library_books Bookstacks

In the Restaurant

The restaurant was bright, elegant, and comfortable. It lay just to the right of the hall, opposite the conversation rooms, and was used, as Joachim explained, chiefly by newly arrived guests taking meals outside the regular hours, and by those who had visitors. But birthdays and impending departures were also festively celebrated there, as were favorable results of general examinations. Sometimes things went high in the restaurant, Joachim said; champagne was served there too. At present no one was sitting there except a single lady of about thirty, who was reading in a book, but at the same time humming to herself and continually tapping lightly on the tablecloth with the middle finger of her left hand. When the young men had seated themselves, she changed places in order to turn her back to them. She was shy of people, Joachim explained softly, and always ate in the restaurant with a book. It was said that she had entered lung sanatoriums as quite a young girl and since then had no longer lived in the world.

"Well, then you are still a young beginner compared with her, with your five months, and will still be one when you have a year on your back," Hans Castorp said to his cousin; whereupon Joachim, with that shrug which had not formerly been peculiar to him, reached for the menu.

They had taken the raised table by the window, the prettiest place. Beside the cream-colored curtain they sat facing each other, their faces glowing in the shine of the red-shaded electric table lamp. Hans Castorp folded his freshly washed hands and rubbed them together in comfortable expectation, as he was accustomed to do when sitting down to table - perhaps because his ancestors had prayed before the soup. A friendly girl, speaking from the palate, in a black dress with a white apron and with a large face of exceedingly healthy color, served them, and to his great amusement Hans Castorp allowed himself to be instructed that waitresses here were called "daughters of the hall." They ordered a bottle of Gruaud Larose from her, which Hans Castorp sent away once more to have it brought to a better temperature. The food was excellent. There was asparagus soup, stuffed tomatoes, roast with all sorts of accompaniments, a particularly well-prepared sweet dish, a cheese platter, and fruit. Hans Castorp ate very heartily, although his appetite did not prove as lively as he had thought. But he was used to eating a great deal even when he was not hungry, and did so out of self-respect.

Joachim did the dishes little honor. He was tired of the cooking, he said; they all were up here, and it was customary to rail at the food, for when one sat here forever and three days… On the other hand he drank the wine with pleasure, indeed with a certain devotion, and, while carefully avoiding turns of phrase that were too sentimental, repeatedly expressed his satisfaction that someone was there with whom one could exchange a reasonable word.

"Yes, it is brilliant that you have come!" he said, and his leisurely voice was moved. "I may say it is positively an event for me. It is at least a change - I mean, it is a break, an articulation in the eternal, boundless monotony…"

"But time must actually pass quickly for you here," Hans Castorp thought.

"Quickly and slowly, however you like," Joachim answered. "It does not pass at all, I tell you; there is no time at all, and it is not life either - no, it is not," he said, shaking his head, and took up his glass again.

Hans Castorp drank too, although by now his face was burning like fire. But in his body he was still cold, and a special, joyful, yet somewhat tormenting unrest was in his limbs. His words rushed ahead of themselves; he misspoke often and passed over it with a dismissive movement of the hand. Joachim, too, was in an animated mood, and their conversation went all the more freely and cheerfully because the humming, tapping lady had quite suddenly risen and gone away. They gesticulated with their forks while eating, assumed important expressions with a bite in their cheek, laughed, nodded, lifted their shoulders, and had not properly swallowed before they were speaking on. Joachim wanted to hear about Hamburg and had brought the conversation around to the planned regulation of the Elbe.

"Epoch-making!" said Hans Castorp. "Epoch-making for the development of our shipping - not to be overestimated. We are putting fifty million into the budget for it as an immediate one-time expenditure, and you may be convinced that we know exactly what we are doing."

Nevertheless, for all the importance he attached to the regulation of the Elbe, he immediately jumped away from this subject again and demanded that Joachim tell him more about life "up here" and about the guests, which happened readily enough, since Joachim was glad to relieve himself and communicate. The business about the corpses that were sent down the bobsled run he had to repeat, and once more expressly assure him that it was based on truth. Since Hans Castorp was again seized by laughter, he laughed too, which he seemed to enjoy heartily, and let him hear other comic things, in order to feed the exuberance. There was a lady sitting at his table, by the name of Frau Stöhr, rather ill, incidentally, the wife of a musician from Cannstatt - she was the most uneducated creature he had ever encountered. She said "disinfiskate" - and in full earnest. And she called the assistant Krokowski the "fomulus." One had to swallow that without twisting one's face. Besides, she was addicted to gossip, as most people up here were, and she said of another lady, Frau Iltis, that she wore a "sterilet." "She calls it a sterilet - that is priceless!" And half reclining, thrown back against the backs of their chairs, they laughed so much that their bellies shook and both got hiccups almost at the same time.

In between, Joachim became sorrowful and remembered his lot.

"Yes, here we sit and laugh," he said with a pained face, and now and then interrupted by the shocks of his diaphragm; "and meanwhile there is no telling when I shall get away from here, for when Behrens says another half year, then that is calculated narrowly; one must be prepared for more. But it is hard, say yourself whether it is not sad for me. There I had already been accepted, and next month I could be taking my officer's examination. And now I loiter about here with the thermometer in my mouth and count the blunders of this uneducated Frau Stöhr and miss my time. A year plays such a role at our age; down below in life it brings so many changes and advances with it. And I must stagnate here like a water hole - yes, just like a foul pond, it is by no means too harsh a comparison…"

Strangely enough, Hans Castorp answered this only by asking whether one could actually get porter here, and when his cousin looked at him in some astonishment, he saw that the other was in the act of falling asleep - in fact, he was already asleep.

