It was a week before Hans Castorp was summoned to the fluoroscopy laboratory by the matron of Mylendonkbecame. He didn’t like to push. People were busy in the “Berghof” house, apparently doctors and staff had their hands full. New guests had arrived in the last few days: two Russian students with thick hair and closed black blouses that showed no sign of washing; a Dutch couple seated at Settembrini’s tables; a hunchbacked Mexican who frightened the table company with terrible attacks of shortness of breath: he clung to his neighbors, whether gentleman or lady, with a brazen grip of his long hands, held tight like a vise and pulled the terrified reluctant ones who called for help like that into his fears. In short, the dining room was almost full, even though the winter season didn’t start until October. And the gravity of Hans Castorp’s fall, his degree of illness hardly gave him a right to claim special attention. Frau Stöhr, for example, in all her stupidity and lack of education, was without a doubt much sicker than he, from Dr. Not to mention cauliflower. One would have had to be without any sense of hierarchy and distance not to exercise modest restraint in Hans Castorp’s case—especially since such an attitude was part of the spirit of the house. Slightly ill people didn’t count for much, he’d heard it often from conversations. They were spoken of with contempt, according to the standards that applied here, they were looked down on, and not only by those of higher and higher rank, but also by those who were only “light” themselves: with which of course this contempt also of themselves showed, but saved a higher self-esteem, by submitting to the standard. That’s human.“Oh, that one!” they could probably say to each other, “there’s nothing wrong with him, hardly that he has the right to be here. He doesn’t even have a cavern…” This was the spirit; he was aristocratic in his special sense, and Hans Castorp, out of innate respect for law and order of every kind, saluted him. Rural, moral, they say. Travelers show themselves uneducated when they ridicule the customs and values ​​of their host peoples, and there are such and such qualities of qualities that bring honor. Even towards Joachim himself Hans Castorp observed a certain respect and consideration – not so much because he was the longer resident and his guide and cicerone in this world – but especially because he was undoubtedly the “heavier”. But since everything was like this, it was understandable that people tended to to make the best of his case and, in his case, to exaggerate in order to belong to the aristocracy or to come closer to it. Even Hans Castorp, when asked at the table, probably named a few points more than he actually measured, and could not help but feel flattered when someone threatened him with a finger, like someone who was a sly old man has ears. But even if he applied a little, he still remained, actually speaking, a person of inferior rank, and so patience and restraint were certainly his due demeanor. and couldn’t help but feel flattered when you wagged your finger at him like a sly old man. But even if he applied a little, he still remained, actually speaking, a person of inferior rank, and so patience and restraint were certainly his due demeanor. and couldn’t help but feel flattered when you wagged your finger at him like a sly old man. But even if he applied a little, he still remained, actually speaking, a person of inferior rank, and so patience and restraint were certainly his due demeanor.

He had resumed the way of life of his first three weeks, this already familiar, regular and precisely regulated life at Joachim’s side, and from the first day things went like clockwork, as if it had never been interrupted. In fact, that interruption had been null and void;he felt it clearly on the occasion of his first reappearance at the table. It is true that Joachim, who placed a very specific and studious emphasis on such markings, had taken care that a few flowers adorned the place of the risen one. But the greeting by the table companions was not very festive, differing only slightly from earlier ones, which had been preceded by a separation of not three weeks but three hours: less out of indifference towards his simple and sympathetic personality and because these people were too self-absorbed , that is: they were busy with their interesting body than because they had not become aware of the intervening time. And Hans Castorp could follow them without difficulty, for he himself was sitting at his place at the end of the table,

But if at the table one had not made much fuss about the end of one’s seclusion, how could one have made any of it in the further room? Literally no one there had even noticed — the sole exception of Settembrini, who had come over to greet them jokingly after the meal was over. Of course, Hans Castorp would have made another restriction, the justification of which we have to question. He claimed to himself that Clawdia Chauchat noticed his reappearance–as soon as she entered, late as usual, after the glass door had slammed shut, she had let her narrow gaze rest on him whom he had met with his, and scarcely had she sat down, once more looked around at him over her shoulder and smiledgot: smiling, like three weeks ago, before he went to the examination. And it had been such a blatant and ruthless move – ruthless to himself and to the rest of the guests – that he had not known whether to delight in it or take it as a sign of contempt and be angry about it. In any case, his heart had clenched under these looks, which the social obscurity between the patient and him had denied and given the lie to in a way that was monstrous and intoxicating in his eyes – clenched almost painfully when the glass door rattled, because he had waited for this moment with short breathing.

