Here an apparition is imminent which the narrator does well to wonder about himself, lest the reader himself be too surprised about it. While our account of the first three weeks of Hans Castorp’s stay with those up here (twenty-one midsummer days, to which human foresight this stay should have been limited) swallowed up spaces and amounts of time, the extent of which was only too great for our own half-confessed expectations corresponds, – the mastering of the next three weeks of his visit to this place will hardly require as many lines, even words and moments, as the pages, sheets, hours and days’ work cost him: in no time, we see that coming, these three weeks will be be put behind us and buried.

So this might surprise you; and yet it is in order and conforms to the laws of storytelling and listening. Because it is in order and it corresponds to these laws that time becomes just as long or short for us, widens or shrinks for our experience just as much as the hero of our story who was so unexpectedly seized by fate, the young Hans Castorp; and it may be useful, with regard to the mystery of the time, to prepare the reader for quite different miracles and phenomena than those striking here, which will happen to us in his company. For now it suffices that everyone remembers how quickly a series, indeed a “long” series of days passes that one spends as a sick person in bed: itis always the same day repeating itself; but since it is always the same, it is basically not correct to speak of “repetition”; there should be talk of oneness, of a standing now or of eternity. You will be brought the soup for lunch, as it was brought to you yesterday and will be brought to you tomorrow. And at the same moment it blows at you – you don’t know how and from where; you feel dizzy as you see the soup coming, the tenses blur, flow into one another, and what is revealed to you as the true form of being is an unexpanded present in which the soup is brought to you forever. But to speak of boredom with reference to eternity would be very paradoxical; and we want to avoid paradoxes, especially in living with this hero.

So Hans Castorp had been bedridden since Saturday afternoon, since Hofrat Behrens, the supreme authority in the world that includes us, had ordered it so. There he lay, his monogram on the breast pocket of his nightgown, his hands clasped behind his head, in his clean white bed, the deathbed of the American woman and probably some other person as well, looking up at the ceiling with simple, cold-clouded blue eyes , contemplating the strangeness of his situation. It is not to be assumed that his eyes would have looked clear, bright and unambiguous without a cold, for that is not how it looked inside him, no matter how simple it might be, but in fact very cloudy, confused, indistinct, half-sincere and doubtful . Soon, as he lay there, a mad,known, extravagant joy and hope; Soon he would turn pale again with terror and fear, and it was the beatings of conscience itself that made his heart pound against his ribs in rapid, frantic beats.

Joachim left him alone the first day and avoided any discussion. He gently walked into the sickroom a couple of times, nodded to the patient and, because of his good form, asked if he was wrong. Incidentally, it was all the easier for him to recognize and respect Hans Castorp’s shyness of an argument because he shared it and, in his opinion, found himself in a more embarrassing position than the latter.

But on Sunday morning, after his return from his morning walk, which he had taken alone as before, he did not put off discussing what was now most urgent with his cousin any longer. He stood by his bed and said with a sigh:

“Yes, nothing helps, steps must now be taken. They’re expecting you at home.”

“Not yet,” answered Hans Castorp.

“No, but in the next few days, Wednesday or Thursday.”

‘Oh,’ said Hans Castorp, ‘you’re not expecting me exactly on the day at all. They have other things to do than wait for me and count the days until I come back. When I come, I’ll be there, and Uncle Tienappel says: ‘There you are again!’ and Uncle James says, ‘Well, that was nice.’ And if I don’t come, it will be a long time before they notice, you can be sure of that. Of course, they would have to be notified in due course…”

“You can imagine,” said Joachim and sighed again, “how uncomfortable this is for me! What’s going to happen now? Of course I feel responsible, so to speak. You come up here to see me and I introduce you up here and now you’re stuck and no one knows when you’ll be able to get out and start your job. You must see that I am extremely embarrassed.”

“Allow me!” said Hans Castorp, always with his hands under his head. “What’s your headache? That’s nonsense. did I come up to see you? Also; but in the end primarily to recover, as instructed by Heidekind. Well, and now it turns out that I need more rest than he and we all dreamed of. I’m probably not the first who thought I was making a flying visit here, and then things turned out differently. Just think, for example, of Tous les deux’second son, and how things turned out quite differently for him here – I don’t know if he’s still alive, maybe they picked him up during a meal. It’s a surprise to me that I’m a bit ill, I first have to get used to feeling like a patient here and really like one of you, instead of just being a guest like before. And then it doesn’t surprise me at all, because I’ve actually never felt in such splendid condition, and when I think how early both my parents died – where was the splendor supposed to come from after all! The fact that you’ve got a little crack, isn’t it, even if it’s as good as cured now, we’re all not fooling ourselves about that, and so it’s possible that it isruns a bit in our family, at least Behrens made such a remark. Anyway, I’ve been lying here since yesterday, thinking about how I always felt and how I related to the whole thing, to life, you know, and its demands. A certain seriousness and a certain aversion to robust and noisy beings was always in my nature – we were still talking about it the other day, and that sometimes I almost felt like becoming a spiritual man out of interest in sad and edifying things – a black one Cloth, you know, with a silver cross on it, or RIP … Requiescat in pace… that’s actually the most beautiful word and I like it a lot more than ‘He shall live high’, which is more of a row. All this, I think to myself, is probably due to the fact that I myself have a crack and understand the disease from the start – it shows on this occasion. But if that’s the case, then I can say I’m lucky that I came up and had myself examined; you don’t need to blame yourself in the slightest for that. Because you have heard: if I had carried on like this in the flat country for a while, it might have gone to the devil, nothing and my whole lobe of lung.”

“You can’t know that!” said Joachim. “That’s the thing, that you can’t even know! You are said to have had spots in the past that no one bothered about and which healed by themselves, leaving you with just a few indifferent dull spots. It might have been the same with the wet spot that you are supposed to have now, if you hadn’t accidentally come up to me – one can’t know!”

