Classic Audiobook Collection - The Magic Mountain Vol1 by Thomas Mann ~ Full Audiobook [drama]

Starting point is 00:00:00 The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Volume 1. Section 0. Forward The story of Hans Kastorp, which we would here set forth, not on his own account, for in him the reader will make acquaintance with a simple-minded, though pleasing young man, but for the sake of the story itself, which seems to us highly worth telling, though it must needs be borne in mind in Hans Kastorp's behalf,

Starting point is 00:00:29 that it is his story, and not every story happens to everybody, this story we say belongs to the long ago, is already, so to speak, covered with historic mould, and unquestionably to be presented in the tense best suited to a narrative out of the depth of the past. That should be no drawback to a story, but rather the reverse, since histories must be in the past, then the more past the better, it would seem,

Starting point is 00:01:00 for them in their character as histories, and for him, the teller of them, rounding Wizard of Times gone by. With this story, moreover, it stands as it does today with human beings, not least among them writers of tales. It is far older than its years. Its age may not be measured by length of days,

Starting point is 00:01:22 nor the weight of time on its head, reckoned by the rising or setting of suns. In a word, the degree of its antiquity has no ways to do with the passage of time, in which statement the author intentionally touches upon the strange and questionable double nature of that riddling element. But we would not willfully obscure a plain matter. The exaggerated pastness of our narrative is due to its taking place before the epoch when a certain crisis shattered its way through life and consciousness, and left a deep chasm behind.

Starting point is 00:02:02 It takes place, or rather deliberately to avoid the present tense, it took place and had taken place in the long ago, in the old days, the days of the world before the Great War, in the beginning of which so much began that is scarcely yet left off beginning. Yes, it took place before that, yet not so long before. Is not the pastness of the past, the profounder, the completer, the more legendary, the more immediately before the present it falls? More than that, our story has of its own nature something of the legend about it now and again. We shall tell it at length, thoroughly, in detail. For when did a narrative seem too long, or too short, by reason of the actual time or space it took up? We do not fear being called meticulous,

Starting point is 00:02:55 inclining as we do, to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting. Not all in a minute, then, will the narrator be finished with the story of our hands. The seven days of a week will not suffice, no, nor seven months either. Best not too soon make too plain how much mortal time must pass over his head, while he sits spun round in his spell. heaven forbid it should be seven years and now we begin end of section zero

Starting point is 00:03:29 section one of the magic mountain by Thomas Mann this Librevox recording is in the public domain section one chapter one arrival an unassuming young man was travelling in midsummer from his native city of Hamburg to Davos Plats

Starting point is 00:03:52 in the canton of the Grisense on a three-week's visit. From Hamburg to Davos is a long journey, too long indeed for so brief a stay. It crosses all sorts of country, goes uphill and down dale, descends from the plateau of southern Germany to the shore of Lake Constance, over its bounding waves and on across marshes

Starting point is 00:04:17 once thought to be bottomless. At this point, the route, which has been so far over trunk lines gets cut up. There are stops and formalities. At Rorschach, in Swiss territory, one takes train again, but only as far as Lankort, a small alpine station, where one has to change. Here, after a long and windy wait in a spot divide of charm,

Starting point is 00:04:46 one mounts a narrow-gauge train. And as the small but very powerful engine, gets underway, there begins the thrilling part of the journey, a steep and steady climb that seems never to come to an end. For the station of Lankwot lies at a relatively low altitude, but now the wild and rocky route pushes grimly onward into the Alps themselves. Hans Castorp, such was the young man's name, sat alone in his little grey upholstered compartment with his alligator-skin handbag, a present from his uncle and guardian, console, tynaple. Let us get the introductions over with at once. His travelling rug, with his winter overcoat swinging

Starting point is 00:05:33 on its hook. The window was down, the afternoon grew cool, and he, tender product of the sheltered life, had turned up the collar of his fashionably cut silk-lined summer overcoat. Near him on the seat lay a paper-bound volume entitled Ocean Steamships. Earlier in the journey he had studied it off and on, but now it lay neglected, and the breath of the panting engine, streaming in, defiled its cover with particles of soot. Two days' travel separated the youth, he was still too young to have thrust his roots down firmly into life,

Starting point is 00:06:13 from his own world, from all that he thought of as his own duties. interests, cares and prospects, far more than he had dreamed it would when he sat in the carriage on the way to the station. Space rolling and revolving between him and his native heath possessed and wielded the powers we generally ascribe to time. From hour to hour it worked changes in him, like to those wrought by time,

Starting point is 00:06:43 yet in a way even more striking. Space, like time, engenders forget. but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even in the twinkling of an eye make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time we say is Leith, but change of air is a similar draft, and if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly. Such was the experience of young Hans Castorpe. He had not meant to take the journey seriously, or commit himself deeply to it,

Starting point is 00:07:22 but to get it over quickly, since it had to be made, to return as he had gone, and to take up his life at the point where, for the moment, he had had to lay it down. Only yesterday he had been encompassed in the wanted circle of his thoughts and entirely taken up by two matters.

Starting point is 00:07:40 The examination he had just passed, and his approaching entrance into the firm of Tundra and Wilms, shipbuilders, smelters and machinists. With as much impatience as lay in his temperament to feel, he had discounted the next three weeks, but now began to seem as though present circumstances required his entire attention, that it would not be at all the thing to take them too lightly. This being carried upward into regions where he had never before drawn breath,

Starting point is 00:08:11 and where he knew that unusual living conditions prevailed, such as could only be described as sparse or scanty, it began to work upon him, to fill him with a certain concern. Home and regular living lay not only far behind, they lay fathoms deep beneath him, and he continued to mount above them. Poised between them and the unknown, he asked himself how he was going to fare.

Starting point is 00:08:39 Perhaps it had been ill-advised of him, born as he was a few feet above sea-level, to come immediately to these great heights, without stopping at least a day or so at some point in between. He wished he were at the end of his journey, but once there he could begin to live as he would anywhere else, and not be reminded by this continual climbing of the incongruous situation he found himself in.

Starting point is 00:09:05 He looked out. A train wound in curves along the narrow pass. He could see the front carriages and the labouring engine vomiting great masses of brown, black and greenish smoke that floated away. Water roared in the abysses on the right. On the left among rocks, dark fir trees aspired toward a stone grey sky. A train passed through pitch-black tunnels, and when daylight came again, it showed wide chasms,

Starting point is 00:09:37 with villages nestled in their depths. Then the past closed in again, they wound along narrow defiles with traces of snow in chinks and crannies. There were halts at wretched little shanties of stations also at more important ones which the train left in the opposite direction. Making one lose the points of the compass.

Starting point is 00:10:00 A magnificent succession of vistas opened before the awed eye of the solemn, phantasmagoric world of towering peaks into which their root wove and wormed itself. Vesters that appeared and disappeared with each new winding of the path. Hans Kastorp reflected that they must have got above the zone of shade trees, also probably of songbirds, whereupon he felt such a sense of the impoverishment of life

Starting point is 00:10:29 as gave him a slight attack of giddiness and nausea and made him put his hand over his eyes for a few seconds. It passed. He perceived that they had stopped climbing, The top of the coal was reached. The train rolled smoothly along the level floor of the valley. It was about eight o'clock and still daylight. The lake was visible in the distant landscape.

Starting point is 00:10:55 Its waters grey, its shores covered with black fir forests that climbed the surrounding heights, thinned out, and gave place to bare, mist-wreathed rock. They stopped at a small station. Hans Castop heard the name. called out. It was Davos Dorff. Soon he would be at his journey's end. And suddenly, close to him, he had a voice, a comfortable Hamburg voice of his cousin, Joachim Zimson, saying, Hello, there you are! Here's where you get out. And peering through the window, he saw his

Starting point is 00:11:34 cousin himself, standing below on the platform, in a brown ulster, bareheaded, looking more robust than ever in his life before. He laughed and said again, Come along out. It's all right. But I'm not there yet, said Hans Kastov, taken her back and still seated. Oh yes you are. This is the village. It is nearer to the sanatorium from here. I have a carriage. Just gives your things. And, laughing, confused in the excitement of arrival and meeting, Hans Kastob, reached bag, overcoat, the roll with stick, umbrella, and finally ocean steamships, out of the window. Then he ran down the narrow corridor

Starting point is 00:12:17 and sprang out upon the platform to greet his cousin properly. A meeting took place without exuberance, as between people of traditional coolness and reserve. Strange to say, the cousins had always avoided calling each other by their first names, simply because they were afraid of showing too much feeling. And as they could not well address each other by their last names, they can find themselves, by established custom, to the thou. A man in livery with a braided cap looked on while they shook hands quickly, not with that embarrassment. Young Zimson in military position heals together. Then he came forward to ask for Hans Kastorp's luggage ticket. He was the concierge of the International Sanatorium Berghoff and would fetch their

Starting point is 00:13:08 guests' large trunk from the other station while the gentleman drove directly up to supper. This man limped noticeably, and so, curiously enough, the first thing Hans Castob said to his cousin was, "'Is that a war veteran?' "'What makes him limp like that?' "'Wor veteran? No fear,' said Joach him, with some bitterness. "'He's got it in his knee. Or rather he had it. the knee-pan has been removed. Hans Castob bethought himself hastily.

Starting point is 00:13:45 So that's it, he said, as he walked on, turned his head and gave a quick glance back. But you can't make me believe you've still got anything like that the matter with you, why, you look as if you had just come from manoeuvres, and he looked sidelong at his cousin. Jo Kim was taller and broader than he, a picture of youthful vigour. and made for a uniform.

Starting point is 00:14:10 He was of the very dark type, which his blonde-people country not seldom produces, and his already nut-brown skin was tanned almost a bronze. With his large black eyes and small dark moustache over the full, well-shaped mouth, he would have been distinctly handsome if his ears had not stood out. Up to a certain period there had been his only trouble in life.

Starting point is 00:14:36 Now, however, he had others. Hans Castop went on. You're coming back down with me, aren't you? I see no reason why not. Back down with you, said his cousin, and turned his large eyes full upon him. They had always been gentle, but in these five months they had taken on a tired,

Starting point is 00:14:56 almost sad expression. When? Why, in three weeks? Oh, yes, you're already on the way back home, in your thoughts, answered Joachim. wait a bit you've only just come three weeks and nothing at all

Starting point is 00:15:13 to us up here it looked like a lot of time to you because you are only up here on a visit and three weeks is all you have get to climatise first if it isn't so easy you'll see and the climate isn't the only queer thing about us

Starting point is 00:15:27 you're going to see some things you've never dreamed of just wait about me it isn't such smooth sailing as you think you with your going home in three weeks That's the class of ideas you have down below. Yes, I am brown, I know, but it is mostly snow-burning.

Starting point is 00:15:46 Doesn't mean much, as Berens always says. He told me at the last regular examination it would take another half-year, pretty certainly. Half a year, are you crazy? shouted Hans Castorup. They had climbed into the yellow cabriolet that stood in the stone-paved square in front of the shed-like station, and as the pair of brown horses started up, he flounced indignantly on the hard cushions. Half a year. You've been up here half a year already. Who's got so much time to spend? Oh, time, said Yoakim, and nodded repeatedly, straight in front of him, paying his cousin's honest indignation, no heed. They make pretty free with the human being's idea of time up here. You wouldn't believe it.

Starting point is 00:16:34 three weeks are just like a day to them. You'll learn all about it, he said, and added, one's ideas get changed. Hans Kastob regarded him earnestly as they drove. But seems to be you've made a splendid recovery, he said, shaking his head. You really think so, don't you? answered Joachim. I think I have too. He drew himself up, straighter against the cushions,

Starting point is 00:17:03 but immediately relaxed again. Yes, I am better, they explained. But I'm not cured yet. In the left globe, where there are rails, it only sounds harsh now, and that is not so bad. But lower down, it is still very harsh, and there are ronky in the second intercostal space.

Starting point is 00:17:24 How learned you've got, said Hans Kastor. Fine sort of learning. God knows I wished I'd had it sweated out of my sister, him in the service, responded Yoakim. But I still have sputum, he said, with a shoulder shrug that was somehow indifferent and vehement both at once, and became him but ill. He half pulled out and showed to his cousin something he carried in the side pocket of his overcoat, next to Hans Castorpe.

Starting point is 00:17:52 It was a flat, curving bottle of bluish glass with a metal cap. Most of us up here carry it, he said, shoving it back. It even has a nickname. They make quite a joke of it. You are looking at the landscape? Hans Castrop was. Splendid, he said. Think so?

Starting point is 00:18:14 Asked Yo Kim. They had driven for a space straight up the axis of the valley, along a near-regulally built street that followed the line of the railway. Then, turning to the left, they crossed the narrow tracks and a watercourse, now trotted up a high road that, mounted gently towards the wooded slopes.

Starting point is 00:18:35 Before them rose a low, projecting meadow-like plateau, on which, facing south-west, stood a long building with a cupola, and so many balconies that from a distance it looked porous, like a sponge. In this building, lights were beginning to show. It was rapidly growing dusk. The faint rose colour that had briefly enlivened the overcast heavens was faded now, and there reigned the colourless, soulless, melancholy transition period that comes just before the onset of night.

Starting point is 00:19:09 The Populous Valley, extended and rather winding, now began to show lights everywhere, not only in the middle, but here and there on the slopes at either hand, particularly on the projecting right side, upon which buildings mounted in terrace formation. Paths ran up the sloping meadows to the left and lost themselves in the vague blackness of the pine forest. Behind them where the valley narrowed to its entrance,

Starting point is 00:19:36 the more distant ranges showed a cold, slaty blue. The wind had sprung up and made perceptible the chill of evening. No, to speak frankly, I don't find it so ever-powering, said Hans Kastop. Where are the glaciers, and the snow peaks and the gigantic heights you hear about? These things aren't very high, it seems to me. "'Oh, yes, they are,' answered Joachim. "'You can see the tree line, almost everywhere. "'It is very sharply defined.

