But Joachim could only answer with difficulty and indistinctly. He had a red leather, lined with velvetcase lying on his desk, took a small thermometer and put the lower end, which was filled with mercury, in his mouth. He held it to the left under his tongue in such a way that the glass instrument stuck out of his mouth at an angle. Then he cleaned the house, put on shoes and a litewka-like jacket, took a printed table and pencil from the table, and also a book, a Russian grammar—because he was doing Russian because, as he said, he hoped it would be of service to him—and so on equipped, he took a seat outside on the balcony in a deck chair, throwing a camel’s hair blanket only lightly over his feet.

It was scarcely necessary: ​​during the last quarter of an hour the layer of clouds had become thinner and thinner, and the sun broke through, so warm and dazzling as summer that Joachim protected his head with a white linen umbrella, which was secured by a small, ingenious device on the armrest of the chair and to be adjusted according to the position of the sun. Hans Castorp praised this invention. He wanted to wait for the result of the measurement and meanwhile watched how everything was done, also looked at the fur sack that was leaning in a corner of the loggia (Joachim used it on cold days) and, with his elbows on the parapet, looked into the garden down where the general patient lounge was now populated by patients stretched out reading, writing, and chatting. By the way, you only saw a part of the interior,

“But how long does that take?” asked Hans Castorp and turned around.

Joachim held up seven fingers.

“They must be up – seven minutes!”

Joachim shook his head. A little later he took the thermometer out of his mouth, looked at it and said:

“Yes, if you watch it, time, it goes by very slowly. I really like taking measurements, four times a day, because you notice what that actually means: one minute or even a whole seven – when you’re beating around your head so horribly seven days of the week here.”

“You say ‘actually’. ‘Actually’ you can’t say,” replied Hans Castorp. He was sitting with one thigh on the parapet and the whites of his eyes were veined red. “Time is not ‘actual’ at all. If it seems long, it is long, and if it seems short, it is short, but no one knows how long or short it actually is.” He was not at all used to philosophizing, and yet he felt the urge to.

Joachim disagreed.

“How come. No. We measure them. We have clocks and calendars, and when a month is up, it’s up for you and me and all of us.”

“Then watch out,” said Hans Castorp, even putting his index finger next to his bleary eyes. “So a minute is as long as it seems when you measure yourself?”

“A minute is so long… it lasts as long as it takes the second hand to complete its circle.”

“But it takes a very different amount of time – for our feelings! And indeed … I say: actually taken,” repeated Hans Castorp and pressed his index finger so hard against his nose that he completely bent the tip, “is that a movement, a spatial movement, isn’t it? stop, wait! So we measure time with space. Butthat’s just as if we wanted to measure space in time – which only completely unscientific people do. It’s twenty hours from Hamburg to Davos – yes, by train. But on foot, how long is it there? And in thoughts? Not a second!”

“Listen,” said Joachim, “what’s wrong with you? I think it’s attacking you here with us?”

“Be quiet! I’m very sharp in the head today. What is the time then?” asked Hans Castorp and bent the tip of his nose so violently that it became white and bloodless. “Do you want to tell me that? We perceive space with our organs, with the sense of sight and the sense of touch. Nice. But what is our organ of time? Do you want to tell me that? You see, you’re stuck. But how are we supposed to measure something about which, strictly speaking, we know absolutely nothing, not a single property! We say: time is running out. Nice, so it should expire. But to be able to measure them… wait! In order to be measurable, it would have to be uniformexpire, and where is it written that she does that? To our consciousness it doesn’t, we just assume for the record that it does, and our measurements are just convention, allow me…”

“Good,” said Joachim, “then it’s just a matter of convention that I have four marks too many on my thermometer! But because of those five dashes, I have to loll about here and not be on duty, that’s a disgusting fact!’

“Do you have 37.5?”

“It’s going down again.” And Joachim did itentry in his table. “Last night there were almost 38, that made your arrival. Everyone who gets visitors has a boost. But it’s a blessing.”

“I’m going now too,” said Hans Castorp. “I still have a lot of thoughts in my head about the time – it’s quite a complex, I dare say. But I don’t want to upset you with that now, since you’ve got too many lines anyway. I’ll keep it all and we can come back to it later, maybe after breakfast. When it’s breakfast time, you’ll probably call me. I’m also going to the rest cure now, it doesn’t hurt, thank God.” And with that he walked past the glass partition into his own box, where a deck chair and table were also set up, and got “Ocean steamships” and his beautiful one , soft, dark red and green checked plaid out of the clean, tidy room and sat down.

He, too, soon had to put up his umbrella; as soon as one lay down, the sunburn became unbearable. But one was lying quite unusually comfortably, as Hans Castorp immediately discovered with pleasure – he did not remember that such a comfortable lounge chair had ever happened to him. The frame, a little old-fashioned in form—but that was just a tidbit, for the chair was evidently new—was of reddish-brown polished wood, and a mattress with a soft calico covering, actually made up of three high pillows, stretched from the foot end up over the backrest. In addition, a bolster with an embroidered linen cover, which was neither too firm nor too flexible, was fastened to it by means of a cord, which had a particularly beneficial effect. Hans Castorp propped up an armthe broad, smooth surface of the seat-back blinked and rested, not calling on ” ocean steamships ” for its amusement. Seen through the arches of the loggia, the hard and barren, but brightly sunlit landscape outside looked like a painting and framed. Hans Castorp regarded her thoughtfully. Suddenly something occurred to him and he said aloud in the silence:

“It was a dwarf who served us at our first breakfast.”