“No, you can’t know anything,” answered Hans Castorp. “And that’s why you have no right to start with the most annoying thing, for example with regard to the duration of my stay at the spa. You say nobody knows when I’ll be able to get away and enter the shipyard, but you say it in a pessimistic sense, and I think that’s premature, since it’s impossible to know. Behrens did not give a date, he is a level-headed man and does not play the fortune teller. The X-rays and photographs have not yet taken place, which will first clarify the facts objectively, and who knows whether something worth mentioning will come to light and whether I won’t be fever-free beforehand and can say goodbye to you. I am in favor, that we don’t pretend to be ahead of time and tell those at home the biggest robber stories right away. It will suffice if we write next time – I can write myself, with the fountain pen here, if I sit up a bit – that I have a bad cold and am feverish and bedridden and cannot travel for the time being. The rest can be found.”

“Good,” said Joachim, “we can do it like that for the time being. And then we can also wait a bit with the other one.”

“With which other?”

“Don’t be so thoughtless! You’re only set up for three weeks with your cabin trunk. You need underwear, underwear and outerwear and winter clothes, and you need more shoes. Finally, you must also have money sent to you.”

” If ,” said Hans Castorp, ” if I need all that.”

“Well, let’s wait and see. But we should … no,” said Joachim and walked across the room, “we shouldn’t be under any illusions! I’ve been here too long not to know. If Behrens says that there is a rough spot, almost a noise … But of course, we can watch!” –

That’s how it stayed for this time, and for the time being the eight- and fourteen-day variations of the normal day came into their own – even in his present situation Hans Castorp had a part in it, if not through direct enjoyment, then through reports that Joachim made when he visited and sat on the edge of his bed for a quarter of an hour.

The tea tray on which his breakfast was brought to him on Sunday morning was adorned with a vase of flowers, and he had not failed to send him some of the pastries that were being served in the hall that day. Later, things came to life down in the garden and on the terrace, and the fortnightly Sunday concert began with fanfare and clarinet noise, for which Joachim found his cousin: he accepted the performance with the balcony door open outside in the box, while Hans Castorp listened to his Bette aus, half sitting, his head on one side and listening to the surging harmonies with a loving, devotional blurred gaze, not without inwardly shrugging his shoulders thinking of Settembrini’s talk about the “political suspicion” of the music.

Besides, as we said, he let Joachim report to him on the apparitions and events of the day, asked him whether Sunday had brought any festive occasions, top matinees or the like (for top matineesbut it was too cold); also whether there had been carriage rides in the afternoon (some had actually been undertaken: the “half lung” association was in corporeflown to Clavadell); and on Monday he asked Dr. To hear Krokowski’s Conférence when Joachim returned from it and called on him before he went to the midday rest cure. Joachim appeared lazy and reluctant to report on the lecture – just as the previous one hadn’t been discussed between the two of them. But Hans Castorp insisted on hearing details. “I’m lying here paying full price,” he said. “I also want to have something of what is on offer.” He remembered Monday a fortnight ago, his independent walk, which had done him so little good, and expressed the definite suspicion that it had actually been him who had a revolutionary effect on his body and brought about the outbreak of the still existing disease. “But the way people talk here ” he shouted; “the lowly folk – so dignified and solemn: it sometimes sounds like poetry. ‘Well, farewell and thank you!’” he repeated, imitating the woodman’s speech. “So I heard it in the forest, and I shall not forget it as long as I live. That kind of thing then connects with other impressions or memories, you know, and you keep it in your ear for the rest of your life. – So Krokowski talked about ‘love’ again?” he asked, making a face at the word. and you keep it in your ear until the end of your life. – So Krokowski talked about ‘love’ again?” he asked, making a face at the word. and you keep it in your ear until the end of your life. – So Krokowski talked about ‘love’ again?” he asked, making a face at the word.

“Of course,” said Joachim. “Of what else? After all, it’s his topic.”

“What did he say about it today?”

“Nothing special. You know how he puts it from last time.”

“But what news did he tell you?”

“Nothing else new … Yes, it was pure chemistry what he did today,” Joachim reluctantly condescended to report. It is “in this case” a kind of poisoning, of self-poisoning of the organism, Dr. Krokowski said that it arises when a still unknown substance in the body undergoes decomposition; and the products of this decomposition acted intoxicatingly on certain centers of the spinal cord, not unlike the habitual introduction of foreign poisons, morphine or cocaine.

“And then you get cheerful cheeks!” said Hans Castorp. “Look, that’s worth hearing. What he doesn’t know -. He ate it with spoons. Just wait, one day he’ll discover the unknown substance that’s spread throughout the body and make the soluble poisons that intoxicate the core, then he can get people tipsy in a special way. Maybe you’ve gotten that far before. Hearing it, you might think there’s some truth to the tales of love potions and stuff like that the saga books talk about…Are you going yet?”

“Yes,” said Joachim, “I absolutely have to lie down a little longer. I have rising curve since yesterday. The thing with you has taken its toll on me.” –

That was Sunday, Monday. Evening and morning turned into the third day of Hans Castorp’s stay in the “Remise”, a weekday without distinctionTuesday. But it was the day of his arrival up here, he had been in this place for about three weeks now, and so he still felt driven to write the letter home and at least to inform his uncles about the state of affairs, at least for the moment. With his plumeau on his back, he wrote on a letter from the institution that his departure from here was being delayed, contrary to plan. He was suffering from a fever, which Hofrat Behrens, overly conscientious as he was, obviously did not take it lightly, since he associated it with his, the writer’s, constitution in general. Because right from the first acquaintance the doctor in charge found him severely anemic, and all in all it seems as if the decisive factor was that of him, Hans Castorp, period set for his recovery is not considered quite sufficient. More marriageably. – That’s good, thought Hans Castorp. There is not a word too much and yet it definitely lasts a while. The letter was handed over to the porter, who took it straight to the next scheduled train, avoiding the detour via the box.