Starting point is 00:20:08 "'The fir trees leave off, and after that there is absolutely nothing but bare rock. "'And up there, to the right of the Schwarzhorn, that tooth-shaped peak, there is a glacier. "'Can't you see the blue? "'It is not very large, but it is a glacier, right enough. "'The scoletta. "'Pitz, Michel, and Tinsenhorn in the notch. You can't see them from here. Have snow all the year round. Eternal snow, said Hans Castor.

Starting point is 00:20:40 Eternal snow, if you like. Yes, that's all very high. But we are frightfully high ourselves. Sixteen hundred metres above sea level. That's why the peaks don't seem any higher. Yes, what a climb that was. I was scared to death, I can tell you. "'1600 metres, that is over 5,000 feet, as I reckon it. "'I've never been so high up in my life.' "'And Hans Kastob took in a deep, experimental breath of the strange air. "'It was fresh, and that was all. "'Had no perfume, no content, no humidity.

Starting point is 00:21:18 "'It breathed in easily and held for him no associations. "'Wonderful air,' he remarked politely. Yes, the atmosphere is famous, but the place doesn't look its best tonight. Sometimes it makes a much better impression, especially when there is snow. But you can get sick of looking at it. All of us up here are frightfully fed up, you can imagine, said Joachim, and twisted his mouth into an expression of disgust that was as unlike him as the shoulder shrug. It looked irritable and disproportionate.

Starting point is 00:21:56 You have such a queer way of talking, said Hans Kastop. Have I? said Yonkham, concerned, and turned to look at his cousin. Oh no, of course I don't mean you really have. I suppose it just seemed so to me for the moment. Hans Kastop hastened to assure him. It was the expression, all of us up here, which Yokim had used several times, that had somehow struck him as strange and given him an uneasy feeling. "'Our sanatorium is higher up than the village, as you see,' went on Joachim,

Starting point is 00:22:30 "'fifty metres higher. "'In the prospectus it says a hundred, but it is really only fifty. "'The highest of the sanatoriums is the Shatzalb. "'You can't see it from here. "'They have to bring their bodies down on bobsleds in the winter "'because the roads are blocked. "'Their bodies? "'Oh, I see. Imagine,' said Hans Castor,

Starting point is 00:22:54 and suddenly he burst out laughing, a violent, irrepressible laugh that shook him all over and distorted his face that was stiff with the cold wind until it almost hurt. On bobsleds? And you can tell it me just like that, in cold blood. You've certainly got pretty cynical in these five months. Not at all, answered Joachim, shrugging again.

Starting point is 00:23:19 Why not? It's all the same to them, isn't it? But maybe we do get cynical up here. Berens is a cynic himself, but he's a great old bird, after all, an old core student. He's a brilliant operator, they say. You will like him. Krakoski is the assistant, devilishly clever article. They mention his activities specially in the prospectus. He psychoanalyses the patients. He what?

Starting point is 00:23:48 Psychoanalyses. How disgusting, cried Hans Kastop. And now he's a psychoanalyzes. his hilarity altogether got the better of him. He could not stop. The psychoanalysis had been the finishing touch. He laughed so hard that the tears ran down his cheeks. He put up his hands to his face and rocked with laughter. Yol Kim laughed just as heartily. It seemed to do him good. And thus, in great good spirits, the young people climbed out of the wagon, which had slowly mounted the steep winding drive and deposited them before the portal of the International Sanatorium

Starting point is 00:24:26 Berghoff. End of Section 1. Section 2 of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 2. Chapter 1. Number 34. On their right as they entered, between the main door and the inner one was the porter's lodge. An official of the French type, in the grey livery of the man at the station, was sitting at the telephone, reading the newspaper. He came out and led them through the well-lighted halls, on the left of which lay the reception rooms. Hans Castorpe peered in as he passed, but they were empty. Where then were the guests? he asked, and his cousin answered, in the rescue. I had leave tonight to go out and meet you. Otherwise, I am always up in my balcony,

Starting point is 00:25:27 after supper. Hans Kastorp came near bursting out again. What? You lie out on your balcony at night in the damp, he asked, his voice shaking. Yes, that is the rule, from eight to ten. But come and see your room now and get a wash. They entered the lift. It was an electric one, worked by the Frenchman. As they went up, Hans Castorpe wiped his eyes. "'I'm perfectly worn out with laughing,' he said, and breathed through his mouth. "'You've told me such a lot of crazy stuff. That about the psychoanalysis was the last straw. I suppose I am a bit relaxed from the journey, and my feet are cold. Are yours?' But my face burns so. It is really unpleasant. Do we eat now? I feel hungry.

Starting point is 00:26:19 Is the food decent up here? They went noiselessly along the cocoa matting of the narrow corridor, which was lighted by electric lights in white glass shades set in the ceiling. The walls gleamed with hard white enamel paint. They had a glimpse of a nursing sister in a white cap, an eyeglasses on a cord that ran behind her air. She had the look of a Protestant sister, that is to say, one working without a real vocation,

Starting point is 00:26:50 and burdened with restlessness and ennui. As they went along the corridor, hands cast or saw, beside two of the white enameled numbered doors, certain curious, swollen-looking, balloon-shaped vessels with short necks. He did not think at the moment to ask what they were. Here you are, said Joachim. I am next to you on the right. The other side you have a Russian couple,

Starting point is 00:27:16 rather loud and offensive, but it couldn't be helped. Well, how do you like it? There were two doors, an outer and an inner, with clotheshooks in the space between. Joachim had turned on the ceiling light, and in its vibrating brilliance, the room looked restful and cheery,

Starting point is 00:27:37 with practical white furniture, white washable walls, clean linoleum, and white linen curtains gaily embroidered in modern taste. The door stood open, One saw the lights of the valley and heard distant dance music. The good Joachim had put a vase of flowers on the chest of drawers,

Starting point is 00:27:57 a few bluebells and some yarrow, which he had found among the second crop of grass on the slopes. Awfully decent of you, said Hans Castorpe. What a nice room. I shall spend a couple of weeks here with pleasure. An American woman died here a day before yesterday, said Joachim. Berens told me directly that she would be out of it. before you came, and you might have the room. Her fiancé was with her, an English officer of

Starting point is 00:28:24 Marines, but he didn't behave very well. He kept coming out in the corridor to cry, just like a little boy. He rubbed cold cream on his cheeks, because he was clothes shaven, and the tears smarted. Night before last, she had two first-class hemorrhages, and that was the finish. But she has been gone since yesterday morning, and after they took her away, of course, they feel. fumigated the room thoroughly with formalin, which is the proper thing to use in such cases. Hans Castob took in this information with a lively yet half-distort air. He was standing with his sleeves pushed back, before the roomy wash-hand basin, the taps of which shone in the electric light, and gave heartily a glance at the white metal bed with its

Starting point is 00:29:12 fresh coverlet. Fumigated it, air, that's ripping, he said, Lecoigneur. and rather absurdly, as he washed and dried his hands. Methyl aldehyde, yes, that's too much for the bacteria, no matter how strong they are, H-2-C-O. But it's a powerful stench. Of course, perfect sanitation is absolutely essential. He spoke with more of a Hamburg accent than his cousin, who had broken himself of it since his student days. Hans Kastorp continued, volubly. But what I was about to say was,

Starting point is 00:29:48 Probably the officer of Marines used a safety razor. One makes oneself sore with those things easier than with a well-sharpened blade. At least that is my experience, and I use them both by turns. Well, and salt water would naturally make a tender skin smart, so he got in the way, in the service of rubbing in coal cream. I don't see anything strange about that. He rattled on, said that he had 200 Maria Mancini's, his cigar. in his trunk. The customs officers had been very courteous, and he gave his cousin greetings from

Starting point is 00:30:24 various people at home. "'Don't they heat the rooms here?' he broke off to inquire, and ran to put his hands on the radiator. "'No, they keep us pretty cool,' answered Joachim. "'The weather would have been different from this before they put on the heat in August.' "'August, August,' said Hans Castorpe. "'But I am cold, abominably cold. I mean in my body, for my face burns shockingly. Just feel it. This demand was entirely foreign to the young man's nature,

Starting point is 00:30:59 so much so that he himself was disagreeably impressed as he heard himself make it. Yoakim did not take up the offer, but merely said, That is the air. It doesn't mean anything. Berens himself is purple in the face all day long. Some people never get used to it. Come along now, do, or we shan't get anything. to eat. Outside, they saw the nursing sister again, peering short-sightedly and inquisitively

Starting point is 00:31:26 after them. But in the first story, Hans Castorpe suddenly stopped, rooted to the spot, by a perfectly ghastly sound coming from a little distance off, round a bend in the corridor. It was not a loud sound, but so distinctly horrible that Hans Castorpe made a wry face and looked wide-eyed at his cousin. It was coughing. Obviously a man coughing. but coughing, like no other Hans Kastop had ever heard, and compared with which any other had been a magnificent and healthy manifestation of life, a coughing that had no conviction and gave no relief, that did not even come out in paroxysms,

Starting point is 00:32:07 but was just a feeble, dreadful welling up of the juices of organic dissolution. Yes, said Gerecim, that's a bad case, an Austrian aristocrat, you know, very elegant. He's a born horseman, a gentleman rider, and now he's come to this, but he still gets about. As they went, Hans Kastorp discoursed earnestly upon the gentleman rider's cough. You must realise, he said, that I've never heard anything like it before. It is entirely new to me, and naturally it makes a great impression. There are different kinds of coughs, dry and loose, and people always say the loose one is better than the other. the barking kind.

Starting point is 00:32:53 When I had croup in my youth, he actually said in my youth, I bade like a wolf, and I can still remember how glad everybody was when it got looser. But a cough like this, didn't know there was such a cough. It isn't a human cough at all. It isn't dry and yet isn't loose either.

Starting point is 00:33:14 And it's very far from being the right word for it. It is just as if one could look right into him. when he coughs, and see what he looks like. All slime and mucus. Oh, said Youkham, I hear it every day. You don't need to describe it to me. But Hans Castor could not get over the coughing he had heard. He kept repeating that he could see right into the gentleman rider's vitals. When they reached the restaurant, his travel-weary eyes had an excited glitter. End of Section 2.

Starting point is 00:33:48 Section 3 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann This Libravox recording is in the public domain Section 3 Chapter 1 In the Restaurant It was charming in the restaurant elegantly appointed and well lighted The room lay to the right of the hall

Starting point is 00:34:12 opposite the salons And was, Yolkim explained, used chiefly by the new arrivals and by guests eating out of the usual meal hours or entertaining company. But it also served for birthday feasts, farewell parties, even to celebrate a favourable report after a general examination. There were lively times here in the restaurant, on occasion, and champagne flowed freely.

Starting point is 00:34:41 Now no one was here but a solitary lady of some 30 years, reading a book and humming. She kept tapping the table. tablecloth, lightly with the middle finger of her left hand. After the young people had taken their places, she changed hers, or to sit with her back to them. Yer Kim explained in a low voice that she suffered from shyness as from a disease, and ate all her meals in the restaurant with a book. It was said that she had entered her first tuberculosis sanatorium as a young girl, and had never lived in the world since. So compared with her, you are only a novice.

Starting point is 00:35:18 with your five months, and still will be when you have a year on your back, said Hans Kastorp to his cousin, whereat Yoakim, with his newly acquired shoulder shrug, took up the menu. They had sat down at the raised table in the window, the pleasantest spot in the room, facing each other against the cream-coloured hangings, their faces lighted by the red-shaded table-lamp. Hans Kastorp clasped his freshly washed hands, and rubbed them together in agreeable anticipation, a habit of his when he sat down to table, perhaps because his ancestors had set grace before meat. They were served by a friendly maid in black frock and white apron. She had a pleasant, throaty voice, and her broad face was indisputably healthy-coloured.

Starting point is 00:36:08 To its great amusement, Hans Castop learned that the waitresses here were called dining-room girls. They ordered a bottle of Gruen's. Laroz, and Hans Kastop sent it back to have it warmed. The food was excellent, asparagus soup, stuffed tomatoes, a roast with vegetables, an exceedingly well-prepared sweet, cheese and fruit. Hans Kastop ate heartily, though his appetite did not turn out quite so stout as he had thought, but he always had a good deal, out of pure self-respect, even when he was not hungry. Yokim paid scant honour to the meal.

Starting point is 00:36:49 He was tired of the cooking, he said. They all were up here, and it was customary to grumble at the food. If one had to sit up here for ever and a day. But, on the other hand, he partook of the wine, with gusto, not to say abandon, and repeatedly, though with careful avoidance of emotional language, expressed his joy at having somebody here, with whom one could have a little rational conversation. "'Yes, it's first rate you've come,' he said. His gentle voice betrayed some feeling.

Starting point is 00:37:20 "'I must say it is really an event for me. It is certainly a change, anyhow, a break in the everlasting monotony.' "'But time must go fast, living up here,' was Hans Kastop's view. "'Fast and slow as you take it,' answered Yolk. "'It doesn't go at all,' I tell you. "'You can't call it time, and you can't call it living either,' he said, with a shake of the head. and fell to his glass again. Hans Kastop drank too,

Starting point is 00:37:48 though his face was like fire. Yet he was still cold and felt a curious restlessness in his limbs, at once pleasurable and troubling. His words fell over each other. He often misspoke, and passed it over with a deprecating wave. Joachim, too, was in lively humour,

Starting point is 00:38:07 and their conversation continued in a still freer and more convivial vein after the humming, tapping lady had got up suddenly and left the room. They gesticulated with their forks as they ate, nodded, shrug their shoulders, talked with their mouths full. Eau Kim wanted to hear about Hamburg, and brought the conversation round to the proposed regulation of the Elbe. Epoch-making, said Hans Castorpe. Epoc-making for the development of our shipping. Can't be overestimated.

