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The Thermometer

Hans Castorp's week here ran from Tuesday to Tuesday, for he had, of course, arrived on a Tuesday. That he had settled his second weekly bill at the office was already a few days behind him - the modest weekly bill of about 160 francs, modest and cheap in his judgment, even if one did not take into account at all, precisely because they were beyond price, the priceless things involved in the stay up here, nor certain offerings that could well have been calculated if one had wished, such as, for example, the fortnightly cure music and Dr. Krokowski's lectures, but solely and exclusively the actual board and innkeeping service, the comfortable lodging, the five overpowering meals.

"It is not much; it is rather cheap, you cannot complain that they overcharge you up here," said the visitor to the settled resident. "So you need about 650 francs a month for lodging and food, and medical treatment is already included in that. Good. Suppose you throw away another thirty francs a month on tips, if you are decent and set store by friendly faces. That makes 680 francs. Good. You will tell me there are still expenses and fees. One has outlays for drinks, for toiletries, for cigars, one makes an excursion now and then, a carriage drive if you like, and from time to time there is a shoemaker's or tailor's bill. Good, but with all that you cannot, with the best will in the world, get rid of even a thousand francs a month! Not even eight hundred marks! That is not even 10,000 marks a year. More it is not, under any circumstances. One lives on that."

"Mental arithmetic commendable," Joachim said. "I had no idea you were so nimble at it. And that you at once set up the annual calculation, I find that large-minded of you; decidedly, you have already learned something up here. Incidentally, you are reckoning too high. I do not smoke cigars, after all, and I hope I shall not have to have suits made for me here either, thank you!"

"So even too high," Hans Castorp said, somewhat confused. But however it had come about that he had charged cigars and new suits to his cousin's account - as far as his agile mental arithmetic was concerned, that was nothing but dazzling appearance and misdirection about his natural gifts. For as in all things, here too he was rather slow and without fire, and his quick survey in this case was no improvisation but rested on preparation, and indeed on written preparation: namely, one evening during the rest cure (for in the evenings now he did lie out after all, since everyone did), Hans Castorp had expressly risen from his excellent reclining chair, following a sudden idea, in order to fetch paper and pencil from his room for reckoning. In this way he had established that his cousin, or rather that one in general, needed all told 12,000 francs per year up here, and for amusement had made inwardly clear to himself that he personally was economically more than equal to life up here, since he might consider himself a man of 18-19,000 francs a year.

His second weekly bill, then, had been settled three days before with thanks and receipt, which is as much as to say that he found himself in the middle of the third and, according to plan, last week of his stay up here. On the coming Sunday he would still experience one of the fortnightly recurring cure concerts here, and on Monday attend one of Dr. Krokowski's lectures, likewise recurring every two weeks - so he told himself and his cousin; but on Tuesday or Wednesday he would travel and leave Joachim alone up here again, poor Joachim, to whom Rhadamanthus had dictated who knew how many more months, and whose gentle black eyes were veiled with melancholy every time there was talk of Hans Castorp's rapidly approaching departure. Yes, great God, where had this holiday time gone! Run off, flown away, escaped - one truly did not know quite how to say it. After all, there had been twenty-one days that they were to live through together, a long row, not easy to survey at the start. And now, all at once, only three or four trifling days of it were left, a not very considerable remnant, somewhat burdened, to be sure, by the two periodic variations of the normal day, but already filled with thoughts of packing and farewell. Three weeks, up here, were as good as nothing - they had all told him so at once. The smallest unit of time here was the month, Settembrini had said, and since Hans Castorp's stay fell below that magnitude, it was simply a nothing of a stay and a flying visit, as Hofrat Behrens had expressed it. Was it perhaps due to the heightened general combustion that time here passed so in the twinkling of an eye? Such rapidity of living was certainly a consolation for Joachim in view of the five months that still lay before him, if five were to suffice. But during these three weeks they should have watched time a little better, as happened during measuring, when the prescribed seven minutes became such a significant span… Hans Castorp felt heartfelt pity for his cousin, in whose eyes one could read the sorrow over the imminent loss of his human companion - felt in fact the strongest pity for him when he considered that the poor fellow was now to remain here continually without him, while he himself lived again in the flatland and was active in the service of traffic technology that bound the nations together: a positively burning pity, painful to the chest at certain moments, and, in short, so lively that he sometimes seriously doubted whether he would be able to bring himself to leave Joachim alone up here. So strongly, then, did pity burn him at times, and this was probably also the reason why he himself, of his own accord, spoke less and less of his departure: it was Joachim who now and then brought the conversation around to it; Hans Castorp, as we said, seemed from natural tact and delicacy to want not to think of it until the last moment.

"Well, at least let us hope," Joachim said, "that you have recovered with us and feel the refreshment when you get down below."

"Yes, then I shall greet everyone," Hans Castorp replied, "and say that you will follow in five months at the latest. Recovered? You mean whether I have recovered in these few days? I should certainly suppose so. A certain recovery must, in the end, have taken place even in so short a time. To be sure, the impressions up here were so novel, novel in every respect, very stimulating, but also strenuous for mind and body; I do not have the feeling that I have already done with them and have acclimatized myself, which would indeed be the precondition of all recovery. Maria, thank God, is the old one; for several days now I have got the taste for her again. But from time to time my handkerchief still turns red when I use it, and the damned heat in my face together with the senseless palpitation of the heart I shall apparently not be rid of before the end either. No, no, in my case one cannot very well speak of acclimatization; how could one after so short a time? It would need longer to acclimatize oneself here and finish with the impressions, and then recovery could begin, and the putting-on of albumen. A pity. I say 'a pity' because it was decidedly a mistake that I did not reserve more time for this stay - in the end it would have been available. As it is, I feel as though down at home in the flatland I shall above all have to recover from the recovery and sleep three weeks, so worn out do I sometimes feel. And now, vexatiously, this catarrh is added…"