After that, everything seemed to be in order for our adventurer, and with a calm mind, even if plagued by coughing and a dull sniffle, he waited and lived into the day, the normal day, which was often divided into short pieces and, in its fixed uniformity, was neither short nor boring and was always the same . In the morning, after a mighty knock, the lifeguard came in, an annoying individual named Turnherr, with rolled-up shirt sleeves, high-veined forearms and a gurgling, heavydisabled way of speaking, who, like all patients, addressed Hans Castorp with his room number and rubbed him down with alcohol. Not long after his departure, Joachim appeared, fully dressed, to say good morning, to ask about his cousin’s seven o’clock temperature, and to share his own. While he was having breakfast downstairs, Hans Castorp, his plumeau behind him, with the appetite that a new situation creates, did the same – hardly disturbed by the bustling businesslike break-in of the doctors, who at this time had passed the dining room and were making their rounds walked across the rooms of the bedridden and moribund at a rapid pace. Mouth full of preserves, he declared that he had slept “nicely,” watching over the rim of his cup as the privy councilor put his fists on the center table top. quickly checked the fever chart that was there and answered the departing greeting in an indifferent, drawn-out tone. Then he lit a cigarette and saw Joachim returning from his morning’s work, when he had scarcely thought that he had left. Again they chatted this and that, and the interval of time until the second breakfast – Joachim was meanwhile taking a rest cure – was so short that even a decidedly hollow head and mentally poor would not have gotten bored – while Hans Castorp was still working on the impressions of his the first three weeks up here, also had to deal with his current life situation and what might become of it and hardly needed the two thick volumes of an illustrated magazine, which, coming from the institution’s library,

Nothing else applies to the period of time during which Joachim completed his second course after place Davos, an easy hour. He then spoke to Hans Castorp again and told about this and that, what he noticed while walking, stood or sat for a moment at the sickbed before he went to the midday rest cure – and how long did that last? Just another hour! One had hardly looked at the ceiling with one’s hands clasped behind one’s head and was lost in thought when the gong rang out, calling on those who were not bedridden and moribund to get ready for the big meal.

Joachim went, and the “lunchtime soup” came: a simple symbolic name for what was coming! Because Hans Castorp was not put on sick food – why should he have been put on it? Sick diet, small fare, was in no way indicated in his condition. He lay here and paid the full price, and what is brought to him in the standing eternity of this hour is not a “lunchtime soup”, it is the six-course Berghof dinner without deduction and in great detail – sumptuous in everyday life, closed on Sundays Gala, pleasure and parade meal, prepared by a European-educated chef in the luxury hotel kitchen of the institution. The maid, whose job it was to look after the bedridden, brought it to him under nickel-plated hollow lids and in delicious jars; she pushed the sick table that had arrived

He had scarcely finished eating when Joachim returned too, and until he went into his loggia and the silence of the big onesWhen the couchette descended over the “Berghof” house, it was as much as two-thirty. Not quite, maybe; strictly speaking probably only a quarter over two. But such surplus quarters of an hour outside of round units are not counted, but rather devoured on the side where generous time management prevails, such as when travelling, on long train journeys or otherwise in an empty, waiting state, when all striving and life is reduced to bringing and covering time. A quarter past two o’clock – that applies to half past two; in God’s name it also applies to three o’clock, since three is already involved. The thirty minutes are understood as the prelude to the round hour from three to four o’clock and eliminated internally: this is how you do it under such circumstances. And so the duration of the long rest cure was finally and actually limited to one hour – which, by the way, was reduced, trimmed away and, as it were, apostrophized at the end. The apostrophe was Dr. Krokowski.

yes dr On his independent afternoon tour, Krokowski no longer described any arc around Hans Castorp. He was now counting, he was no longer an interval and hiatus, he was a patient, he was asked and not ignored, as had happened for so long to his secret and slight annoyance, which he felt every day. It was on Monday that Dr. Krokowski had appeared in the room for the first time – we say “appeared” because that is the right word for the strange and even somewhat dreadful impression which Hans Castorp could not help but feel at the time. He had been half or quartering asleep when he realized with a start that theAssistant was in the room without getting in through the door and approached him from the outside. Because his way hadn’t been along the corridor, but through the outer loggias, and he had entered through the open balcony door, so that the impression arose as if he had come through the air. In any case, there he was standing at Hans Castorp’s bedside, pale black, broad-shouldered and stocky, the apostrophe of the hour, and his yellowish teeth, smiling like a man, could be seen in his parted beard.

“You seem surprised to see me, Mr. Castorp,” he had spoken with baritonal gentleness, hesitantly, a bit pretentiously and with an exotic palate r, which he didn’t roll, but rather with a single tap of the tongue just behind the upper front teeth; “But I’m only fulfilling a pleasant duty if I see to it that things are all right with you. Your relationship with us has entered a new phase, overnight the guest has become a comrade…” (The word “comrade” had scared Hans Castorp a little.) “Who would have thought it!” Krokowski joked comradely … “Who would have thought it on the evening when I was first allowed to greet you and you countered my erroneous conception – it was erroneous at the time – by explaining that you were completely healthy. I believe, I expressed something of a doubt at the time, but I assure you I didn’t mean it! I don’t want to pretend to be more perceptive than I am, I wasn’t thinking of a wet spot at the time, I meant it differently, more generally, more philosophically, I expressed my doubts that ‘human beings’ and ‘perfect health’ are at allbe rhyming words. And even today, even after the course of your investigation, I, as I happen to be and in contrast to my dear boss, can’t use this wet spot there” – and he had lightly touched Hans Castorp’s shoulder with his fingertip – “not as consider to be in the foreground of interest. For me it is a secondary appearance… The organic is always secondary…”

Hans Castorp winced.

