The Magic Mountain

by Thomas Mann

  Hans Castorp made a personal inspection of the deceased. He did so in open defiance of the institutional practice of concealment; he despised the egotism of all the others, who did not want to know, hear, or see anything, and hoped to reproach them with this act. He had tried to bring up the subject of this latest death with his tablemates, but had been met by a unanimous rebuff so sullen that he felt both chagrined and outraged. Frau Stöhr came close to being rude. How could he even mention such a thing? she had asked. What sort of upbringing had he had? House rules carefully screened them, the patients, from coming into contact with such matters, and now here came a greenhorn sounding off about it—and while they were trying to eat their roast and with Dr. Blumenkohl present at that, who could be taken any day. (This last was whispered behind her hand.) If it happened again she would lodge a complaint. Then and there, as a result of that rebuke, Hans Castorp had reached his decision, which he made known to the others, to pay his personal respects to their departed housemate and say a silent prayer beside his remains. He also prevailed upon Joachim to join him.

  Through the good offices of Sister Berta they were admitted to the dead man’s room, which was on the second floor, directly under their own. His widow received them—a small, disheveled blond, frazzled from long nights of watching, pressing a handkerchief to her lips and red nose and wearing a plaid winter coat with the collar turned up, because it was very cold in the room. The heat had been turned off, the door to the balcony was open. The young men said what had to be said in muffled tones, and then, waved forward by an agonized gesture, they stepped across the room with a reverential, forward rocking motion, the heels of their boots never touching the ground, and stood there regarding the dead man on his bed, each in his own way—Joachim at attention, half bowing in an official, reserved pose; Hans Castorp relaxed and preoccupied, his hands clasped before him, his head tilted to one shoulder, with an expression much like the one he usually wore when listening to music. The horseman’s head was still propped up so that his body—its long frame once the site of life’s ceaseless breeding—looked all the flatter,. almost like a plank, with a slight rise in the blanket from the feet at the other end. A wreath lay in the vicinity of the knees, with a palm frond projecting from it and grazing the large, yellow, bony hands folded across the sunken chest. The face, too, was yellow and bony, with a hooked nose, sharp cheekbones, and a bushy, reddish-blond moustache, so thick that it made the cheeks look even hollower. The eyes were closed unnaturally tight—pressed closed, Hans Castorp could not help thinking, not just closed. They called that the last token of love, although it was done more for the sake of the survivors than of the dead man. And it had to be done very soon, because once too much myosin had formed in the muscles, it was no longer possible, and then he would lie there staring—and that was the end of the sedate notion of “slumber.”

  A skilled expert at all this, in his element in more than one sense, Hans Castorp stood piously beside the bed. “He looks as if he’s sleeping,” he said to be kind, although the considerable differences were obvious. And then in a masterfully subdued voice, he began a conversation with the horseman’s widow, making inquiries—which demonstrated both medical expertise and moral, religious sympathy—about her husband’s long years of suffering, his last days and moments, and the transfer of the body to Kärnten, which was yet to be arranged. The widow, speaking in a nasal, Austrian drawl interrupted occasionally by sobs, found it remarkable for young people to feel and show such concern for other people’s troubles. To which Hans Castorp responded that his cousin and he were themselves ill, after all, and that very early in life he himself had stood beside the deathbeds of close relatives, was an orphan twice over, and so death was an old acquaintance, so to speak. What profession had he chosen? she asked. He replied that he “had been” an engineer. —Had been? —Had been, insofar as his illness and a stay up here of still quite indeterminate length had interfered with his plans; this was a critical time in his life, perhaps even a turning point, one could not know for sure. (Joachim stared, scrutinizing him in horror.) And what about his good cousin? —He wanted to be a soldier down in the flatlands, was an officer’s candidate. —Oh, she said, military service was certainly one of the more serious professions, a soldier had to reckon with coming into close contact with death and certainly did well to grow accustomed to the sight of it early on. She dismissed the young men with her thanks, and her mood was now imposingly serene, given her anguished situation—in particular the stiff bill for oxygen her spouse had left her. The cousins returned to their own floor. Hans Castorp seemed satisfied with their visit and spiritually moved by the impressions it had left on him.