It should be added that Hans Castorp’s inner relationships with the patient from the Good Russian Table, the participation of his senses and his modest spirit in her medium-sized, softly creeping, Kyrgyz-eyed person, in short his infatuation (the word has place, although it is a word of ” down,” is a word of the plain and might suggest that the ditty “How touches me wondrous” was somehow applicable here)—had made very great strides during his retirement. Her image had floated before him when, awake early in the morning, he had looked into the hesitantly unveiling of the room, or, in the evening, into the thickening twilight (even at that hour when Settembrini had entered his room with the light suddenly flaring up, it had very clearly in his mind, and this had been the reason why he had blushed at the sight of the humanist); her mouth, her cheekbones, her eyes, their color, shape, positioncut into his soul, her slack back, the way she held her head, the cervical vertebra in the neckline of her blouse, her arms transfigured by the thinnest gauze he had thought during the individual hours of the shattered day – and if we concealed that this was the means by which The hours passed so effortlessly for him, it was because we sympathetically shared in the uneasiness of conscience that mingled with the frightening happiness of these pictures and visions. Yes, there was fright, tremor connected with it, a hope, joy and fear rambling into the indefinite, unlimited and completely adventurous, which was nameless, but at times squeezed the young man’s heart – his heart in the real and physical sense – so suddenly that he one hand in the region of this organ,

“My God!”

Because behind the forehead were thoughts or half-thoughts that really gave the pictures and visions their far-reaching sweetness, and that related to Madame Chauchat’s carelessness and ruthlessness, to her being ill, to the increase and emphasis on her body through illness, to embodiment of their nature through the illness in which he, Hans Castorp, according to the medical verdict, should now be a part. Behind his forehead he understood the adventurous freedom with which Mrs. Chauchat, by looking around and smiling, ignored the social unfamiliarity between them, as if they were not social beings at all and as if it was not even necessary for them to speak to each other . .. and that was what it was abouthe was frightened: just as frightened as he had been in the examination room when he had looked up from Joachim’s upper body to look up at his eyes, with a quick search – with the difference that at the time pity and concern were the reasons for his fright, but here something else was at play.

So now the Berghof life, this prosperous and well-regulated life on a narrow scene, went its regular pace again – Hans Castorp, waiting for the interior shot, continued to share it with the good Joachim, doing it exactly like this hour after hour like this one; and this neighborhood was probably good for the young man. Because although it was only a sick neighbourhood, there was a lot of military respectability in it: an respectability which, without being aware of it, was already on the point of finding satisfaction in spa service, so that this became a substitute for fulfilling duties in the lowlands and for a job that was foisted on it became, – Hans Castorp was not so stupid as not to notice it exactly. But he felt its restraining, restraining effect on his civilian mind, – even it might be this neighborhood, its example and supervision, that restrained him from outward steps and blind ventures. For he saw well what good Joachim had to endure from a certain orange atmosphere that invaded him daily, in which there were round brown eyes, a small ruby, a great deal of weakly justified lust for laughter and an outwardly well-formed chest, and the reason and love of honor with Joachim, who shunned the influence of this atmosphere and fled, seized Hans Castorp, kept him in some discipline and order and prevented him, so to speak, from leaving the narrow-eyed woman“to borrow a pencil” – which, according to all experience, he would have been very willing to do without the disciplining neighborhood.

Joachim never spoke of the laughable Marusja, and so it was forbidden for Hans Castorp to talk to him about Clawdia Chauchat. He compensated himself by surreptitious exchanges with the mistress at table on his right, teasing the old girl to make her blush at her weakness for the pliable invalid, while imitating old Castorp’s chin and dignified rest. He also urged her to learn something new and worth knowing about Madame Chauchat’s personal circumstances, her origins, her husband, her age, the nature of her illness. He wanted to know if she had children. – But no, she didn’t have any. What would a woman like her do with children? She was probably strictly forbidden to have any – and then again: what would that be for children? Hans Castorp had to agree. By now it was probably too late for that, he suspected with violent objectivity. At times, in profile, Madame Chauchat’s face seems almost a little sharp to him. Was she over thirty? – Fraulein Engelhart contradicted vehemently. clawdia thirty? At worst she was twenty-eight. And as for the profile, she forbade the person sitting next to her to say such a thing. Clawdia’s profile was of the softest youthfulness and sweetness, although of course it was an interesting profile and not that of any healthy goose. And as a punishment Fraulein Engelhart added without a pause that she knew that Frau Chauchat often received visits from gentlemen, visits he guessed with violent objectivity. At times, in profile, Madame Chauchat’s face seems almost a little sharp to him. Was she over thirty? – Fraulein Engelhart contradicted vehemently. clawdia thirty? At worst she was twenty-eight. And as for the profile, she forbade the person sitting next to her to say such a thing. Clawdia’s profile was of the softest youthfulness and sweetness, although of course it was an interesting profile and not that of any healthy goose. And as a punishment Fraulein Engelhart added without a pause that she knew that Frau Chauchat often received visits from gentlemen, visits he guessed with violent objectivity. At times, in profile, Madame Chauchat’s face seems almost a little sharp to him. Was she over thirty? – Fraulein Engelhart contradicted vehemently. clawdia thirty? At worst she was twenty-eight. And as for the profile, she forbade the person sitting next to her to say such a thing. Clawdia’s profile was of the softest youthfulness and sweetness, although of course it was an interesting profile and not that of any healthy goose. And as a punishment Fraulein Engelhart added without a pause that she knew that Frau Chauchat often received visits from gentlemen, visits clawdia thirty? At worst she was twenty-eight. And as for the profile, she forbade the person sitting next to her to say such a thing. Clawdia’s profile was of the softest youthfulness and sweetness, although of course it was an interesting profile and not that of any healthy goose. And as a punishment Fraulein Engelhart added without a pause that she knew that Frau Chauchat often received visits from gentlemen, visits clawdia thirty? At worst she was twenty-eight. And as for the profile, she forbade the person sitting next to her to say such a thing. Clawdia’s profile was of the softest youthfulness and sweetness, although of course it was an interesting profile and not that of any healthy goose. And as a punishment Fraulein Engelhart added without a pause that she knew that Frau Chauchat often received visits from gentlemen, visitsof a compatriot living in “Platz”: she received him in her room in the afternoon.

