He later lost consciousness. According to his pocket watch, it was three-thirty when a conversation behind the left-hand glass wall woke him up: Dr. Krokowski, who was making the rounds at this time without the Hofrat, spoke Russian to the unmannerly couple, inquired how the husband seemed to be, and had his temperature chart shown to him. But then he didn’t continue through the balcony boxes, but avoided Hans Castorp’s compartment by going back into the corridor and entering Joachim’s room through the door. Hans Castorp found it somewhat offensive that people avoided him in this way and ignored him, although after a private meeting with Dr. Krokowski certainly didn’t demand it. Of course, he was healthy and didn’t count – because with those up here,he who had the honor of being in good health was out of the question and was not consulted, and this angered young Castorp.

after dr Krokowski had lingered with Joachim for two or three minutes, he continued along the balcony, and Hans Castorp heard his cousin say that it was time to get up and get ready for supper. “Fine,” he said, standing up. But he felt very dizzy from lying there for so long, and the unrefreshing half-sleep had made his face painfully flushed again, while he tended to shiver—perhaps he hadn’t covered himself warm enough.

He washed his eyes and hands, put his hair and clothes in order, and met Joachim in the corridor.

“Did you hear that Herr Albin?” he asked as they walked down the stairs…

“Of course,” said Joachim. “People should be disciplined. He disturbs the whole afternoon rest with his chatter and upsets the ladies so much that he puts them back weeks. A gross insubordination. But who wants to be the informer? And besides, such speeches are most welcome as entertainment.”

“Do you think it’s possible,” asked Hans Castorp, “that he’s serious about his ‘slick thing’, as he puts it, and applying a foreign body to himself?”

“Oh yes,” replied Joachim, “it’s not entirely impossible. The same thing happens up here. Two months before I came, a student who had been here for a long time hung himself over in the woods after a general check-up. There was a lot of talk about it in my early days.”

Hans Castorp yawned excitedly.

“Yes, I don’t feel good with you,” he explained, “I can’t say that. I think it’s possible that I can’t stay, you, that I have to leave – would you still hold it against me?”

“Leave? What are you thinking of?” shouted Joachim. “Nonsense. Where you just arrived How are you going to judge after the first day!”

“God, is it still the first day? I feel like I’ve been up here with you for a long time.”

“Now don’t start fooling around about time again!” said Joachim. “You made me very confused this morning.”

“No, don’t worry, I’ve forgotten everything,” replied Hans Castorp. “The whole complex. Now I’m not a bit sharp in the head either, that’s over … So now it’s time for tea.”

“Yes, and then we’ll go back to this morning’s bank.”

“For God’s sake. But hopefully we won’t meet Settembrini again. I can no longer participate in any educated conversation today, I tell you that in advance.”

In the dining room all the drinks that could be considered at that hour were given. Miss Robinson drank her blood-red rosehip tea again while the great-niece spooned up yoghurt. There was milk, tea, coffee, chocolate, even bouillon, and everywhere the guests, who had spent two hours lying down since the sumptuous midday meal, were busy buttering large slices of raisin cake.

Hans Castorp had asked for tea and dipped rusksin. He also tried some jam. He studied the raisin cake closely, but literally trembled at the thought of eating it. Once again he sat in his place in the hall with the simply colorful vault, the seven tables – for the fourth time. A little later, at seven o’clock, he sat there for the fifth time, and then it was dinner time. In the meantime, which was short and meaningless, there was a walk to that bench on the mountain wall, by the trickle of water – the path was now crowded with patients, so that the cousins ​​often had to say hello – and another rest cure on the balcony, from fleeting and meaningless hour and a half. Hans Castorp shivered violently.