For it had begun to look as though Hans Castorp were to arrive again in the flatland with a first-class cold. He had caught cold, probably in the rest cure, and indeed, to hazard another supposition, in the evening rest cure, in which he had participated for about a week in spite of the wet-cold weather that seemed unwilling to improve before his departure. He had learned, however, that it was not acknowledged as bad; the concept of bad weather had no rightful existence at all up here, one feared no weather, hardly took it into account, and with the soft teachableness of youth, its whole readiness to adapt itself to the thoughts and customs of the surroundings into which it happens to have been transported, Hans Castorp had begun to make this indifference his own. If it poured as from buckets, one was not to believe on that account that the air was any less dry. It probably really was not, for as before one's head was made as hot by it as by the air of an overheated room, or as though one had drunk a great deal of wine. As for the cold, which was considerable, there would have been little reason in fleeing from it into one's room; for since it was not snowing, there was no heating, and to sit in the room was in no way more comfortable than to lie in the balcony box, wearing one's winter overcoat and packed according to art in one's two good camel-hair blankets. On the contrary, quite the reverse: the latter was incomparably the more comfortable thing; judged simply, it was the most appealing life situation Hans Castorp could remember ever having tried - a judgment in which he did not let himself be confused by the fact that some writer and Carbonaro called it, with a malicious undertone and secondary meaning, the "horizontal" life situation. Especially in the evening he found it appealing, when beside one on the little table the lamp glowed, and one, warm in the blankets, the Maria, tasting good again, between one's lips and in the enjoyment of all the hard-to-define advantages of the local type of reclining chair, with, admittedly, an icy tip of the nose and a book - it was still Ocean steamships - in the admittedly badly cramped, reddened hands, looked through the arches of the loggia over the darkening valley, ornamented here with scattered lights, there with lights crowded thickly together, from which almost every evening, and for at least an hour, music sounded upward, pleasantly muted, familiarly melodic tones: fragments of opera they were, pieces from Carmen, from The Troubadour, or from Der Freischütz, then well-built, sweeping waltzes, marches at which one turned one's head back and forth high-heartedly, and lively mazurkas. Mazurka? Marusja was her real name, the one with the little ruby, and in the neighboring box, behind the thick frosted-glass wall, lay Joachim - now and then Hans Castorp exchanged a cautious word with him, with full consideration for the other horizontals. Joachim had it just as good in his box as Hans Castorp, even if he was unmusical and did not know how to take such pleasure in the evening concerts. Too bad for him; he was probably reading instead in his Russian grammar. Hans Castorp, however, let Ocean steamships lie on the blanket and listened with heartfelt participation to the music, looked with pleasure into the transparent depth of its texture, and felt such inward delight in a melodic inspiration full of character and mood that in the meantime he remembered Settembrini's statements about music only with hostility, statements as annoying as the one that music was politically suspect - which in fact was not much better than Grandfather Giuseppe's phrase about the July Revolution and the six days of the creation of the world…

Joachim, then, did not partake so much of musical enjoyment, and the spicy entertainment of smoking was foreign to him as well; otherwise, however, he lay just as well sheltered in his box, sheltered and at peace. The day was over; for this time everything was over; one was certain that today nothing more would happen, no disturbances would occur, no demands on the heart muscle would any longer be made. At the same time, however, one was certain that tomorrow all this, with all the probability that arose from the narrowness, favor, and regularity of the circumstances, would be the case again and would begin from the start; and this double certainty and shelter was exceedingly comfortable; together with the music and the recovered spice of Maria, it shaped the evening rest cure for Hans Castorp into a truly happy life situation.

All this, however, had not prevented the visitor and soft newcomer from having thoroughly caught cold in the rest cure (or however and wherever). A heavy cold seemed to be on the way; it sat in his frontal sinus and pressed, the uvula in his throat was sore and raw, the air did not pass as usual through the channel nature had provided for this, but swept cold, obstructed, and unceasingly provoking coughing spasms through it; overnight his voice had assumed the timbre of a dull bass burned as if by strong drink, and according to his statement he had not closed an eye that very night, since a suffocating dryness of the throat had now and again made him start up from the pillow.

"Extremely annoying," Joachim said, "that is, and almost embarrassing. Colds, you must know, are not reçus here; they are denied, officially they do not occur in the great dryness of the air, and as a patient one would get a poor reception from Behrens if one wanted to report oneself as having caught cold. But with you it is different, in the end; you have a right to it. It would be good if we could still cut the catarrh short; down in the flatland they know practices, but here - I doubt whether they will be sufficiently interested in it here. One had better not become ill here; no one troubles about it. That is an old lesson; you are learning it now too, at the very last. When I arrived, there was a lady here who held her ear the whole week and wailed with pain, and finally Behrens looked at it. 'You can be perfectly calm,' he says, 'it is not tubercular.' And there the matter rested. Yes, we must see what can be done. I shall tell the bath attendant tomorrow morning when he comes to me. That is the official channel, and he will pass it on, so that perhaps something will happen for you after all."

So Joachim; and the official channel proved itself. Already when Hans Castorp returned to his room on Friday from the morning exercise walk, there was a knock at his door, and for him there resulted the personal acquaintance of Fräulein von Mylendonk, or the "Frau Oberin," as she was called - up to now he had always only glimpsed the obviously very busy woman from a distance as she crossed the corridor, coming out of one sickroom in order to enter another opposite, or had seen her appear briefly in the dining hall and heard her quacking voice. Now, then, her visit was meant for him; drawn there by his catarrh, she knocked bony-hard and short on his room door and entered almost before he had said Come in, while on the threshold she bent back once more to make sure of the room number.

"Forty-three," she quacked without lowering her voice. "That is right. My dear child, on me dit, que vous avez pris froid, I hear, you have caught a cold, Wy, kaschetsja, prostudilisj, I hear you are chilled? How shall I speak with you? German, I see already. Ah, young Ziemßen's visitor, I see already. I must get to the operating room. There is someone being chloroformed who has eaten bean salad. If one does not have one's eyes everywhere… And you, my dear child, claim to have caught cold here?"