That was well aimed. Hans Castorp’s face twisted against all effort, and the phrases he tried to use to treat the opening, which were tuned to “Wasn’t at all” and “Look at it,” were also distorted. Unable to take the countryman’s presence lightly, as he had at first wanted to seem, he kept coming back to him, lips twitching. A younger man? -Young and handsome, after all she heard, replied the teacher; for she could not judge by her own eyes. – Sick? – At most slightly ill! – He wanted to hope, said Hans Castorp scornfully, that there was more washing to be seen on him than at the bad Russian table among his compatriots – for which Engelhart, still as a punishment, declared that she wanted to take responsibility. Then he admitted it was a matter who had to be taken care of, and seriously commissioned her to find out what was going on with this countryman who was going in and out. But instead of bringing him news about this, a few days later she knew something completely new.

She knew that Clawdia Chauchat was being painted, portrayed – and asked Hans Castorp if he knew it too. If not, he could still be sure that she got it from the safest source. For a long time she has been sitting here in the house as a model for her portrait – and who? The Councilor! Herr Hofrat Behrens, who sees her in his private apartment almost every day for this purpose.

This news affected Hans Castorp even more than the previous one. From then on he made many distorted jokes about it. well, certainlyit was well known that the privy councilor painted in oils – what the teacher wanted was not forbidden, and so everyone was free to do so. So in the Hofrat’s widower’s home? I hope at least Fraulein von Mylendonk will be present at the meetings. – They probably don’t have time. “Behrens shouldn’t have more time than the matron,” said Hans Castorp sternly. But while that seemed to say something definitive about the matter, far from dismissing it, he exhausted himself with questions about the nearer and farther: about the picture, its format, and whether it was a headpiece or kneepiece; also about the hour of the sittings – while Fraulein Engelhart could not help with details here either and had to console him with the results of further investigations.

Hans Castorp measured 37.7 after receiving this message. Far more than the visits Mrs. Chauchat received, those she made grieved and troubled him. Mrs. Chauchat’s private and independent life as such in and of itself and independently of its content had begun to cause him pain and uneasiness, and how much both must first become more acute when ambiguities about this content reached his ears! To be sure, it seemed generally possible that the relations of the Russian visitor to his compatriot were of a sober and harmless nature; but Hans Castorp had for some time been inclined to regard sobriety and harmlessness as gimmicks – how could he not bring himself to do it or persuade himself to see the oil painting as a relationship between a brisk-talking widower and a narrow-eyed, quiet-footed young woman as something else. The taste that theHofrat expressed in the choice of his model, corresponded too much to his own for him to believe in sobriety here, in which the idea of ​​the Hofrat’s blue cheeks and red-veined bulging eyes did little to help him.

A percept he made these days, on his own accord and by accident, affected him in a different way, though again it was a matter of confirmation of his taste. There was at the table across from Frau Salomon and the voracious schoolboy with glasses, to the left of that of the cousins, next to the glass door on the side, a sick man, from Mannheim, as Hans Castorp had heard, about thirty years old, with thinning hair, and a carious patient teeth and a timid way of speaking, – the same who sometimes played the piano during the evening social, mostly the Wedding March from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Hans had heard Castorp say that he should be very pious, as is understandably not uncommon among those up here.branches on the front cover. Now, as Hans Castorp remarked one day, he had his eyes exactly where he himself had them – clung with them to Madame Chauchat’s pliable personality, and in a way that was shy and importunate to the point of a dog. Having observed it once, Hans Castorp could not help but notice it again and again. In the evenings he saw him standing in the playroom amidst the guests, sadly lost in the sight of the lovely, albeit damaged woman, over there in the little oneSalon sat on the sofa and with the woolly Tamara (that was the name of the humorous girl), with Dr. cauliflower and the concave and slouched gentlemen of their table; saw him turn away, crouch around, and slowly turn his head back there over his shoulder, eyeballs turned sideways, upper lip pitifully pursed. He saw it change color and not look up, but then look up and look greedily when the glass door fell and Mrs. Chauchat slid into her place. And several times he saw the poor man positioning himself after the table between the exit and the Good Russian Table to let Madame Chauchat pass him and devour her, who paid no attention to him, with eyes filled to the brim with sadness .