“… And so, in my eyes, your catarrh is a third-order phenomenon,” Dr. Added Krokowski very easily. “How about that? Bed rest will certainly quickly do its bit in this regard. What did you measure today?” And from then on, the assistant’s visit had the character of a harmless check-up, which he continued to do in the following days and weeks: Dr. Krokowski came in through the balcony at three-quarters o’clock or a little earlier, greeted the patient in a manfully cheerful manner, asked the simplest medical questions, probably also initiated a short, more personal chat, joked comradely – and if all this was a hint of dubiousness is not lacking, then one finally gets used to the dubious, provided it stays within its limits, and Hans Castorp soon found nothing more against the regular appearance of Dr. To remind Krokowskis, which was part of the standing normal day and apostrophized the hour of the long rest cure.

So it was 4 o’clock when the assistant stepped back onto the balcony – that means deep in the afternoon! Suddenly, and before you thought it, it was late afternoon – which, by the way, deepened almost immediately into evening: thenby the time the tea was drunk, downstairs in the hall and at number 34, it was getting to 5 o’clock at the strongest and, by the time Joachim returned from his third round of work and called on his cousin again, it was at least 6 o’clock so strongly that the rest cure lasted until dinner. if you just calculate a little round, again limited to an hour – a contemporary opponent that can easily be beaten out of the field, if you have thoughts in your head and also a whole orbis pictus on the bedside table.

Joachim said goodbye to the meal. The food was brought. The valley had long since been filled with shadows, and while Hans Castorp ate, it grew noticeably darker in the white room. When he was done, he sat leaning against his quilt in front of the table setting he had eaten and stared into the rapidly increasing twilight, today’s twilight, which was difficult to distinguish from yesterday, the day before yesterday, or a week ago. It was evening – after it had just been morning. The chopped up and artificially entertaining day had literally crumbled in his hands and come to naught, as he remarked with amusement or at most thoughtfully; for horror of this was still alien to his years. It was only as if he were “still” looking.

One day, it might have been ten or twelve since Hans Castorp had become bedridden, there was a knock at the door at that hour, that is to say: before Joachim had returned from supper and from the social gathering, and when Hans Castorp asked Lodovico to come in, Lodovico appeared Settembrini on the threshold, and suddenly the room became dazzlingly bright. Because the visitor’s firstThe movement, with the door still open, had been that he had switched on the ceiling light, which, reflected from the white of the ceiling and the furniture, filled the room in a moment with trembling clarity.

The Italian was the only personality among the spa guests about whom Hans Castorp had asked Joachim specifically and by name in those days. In any case, Joachim reported to him whenever he sat on his cousin’s bedside for ten minutes or stood next to him – and that happened ten times a day – about the small occurrences and fluctuations in the everyday life of the institution, and as far as Hans Castorp had asked questions, they were more general and impersonal in nature. The curiosity of the isolated went to knowing whether new guests had arrived or whether someone from the familiar physiognomies had departed; and it seemed to satisfy him that only that was the case. A “new one” had arrived, a young man, greenish and hollow-faced, and had his place at the table of the ivory Levi and the woman polecat, just to the right of that of the cousins. Well, Hans Castorp could expect to see him. So nobody left? Joachim briefly denied it by lowering his eyes. But he had to answer the question several times, actually every other day, although finally, with a certain impatience in his voice, he had tried to give the answer once and for all and said that as far as he knew no one was about to leave, it wasn’t getting that slimmer here at all left.

As far as Settembrini was concerned, Hans Castorp had personally asked about him and asked to hear what he was doing“said about it”. For what reason? “Well, that I’m lying here and I’m supposed to be ill.” Settembrini had really spoken, albeit very briefly. On the very day Hans Castorp disappeared he had approached Joachim with the question of the guest’s whereabouts, and was obviously ready to learn that Hans Castorp had left. To Joachim’s explanations he only replied with two Italian words: first he said ” Ecco ” and then ” Poveretto “, in German: “There we have it” and “poor little one” – you didn’t need to understand any more Italian than the two young people to get the meaning of these two statements. “Why ‘ poveretto‘?” Hans Castorp had said. “He’s sitting up here with his literature, which consists of humanism and politics, and can’t promote earthly life interests much. He shouldn’t pity me so condescendingly, I still get to the flatlands before he does.”

So now Herr Settembrini was standing in the suddenly lighted room – Hans Castorp, who had leaned on his elbows and turned to the door, recognized him with a blink and blushed when he recognized him. As always, Settembrini wore his thick skirt with large lapels, a slightly damaged turn-down collar and checked trousers. Coming from eating, he held a wooden toothpick between his lips, as was his habit. The corner of his mouth, beneath the beautiful curve of his mustache, curled up in the well-known subtle, sober, and critical smile.

“Good evening, engineer! Are you allowed to look around for you? If so, then light is required for this – forgive my arbitrary use of power!” he said, while helittle hand swung up to the ceiling lamp. “They were contemplating – I certainly don’t want to disturb you. I can understand your tendency to think things over, and after all, you have your cousin to talk to. You see, my superfluity is perfectly clear to me. Nevertheless, one lives together in such a small space, one feels sympathy from person to person, spiritual sympathy, heart sympathy … It’s been a good week that no one sees you. I really began to fancy that you had left when I saw your place down in the refectory empty. The lieutenant taught me better, hm, less good, if that doesn’t sound rude… In short, how are you? What are you up to? How do you feel? Not too depressed, though?”

