Down in the garden the fantasy pennant with the serpent’s staff rose from time to time in the breeze. The sky was evenly overcast again. the sun was goneand immediately it became almost inhospitable cool. The common lounge area seemed to be fully occupied; there was talk and giggles down there.
“Mr. Albin, I beg you, put the knife away, put it away, something bad will happen with it!” complained a high, shaky female voice. And:
“Best Mr. Albin, for God’s sake, spare our nerves and get us out of sight of the horrible murdering!” a second interjected, – whereupon a blond-headed young man, who, a cigarette in his mouth, was sideways on the front deck chair sat, replied in a cheeky tone:
“I can’t think of one! The ladies will surely allow me to play with my knife! Well, yes, it is a particularly sharp knife. I bought it from a blind magician in Calcutta… He managed to swallow it, and a moment later his boy dug it out of the ground fifty yards from him… Want to see? It’s much sharper than a razor. You only have to touch the edge and it goes through your flesh like butter. Wait, I’ll show you closer…’ And Mr. Albin got up. A shriek went up. “No, now I’ll get my revolver!” said Herr Albin. “You’ll be more interested in that. A darn thing. Of a penetrating power… I’ll get him from my room.”
“Mr. Albin, Mr. Albin, don’t do it!” several voices clamored. But Herr Albin was already coming out of the lounge to go to his room – very young and limber, with a rosy child’s face and little whiskers next to his ears.
“Herr Albin,” called a lady behind him, “you’d better get your paletot, put it on, do it for my sake! You’ve been lying there with pneumonia for six weeks and now you’re sitting here without an overcoat and not even covering yourself and smoking cigarettes! That means trying God, Mr. Albin, my word of honour!”
But he only laughed scornfully as he left, and a few minutes later he returned with the revolver. Then they shrieked even more silly than before, and one could hear that several wanted to jump off the chairs, got entangled in their blankets, and fell.
‘See how small and bare he is,’ said Herr Albin, ‘but if I press here he bites…’ Another screech. “It’s loaded, of course,” Mr. Albin continued. “In this disk here are the six cartridges, which rotate one hole with each shot … By the way, I don’t hold this thing for fun,” he said, noticing that the effect was wearing off, and dropped the revolver slipped into his breast pocket and sat back cross-legged in his chair, lighting a fresh cigarette. “Not for fun at all,” he repeated, pursing his lips.
“What for? What for?” asked trembling voices full of foreboding. “Horrible!” suddenly yelled a single one, and then Mr. Albin nodded.
“I see you’re beginning to get it,” he said. “Indeed, that’s what I keep it for,” he continued lightly, after inhaling and blowing out a lot of smoke despite surviving pneumonia. “I’ll keep it on standby for the day I get this junkgets too boring here and where I shall have the honor of sincerely recommending myself. The thing is pretty simple… I’ve done some study on it and I’m pretty clear on the best way to draw it. (A scream was heard at the word “draw”.) The heart switches off… I don’t find the approach particularly easy… I also prefer to extinguish consciousness on the spot, namely by giving myself one inserting a pretty little foreign body into this interesting organ…” And Mr. Albin pointed with his index finger to his close-cropped blond head. “You have to start here -” Herr Albin pulled the nickel-plated revolver out of his pocket and tapped the muzzle on his temple – “here above the artery … Even without a mirror it’s a smooth thing …”
A polyphonic, pleading protest was heard, which was even mixed with violent sobbing.
“Mr. Albin, Mr. Albin, take the revolver away, take the revolver offYour temple gone, you can’t see it! Mr. Albin, you are young, you will get well, you will come back to life and enjoy general popularity, my word of honour! Just put on your coat, lie down, cover yourself, take a cure! Don’t chase the lifeguard away when he comes to rub you down with alcohol! Stop smoking cigarettes, Mr. Albin, listen, we ask for your life, your young, precious life!”
But Mr. Albin was adamant.
‘No, no,’ he said, ‘leave me, it’s fine, thank you. I’ve never refused a lady anything, but you’ll see it’s useless to fateto fall into the spokes. It’s my third year here… I’m fed up and I’m not playing anymore – can you blame me? Incurable, ladies – look at me, sitting here, I am incurable – the Hofrat himself hardly hides it out of honor and shame. Allow me the little bit of freedom that results for me from this fact! It’s like high school when it’s decided that you’re going to stay put and no longer have to be asked and don’t have to do anything else. I have finally thrived again to this happy state. I don’t have to do anything anymore, I’m no longer an option, I laugh at the whole thing. Do you want chocolate? Help yourself! No, you’re not robbing me, I’ve got tons of chocolate in my room. eight candies,
From somewhere a bass voice called for silence. Herr Albin laughed briefly – it was a fluttering, broken laugh. Then it became quiet in the lounge, as quiet as if a dream or a spook had died away; and strangely the words spoken rang in the silence. Hans Castorp listened to them until they were completely dead, and although it seemed to him vaguely that Herr Albin was a jerk, he could not help feeling a certain envy of him. In particular, that parable taken from school life had made an impression on him, because he himself had stayed behind in lower secondary, and he remembered the somewhat disgraceful but humorous, pleasantly neglected state that he had enjoyedwhen he gave up the race in the fourth quarter and was able to laugh “about the whole thing”. Since his reflections were dull and confused, it is difficult to make them precise. In the main, it seemed to him that honor had significant advantages, but shame no less, indeed, that the advantages of the latter were almost limitless. And as he tentatively put himself in Mr. Albin’s condition, and imagined what it must be like to finally be free from the pressures of honor and enjoy forever the bottomless advantages of shame, the young man was terrified by a feeling of wild sweetness that was his temporarily aroused the heart to an even faster pace.