This discovery did not bother the young Hans Castorp a little, although the Mannheimer’s pitiful showmanship did not alarm him in the same way as Clawdia Chauchat’s private dealings with Hofrat Behrens, a man so superior to him in age, person and position in life. Clawdia didn’t bother about the Mannheimer at all – it would not have escaped Hans Castorp’s inner acuity if it had been the case, and in this case it was not the repellent thorn of jealousy that he felt in his soul. But he tested all the sensations that intoxication and passion test when they see themselves in the outside world, and that form the strangest mixture of feelings of disgust and community. Impossible to fathom and dissect everything if we want to move on.des Mannheimers gave poor Hans Castorp to taste.

This is how the eight days passed until Hans Castorp’s X-ray. He had not known that they would pass by then, but when he was told one morning at first breakfast by the matron (she had had another stye, it couldn’t be the same, apparently this harmless but disfiguring ailment was part of her condition ) received the order to go to the laboratory in the afternoon, they had just passed. Hans Castorp was to turn himself in with his cousin half an hour before tea; because an interior view of Joachim was also to be taken on this occasion – the last one had to be considered outdated.

So today they had shortened the long afternoon rest treatment by thirty minutes, at the stroke of three-thirty “down” the stone stairs to the wrong basement floor and were sitting together in the small waiting room that separated the surgery room from the X-ray laboratory – Joachim, nothing new to him imminent, in peace and quiet, Hans Castorp, somewhat feverishly expectant, since up to now no one has had any insight into his organic inner workings. They were not alone: ​​several guests, torn illustrated magazines on their knees, were already sitting in the room when they entered and were waiting with them: a brave young Swede, who was sitting at Settembrini’s tables in the dining room, and of whom it was said he was so ill when he arrived in April that that they hardly wanted to take him in; but now he had gained eighty pounds and was about to be discharged as completely healedbecome; also a woman from the bad Russian table, a mother, herself puny, with her even punier, long-nosed and ugly boy named Sasha. So these people had been waiting longer than the cousins; Apparently they had priority over them in the order of the orders, the delay seemed to be evident in the X-ray room next door, and so cold tea was in prospect.

People were busy in the laboratory. The voice of the privy councilor could be heard giving instructions. It was half past three or a little over when the door opened – a technical assistant who worked down here opened it – and only the Swedish warrior and lucky guy was let in: apparently his predecessor had been dismissed through a different exit . Business was done faster now. After ten minutes one could hear the fully recovered Scandinavian, this walking recommendation of the place and the sanatorium, walking away down the corridor, and the Russian mother and Sascha were received. Again, as when the Swede entered, Hans Castorp noticed that semi-darkness, i.e. artificial semi-light, prevailed in the X-ray room – just as on the other hand in Dr. Krokowski’s analytical cabinet. The windows were shrouded, daylight cut off, and a few electric lights were on. But while they let Sascha and his mother in and Hans Castorp looked after them, the corridor door opened at the same time, and the next patient who had been ordered entered the waiting room, prematurely, since there was a delay, it was Madame Chauchat.

It was Clawdia Chauchat who suddenly found herself in the little room; Hans Castorp recognized her with wide open eyes,feeling distinctly the blood draining from his face, and his lower jaw sagging so that his mouth was about to open. Clawdia’s entrance had happened so incidentally, so unexpectedly – all of a sudden she shared the close stay with her cousins, since they had just not been there at all. Joachim glanced quickly at Hans Castorp and then not only lowered his eyes, but also picked up the illustrated sheet that he had already put away from the table and hid his face behind it. Hans Castorp could not find the determination to do the same. After turning pale, he was very red and his heart was pounding.

Mrs. Chauchat sat down by the door to the laboratory in a plump little armchair with stubby, rudimentary armrests, leaned back, crossed one leg and stared into space, her Pribislav eyes blurred by the awareness that she was being looked at watched, nervously distracted from their line of sight, squinting slightly. She was wearing a white sweater and blue skirt and was holding a book on her lap, a library volume it appeared to be, as she tapped the sole of her foot on the ground softly.