“It’s you, Mr. Settembrini! That’s friendly. Ha, ha, ‘refectory’? Then you made a joke again. Take the chair, please. You don’t bother me one bit. I lay there and pondered – pondering is already saying too much. I was just too lazy to turn on the light. Thank you very much, subjectively I’m doing as well as normal. My cold is almost gone with bed rest, but it’s supposed to be a secondary phenomenon, I’m told. The temperature is still not what it should be, sometimes 37.5, sometimes 37.7, that hasn’t changed in the last few days.”

“You take measurements regularly?”

“Yes, six times a day, just like all of them up here. Haha, sorry, I still have to laugh that you called our dining room ‘refectory’. That’s what they say in the monastery, isn’t it? There really is something of that here, – meI’ve never been to a monastery, but that’s how I imagine it. And I already know the ‘rules’ and observe them very closely.”

“Like a pious brother. One can say your novitiate is over, you have made your profession. My solemn congratulations. You already say ‘our dining room’. By the way – without wanting to offend your manly dignity – you remind me almost more of a young nun than of a monk – of a newly shaven, innocent bride of Christ with big sacrificial eyes. I used to see lambs like that here and there, never without … never without a certain sentimentality. Ah, yes, yes, your cousin told me everything. So you had yourself examined at the last moment.”

“Since I was febrile -. I beg you, Mr. Settembrini, if I had had such catarrh on the plain, I would have gone to our doctor. And here, where you are sitting at the source, so to speak, where there are two specialists in the house – it would have been funny…”

“Of course, of course. And so you measured yourself before you were asked to do it. Incidentally, it was immediately recommended to you. The Mylendonk slipped you the thermometer?”

“Put on? Since the need was there, I bought one from her.”

“I understand. A flawless trade. And how many months did the boss give you? … Good God, I’ve asked you that before! Do you remember? They had just arrived. You answered so boldly at the time…”

“Of course I remember that, Mr Settembrini. I’ve experienced a lot of new things since then, but I still remember that today. Right back then you were so amusing and made Councilor Behrens the judge of Hell… Rhadames… No, wait, that’s different…”

“Rhadamanthys? I may have casually called him that. I don’t keep everything that pops out of my head occasionally.”

“Rhadamanthys, of course! Minos and Rhadamanthys! You also told us about Carducci at the time…”

“Allow me, dear friend, we will leave that aside. The name seems far too strange on your lips at this moment!”

“That’s fine too,” laughed Hans Castorp. “But I learned a lot about him from you. Yes, I had no idea at the time and answered you that I had come up with three weeks, otherwise I didn’t know. Kleefeld had just whistled at me with the pneumothorax to greet me, and I was a bit upset about that. But I also felt febrile right away, because the air here is not only good against the disease, it is also good for the disease, sometimes it causes it to break out, and that is probably necessary in the end if healing is to take place .”

“A compelling hypothesis. Did Hofrat Behrens also tell you about the German-Russian we had here for five months last year – no: the year before last? Not? He should have. A lovely lady, of German-Russian descent, married, young mother. She came here from the east, lymphatic, anemic, there was probably something more serious going on. Well she lives oneMonth here and complains that she feels bad. Only patience! A second month goes by and she keeps claiming that she’s not getting better, she’s getting worse. She is told that only the doctor can judge how she is doing ; she can only state how she feels, – and that was of little importance. You are satisfied with your lungs. Well, she’s silent, she’s taking a cure and she’s losing weight every week. In the fourth month she faints during examinations. That doesn’t hurt, explains Behrens; he was quite content with her lungs. But when she can no longer walk in the fifth month, she writes this to her husband to the east, and Behrens gets a letter from him – it said ‘Personal’ and ‘Urgent’ in pithy writing, I saw it myself. Yes, Behrens now says and shrugs his shoulders, it seems to be turning out that she obviously doesn’t like the climate here. The woman was beside herself. He should have told her earlier, she cried, she had always felt it, she had completely spoiled herself! … Let’s hope they joinher husband regained strength in the East.”

“Excellent! Your story is so pretty, Mr Settembrini, each of your words is almost vivid. I often had to laugh to myself about the story about the young lady who was bathing in the lake and who was given the mute sister. Yes, whatever happens. You certainly don’t stop learning. Incidentally, my own case is still quite uncertain. The privy councilor claims to have found a little something in my house – I heard the old passages where I was ill earlier without knowing it when I knocked, and now a fresh one is supposed to be heard here somewhere –ha, ‘fresh’ is a strange way of saying it in this context. But so far we’ve only been dealing with acoustic perceptions, and we won’t have the right diagnostic certainty until I’m up again and the X-ray and the photograph have taken place. Then we will know positively.”

“You mean? – Do you know that the photographic plate often shows spots which one takes for caverns, when they are only shadows, and that where there is something it sometimes shows no spots ? Madonna, the photographic plate! Here was a young numismatist who was feverish; and since he was feverish, caverns were clearly seen on the photographic plate. They even wanted to hear it! He was treated for phthisis and died from it. The autopsy showed that there was nothing wrong with his lungs and that he had died of some kind of cocci.”

‘Well, listen, Mr Settembrini, you’re about to talk about an autopsy! It’s probably not that far for me.”

“Engineer, you are a rascal.”

“And you are a critic and doubter through and through, I have to say that! You don’t even believe in exact science. Does your plate show spots?”

“Yes, she shows some.”

“And are you really sick?”

“Yes, unfortunately I’m quite ill,” replied Mr. Settembrini, bowing his head. There was a pause during which he coughed. Hans Castorp looked at the silenced guest from his position of rest. It seemed to him that with his two very simple questions he had refuted and silenced everything possible, even the Republicand the beautiful style. He did nothing on his part to get the conversation going again.

