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Teasing. Viaticum. Interrupted Merriment

"Very nice man," said Hans Castorp, after they had exchanged friendly greetings with the limping concierge, who was sorting letters in his lodge, and had stepped through the portal into the open air. The portal lay on the southeast flank of the whitewashed building, whose central part rose one story above the two wings and was crowned by a short clock tower roofed with slate-colored sheet iron. One did not touch the fenced garden when one left the house here, but was at once in the open, facing slanting mountain meadows, scattered with isolated, moderately high firs and dwarf pines crouched low against the ground. The path they took - actually the only one that came into consideration, apart from the carriage road falling toward the valley - led them, gently rising, to the left past the rear of the sanatorium, the kitchen and service side, where iron refuse bins stood at the railings of the cellar stairs, continued a good stretch farther in the same direction, then described a sharp elbow and led more steeply to the right up the thinly wooded slope. It was a hard, reddish-colored path, still somewhat damp, along whose edge blocks of stone lay here and there. The cousins by no means found themselves alone on the promenade. Guests who had finished breakfast just after them followed close at their heels, and whole groups, on their way back, came toward them with the stamping steps of people descending.

"Very nice man!" Hans Castorp repeated. "He has such a brisk way of talking; it amused me to listen to him. 'Mercury cigar' for 'thermometer' is excellent; I understood it at once… But now I am going to light a real one," he said, stopping. "I cannot stand it any longer! Since yesterday noon I have not smoked anything proper… Excuse me a moment!" And from his automobile-leather case, ornamented with a silver monogram, he took a specimen of Maria Mancini, a handsome specimen from the top layer, flattened on one side as he especially loved it, clipped the tip with a little angular-cutting instrument that he wore on his watch chain, let his pocket lighter flare up, and set the rather long cigar, blunt in front, burning with several devoted puffs. "There!" he said. "Now as far as I am concerned we can continue the pleasure stroll. Naturally you do not smoke, from sheer beer-zeal."

"I never smoke anyway," Joachim replied. "Why should I smoke here of all places?"

"I do not understand that!" said Hans Castorp. "I do not understand how anyone can fail to smoke - he is, so to speak, depriving himself of the best part of life and in any case of a quite eminent pleasure! When I wake up, I look forward to being able to smoke during the day, and when I eat, I look forward to it again; yes, I can say that I really eat only in order to be able to smoke afterward, though of course I am exaggerating a little. But a day without tobacco would be for me the height of staleness, a completely bleak and charm-free day, and if in the morning I had to say to myself: today there will be nothing to smoke - I believe I would not even find the courage to get up, truly, I would stay lying down. You see: if one has a well-burning cigar - naturally it must not draw false air or draw badly, that is irritating in the highest degree - I mean: if one has a good cigar, then one is actually sheltered, literally nothing can happen to one. It is exactly as when one lies by the sea; then one is simply lying by the sea, is one not, and needs nothing further, neither work nor entertainment… Thank God people smoke throughout the world; it is nowhere unknown, so far as I know, wherever one might perhaps be driven. Even the polar explorers equip themselves amply with smoking supplies for their hardships, and that has always touched me sympathetically when I read it. For one can be doing very badly - let us assume, for example, that things were miserable with me; but as long as I still had my cigar, I could bear it, that I know, it would carry me over."

"All the same, it is a bit slack," said Joachim, "that you are so attached to it. Behrens is quite right: you are a civilian - he probably meant it more as praise, but you are a hopeless civilian, that is the matter. Besides, you are healthy and can do what you like," he said, and his eyes grew tired.

"Yes, healthy except for the anemia," said Hans Castorp. "It was fairly strong, the way he told me I look green. But it is true; I have noticed myself that compared with you people up here I am positively green; at home I did not notice it so much. And then it is nice of him, too, to give me advice so readily, quite sine pecunia, as he puts it. I shall gladly make up my mind to do as he says and adapt myself entirely to your way of life - what else should I do among you up here, after all, and it can do no harm if, in God's name, I put on protein, though it does sound somewhat disgusting, you must admit that."

Joachim coughed a few times as they walked - the incline did seem to be straining him. When he began for the third time, he stopped with knitted brows. "You go on ahead," he said. Hans Castorp hastened to continue and did not look around. Then he slowed his step and at last almost stopped, since it seemed to him that he must have gained a considerable lead over Joachim. But he did not look around.