Within a minute and a half she changed her position, looked around, stood up looking as if she didn’t know where she was or where to turn – and began to speak. She asked something, addressed a question to Joachim, although he seemed engrossed in his illustrated newspaper while Hans Castorp sat doing nothing—formed words with her mouth and voiced them from her white throat: it wasn’t deep, but a little sharpcontained, pleasantly strained voice that Hans Castorp knew – knew for a long time and once even heard from close proximity: at the time when this voice had been used to say for himself: “Sure. But you must definitely give it back to me after the lesson.” That, however, was spoken more fluently and more definitely; now the words came a little sluggishly and brokenly, the speaker had no natural right to them, she just borrowed them, as Hans Castorp had heard her do a couple of times before, with a kind of feeling of superiority, but surrounded by humble delight. One hand in the pocket of her cardigan and the other on the back of her head, Mrs. Chauchat asked:

“Please, what time are you called?”

And Joachim, having cast a quick glance at his cousin, replied, sitting, pulling his heels together:

“To three-thirty.”

She spoke again:

“I to three quarters. What is it? It’s almost four. People just entered, didn’t they?”

“Yes, two people,” answered Joachim. “Your turn came before us. The service is late. It seems the whole thing has been delayed by half an hour.”

“It’s awkward!” she said, fingering her hair nervously.

“Rather,” replied Joachim. “We’ve been waiting for almost half an hour.”

So they talked to each other, and Hans Castorp listened as if in a dream. That Joachim spoke to Frau Chauchat wasalmost the same as if he had talked to her himself – if, of course, something completely different again. The “rather” had offended Hans Castorp, it struck him as cheeky and at least strangely indifferent given the circumstances. But in the end Joachim could speak like that – he could at alltalk to her and perhaps boasted a little with his bold “Rather” in front of him – roughly the way he had acted out in front of Joachim and Settembrini when they asked him how long he intended to stay and he said “three weeks”. had answered. She had addressed her address to Joachim, although he was holding the newspaper in front of his face—certainly because he was the older resident and had known her for a long time; but also for that other reason, because civilized intercourse, an articulated exchange, was in place in their case, and nothing wild, deep, terrible, and mysterious held sway between them. Had someone brown-eyed with a ruby ​​ring and orange perfume been waiting here with them, it would have been up to him, Hans Castorp, to speak and say “rather” – independent and pure, how he faced her. “Certainly, rather unpleasantly, dear Miss!” he would have said and perhaps pulled his handkerchief out of his breast pocket with a flourish to blow his nose. “Please be patient. We are in no better position.” And Joachim would have been amazed at his easygoingness – but probably without seriously wanting to be in his place. No, Hans Castorp wasn’t jealous of Joachim either, the way things were, although it was Joachim who was allowed to speak to Frau Chauchat. He agreed that she had approached him; she ’ And Joachim would have been amazed at his easygoingness – but probably without seriously wanting to be in his place. No, Hans Castorp wasn’t jealous of Joachim either, the way things were, although it was Joachim who was allowed to speak to Frau Chauchat. He agreed that she had approached him; she ’ And Joachim would have been amazed at his easygoingness – but probably without seriously wanting to be in his place. No, Hans Castorp wasn’t jealous of Joachim either, the way things were, although it was Joachim who was allowed to speak to Frau Chauchat. He agreed that she had approached him; shehad taken the circumstances into account by doing so, thus showing that she was aware of the circumstances… His heart was pounding.

