have to come on to the hypos. They'll serve your turn, or I'm a Dutchman. In three or four months you ought to be as fit as a fiddle.” Thus it came about that Hans Castorp had to produce himself, twice in the week, Monday and Sat.u.r.day after the morning exercise, down in the ”lab,” where he was given his injections.

These were given by either physician indifferently; but the Hofrat performed the operation like a virtuoso, with a fine sweep, squeezing the little syringe at the very moment he pressed the point home. And he cared not a doit where he thrust his needle, so that the pain was often acute, and the spot hard and inflamed long afterwards. The effect of the inoculations on the entire organism was very noticeable, the nervous system reacted as after hard muscular exertion; and their strength was displayed in the heightened fever which was their immediate result. The Hofrat had said they would have this effect, and so it fell out. The whole affair, each time, took but a second; one after another, the row of patients received their dosage, in thigh or arm, and turned away. But once or twice, when the Hofrat was in a more lively mood, not depressed by the tobacco he had smoked, Hans Castorp came to speech with him, and conducted the brief conversation somewhat as follows:

”I still remember the coffee and the pleasant talk we had last autumn, Herr Hofrat,” he would say. ”Only yesterday, or perhaps the day before, was it, I was reminding my cousin of how we happened to-”

”Gaffky seven,” said the Hofrat. ”Last examination. The chap simply can't part with his bacilli. And yet he keeps at me worse than ever, to let him get away so he can wear a sword tied round his middle. What a child it is! Makes me a scene over a month or so of time, as though it were aeons pa.s.sing over our heads. Means to leave, whether or no-does he say the same to you? You ought to give him a pretty straight talking-to. Take it from me, you'll have him hopping the twig if he is too previous about going down and breathing the nice damp air into his weak spot. A swordswallower like that doesn't necessarily possess so much grey matter; but you, as the steady civilian, you ought to see to it he doesn't make an a.s.s of himself.”

”I do talk to him, Herr Hofrat,” Hans Castorp responded, taking the reins again into his hands. ”I do, often, when he begins to kick against the p.r.i.c.ks-and I think he will listen to reason. But the examples he has before his eyes are all the wrong kind. He is always seeing people going off on their own, without authority from you; it looks mighty gay, as though they were really leaving for good, and that is a temptation to all but the strongest characters. For instance, lately-who was it went off? A lady, from the 'good' Russian table, that Frau Chauchat. She's gone to Daghestan, they say. Well, Daghestan-I don't know the climate, it is probably better, when all is said and done, than being right down on the water. But after all, it is the flat-land, according to our ideas up here-though for aught I know it may be mountainous, geographically speaking; I am not much up on the subject. But how can a person who isn't sound live out there, where all the proper ideas are totally lacking, and n.o.body has a notion of the regimen, the rest-cure, and measuring, and all that? Anyhow, she will be coming back, she told me so herself-happened to. How did we come to speak of her?-Yes, Herr Hofrat, I remember as thought it was yesterday, how we met you in the garden, or, rather, you met us, for we were sitting on a bench-I could show you the very bench, to-day, that we were sitting on-we were sitting and smoking. Or, rather, I was smoking, for my cousin doesn't smoke, oddly enough. You were smoking too, and we exchanged our brands, I recall. Your Brazil I found excellent; but I suspect one has to go about them a little gingerly, or something may happen as it happened to you that time with the two little imported-when your bosom swelled with pride, and you nearly toddled off, you know. I may joke about it, since it turned out all right. I've ordered another couple of hundred of my Maria lately. I'm very dependent on her, she suits me in every respect. But the carriage and customs make the cost rather mount up-so if you have anything good to suggest, Herr Hofrat, I'm ready to have a go at the domestic product-I see some attractive weeds in the windows. Yes, we were privileged to look at your paintings, I remember the whole thing so well. And I was perfectly amazed at your oil technique, I'd never venture anything like it. You showed us the portrait you made of Frau Chauchat, simply first-cla.s.s treatment of the skin-I must say I was very much struck by it. At that time I was not personally acquainted with the sitter, only by sight. But just before she went off, I got to know her.” ”You don't say!” answered the Hofrat-a little as he had that time when Hans Castorp told him, shortly before the first examination, that he had fever. He said no more.

”Yes,” went on the youth, ”I made her acquaintance-a thing that isn't so easy, hereabouts, you know. But Frau Chauchat and I, we managed, at the eleventh hour, we had some conversation-Ff-f!” went Hans Castorp, and drew his breath sharply through his teeth. The needle had gone in. ”That was certainly a very important nerve you happened to hit on, Herr Hofrat,” he said. ”I do a.s.sure you, it hurt like the devil. Thanks, a little ma.s.sage does it good... Yes, we came a little closer to each other, in conversation.”

”Ah? Well?” the Hofrat said. His manner was as one expecting from his own experience a very favouring reply, and expressing his agreement in antic.i.p.ation by the way he puts the question.

”I'm afraid my French was rather lame,” Hans Castorp answered evasively. ”I haven't had much occasion to use it. But the words somehow come into one's mind when one needs them-so we understood each other tolerably well.”

”I believe you,” said the Hofrat. ”Well?” he repeated his inquisition; and even added, of his own motion: ”Pretty nice, what?”

Hans Castorp stood, legs and elbows extended, his face turned up, b.u.t.toning his s.h.i.+rt-collar.

”It's the old story,” he said. ”At a place like this, two people, or two families, can live weeks on end under one roof, without speaking. But some day they get acquainted, and take to each other, only to find that one of the parties is on the point of leaving. Regrettable incidents like that happen, I suppose. In such cases, one feels like keeping in touch by post, at least. But Frau Chauchat-” ”Tut, she won't, won't she?” the Hofrat laughed.