Hans Castorp was dumbfounded by this manner of speech in an old noblewoman. While she spoke, she ran over her own words by restlessly turning her head back and forth in a rolling, loop-shaped movement, her nose lifted searchingly, as beasts of prey do in a cage, and by swinging her freckled right hand, lightly closed and thumb upward, before her at the wrist, as if she wanted to say: "Quick, quick, quick! Do not listen to what I am saying, but speak yourself, so that I can get away!" She was a woman in her forties, of meager growth, without form, dressed in a white, belted, clinical apron-dress, on whose breast lay a garnet cross. Under her nurse's cap sparse reddish hair emerged; her watery blue, inflamed eyes, on one of which, to make matters worse, sat a stye far advanced in its development, had an unsteady look, her nose was turned up, her mouth frog-like, moreover with a lower lip projecting crookedly, which she moved like a shovel when she spoke. Meanwhile Hans Castorp regarded her with all the modestly patient and trusting philanthropy that was inborn in him.

"What kind of a cold is that, eh?" the Oberin asked again, trying to make her eyes penetrating, which did not succeed, however, since they wandered off. "We do not love such colds. Are you often chilled? Was your cousin not also so often chilled? How old are you then? Twenty-four? That age has something in it. And now you come up here and are chilled? We should not speak here of 'catching cold,' esteemed child of man; that is such flatland fiddle-faddle. (The word "fiddle-faddle" looked quite abominable and adventurous in her mouth, as she brought it out with her shoveling lower lip.) You have the most beautiful catarrh of the respiratory passages, I grant you that; one sees it in your eyes - (And again she made the strange attempt to look penetratingly into his eyes, without quite succeeding.) But catarrhs do not come from cold; they come from an infection for which one has been receptive, and the only question is whether an innocent infection is present or a less innocent one; everything else is fiddle-faddle. (Again that dreadful "fiddle-faddle"!) It is possible, of course, that your receptiveness inclines more toward the harmless," she said, and looked at him with her advanced stye, he did not know how. "Here you have a harmless antiseptic. It may possibly do you good." And from the black leather bag that hung at her belt she brought out a packet, which she set on the table. It was Formamint. "Incidentally, you look excited; as though you had heat." And she did not stop looking into his face, but always with eyes that went a little to one side. "Have you taken your temperature?"

He said no.

"Why not?" she asked, and left her obliquely thrust-out lower lip standing in the air…

He fell silent. The good fellow was still so young; he had still preserved the falling-silent of the schoolboy who stands at the bench, knows nothing, and is silent.

"Do you perhaps never take your temperature at all?"

"Yes, Frau Oberin. When I have fever."

"My dear child, one takes one's temperature first and foremost in order to see whether one has fever. And now, in your opinion, you have none?"

"I do not quite know, Frau Oberin; I cannot quite distinguish it. I have been a little hot and chilly ever since my arrival up here."

"Aha. And where is your thermometer?"

"I do not have one with me, Frau Oberin. Why should I? I am only visiting here; I am healthy."

"Fiddle-faddle! Did you call me because you are healthy?"

"No," he laughed politely, "but because I have somewhat -"

"- caught cold. Such colds have occurred with us before. Here!" she said, and rummaged again in her bag to bring to light two elongated leather cases, one black and one red, which she likewise laid on the table. "This one costs three francs fifty, and this one five francs. Naturally you do better with the one for five. That is something for life, if you handle it properly."

Smiling, he took the red case from the table and opened it. Like jewelry, like an ornament, the glass device lay bedded in the hollow cut out precisely according to its figure in the red velvet padding. The full degrees were marked with red strokes, the tenths of a degree with black. The numbering was red; the lower, tapering part was filled with mirror-bright mercury. The column stood deep and cool, far below the normal degree of animal warmth.

Hans Castorp knew what he owed himself and his standing.

"I shall take this one," he said, without paying the other the slightest attention. "This one for five. May I at once…"

"Settled!" quacked the Oberin. "No stinting on important acquisitions! No hurry; it goes on the bill. Give it here; we shall first make it properly small, drive it all the way down - so." And she took the thermometer from his hand, thrust it repeatedly through the air, and in this way drove the mercury still lower, down below 35. "It will rise, it will wander upward, Mercurius will!" she said. "Here is your acquisition! You do know how it is done with us, do you not? Under the valued tongue with it, for seven minutes, four times a day, and close the esteemed lips well around it. Adieu, my dear child! I wish good results!" And she was out of the room.

Hans Castorp, who had bowed, stood at the table and looked at the door through which she had vanished, and at the instrument she had left behind. "So that was the Oberin von Mylendonk," he thought. "Settembrini does not like her, and it is true, she has her unpleasantnesses. The stye is not beautiful, though she presumably does not always have it. But why does she always call me 'child of man,' and with an s in the middle besides? It is boyish and peculiar. And now she has sold me a thermometer; she always has a couple in her bag. They are supposed to be everywhere here, in all the shops, even where one would not at all expect it; Joachim said so. But I have not needed to make any effort; it has fallen of itself into my lap." He took the dainty device from the case, looked at it, and then walked several times restlessly through the room with it. His heart beat rapidly and strongly. He looked toward the open balcony door and made a movement toward the room door from the impulse to seek out Joachim, but then refrained and remained standing at the table again, clearing his throat in order to test the dullness of his voice. Then he coughed. "Yes, I must now see whether I have cold fever," he said, and quickly put the thermometer in his mouth, the mercury tip under his tongue, so that the instrument projected obliquely upward between his lips, which he closed tightly around it in order to admit no outside air. Then he looked at his wristwatch: it was six minutes after half past nine. And he began to wait for the expiration of seven minutes.

"Not one superfluous second," he thought, "and not one too few. I can be relied on, upward and downward. They need not exchange it for me with a mute sister, as with the person Settembrini told of, Ottilie Kneifer." And he walked about the room, pressing the instrument down with his tongue.