“Hush,” said Joachim. “Quietly. Yes, a dwarf. And?”

“Nothing. We hadn’t even talked about it.”

And then he kept dreaming. It was already ten o’clock when he lay down. An hour passed. It was an ordinary hour, not long, not short. When it was gone, a gong sounded through the house and garden, first far away, then closer, then far away again.

“Breakfast,” said Joachim, and it was heard that he got up.

Hans Castorp also ended the rest cure for this time and went into the room to get ready a little. The cousins ​​met in the corridor and went downstairs. Hans Castorp said:

“Well, it was excellent. What are those chairs? If you can buy one here, I’ll take one with me to Hamburg, it’s like heaven. Or do you think that Behrens had them made according to his instructions?”

Joachim didn’t know that. They cast off and entered thesecond time to the dining room, where the meal was already in full swing.

The milk shimmered white in the hall: at every seat there was a large glass, probably half a liter full.

“No,” said Hans Castorp, when he sat down again at his end of the table between the seamstress and the Englishwoman and devotedly unfolded his serviette, although he was still so heavily burdened from the first breakfast. ‘No,’ he said, ‘God help me, I can’t drink milk at all, least of all now. Isn’t Porter here, perhaps?’ And he first addressed the dwarf with the question, politely and tenderly. Unfortunately nobody was there. But she promised to bring Kulmbacher beer and she did. It was thick, black, frothy brown and a perfect substitute for the porter. Thirsty, Hans Castorp drank from a tall half-litre glass. He ate cold cold cuts on toast. There was porridge again and lots of butter and fruit again. He at least kept his eyes on it, unable to to feed oneself from it. He also looked at the guests – the masses began to part for him; Individuals emerged.

His own table was complete except for the top seat across from him, which he was told was the doctor’s seat. For the doctors, whenever their time permitted, shared meals together and changed tables: one such doctor’s seat was reserved at the top of each table. Now neither of them was present; they said they were having an operation. Again the young man with the mustache came in, dropped his chin once on his chest and sat down with a worried-closed expressionExpression. Again the light blonde, skinny sat in her place and ate yoghurt as if it were her only food. Beside her this time sat a lively little old lady, speaking in Russian to the quiet young man, who looked at her worriedly and answered only with a nod of the head, making that face as if he had something bad-tasting in his mouth. Opposite him, on the other side of the old lady, was placed another young girl – pretty she was, of blooming complexion and high breast, with chestnut brown hair arranged in pleasant waves, round brown childlike eyes, and a small ruby ​​on hers beautiful hand. She laughed a lot and also spoke Russian, only Russian. Her name was Marusja, as Hans Castorp heard. He also casually remarked

Settembrini appeared through the side entrance and, curling his mustache, strode to his place, which was at the end of the table that stood diagonally in front of Hans Castorp’s. His table companions burst out laughing as he sat down; he had probably said something malicious. Hans Castorp also recognized the members of the “Half Lung Association”. Hermine Kleefeld, with silly eyes, pushed her way to her table over there in front of the patio door and greeted the plump-lipped youth who had just pulled up his jacket so indecently. The ivory-colored Levi sat next to the fat and liver-spotted Polecat among strangers at the transverse table to Hans Castorp’s right.

“There are your neighbors,” Joachim said softly to his cousin, leaning forward… The couple walked closeHans Castorp past to the last table on the right, the “Bad Russian Table”, where a family with an ugly boy devoured large piles of porridge. The man was of slight build, with gray and hollow cheeks. He was wearing a brown leather jacket and clumsy felt boots with buckles on his feet. His wife, also small and dainty, in a bobbing feather hat, tripped on tiny, high-heeled Russian boots; an unclean boa made of bird feathers lay around her neck. Hans Castorp looked at the two with a ruthlessness that was otherwise alien to him and that he himself found brutal; but it was the brutality of it that suddenly gave him a certain pleasure. His eyes were dull and insistent at the same time. When at the same moment the glass door on the left slammed shut, banging and clinking, as at first breakfast, he did not wince as he did this morning, but only made a lazy grimace; and when he wanted to turn his head that way, he found it too difficult and not worth the trouble. So it happened that this time, too, he was unable to establish who was handling the door so sloppily.

The thing was that the morning beer, otherwise of only moderately intoxicating effect on his nature, to-day completely stunned and paralyzed the young man – it produced results as if he had been struck in the forehead. His eyelids were as heavy as lead, his tongue did not quite obey the simple thought as he tried to chat with the Englishwoman out of politeness; even to change the direction of one’s gaze required great self-control, and what was more, the hideous burn on the face of yesterdayhad now fully reached his full degree again: his cheeks seemed puffy with heat, he was breathing heavily, his heart was pounding like a wrapped hammer, and if he wasn’t terribly suffering from all this, it was because his head was in a state , as if he had taken two or three breaths of chloroform. that dr Krokowski did appear at breakfast and took a seat at his table opposite him, he remarked only dreamily, although the doctor repeatedly eyed him sharply while he was conversing in Russian with the ladies on his right – the young girls viz the blooming Marusja as well as the skinny yoghurt-eater, submissively and bashfully lowered their eyes to him. Incidentally, Hans Castorp honestly kept silent, as goes without saying, as his tongue showed itself stubborn, he preferred to keep quiet and even handled his knife and fork with special decency. When his cousin nodded to him and got up, he got up too, bowed blindly to his companions at the table, and followed Joachim out with a firm step.

“When is the rest cure again?” he asked as they left the house. “This is the best here as far as I can see. I wish I were lying in my excellent chair again. shall we go for a long walk?”