For supper he dressed conscientiously, and then ate julienne soup between Miss Robinson and the teacher, baked and roasted meat with accessories, two slices of a cake that had everything: macaroon dough, buttercream, chocolate, fruit puree and marzipan, and very good cheese on pumpernickel. Again he asked for a bottle of Kulmbacher. However, when he was halfway through his tall glass, he realized clearly that he belonged in bed. His head roared, his eyelids were like lead, his heart beat like a little drum, and to his torment he imagined that pretty Marusya, who was bending over and hiding her face in her hand with the little ruby, about himlaugh, although he had tried so hard not to give any cause to it. As if from afar, he heard Frau Stohr say something or say something that seemed so crazy to him that he began to have confused doubts as to whether he was still hearing correctly or whether Frau Stohr’s utterances were turning into nonsense in his head. Shedeclared that she knew how to prepare twenty-eight different fish sauces – she had the courage to stand up for them, although her own husband had warned her not to speak of them. “Don’t talk about it!” he said. “No one will believe you, and if you believe it, you will find it ridiculous!” And yet she wanted to say it today and openly admit that there were twenty-eight fish sauces that she could make. That seemed dreadful to poor Hans Castorp; he was startled, put his hand to his forehead, and completely forgot to finish chewing and swallowing a mouthful of pumpernickel with chester that he had in his mouth. He still had it in his mouth when you got up from the table.

One went out through the glass door on the left, the fatal one that always slammed shut, and which led straight into the front hall. Almost all the guests took this route, for it turned out that around the hour after dinner a kind of conviviality took place in the hall and the adjoining salons. Most of the patients stood around in small groups, chatting. At two green-lined folding tables, the game was played; it was dominoes at one table, bridge at the other, and here it was only young people playing, including Herr Albin and Hermine Kleefeld. There were also a few entertaining optical objects in the first salon: a stereoscopic peep-box, through the lenses of which one could see the photographs set up inside, for example a Venetian gondolier, in rigid and bloodless corporeality; secondly, a telescope-shaped kaleidoscope, to the lens of which one laid one eye in order, by the slight manipulation of a wheel, to conjure up an enchanting alternation of variegated stars and arabesques; a spinning oneFinally, a drum into which cinematographic film strips were placed and through the openings of which, if you looked in from the side, you could see a miller fighting a chimney sweep, a schoolmaster beating a boy, a jumping tightrope walker and a peasant couple dancing the country dance. Hans Castorp, his cold hands on his knees, stared into each of the machines for a long time. He also lingered a little at the bridge table, where the incurable Herr Albin, with sagging lips and politely discarding gestures, was handling the cards. In a corner sat Dr. Krokowski engaged in fresh and cordial conversation with a semicircle of ladies, which included Frau Stoehr, Frau Iltis, and Fraulein Levi. The owners of the Good Russian Table had retired to the adjoining, smaller salon, which was only separated from the playroom by a door, and formed an intimate clique there. There were, besides Madame Chauchat: a blond-bearded, sagging gentleman with a concave chest and bulging eyeballs; a deep brunette girl of an original and humorous type, with gold earrings and tousled woolly hair; also Dr. Cauliflower, who had joined them, and two more slouchy youths. Madame Chauchat wore a blue dress with a white lace collar. She was the center of her group, sitting on the sofa behind the round table at the back of the small room, her face turned towards the playroom. Hans Castorp, who could not look at the naughty woman without disapproval, thought to himself: She reminds me of something, but I cannot say what…Pianoforte three times in succession the Wedding March from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and when some ladies asked him to do so, he began the melodious piece for the fourth time, after looking deeply and silently into each other’s eyes.

“Is it permissible to ask how you are, engineer?” asked Settembrini, who, with his hands in his trouser pockets, had strolled among the guests and now stepped up to Hans Castorp … He was still wearing his grey, fluffy coat and the light checked trousers. He smiled as he addressed him, and again Hans Castorp felt something like disillusionment at the sight of the finely and mockingly curled corner of his mouth under the curve of his black mustache. Incidentally, he looked at the Italian rather stupidly, with a slack mouth and red-veined eyes.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “The gentleman from the morning walk that we met at that bench up there… by the watercourse… Of course, I recognized you immediately. Do you want to believe,” he went on, although he saw that he shouldn’t have said it, “that at first I took you for an organ grinder? … That was, of course, pure nonsense,” he added, seeing that Settembrini’s gaze was taking on a cool, inquiring expression, “—a dreadful stupidity, in a word! In fact, it ‘s completely incomprehensible to me how on earth I…”

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean anything,” Settembrini replied, after observing the young man in silence for a moment. “So how did you spend your day – the first of your stay in this place of pleasure?”

“Thank you very much. According to the regulations,” answered Hans Castorp. “Mostly in a ‘horizontal’ way, as you like to call it.”