Time crawled; the interval seemed endless. Only two and a half minutes had passed when he looked at the hands, already concerned that he might miss the moment. He did a thousand things, picked objects up and set them down, stepped out onto the balcony without making himself noticeable to his cousin, surveyed the landscape, this high valley already intimately familiar to his sense in all its forms: with its horns, ridge-lines, and walls, with the "Brembühl" pushed forward on the left like a stage wing, whose back sloped diagonally toward the town and whose flank the rough Mattenwald covered, with the mountain formations to the right, whose names had likewise become familiar to him, and the Alteinwand, which, seen from here, seemed to close the valley in the south - looked down onto the paths and beds of the garden platform, the rock grotto, the silver fir, listened to a whispering that came from the reclining hall where the cure was being taken, and turned back into the room, trying meanwhile to improve the position of the instrument in his mouth, then again stretching his arm forward to draw the sleeve away from his wrist and bend his forearm before his face. With toil and effort, as though with shoving, pushing, and kicks, six minutes had been driven away. But now, as he stood in the middle of the room, he fell to dreaming and let his thoughts wander, and so the last remaining minute slipped away from him unnoticed on cats' paws; a new movement of the arm revealed to him its secret escape, and it was a little too late, the eighth was already a third in the past, when, thinking that this did no harm, made no difference to the result, and had nothing to signify, he tore the thermometer from his mouth and stared down at it with confused eyes.

He did not immediately become wise from its indication; the shine of the mercury coincided with the reflection of light from the flat, rounded glass sheath, the column seemed now to stand quite high up, now not to be present at all; he brought the instrument close before his eyes, turned it this way and that, and recognized nothing. At last, after a fortunate turn, the image became clear to him; he held it fast and hastily worked it over with his understanding. In fact, Mercurius had expanded; he had expanded strongly; the column had climbed fairly high; it stood several tenths of a degree above the boundary of normal blood warmth. Hans Castorp had 37.6.

In the bright forenoon between ten and half past ten, 37.6 - that was too much; it was "temperature," fever as the result of an infection for which he had been receptive, and the only question was what kind of infection it was. 37.6 - Joachim had no more than that either, no one here had more who did not keep to bed as gravely ill or moribund, neither Kleefeld with the pneumothorax nor… nor even Madame Chauchat. In his case, of course, it was probably not quite the real thing - mere cold fever, as it was called down below. But it was not possible to distinguish and keep things apart exactly; Hans Castorp doubted that he had received this temperature only since he had caught cold, and he had to regret not having questioned Mercurius earlier, right at the beginning, as the Hofrat had suggested to him. That advice had been entirely sensible, as now appeared, and Settembrini had been wholly wrong to laugh so scornfully about it into the air - Settembrini with the republic and beautiful style. Hans Castorp despised the republic and beautiful style, while again and again he checked the thermometer's statement, which he lost several times through the glare and then restored by eagerly turning and twisting the instrument: it read 37.6, and that in the earliest forenoon!

His agitation was mighty. He walked a few times through the room, the thermometer in his hand, though he held it horizontally in order not to bring about a disturbance through vertical shaking, then laid it down with all caution on the washstand slab and for the time being went into the rest cure with overcoat and blankets. Sitting, he threw the blankets around himself, as he had learned, from the sides and from below, one after the other, with a hand already practiced, and then lay still, awaiting the hour of second breakfast and Joachim's entrance. At times he smiled, and it was as though he smiled at someone. At times his chest rose with an anxious trembling, and then he had to cough from his catarrhal chest.

Joachim found him still lying there when, at eleven o'clock after the sounding of the gong, he came over to fetch him to breakfast.

"Well?" he asked in surprise, stepping beside the chair…

Hans Castorp remained silent for a while and looked ahead of himself. Then he answered:

"Yes, the latest thing, then, is that I have a little temperature."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Joachim asked. "Do you feel feverish?"

Hans Castorp again let the answer wait a little, and then, with a certain sluggishness, gave the following:

"Feverish, my dear fellow, I have felt for a long time, the whole time. But now it is not a matter of subjective sensations, but of an exact determination. I have taken my temperature."

"You have taken your temperature?! With what?!" Joachim cried, startled.

"Naturally with a thermometer," Hans Castorp answered, not without mockery and severity. "The Oberin sold me one. Why she always addresses one as 'child of man,' I do not know; it is not correct. But she sold me a very good thermometer in all haste, and if you wish to convince yourself how much it shows, it is lying in there on the washstand. It is a minimal elevation."

Joachim turned shortly about and went into the room. When he returned, he said hesitantly:

"Yes, that is 37 comma 5 1/2."

"Then it has gone back a little!" Hans Castorp replied quickly. "It was six."

"In no case can one call that minimal for the forenoon," Joachim said. "A pretty state of affairs," he said, and stood at his cousin's couch as one stands before a "pretty state of affairs," his arms braced against his sides and his head lowered. "You will have to go to bed."

Hans Castorp had his answer ready for that.

"I do not see," he said, "why I should lie down in bed with 37.6 when you and so many others, who do not have any less either - when all of you walk around freely here."

"But that is something different," Joachim said. "With you it is acute and harmless. You have cold fever."

"First," Hans Castorp replied, now even dividing his speech into first and second, "I do not understand why one must keep to bed with harmless fever - I shall assume for the moment that there is such a thing - with harmless fever, but not with another kind. And secondly, I tell you that the cold has not made me hotter than I already was before. I take the position," he concluded, "that 37.6 equals 37.6. If you can walk around with it, so can I."

"But I had to lie down for four weeks when I arrived," Joachim objected, "and only when it became evident that the temperature did not vanish through bed rest was I allowed to get up."

Hans Castorp smiled.

"Well, and?" he asked. "I thought in your case it was something different? It seems to me you are entangling yourself in contradictions. First you distinguish, and then you equate. That is fiddle-faddle…"

Joachim turned on his heel, and when he turned back toward his cousin, one saw that his browned face had become another shade darker.

"No," he said, "I am not equating; you are a councilor of confusion. I only mean that you are miserably chilled, one can hear it in your voice, and you ought to lie down in order to shorten the process, since you want to go home next week. But if you do not want to - I mean: if you do not want to lie down, then of course you can leave it. I make you no prescriptions. In any case, we must go to breakfast now. Hurry, it is past time!"

