The Magic Mountain

by Thomas Mann

  Hans Castorp did not reply. He said nothing about Joachim’s “permission” to leave, or about his own, although the topic might easily have been addressed. He got himself ready for his rest cure, stuck his thermometer in his mouth, put perfected skills to work and with a few deft, sure motions of the sacred art—about which no one in the flatlands had the vaguest—he wrapped his two camel-hair blankets around him to form a solid, unbroken cylinder, and lay there quietly on his splendid lounge chair, in the cold damp of the early autumn afternoon.

  Rain clouds hung low; the fantasy flag had been taken down. There were still remnants of snow on the wet boughs of the silver fir. From the common lounging area below, from where he had first heard Herr Albin’s voice a little more than a year ago, the low hum of conversation now rose to him as he lay in his rest cure, his fingers and face quickly turning clammy and stiff in the cold. He was used to it and was grateful for the opportunity that the local style of life—which for him had long since become the only conceivable style—provided him to lie there safe and secure and think things through.

  It was definite: Joachim would be leaving. Rhadamanthus had discharged him—not officially, not as a cured man, but with a kind of semiapproval all the same, in recognition of Joachim’s perseverance. He would take the narrow-gauge train back down to the lowlands via Landquart and Romanshorn, then pass over the wide, unfathomable lake (whose frozen surface, as legend had it, a man had ridden across on horseback), and travel the length of Germany to arrive home. He would live there in the world of the flatlands, among people who had not the vaguest about how one had to live, about thermometers, about the art of wrapping oneself, about fur-lined sleeping bags, about three promenades a day, about—it was difficult to say, difficult to enumerate all the things people down there did not know about; but the notion that Joachim, after having spent more than a year and a half up here, would now be living among such ignorant people, that notion, which applied only to Joachim—and merely from a great distance and only quite hypothetically to himself—so confused Hans Castorp that he closed his eyes and dismissed it with a gesture of his hand. “Impossible, impossible,” he murmured.

  But since it was impossible, that meant he would go on living alone up here without Joachim, didn’t it? Yes. And for how long? Until Behrens discharged him as cured—in earnest, not like today. But first of all, that was a point in time so indefinite that you could only describe it, as Joachim had done on some occasion or other, with a trailing gesture of immeasurability, and second, did that make the impossible any more possible? It was more like the opposite. And to be fair, he had to admit that a hand had now been offered him, now, when the impossible was perhaps not quite so impossible as it would be later—Joachim’s wild departure could be a support, a guiding hand on the road back to the flatlands, which he would never, ever find all on his own. And what if humanistic pedagogy were to learn of this opportunity? Oh, how it would exhort him to grab that hand and accept its guidance. But Herr Settembrini was only a representative—of things and forces worth hearing about, but not without qualification, as if nothing else existed. The same applied to Joachim. He was a soldier, yes indeed. He would be departing at almost the same moment when Marusya of the prominent breasts was supposed to return (it was common knowledge that she would be back on October first); whereas for him, Hans Castorp the civilian, a departure seemed impossible, because—to put it openly and succinctly—he had to wait for Clavdia Chauchat, about whose return he had heard nothing at all. “That is not how I see it,” Joachim had said when Rhadamanthus mentioned desertion, and Joachim had doubtless interpreted it as more of the gloomy director’s hot air. But things were surely different for him as a civilian. For him—yes, no doubt about it! He had lain down here in the cold and damp today for the sole purpose of wresting this crucial insight from his mixed emotions—for him to grab this chance of a fraudulent or semifraudulent departure to the flatlands would constitute real desertion of duty, desertion from the vast responsibilities that had grown up out of his vision of the sublime image, the homo Dei, a betrayal of the hard, exciting duties of “playing king,” which though they might overtax his natural energies nevertheless made him wildly happy whenever he fulfilled them on his balcony or in the blue-blossoming meadow.

  He pulled the thermometer from his mouth, more violently than he had ever done before, except for that first time, the day the head nurse had sold him this dainty gadget, and he gazed down at it with the same eagerness as he had then. Mercury had climbed very robustly, reaching 100 degrees, almost 100.2.