A troop of guests of both sexes came toward him - he had seen them up above, halfway up the slope, coming along the level path; now they were stamping downward, straight toward him, and letting their various voices be heard. There were six or seven persons of mixed ages, some very young, a couple already somewhat further on in years. He looked at them with his head inclined sideways while he thought of Joachim. They were bareheaded and brown, the ladies in colored sweaters, the gentlemen mostly without overcoats and even without sticks, like people who, without ceremony and with their hands in their pockets, take a few steps in front of the house. Since they were going downhill, which demands no seriously sustained exertion but only a merry braking and bracing of the legs so that one does not start running and stumbling, indeed actually nothing more than a letting-oneself-fall, their gait had something winged and light-minded about it, which communicated itself to their expressions, to their whole appearance, so that one might well wish to belong to them.

Now they were upon him; Hans Castorp saw their faces exactly. They were not all browned; two ladies stood out by their pallor: one thin as a stick and ivory of countenance, the other smaller and fat, disfigured by liver spots. They all looked at him with a shared, bold smile. A long young girl in a green sweater, with badly dressed hair and stupid, only half-open eyes, brushed close past Hans Castorp, almost touching him with her arm. And as she did so she whistled… No, that was insane! She whistled at him, yet not with her mouth, which she did not purse at all; on the contrary, she kept it tightly closed. It whistled out of her while she looked at him, stupidly and with half-closed eyes - an extraordinarily unpleasant whistle, rough, sharp and yet hollow, drawn out and falling in pitch toward the end, so that it reminded one of the music of those fairground rubber pigs that plaintively let out their blown-in air and collapse; somehow and incomprehensibly it came forth from her chest, and then she and her company were past.

Hans Castorp stood rigid and stared into the distance. Then he turned hastily around and understood at least this much, that the abomination must have been a joke, a prearranged bit of fooling; for he saw by the shoulders of those withdrawing that they were laughing, and a stocky youth with thick lips, who, both hands in his trouser pockets, held his jacket drawn up in a rather indecorous fashion, even turned his head openly toward him and laughed… Joachim had come up. He greeted the group by almost coming to attention, according to his chivalrous habit, and bowing with heels drawn together; then, with gentle eyes, he stepped to his cousin.

"What sort of face are you making?" he asked.

"She whistled!" Hans Castorp answered. "She whistled out of her belly when she passed me; will you explain that to me?"

"Oh," said Joachim, and laughed dismissively. "Not out of her belly, nonsense. That was Kleefeld, Hermine Kleefeld; she whistles with her pneumothorax."

"With what?" asked Hans Castorp. He was extraordinarily agitated and did not quite know in what sense. He wavered between laughter and tears as he added: "You cannot expect me to understand your thieves' jargon."

"Come along, then!" said Joachim. "I can explain it to you while we walk. You are rooted to the spot! It is something surgical, as you can imagine, an operation that is often performed up here. Behrens has great practice in it… When one lung is very badly affected, you understand, but the other is healthy or comparatively healthy, then the sick one is relieved of its activity for a while, to spare it… That is: one is cut open here, somewhere here at the side - I do not know the exact place, of course, but Behrens has it splendidly in hand. And then gas is let into one, nitrogen, you know, and in this way the caseous lung-wing is put out of service. Naturally the gas does not last long; about twice a month it has to be renewed - one is, as it were, filled up, that is how you must picture it. And if that goes on for a year or longer, and all goes well, the lung may be healed through rest. Not always, of course; indeed it is probably even a daring business. But good successes are said to have been achieved with pneumothorax. All the people you just saw have it. Frau Iltis was there too - the one with the liver spots - and Fraulein Levi, the thin one, you remember, she lay in bed for so long. They have found one another, for something like pneumothorax naturally binds people together, and they call themselves the 'Half-Lung Association'; they are known by that name. But the pride of the association is Hermine Kleefeld, because she can whistle with her pneumothorax - that is a gift of hers; by no means can everyone do it. How she manages it I cannot tell you either; she herself cannot describe it clearly. But when she has walked fast, then she can whistle out of her interior, and naturally she uses that to frighten people, especially the newly arrived patients. I believe, incidentally, that she wastes nitrogen doing it, for she has to be filled up every week."

Now Hans Castorp laughed; his agitation, at Joachim's words, had decided in favor of merriment, and as, while walking, he covered his eyes with his hand and bent forward, his shoulders were shaken by a quick and quiet giggling.

"Are they registered too?" he asked, and speaking did not come easily to him; from restrained laughter it sounded tearful and softly wailing. "Do they have statutes? A pity you are not a member, you; then they could admit me as an honorary guest or as a… drinking companion… You ought to ask Behrens to put you partly out of service. Perhaps you would be able to whistle too if you set your mind to it; after all, it must be learnable… That is the funniest thing I have ever heard in my life!" he said, sighing deeply. "Yes, forgive me for speaking of it that way, but they themselves are in the best of spirits, your pneumatic friends! How they came along… And to think that it was the 'Half-Lung Association'! 'Tiuu,' she whistles at me - a mad person! But that is sheer high spirits! Why are they so high-spirited, tell me, will you explain that?"