"Right. Off we go!" Hans Castorp said, and threw the blankets from himself. He went into the room to pass the brush over his hair, and while he did it Joachim looked once more at the thermometer on the washstand, while Hans Castorp observed him from a distance. Then they went, silently, and once more sat in their places in the dining hall, where, as always at this hour, everything shimmered white with milk.

When the dwarf brought the Kulmbach beer for Hans Castorp, he refused it with solemn renunciation. He preferred not to drink beer today, not to drink anything at all, no, thank you very much, at most a sip of water. That attracted attention. How so? What innovations! Why no beer? - He had a little temperature, Hans Castorp threw out. 37.6. Minimal.

Then they threatened him with their index fingers - it was very strange. They became roguish, laid their heads to one side, squeezed one eye shut, and stirred their index fingers at ear height, as though bold, piquant things were coming to light about someone who had played the innocent. "Well, well, you," said the schoolmistress, and the down on her cheeks reddened while she smiled threateningly. "Fine stories one hears, high-spirited ones. Just wait, just wait, just wait." - "Dear, dear, dear," Frau Stöhr made too, and threatened with her short red stump, holding it beside her nose. "Tempus he has, Herr Visitor. You are a one for me - the right sort you are, a jolly brother!" Even the great-aunt at the upper end of the table threatened him jokingly and slyly when the news reached her; the pretty Marusja, who until now had hardly ever paid him attention, bent forward toward him and looked at him with her round brown eyes, the orange cloth pressed to her lips, while she threatened; even Dr. Blumenkohl, to whom Frau Stöhr told the matter, could not avoid joining the general gesture, without, however, looking at Hans Castorp while doing so, and only Miss Robinson showed herself indifferent and closed in mind as always. Joachim, with a decent expression, kept his eyes lowered.

Hans Castorp, flattered by so much teasing, believed he must modestly decline. "No, no," he said, "you are mistaken; my case is the most harmless imaginable, I have a cold, you see: my eyes are overflowing, my chest is blocked, I cough half the night, it is unpleasant enough…" But they did not accept his excuses; they laughed and waved him away with their hands, calling: "Yes, yes, yes, fancies, evasions, cold fever, we know it, we know it!" And then they all at once demanded that Hans Castorp report immediately for examination. They were enlivened by the news; among the seven tables, at this one during breakfast the conversation was the liveliest. Frau Stöhr in particular, her stubborn face deep red above her neck-ruff and little cracks in the skin of her cheeks, displayed an almost savage talkativeness and expatiated on the agreeableness of coughing - yes, there was absolutely something entertaining and pleasurable about it when in the depths of the chest the tickle increased and grew and one reached properly deep down with spasm and pressure in order to satisfy the irritation: it was a similar pleasure to sneezing, when the desire for it swelled mightily and became irresistible and one, with intoxicated expression, breathed stormily out and in a couple of times, gave oneself up blissfully, and over the blessed outbreak forgot the whole world. And sometimes it came two or three times in succession. Those were cost-free pleasures of life, like, for example, scratching chilblains in spring when they itched so sweetishly - scratching oneself so really inwardly and cruelly, to the blood, in fury and delight, and if one happened to look in the mirror while doing it, then one saw a devil's grimace.

So dreadfully circumstantially did the uneducated Stöhr speak, until the brief though ample intermediate meal was ended and the cousins set out on their second morning walk, the walk down to Platz Davos. Joachim was withdrawn into himself on the way, and Hans Castorp groaned from his cold and cleared his throat from a rusty chest. On the way home Joachim said:

"I make you a proposal. Today is Friday - tomorrow after table I have my monthly examination. It is not a general examination, but Behrens taps me a little and has Krokowski make a few notes. You could come along and ask him to sound you quickly on that occasion too. It is ridiculous - if you were at home, you would have Heidekind come. And here, where there are two specialists in the house, you run around and do not know where you stand, and how deep it sits in you, and whether you would not do better to lie down."

"Fine," Hans Castorp said. "As you think. Of course, I can do it that way. And it is also interesting for me to be present at an examination."

So they agreed; and when they came up in front of the sanatorium, chance would have it that they met Hofrat Behrens in person and found a favorable opportunity to present their request on the spot.

Behrens came out of the vestibule, long and high-necked, a stiff hat on the back of his head and a cigar in his mouth, blue-cheeked and bulging-eyed, quite in the swing of activity, in the act of going about his private practice, of making visits in the town, after he had just been at work in the operating room, as he explained.

"Mealtime, gentlemen!" he said. "Always on the road? Was it fine out in the great world? I have just come from an unequal duel with knife and bone-saw - great matter, you know, rib resection. Formerly fifty percent stayed on the house table with that. Now we have it down better, but often enough one still has to pack up prematurely mortis causa. Well, today's man could take a joke, stayed quite smartly at his post for the moment… Mad thing, such a human thorax that is no longer one. Soft part, you know, unbecoming, slight clouding of the idea, so to speak. Well, and you? How is the esteemed condition? A merrier life conduct in pairs, eh, Ziemßen, old slyboots? Why are you weeping, you pleasure traveler?" he suddenly turned to Hans Castorp. "Public weeping is not allowed here. House-rule prohibition. Anyone could come along then."

"That is my cold, Herr Hofrat," Hans Castorp answered. "I do not know how it was possible, but I have picked up an enormous catarrh. I have a cough too, and it lies properly on my chest."

"So?" Behrens said. "Then you should consult a sensible physician."

The two laughed, and Joachim answered, drawing his heels together:

"We are in the act of doing so, Herr Hofrat. I have an examination tomorrow, as you know, and we wanted to ask whether you would be so kind as to take my cousin at once too. The question is whether he will be able to travel on Tuesday…"

"M. w.!" Behrens said. "M. w. m. F.! We do it with pleasure! We should have done it long ago. If one is here already, one should always take that along. But naturally one does not like to force oneself on people. So tomorrow at two, directly when you come from the crib!"

"For I also have a little fever," Hans Castorp added.

"What you say!" Behrens cried. "Do you want to tell me news? Do you think I have no eyes in my head?" And with his enormous index finger he pointed to his two bloodshot, bluely bulging, tearing eyeballs. "How much is it, incidentally?"