Starting point is 00:38:38 We've budgeted 50 millions for immediate expenditure, and you may be sure we know what we're about. But notwithstanding all the importance he attached to the projected improvement, he jumped away from the theme and demanded that Joachim tell him more about life up here and about the guests, which the latter straightway did, being only too pleased to be able to unbosom himself. He had to repeat the story of the corpses sent down by Bob Slay and vouch for its truth. Hans Castob being taken by another fit of laughing, his cousin laughed too,

Starting point is 00:39:10 with hearty enjoyment, and told other funny things to add fuel to their merriment. There was a lady sitting at his table named Frow Stor, the wife of a Can-Start musician. A rather serious case she was, and the most ignorant creature he had ever seen. She said diseased, for deceased, quite seriously, and she called Krakowski, the assistant, and you had to take it all without cracking a smile. She was a regular gossip, most people were up here, and published it broadcast that another lady a certain frauiltis carried a sterolito on her person.

Starting point is 00:39:47 That is exactly what she called it. Isn't that priceless? They lulled in their chairs. They flung themselves back and laughed so hard that they shook. They began to hiccup at nearly the same time. Now and then Yolkim's face would cloud over and he would remember his lot. Yes, we sit here and laugh, he said, with a long face. his words interrupted by the heaving of his diaphragm. We sit here and laugh, but there's no telling when I shall get away.

Starting point is 00:40:16 When Beron says half a year, you can make up your mind it will be more. It is hard, isn't it? You just tell me if you don't think it is pretty hard on me. I had already been accepted. I could have taken my exams next month. And now I shall have to drool about with a thermometer stuck in my mouth and count the howlers of this ignorant, Froustal.

Starting point is 00:40:40 And watch the time slipping away. A year is so important at our age. Down below, one goes through so many changes and makes so much progress in a single year of life. And I have to stagnate up here. Yes, just stagnate like a filthy puddle. It isn't too crass a comparison. Strange to say, Hans Castop's only reply to all this

Starting point is 00:41:06 was a query as to whether it was possible to get Porter up here. When Yoakim looked at him in some astonishment, he perceived that his cousin was overcome with sleep, that in fact he was actually nodding. But you are going to sleep, said Joachim. Come along. It is time we both went to bed. You can't call it time, quoth Hans Castorpe, thick-tonged. He went with his cousin, rather bent and stiff in the knees, like a man bowed to the earth with fatigue.

Starting point is 00:41:37 However, in the dimly lighted corridor, he pulled himself, sharply together on hearing his cousin say, There's Krakowski, sitting there. I think I'll just have to present you as briefly as possible. Dr. Krakowski sat in the bright light at the fireplace of one of the reception rooms close to the folding doors. He was reading a paper and got up as the young people approached. Yoakim, in military position, heals together, said,

Starting point is 00:42:05 Hey, Doctor, may I present my cousin, Kastorp from Hamburg? He has just arrived. Dr. Krakowski greeted the new inmate with a jovial and robust heartiness, as we should say that with him all formality was superfluous, and only joccan mutual confidence in place. He was about 35 years old, broad-shouldered and fleshy, much shorter than either of the youths before him, so that he had to tip back his head to look them in the face.

Starting point is 00:42:34 He was unusually pale of a translucent, yes, phosphorescent pallor, that was further accentuated by the dark ardour of his eyes, the blackness of his brows, and his rather long, full whisker, which ended in two points, and already showed some white threads. He had on a black, double-breasted, somewhat worn sack-suit, black, open-worked, sandal-like shoes of grey woolen socks,

Starting point is 00:43:04 and a soft, turned-down collar, such as Hans Castorpe, had previously seen worn, only by a photographer in Danzig, which did, in fact, lend a certain stamp of the studio to Dr. Krakowski's appearance. Smining warmly and showing his yellow teeth in his beard, he shook the young man by the hand and said in a baritone voice, with rather a foreign drawl, "'Welcome to our midst,' Herr Kastop. "'May you get quickly acclimatized and feel yourself at home among us?' "'Do you come as a patient, may I ask?'

Starting point is 00:43:40 It was touching to see Hans cast up labour to master his drowsiness and be polite. It annoyed him to be in such bad form, and with the self-consciousness of youth, he read signs of indulgent amusement in the warmth of the assistance manner. He replied, mentioning his examinations and his three weeks' visit, and ended by saying he was, thank God, perfectly healthy. Really? asked Krakowski, putting his head teasingly on one side. His smile grew broader. Then you are a phenomenon worthy of study.

Starting point is 00:44:16 I, for one, have never in my life come across a perfectly healthy human being. What were the examinations you have just passed, if I may ask? I am an engineer, Herr Doctor, said Hans Castorpe, with modest dignity. Ah, an engineer, Dr. Krakowski's smile retreated, as it were, lost for the moment something of its genial warmth. "'A splendid calling! "'And so you will not require any attention "'while you were here, either physical or psychical.' "'Oh, no, thank you ever so much,' said Hans Castop,

Starting point is 00:44:53 "'and almost drew back a step as he spoke. "'At that, Dr. Krakowski's smile burst forth triumphant. "'He shook the young man's hand afresh and cried briskly, "'Well, sleep well, hair, Castop, "'and rejoice in the fullness of your perfect health.' Sleep well, and al-Vida Zane. With which he dismissed the cousins and returned to his paper. The lift had stopped running, so they climbed the stairs.

Starting point is 00:45:22 In silence, some were taken aback by the encounter with Dr. Krakowski. Jo Kim went with his cousin to number 34, where the lame porter had already deposited the luggage of the new arrival. They talked for another quarter hour, while Hans Kastop packed his night and toilet things, smoking a large, mild cigarette the while. The cigar would have been too much for him this evening, a fact which impressed him as odd indeed.

Starting point is 00:45:50 He looks quite a personality, he said, blowing out the smoke. He is as pale as wax. But dear me, what hideous foot gear he wears. Grey woolen socks and then those sandals. Was he really offended at the end, do you think? He is rather touchy. admitted Yerkin. You ought not to have refused the treatment so brusquely,

Starting point is 00:46:14 at least not the psychical. He doesn't like to have people get out of it. He doesn't take much stock in me because I don't confide in him enough. But every now and then I tell him a dream I've had, so that he can have something to analyse. Then I certainly did offend him, said Hans Kastorp fretfully, for it annoyed him to give offence.

Starting point is 00:46:34 His weariness rushed over him with renewed force, at the thought. "'Good night,' he said. "'I'm falling over.' "'At eight o'clock, I'll come fetch you to breakfast,' "'Yokim said and went. Hans Kastorp made only a cursory toilet for the night. "'Hardly had he put out the bedside light

Starting point is 00:46:56 "'when sleep overcame him. "'But he started up again, "'remembering that in that bed, "'the day before yesterday, someone had died. "'That wasn't the first time either,' he said to himself, as though the thought was reassuring. It is a regular deathbed, a common deathbed. And he fell asleep.

Starting point is 00:47:20 No sooner had he gone off, however, then he began to dream, and dreamed almost without stopping until next morning. Principally, he saw his cousin, Joachim Zimson, in a strange, dislocated attitude on a bobsled, riding down a steep course. He had a phosphorescent pallor like Dr. Kukerski. and in front of him sat the gentleman rider and steered. The gentleman rider was indistinct, like someone wanted her cough but never seen.

Starting point is 00:47:50 "'It is all the same to us up here,' remarked the dislocated Joachim. And then it was he and not the gentleman rider who was coughing in that horribly pulpy manner. Hans Castorpe wept bitterly to hear, and then perceived that he must run to the chemists to get some cold cream. But Frou Iltis, with a pointed scyenne, snout sat by the roadside with something in her hand, which must be her steriletto, but was obviously nothing else than a safety razor. This made Hans Castor go from tears to laughing, and thus he was tossed back and forth among varying emotions until the dawn came through his half-open

Starting point is 00:48:31 balcony door, and wakened him. End of Section 3. Section 4 of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 4 Chapter 2 Of the Christening Basin and of Grandfather in His Twofold guise. Hans Kastorp retained only pale memories of his parental home. His father and mother he had barely known.

Starting point is 00:49:05 They both dropped away in the brief period between his fifth and seventh birthdays. First the mother, quite suddenly, on the east. eve of a confinement of an arterial obstruction following the ritis, an embellus, Dr. Hydekind had called it, which caused instantaneous cardiac arrest. She had just been laughing, sitting up in bed, and it looked as though she had fallen back with laughter. But really it was because she had died. The father, Herman Castorp, could not grasp his loss. He had been deeply attached to his wife, and not being of the strongest himself never quite recovered from her death. His spirit was troubled, he shrank within himself.

Starting point is 00:49:52 His benumbed brain made him blunder in his business, so that the firm of Castorp and son suffered sensible financial losses. And the next spring, while inspecting warehouses on the windy landing stage, he got inflammation of the lungs. The fever was too much for his shaken heart, and in five days, notwithstanding all Dr. Hydekind's care, he died. Attended to his rest by a respectable concourse of citizens, he followed his wife to the Castorpe family vault,

Starting point is 00:50:26 a charming sight in St. Catherine's churchyard, with a view of the botanical gardens. His father, the senator, survived him a short time. Then he too passed away, likewise of inflammation of the lungs. His death agony was sore, for unlike his son, Hans Lorenz Castorpe, had been a man of tough constitution and firmly rooted in life. Before his death, for the space of a year and a half,

Starting point is 00:50:58 the grandfather harboured the orphaned Hans Castorp in his home, a mansion, standing in a narrow lot on the esplanade, built in the early years of the last century in the northern classic style of architecture. It was painted a depressing weather colour, and had palasters on either side of the entrance door, which was approached by a flight of five steps. Besides the parterre, which had windows going down to the floor and furnished with cast iron grills, there were two upper stories.

Starting point is 00:51:28 In the parterre were chiefly rooms of ceremony and a very light and cheerful dining room, with walls decorated in stucco. Its three windows, draped with wine-coloured curtains, looked out on the back garden. In this room daily at four o'clock, for the space of 18 months, grandfather and grandson dined together, served by old Fiat, who had earrings in his ears and silver buttons on his livery,

Starting point is 00:51:57 also a Batiste neckcloth like his masters, in which he buried his shaven chin, just as Hans Lorenz Castorpe did in his. Grandfather said thou to him, and addressed him in dialect, not with any humorous intent, for he had no bent that way, but in all seriousness, because it was his custom so to do in his dealings with the common people, the warehouse Hans, postman, coachman, and servants. Hans Castog liked to hear it, and very much he liked to hear Fiat reply, in dialect too,

Starting point is 00:52:33 bending over as he served and speaking into his master's left ear, for the senator could hear much better on that side. The old man would listen and nod and go on eating, sitting erect between the table and the high back of his mahogany chair, and scarcely at all bending over his plate. And his grandson, opposite, watched in silence with deep, unconscious concentration. Grandfather's beautiful, thin, white old hands with their pointed nails, and on the right forefinger the green seal ring with the crest, watched the small, deft, practiced motions, with which they arranged a mouthful of meat, vegetable and potato on the end of his fork,

Starting point is 00:53:19 and with a slight inclination of the head conveyed it to his mouth. Then he would look at his own hands, and there are still clumsy movements, and see in them the hope foreshadowed of one day holding and using his knife and fork, as grandfather did. Again he would wonder whether he should ever bury his chin, in such another neckband as that which filled the wide space inside grandfather's extraordinary colour, with its sharp points, brushing the old man's cheeks.

Starting point is 00:53:49 He doubted it. One would have to be as old as grandfather for that. In these days, save for him and his old fiat, nobody, far and wide, wore such colours and neckcloths. It was a pity. Little Hans Kastop liked the way his grandfather's chin nestled in the high. high snow-white band. Even after he had grown, he recalled it with pleasure. Something in the depth of his being responded to it.

Starting point is 00:54:18 When they had done, they folded their table napkins and put them in their silver rings, a job at which Hans Castor never acquitted himself very well, but they were the size of small tablecloths. Then the senator got up from his chair, which Fiette drew away behind him, and went with shuffling steps. into his office to get a cigar. Sometimes the grandson followed him in. This office had come to exist because of a peculiarity

Starting point is 00:54:48 in the arrangement of the lower floor, namely that the dining room had been planned with three windows instead of two and ran the whole width of the house, which left space for only two drawing rooms instead of the usual three, and gave to one of them at right angles to the dining room with a single window on the street, a quite disproportionate depth. Of this room, therefore, some quarter of the length had been cut off, and turned into a cabinet.

Starting point is 00:55:18 It was a strip of a room with a skylight, twilighted, and not much furnished. There was an etagerre on which stood the senator's cigar case, a card table, the drawer of which held whisked cards, counters, little marking boards with tiny teeth that clapped open and shut. a slate and slate pencil, paper, cigar holders, and other such attractions, and finally in the corner a rococo case in palisander wood, with yellow silk stretched behind its glass doors.