  “Requiescat in pace,” he said. “Sit tibi terra levis. Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine. You see, when it comes to death, when one speaks to the dead or about them, Latin comes into its own. It’s the official language in such cases, which only points up how special death is. But it is not out of humanistic courtesy that people speak Latin in their honor. The language of the dead is not the Latin you learn in school, you see, but comes from a totally different sphere, from just the opposite direction one might say. It is sacred Latin, the dialect of monks, a chant from the Middle Ages, so to speak, a kind of muted, subterranean monotone. Settembrini would not be pleased with it, it’s nothing for humanists and republicans and pedagogues of that ilk. It comes from a different intellectual direction—from the other one. It seems to me you have to be clear about these two intellectual directions, or dispositions, as they might more accurately be called—the religious and the freethinking. They both have their good points, but what I particularly have against the freethinking one—the Settembrinian one, I mean—is that it assumes that only it truly represents human dignity. That is an exaggeration. In its own way, the other contains a great deal of human dignity, too, and contributes to moral conduct and decorum and noble formality, certainly more than ‘freethinking’ does—and always with an eye to human weakness and frailty. The concepts of death and corruption play an important role, too. Have you ever seen a production of Don Carlos—the way things were done at the Spanish court? When King Philip enters, all in black, decorated with his orders of the Garter and the Golden Fleece, and slowly doffs his hat—which looks very much like one of our modern bowlers—in a kind of wide, upward sweep, and says, ‘Ye may cover now, my lords,’ or something like that. Well, that’s up to the highest standards, let me tell you, not a hint of slipshod manners and simply letting things take their course—just the contrary. And then the queen says, “ ’Twas otherwise in my own France”—naturally, it’s all too correct and formal for her, she wants life to be more amusing, more human. But what does that mean, human? Everything is human. The Spaniard’s fear of God, his humility, his solemnity, his scrupulous austerity is a very worthy form of humanity, I would say. Whereas you can also use the word ‘human’ to cover up all sorts of weak-willed slovenliness. You do agree I’m right, don’t you?”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Joachim said, “of course I can’t stand either slovenliness or weak-willed people. There has to be discipline.”

  “Yes, you say that as a military man, and I must admit, the military understands these things. The widow was quite right to say your profession has something serious about it, because the military always has to reckon with the worst case, which can mean dealing with death. You have your uniforms that sit tight and proper and have stiff collars—that gives you your bienséance. Plus you have your idea of rank, your obedience to authority, and take pains to deal honorably with one another, and that’s part of the Spanish spirit, too—all out of a kind of piety, and deep down I respect that. It’s a spirit that ought to be more prevalent among us civilians, in our customs and conduct—I’d like that better, it would suit me. I think the world and life are such that people ought to dress mostly in black, with a starched ruff instead of your military collar, and deal with one another in a serious, muted, formal way, always keeping death in mind—that’s how I’d li
ke it, that would be moral. You see, that’s another one of Settembrini’s conceited misconceptions—it would be good to bring it up with him sometime. He claims he’s the one true representative not only of human dignity, but of morality as well—what with his ‘practical, lifelong labor’ and his Sunday festivities in honor of progress, as if people didn’t have other things besides progress to think about on Sunday. His systematic eradication of suffering. You haven’t heard about that yet, by the way, but he gave me a nice lecture on the topic—wants to eradicate it systematically with an encyclopedia. And if the project seems downright immoral to me, what then? I won’t say anything to him, of course—he would talk circles around me with his graphic patter and say, ‘I am warning you, my good engineer!’ But a man can think what he likes—‘Sire, give thoughts their freedom.’ Let me tell you something,” he said in conclusion—they had arrived in Joachim’s room, and his cousin was getting ready for rest cure. “Let me tell you something I’ve decided to do. We live here right next door to dying people, next to awful tribulation and misery, and it’s not just that we all act as if it were no concern of ours, but we’re even protected, spared any possibility of coming into contact with it, or seeing it. And now they’ll sneak the horseman out while we’re eating supper or breakfast. I find that immoral. That Stöhr woman got huffy merely because I mentioned someone had died—how silly. And even if she is so ignorant that she believes ‘Softly, softly, holy air’ comes from Tannhäuser—she let that one slip just recently—she could at least show some moral emotions. They all could. I’ve decided that from now on, I shall show more concern about serious and moribund cases. It will do me good. Just this visit of ours did me some good. Poor Reuter, the fellow in room twenty-seven—I caught a glimpse of him through his door one of my first days here—he surely joined his ancestors long ago, after which they sneaked him out. His eyes were simply huge even back then. But there are plenty of others, the place is full of them, what with new arrivals every day. And Sister Alfreda or the head nurse or even Behrens would certainly help us strike up an acquaintance or two—it can easily be done, I’m sure. Let’s assume someone who’s moribund has a birthday and we learn about it—it’s not hard to come by that sort of information. Fine, we send the fellow, or the lady, whichever, a potted plant for his or her room, a little thoughtful remembrance from two anonymous colleagues, along with best wishes for recovery—which is, one would hope, always a courteous thing to do. And then our names get mentioned, of course, and as weak as he or she may be, we are permitted to say a friendly hello, just through the door, or are even invited into the room for a moment, perhaps, and we exchange a few humane words before he or she slips away. That’s how I imagine it. Are you agreed? For my part at least, I plan to do it.”