Joachim searched for an answer. "God," he said, "they are so free… I mean, they are young people, after all, and time plays no role for them, and then perhaps they die. Why should they make serious faces? I sometimes think: illness and dying are not really serious; they are more a kind of loafing about. Strictly speaking, seriousness exists only in life down below. I believe you will understand that in time, once you have been up here longer."

"Certainly," said Hans Castorp. "I even believe it certainly. I have already taken a great deal of interest in you people up here, and when one is interested, is one not, then understanding comes of itself… But what is the matter with me - it does not taste good!" he said, and looked at his cigar. "I have been asking myself the whole time what is wrong with me, and now I notice that it is Maria that does not taste good. It tastes like papier-mache, I assure you; it is just as if one had a completely spoiled stomach. That is incomprehensible! I ate an unusually large breakfast, to be sure, but that cannot be the reason, because when one has eaten too much, it first tastes especially good. Do you think it can come from my having slept so restlessly? Perhaps I have been thrown out of order by that. No, I absolutely must throw it away!" he said after a new attempt. "Every draw is a disappointment; there is no point in forcing it." And after hesitating another moment, he threw the cigar down the slope among the damp conifer scrub. "Do you know what, in my conviction, it is connected with?" he asked… "In my firm conviction it is connected with this damned heat in my face, which I have been laboring under again since getting up. The devil knows, I always feel as though my face were red with shame… Did you have that too when you arrived?"

"Yes," said Joachim. "I felt rather strange at first too. Do not worry about it! I told you it is not so easy to settle in with us. But you will come back into order. See, the bench is nicely placed. Let us sit down a little, and then go home; I have to be in the rest cure."

The path had become level. It now ran in the direction of Platz Davos, about a third of the way up the slope, and through high, narrow-grown and wind-crooked pines it granted a view of the village, which lay whitish in brighter light. The simply built bench on which they sat leaned against the steep mountain wall. Beside them, water fell gurgling and splashing down toward the valley in an open wooden channel.

Joachim wanted to instruct his cousin about the names of the clouded Alpine heads that seemed to close the valley in the south, pointing to them with the tip of his mountain stick. But Hans Castorp looked over only fleetingly; he sat bent forward, drew figures in the sand with the ferrule of his city cane, mounted in silver, and wanted to know something else.

"What I wanted to ask you -" he began… "The case in my room had just departed, then, when I arrived. Have there been many deaths otherwise since you have been up here?"

"Several certainly," Joachim answered. "But they are handled discreetly, you understand; one learns nothing about them, or only occasionally, later. It all goes on in the strictest secrecy when someone dies, out of consideration for the patients and particularly for the ladies, who otherwise would easily have attacks. If someone dies next to you, you do not notice at all. And the coffin is brought very early in the morning, when you are still asleep, and the person in question is fetched away only at such times too, for example during meals."

"Hm," said Hans Castorp, and went on drawing. "So that sort of thing goes on behind the scenes."

"Yes, one can put it that way. But recently, it is now - wait a moment - possibly eight weeks ago -"

"Then you cannot say recently," Hans Castorp observed dryly and watchfully.

"What? Well then, not recently. You are precise. I only guessed the number. So, some time ago, I did once look behind the scenes, purely by chance; I remember it as though it were today. That was when they brought little Hujus, a Catholic, Barbara Hujus, the viaticum, the sacrament for the dying, you know, the last unction. She was still up when I arrived here, and she could be exuberantly merry, so silly, quite like a schoolgirl. But then it went rapidly with her; she no longer got up; she lay three rooms from mine, and her parents came, and now the priest came as well. He came while everyone was at tea, in the afternoon; there was not a soul in the corridors. But imagine, I had overslept; I had fallen asleep in the main rest cure and had missed the gong and was a quarter of an hour late. So at the decisive moment I was not where everyone else was, but had got behind the scenes, as you say; and as I go along the corridor, there they come toward me, in lace shirts and with a cross in front, a golden cross with lanterns; one carried it ahead like the Turkish crescent before Janissary music."

"That is no comparison," said Hans Castorp, not without severity.

"It seemed so to me. I was involuntarily reminded of it. But just listen further. So they come toward me, march, march, at quick step, three of them, if I am not mistaken; first the man with the cross, then the cleric, with spectacles on his nose, and then another boy with a little censer. The cleric held the viaticum to his breast; it was covered, and he held his head quite humbly tilted to one side, since it is their holiest of holies."

"Precisely for that reason," said Hans Castorp. "Precisely for that reason I am surprised that you care to speak of a Turkish crescent."