Starting point is 00:55:53 "'Grandpa,' little Hans Castorpe might say, standing on tiptoes to reach the old man's ear, "'Please show me the christening basin.' And the grandfather, who had already pulled back the skirts of his long Kashmir frock and taken the bunch of keys from his trouser pocket, forthwith opened the door of the glass case, whence floated odours odd and pleasant to the boy's sense. Inside were all manner of disused and fascinating objects,

Starting point is 00:56:22 a pair of silver-branched candlesticks, a broken barometer in a wooden case with allegorical carving, an album of daguerretypes, a cedarwood case for lecares, a funny little Turk in flowing silk robes under which was a hard body with a mechanism inside. Once you had wound him up, he had been able to leap about all over the table,

Starting point is 00:56:45 but he was long since out of repair. Then there was a quaint old model of a ship, and right at the bottom a rat trap. But from the middle shelves, grandfather took a much tarnished, round, silver dish, with a tray likewise of silver, and showed them both to the boy. lifting them separately and turning them about in his hands,

Starting point is 00:57:07 as he told the story he had so often told before. Platon Basin, one could see, and as the little one heard, once again, had not originally belonged together. But, grandfather said, they had been in use together for around hundred years, or since the time when the basin was made. The latter was very beautiful, of simple and elegant form in the severe taste of the early 19th century. It rested, plain and solid, on a round base, and once being gilt within, but the gilding

Starting point is 00:57:40 had faded with time to a yellow shimmer. Its single decoration was a chaste garland of roses and serrated leaves about the brim. As for the plate, its far greater antiquity could be read on the inside. The date 1650 was engraved there in ornamental figures, framed in curly engraved lines, executed in the modern manner of the period, florid and capricious devices in arabesques that was something between star and flower. On the back, engraved in a variety of scripts, were the names of its successive owners, seven in number.

Starting point is 00:58:18 Each were the date when it had passed into his hands. The old man named each one to his grandson, pointing with beringed index finger. There was Hans Castob's father's name. There was grandfather's own. There was great-grandfathers, and then the great came doubled, tripled, quadrupled, from the old man's mouth. Whilst the little lad listened, his head on one side, his eyes full of thought,

Starting point is 00:58:44 yet fixed and dreamy too. The childish lips parted, half in awe, half sleepily. That great, great, great, great, what a hollous sound it had, how it spoke of the falling away of time, yet how it seemed the expression of a piously cherished link between the present, his own life, and the depth of the past. All that, as his face showed, made a profound impression. As he listened to the great, great, great,

Starting point is 00:59:16 he seemed to smell the cool, earthy air of the vault of St. Michael's or St. Catharines. The breath of places where one went a hat in hand, the head reverently bowed, walking weavingly, on the tips of one's toes, seemed too to hear the resounding hush of those remote and set-apart places. Religious feeling mingled in his mind with thoughts of death and a sense of history as he listened to the sombre syllable. He received, therefore, an ineffable gratification. Indeed, it may have been for the sake of hearing the sound that he so often begged to see the christening basin. Grandfather set the vessel back on the train,

Starting point is 00:59:59 and let the boy look into the smooth, faintly golden inside, which caught the light from the window in the ceiling. Yes, he said, it will soon be eight years since we held you over it. And the water flowed into it from your baptism. Lassen, the sexton of St. Jacobs, poured it into our old pastor Bouganagan's hand, and it ran out over your little top-knot and into the basin.

Starting point is 01:00:27 We had warmed it, so it should not frighten you and make you cry, and you did not. You cried beforehand, though so loud that Bougain could hardly get on with the service, but you stopped when you felt the water, and that, let us hope, was out of respect for the Holy Sacrament. A few days from now it will be 44 years since your blessed father was a baby at the baptismal font, and it was from his head the water flowed into the basin. that was here in this house

Starting point is 01:01:00 where he was born in the front of the middle dining room window and old pastor Hezekiel was still alive He was the man the French nearly shot when he was young because he preached against their burning and looting He has been with God these many years Then five and seventy years ago I was the youngster whose head they held over this south-same basin

Starting point is 01:01:23 That was in the dining room too And the minister spoke the very one words that was spoken when you and your father were baptized, and the clear, warm water flowed over my head, precisely the same way. There wasn't much more hair than there is now, and fell into this golden bowl just as it did from yours. The little one looked up at grandfather's narrow grey head, bending over the basin as it had in the time he described. A familiar feeling pervaded the child, a strange, dreamy, troubling sense of change in the midst of duration, of time as both flowing and persisting, of recurrence in continuity. These were sensations he had felt before on the like occasion, and both expected and longed for again, whenever the heirloom was displayed.

Starting point is 01:02:15 As a young man, he was aware that the image of his grandfather was more deeply and clearly imprinted on his mind, with greater significance than those of his own parents. The fact might rest upon sympathy and physical likeness, for the grandson resembled a grandfather, insofar that is, as a rosy youth, with the down on his chin might resemble a bleached, rheumatic, septuagarian. Yet it probably spoke even more for that which was indeed the truth, but the grandfather had been the real personality, the picturesque figure of the family.

Starting point is 01:02:50 long beforehand Lorenz Custops passing, his person and the things for which he stood had ceased to be representative of his age. He had been a typical Christian gentleman of the reformed faith, of a strongly conservative cast of mind, as obstinately convinced of the right of the aristocracy to govern, as if he had been born in the 14th century, when the labouring classes had begun to make head against the stout resistance of the free patriciate, and rest from it a place and voice in the councils of the ancient city. He had little use for the new. His active years had fallen in a decade of rapid growth and repeated upheavals, a decade of progress by forced marches,

Starting point is 01:03:36 which had made continual demands on the public capacity for enterprise and self-sacrifice. Certainly he had no part or lot, or cast off, in the brilliant triumph of the modern spirit that followed hard upon. It was not his fault. He had held far more with ancestral ways and old institutions than with ruinous schemes for widening the harbour or godless and rubbishing plans for a great metropolis. He had put on the brakes. He had whittled things down wherever he could, and if matters had gone to his liking, the administration would have continued to wear the same idyllic, old Frankish guise as in his time his own office did. such in his lifetime and afterwards was the figure of the old man presented to the eyes of his fellow burghers

Starting point is 01:04:26 and such in essentials was he also to the childish gaze of little Hans Castorpe who knew naught of affairs of state and whose formless uncritical judgments were rather the fruit of mere lively perceptions yet they persisted into later life as the elements of a perfectly conscious memory picture which defied expression or analysis, but was nonetheless positive for all that. We repeat that natural sympathy was in play here too, the close family tie and essential intimacy, which not infrequently leaps over an intervening generation.

Starting point is 01:05:06 Senator Castorpe was tall and lean. The years had bent his back and neck, but he tried to counteract the curvature by pressure in another direction, drawing down his mouth with sedulous dignity, though the lips were shrunken against the bare gums, for he had lost all his teeth and put in the false ones only to eat. It was this posture also which helped a steady and incipient shaking of the head, gave him his look of being sternly rained up, and caused him to support his chin on his neckcloth in the manner so congenial to little Hans Castorpe's taste.

Starting point is 01:05:42 He loved his snuff-box. It was a longish, golden laid. tortoise-shell one, and on account of his snuff-taking, used a red pocket-handkerchief, the corner of which always hung out of the back pocket of his coat. If this foible added a quaint touch to his appearance, yet the effect was only of a slight negligence or licence due to age, which length of days either consciously or cheerfully permits itself, or else brings in its train without the victims being aware. If weakness it were, it was the only one the sharp eye of the child ever noted in his grandfather's exterior. But the old man's everyday appearance was not his real

Starting point is 01:06:21 and authentic one, either to the seven-year-old child or to the memory of the grown man in after years. It was different, far finer and truer. It was grandfather as he appeared in a life-sized portrait, which had once hung in the house of Hans Kastop's own parents, had moved over with him to the esplanade on their death, and now hung above the great red. sat in sofa in the reception room. The painting showed Hans Lorenz Castorp in his official garb as counsellor, the sober, even godly, civilian habit

Starting point is 01:06:57 of a bygone century, which a Commonwealth both self-assertive and enterprising had brought with it down the years, and retained in ceremonial use in order to make the present the past, make the past the present, to bear witness to the perpetual continuity of things, and the perfect soundness of its,

Starting point is 01:07:15 business signature. Senator Castorpe stood at full length on a red-tiled floor in a perspective of column and pointing arch. His chin was dropped, his mouth drawn down, his blue musing eyes with the tear ducts plain beneath them, directed toward the distant view. He wore the black coat, cut full like a robe, more than knee-length, with a wide trimming of fur all round the edge. The upper sleeves were wide and puffed and fur trimmed too, while from beneath them came the narrow under-sleeves of plain cloth, then lace cuffs, which covered the hands to the knuckles.

Starting point is 01:07:57 The slender, elderly legs were cased in black silk stockings. The shoes had silver buckles. But about his neck was the broad, starch rough, pressed down in front and swelling out on the sides, beneath which, for good measure, a fluted jabot came out over the waistcoat. under his arm he held the old-fashioned broad-roomed hat that tapered to a point on the top it was a capital picture by an artist of some note in an old masterish style that suited the subject and was reminiscent of much Spanish-Dutch late Middle Ages work

Starting point is 01:08:33 Little Hans Castorpe had often looked at it Not of course with any knowledge of art But with a larger even a fervoured comprehension Only once and then only for a moment, had he seen Grandfather as he was here represented, on the occasion of a procession to the Rathos. But he could not help feeling that this presentment was the genuine, the authentic grandfather, and the everyday one was merely subsidiary, not entirely conformable,

Starting point is 01:09:06 a sort of interim grandfather, as it were. For it was clear that the deviations and idiosyncrasies presented by his everyday appearance were due to incomplete, perhaps even unsuccessful adaptation. They were the not quite eradicable vestiges of grandfather's pure and genuine form. The choker collar and band, for instance, were old-fashioned. An adjective it would have been impossible to apply to that admirable article of apparel whose interim representative they were, namely the rough. The same was true of the outlandish top had, Grandfather wore,

Starting point is 01:09:43 with the bell-shaped crown, to which the broad-brimmed felt in the painting corresponded only with a higher degree of actuality, and of the voluminous frock-coat, whose archetype and original was, for the little Hans cast of, the lace and fur-trimmed ceremonial garment. Thus he was glad from his heart

Starting point is 01:10:05 that it should be the authentic, the perfect grandfather, who lay there resplendent on that day when he came to take last leave of him. It was in the room where so often they had faced each other at table. And now, in the centre, Hans Lorenz Kastop was lying in a silver-mounted coffin upon a beguarlanded beer. He had fought out the attack on his lungs, fought long and stoutly, despite his air of being at home in the life of the day only by dint of his powers of adaptability. One hardly knew whether he had won or lost in the struggle.

Starting point is 01:10:41 but in any case there he lay with a stern yet satisfied expression on his bed of state he had altered with the illness his nose looked sharp and thin the lower half of his body was hidden by a coverlet on which lay a palm branch the head was lifted high by the silken pillow

Starting point is 01:11:02 so that his chin rested beautifully in the front swell of the rough between the hands half shrouded in their lace cuffs their visibly cold, dead fingers artfully arranged to simulate life was stuck an ivory cross. He seemed to gaze beneath drooping lids, steadfastly down upon it. Hans Kastorp had probably seen his grandfather several times at the beginning of this last illness,

Starting point is 01:11:30 but not toward the end. They had spared him the sight of the struggle, the more easily that it had been mostly at night. He had only felt it through the surcharged at night. atmosphere of the house, Old Fiat's red eyes, the coming and going of the doctors. What he gathered as he stood now by the beer in the dining room was that grandfather had finally and formally surmounted his interim aspect and assumed for all time his true and adequate shape.

Starting point is 01:12:01 And that was a gratifying result, even though old Fiat continually wept and shook his head, even though hands castorpe himself wept, as he had at the sight of the mother he had abruptly been bereft of, and the father who, so little time after her, lay in his turn still and strange before the little boy's eyes. Thus, for the third time, in so short a space and in such young years, did death play upon the spirit and senses, but chiefly on the senses of the lad.

Starting point is 01:12:34 The sight was no longer strange, It was already right familiar. And as on those earlier occasions, only in still greater degree, he bore himself in the presence of death with a responsible air, quite self-controlled, showing no nervous weakness, if some natural dejection. He was unaware of the practical result the loss would mean to his own life, or else with childlike indifference was instinctively confident

Starting point is 01:13:02 that he would be taken care of somehow. Thus, at the beer, he displayed both an uncomprehending coolness and the detached alertness of observation, to which were added, on this third occasion, a feeling and expression of connoisseurship. And something more, a peculiar, precocious variation. He seemed no longer to think of tears, either the frequent outburst of grief,

Starting point is 01:13:28 or the contagion from the grief of others, as a natural reaction. In three or four months, after his father's passing, he'd forgotten about death. But now he remembered, and all the impressions of that time recurred, precise, immediate, and piercing in their transcendent strangeness.

Starting point is 01:13:49 Reduced to order and put into words, there would have been something like the following. In one aspect, death was a holy, a pensive, a spiritual state, possessed of a certain mournful beauty. In another it was quite different. It was precisely the opposite. It was very physical.