Settembrini smiled.

“I may have expressed myself that way on occasion,” he said. “Well, and you found it amusing, this way of life?”

“Entertaining and boring, whatever you want,” replied Hans Castorp. “It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes, you know. I wasn’t bored at all – it’s too lively up here for that. You get to hear and see so many new and strange things … And yet, on the other hand, I feel as if I had been here not just for a day, but for a long time – almost as if I had grown older and wiser here would be, it seems to me.”

“Clever too?” said Settembrini, raising his eyebrows. “Will you allow me to ask: How old are you actually?”

But lo and behold, Hans Castorp didn’t know! At the moment he didn’t know how old he was, despite violent, even desperate, efforts to think it over. To gain time, he had the question repeated and then said:

“… I… how old? I’m in my twenty-fourth, of course. I’ll be twenty-four soon. Forgive me, I’m tired!” he said. “And tiredness is not the expression for my condition. Do you know that feeling when you are dreaming and you know that you are dreaming and you are trying to wake up and you cannot wake up? That’s exactly how I feel. I absolutely have to have a fever, I can’t think of any other wayexplain. Do you want to believe that my feet are cold up to my knees? If one may say so, because of course one’s knees are no longer one’s feet, – excuse me, I’m extremely confused, and that’s no wonder after all, when you’re already early in the morning with the … with the pneumothorax is whistled at and afterwards listens to the speeches of this Mr. Albin and on top of that in a horizontal position. Just think, I always feel as if I can no longer really trust my five senses, and I have to say that embarrasses me even more than the heat in my face and cold feet. Tell me frankly: do you think it’s possible that Frau Stohr knows how to make twenty-eight fish sauces? I do not mean,

Settembrini looked at him. He didn’t seem to have been listening. Again his eyes had “fixed themselves”, had gotten into a fixed and blind attitude, and like this morning he said “so, so, so” and “see, see, see” three times each – mockingly thoughtfully and with a sharp S -Loud.

“Twenty-four you said?” he then asked…

“No, twenty-eight!” said Hans Castorp. “Twenty-eight fish sauces! Not sauces in general, but fish sauces in particular, that’s the outrageous thing.”

“Engineer!” said Settembrini angrily and admonishingly. “Pull yourself together and leave me alone with this slovenly nonsense! I know nothing about it and don’t want to know anything about it. – In the twenty-fourth, you said? Hm … allow me to ask one more question, or an irrelevant onesuggestion, if you will. Since the stay does not seem to be conducive to you, dayou are physically and, if I am not mistaken, also mentally unwell – how would it be if you gave up getting older here, in short, if you packed up again tonight and dealt with the tomorrow on scheduled express trains and took off?”

“You mean I should leave?” asked Hans Castorp… “Where I just arrived? But no, how am I going to judge after the first day!”

As he said this he happened to look into the next room and saw Frau Chauchat from the front, her narrow eyes and broad cheekbones. What, he thought, what and who on earth does she remind me of. But his tired head couldn’t answer the question despite some effort.

“Of course it’s not that easy for me to acclimatize up here with you,” he continued, “that was foreseeable, and therefore I’d throw in the towel straight away, just because I might have been a little confused for a few days and would be hot, I would have to be ashamed, I would feel downright cowardly and besides, it would go against all reason – no, tell me yourself…”

Suddenly he spoke very urgently, with excited shoulder movements, and seemed to want to persuade the Italian to formally withdraw his proposal.