"Yes, yes. But just wait; if you had been there, you would not know what sort of face to make in recollection either. It was something one could dream of -"

"In what respect?"

"In the following way. So I ask myself how I have to behave under these circumstances. I had no hat on to take off -"

"You see!" Hans Castorp interrupted him quickly once more. "You see that one ought to have a hat on! Naturally it struck me that none of you wear one up here. But one should put one on so that one can take it off on occasions where it is fitting. But what next?"

"I placed myself against the wall," said Joachim, "in a proper posture, and bowed a little when they reached me - it was just in front of little Hujus's room, number twenty-eight. I believe the cleric was pleased that I greeted him; he thanked me very politely and took off his cap. But at the same time they were already stopping, and the altar boy with the censer knocked, and then he opened the door and let his chief go first into the room. And now imagine it, and picture my horror and my feelings! At the moment when the priest set his foot across the threshold, a hue and cry began in there, shrieking, you have never heard anything like it, three, four times in succession, and after that screaming without pause or break, from a wide-open mouth apparently, ahhh, there was such misery in it and such terror and contradiction that it cannot be described, and such dreadful begging in between too, and all at once it turned hollow and muffled, as though it had sunk into the earth and were coming from deep in the cellar."

Hans Castorp had turned violently toward his cousin. "Was that Hujus?" he asked, indignant. "And how do you mean: 'from the cellar'?"

"She had crawled under the covers!" said Joachim. "Imagine my feelings! The cleric stood close to the threshold and spoke soothing words; I can still see him, he kept pushing his head forward as he did it and then drawing it back again. The cross-bearer and the altar boy were still standing in the doorway and could not enter. And I could see into the room between them. It is a room like yours and mine, the bed stands to the left of the door along the side wall, and at the head of it people were standing, her relatives of course, the parents, and were also speaking soothingly down at the bed; one saw nothing but a shapeless mass in it that begged and protested horribly and kicked with its legs."

"Do you say that she kicked with her legs?"

"With all her strength! But it did her no good; she had to have the sacrament for the dying. The priest went toward her, and the other two entered as well, and the door was pulled shut. But before that I still saw: Hujus's head came into view for one second, with tangled light-blond hair, and stared at the priest with eyes torn wide open, such pale eyes, wholly without color, and with Ah and Huh she shot back under the sheet."

"And you are only telling me this now?" said Hans Castorp after a pause. "I do not understand why you did not bring it up last evening. But, my God, she must still have had a lot of strength, the way she defended herself. That takes strength. One ought not to have the priest called before someone is quite weak."

"She was weak too," Joachim replied. "… Ah, there would be much to tell; it is hard to make the first selection… Weak she certainly was; it was only fear that gave her so much strength. She was simply terribly frightened because she noticed she was supposed to die. She was a young girl, after all; in the end one must excuse it. But men sometimes carry on like that too, which of course is an unpardonable slackness. Behrens, incidentally, knows how to deal with them; he has the right tone in such cases."

"What kind of tone?" asked Hans Castorp with knitted brows.

"'Do not carry on so!' he says," Joachim answered. "At least he said it recently to one of them - we know it from the head nurse, who was there and helped hold the dying man down. He was one of those who, at the very last, made a hideous scene and absolutely did not want to die. Then Behrens snapped at him: 'Kindly do not carry on so!' he said, and at once the patient became quiet and died quite calmly."

Hans Castorp struck his thigh with his hand and flung himself against the back of the bench, looking up to heaven.

"Now listen, that is strong!" he cried. "He goes at him and simply says to him: 'Do not carry on so!' To a dying man! That is strong! A dying man is, after all, in a certain sense venerable. One cannot just, without further ado… A dying man is, so to speak, holy, I should think!"

"I do not deny that," said Joachim. "But if he nevertheless behaves in such a slack way…"

"No!" Hans Castorp insisted, with a vehemence out of all proportion to the resistance offered him. "I will not be talked out of it, that a dying man is something nobler than just some lout who walks about and laughs and earns money and stuffs his belly! That will not do -" and his voice wavered most strangely. "That will not do, treating him just without further ado -" and his words were choked by the laughter that seized him and overwhelmed him, the laughter from yesterday, a deep-upwelling, body-shaking, boundless laughter that closed his eyes and pressed tears out between the lids.

"Pst!" Joachim suddenly made. "Be quiet!" he whispered, and secretly nudged the helplessly laughing man in the side. Hans Castorp looked up in tears.

On the path from the left a stranger was approaching, a dainty brunette gentleman with a beautifully twisted black mustache and in light-check trousers, who, having come up, exchanged a morning greeting with Joachim - his own was precise and resonant - and, with crossed feet, leaning on his cane, stopped before him in a graceful posture.