  Hans Castorp threw his blankets aside, jumped up, and quickly walked the length of his room, to the door and back. Then resuming his horizontal position, he called out softly to Joachim and asked about his fever chart.

  “I’m no longer measuring,” Joachim replied.

  “Well, I have a temp,” Hans Castorp said, borrowing Frau Stöhr’s abridged form of the word. Joachim responded with silence from his side of the glass partition.

  And he did not say anything later that day or the next, either, did not inquire about his cousin’s plans or decisions, which, given the short time involved, would be revealed all by themselves, either by actions or by the failure to act—and indeed they were, by the latter. Hans Castorp appeared to have joined the quietists, who claimed that to act was an affront to God, who alone can will to act; his activities during this week, at any rate, were limited to a visit with Behrens. Joachim was quite aware of this consultation—the subject and outcome were as plain as the nose on his face. His cousin, he was sure, had declared he would take the liberty of setting greater store by the director’s earlier and frequent warnings that his case should be completely cured so he would never have to return again, than by hasty words spoken in a moment of impatience. He had a temperature of one hundred degrees, he could not believe he had been officially discharged, unless the director’s recent remarks were to be taken as an order of expulsion, although he, the speaker, was unaware of having given any cause for such a measure; he had therefore decided, after considering the matter calmly and in conscious distinction to Joachim Ziemssen, to remain here and wait until he was completely detoxified. To which the director had surely responded, more or less verbatim, with, “Bon, fine!” and “No harm meant!” and then gone on to say that was what he called being reasonable and that he had seen right off Hans Castorp had more talent for being a patient than that trace-kicking swashbuckler. And so on.

  Joachim guessed that this was the course their conversation had taken, and his guess was fairly accurate; and so he said nothing and simply observed in silence that, unlike himself, Hans Castorp was not making any preparations for departure. And dear old Joachim had enough to do just looking after himself. He really could not worry about his cousin’s whereabouts or fate. As is easy to imagine, a storm was raging in his breast. It was a good thing, perhaps, that he no longer kept track of his temperature, having—so he claimed—dropped his thermometer and broken it. Such measurements might well have brought forth disconcerting results—particularly given Joachim’s dreadfully excited state, in which he would by turns flush darkly with joy and grow pale with anticipation. He could no longer lie still; Hans Castorp heard him pacing his room four times a day, during those hours when the rest of the Berghof assumed the horizontal position. A year and a half! And now it was back down to the flatlands, back home, where he would actually join his regiment—even if only with semipermission. It was no small matter, definitely not. Listening to that restless pacing, Hans Castorp could certainly sympathize with his cousin. Joachim had lived up here for eighteen months—a year come full circle, and half again—had profoundly settled in, become accustomed to the routine, to the undeviating path of life here, had walked it seventy times seven times, in all seasons. And now he was to return home, to an alien land, to ignorant people. What difficulties in acclimatization awaited one there? Was it any wonder, then, that Joachim’s excitement consisted not just of joy but also of fear, that the anguish
of saying farewell to everything familiar kept him pacing his room?—And that is without even mentioning Marusya.

  But joy predominated. Dear old Joachim’s heart and words were brimming over with it; he spoke about himself, never mentioning his cousin’s future. He talked about how new and fresh everything would be—life, himself, time, each day, each hour. He would know solid time again, the slow, momentous years of youth. He spoke about his mother, Hans Castorp’s half aunt Ziemssen, who had those same gentle, black eyes and whom he had not seen during all his time in the mountains, because, like her son, she had been put off from month to month, season to season, and so could never actually decide to pay him a visit. He smiled and spoke enthusiastically about the oath he would soon be taking—in a solemn ceremony he would stand beneath the flag and swear his allegiance to it, to the banner. “What’s that?” Hans Castorp asked. “Are you serious? To a flagpole? To a scrap of cloth?” Yes, indeed; and in the artillery the oath was sworn, symbolically, to a cannon. Well, the civilian remarked, those were certainly fervent customs, something for emotional fanatics, one might say. To which Joachim simply nodded with happy pride.