Hans Castorp modestly named the figure.

"Forenoon? Hm, not bad. Not untalented at all for a beginning. Well then, fall in by pairs tomorrow at two! It shall be an honor to me. Blessed taking-in of nourishment!" And with bent knees and rowing hands he began to stump down the sloping path, while a banner of smoke from his cigar blew backward.

"So that has been arranged according to your wish," Hans Castorp said. "It could not have happened more fortunately, and now I am reported. Of course he will not be able to do much more in the matter than perhaps prescribe me a licorice juice or chest tea, but it is nevertheless pleasant to have a little medical encouragement when one feels as I do. But why must he always talk so immoderately brusquely!" he said. "At first it amused me, but in the long run it is disagreeable to me. 'Blessed taking-in of nourishment'! What gibberish. One can say: 'Blessed meal!' for 'meal' is a poetic word, so to speak, like 'daily bread,' and gets along quite well with 'blessed.' But 'taking-in of nourishment' is pure physiology, and to wish blessing on that is surely mocking talk. I also do not like to see him smoke; it has something frightening for me, because I know it does not agree with him and makes him melancholic. Settembrini said of him that his cheerfulness was forced, and Settembrini is a critic, a man of judgment, one must grant him that. Perhaps I too should judge more and not take everything as it is; he is quite right. But sometimes one begins with judgment and censure and righteous offense, and then something quite different comes in between, which has nothing whatever to do with judging, and then moral severity is over and done with, and the republic and beautiful style too seem only insipid…"

He murmured indistinct things, seemed not entirely clear himself about what he meant. His cousin too looked at him only from the side and said "Until we meet again," whereupon each went to his room and into his balcony box.

"How much?" Joachim asked softly after a while, although he had not seen that Hans Castorp had again consulted his thermometer… And Hans Castorp answered in an indifferent tone:

"Nothing new."

In fact, immediately upon entering he had taken his dainty acquisition of that morning from the washstand, had destroyed the 37.6, which had now played out its role, by vertical thrusts, and had betaken himself to the rest cure quite like an old hand, the glass cigar in his mouth. But contrary to expectations flying too high, and although he had kept the instrument a full eight minutes under his tongue, Mercurius had expanded no further than once more only to 37.6 - which, incidentally, was fever, even if no higher than had already been present in the earlier forenoon. After table the shimmering little column climbed to 37.7, remained in the evening, when the patient was very tired after the excitements and novelties of the day, at 37.5, and in the early morning of the next day showed only 37, only to reach yesterday's height again toward noon. Under these results came the main meal of the following day, and with its ending the hour of the rendezvous.

Hans Castorp remembered later that during this meal Madame Chauchat had worn a golden-yellow sweater with large buttons and embroidered pockets, which was new, at least new for Hans Castorp, and in which, upon her entrance, late as always, she had for a moment faced front toward the hall in the way Hans Castorp knew so well in her. Then, as five times daily, she had glided to her table, had settled herself with soft movements, and had begun to eat and chat: Hans Castorp had, as every day, but yet with particular attention, seen her head move while she spoke and had noticed anew the rounding of her neck, the slack posture of her back, whenever he had looked past the Settembrinis, who sat at the end of the table standing diagonally between, over to the Good Russian table. Frau Chauchat for her part had not once turned to look toward the hall during midday meal. But when the dessert had been taken and the great chain-and-pendulum clock on the right narrow side of the hall, there where the Bad Russian table stood, had struck two, then, to Hans Castorp's mysterious shock, it had happened nevertheless: while the clock struck two - one and two - the graceful sick woman had slowly turned her head and a little of her upper body too, and over her shoulder had looked distinctly and undisguisedly toward Hans Castorp's table - and not only in general toward his table, no, unmistakably and strictly personally over to him, a smile around her closed lips and in her narrow-cut Pribislav eyes, as if she wanted to say: "Well? It is time. Will you go?" (for when only the eyes speak, speech proceeds in the intimate form, even if the mouth has not even said "Sie") - and that had been an incident that confused and horrified Hans Castorp in his deepest soul; he had scarcely trusted his senses, and, bewildered, had looked first into Frau Chauchat's face and then, raising his eyes, over her brow and hair into emptiness. Did she then know that he had been ordered for examination at two o'clock? It had looked exactly so. And yet it was almost as unlikely as that she should have known that only just now, in the most recent minute, he had asked himself whether he should not have Joachim tell the Hofrat that his cold had already improved and that he regarded the examination as superfluous: a thought whose advantages under that questioning smile had of course withered away and transformed themselves into nothing but repellent tediousness. In the next second Joachim had already laid his rolled napkin on the table, had beckoned to him with lifted brows, bowed to those sitting around, and left the table - whereupon Hans Castorp, reeling inwardly though outwardly with firm step, and with the feeling that that gaze and smile still lay on him, followed his cousin out of the hall.

Since yesterday morning they had not spoken any more about today's undertaking, and now too they went in silent understanding. Joachim hurried: it was already past the agreed hour, and Hofrat Behrens insisted on punctuality. They went from the dining hall along the ground-floor corridor, past the "Administration," and down the clean stair, covered with waxed linoleum, to the basement story. Joachim knocked at the door that, directly opposite the stairs, identified itself by a porcelain sign as the entrance to the consulting room.

"Come in!" Behrens called, strongly emphasizing the first syllable. He stood in the middle of the room, in his smock, in his right hand the black stethoscope with which he was tapping his thigh.

"Tempo, tempo," he said, and turned his bulging eyes toward the wall clock. "Un poco più presto, Signori! We are not exclusively present for Your Most Highborn Honors."

At the double desk before the window sat Dr. Krokowski, pale against his black luster shirt, elbows on the top, in one hand the pen, the other in his beard, papers before him, probably the case record, and looked toward those entering with the dull expression of a person who is present only in an assisting capacity.