After the relaxed treatment that Frau Chauchat experienced from Joachim, and in which Hans Castorp had even sensed something like a slight hostility on the part of the good Joachim towards the fellow patient, a hostility that made him smile despite his shock, – tried “Clawdia ‘ to take a walk across the room; but there was not enough room for it, so she too took an illustrated book from the table and returned with it to the armchair with the rudimentary armrests. Hans Castorp sat and looked at her, imitating his grandfather’s chin rest and thus looking ridiculously like the old man really. Since Mrs. Chauchat had once again crossed one leg, her knee, yes, the whole slender line of her leg, was outlined under the blue cloth skirt. She was only of medium height in Hans Castorp’s eyes a very comfortable and correct size, but relatively long-legged and not wide in the hips. She wasn’t sitting back, but hunched over, her forearms crossed on the thigh of her crossed leg, her back rounded and her shoulders slumped so that the vertebrae of her neck stood out, yes, her spine was almost visible under the close-fitting sweater, and her chest that wasn’t as tall and luxuriantly developed as Marusja’s, but small and girlish, was pressed together from both sides. Suddenly Hans Castorp remembered that she, too, was sitting there expecting to be x-rayed. The privy councilor painted them; he gave her outward appearance with oils and dyes on the canvas She wasn’t sitting back, but hunched over, her forearms crossed on the thigh of her crossed leg, her back rounded and her shoulders slumped so that the vertebrae of her neck stood out, yes, her spine was almost visible under the close-fitting sweater, and her chest that wasn’t as tall and luxuriantly developed as Marusja’s, but small and girlish, was pressed together from both sides. Suddenly Hans Castorp remembered that she, too, was sitting there expecting to be x-rayed. The privy councilor painted them; he gave her outward appearance with oils and dyes on the canvas She wasn’t sitting back, but hunched over, her forearms crossed on the thigh of her crossed leg, her back rounded and her shoulders slumped so that the vertebrae of her neck stood out, yes, her spine was almost visible under the close-fitting sweater, and her chest that wasn’t as tall and luxuriantly developed as Marusja’s, but small and girlish, was pressed together from both sides. Suddenly Hans Castorp remembered that she, too, was sitting there expecting to be x-rayed. The privy councilor painted them; he gave her outward appearance with oils and dyes on the canvas yes, under the close-fitting sweater the backbone was almost visible and her chest, which was not as high and voluptuous as Marusja’s, but small and girlish, was pressed together from both sides. Suddenly Hans Castorp remembered that she, too, was sitting there expecting to be x-rayed. The privy councilor painted them; he gave her outward appearance with oils and dyes on the canvas yes, under the close-fitting sweater the backbone was almost visible and her chest, which was not as high and voluptuous as Marusja’s, but small and girlish, was pressed together from both sides. Suddenly Hans Castorp remembered that she, too, was sitting there expecting to be x-rayed. The privy councilor painted them; he gave her outward appearance with oils and dyes on the canvasagain. But now, in the semidarkness, he would direct rays of light towards her, revealing the inside of her body to him. And while Hans Castorp was thinking this, he turned his head aside with a respectable scowl, an expression of discretion and modesty that he thought appropriate to adopt to himself at the thought.

The three of them got together in the little waiting room and didn’t last long. Inside, Sascha and his mother hadn’t been very light-hearted, so they hurried to make up for the delay. Recently the technician in the white coat opened the door, Joachim got up and threw his newspaper back on the table, and Hans Castorp followed him, though not without inner hesitation, to the door. Chivalrous scruples arose in him, together with the temptation to speak civilly to Madame Chauchat and offer her the way; maybe even in French if it could be done; and hastily he searched for the vocabulary, the sentence structure. But he did not know whether such courtesies were local custom, whether the order in which they were performed was not high above chivalry. Joachim had to know

He was too dazed by what he was leaving behind, by the adventures of the last ten minutes, for his inner presence to have been able to change as soon as he entered the X-ray room. He saw nothing or only very general things in the artificial half-light. He heard mrsChauchat’s pleasantly muffled voice, in which she had said: “What’s the matter… People have just entered… That’s unpleasant…” and this voice sound shivered down his spine like a sweet charm. He saw the image of her knees under the cloth skirt, saw the cervical vertebrae stick out on her bent neck, under the short reddish-blond hair that hung loosely there without being tied up in the braid, and again he shuddered. He saw Hofrat Behrens, turned away from those entering, standing in front of a cupboard or built-in shelf and looking at a blackish plate that he was holding with outstretched arm against the dim ceiling light. Past him they went deeper into the room, overtaken by the aide who was making preparations for their treatment and clearance. It smelled strange in here. A kind of stale ozone filled the atmosphere. Protruding between the black curtained windows, the installation divided the laboratory into two unequal halves. A distinction was made between physical apparatus, hollow glass, switchboards, upright measuring instruments, but also a camera-like box on a wheeled frame, glass slides that were embedded in rows in the wall – you didn’t know whether you were in a photographer’s studio, a darkroom or a Inventor’s workshop and technical witch’s office.

Joachim had immediately begun to free his upper body. The assistant, a young, stocky, red-cheeked native in a white coat, instructed Hans Castorp to do the same. It’s going fast, it’s his turn immediately… While Hans Castorp was taking off his waistcoat, cameBehrens from the small compartment where he was standing to the more spacious one.

he said. “These are our Dioscuri! Castorp and Pollux… Please stop your wailing! Just wait, we’ll have both of you figured out in a moment. I think you’re afraid, Castorp, to open up your insides to us? Don’t worry, it’s very aesthetic. Here, have you already seen my private gallery?” And he pulled Hans Castorp by the arm in front of the rows of dark glasses, behind which he snapped the light on. Then they lit up and showed their pictures. Hans Castorp saw limbs: hands, feet, kneecaps, thighs and lower legs, arms and pelvic parts. But the plump life form of these fragments of human body was dim and hazy in outline; like a haze and pale glow, it uncertainly surrounded its core, the skeleton, which clearly, minutely, and decisively emerged.

“Very interesting,” said Hans Castorp.

“That is indeed interesting!” replied the Hofrat. “Useful object lesson for young people. Light anatomy, you see, triumph of modern times. That’s a woman’s arm, you can tell by its cuteness. They hug you with that, you know.” And he laughed, his upper lip with the trimmed mustache curling higher on one side. The images went out. Hans Castorp turned to the side where Joachim’s interior shot was being prepared.