“I salute reason,” Settembrini replied. “By the way, I also salute the Mute. I think it’s worth listening to what you’re saying, it would be hard to argue with anything cogent. Also I have really nice cases ofacclimatization observed. Last year there was Fraulein Kneifer, Ottilie Kneifer, definitely from the family, the daughter of a high-ranking state functionary. She had been here for a year and a half and had settled in so well that when her health was completely restored – because that happens, one sometimes gets well up here – she didn’t want to leave at all. She begged the Hofrat with all her heart to be allowed to stay, she couldn’t and didn’t want to go home, here she was at home, here she was happy; but since there was a lively influx of people and her room was needed, her pleading was in vain and they insisted on dismissing her as healthy. Ottilie got a high fever, she let her curves increase considerably. But they were unmasked by exchanging the usual thermometer for a ‘mute nurse’ – you don’t yet know what that is, it’s a thermometer without numbers, the doctor checks it by putting a measure on it and then draws the curve himself. Ottilie , sir, had 36.9, Ottilie was free of fever. She was bathing in the lake – we wrote at the beginning of May, we had night frosts, the lake wasn’t exactly ice cold, it was actually a few degrees above zero. She stayed in the water for a good while to get this or that—success alone? She was and stayed healthy. She departed in pain and despair, inaccessible to her parents’ words of comfort. ‘What am I supposed to do down there?’ she called repeatedly. ‘Here is my homeland!’ I don’t know what became of her… But it seems to me you don’t hear me, Engineer? You’re having trouble staying on your feet, if I’m not mistaken. Lieutenant, here is your cousin!” he turned to Joachim,who just approached. “Take him to bed! He combines reason and courage, but tonight he’s a little frail.”

“No, really, I understood everything!” Hans Castorp asserted. “So the mute sister is just a column of mercury, without any figures – you see, I understood it perfectly!” But then he went up in the elevator with Joachim, together with several other patients – the socializing was over for today, they parted and sought out halls and loggias for an evening rest cure. Hans Castorp went to Joachim’s room. The floor of the corridor with the coconut runner made gentle undulations under his feet, but he didn’t find it particularly uncomfortable. He sat down in Joachim’s large armchair with a floral pattern – there was a chair like that in his own room – and lit a Maria Mancini. She tasted of glue, of coal and some other things, just not as she should; but he went on smoking it anyway while he watched Joachim get ready for the rest cure, put on his litewka-like house jacket, pulled an older paletot over it, and then went out onto the balcony with the bedside lamp and his Russian exercise book, where he found the little lamp switched on and, sitting on the lounge chair, thermometer in mouth, began to wrap himself in two large camel’s hair blankets spread over the chair with astonishing dexterity. Hans Castorp saw with sincere admiration how skilfully he executed it. He folded the blankets, one after the other, first from the left lengthwise over himself to below his armpits, then from below over his feet, and then from the right, so that at last he had a perfectly even blanket put on his litevka-like house jacket, pulled an older paletot over it and then went out onto the balcony with the bedside lamp and his Russian exercise book, where he switched on the little lamp and, sitting on the deck chair, the thermometer in his mouth, began to wrap himself in two large camel-hair blankets with astonishing dexterity , which were spread over the chair. Hans Castorp saw with sincere admiration how skilfully he executed it. He folded the blankets, one after the other, first from the left lengthwise over himself to below his armpits, then from below over his feet, and then from the right, so that at last he had a perfectly even blanket put on his litevka-like house jacket, pulled an older paletot over it and then went out onto the balcony with the bedside lamp and his Russian exercise book, where he switched on the little lamp and, sitting on the deck chair, the thermometer in his mouth, began to wrap himself in two large camel-hair blankets with astonishing dexterity , which were spread over the chair. Hans Castorp saw with sincere admiration how skilfully he executed it. He folded the blankets, one after the other, first from the left lengthwise over himself to below his armpits, then from below over his feet, and then from the right, so that at last he had a perfectly even blanket where he switched on the lamp and, sitting on the lounge chair, the thermometer in his mouth, began to wrap himself in two large camel’s hair blankets, which were spread over the chair, with astonishing dexterity. Hans Castorp saw with sincere admiration how skilfully he executed it. He folded the blankets, one after the other, first from the left lengthwise over himself to below his armpits, then from below over his feet, and then from the right, so that at last he had a perfectly even blanket where he switched on the lamp and, sitting on the lounge chair, the thermometer in his mouth, began to wrap himself in two large camel’s hair blankets, which were spread over the chair, with astonishing dexterity. Hans Castorp saw with sincere admiration how skilfully he executed it. He folded the blankets, one after the other, first from the left lengthwise over himself to below his armpits, then from below over his feet, and then from the right, so that at last he had a perfectly even blanketand formed a smooth package from which only the head, shoulders and arms showed.

“You’re doing excellently,” said Hans Castorp.

“It’s the exercise,” answered Joachim, holding the thermometer between his teeth as he spoke. “You’re learning too. Tomorrow we have to get some blankets for you. You can use them again downstairs, and here with us they are indispensable, especially since you don’t have a fur sack.”