"Well then, hand over the conduct!" answered the Hofrat to Joachim's apologies, and took the fever chart from his hand in order to look through it, while the patient hastened to bare his upper body and hang the clothing he had taken off on the coat-stand beside the door. No one troubled about Hans Castorp. He stood watching for a while and later seated himself on an old-fashioned little fauteuil with tassels on the armrests, beside a small table with a water carafe. Bookcases with broad-backed medical works and bundles of files stood along the walls. As for furniture, there was otherwise only a chaise longue covered with white oilcloth, which could be cranked higher and lower, and over whose head cushion a paper napkin was spread.

"Comma 7, comma 9, comma 8," Behrens said, leafing through the weekly cards in which Joachim had faithfully entered the results of his five daily measurements. "Still a little illuminated, dear Ziemßen; cannot exactly claim you have become more solid since lately. ("Lately" had been four weeks ago.) Not detoxified, not detoxified," he said. "Well, that naturally does not go from today to tomorrow; we cannot work magic either."

Joachim nodded and shrugged his bare shoulders, although he might have objected that he had by no means been up here only since yesterday.

"How is it, then, with the stabs at the right hilus, where it always sounded sharpened? Better? Well, come here! We shall politely knock on you a little." And the auscultation began.

Hofrat Behrens, legs wide apart and leaning backward, the stethoscope under his arm, first tapped at the very top of Joachim's right shoulder, tapped from the wrist, using the mighty middle finger of his right hand as a hammer and the left for support. Then he went down below the shoulder blade and tapped laterally at the middle and lower back, whereupon Joachim, who was well trained, raised his arm in order to be tapped under the armpit too. After this the whole thing was repeated on the left side, and when that was done the Hofrat commanded "About face!" for the tapping of the chest side. He tapped just below the throat at the collarbone, tapped above and below the breast, first right and then left. But when he had tapped enough, he passed over to listening, placing his stethoscope, his ear at the bell, on Joachim's chest and back, everywhere he had previously tapped. During this Joachim had alternately to breathe strongly and cough artificially, which seemed to tire him greatly, for he became short of breath and tears came into his eyes. Hofrat Behrens, however, reported everything he heard in there to the assistant at the desk in brief, fixed words, so that Hans Castorp could not help thinking of the procedure at the tailor's when the well-dressed gentleman takes one's measure for a suit, lays the measuring tape here and there around the trunk and limbs in the customary order, and dictates the figures obtained to the stooping assistant's pen. "Short," "shortened," Hofrat Behrens dictated. "Vesicular," he said, and again: "Vesicular" (that was good, apparently). "Rough," he said, and made a face. "Very rough." "Sound." And Dr. Krokowski entered it all, like the employee the cutter's figures.

Hans Castorp followed the proceedings with his head inclined sideways, thoughtfully sunk in the contemplation of Joachim's upper body, whose ribs (thank God he was in possession of his ribs) rose, when he panted, under the taut skin high above the retreating stomach - this slender, yellowish-brunet young man's upper body, with the black hair at the breastbone and on the otherwise strong arms, one of which wore a gold chain bracelet around the wrist. Gymnast's arms, those are, Hans Castorp thought; he always liked gymnastics, while I never cared for them, and that was connected with his desire for the soldier's profession. He was always well-disposed physically, much more than I, or at least in a different way; for I was always a civilian, and cared more for warm baths and good eating and drinking, while he cared for masculine demands and achievements. And now in such an entirely different way his body has come to the foreground and made itself independent and important, namely through illness. He is illuminated and does not want to detoxify and become solid, however much poor Joachim would like to be a soldier in the flatland. Just look, he has grown as the book prescribes, a pure Apollo Belvedere, except for the hair. But inwardly he is ill and outwardly too warm from illness; for illness makes a person much more bodily, it makes him wholly into body… And as he thought this, he was startled and looked quickly and searchingly from Joachim's bare upper body up to his eyes, his great, black, and gentle eyes, which stood in tears from the artificial breathing and coughing and, during the examination, looked with a sad expression past the spectator into emptiness.

Meanwhile, however, Hofrat Behrens had come to the end.

"Well, is good, Ziemßen," he said. "Everything in order, as far as possible. Next time" (that was in four weeks), "it will surely be a little better everywhere again."

"How long does Herr Hofrat think that -"

"Do you want to start pressing again already? You cannot harry your fellows in an exhilarated condition! Half a little year I said lately - count from lately, for all I care, but regard it as a minimum. After all, one can live here; you must be polite too. We are surely no bagno and no… Siberian mine! Or do you want to say we have a resemblance to such things? Is good, Ziemßen! Fall out! Next, whoever still has the inclination!" he cried, and looked into the air. With outstretched arm he meanwhile handed his stethoscope over to Dr. Krokowski, who stood up and grasped it in order to make a little assistant's recheck on Joachim.

Hans Castorp too had sprung up, and his eyes fettered to the person of the Hofrat, who, standing wide-legged, seemed sunk in thought with open mouth, began to make himself ready in haste. He hurried too much, did not at once find his way out of his dotted cuffed shirt as he pulled it over his head. And then he stood, white, blond, and narrow, before Hofrat Behrens - of a more civilian formation, it seemed, than Joachim Ziemßen.

But the Hofrat left him standing, still in thought. Dr. Krokowski had already taken his seat again and Joachim had begun dressing, when Behrens finally decided to take notice of the one who still had the inclination.

"Oh yes, so that would be you!" he said, took Hans Castorp by the upper arm with his gigantic hand, moved him away from himself, and looked at him sharply. He did not look him in the face, as one looks at a human being, but at the body; turned him around as one turns around a body, and looked at his back too. "Hm," he said. "Well, we shall see how you play." And as before he began his tapping.

He tapped everywhere he had tapped on Joachim Ziemßen and returned several times to various places. For a longer time he tapped alternately, and for comparison, at the upper left by the collarbone and somewhat lower.

"Do you hear?" he asked meanwhile over to Dr. Krokowski… And Dr. Krokowski, sitting five steps away at the desk, indicated by an inclination of the head that he heard: gravely he lowered his chin onto his chest, so that his beard was pressed in and the tips bent upward.

