The Magic Mountain

by Thomas Mann

  “I’m sweating a little,” he said. “Welcome, young man. On the contrary. Have a seat. It is a sign of weakness when one no sooner enjoys a hot drink than—Would you please? Quite, right, the handkerchief. Thanks so much.” The flush soon left his face, however, making way for the yellow pallor that usually came to the man’s face after a malign attack. The quartan fever had been fierce that morning, in all three of its’ stages—the chill, the hot flush, and the sweats—and Peeperkorn’s little pale eyes gazed out dully from under the idol-like tracery of his brow.

  “It is—by all means, young man,” he said. “I might even say, by all means ‘appreciated’—absolutely. Very kind of you to pay a sick old man—”

  “A visit?” Hans Castorp asked. “Not really, Mynheer Peeperkorn. I am the one who should be very grateful just to be allowed to sit here awhile. I get incomparably more out of it than you, my reasons are purely egoistic. And what a misleading description that is—‘a sick old man.’ No one would guess that is supposed to mean you. What a totally false picture that is.”

  “Fine, fine,” Mynheer replied and closed his eyes for several seconds. Now he threw his majestic head back against the pillow, raising the chin high; he folded his long-nailed fingers over the broad regal chest outlined under his woolen shirt. “Fine, young man, or rather, you mean well, of that I am certain. It was pleasant yesterday afternoon—yes, yes, only yesterday afternoon—at that hospitable inn—I have forgotten the name—where we enjoyed those excellent scrambled eggs and salami and that wholesome country wine.”

  “It was splendid!” Hans Castorp confirmed. “We all partook of downright illegal portions—the chef at the Berghof would be justly offended if he had seen us. In short, we all, without exception, did some intensive work there. The salami was the genuine Italian article. Herr Settembrini was quite touched, ate it with tears in his eyes, so to speak. He is a true patriot, as you know, a democratic patriot. He has consecrated his citizen’s pike on the altar of humanity just so that salami will have to pass through customs at the Brenner Pass someday.”

  “That is immaterial,” Peeperkorn declared. “He is a chivalrous man and can carry on a high-spirited conversation, a cavalier, although apparently he does not enjoy the privilege of changing his attire often.”

  “Never, in fact,” Hans Castorp said. “Never has the privilege. I have known him for a long time now and am on the friendliest of terms with him, which is to say, he very kindly took me on because he thought/I was ‘a problem child of life’—that’s just a phrase we two use and would require lengthy explanation—and works very hard to influence me and set me on the right course. But I have never seen him, be it summer or winter, in anything except those checked trousers and that threadbare double-breasted coat. He wears those old things, however, with remarkable decorum, quite the cavalier, I can only concur with you there. The way he wears them is a triumph over poverty, and I certainly prefer his poverty to Naphta’s elegance, which always seems uncanny somehow, the Devil’s own elegance, so to speak, and he gets the funds from dubious sources—I’ve caught a glimpse or two of his circumstances.”

  “A chivalrous and high-spirited man,” Peeperkorn repeated without picking up on the remark about Naphta, “although—permit me a qualification—although not without his prejudices. Madame, my traveling companion, is not especially fond of him, as you perhaps may have noticed; she expresses little sympathy for him, doubtless because in his behavior toward her those very prejudices are in fact—not a word, young man. Far be it from me, as to Herr Settembrini and your friendly sentiments toward him—settled. I would not think of asserting that, in terms of the courtesy a cavalier owes a lady, he would ever—agreed, dear friend, absolutely unobjectionable. And yet there is a certain boundary, a reserve, a certain stand-off-ish-ness, which, humanly speaking, makes Madame’s feelings toward him eminently—”