“But I don’t lie down on the balcony at night,” explained Hans Castorp. “I’m not doing that, I’ll tell you right away. It would seem too strange to me. Everything has its limits. And somehow I have to mark that I’m only visiting you up here. I’ll sit here a little longer and smoke my cigar, as it should be. It tastes awful, but I know it’s good, and that’ll have to do with me for today. Now the clock is almost nine – unfortunately, it’s not even nine yet. But by the time it’s nine-thirty, it’s already far enough for you to be able to go to bed halfway normally.”

A shiver of frost ran over him–one, and then several in rapid succession. Hans Castorp jumped up and ran to the wall thermometer as if to catch him red-handed . According to Réaumur, the room was nine degrees. He touched the tubes and found them dead and cold. He murmured something disorderly, saying that although it was August, it was a shame that there was no heating, because it didn’t depend on the name of the month that you were writing, but on the prevailing temperature, and it was like this that he freezes like a dog. But his face burned. He sat downagain, got up again, murmured asking permission to take Joachim’s blanket and, sitting in the chair, spread it over his lower body. So he sat, hot and shivering, and tormented himself with the disgusting-tasting cigar. A great feeling of misery came over him; he felt as if he had never had it so bad in his life. “That’s misery!” he murmured. In between, however, he was suddenly touched by a very peculiar, extravagant feeling of joy and hope, and when he had felt it, he just sat there to wait to see if it might not come again. But it didn’t come back; only misery remained. And so he finally got up, threw Joachim’s blanket back on the bed, mumbled something like “Good night!” and “Don’t freeze to death!

He sang to himself as he undressed, but not out of happiness. Mechanically and without the right deliberation, he performed the little hand movements and cultural duties of the night toilet, poured bright red mouthwash from the travel bottle into the glass and gargled discreetly, washed his hands with his good and mild violet soap and put on the long cambric shirt that was on the breast pocket was embroidered with the letters HC. Then he lay down and put out the light, letting his hot, distraught head fall back on the American woman’s death pillow.

He had most definitely expected that he would fall asleep immediately, but that turned out to be a mistake, and his eyelids, which he had scarcely been able to keep open a moment ago – now they did not want to remain closed at all, but ratheropened, twitching restlessly as soon as he lowered them. It wasn’t his usual bedtime yet, he told himself, and then he’d probably slept too much during the day. A carpet was also being beaten outside – which was unlikely and in fact not the case at all; but it turned out that it was his heart whose beating he heard far and wide in the open air, just as if a carpet was being beaten with a plaited reed beater out there.

It was not yet completely dark in the room; the glow of the little lamps outside in the boxes, at Joachim’s and at the couple from the bad Russian table, fell in through the open balcony door. And while Hans Castorp was lying on his back with blinking eyelids, an impression suddenly came back to him, a single one of the day, an observation that he had tried to forget with horror and tenderness at once. It was the expression Joachim’s face had taken on when Marusja and her physical characteristics had been spoken of – this very peculiar pitiful distortion of his mouth together with the blotchy paling of his tanned cheeks. Hans Castorp understood and saw through what it meant, understood and saw through it in such a new, thorough and intimate way that that the reed knocker out there doubled his beats both in speed and strength and almost drowned out the sounds of the evening serenade in “Platz” – because it was another concert in that hotel down there; a symmetrically constructed and tasteless operetta melody rang out through the darkness, and Hans Castorp whistled along with it in a whisper (one can whistle in a whisper), while beating time with his cold feet under the duvet.

Of course that wasn’t the right way to fall asleep, and Hans Castorp felt no inclination to do so now. Ever since he understood in such a novel and vivid way why Joachim had changed color, the world seemed new to him, and that feeling of excessive joy and hope touched him to his core again. Besides, he was still waiting for something without really asking himself what for. But when he heard the neighbors on the right and left finish their evening rest and go to their rooms to exchange the horizontal position outside for that inside, he expressed to himself the conviction that the barbaric couple would keep peace. I can go to sleep, he thought. They will keep the peace tonight, I expect that most definitely! But they didn’t and Hans Castorp hadn’t thought it sincerely at all, yes, to tell the truth, he personally and for his part would not have understood it even if they had made peace. Nevertheless, he indulged in toneless exclamations of the greatest astonishment at what he heard. “Outrageous!” he cried without a voice. “That’s huge! Who would have thought such a thing possible?” And in between he took part again with whispering lips in the insipid operetta melody that sounded persistently.