Starting point is 01:14:09 It was material. It could not possibly be called either holy or pensive or beautiful, not even mournful. The solemn, spiritual side expressed itself in the ceremonial lying-in state of the corpse, in the fan-leaved palm and the wealth of flowers, all which symbolized the peace of God and the heavenly kingdom, as did even more explicitly the ivory cross

Starting point is 01:14:34 stuck between the dead fingers of what was once grandfather, and the bust of Christ by Thawelson at the head of the beer, with towering candelabra on either side. It was these last that gave a churchly heir to the scene. All such arrangements had their more precise justification in the fact that grandfather was now clothed forever in his true and proper guise. But over and above that raison d'ette,

Starting point is 01:15:01 they had another of a more profane, of which little Hans Castrop was distinctly aware, though without admitting it in so many words. One and all of them, but expressly the flowers, and of these more expressly the hosts of tuberoses, were there to palliate the other aspects of death, the side which was neither beautiful, nor exactly sad, but somehow almost improper, its lowly physical side, to slur it over and prevent one from being conscious of him. It was this other aspect of death that made grandfather himself look so strange, not like grandfather at all, more like a life-size-waxed doll,

Starting point is 01:15:45 which death had put in his place, to be the centre of all this pious and reverent spectacle. He who lay there, or more correctly, that which lay there, was not grandfather himself, but a shell made, as Hans Kastrop was aware, not of wax, but of its own substance and only of that. Therein precisely was the impropriety. It was scarcely sad at all, as things are not which have to do with the body and only with it. Little Hans Castro regarded that substance,

Starting point is 01:16:18 waxy yellow and fine grain like cheese, of which the life-sized figure was made, the face and hands of what had been grandfather. A fly had settled on the quiet brow and began to move its proboscis, up and down. Oh, Fiat, shoot it cautiously away, taking care not to touch the forehead of the dead,

Starting point is 01:16:40 putting on a seemly air of absent-mindedness, obscure antism, as it were, as though he neither might nor would take notice of what he was doing. This correctness of demeanour obviously had to do with the fact that grandfather was now no longer anything but body. But the fly, after a circling flight, came to rest on grandfather's fingers close to the ivory cross. And Hans Castorpe watching, thought he detected, more plainly than ever before,

Starting point is 01:17:10 a familiar strange exhalation, faint yet oddly clinging. He blushed to find that it made him think of a former schoolfellow who was avoided by his classmates because he suffered from a certain unpleasant malady, for the drowning out of which the tuber roses were there, and which, with all their lovely luxuriance and strongness of their scent, they yet failed to overpower. He stood three times by his grandfather's beer, once alone with old Fiat, once with great-uncle Tarnapel, the wine merchant and his two uncles, James and Peter, the third and last time, when a group of harbour hands in their Sunday clothes came to take leave of the head of the house of Castoppen's son,

Starting point is 01:17:56 Then came the funeral. The room was full of people, and Pastor Bouganagan of St. Michael's, the same who had baptized little Hans, preached a sermon in a ruff. He was most friendly with the boys. They drove out together to the cemetery in the first carriage behind the hearse. Thus did another epoch in the life of Hans Castor come to an end. And again he moved to a new home and new surroundings. for the second time in his young life.

Starting point is 01:18:32 End of Section 4. Section 5 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 5 Chapter 2 At Tinaples and of Young Hanses' moral state. The change was no loss to him, for he entered the home of his appointed guardian,

Starting point is 01:18:58 Consul Tienapel, where he wanted for nothing. Certainly this was true so far as his bodily needs were concerned, and not less in the sense of safeguarding his interests, about which he was still too young to know anything at all. For Consul Tienapel, an uncle of Hans' deceased mother, was administrator of the Castorp estate. He put up the property for sale, took in hand the business of liquidating the firm of Castorp and son,

Starting point is 01:19:27 importers and exporters, and realised from the whole nearly four hundred, thousand marks, the inheritance of young Hans. This sum, consul Tienapel, invested in trust funds, and took unto himself two percent of the interest every quarter, without impairment of his kinsmanly feelings. The Tienapel house lay at the foot of a garden in Harvest Hudestrasse. The windows looked out on a plot of lawn, in which not the tiniest weed was suffered to flourish, then upon public rose-borders, and then upon the river. The consul went on foot every morning to his business in the old town,

Starting point is 01:20:06 although he possessed more than one fine equipage, in order to get a little exercise, for he sometimes suffered from cerebral congestion. He returned in the same way at five in the afternoon, at which time the tin apples dined with due and fitting ceremony. He was a weighty man whose suits were always of the best English cloths. His eyes were watery blue and prominent behind his gold-rimmed glasses. His nose was ruddy, and his square-cut beard was grey.

Starting point is 01:20:37 He wore a flashing brilliant on the stubby little finger of his left hand. His wife was long since dead. He had two sons, Peter and James, of whom one was in the Navy and seldom at home, the other occupied in the paternal wine trade and destined heir to the business. The housekeeping, for many years, had been the care of an Antona Goldsmith's daughter, named Shaline, who wore starched white ruffles at her plump, round wrists. Hers it was to see to it that the table, morning and evening, was richly laden with cold meats, with crabs and salmon, eel, and smoked breast of goose, with tomato ketchup for the roast beef.

Starting point is 01:21:22 She kept a watchful eye on the hired waiters when Consul Tignapel gave a gentleman's dinner, and she it was who, so far as in her lay, took the place of a mother to little Hans Castorb. So he grew up, in wretched weather, in the teeth of wind and mist, grew up, so to say, in a yellow mackintosh, and generally speaking he throve. A little anemic he had always been, so Dr. Hydekind said, and had him take a good glass of porter after third breakfast every day when he came home from school. This, as everyone knows, is a hearty drink. Dr. Hydekind considered it a bloodmaker, and certainly Hans Kastob found it most soothing to his spirits, and encouraging to a propensity of his,

Starting point is 01:22:10 which is Uncle Tienappell called dozing, namely, sitting staring into space, with his jaw dropped, and his thoughts fixed on just nothing at all. But on the whole, he was sound and fit, an adequate tennis player and rower, although actually handling the oars was less to his taste, and sitting of a summer evening on the terrace of the Ulamhorst Ferry House with a good drink before him,

Starting point is 01:22:34 and the sound of music in his ears, while he watched the lighted boats and the swans mirrored in the bright water. Hear him talk, sedate and sensible, in a rather low, monotonous voice, just tinged with dialect, observe him in his blonde correctness with his well-shaped head, which had about it some stamp of the classic, and his self-possessed, indolent bearing, the fruit of innate, inherited, perfectly unconscious self-esteem, you would swear that this young Castrop was a legitimate and genuine product of the soil in which he flourished, and strikingly at home in his environment. Nor would he, had he ever put such a question to himself, have been for a single second doubtful of the answer. Yes, he was thoroughly in his element in the atmosphere of this.

Starting point is 01:23:25 great seaboard city, this reeking air, compact of good living and a retail trade that embraced the four corners of the earth. It had been the breadth of his father's nostrils, and the sun drew it in with profound acquiescence and the sense of well-being. The exhalations from water, coals, the sharp tang in the nostrils, from heaped-up stacks of colonial produce, the huge steam cranes at the dockside, imitating the quiet, the intelligence, and the giant strength of elephants at work, as they hoisted tons of sacks, bales, chests, vats, and carboys,

Starting point is 01:24:06 out of the bowels of sea-going ships, and conveyed them into waiting trains and scales. The businessman in yellow rubber coats, like his own, streaming to the bourse at midday, where, as he knew, there was oftentimes pretty sharp work, and a man might have to strengthen his credit at short notice by giving out invitations to a big dinner. All this he felt, saw, heard, new. Besides it all, there was the field in which later was to lie his own particular interest, the confusion of the yards,

Starting point is 01:24:39 the mammoth bodies of great ships, Asiatic and African liners, lying in dry-dock, keel and propeller bear, supported by props as thick as tree trunks, lying there in monstrous helplessness, swarmed over by troops of men like dwarves, scouring, whitewashing, hammering. There were the roofed over ways, wrapped in wreaths of smoke-like mist, holding the towering frames of rising ships, among which moved the engineers, blueprint and loading scale in hand, directing the workpeople. All these were familiar sights to Hans Castro, his youth upwards, waking in him only the agreeable, homely sensations of belonging, which were the prerogative of his years. Such sensations would reach their height when he sat of a Sunday

Starting point is 01:25:29 forenoon with James Tiennapel, or his cousin Zimson, Joachim Zimson, in the pavilion at Alster, breakfasting on hot cuts and smoked meat, at the glass of old port. Or when, having eaten, he would lean back in his chair and give himself up to his cigar. For therein, especially, he was true to type, that he liked good living, and notwithstanding his thin-bloodedness and look of over-refinement, clung to the grosser pleasures of life as a greedy suckling to its mother's breast. Comfortably, not without dignity, he carried the weight of culture, with which the governing upper class of the commercial city endowed its children. He was as clean as a well-cared-for-baby, dressed by the tailor, in whom the young men of his social sphere felt most confidence.

Starting point is 01:26:20 Charlene took beautiful care of his small stock of carefully marked linen, which was bestowed in a dressing chest on the English plan. When he studied away from home, he regularly sent back his laundry to be washed and mended, for it was a saying of his that outside Hamburg, nobody in the kingdom knew how to iron. A rough spot on the cuff of his dainty coloured shirts filled him with acute discomfort. His hands, though not particularly aristocratic in shape, were well tended and fresh-skinned,

Starting point is 01:26:53 and he wore a platinum chain ring as well as the seal ring inherited from grandfather. His teeth were rather soft and defective and he had a number of gold fillings. Standing and walking he rather stuck out his abdomen which hardly made an athletic impression, but his bearing a table was beyond cavil. Sitting very erect, he would turn the whole upper part of his body

Starting point is 01:27:16 to speak to his neighbour, with self-possession, of course, and a little plat. And he kept his elbows well in as he dismembered his piece of fowl, or deftly, with the appointed tool, drew the rosy flesh from a lobster's shell. His first requirement after a meal was the finger-bowl of perfumed water, his second the Russian cigarette, which paid no duty, as he had a convenient way of getting them smuggled in. After the cigarette, the cigar. He favoured a Bremen brand called Maria Mancini, of which we shall hear more hereafter. The fragrant narcotic blended so soothingly with the coffee.

Starting point is 01:27:58 Hans Castor protected his supply of tobacco from the injurious effect of steam heating by keeping it in the cellar, whether he would partake himself every morning to load his case with his stock for the day. It went against the grain for him to eat butter, served in the piece, instead of in little fluted balls. It will be seen that we mean to say everything that may be said in Hans Castorps' favour, yet without fulsomeness, not making him out as better or worse than he was. He was neither genius nor Dunderhead, and if, in our description of him, we have avoided the use of the word mediocre, it has been for reasons quite unconnected with his intelligence, hardly even with any bearing upon his whole simple personality, but rather out of regard for his lot in life,

Starting point is 01:28:48 to which we inclined to ascribe a certain importance above and beyond personal considerations. His headpiece, sustained without undue strain the demands made upon it, by the course at the real gymnasium. Strain, indeed, was something to which he was quite definitely disinclined. whatever the circumstances or the object of his effort, less out of fear of hurting himself than because he positively saw no reason, or, more precisely, saw no positive reason for exertion. This then, perhaps, is why we may not call him mediocre, that, somehow or other, he was aware of the lack of such a reason. A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life. of his epoch and his contemporaries. He may regard the general, impersonal foundations of his existence as definitely settled and taken for granted, and be as far from assuming a critical attitude

Starting point is 01:29:49 towards them as our good hands cast up really was. Yet it is quite conceivable that he may, nonetheless, be vaguely conscious of the deficiencies of his epoch, and find them prejudicial to his own moral well-being. All sorts of personal aims, end, hopes, prospects, hover before the eyes of the individual. And out of these he derives the impulse to ambition and achievement. Now, if the life about him, if his own time seem, however outwardly stimulating to be at bottom empty of such food for his aspirations, if he privately recognize it to be hopeless, viewless, helpless, opposing only a hollow silence to all the questions man puts consciously or unconsciously, yet somehow puts as to the final absolute and abstract meaning

Starting point is 01:30:41 in all his efforts and activities. Then, in such a case, a certain laming of the personality is bound to occur. The more inevitably, the more upright the character in question, a sort of palsy, as it were, which may even extend from his spiritual and moral over into his physical and organic part. In an age that affords no satisfying answer to the eternal question of why, to what end, a man who is capable of achievement over and above the average, an expected modicum, must be equipped either with a moral remoteness and single-mindedness, which is rare indeed and of heroic mould, or else with an exceptionally robust vitality. Hans Kastor had neither the one nor the other of these, and thus he must be considered mediocre, though in an entirely honourable

Starting point is 01:31:36 sense. All this that we have said has reference to the inward state of the young man, not only during his school years, but also in those that followed, after he had made choice of his civil profession. On his way through his forms at school, he had now and again to take one for the second time. But in the main, his origin, his good breeding, and also a pretty, if unimpassioned gift for mathematics got him forward. And when he received his one-year service certificate, he made up his mind to continue at school. Principally, it must be said, because he thus prolonged a situation he was used to, in which no definite decisions had to be taken, and in which he had further time to think matters over and decide what he really wanted to do,

Starting point is 01:32:24 which he was far from knowing after he had arrived at the top form. Even when it was finally decided, to say when Hans Castorpe finally decided it would be saying too much, he had the feeling that it might quite as well have been decided some other way. So much, however, was true that he had always liked ships. As a small boy he had filled the pages of his notebooks with drawings of fishing barks, five masters, and vegetable barges. When he was fifteen, he had had a front seat at the christening ceremony of the new double-screwed steamer. Hansa. He had watched her leave the ways at Blom and Vosses, and afterwards made quite a happy

Starting point is 01:33:05 watercolour of the graceful ship, done with a good deal of attention to detail, and a loving and not unskilful treatment of the glassy green rolling waves. Consul Tienapel hung it in his private office, and somebody told him that it showed talent, that the artist might develop into a good green painter. A remark which the consul could safely repeat to his ward. For Hans Kastop, and he laughed good-humidly, and not for a moment considered letting himself in for a career of being eccentric and not getting enough to eat. You haven't so much, you know, his uncle Tianapple would say to him, James and Peter will get most of what I have. That is to say, it stops in the business, and Peter will draw his interest.