  He was caught up in preparations; he paid his final bill in full at the office and began packing his bags days ahead of time. He packed summer and winter clothes, gave his fur-lined sleeping bag and camel-hair blankets to the porter to have them sewn into linen sacks—he might have use for them sometime on maneuvers. He began to say his good-byes. He paid a farewell visit to Naphta and Settembrini—alone, his cousin did not join him, did not even ask what Settembrini had said about Joachim’s imminent departure or Hans Castorp’s imminent non-departure, whether he had said, “I see, I see,” or “Yes, yes,” or both, or “Poveretto.” It was all of no interest to Hans Castorp, apparently.

  Then came the eve of departure, when Joachim did everything for the last time—each meal, each rest cure, each promenade—and took his leave of the doctors and the head nurse. And then came the day itself. Joachim arrived at breakfast with glowing eyes and cold hands, since he had not slept at all, and hardly ate a bite. When the dwarf reported that his baggage was strapped to the carriage, he hastily jumped to his feet to bid farewell to his tablemates. As she said her good-byes, Frau Stöhr wept great tears, the unsalty, free-flowing tears of the uncultured; and in the next moment, behind Joachim’s back, she turned to the teacher, shook her head, and wagged one hand, its fingers splayed—her sour expression reflecting a vulgar skepticism about Joachim’s permission to depart and how he would manage now. Hans Castorp watched her as he stood there drinking the rest of his tea, ready to follow his cousin out. There was still some tipping to do, and then came the official farewell in the lobby, extended by a representative of the management. As always, patients had gathered to watch the departure: Frau Iltis of the “stirletto,” Fräulein Levi of the ivory complexion, drastic Herr Popóv and his wife. They waved their handkerchiefs as the carriage, rear brake set, skidded down the driveway. Joachim had been given roses. He was wearing a hat. Hans Castorp was not.

  It was a splendid morning, the first sunny day after a long gloomy period. Outlined against the blue were the unchanged hallmarks of Schiahorn, Green Towers, and Dorfberg—Joachim’s eyes rested on them. What a shame he had to depart in such beautiful weather, Hans Castorp remarked; there was something almost spiteful about it, because a last inhospitable impression always made parting easier. To which Joachim replied that things didn’t have to be made easier for him, that this was excellent drill weather, which he would certainly ‘be able to use down below. Otherwise they said little. As things stood for each of them and between them, there was in fact little to say. Besides, the limping concierge was right in front of them, up on the box next to the driver.

  Sitting up straight, thrown back against the cabriolet’s hard cushions, they crossed the brook and then the narrow tracks, following the street running alongside them and faced by an irregular pattern of buildings, and halted now on the gravel apron in front of the Dorf railroad station, which was not much more than a shed. Hans Castorp was startled to recognize it all again; he had not seen the station since his arrival at dusk thirteen months before. “This is where I arrived,” he said superfluously. And Joachim simply replied, “Yes, so you did,” and paid the driver.

  The bustling, limping concierge took care of everything—the ticket, the baggage. They stood side by side on the platform, next to the miniature train, right in front of the little gray-upholstered compartment where

  Joachim had claimed a seat with his coat, plaid blanket, and roses. “Well, make sure you swear that oath fervently,” Hans Castorp said; and Joachim responded, “I intend to.” And what else? They exchanged final regards to be paid both to people down below and up here. Then Hans Castorp stood there drawing figures on the asphalt with his cane. At the “all aboard” call, he looked up in surprise; he stared at Joachim. Joachim stared at him. They shook hands. Hans Castorp managed a vague smile; his cousin’s eyes were serious, sad, urgent. “Hans!” he said—good God! Had the world ever known a more embarrassing moment? He had called Hans Castorp by his first name. Their whole lives long they had used informal pronouns and phrases like “my man,” and now, in defiance of all cool, reserved custom, in a moment of the most embarrassing exuberance—a first name. “Hans,” he said, and in desperate anguish he squeezed his cousin’s hand, and the latter noticed Joachim’s head trembling from lack of sleep and the excitement of the trip, just as his own did when he “played king.” “Hans,” he said imploringly, “come soon!” And then he swung himself up on the footboard. The door closed, there was a whistle, the cars banged against each other, the little locomotive pulled, the train glided away. The traveler waved from the window with his hat; the man left behind waved with his hand. He stood there a long time, alone, his heart in turmoil. Then he slowly walked back up the road that Joachim had led him along little more than a year before.