  And Joachim did not have any great objection to these plans. “It’s against the house rules,” he said. “It would mean breaking them, more or less. But Behrens would probably make an exception and give you permission if you made it a point to ask. You can always claim it’s out of medical interest.”

  “Yes, that would be another reason,” Hans Castorp said, because, in fact, there were complicated motives behind this wish. His protest against the egotism prevalent here was only one of them. Likewise playing a role was his own spiritual need to take suffering and death seriously, to pay attention to them, a need he hoped would be nourished and satisfied by his getting closer to the seriously ill and dying, as a way of counteracting the numerous rebuffs such a need received daily, even hourly, wherever he turned—including some of Settembrini’s insulting pronouncements, which only reinforced his own craving. Examples of such rebuffs were far too numerous to count. If someone had asked Hans Castorp to name a few, he would probably have first mentioned those people at the Berghof who readily admitted that they were not seriously ill, but came up here voluntarily under the official pretext of not feeling well, whereas in reality it was because the style of life, the amusements, here appealed to them, as was the case, for instance, with Widow Hessenfeld, previously mentioned in passing, a lively lady, whose passion in life was betting on things: she would bet with the gentlemen about anything and everything, about the next day’s weather, about what the next course would be, about the results of people’s monthly checkups and how many months would be added to their sentences; she would bet on certain bobsledders, ice-skaters, or skiers at various athletic contests or championships, on the results of some nascent love affair among the guests, and on a hundred other, often totally trivial and insignificant things, wagering for chocolate or champagne or the caviar enjoyed on festive occasions in the restaurant, for money, for movie tickets, even for kisses, both those given and received—in short, her passion for gambling brought a great deal of lively excitement into the dining hall. Of course, young Hans Castorp could not see his way clear to take such carryings-on very seriously, indeed her mere presence seemed prejudicial to the dignity of this place of suffering.