Slumber came later. But with him came the crooked dream images, even more crooked than the first night, from which he often awoke, frightened or chasing a confused idea. He dreamed that he saw Hofrat Behrens walking along the garden paths with bent knees and arms hanging stiffly in front of him, while his long and seemingly tedious strides were accompanied by distant marching musicadapted. When the privy councilor stopped in front of Hans Castorp, he was wearing thick, round glasses and was rambling nonsensically. “Civilian, of course,” he said, and without asking permission, pulled down Hans Castorp’s eyelid with the index and middle fingers of his huge hand. “Respectable civilian, as I immediately pointed out. But not without talent, not at all without talent for increased general combustion! Wouldn’t be stingy with the little years, the brisk years of service with us up here! Well, oops, gentlemen, and let’s go for a walk!” he cried, putting his two enormous index fingers in his mouth and whistling in such a peculiarly melodious manner that the teacher and Miss Robinson, on different sides and in reduced form, flew through the air came flying and sat on his shoulders right and left, as they sat on the right and left of Hans Castorp in the dining room. So the privy councilor went off with hopping steps, slipping a serviette behind his glasses to wipe his eyes—you didn’t know what was there to dry, whether it was sweat or tears.

Then it seemed to the dreaming that he was in the schoolyard, where he had spent the breaks between lessons for so many years, and was about to borrow a pencil from Madame Chauchat, who was also present. She gave him the red-colored pen, which was only half a length in a silver crayon, admonishing Hans Castorp in a pleasantly hoarse voice to give it back to her after the lesson, and when she looked at him with her narrow blue-grey-green eyes over the broad cheekbones, then he tore himself violently out of the dream, because now he had it and wanted to hold on to it,what and who she actually reminded him of so vividly. He hurriedly brought the knowledge to safety for tomorrow, for he felt that sleep and dreams were enfolding him again, and was soon able to seek refuge from Dr. Having to look for Krokowski, who was after him in order to dissect his soul, which caused Hans Castorp to feel a mad, truly senseless fear. He fled from the doctor with a disabled foot past the glass walls through the balcony boxes, jumped down into the garden at the risk of his life, in his distress even tried to climb the reddish-brown flagpole and woke up sweating just as the pursuer grabbed him by the trouser leg.

However, scarcely had he calmed down a little and fallen asleep again when the situation developed for him as follows. He tried to shove Settembrini with his shoulder, who stood there and smiled – fine, dry and mocking, under the full, black mustache, where it curved upwards in a beautiful curve, and that smile was it which Hans Castorp perceived as an impairment. “You are disturbing!” he heard himself say clearly. “Away with you! You’re just an organ grinder, and you’re being a nuisance here!” Only Settembrini didn’t let himself be pushed from the spot, and Hans Castorp was still standing there to think about what to do here when, quite unexpectedly, he was granted the excellent insight as to what the Time is: namely nothing else than simply a mute sister,to inform his cousin Joachim of this discovery tomorrow.

Amidst such adventures and discoveries the night passed, and Hermine Kleefeld, as well as Herr Albin and Captain Miklosich, the latter carrying Frau Stoehr away in his throat and being pierced with a spear by Prosecutor Paravant, also played their confused role. But Hans Castorp dreamed a dream twice that night, both times in exactly the same form – the last time towards morning. He was sitting in the hall with the seven tables when the glass door slammed shut to the greatest bang and Madame Chauchat came in, in a white sweater, one hand in her pocket and the other on the back of her head. But instead of going to the good Russian table, the rude woman moved silently towards Hans Castorp and silently gave him her hand to kiss – but she didn’t give him the back of the hand, but the inside, and Hans Castorp kissed her hand, her unrefined, rather broad and short-fingered hand with the roughened skin on the sides of the nails. Then he felt again from head to toe that feeling of wild sweetness which had risen in him when he had felt free from the pressure of honor and enjoyed the bottomless advantages of shame – he now felt this again in his dream , only immensely stronger.