  “Understandable. Logical. Eminently justified. Forgive me, Mynheer Peeperkorn, for having arbitrarily completed your sentence. I risk it only because I am convinced of your complete acquiescence. There is nothing particularly remarkable in her reaction, not when one takes into account how very much the behavior of women—and you may well smile that at my tender age I generalize about women in this way—is dependent on the behavior of a man toward them. Women, if one may put it this way, are reactive creatures, with little original initiative, careless to the point of being passive. Allow me, please, to attempt to develop my thought somewhat, though in labored fashion. In matters of love, a woman, as nearly as I can determine, primarily regards herself as simply an object, she lets things come at her, she does not choose freely, she makes her own subjective choice in love only on the basis of the man’s choice, so that, if you will permit me to add this final point, her freedom of choice—presuming, of course, that the man in question is not too sorry a specimen, and even that cannot be regarded as all too strict a requirement—her freedom of choice, then, is prejudiced and corrupted by the fact that she has been chosen. Good God, I’m speaking in banalities, but when one is young, everything is, of course, new—new and astounding. You ask a woman: ‘Do you love him, then?’ And she opens her eyes wide, or even bats them, and replies, ‘He loves me so much.’ And now try to imagine that sort of answer from a man—forgive me for correlating the two. Perhaps there are men who would have to answer that way, but they are simply and utterly ridiculous, tied to love’s apron strings, to put it epigrammatically. I would like to know what sense of self-worth such a female answer represents. Does a woman feel she owes boundless subservience to a man who would confer the favor of his love on such a lowly creature, or does she see in the man’s love for her an unerring token of his superiority? I’ve asked myself that question in passing, now and again, in life’s quiet moments.”

  “Primal, classic questions you’ve touched on there, young man, with your apt little discourse on holy matters,” Peeperkorn responded. “Desire intoxicates the male, the female demands and expects to be intoxicated by his desire. Which is the source of our duty to feel. And the source of the terrible disgrace when feeling is lacking, when there is an inability to awaken the female to desire. Will you drink a glass of red wine with me? I drink. I thirst. My loss of fluids today was considerable.”

  “Many thanks, Mynheer Peeperkorn. It’s a little early yet for me, but I’m always willing to drink a sip to your health.”

  “Well then, help yourself to the wineglass.’ There’s only one. I shall make do with the water tumbler. I’m sure this modest vintage will not be harmed if drunk from simpler vessels.” He poured, though his trembling captain’s hand required the assistance of his guest, and thirstily transferred red wine from the simple glass to his proletarian gullet, as if it were clearest water.

  “That regales,” he said. “Won’t you have more? Then allow me to avail myself of—” He spilled a little wine as he poured himself another glass. The cover sheet of his comforter was splattered with dark red stains. “I repeat,” he said, raising a finger lance, while the wineglass continued to tremble in his other hand, “I repeat, that it is our duty, our religious duty to feel. Our feeling, you see, is our manly vigor, which awakens life. Life slumbers. It wants to be awakened, roused to drunken nuptials with divine feeling. Because feeling, young man, is divine. Man himself is divine in that he feels. He is the very feeling of God. God created him in order to feel through him. Man is nothing more than the organ by which God consummates His marriage with awakened and intoxicated life. And if man fails to feel, it is an eruption of divine disgrace, it is the defeat of God’s manly vigor, a cosmic catastrophe, a horror that never leaves the mind—” He drank.

  “Allow me to take your empty glass, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” Hans Castorp said. “I find it most instructive to follow your train of thought. You have constructed a theological theory that ascribes to man an eminently honorable, if perhaps somewhat one-sided religious function. There is a rigor about your way of viewing things that, if I may say so, is also rather dispiriting—
beg your pardon. All religious austerity is, of course, dispiriting for people of lesser stature. I would not think of wanting to correct you, but I would merely like to refer you back to your own comment about certain ‘prejudices’ that you say you have observed in Herr Settembrini’s behavior toward Madame, your traveling companion. I have known Herr Settembrini for a long time, a very long time, not just for years, but for years and years now. And I can assure you that his prejudices, to the extent he has any, are in no way of a petty or philistine nature—it would be absurd even to think such a thing. With him, one can speak only of prejudices on a grand and therefore impersonal scale, of general pedagogic principles, upon which, I admit, given my status as a ‘problem child of life,’ Herr Settembrini has often insisted—but that would lead us too far afield. It is a very vast topic, which it would be impossible to address in a few words—”

  “And you love Madame, do you not?” Mynheer suddenly asked, turning toward his guest a regal countenance with painfully ragged lips and pale little eyes under a brow full of arabesques.