Starting point is 01:33:52 What belongs to you is well invested And brings you in something safe But it's no joke living on your interest today Unless one has at least five times What do you have And if you want to be somebody here in this town And live as you have been brought up to You'll have to earn a bit more

Starting point is 01:34:10 To put with it You mark my words, my son Hans Castorpe marked them He looked about for a profession Suitable in his own eyes and those of his fellow citizens. And when he had once chosen, it came about at the instance of old Wilms,

Starting point is 01:34:27 of the firm of Tundra and Wilms, who said to consult he and Apple at the Saturday Whist table that a young cast job ought to study shipbuilding. He would be a good idea, he would come into his office, and he would keep an eye on him. When he had once chosen,

Starting point is 01:34:43 he thought very highly of his calling. It was, to be sure, confoundedly complicated and fatiguing, but all the same, It was very first-rate, very solid, very important. And certainly, being peaceful in his tastes, he preferred it to that of his cousin, Zimson, the son of his mother's half-sister,

Starting point is 01:35:03 who was bent on being an officer. But Iokim Zimson was rather weak in the chest, and for that reason a calling which would keep him in the open, and in which there was no mental strain or fatigue to speak of, might be quite the right thing for him, Hans Kastop thought, with easy condescension. He had the greatest respect, for work, though personally he found that he tired easily.

Starting point is 01:35:26 And here we return to our suggestion of a few pages back. The idea that an unfavourable influence exerted upon a man's personal life, by the times in which he lives, may even extend his physical organism. Hans Castorpe respected work, as how should he not have? It would have been unnatural. Work was for him in the nature of things the most estimable attribute of life. When you came down to it, there was nothing else that was estimable. It was the principle by which one stood or fell, the absolute of the time. It was, so to

Starting point is 01:36:03 speak, its own justification. His regard for it was thus religious in its character, and so far as he knew, unquestioning. But it was another matter whether he loved it, and that he could not do, however great his regard. The simple reason, being, that it did not agree with him. Exacting occupation dragged at his nerves. It wore him out. Quite openly he confessed that he liked better to have his time free, not waited with the leaden load of effort, lying spacious before him, not divided up by obstacles. One had to grit one's teeth and conquer, one after another. These conflicting sentiments on the subject of work had, strictly speaking, to be reconciled. Is it perhaps possible if he had been able to believe

Starting point is 01:36:50 in work as a positive value, a self-justifying principle, believe in it in the very depth of his soul, even without being himself conscious of doing so, that his body as well as his spirit, first the spirit and through it the body as well, would have been able to devote itself to his task with more of joy and constancy, would have been able to find peace therein. Here again is posed the question of Hans Castorpe's mediocrity, or more than mediocrity. to which we would give no hard and fast answer. For we do not set up as the young man's encomiast, and prefer to leave room for the other view,

Starting point is 01:37:30 namely that his work stood somewhat in the way of his unclouded enjoyment of his Maria Mancini's. To military service he was not inclined, his being revolted against it, and found ways of making difficulties. It may be too that staff medical officer Dr. Ebidding, who visited at Harveston, at Harvest Hudistras, heard from Consulthianneple in the course of conversation,

Starting point is 01:37:55 that young Castorpe was leaving home to begin his technical studies and would find a call to the colours a very sensible interruption to his calling. Working slowly and deliberately, kept up his soothing habit of porter breakfast while he was away, he filled his brain with analytic and descriptive geometry, differential calculus, mechanics, projection, hydrostatic, reckoned full and empty displacement, stability, trim moment and metacenter, and sometimes he got very sick of it. His technical drawings, the drafts and designs of frames, water lines and longitudinal projections,

Starting point is 01:38:35 were not quite so good as the picturesque representation of the Hansa on the high seas. But wherever it was in place to call in the sense perceptions to help out the intellectual, wherever he could wash in the shadows and lay on the cross-sections in the conventional colours. There, Hans Castorpe, showed more dexterity than most. When he came home for the holidays, very clean, very well dressed, with a little red blonde moustache that became his sleepy young patrician face, obviously en route to a considerable position in life, people looked at him, the people who concerned themselves with the affairs of the community and made it their business to know all about family and social relations, and that, in a self-governing city state, met

Starting point is 01:39:19 most of the population, they looked him well over, his fellow citizens, and asked themselves what public role young Castorpe was destined to fill. He had traditions, his name was old and good. It would certainly have to reckon with him one day as a political factor. Someday he would sit in the Assembly, or on the board of directors, he would help make the laws, he would occupy some honourable office and share the burdens of sovereignty. He would belong to the executive branch, perhaps, the Finance and Building Commission. His voice would be listened to. His vote would count.

Starting point is 01:39:56 It would be interesting to see what party he would choose. Appearances were deceiving. But he did not look as a man does whom the Democrats can count on, and his likeness to his grandfather was unmistakable. Would he take after him, would be a drag, a conservative element? It was quite possible.

Starting point is 01:40:16 But so was the opposite. He was an engineer, studying shableness. building, on the technical side, in touch with world commerce. He might turn out to be a radical, a reckless spender, a profane destroyer of old buildings and landscape beauties. He might be as unfettered as a Jew, as irreverent as an American. He might prefer a ruthless break with tradition to a considered development of natural resources. He might incline to plunge the state into foolhardy experimentation. All that was conceivable. Was it in his blood to feel that their worships in the Senate, before whom the double sentry at the Rattos presented arms, were likely to know best in all

Starting point is 01:40:57 contingencies, or would he side with the opposition in the Assembly? In his blue eyes, under their reddish-brown brows, his fellow citizens read no answer to their curious questioning. And he probably knew none himself, Hans Castor, this still unwritten page. When he took the journey upon which we have encountered him, he was in his 23rd year. He had spent four semesters at the Danzig Polytechnic, four more at the technical schools of Brownschweig and Kalsru, and had just previously passed his first final, quite respectably, if without any fanfare of trumpets. And now he was preparing to enter the firm of Tundra and Wilms, as volunteer apprentice, in order to get his practical training in the shipyards.

Starting point is 01:41:44 But at this point his life took the following turn. He had to work hard and steadily for his examination, and came home looking rather paler than a man of his blonde, rosy type should. Dr. Heidekind, scolded, and insisted on a change of air. A complete change, not a stay at Nodene or Wick or Four. That would not mend matters this time, he said. If they wanted his advice, it was that Hans Castorpe should go for a few weeks to high mountains before he took up his work in the yards.

Starting point is 01:42:18 Consul Tienapel told his nephew and foster son he approved the plan, only that in that case they would part company for the summer, for wild horses couldn't drag him into the high mountains. They were not for him. He required a reasonable atmospheric pressure, else he might get an attack. Hans Castorpe would be good enough to go by himself, let him pay his cousin, Zimson, a visit. It was an obvious, suggestion. Yo-Kim Ziamson was ill, not ill like Hans Kastorp, but in all seriousness, critically.

Starting point is 01:42:51 There had been a great scare, in fact. He had always been subject to feverish Qatar, and one day he actually spat blood, whereupon he had been rushed off to Davos, heels overhead, to his great distress and affliction, for he had just then arrived within sight of the goal of all his hopes. Some semesters long he had complied with the wish of his family and studied law. Then, yielding to irresistible inward urging, he had changed over, presented himself as ensign, and been accepted. And now, for the past five months, he had been stuck in the International Sanatorium Berkhoff, directing physician Hofrat Berens, and was bored half sick, as he wrote home on postcards. If Hans Kastob wanted to do himself a good turn before he entered his post at Tunda and Wilms,

Starting point is 01:43:40 what more natural than that he should go up to Davos, keep his poor cousin company for a while. It would be agreeable on both sides. It was midsummer before he made up his mind to go, already the last week in July. He left for a stay of three weeks. End of Section 5. Section 6 of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 6 Chapter 3. Drawing the Vale. He had been so utterly weary. He had feared to oversleep, but he was on his legs rather earlier than usual, and had a superfluity of leisure in which to perform the accustomed ritual of his morning toilet, in which a rubber tub, a wooden bowl of

Starting point is 01:44:35 green lavender soap, and the accompanying little brush played the principal part. He had even time to do some unpacking and moving in, as he covered his time. As he covered his cheeks with scented lather and drew over them the blade of his silver-plated safety, he recalled his confused dreams, and shook his head indulgently over so much nonsense with the superior feeling a man has when shaving himself in the clear light of reason. He did not feel precisely rested, yet had a sense of morning freshness. With powdered cheeks, in his scotch-thread drawers and red Morocco slippers, he walked out on balcony, drying his hands. The balcony ran across the house and was divided into small,

Starting point is 01:45:22 separate compartments by opaque glass partitions, which did not quite reach to the balustrade. The morning was cool and cloudy. Trails of mist lay motionless in front of the heights on one side and the other, while great cloud masses, grey and white, hung down over the distant peaks. patches and bands of blue showed here and there now and then a gleam of sunshine lighted up the village down in the valley till it glistened whitely against the dark fur-covered slopes somewhere there was music very likely in the same hotel where there had been a concert the evening before

Starting point is 01:46:01 the subdued chords of a hymn floated up after a pause came a march hans castorpe loved music from his heart. It worked upon him in much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with a deeply soothing narcotic effect, tempting him to doze. He listened, well pleased, his head on one side, his eyes a little bloodshot. He could see below him the winding road up to the sanatorium, by which he had come the night before. Among the dewy grass of the sloping terrace, short-stemmed, star-shaped gentions stood out.

Starting point is 01:46:40 Part of the level ground had been enclosed for a garden, with flower beds, gravel paths, and an artificial grotto under a stately silver fir. A hall with reclining chairs and a galvanised roof opened towards the south. Near it stood a flagpole, painted reddish-brown, on which the flag fluttered open now and then on its cord. It was a fancy flag, green and white, with the caduceus, the emblem of healing in the centre, A woman was walking in the garden, an elderly lady of melancholy, even tragic aspect, dressed all in black, a black veil wound about her disheveled grey-black hair, with wrinkled brow and co-black eyes that had hanging pouches of skin beneath them, she moved with rapid, restless step along the garden paths,

Starting point is 01:47:33 staring straight before her, her knees a little bent, her arms hanging stiffly down. The aging face in its southern pallor With the large right mouth drawn down on one side Reminded Hans Castop of a portrait He had once seen of a famous, tragic actress And strange it was to see how the pale black-clad woman Unconsciously matched her long, woeful pace To the music of the march.

Starting point is 01:48:00 He looked down upon her with pensive sympathy. It seemed to him the sad apparition darkened the morning sunshine but in the same instant he became aware of something else, something audible, certain noises penetrating to his hearing from the room on the left of his own, which was occupied, Yoakim had said, by a Russian couple. Again he felt a discrepancy. These sounds no more suited the blithe freshness of the morning than had the sad sight in the garden below. Rather they seemed to befoul the air, make it thick, sticky. Hans Castop recalled having heard similar sounds the evening before, though his weariness had prevented him from heeding them. A struggling, a panting and giggling, the offensive nature of which could not long remain hidden to the young man, try as he good-naturedly did to put a harmless construction on them.

Starting point is 01:48:57 Perhaps something more or other than good nature was in play, something to which we give a variety of names, calling it now purity of soul, which sounds insipid, again by that grave, beautiful name of chastity, and yet again disparaging it as hypocrisy, as hating to look facts in the face, even ascribing it to an obscure sense of awe and piety. And in truth, something of all these was in Hans Castop's face and bearing, as he listened. He seemed to be practising a seemly obscurantism, to be mentally drawing the very very very veil over these sounds that he heard, to be telling himself that honour forbade his taking any

Starting point is 01:49:41 cognizance of them, or even hearing them at all. It gave him an air of propriety, which was not quite native, though he knew how to assume it on occasion. With this main, then, he drew back from the balcony into his room, in order not to listen further to the proceedings which, for all the giggling that went with them were plainly in dead earnest, even alarming. But from indoors, the noise could be heard even more plainly. He seemed to hear a chase about the room. A chair fell over. Someone was caught and seized. Loud kissings ensued, and the music below had changed to a waltz, a popular air whose hackneyed and melodious phrases accompanied the invisible scene. Hans Kastop stood, towel in hand.

Starting point is 01:50:30 and listened against his better judgment. And he began to blush through the powder, for what he had all along seen coming was come, and the game had passed, quite frankly, over into the bestial. Good Lord, he thought. He turned away and made as much noise as possible while he concluded at his toilet.

Starting point is 01:50:55 Well, at least they are married, as far as that goes, he said to himself, but in broad daylight. It's a bit thick. And last night too, I'm sure. But of course they are ill, or at least one of them, or they wouldn't be here. That may be some excuse.

Starting point is 01:51:11 The scandalous part of it is the walls are so thin one can't help hearing everything. Simply intolerable. The place is shamefully jerry-built, of course. What if I should see them, or even be introduced? I simply couldn't endure it.

Starting point is 01:51:29 Here Hans Castorpe remarked with surprise that the flush, which had mounted his freshly-shaven cheek, did not subside, nor its accompanying warmth. His face glowed with the same dry heat as on the evening before. He had got free of it in sleep, but the blush had made it set in again. He did not feel the friendlier for this discovery towards the wretched pair next door. In fact, he stuck out his lips and muttered a derogatory word in their direction as he tried to cool his hot face by bathing it in cold water,

Starting point is 01:52:04 and only made it glow the more. He felt put out. His voice vibrated with ill-humour as he answered to his cousin's knock on the wall, and he appeared to yoke him on his entrance, like anything but a man refreshed and invigorated by a good night's sleep. End of Section 6. Section 7 of The Magic Mountain by Thomas. man. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 7. Chapter 3. Breakfast.

Starting point is 01:52:41 Morning, Yon Kim said. Well, that was your first night up here. How did you find it? He was dressed for out-of-doors in sports clothes and stout boots and carried his ulster over his arm. The outline of the flat bottle could be seen on the side pocket. as yesterday he wore no hat. Thanks, responded Hans Kastop. It was well enough. I won't try to judge yet. I've had all sorts of mixed-up dreams, and this building seems to possess the disadvantage of being porous.