"Breathe deeply! Cough!" commanded the Hofrat, who had now taken the stethoscope in hand again; and Hans Castorp worked hard, for perhaps eight or ten minutes, while the Hofrat listened to him. He spoke not a word during it, only set the stethoscope here and there and listened especially and repeatedly at the points where he had already lingered with tapping. Then he pushed the instrument under his arm, laid his hands on his back, and looked down at the floor between himself and Hans Castorp.

"Yes, Castorp," he said - and it happened for the first time that he called the young man simply by his surname - "the matter stands more or less as I had always thought. I had you on my line, Castorp, now I can tell you - from the beginning, ever since I first had the undeserved distinction of making your acquaintance - and quite surely suspected that in secret you were one of ours and would come to see it too, like so many another who came up here for fun, looked around with his nose in the air, and one day learned that he would do well - and not merely 'do well,' please understand me - to make a somewhat more ample stop here, quite without the air of disinterested curiosity."

Hans Castorp had changed color, and Joachim, in the act of buttoning his suspenders, paused as he stood there and listened…

"You have such a nice, sympathetic cousin there," the Hofrat continued, nodding his head toward Joachim's side and meanwhile rocking on the balls of his feet and on his heels, "- who now hopefully will soon be able to say that he once was ill, but when we are that far, he will nevertheless still have once been ill, your right honorable cousin, and that casts, a priori, as the thinker says, a certain light on you too, dear Castorp…"

"But he is only a step-cousin of mine, Herr Hofrat."

"Now, now. You surely will not want to disown your cousin. Step or not, he remains a blood relation. On which side then?"

"On my mother's, Herr Hofrat. He is the son of a step-"

"And your Frau Mama is cheerful?"

"No, she is dead. She died when I was still little."

"Oh, why then?"

"Of a blood clot, Herr Hofrat."

"Blood clot? Well, that was long ago. And your Herr Father?"

"He died of pneumonia," Hans Castorp said, "and my grandfather too," he added.

"So, he too? Well, so much for your forebears. As for you, you were always rather chlorotic, were you not? But you did not easily become tired at physical and mental work? You did? And have much palpitation? Only recently? Fine, and besides there is apparently a lively inclination to catarrhs of the respiratory passages. Do you know that you were already ill before?"

"I?"

"Yes, I have you personally in mind. Do you hear the difference?" And the Hofrat tapped alternately at the upper left of the chest and somewhat lower.

"It sounds a little duller there than here," Hans Castorp said.

"Very good. You should become a specialist. So that is a dulling, and dullings rest on old spots where calcification has already set in, scarring if you like. You are an old patient, Castorp, but we will hold it against no one that you did not learn it. Early diagnosis is difficult - especially for the gentlemen colleagues in the flatland. I will not even say that we have finer ears, although special practice does count for something. But the air helps us hear, you understand, the thin, dry air up here."

"Certainly, naturally," Hans Castorp said.

"Good, Castorp. And now listen to me, my boy; I shall now speak several golden words. If there were nothing more with you, you understand, and if matters rested with the dullings and scars on your Aeolian pipe in there and with the calcareous foreign bodies in it, then I would send you back to your Lares and Penates and not trouble myself another whit about you, you understand me? But as things stand, and with the further findings, and since you now are here with us - the journey home is not worth it, Hans Castorp; in a short time you would have to report back anyway."

Hans Castorp felt his blood stream to his heart anew so that it hammered, and Joachim still stood, hands at the back buttons, and had lowered his eyes.

"For besides the dullings," the Hofrat said, "you also have up there on the left a roughness that is almost already a sound and undoubtedly comes from a fresh spot - I shall not yet speak of a softening focus, but it is certainly a moist spot, and if you keep on carrying on down there like that, my dear fellow, then, quick as anything, the whole lobe of your lung goes to the devil."

Hans Castorp stood without movement; around his mouth there twitched something peculiar, and one could distinctly see his heart pulsing against the ribs. He looked over toward Joachim, whose eyes he did not find, and then again into the Hofrat's face with the blue cheeks, the likewise blue bulging eyes, and the little mustache drawn up on one side.

"As objective confirmation," Behrens continued, "we also have your temperature there: 37.6 at ten in the morning; that corresponds fairly well to the acoustic perceptions."

"I only thought," Hans Castorp said, "that the fever came from my catarrh."

"And the catarrh?" replied the Hofrat… "Where does that come from? Let me tell you something, Castorp, and pay attention; you possess sufficiently numerous cerebral convolutions, as far as I know. So the air here with us is good against the disease, you think, don't you? And that is so. But it is also good for the disease, do you understand me; first of all it promotes it, it revolutionizes the body, it brings the latent disease to outbreak, and such an outbreak, no offense, is your catarrh. I do not know whether you were already febrile down in the lowlands, but up here you became so in any case on the very first day and not only through your catarrh - to state my opinion."

"Yes," Hans Castorp said, "yes, I really believe that too."

"You were probably tipsy at once," the Hofrat confirmed. "Those are the soluble poisons produced by the bacteria; they have an intoxicating effect on the central nervous system, you understand, and then one gets cheerful little cheeks. You go into the stall now for the time being, Castorp; we must see whether we can get you sober through a few weeks of bed rest. The rest can come afterward. We shall take a nice interior view of you - it will amuse you to gain such insight into your own person. But I tell you at once: a case like yours does not heal from today to the day after tomorrow; advertising successes and miracle cures are not to be exhibited there. It seemed to me right away as though you would be a better patient, with more talent for being ill, than that brigadier general there, who always wants to leave as soon as he has a few lines less. As though lying-still were not just as good a command as standing-still! Rest is the first civic duty, and impatience only harms. So see that you do not disappoint me, Castorp, and falsify my knowledge of men, I request it! And now march, into the shed with you!"

With that Hofrat Behrens closed the interview and sat down at the desk in order, as a man of many affairs, to fill the pause until the next examination with written work. Dr. Krokowski, however, rose from his place, strode toward Hans Castorp, and, his head laid obliquely back, one hand on the young man's shoulder and smiling heartily so that the yellowish teeth became visible in his beard, shook his right hand warmly.