It happened in front of the building on the other side of which the Hofrat stood at first. Joachim sat down on a kind of shoemaker’s chair in front of a board against whichhe squeezed his chest while also embracing it with his arms; and with kneading movements the assistant improved his position by pushing Joachim’s shoulders further forward and massaging his back. Then he went behind the camera to examine the view, like any photographer, stooped, legs apart, expressed his satisfaction and admonished Joachim, stepping aside, to take a deep breath and, until it was all over, to hold his breath. Joachim’s rounded back stretched and stood still. At that moment the assistant at the switchboard had done the necessary thing. For two seconds, terrible forces, the exertion of which was necessary to penetrate matter, played currents of thousands of volts, hundreds of thousands, Hans Castorp thought he remembered. Barely tamed to the end, the powers that be sought to vent themselves in byways. Discharges cracked like shots. The measuring apparatus crackled blue. Long bolts of lightning crackled along the wall. Somewhere a red light, like an eye, peered silently and menacingly into the room, and a vial in Joachim’s back was filling with green. Then everything calmed down; the light phenomena disappeared and Joachim let out his breath with a sigh. It had happened.

“Next delinquent!” said Behrens and elbowed Hans Castorp. “Don’t pretend to be tired! You’ll get a free copy, Castorp. Then you can project the secrets of your breasts onto the wall for children and grandchildren!”

Joachim had resigned; the technician changed the plate. Hofrat Behrens personally instructed the newcomer on how to sit and hold himself. “Hug!” he said. “The boardembrace! For my part, imagine something else underneath! And press your chest well, as if feelings of happiness were associated with it! So it is right. Breathe in! Hold still!” he commanded. “Please, kindly!” Hans Castorp waited, blinking, his lungs full of air. The storm broke behind him, crackling, rattling, popping and then calming down. The lens had looked inside.

He dismounted, confused and stunned by what had happened to him, although he had not felt the penetration in the slightest. “Good,” said the Hofrat. “Now we’ll see for ourselves.” And already Joachim, well versed as he was, had moved on, set himself up on a tripod nearer the exit door, behind him the apparatus, which was building up extensively, at the height of his back one could see a glass bubble half filled with water Evaporation tube saw, in front of him, at chest height, a framed umbrella suspended on pulleys. To his left, amid a switchboard and instrumentation, rose a red chime. The privy councilor, riding on a stool in front of the hanging umbrella, lit it. The overhead light went out, leaving only the ruby ​​light to illuminate the scene.

“Your eyes have to get used to it first,” the Hofrat could be heard saying in the dark. “We first have to get very large pupils, like cats, in order to see what we want to see. You understand that we cannot easily see it properly with our ordinary day eyes. We have to put the bright day with its jolly pictures out of our minds to do this.”

“Of course,” said Hans Castorp, who was standing behind the councilor’s shoulder, and closed his eyes, since it made absolutely no difference whether one kept them open or not, the night was so black. “First we have to wash our eyes with darkness to see something like that, that’s obvious. I even think it’s good and right for us to collect ourselves a little beforehand, in quiet prayer, so to speak. I’m standing here with my eyes closed, feeling comfortably sleepy. But what does it smell like in here?”

“Oxygen,” said the Councilor. “That’s oxygen, what you feel in the air. Atmospheric product of the storm, understand me… open your eyes!” he said. “Now the incantation begins.” Hans Castorp obeyed hastily.

You could hear the flick of a lever. A motor sprang up and sang up in anger, but was tamed to steadiness by a new handle. The floor shook evenly. The little red light, elongated and vertical, looked over with silent menace. Lightning crackled somewhere. And slowly, with a milky glow, a lightening window, the pale square of the fluorescent screen emerged from the darkness, in front of which Hofrat Behrens rode on his shoemaker’s stool, his thighs spread, his fists planted on them, his snub nose close to the pane, the view into of a human being’s organic interior.

“You see, young man?” he asked… Hans Castorp leaned over his shoulder, but raised his head again to where Joachim’s eyes were to be expected in the dark, which might have been looking soft and sad, as they had been during the examination , and asked:

“You allow it?”

“Please, please,” Joachim answered liberally out of his darkness. And while the ground shook, in the crackling and rumbling of the forces at play, Hans Castorp bent over and peered through the pale window, peered through Joachim Ziemssen’s empty bones. The breastbone collapsed with the spine into a dark, gristly pillar. The anterior rib framework was overlapped by that of the back, which appeared paler. The collarbones branched off on both sides, and in the soft, luminous shell of the fleshy form the shoulder skeleton, the base of Joachim’s humerus, showed up dry and sharp. It was light in the chest, but one could distinguish veins, dark spots, a blackish ripple.

