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Sharpness of Thought

But Joachim could answer only with hindrance and indistinctly now. From a red-leather, velvet-lined case that lay on his table he had taken a small thermometer and put the lower end, filled with mercury, into his mouth. He held it under his tongue on the left, so that the glass instrument projected obliquely upward from his mouth. Then he made his indoor toilette, put on shoes and a litewka-like jacket, took from the table a printed chart together with a pencil, furthermore a book, a Russian grammar - for he was studying Russian because, as he said, he hoped for professional advantage from it - and, so equipped, took his place outside on the balcony in the reclining chair, throwing a camel's-hair blanket only lightly over his feet.

It was scarcely necessary: already during the last quarter of an hour the layer of cloud had grown thinner and thinner, and the sun broke through, so summery warm and dazzling that Joachim protected his head with a white linen shade, which by means of a small, ingenious device could be fastened to the arm of the chair and adjusted according to the position of the sun. Hans Castorp praised this invention. He wanted to await the result of the measuring and meanwhile watched how everything was done, also examined the fur sack that leaned in a corner of the loggia (Joachim used it on cold days), and, elbows on the balustrade, looked down into the garden, where the general reclining hall was now populated by patients stretched out reading, writing, and chatting. Incidentally, one saw only part of the interior, about five chairs.

"But how long does it take?" asked Hans Castorp, turning around.

Joachim raised seven fingers.

"They must be up by now - seven minutes!"

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

"Yes, if one watches it, time, then it passes very slowly. I am really rather fond of measuring, four times a day, because one does notice in doing it what it actually is: a minute, or even seven whole ones - while here one knocks the seven days of the week about one's ears so dreadfully."

"You say 'actually.' You cannot say 'actually,'" replied Hans Castorp. He was sitting with one thigh on the balustrade, and the whites of his eyes were veined red. "Time is not 'actual' at all, really. If it seems long to one, then it is long, and if it seems short to one, then it is short; but how long or short it is in reality, nobody knows." He was by no means accustomed to philosophizing, and nevertheless felt the urge to do so.

Joachim contradicted him.

"How so? No. We measure it, after all. We have clocks and calendars, and when a month is over, then it is over for you and me and all of us."

"Then pay attention," said Hans Castorp, and even held his index finger beside his clouded eyes. "A minute, then, is as long as it seems to you when you are measuring?"

"A minute is as long… it lasts as long as the second hand needs to describe its circle."

"But it needs quite different lengths of time - for our feeling! And actually… I say: taken actually," Hans Castorp repeated, pressing his index finger so firmly against his nose that he bent its tip completely aside, "that is a movement, a spatial movement, is it not? Stop, wait! So we measure time with space. But that is just as if we wanted to measure space by time - which only quite unscientific people do. From Hamburg to Davos is twenty hours - yes, by railway. But on foot, how long is it then? And in thought? Not a second!"

"Listen," said Joachim, "what is the matter with you? I believe it is attacking you here with us?"

"Be quiet! I am very sharp in the head today. What is time, then?" asked Hans Castorp, bending the tip of his nose so violently to the side that it turned white and bloodless. "Will you tell me that? We perceive space with our organs, with the sense of sight and the sense of touch. Fine. But what is our time organ? Will you just tell me that? You see, there you are stuck. But how are we to measure something of which, strictly speaking, we know absolutely nothing, cannot state one single property! We say: time runs off. Fine, let it run off then. But in order to be able to measure it… wait! In order to be measurable, it would have to run off uniformly, and where is it written that it does that? For our consciousness it does not; we merely assume for the sake of order that it does, and our measures are only convention, allow me…"

"Good," said Joachim, "then it is probably only convention too that I have four marks too many here on my thermometer! But because of these five marks I have to lounge about here and cannot do service, and that is a disgusting fact!"

"You have 37.5?"

"It is already going down again." And Joachim made the entry in his chart. "Last evening it was almost 38; your arrival caused that. Everyone who gets a visitor has a rise. But it is still a blessing."

"I am going now too," said Hans Castorp. "I still have a mass of thoughts about time in my head - a whole complex, I can well say. But I do not want to excite you with it now, since you have too many marks as it is. I shall remember it all, and we can come back to it later, perhaps after breakfast. When it is breakfast time, will you call me? I am going into the rest cure now too; thank God, it does not hurt." And with that he went past the glass partition into his own loggia, where a reclining chair together with a little table had likewise been set up, fetched Ocean Steamships and his handsome, soft plaid, checked dark red and green, from the cleanly tidied room, and settled down.

He too soon had to open the shade; as soon as one was lying down, the sunburn became unbearable. But one lay extraordinarily comfortably, as Hans Castorp at once established with pleasure - he did not remember ever having encountered so agreeable a reclining chair. The frame, a little old-fashioned in form - which, however, was only a playful matter of taste, for the chair was plainly new - consisted of red-brown polished wood, and a mattress with a soft calico-like cover, actually composed of three high cushions, reached from the foot end up over the backrest. In addition, by means of a cord, a neck roll, neither too firm nor too yielding, with an embroidered linen cover, was fastened to it and had a particularly beneficial effect. Hans Castorp supported one arm on the broad, smooth surface of the side rest, blinked, and rested, without calling upon Ocean Steamships for his entertainment. Seen through the arches of the loggia, the hard and meager but brightly sunlit landscape outside had an effect like a painting and as if framed. Hans Castorp looked at it thoughtfully. Suddenly something occurred to him, and he said aloud into the silence:

"It was a dwarf woman who served us at first breakfast."

"Pst," Joachim made. "Quietly, do. Yes, a dwarf woman. And?"

"Nothing. We had not yet spoken about it."