  In his shock, Hans Castorp stammered, “You asked if—that is—but of course I respect Frau Chauchat in her position as—”

  “I beg you,” Peeperkorn said, stretching out his hand in one of his restraining, cultured gestures. “Allow me,” he continued, having now created a space to say what he had to say, “allow me to repeat that I am in no way reproaching this Italian gentleman for any lapse of courtesy that a cavalier—I reproach no one for such a lapse, no one. It merely occurs to me—that at the present moment I am enjoying—fine, young man. By all means—fine, lovely. I am delighted, let there be no doubt of that. It truly gives me great pleasure. And yet, I say to myself—to be brief, I say: your acquaintance with Madame is older than our own. You shared with her her previous sojourn here. She is, moreover, a lady of the most charming attributes, and I am but a sick old man. How does it happen that—since I am indisposed and she has gone down to the resort to do some shopping, quite alone, with no one to accompany her—nothing wrong with that, certainly not! And yet it would doubtless be—‘should I ascribe it to the influence, shall we say, to the pedagogic principles of Signor Settembrini that in regard to your own chivalrous impulses, you have—I beg you, please understand me when I say . . .”

  “Oh, but I do, Mynheer Peeperkorn. Oh, no, that isn’t it at all. I’m acting quite independently. On the contrary, Herr Settembrini has on occasion even—oh, I’m so sorry, I see some wine stains on your sheets, Mynheer Peeperkorn. Should we not—one usually sprinkles salt on them, at least if they’re fresh—”

  “That is unimportant,” Peeperkorn said, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on his guest.

  Hans Castorp blushed. “Things up here,” he said with a forced smile, “are different from what is usual elsewhere. The spirit of the place, if I may put it that way, is not a conventional one. The patient has priority, whether man or woman. The rules of chivalry are of secondary importance. You are temporarily indisposed, Mynheer Peeperkorn—acutely indisposed, at this very moment. Your traveling companion is relatively healthy in comparison. And so I believe that I am acting as Madame would wish by serving as her representative here with you in her absence—to the extent one can speak of representing her, ha ha—instead of serving as your representative with her and offering to accompany her down into town. And why should I even think of forcing my chivalrous services upon your traveling companion? I have neither the right nor the authorization for that. I may say that I have a good sense of what is legitimate. In short, my situation is, I think, correct; it corresponds to the general state of affairs and in particular to my own sincere regard for your person, Mynheer Peeperkorn. And so in answer to your question—for you did ask a question of me—I believe I have given you a satisfactory answer.”

  “A very agreeable answer,” Peeperkorn replied. “I listen with instinctive pleasure to your nimble little discourse, young man. It leaps over every hedge and ditch and rounds everything off agreeably. But satisfactory—no. Your answer does not quite satisfy me—forgive me if I disappoint you there. ‘Rigor’—you used the word in regard to certain views I expressed just now. There is also a certain rigor in your remarks, a kind of stiffness, an austerity that does not seem consistent with your own nature, although I have noticed something of the sort in your behavior before. And I recognize it again now. It is the same stiffness you show toward Madame, and toward no one else in our group, during our strolls and outings. And you owe me an explanation—it is a debt, an obligation you owe me, young man. I am not mistaken in this. I have confirmed my observation too often, and it is not improbable that the same notion has occurred to the others—with one difference, that possibly, indeed probably, they know the explanation for this phenomenon.”

  Mynheer spoke in an unusually precise and compact style this afternoon, despite his fatigue from the malign attack of fever. There was almost nothing fragmented about it. Half sitting up in bed, with mighty shoulders and majestic head turned toward his visitor, he stretched one arm out across the bedclothes and held his freckled captain’s hand erect at the end of the woolen sleeve, forming a precise ring of thumb and forefinger, thrusting the other finger lances in the air; and his mouth formed the words as sharply and exactly, as graphically in fact, as Herr Settembrini himself might have wished, and he added a throaty rolled r to words like “difference” and “occurred.”

  “You smile,” he went on, “you blink and turn your head back and forth, endeavoring, it appears, to cogitate, but to no avail. And yet there can be no doubt that you know what I mean and what this is about. I do not claim that you do not occasionally address Madame, or that you fail to respond when the conversation happens to turn around the other way. But I repeat, it is done with a definite stiffness, or to be more precise—you are dodging, or avoiding something, and upon closer inspection, it turns out you are avoiding something specific. Indeed, one has the impression you have made a bet with Madame, a philopena, by the terms of which you are never to address her directly. You never say ‘you’ to her, never use the pronoun, formal or informal.”