  For it was his sincere desire faithfully to defend and uphold that dignity in his own eyes, however difficult that might be after an almost six-month stay among “people up here.” The insights he had gained over time into their lives and doings, their customs and opinions, were not very conducive to such good intentions. There were, for example, the two skinny dandies, “Max and Moritz,” the one seventeen, the other eighteen years old, who offered the ladies much stuff for conversation by slipping out each evening to play poker and carouse. Not long before, about a week after New Year—and it must be kept in mind that while we tell our story, the silent, restless current of time sweeps on—news spread at breakfast that the bath attendant had found them that morning lying on their beds still in wrinkled evening clothes. Even Hans Castorp had laughed. But although that incident confounded his good intentions, it was nothing in comparison to the stories told about Herr Einhuf, a lawyer from Jüterbog, a forty-year-old with a goatee and hands furry with black hair, who had been sitting at Settembrini’s table for some time now, having replaced the cured Swede. He not only came home drunk every night, but indeed had also not even bothered to do that recently—and had been found outside in the snow. He was considered a dangerous rake, and Frau Stöhr could point to the young lady—engaged to be married down in the lowlands, by the way—who had been seen leaving Einhuf’s room at a very late hour, clad in a fur coat, under which she wore nothing more than bloomers. That was scandalous—not just in the general moral sense, but also personally scandalous to Hans Castorp, an offense to his own spiritual strivings. He could not think of the lawyer, moreover, without being reminded of Fränzchen Oberdank, the smoothly coiffed lady’s companion and housemaid who had recently been brought up here by her mother, a very dignified provincial lady. Upon admission and after her first checkup, she had been considered only a mild case; but whether she had not been conscientious in her rest cure, whether this was a case in which the air at first was not just good for fighting off illness, but for illness, or whether the young lady had become involved in intrigues or excitements that had not done her any good—in any case, four weeks after her arrival, she entered the dining hall upon returning from a new checkup, tossed her purse in the air, and cried in a clear voice, “Hurrah, I have to stay a whole year!” And the entire dining hall had burst into Homeric laughter. But fourteen days later the rumor spread that Herr Einhuf had behaved like a cad to Fränzchen Oberdank. That epithet, by the way, is ours (or better, Hans Castorp’s), because for those who spread such news it was hardly a novelty that required such strong language. They shrugged, as if to say that it took two for such affairs, and that presumably nothing had occurred against the wish or will of either participant. At least, to judge from her demeanor, that was Frau Stöhr’s moral reaction to the matter.

  Karoline Stöhr was a dreadful person. If there was any one thing that interfered with Hans Castorp’s well-intentioned spiritual striving, it was this woman—her personality, her very existence. Her endless malapropisms alone would have sufficed. She called death the “grim
ripper,” called people “impediment” if she wanted to accuse them of being too cheeky, and could talk the most ghastly nonsense about the astronomical causes for a solar eclipse. She called the deep snow-cover a “massive agglomeration”; and one day she caused Herr Settembrini no end of amazement by declaring that she had been reading a book from the sanatorium library that would interest him, entitled Benedetto Cenelli, in Schiller’s translation. She loved turns of phrases that grated on Hans Castorp’s nerves simply because they were clichés or the latest shabby slang—“Isn’t that the limit!” or “Bowl me over!” And since the adjective “stunning” had been used for “splendid” or “excellent” for quite some time now—was totally washed out, enervated, prostituted, and therefore obsolete—she had of late seized upon the word “devastating,” and now found everything “devastating,” whether in earnest or in jest: the bobsled run, their dessert dumplings, and her own body warmth, which sounded equally repulsive coming from her. And then there was her love of gossip—which was excessive. Nevertheless, if she reported that Frau Salomon was wearing her most expensive lace undergarments that day—because she had an appointment for a checkup and always donned fine lingerie for the doctors—there was probably something to it. Hans Castorp himself had the impression that checkups, quite apart from the results, were a source of entertainment for the ladies, for which they attired themselves in their flirtatious best. But what should one say to Frau Stöhr’s assertion that Frau Redisch from Posen, who was said to have tuberculosis of the spinal cord, was forced once a week to march naked back and forth in front of Director Behrens in his office for ten minutes? The claim was almost as scandalous as it was improbable, but Frau Stöhr swore it was so by all that was holy—though it was hard to understand how the poor thing could devote such zeal, vigor, and cantankerousness to gossip, when her own problems were giving her so much trouble. For from time to time she was subject to fits of anxious, whining panic, the result of her allegedly increasing “listlessness” and the upward curve of her fever chart. She would come to the table sobbing, tears streaming down her chapped red cheeks, and blubber into her handkerchief that Behrens wanted to order her to bed, but she wanted to know what he had said behind her back about her condition, about just how ill she was—she wanted to look truth in the eye. One day, to her horror, she found her bed had been turned with the foot toward the door, and the discovery almost sent her into convulsions. Her anger, her dread, did not meet with ready understanding; Hans Castorp in particular was slow to comprehend. Well? But so what? Why shouldn’t the bed be placed the way it was?