"But you are asleep!" said Joachim. "Come, it is time to go to bed, for both of us."

"There is no time at all," said Hans Castorp with a heavy tongue. But he went along nevertheless, somewhat bent and stiff-legged, like a man being almost pulled to the floor by weariness - yet he violently pulled himself together when, in the only dimly lit hall, he heard Joachim say:

"There sits Krokowski. I think I must quickly introduce you."

Dr. Krokowski was sitting in the light, by the fireplace of one of the conversation rooms, right beside the open sliding door, and reading a newspaper. He stood up when the young men approached him and Joachim said in military posture:

"May I, please, introduce my cousin Castorp from Hamburg, Doctor. He has only just arrived."

Dr. Krokowski greeted the new housemate with a certain cheerful, sturdy, and encouraging heartiness, as if he meant to indicate that face to face with him every embarrassment was superfluous and only joyful confidence was in place. He was about thirty-five years old, broad-shouldered, fat, considerably shorter than the two standing before him, so that he had to lay his head back at an angle in order to look into their faces - and extraordinarily pale, of a translucent, indeed phosphorescent pallor, which was heightened still further by the dark glow of his eyes, the blackness of his brows, and his rather long full beard ending in two points, which already showed a couple of white threads. He wore a black, double-breasted sack suit, already somewhat worn, black openwork, sandal-like low shoes with thick gray woolen socks, and a soft, falling collar of the kind Hans Castorp had until then seen only on a photographer in Danzig, and which in fact gave Dr. Krokowski's appearance a studio-like stamp. Smiling cordially, so that the yellowish teeth became visible in his beard, he shook the young man's hand and, in a baritone voice and with somewhat foreign, dragging accents, said:

"Welcome among us, Herr Castorp! May you settle in quickly and feel at ease in our midst. You come to us as a patient, if I may permit myself the question?"

It was touching to see how Hans Castorp labored to show himself polite and master his sleepiness. He was annoyed at being in such poor form and, with the suspicious self-consciousness of young people, saw signs of indulgent mockery in the assistant's smile and encouraging manner. He answered by speaking of the three weeks, mentioned his examination as well, and added that, thank God, he was entirely healthy.

"Truly?" asked Dr. Krokowski, thrusting his head obliquely forward as if teasing and strengthening his smile… "But then you are a phenomenon highly worthy of study! I, namely, have never yet encountered an entirely healthy person. What examination did you take, if the question is allowed?"

"I am an engineer, Doctor," Hans Castorp answered with modest dignity.

"Ah, engineer!" And Dr. Krokowski's smile seemed to withdraw, for the moment losing something of its force and heartiness. "That is sturdy work. And so you will take no medical treatment here of any kind, neither in a physical nor in a psychical respect?"

"No, I thank you a thousand times!" said Hans Castorp, and almost stepped back.

Then Dr. Krokowski's smile broke forth victoriously again, and as he shook the young man's hand anew he cried in a loud voice:

"Well then, sleep well, Herr Castorp - in the full feeling of your irreproachable health! Sleep well, and until we meet again!" - With that he dismissed the young men and sat down again to his newspaper.

The elevator was no longer attended, and so they covered the stairs on foot, silent and somewhat confused by the encounter with Dr. Krokowski. Joachim accompanied Hans Castorp to Number Thirty-four, where the limping man had duly delivered the newcomer's luggage, and they chatted for another quarter of an hour while Hans Castorp unpacked his night things and washing things and smoked a thick, mild cigarette with it. He did not get to the cigar today, which seemed strange and extraordinary to him.

"He looks very important," he said, spurting out the inhaled smoke as he spoke. "Wax-pale he is. But with his chaussure, listen, things stand horribly. Gray woolen socks and then those sandals. Was he actually offended at the end?"

"He is somewhat sensitive," Joachim admitted. "You should not have rejected medical treatment so brusquely, at least not the psychical. He does not like it when one evades that. He is not especially well-disposed toward me either, because I do not confide enough in him. But now and then I do tell him a dream, so that he has something to dissect."

"Well, then I have simply hit him on the head," said Hans Castorp peevishly; for it made him dissatisfied with himself to have offended someone, and so weariness came over him again with renewed strength.

"Good night," he said. "I am falling over."

"I will fetch you for breakfast at eight," said Joachim, and went.

Hans Castorp made only a hurried night toilet. Sleep overpowered him scarcely after he had extinguished the little bedside lamp, but he started up once more when he remembered that someone had died in this bed the day before yesterday. "It will not have been the first time," he said to himself, as if that could serve to calm him. "It is simply a deathbed, an ordinary deathbed." And he fell asleep.

But as soon as he had fallen asleep, he began to dream, and dreamed almost without interruption until the next morning. Chiefly he saw Joachim Ziemßen, in a strangely contorted position, riding down an inclined track on a bobsled. He was as phosphorescently pale as Dr. Krokowski, and in front sat the gentleman rider, who looked very indistinct, like someone one had merely heard coughing, and steered. "That makes no difference to us at all - to us up here," said the contorted Joachim, and then it was he, not the gentleman rider, who coughed in such a gruesomely mushy way. At this Hans Castorp had to weep bitterly and saw that he must run to the pharmacy to get himself some cold cream. But on the way Frau Iltis was sitting with a pointed snout and holding something in her hand that was evidently supposed to be her "sterilet," but was nothing more than a safety razor. This made Hans Castorp laugh again, and so he was tossed back and forth between various emotions until morning grayed through his half-open balcony door and woke him.