After a while, Mr. Settembrini sat up again, smiling.

“Now tell me, engineer,” he said, “how did yours take the news?”

“I mean, what message? The delay in my departure? Oh, mine, you know, my family at home consists of three uncles, a great-uncle and two sons of his, to whom I am more of a cousin. I don’t have any other family, I became a double orphan very early on. Recorded? You don’t know much yet, not any more than I do. At the beginning, when I had to lie down, I wrote to them that I had a bad cold and couldn’t travel. And yesterday, since it was taking a little longer, I wrote again and said that the catarrh had made Hofrat Behrens aware of the condition of my breast and that I was urging that I extend my stay until things were clear. They will have taken note of this with very calm blood.”

“And your post? You spoke of a practical sphere of activity that you were about to enter.”

“Yes, as a volunteer. I have asked for a preliminary apology to the shipyard. You don’t have to think that’s why there’s desperation. They can manage as long as they like without a volunteer.”

“Very good! Seen from this side, everything is fine. Phlegm across the board. In general, people in your country are phlegmatic, aren’t they? But also energetic!”

“Oh yes, vigorously too, yes, very energetically,” said Hans Castorp. He examined the mood of life at home from a distance and found that his interlocutor described it correctly. “Phlegmatic and energetic, that’s what they are.”

‘Well,’ continued M. Settembrini, ‘if you should stay longer, we won’t fail to make the acquaintance of your uncle – I mean your great-uncle – up here. No doubt he will come up to look for you.”

“Out of the question!” shouted Hans Castorp. “Under no circumstances! Ten horses won’t bring him up here! My uncle is severely apoplectic, you know, he has almost no throat. No, he needs reasonable air pressure, he would fare even worse here than your lady from the east, he would get all conditions.”

“That disappoints me. So apoplectic? What use is phlegm and energy to me? – Your uncle is probably rich? Are you rich too? You’re rich at home.”

Hans Castorp smiled at Herr Settembrini’s literary generalization, and then he looked out from his resting position into the distance, into the home sphere from which he had escaped. He remembered trying to judge impersonally, distance encouraged and enabled him to do so. He answered:

“One is rich, yes, – or one is not. And if not, the worse. I? I’m not a millionaire, but mine is guaranteed, I’m independent, I have to live. Let’s disregard me. If you had said: You have to be rich back there – then I would have agreed with you. For suppose one is not rich, or ceases to be,—then woe betide. ,The? Does he still have money?’they ask… Literally like that and with exactly like that face; I’ve heard it often, and I feel it has made an impression on me. So it must have struck me as odd, although I was accustomed to hearing it – otherwise it would not have stuck in my mind. Or what do you mean. No, I don’t think it’s you, for example, as homo humanus, would suit us; even to me, who is at home there, it often seemed crass, as I later realized, although I personally didn’t suffer from it. If you don’t have the best, most expensive wines served at your dinners, you don’t go to them at all, and your daughters stay put. That’s how people are. As I lie here and see it from afar, it seems crass to me. What expressions did you need – phlegmatic and? And energetic! Fine, but what does that mean? That means hard, cold. And what does hard and cold mean? That means cruel. It’s a cruel air down there, unrelenting. When you lie there and see it from afar, it can make you dread.”

Settembrini listened to him and nodded. He was still doing this when Hans Castorp had temporarily finished his criticism and was no longer speaking. Then he breathed a sigh of relief and said:

“I do not wish to embellish the particular manifestations that the natural cruelty of life takes within your society. Anyway, the accusation of cruelty remains a rather sentimental accusation. They would scarcely have raised him there, for fear of being ridiculous to themselves. They rightly left him to the slackers of life. The fact that you are raising it now shows a certain alienation which I would hate to see growing, for whoever gets used to itcan easily be lost to life, to the life form for which it was born. Do you know, engineer, what that means: ‘lost to life’? I, I know it, I see it here every day. After six months at the latest, the young person who comes upstairs (and it’s almost all young people who come upstairs) has no other thoughts on his mind than flirting and temperature. And after a year at the latest, he will never be able to catch anyone else again, but will see everyone else as ‘cruel’ or, to put it better, as faulty and ignorant. You love stories – I could wait for you. I could tell you about the son and husband who was here for eleven months that I knew. He was a little older than you, I think – a little older, in fact. He was released on trial as improved, he returned home in the arms of his loved ones; they weren’t uncles, they were mother and wife. All day long he lay with the thermometer in his mouth and knew nothing else. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘You have to have lived up there to know what it must be like. Here below the basic terms are missing.’ It ended up with his mother deciding, ‘Just go back up. There’s nothing more to do with you.’ And he went up again. He returned to ‘home’ – you know, it’s called ‘home’ once you’ve lived here. He was completely estranged from his young wife, she lacked the ‘basic concepts’ and renounced them. She realized that he would find a comrade back home with the same ‘basic concepts’ and would stay there.” they were mother and wife. All day long he lay with the thermometer in his mouth and knew nothing else. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘You have to have lived up there to know what it must be like. Here below the basic terms are missing.’ It ended up with his mother deciding, ‘Just go back up. There’s nothing more to do with you.’ And he went up again. He returned to ‘home’ – you know, it’s called ‘home’ once you’ve lived here. He was completely estranged from his young wife, she lacked the ‘basic concepts’ and renounced them. She realized that he would find a comrade back home with the same ‘basic concepts’ and would stay there.” they were mother and wife. All day long he lay with the thermometer in his mouth and knew nothing else. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘You have to have lived up there to know what it must be like. Here below the basic terms are missing.’ It ended up with his mother deciding, ‘Just go back up. There’s nothing more to do with you.’ And he went up again. He returned to ‘home’ – you know, it’s called ‘home’ once you’ve lived here. He was completely estranged from his young wife, she lacked the ‘basic concepts’ and renounced them. She realized that he would find a comrade back home with the same ‘basic concepts’ and would stay there.” ‘You have to have lived up there to know what it must be like. Here below the basic terms are missing.’ It ended up with his mother deciding, ‘Just go back up. There’s nothing more to do with you.’ And he went up again. He returned to ‘home’ – you know, it’s called ‘home’ once you’ve lived here. He was completely estranged from his young wife, she lacked the ‘basic concepts’ and renounced them. She realized that he would find a comrade back home with the same ‘basic concepts’ and would stay there.” ‘You have to have lived up there to know what it must be like. Here below the basic terms are missing.’ It ended up with his mother deciding, ‘Just go back up. There’s nothing more to do with you.’ And he went up again. He returned to ‘home’ – you know, it’s called ‘home’ once you’ve lived here. He was completely estranged from his young wife, she lacked the ‘basic concepts’ and renounced them. She realized that he would find a comrade back home with the same ‘basic concepts’ and would stay there.” one calls this ‘home’ once one has lived here. He was completely estranged from his young wife, she lacked the ‘basic concepts’ and renounced them. She realized that he would find a comrade back home with the same ‘basic concepts’ and would stay there.” one calls this ‘home’ once one has lived here. He was completely estranged from his young wife, she lacked the ‘basic concepts’ and renounced them. She realized that he would find a comrade back home with the same ‘basic concepts’ and would stay there.”