Starting point is 01:53:18 The sound goes straight through it. It's annoying. Who is that dark woman down in the garden? Jo Kim knew at once whom he meant. Oh, he said. That's Toulé de. We all call of that up here, because it's the only thing she says. Mexican, you know, doesn't know a word of German and hardly any French, just a few scraps.

Starting point is 01:53:42 She has been here for five weeks with her eldest son, a hopeless case without much longer to go. He has it all over. Tubercular through and through, you might say. Berrin says it is much like typhus at the end. Horrible, for all concerned. Well, two weeks ago, the second son came up to see his brother before the end. Handsome as a picture, both of them were that, with eyes like live coals.

Starting point is 01:54:08 They fluttered the Duff-Cots, I can tell you. He had been coughing a bit down below, but otherwise quite lively. Well, he no sooner gets up here, then he begins to run a temperature. High fever, you know, 103.1 degrees. They put him to bed, and if he gets up again, Baron says it would be more good luck than good management. but it was high time he came, in any case, Berin says. Well, and since then the mother goes about, whenever she is not sitting with them. And if you speak to her, she just says,

Starting point is 01:54:41 Too la de. She can't see any more, and for the moment there is no one up here who understands Spanish. So that's it, Hans Castop said. Will she say it to me when I get to know her, do you think? That will be queer. Funny and weird at the same time, I mean. His eyes looked as they had yesterday. They felt hot and heavy, as if tired with weeping,

Starting point is 01:55:07 and yet brilliant too, with the gleam that had been kindled in them yesterday at the sound of that strange new cough on the part of the gentleman rider. He had the feeling that he had been out of touch with yesterday since waking, and had only now picked up the threads again, where he had laid them down. He told his cousin he was ready,

Starting point is 01:55:28 sprinkling a few drops of lavender-werect. water on his handkerchief as he spoke, and dabbing his face with it, on the brow and under the eyes. If you like, we can go to breakfast too later, he recklessly joked. Yo-Kim looked with mildness at him, then smiled his enigmatic smile of mingled melancholy and mockery, or so it seemed, for he did not express himself otherwise. After looking to his supply of cigars, Hans Castob took coat and stick, also, rather defiantly, his hat. He was far too sure of himself and his station in life to alter his ways and acquire new ones

Starting point is 01:56:05 for a mere three weeks' visit. And they went out and down the steps. In the corridor, Yo-Kim pointed to this and that door and gave the names of the occupants. There were German names, but also all sorts of foreign ones, with brief comments on them and the seriousness of their cases. They met people already coming back from breakfast, and when Yo-kim said good-morning, Hans Kastorp courteously lifted his hat. He was tense and nervous, as the young man is, when about to present himself before strangers. When that is, he is conscious that his eyes are heavy, and his face red. The last, however, was only true in part, for it was rather pale than otherwise. Before I forget it, he said abruptly, you may introduce me to the lady in the garden, if you like.

Starting point is 01:56:55 I mean, if it happens that way. I have no objection. She would just say, too lay do to me, and I shouldn't mind it, being prepared, and knowing what it means. I should know how to look. But I don't wish to know the Russian pair, do you hear? I expressly don't wish it. They are a very ill-behaved lot. If I must live for three weeks next door to them, and nothing else could be arranged, at least I need to know them. I am justified in that, and I simply and explicitly decline.

Starting point is 01:57:26 Very good, Joachim said. Did they disturb you? Yes, they are barbarians, more or less, uncivilised. I told you so before. He comes to the table in a leather jacket. Very shabby. Always wonder Berens doesn't make a row. And she isn't the cleanest in this world with her feather hat.

Starting point is 01:57:49 You may make yourself quite easy. They sit at the bad Russian table, the long way of us. There is a good Russian table. too, you see, where the nicer Russians sit, and there is not much chance of you coming into contact with them, even if you wanted to. It is not very easy to make acquaintance here, partly from the fact that there are so many foreigners. Personally, as long as I have been here, I know very few. Which of the two is ill? Hans Castor asked. He or she? The man, I think. Yes, only the man, Yerke-man said, absently.

Starting point is 01:58:26 They passed among the hat and coat racks and entered the light, low-vaunted hall, where there was a buzzing of voices, a clattering of dishes, and a running to and fro of waitresses with steaming jugs. There were seven tables, all but two of them standing lengthwise of the room. They were good-sized, seating each ten persons, though not all of them were at present full. A few steps diagonally into the room, and they stood at their places. Hans Castops was at the end. end of a table placed between the two crosswise ones.

Starting point is 01:59:00 Erect behind his chair, he bowed stiffly, but amiably, to each table-mate in turn, as Yochim formally presented him. Hardly seeing them, much less having their names penetrate his mind. He caught but a single name and person, Frow Stor, whom he perceived have a red face and greasy ash-blond hair. Looking at her, he could quite credit the malapropisms, Yoh Kim told of. Her face expressed nothing but ill nature and ignorance. He sat down, observing as he did so that early breakfast was taken seriously up here.

Starting point is 01:59:38 There were pots of marmalade and honey, basins of rice and oatmeal porridge, dishes of cold meat and scrambled eggs, a plenitude of butter, a greer cheese dropping moisture under a glass bell. A bowl of fresh and dried fruits stood in the centre of the table, A waitress, in black and white, asked Hans Castor, whether he would drink coffee, cocoa, or tea. She was small as a child, with a long, oldish face. A dwarf, he realised with a start. He looked at his cousin, who only shrugged indifferently with brows and shoulders as though to say,

Starting point is 02:00:16 Well, what of it? So he adjusted himself as speedily as possible to the fact that he was being served by a dwarf, and put special consideration into his voice as he asked for tea. Then he began eating rice with cinnamon and sugar, his eyes roving over the table, full of other inviting viands, and over the guests at the six remaining tables, Joachim's companions and fellow victims

Starting point is 02:00:41 who were all inwardly infected, and now sat there breakfasting. The hall was done in that modern style, which knows how to give just the right touch of individuality to something in reality very simple. It was rather shallow in proportion to its length, and opened in great arched bays into a sort of lobby surrounding it in which serving tables were placed. The pillars were faced halfway up with wood finished to look like sandalwood, the upper part white enameled, like the ceiling and upper half of the walls. They were stenciled in gay-coloured bands of simple and lively designs, which were repeated on the girders of the vaulted ceiling.

Starting point is 02:01:21 The room was further enliven by several and electric chandeliers in bright brass, consisting of three rings, placed horizontally, one over the other, and held together by delicate woven work, the lowest ring set with globes of milky glass like little moons. There were four glass doors, two on the opposite wall, opening on the veranda, a third at the bottom of the room on the left, leading into the front hall, and a fourth by which Hans Castorpe had entered through a vestibule, as Joachim had brought him down a different stair from the one they had used yesterday evening. He had on his right a plain-looking woman in black, with a dull flush on her cheeks, the skin of which was downy-looking, as an older person's often is.

Starting point is 02:02:06 She looked to him like a seamstress, or home dressmaker, the idea being suggested by the fact that she took only coffee and buttered rolls for breakfast. Since his childhood, he had always somehow associated dressmakers with coffee and buttered rolls. On his left, sat in English spinster, also well on in years, very ugly, with frozen, withered-looking fingers. She sat reading her home letters, which were written in round hand, and drinking tea the colour of blood. Next her was Joachim, and then Frasdor, in a woolen blouse of scotch plaid. She held her left hand, doubled up, in a fist, near her cheek as she ate, and drew her upper lip back, from her long, narrow, rodent-like teeth when she spoke,

Starting point is 02:02:54 obviously trying to make an impression of culture and refinement. A young man with thin mustaches sat next beyond. His facial expression was of one with something bad tasting in his mouth, and yet, without a word, he had come in after Hans Kastop was already seated, with his chin sunk on his breast, and sat down so, without even lifting his head in greeting, seeming by his bearing, plumply to decline being made acquainted with the new guest.

Starting point is 02:03:24 He was perhaps too ill to have thought of or care for appearances, or even to take any interest in his surroundings. Opposite him there had sat for a short time, a very lean, light blonde girl, who emptied a bottle of yoghurt on her plate, ladled it up with a spoon, and took herself off. The conversation at table was not lively. Yoh Kim talked politely with Froustor, inquiring after her condition and heard with proper solicitude that it was unsatisfactory. She complained of relaxation.

Starting point is 02:03:57 I feel so relaxed, she said with a draw and an underbred, affected manner. And she had had 99.1 degrees when she got up that morning, what was she likely to have by afternoon? The dressmaker confessed to the same temperature, but she, on the contrary, felt excited, tense and restless, as though some important event was about to happen, which was certainly not the case. The excitation was purely physical, quite without emotional grounds. Hans Kastorp thought to himself that she could not be a dressmaker after all. She spoke to correctly, even pedantically. He found her excitation, or rather the expression of it,

Starting point is 02:04:41 somehow unsuitable, almost offensive and so homely and insolmely and insinically. significant a creature. He asked her and Froucestor, one after the other, how long they had been up here, and found that one had five and the other seven months to her credit. Then he mustered his English to inquire of his neighbour on the right what sort of tea she was drinking. It was made of rose-hips, and if it tasted good, which she almost passionately affirmed. Then he watched people coming and going in the room. The first breakfast, it appeared, was not regarded as a regular meal in any strict sense. He had been a little afraid of unpleasant impressions, but found himself agreeably disappointed.

Starting point is 02:05:24 The room was lively. One had not the least feeling of being in a place of suffering. Tanned young people of both sexes came in humming, spoke to the waitresses, and fell too upon the Vians with robust appetite. There were older people, married couples, the whole family with children, speaking Russian and half-grown lads. The women wore chiefly close-fitting jackets of wool or silk, the so-called sweater in white or colours, with turnover colours and side pockets. They would stand with hands thrust deep in these pockets and talk. It looked very pretty. At some tables photographs were being handed about, amateur photography, no doubt. At another, stamps were being exchanged. The talk was of the weather,

Starting point is 02:06:10 of how one had slept, of what one had measured in the mouth, on rising. Nearly everybody seemed in good spirits, probably on no other grounds than that they were in numerous company and had no immediate cares. Here and there, indeed, sat someone who rested his head on his hand and stared before him. They let him stare, and paid no heed. Hans Castorke gave a sudden, angry start.

Starting point is 02:06:38 A door was slammed. It was the one on the left. leading into the hall, and someone had let it fall shut, or even banged it, a thing he detested. He had never been able to endure it. Whether from his upbringing or out of a natural idiosyncrasy, he loathed the slamming of doors, and could have struck the guilty person. In this case, the door was filled in above with small glass panes, which augmented the shock, with their ringing and rattling. Oh, come, he thought angrily, what kind of damned carelessness was that? But at the same time the seamstress addressed him with a remark, and he had no time to see who the transgressor had been.

Starting point is 02:07:18 Deep creases furrowed his blonde brows, and his face was contorted, as he turned to reply to his neighbour. Yoakim asked whether the doctors had come through. Yes, someone answered. They had been there once and left the room just as the cousins entered. Then it would be better not to wait, Yolkim thought. An opportunity for introducing his cousin would surely come in the course of the day. but at the door they nearly ran into Hofrat Berens, as he entered with hasty steps, followed by Dr. Krakowski. Hello, hello there! Take care, gentlemen. That might have been rough on all our corns. He spoke with a strong, low, Saxon accent, broad and moutingly. Oh, so here you are, he addressed Hans Castop, whom Yoak him, heels together, presented. "'Well, glad to see you.'

Starting point is 02:08:13 He reached the young man a hand the size of a shovel. He was some three heads taller than Dr. Krakowski, a bony man, his hair already quite white. His neck stuck out, his large, goggling, bloodshot blue eyes were swimming in tears. He had a snub nose and a close-trimmed little moustache, which made a crooked line because his upper lip was drawn up on one side. What Yoakim had said about his cheeks were fully borne out. they were really purple and set off his head garishly against the white surgeon's coat he wore,

Starting point is 02:08:46 a belted smock of more than knee-length, beneath which showed striped trousers and a pair of enormous feet in rather worn yellow lace boots. Dr. Krakowski, too, was in professional garb, but his smock was of some shiny black stuff and made like a shirt with elastic bands at the wrists. It contrasted sharply with the pallor of his skin. His manner suggested that he was present solely in his capacity as assistant. He took no part in the greeting, but a certain expression at the corners of his mouth betrayed the fact that he felt the strain of his subordinate position.

Starting point is 02:09:24 "'Cousins?' the Hoffwright asked, motioning with his hand from one to the other of the two young men and looking at them with his bloodshot eyes. "'Is he going to follow the drums like you?' he addressed Joachim, jerking his head at Hans Castor. God forbid, eh? I could tell as soon as I saw you, he spoke now directly to the young man,

Starting point is 02:09:45 that you were a layman. There's something civilian and uncomfortable about you, not like our sabre-rattling corporal here. You'd be a better patient than he is our wager. I can tell by looking at people, you know, whether they'll make good patience or not. It takes talent. Everything takes talent.

Starting point is 02:10:05 And this mermaid on here hasn't a spark. Maybe he shows up on the playground for what I know, but he's no good of being ill. Would you believe it, he's always wanted to clear out? Badgers me all the time. Simply can't wait to get down there and be skinned alive. There's doggedness for you. Won't give us even a measly half a year, and yet it's quite pretty up here. I leave it to you, if it isn't, Simon, what?