  AN ATTACK REPULSED

  The wheel turned. The clock hand jerked. Orchis and columbine had ceased blooming, as had the wild pink. The deep blue stars of gentian and the pale, poisonous blossoms of meadow crocus appeared again in the wet grasses, and there was a reddish cast to the woodlands. The autumn equinox had passed, All Souls’ was coming into view—and for expert consumers of time, that meant so were the first Sunday in Advent, the shortest day of the year, and Christmas. But for now, there was a succession of beautiful October days—days like the one on which the cousins had viewed the director’s oil paintings.

  Since Joachim’s departure, Hans Castorp no longer sat at Frau Stöhr’s table—the same table that had been abandoned by the late Dr. Blumenkohl and where Marusya had sat, stifling her unfounded mirth in her orange-scented handkerchief. New guests, total strangers, were sitting there now. Two and a half months into our friend’s second year, management had assigned him a different seat, at a neighboring table set crosswise to his old one, between it and the Good Russian table and farther toward the veranda door on the left—in short, Settembrini’s table. Yes, Hans Castorp was now sitting in the same spot the humanist had deserted; like his old place, it was at one end of the table, opposite the “doctor’s chair,” which was reserved at each of the seven tables for the director and his aide-de-camp.

  At the far end on his left, the hunchbacked amateur photographer from Mexico sat perched on several pillows, wearing the facial expression of a deaf man, the result of linguistic isolation; on his right was seated the old maid from Transylvania, a lady who, as Herr Settembrini had complained, demanded that everyone take an interest in her brother-in-law, although no one knew the man, nor wished to know him. At certain times of the day, she could be seen at the railing of her balcony doing hygienic deep-breathing exercises—her chest, flat as a platter, rising and falling and her cane with a niello-silver handle, which she also used on her constitutionals, held straight across the back of her neck. A Czech gentleman sat across from her; people called him Herr Wenzel, since no one could pronounce his real las
t name. In his day, Herr Settembrini had tried to utter its intricate succession of consonants—not, however, as an honest attempt at its wild jungle of sound, but as an amusing challenge for his own hopelessly elegant Latinity. Although this Bohemian was as stocky as a badger and displayed an appetite quite amazing even for people up here, he had been asserting for four years now that he would soon die. At their evening socials, he would occasionally plunk out the songs of his homeland on a ribboned mandolin or talk about his sugar-beet plantation, where only pretty maids worked. Closer to Hans Castorp, then, one on each side of the table, came Herr and Frau Magnus—the beer-brewer from Halle and his wife. Melancholy hung like a cloud over them, because both were steadily losing vital products of metabolism—Herr Magnus, sugar; Frau Magnus, protein. The mood of pallid Frau Magnus in particular seemed without a glimmer of hope; she exuded bleakness of spirit the way a cellar exudes damp. And perhaps even more explicitly than ignorant Frau Stöhr, she represented the union of sickness and stupidity that Hans Castorp had declared intellectually offensive—for which Settembrini had rebuked him. Herr Magnus was more talkative and lively by nature, although in ways that had once aroused Settembrini’s literary impatience. He was also inclined to temper tantrums and had frequently clashed with Herr Wenzel about politics or other matters, for he was incensed by the nationalist aspirations of the Bohemian, who likewise declared himself an advocate of temperance and would sometimes cast moral aspersions on the brewer’s profession, whereupon the latter would turn red-faced and defend the incontestable benefits to health found in the beverage with which his interests were so intimately entwined. On such occasions, Herr Settembrini’s humor had at one time helped to smooth matters over; but although he sat in the same chair now, Hans Castorp was less adept at this and unable to lay claim to the necessary authority.