Hans Castorp seemed to have only been listening with half an ear. He was still looking into the incandescent clarity of theinto a white room as into a vast expanse. He belatedly laughed and said:

“He called it home? That’s probably really a bit sentimental, as you say. Yes, you know stories without number. I was just thinking some more about what we were talking about harshness and cruelty, I’ve thought about it a number of times over the past few days. You see, you have to be pretty thick-skinned to naturally agree with the way people think down in the lowlands and with questions like ‘Does he still have money?’ and the face they make to it. It never really came naturally to me, although I’m not even a homo humanus– I notice afterwards that it always struck me as striking. Perhaps it had something to do with my unconscious tendency to illness that it didn’t come naturally to me – I’ve heard the old passages myself, and now Behrens has allegedly found a fresh little thing in me. It probably came as a surprise to me, and yet I wasn’t really very surprised about it. I’ve never really felt rock solid; and then both my parents died so young – I’ve been an orphan from childhood, you know…”

Mr. Settembrini used his head, shoulders and hands to describe a unified gesture that answered the question ‘So what? What next?” cheerfully and politely illustrated.

“You’re a writer,” said Hans Castorp, “- man of letters; You must be able to understand something like that and realize that under these circumstances one cannot really be coarse-minded and find people’s cruelty quite natural,– of the common people, you know, going around and laughing and making money and stuffing themselves… I don’t know if I’m correct…”

Settembrini bowed. “You mean to say,” he explained, “that early and repeated contact with death brings about a basic mood of mind which makes one irritable and sensitive to the harshness and crudities of thoughtless world life, let us say: to its cynicism.”

“Exactly like that!” exclaimed Hans Castorp in sincere enthusiasm. “Perfectly expressed to the icing on the cake, Mr. Settembrini! With death! I knew that you, as a man of letters…”

Settembrini stretched out his hand towards him, laying his head on one side and closing his eyes – a very beautiful and gentle gesture of stopping and asking for further hearing. He remained in this position for several seconds, even after Hans Castorp had been silent for a long time and waited in some embarrassment for what was to come. Finally he opened his black eyes – the eyes of the barrel-organ men – and said:

“Excuse me. Allow me, Engineer, to tell you and to encourage you that the only sane and noble, and incidentally also – I want to add this expressly – also the only religious way of looking at death is to see it as a part and Accessories, to understand and feel as a sacred condition of life, but not – which would be the opposite of healthy, noble, reasonable and religious – to separate it spiritually in any way, to bring it into opposition and to play it off against it, perhaps even repugnantly. The ancients decorated their sarcophagi with symbolsof life and procreation, even with obscene symbols – in ancient religiosity, the sacred was very often one with the obscene. These people knew how to honor death. Death is venerable as the cradle of life, as the womb of renewal. Seen apart from life, he becomes a ghost, a grimace – and something even worse. For death as an independent spiritual power is a most slovenly power, whose vicious power of attraction is undoubtedly very strong, but to sympathize with it also undoubtedly means the most dreadful aberration of the human spirit.”

Here Mr. Settembrini was silent. He stopped short at this generality and ended in the most definite way. He was serious; He hadn’t talked for amusement, had scorned to offer his partner the opportunity to pick up points and counter-arguments, but at the end of his statements he had dropped his voice and made a point. He sat with his mouth closed, his hands crossed in his lap, one leg in his plaid trousers crossed over the other, and only slightly tapping his foot, which was floating in the air, which he regarded sternly.

So Hans Castorp was also silent. Sitting in his plumeau, he turned his head to the wall and lightly drummed his fingertips on the quilt. He felt instructed, rebuked, even scolded, and there was much childish obduracy in his silence. The pause in the conversation lasted quite a long time.