And then he went on dreaming. It had already been ten o'clock when he lay down. An hour passed. It was an ordinary hour, neither long nor short. When it had flowed away, a gong sounded through house and garden, first distant, then nearer, then distant again.

"Breakfast," said Joachim, and one heard him get up.

Hans Castorp too ended the rest cure for this time and went into the room to set himself a little to rights. The cousins met in the corridor and went down. Hans Castorp said:

"Well, one did lie splendidly. What kind of chairs are those? If they can be bought here, I shall take one with me to Hamburg; one lies on them as if in heaven. Or do you think Behrens has had them made specially according to his instructions?"

Joachim did not know that. They laid their things aside and entered the dining hall for the second time, where the meal was already once more in full swing.

The hall shimmered white with sheer milk: at every place stood a large glass, probably half a liter full.

"No," said Hans Castorp, when he had again taken his place at the end of his table between the seamstress and the Englishwoman and had submissively unfolded his napkin, although he was still so heavily burdened by first breakfast. "No," he said, "God help me, I cannot drink milk at all, and least of all now. Is there perhaps porter?" And he first turned politely and delicately to the dwarf woman with this question. Unfortunately there was none. But she promised to bring Kulmbach beer and brought it too. It was thick, black, brown-foaming, and made up for the porter in the best possible way. Hans Castorp drank thirstily from a tall half-liter glass. He ate cold sliced meat with it on toast. Oatmeal porridge had been set out again, and again much butter and fruit. He at least let his eyes rest on it, since he was not capable of taking any of it in. He also examined the company of guests - the masses were beginning to divide for him; individual persons emerged.

His own table was complete, except for the upper place opposite him, which, as he was informed, was the doctor's place. For the doctors, whenever their time in any way permitted it, took part in the common meals and changed tables while doing so: at each one such a doctor's place was kept free at the top. Now neither of them was present; they were said to be at an operation. Again the young man with the mustache came in, lowered his chin once to his chest, and sat down with a worried, closed expression. Again the light-blond, thin girl sat in her place and spooned yogurt as if it were her only food. Beside her this time sat a small, lively old lady, who spoke in the Russian tongue to the silent young man, who looked at her worriedly and answered only by nodding his head, while making that face as though he had something bad-tasting in his mouth. Opposite him, on the other side of the old lady, another young girl was placed - she was pretty, of blooming complexion and high breast, with chestnut-brown hair pleasantly arranged in waves, round, brown, childlike eyes, and a small ruby on her beautiful hand. She laughed a great deal and likewise spoke Russian, only Russian. Her name was Marusja, as Hans Castorp heard. Furthermore he noticed in passing that Joachim lowered his eyes with a stern expression whenever she laughed and spoke.

Settembrini appeared through the side entrance and strode, mustache curling, to his place, which lay at the end of the table that stood diagonally before Hans Castorp's. His table companions burst into ringing laughter as he sat down; he had probably said something malicious. Hans Castorp also recognized the members of the "Half-Lung Association" again. Hermine Kleefeld shoved along with stupid eyes to her table over there before one of the veranda doors and greeted the thick-lipped youth who earlier had drawn up his jacket so indecorously. The ivory-colored Levi sat beside the fat, liver-spotted Iltis among unknown people at the crosswise table to Hans Castorp's right.

"There are your neighbors," Joachim said softly to his cousin, bending forward… The pair went close past Hans Castorp to the last table on the right, the "Bad Russian table," then, where a family with an ugly boy was already devouring great heaps of porridge. The man was of slight build and had gray, hollow cheeks. He wore a brown leather jacket and, on his feet, clumsy felt boots with buckle fastenings. His wife, likewise small and dainty, in a bobbing feather hat, tripped along on tiny, high-heeled Russia-leather boots; an unclean boa of bird feathers lay about her neck. Hans Castorp examined the two of them with a ruthlessness otherwise foreign to him and which he himself felt to be brutal; but it was precisely the brutality of it that suddenly gave him a certain pleasure. His eyes were at once dull and intrusive. When at that same moment the glass door on the left fell shut, crashing and clattering as at first breakfast, he did not start as he had this morning, but only cut a sluggish grimace; and when he wanted to turn his head in that direction, he found that this was much too difficult and not worth the trouble. Thus it came about that this time too he did not succeed in establishing who was handling the door so slovenly.

The matter was that the breakfast beer, otherwise of only moderately befogging effect on his nature, today completely stunned and paralyzed the young man - it produced consequences as though he had received a blow to the forehead. His lids were as heavy as lead, his tongue did not properly obey the simple thought when out of politeness he tried to chat with the Englishwoman; even merely changing the direction of his gaze required great self-overcoming, and in addition the abominable burning in his face had now fully reached yesterday's degree again: his cheeks seemed to him swollen with heat, he breathed heavily, his heart beat like a wrapped hammer, and if under all this he did not suffer especially, that was because his head was in a condition as though he had taken two or three breaths of chloroform. That Dr. Krokowski did after all appear at breakfast and take his place at his table opposite him, he noticed only as in a dream, although the doctor repeatedly fixed him with a sharp eye while conversing in Russian with the ladies to his right - at which the young girls, namely blooming Marusja as well as the thin yogurt-eater, submissively and modestly lowered their eyes before him. Incidentally, Hans Castorp held himself honorably, as goes without saying, preferred to keep silent since his tongue showed itself rebellious, and handled knife and fork even with particular propriety. When his cousin nodded to him and rose, he stood up likewise, bowed blindly toward his table companions, and went with a determined step out behind Joachim.

"When is the next rest cure?" he asked as they left the house. "That is the best thing here, so far as I can see. I wish I were already lying on my excellent chair again. Are we going for a long walk?"