“Clear picture,” said the Hofrat. “This is the decent leanness, the military youth. I had stomachs here – impenetrable, almost nothing to recognize. One would first have to discover the rays that go through such a layer of fat … This is neat work here. See the diaphragm?” he said, pointing at the dark arch that rose and fell at the bottom of the window… “See those humps to the left here, the ridges? That’s the pleurisy he had when he was fifteen. Breathe deeply!” he commanded. “Deeper! I say deep!” And Joachim’s diaphragm rose trembling as high as it could, lightening was noticeable in the upper parts of the lungs, but the privy councilor was not satisfied. “Insufficient!” he said. “See the hilar glands? Can you see the adhesions? Do you see the caverns here? That’s where the poisons come from that make him tipsy.” But Hans Castorp’s attention was occupied by something baggy, shapelessAnimal things, visible dimly behind the central trunk, and for the most part to the right as seen by the beholder,—expanding and contracting evenly, somewhat in the manner of a rowing jellyfish.

“Do you see his heart?” asked the privy councilor, once again releasing his huge hand from his thigh and pointing his forefinger at the pulsating pendant… Good God, it was his heart, Joachim’s honor-loving heart, that Hans Castorp saw!

“I see your heart!” he said tightly.

“Please, please,” Joachim answered again, and he was probably smiling submissively up there in the dark. But the privy councilor ordered them to be silent and not to exchange sensibilities. He studied the spots and lines, the black ripples in the inner chest, while his fellow scout never tired of looking at Joachim’s grave and death’s bones, this bare scaffolding and spindly memento. Reverence and terror filled him. “Yes, yes, I see,” he said several times. “My God, I see!” He had heard of a woman, a long-dead relative of Tienappel’s side, – she was said to have been endowed or beaten with a heavy gift, which she borne in humility, and which consisted in the fact that people , who were about to die, had appeared to their eyes as skeletons. This is how Hans Castorp now saw the good Joachim, albeit with the help and at the direction of physical-optical science, so that it didn’t mean anything and everything went right, especially since he expressly withdrew Joachim’s consent. Nevertheless, he came to understand the melancholy in the fate of that visionary aunt.Violently moved by what he saw, or actually by the fact that he saw it, he felt his mind goaded with secret doubts as to whether things were right with which this was going, doubts as to the legitimacy of his vision in the shaking, crackling darkness; and the tugging lust of indiscretion mingled in his breast with feelings of emotion and piety.

But a few minutes later he himself stood in the pillory in the thunderstorm while Joachim, again closed, got dressed. The privy councilor peered through the milky pane again, this time into Hans Castorp’s innermost being, and from his whispered utterances, ragged rants and idioms it seemed to emerge that the findings corresponded to his expectations. He was then kind enough to allow the patient to look at his own hand through the screen, as he had urgently requested. And Hans Castorp saw what he had expected to see, but what man is not meant to see and what he had never thought he was meant to see: he looked into his own grave. He saw the later business of decomposition anticipated by the power of light, the flesh, in which he wandered, decomposed, destroyed, dissolved into a futile mist, and in it the minutely turned skeleton of his right hand, around whose upper ring finger his signet ring, bequeathed to him by his grandfather, floated black and loose: a hard thing of this earth, with which man adorns its body, which is destined to melt away underneath, so that it becomes free and passes on to a flesh that can bear it again for a while. Through the eyes of that Tienappel ancestor he saw a familiar one so that it becomes free and goes on to a flesh that can carry it again for a while. Through the eyes of that Tienappel ancestor he saw a familiar one so that it becomes free and goes on to a flesh that can carry it again for a while. Through the eyes of that Tienappel ancestor he saw a familiar onePart of his body, see-through, foresighted eyes, and for the first time in his life he understood that he was going to die. In addition he made a face as he used to make when he heard music – rather stupid, sleepy and pious, his head, mouth half open, tilted on his shoulder. The Councilor said:

“Spooky, huh? Yes, a spooky touch is unmistakable.”

And then he stopped the forces. The floor came to rest, the phenomena of light disappeared, the magic window shrouded itself in darkness again. The overhead light came on. And while Hans Castorp also threw on his clothes, Behrens gave the young people some information about his observations, taking into account their layman’s ability to understand. As far as Hans Castorp was concerned in particular, the optical findings had confirmed the acoustic ones as precisely as the honor of science could ever demand. The old spots as well as the fresh ones could be seen, and “strings” stretched from the bronchi quite far into the organ – “strings with nodules”. Hans Castorp will be able to check it himself on the slide that, as I said, will be handed to him shortly. So calm, patience Disciplining, measuring, eating, lying down, waiting and drinking tea. He turned his back on them. They went. Hans Castorp, behind Joachim, looked over his shoulder as they left. Let in by the technician, Mrs. Chauchat entered the laboratory.