  “But, Mynheer Peeperkorn. What sort of a bet would . . .”

  “Surely I may call your attention to something of which you yourself cannot be unaware—indeed, you just turned very pale, even your lips.”

  Hans Castorp did not look up. He was bent over, engrossed in the problem of the red stains on the sheets. “It was bound to come to this,” he thought. “That is what he was aiming for. I have even done my share, I’m afraid, to bring it to this. I’ve been plotting it to some extent, though that has only become clear to me at this moment. Am I really so pale? It may be—well, this is the critical moment. No way of knowing what will happen. Can I still lie? It probably wouldn’t work—and I don’t even want to. For now, I’ll just stick with these bloodstains, red wine stains here on the sheet.”

  But no one spoke about them, either. The silence lasted for two or three minutes—revealing how even these smallest units of time can expand under such circumstances.

  It was Pieter Peeperkorn who reopened the conversation. “It was on the evening when I had the privilege of first making your acquaintance,” he began in a lilting tone, letting his voice fall at the end, as if this were the first sentence in a long story. “We had just celebrated a little feast, had enjoyed food and drink, and linking arms in an elevated mood, in a humanely relaxed and adventurous spirit, we sought out our nocturnal couches in the small hours of the morning. And then it was, here at my door, as we took our leave of one another, that the inspiration came to me to invite you to place your lips upon the brow of the lady who had introduced you to me as a good friend from her previous stay here, leaving it then to her to respond in my presence to such a solemn, yet cheerful token of the advanced hour. You rejected my proposal outright, rejected it because you found it nonsensical to exchange kisses on the brow with my traveling companion. You will surely not dispute that was your explanation, which itself would have demanded an ex
planation—an explanation which you still owe me to this day. Are you willing to pay that debt now?”

  “So he noticed that, too,” Hans Castorp thought and bent down closer still to the wine stains, scratching at one of them with the tip of his curled middle finger. “The fact is, I had wanted him to notice, and remember, even then—otherwise I would not have said it. But what now? My heart’s pounding fairly hard. Will there be a first-rate royal temper tantrum? It might be a good idea to look up to see if his fist is hovering just above my head. I find myself in a highly peculiar and extremely ticklish position.”

  Suddenly he felt his wrist, his right wrist, grasped by Peeperkorn’s hand.

  “Now he’s grabbing my wrist,” he thought. “Well, how ridiculous for me to sit here with my tail tucked between my legs. Have I wronged him in any way? Not in the least. Let the husband in Daghestan complain first. And then whoever after that. And then me. As far as I know, he has nothing at all to complain about. So why is my heart pounding like this? It’s high time for me to sit up and look squarely, if respectfully, into that majestic countenance.”

  Which he did. The majestic countenance was yellow, with pale eyes gazing out from under the raised tracery of the brow; the expression on the ragged lips was bitter. Each read the other’s eyes—the grand old man and the insignificant young man, the former still with a grasp on the latter’s wrist.

  At last Peeperkorn said softly: “You were Clavdia’s lover during her previous stay here.”

  Hans Castorp let his head fall briefly, but then sat up straight again and took a deep breath. “Mynheer Peeperkorn,” he said, “I would find it most repugnant to lie to you, and I am seeking some way to avoid doing so. It is not easy. I would be boasting if I were to confirm your observation, and I would be lying if I were to deny it. The matter should be seen as follows. For a long time, a very long time, I lived here at the Berghof with Clavdia—excuse me—with your current traveling companion without knowing her socially. Our relationship, or my relationship to her, precluded any social element; indeed I must say its beginnings lie in darkness. In my own mind, at least, I never addressed Clavdia except by that name and with informal pronouns—or indeed in reality, either. For the evening when I cast aside certain pedagogic fetters, of which we were just speaking, and approached her—under a pretense suggested to me by a past experience—was an evening of masks and disguises. It was Mardi Gras, an irresponsible evening, an evening of first names, in the course of which, in a manner both irresponsible and dreamlike, the use of informal pronouns achieved its full meaning. It was likewise the evening before Clavdia’s departure.”