Finally M. Settembrini raised his head again and said with a smile:

“Do you well remember, engineer, that we had a similar dispute before – one can say:the same? At that time we chatted – I think it was while walking – about illness and stupidity, the combination of which you declared to be a paradox, out of respect for the illness. I called this respect a sombre whimsy dishonoring the mind of man, and to my amusement you seemed not altogether averse to considering my objection. We also spoke of the neutrality and intellectual indecisiveness of youth, of their freedom of choice, their tendency to experiment with the possible points of view, and that such experiments should not, – need to be, be considered as final and serious options. Do you want me -” and Mr. Settembrini smiled and leaned forward in his chair, his feet together on the floor,

“Certainly, Mr. Settembrini!” Hans Castorp hastened to give up his embarrassed and half-stubborn retreat, to stop drumming on the bedspread and to turn to his guest with dismayed friendliness. “In fact, it is exceedingly kind of you… I really wonder if I… That is, if I am…”

“Quite sine pecunia ,” quoted Mr. Settembrini while standing up. “Who wants to be ragged?” They laughed. One heard the outer double doors go, and the nextInstantly the inner one was also latched. It was Joachim returning from the evening social. He, too, blushed at the sight of the Italian, as Hans Castorp, for his part, did earlier: the scorched darkness of his face deepened a shade.

“Oh, you have company,” he said. “How convenient for you. I’ve been stopped. They pushed me into a game of bridge – bridge they call it to the outside world,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘and it turned out to be something else altogether. I won five marks…”

“Just so that it doesn’t have a vicious attraction for you,” said Hans Castorp. “Hmm, hmm. In the meantime, Mr Settembrini has been doing so well for me … which, by the way, is not an expression at all. At best, it applies to your false bridge, but Mr. Settembrini has taken up so much of my time … As a decent person one would have to try tooth and nail to get away from here – where it is already starting with false bridge in your midst. But in order to be able to hear Mr. Settembrini quite often and to have him give me a hand in conversation, I could almost wish to remain febrile for an indefinitely long time and be stuck here with you … In the end I have to be given a mute sister so that I don’t cheat.”

“I repeat, Engineer, that you are a rogue,” said the Italian. He recommended himself in the most agreeable forms. Left alone with his cousin, Hans Castorp sighed.

“Is that a pedagogue?” he said … “A humanistic pedagogue, one has to admit that. He is always correcting you, alternately in story form and in abstract form. And you come up with things with himto speak – one would never have thought that one could talk about it or even understand it. And if I had met him down in the plains, I would not have understood them either,” he added.

Joachim stayed with him for a while about this time; he sacrificed two or three quarters of an hour from his evening rest cure. Sometimes they played chess on Hans Castorp’s dining table – Joachim had brought up a game from below. Later he went to his balcony with bag and baggage, the thermometer in his mouth, and Hans Castorp also measured himself one last time, while light music sounded from near or far from the nightly valley. At ten o’clock the rest cure was finished; one heard Joachim; you could hear the couple from the bad Russian table… And Hans Castorp lay on his side, waiting for sleep.

The night was the more difficult half of the day, because Hans Castorp often woke up and not infrequently lay awake for hours, either because his blood temperature was not quite right keeping him alert, or because his currently completely horizontal way of life meant that he lost the desire and strength to sleep. On the other hand, the hours of slumber were enlivened by varied and very vivid dreams, which he could indulge in while lying awake. And if the multiple structure and division of the day made it entertaining, at night it was the blurring monotony of the passing hours that worked in the same direction. But once morning came, it was amusing to watch the gradual graying and appearance of the room, the emergence and unveiling of things,to see embers ignite; And before you knew it, the moment came again when the lifeguard knocked hard and announced that the agenda had come into effect.

Hans Castorp had not taken a calendar with him on his trip, and so he did not always find himself exactly up to date on the date. Now and then he asked his cousin for information, but he was not always sure about this point either. In any case, the Sundays, especially the second fortnight with a concert that Hans Castorp spent in this way, offered some support, and it was certain that September was pretty far advanced, almost halfway through. Out in the valley, since Hans Castorp went to bed, the gloomy and cold weather that had prevailed at the time had given way to glorious midsummer days, countless such days, a whole series of so that Joachim had gone to his cousin’s every morning in white trousers, and he could not suppress a sincere regret, a regret of soul and of his young muscles, at the loss of such a splendid time. He had even called it a “shame” once in a low voice that he was missing it in such a way – but then added to his reassurance that when he was free he wouldn’t have known much more to do with it than now, since he had a lot of exercise experience has shown that it is prohibited here. And the wide, wide-open balcony door gave him a share of the warm glow outside. that he misses it in such a way – but then added to his appeasement that he would not have known much more to do with it when he was free than now, since experience has shown that extensive exercise is forbidden for him here. And the wide, wide-open balcony door gave him a share of the warm glow outside. that he misses it in such a way – but then added to his appeasement that he would not have known much more to do with it when he was free than now, since experience has shown that extensive exercise is forbidden for him here. And the wide, wide-open balcony door gave him a share of the warm glow outside.

But towards the end of the retirement imposed on him the weather changed again. It had become foggy and cold overnight, the valley was wrapped in wet snow flurries,and the dry breath of steam heating filled the room. It was the same on the day when Hans Castorp, during the doctors’ morning rounds, reminded the privy councilor that he had been in bed for three weeks and asked permission to get up.

“What the hell, are you ready yet?” said Behrens. “Let’s see; truly it is true. God how you get old. Not much has changed with you in the meantime. What, yesterday was normal? Yes, except for the 6 p.m. measurement. Well, Castorp, then I don’t want to be like that either, and I want to put you back to human society. Get up and walk, man! Within the given limits and dimensions, of course. We’ll do your interior portrait soon. Make a note of it!” he said to Dr. Krokowski, pointing at Hans Castorp over his shoulder with his huge thumb and looking at the pale assistant with his bloody, tearing blue eyes… Hans Castorp left the “Remise”.

With the collar of his coat turned up and in rubber shoes, he accompanied his cousin to the bank by the watercourse and back for the first time, not without raising the question on the way how long the privy councilor would have left him there if he had not reported that the deadline had expired. And Joachim, with a broken look, his mouth open as if in a hopeless “Oh,” made the gesture of the unforeseeable in the air.