Starting point is 02:10:34 Well, your cousin will appreciate us, even if you don't. get some fun out of it. There's no shortage in the lady market here either. We have the most charming females. At least some of them are very picturesque on the outside. But you ought to have better colour yourself, you know, if you want to please the sex. The golden tree of life is green, as the poet says, but it's a poor colour for the complexion, all the same. Total anemic, of course. He broke off. Without more ado, put up his index and middle fingers, and drew down Hans Kastop's eyelid.

Starting point is 02:11:11 Precisely, totally anemic. As I was saying, you know, it wasn't such a bad idea of yours to let your native Hamburg shift for itself a while. Great institution, Hamburg, simply revels in humility. Sends us a tidy contingent every year,

Starting point is 02:11:28 but if I may take the occasion to give you the benefit of my poor opinion, sine pecuniia, you understand, quite sine pecuniia. I would suggest that you do just as your cousin does while you were up here. You couldn't turn a better trick than to behave for the time as though you had a slight tuberculosis pulmonum and put on a little flesh. It's curious about the metabolism of protein with us up here, although the process of combustion is heightened, yet the body at the same time puts on flesh.

Starting point is 02:11:59 "'Well, Zimson, slept pretty well. What? "'Splendid. "'And get on with the out-of-doors exercise. "'But not more than half an hour, you hear? "'And afterwards stick the quick silver cigar in your face, eh? "'And be good to write it down, Zamson. "'What a conscientious lad. "'Saturday, I look at the curve.

Starting point is 02:12:21 "'Your cousin better measure too. "'Measuring can't hurt anybody. "'Mawning, gentlemen. "'Have a good time. Morning? Morning? Kukowski joined him as he sailed off down the hall, swinging his arms, palms backward, directing to right and left the question about sleeping well,

Starting point is 02:12:41 which was answered on all sides in the affirmative. End of Section 7. Section 8 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 8. Chapter 3. Banta. Viaticum interrupted mirth.

Starting point is 02:13:04 Very nice man, Hans Castrop said, as after a friendly nod to the lame concierge, who was sorting letters in his lodge, they passed out into the open air. The main entrance was on the southwest side of the white building, the central portion of which was a story higher than the wings

Starting point is 02:13:25 and crowned by a turret with a roof of slate-coloured tin. You did not issue from this side into the hedged-in garden, but were immediately in the open, in the site of the steep mountain meadows, dotted with single fir-trees of moderate size, and writhen, stunted pines. The way they took, it was the only one they could take, outside the drive going down to the valley,

Starting point is 02:13:51 rose by a gentle ascent to the left, behind the sanatorium, past the kitchen and domestic offices, where huge dust-bins stood at the area rails. Thence it led in the same direction, for a goodish piece, then made a sharp bend to the right, and mounted more rapidly along the thinly wooded slopes. It was a reddish path, firm and yet rather moist underfoot, with boulders now and then along the edge.

Starting point is 02:14:19 The cousins were by no means alone upon it. Guests who had finished breakfast not long after them followed hard upon their steps, and groups of others, already returning, approached with the stalking gate of people descending a steep incline. Very nice man, repeated Hans Castorpe. He has such a flow of words. I enjoyed listening to him. Quick silver cigar was capital. I got it at once.

Starting point is 02:14:47 But I'll just light up a real one, he said, pausing. I can't hold out any longer. I haven't had a proper smoke since yesterday after luncheon. Excuse me a minute. He opened his automobile leather case with its silver monogram and drew out a Maria Mancini, a beautiful specimen of the first layer, flattened on one side as he particularly liked it. He cut off the tip, slantingly with a sharp little tool he wore on his watch chain, then, striking a tiny flame with his pocket apparatus, puffed with concentration at the long, blunt-ended cigar, until it was a light.

Starting point is 02:15:25 there he said now as far as i'm concerned we can get on with the exercise you don't smoke out of sheer doggedness of course i never do smoke answered york him why should i begin up here i don't understand it hans cast up said i never can understand how anybody cannot smoke it deprives a man of the best part of life so to speak or at least of a first-class pleasure When I wake in the morning, I feel glad at the thought of being able to smoke all day. And when I eat, I look forward to smoking afterwards. I might almost say I only eat for the sake of being able to smoke, though, of course, that is more or less of an exaggeration. But a day without tobacco would be flat, stale and unprofitable, as far as I am concerned. If I had to say to myself tomorrow, no smoke today, I believe I shouldn't find the courage to get up on my honour.

Starting point is 02:16:23 I'd stop in bed. But when a man has a good cigar in his mouth, of course it mustn't have a side draft or not draw well, that is extremely irritating, but with a good cigar in his mouth, a man is perfectly safe. Nothing can touch him, literally. It's just like lying on the beach.

Starting point is 02:16:43 When you lie on the beach, why, you lie on the beach, don't you? You don't require anything else, in the line of work or amusement either. People smoke all over the world, thank goodness. There is nowhere one could get to, as far as I know, where the habit hasn't penetrated. Even polar expeditions fit themselves out with supplies of tobacco to help them carry on. I've always felt a thrill of sympathy when I read that. You can be very miserable. I might be feeling perfectly wretched, for instance, but I could always stand it if I had my smoke.

Starting point is 02:17:19 But after all, the Hockham said, it is rather flabby-minded of you to be so, dependent on it. Berens is right. You were certainly a civilian. He meant it for a sort of compliment, I dare say. But the truth is, you are a civilian, incurable. But then you are healthy. You can do what you like, he added, and his eyes took on their tired look. Yes, healthy except for the anemia, said Hans Castor. That was certainly straight from the shoulder. He's telling me I look green. But it is true. I've noticed myself that I look green in comparison with the rest of you up here, though it never struck me down home, and it was nice of him to give me advice gratis like that, sinipicunia,

Starting point is 02:18:05 as he put it. I'll gladly undertake to do as he says, and live just as you do. After all, how else should I do when I'm up here? And he can't do me any harm. Suppose I do put on a little flesh, then, in God's name. Though it doesn't sound very appetising, you will admit. Yokim coughed slightly now and then as they walked. It seemed to strain him to go uphill. When he did so for the third time, he paused and stood still with a frown. Go on ahead, he said. Hans Kastorp hastened to do so without looking round.

Starting point is 02:18:42 Then he slackened his pace, and finally almost stopped, as it seemed to him, he must have got a good distance ahead of Yokim. But he did not look round. A troop of guests of both sexes approached him. He had seen them coming along the level path, halfway up the slope. Now they were stalking downhill directly towards him. He heard their voices. They were six or seven persons of various ages, some in the bloom of youth, others rather older.

Starting point is 02:19:12 Took a good look at them from the side as he walked with bent head, thinking about Yoakim. They were tanned and bareheaded, women in sweaters. The men mostly without overcoats, or even walking sticks. All of them like people who have just gone casually out for a turn in the open. Going downhill involves no sustained muscular effort, only an agreeable process of putting on the brakes in order not to finish by running and tripping head over heels. It is really nothing more than just letting yourself go.

Starting point is 02:19:46 And thus the gate of these people had something loose-jointed and flighty about it, which communicated itself to the appearance of the whole group, and made one almost wish to be of their lively party. They came close to him, he saw their faces clearly. No, they were not all brown, two of the ladies were, on the contrary, distinctly pale. One of them, thin as a lath, and ivory-white of complexion, the other shorter and plump, disfigured by freckles. They all looked at him, smiling rather boldly,

Starting point is 02:20:21 A tall young girl, in a green sweater, with untidy hair and foolish, half-open eyes, brushed past hands castob, nearly touching him with her arm. And as she did so, she whistled. Oh, impossible! Yes, she did, though. Not with her mouth, indeed, for she did not pucker the lips, but held them firmly closed. She whistled from somewhere inside, and looked at him with her silly, half-shut eyes,

Starting point is 02:20:51 It was an extraordinarily unpleasant whistle, harsh and penetrating, very hollow sounding, a long-drawn-out note, falling at the end, like the sound made by those rubber pigs, one buys at fares, that give out the air in a wailing key as they collapse. The sound issued, inexplicably, from her breast, and then, with her troop, she had passed on. Hans Castor stood and stared. in a moment he turned round, understanding at least so much that the atrocious thing must have been a joke, put up job, for he saw over his shoulder that they were laughing as they went, that a stodgy, thick-lipped youth, whose coat was turned up in an unseemly way about him,

Starting point is 02:21:38 so that he could put both hands in his trouser pockets, turned his head and laughed quite openly. Yercombe approached. He had greeted the group with his usual punctiliousness, almost pausing and bowing with heels together. Now he came mildly up to his cousin. Why are you making such a face? he asked. She whistled, answered Hans Castor. She whistled out of her inside as she passed. Will you have the goodness to explain to me how? Oh, Yerickham said and laughed curtly. Nonsense. She didn't do it with her inside. That was Hermina Clefeld.

Starting point is 02:22:17 She whistles with her new more thorax. "'Were there what?' Hans Castorne demanded. "'He felt wrought up without knowing why. "'His voice was between laughter and tears, as he added, "'You can't expect me to understand your lingo.' "'Oh, come along,' Yerkim said. "'I can explain it to you as we go. "'You look rooted to the spot.

Starting point is 02:22:41 "'It's a surgical operation. "'They often perform it up here. "'Berons is a regular dab at it. "'When one of the lungs is much affected, do you understand, the other one fairly healthy. They make the bad ones stop functioning for a while to give it a rest. That is to say, they make an incision here, somewhere on the side. I don't know the precise place, but Berens has it done fine. Then they fill you up with gas, nitrogen, you know, and that puts the cheesy part of the lung out of operation. The gas doesn't last long, of course. It has to be

Starting point is 02:23:14 renewed every two weeks. They fill you up again, as it were. Now if that keeps on a year or two, and all goes well, the lung gets healed. Not always, of course. It's a risky business, but they say they have had a good deal of success with it. Those people you saw just now all have it. That was Frow Iltis, with the freckles, and the thin pale one was Fraline Levi, that had to lie so long in bed, you know.

Starting point is 02:23:41 They have formed a group, for of course a thing like the pneumothorax brings people together. They call themselves the half-lung club, Everybody knows them by that name. And Hermania Clefelt is the pride of the club, because she can whistle with hers. It is a special gift, by no means everybody can do it. I can't tell you how it is done, and she herself can't exactly describe it. But when she's been walking rather fast, she can make it whistle.

Starting point is 02:24:08 And of course she does it to frighten people, especially when they are new to the place. Also, I believe she uses up nitrogen when she does it, for she has to be refilled once a week. Then it was that Hans Castorpe laughed. His excitement, while Joachim was speaking, had fixed for its outlet upon laughter rather than tears, and he laughed as he walked. His hand over his eyes, his shoulders bent, shaken by a succession of subdued chuckles.

Starting point is 02:24:37 Are they incorporated? He asked as soon as he could speak. His voice sounded weak and tearful with suppressed laughter. Have there any bylaws? Pity you aren't a member? You can get me in as a guest. as an associate half-lunger. You ought to ask Barons to put you out of commission.

Starting point is 02:24:55 Then perhaps you could learn to whistle, too. It must be something one could learn. Well, that's the funniest thing ever I heard in my life, he finished, heaving a heavy sigh. I beg your pardon for speaking of it like this, but they seem very jolly over it themselves, your pneumatic friends. The way they were coming along,

Starting point is 02:25:15 and to think that was the half-lung club. Tuttlety-2. She went at me. She must be out of her senses. It was utter cheek. Will you tell me why they behave so cheekily? Yokim sought for a reply. Good Lord, he said. They are so free. I mean they are so young and time is nothing to them. And then they may die, perhaps. Why should they make a long face? Sometimes I think being ill and dying aren't serious at all. Just a sort of loafing about and wasting time. life is only serious down below.

Starting point is 02:25:53 You will get to understand that after a while, but not until you have spent some time up here. Surely, surely, Hans Kastop said, I'm sure I shall. I already feel great interest in the life up here, and when one is interested, the understanding follows. But what is the matter with me? It doesn't taste good, he said,

Starting point is 02:26:14 and took his cigar out of his mouth to look at it. I've been asking myself all this time what the matter? is, and now I see it is Maria. She tastes like pepier-m-mache, I do assure you, precisely as when one has a spot digestion. I can't understand it. I did eat more than usual for breakfast, but that cannot be the reason for she usually tastes particularly good after a two-hearty meal. Do you think it is because I had such a disturbed night? Perhaps that is how I got out of order. No, I really can't stick it, he said after another attempt. Every pull is a difficult. disappointment. There is no sense in forcing it, and after a hesitating moment he tossed the cigar

Starting point is 02:26:55 off down the slope among the wet pine boughs. Do you know what I think it has to do with, he asked. I feel convinced it is connected with this damned heat I feel all the time in my face. I have suffered from it ever since I got up. I feel as though I were blushing the whole time. Do you take it? Did you have anything like it when you first came? Yes, said Yacquam. I was rather queer at first. Don't think too much of it. I told you it isn't easy to accustom oneself to the life up here. But you will get right again after a bit.

Starting point is 02:27:30 Look, that bench is in a pretty place. Let's sit down a while and then go home. I must take my cure. The path had become level. It ran now in the direction of Davos Blatz, some third of the height, and kept a continuous view between high sparse, wind-blown pines of the settlement below. gleaming whitely in the bright air. The bench on which they sat leaned against the steep wall of the mountainside, and near them a spring in an open wooden trough ran gurgling and plashing

Starting point is 02:28:02 to the valley. Yokim was for instructing his cousin in the names of the mist-wreathed alpine heights, which seemed to enclose the valley on the south, pointing them out in turn with his alpenstock. But Hans Kastorp gave the mountains only a fleeting glass. He sat bent over, tracing figures on the ground with the ferrule of his city-fied, silver-mounted, walking-stick. There were other things he wanted to know. "'What I meant to ask you,' he began, "'the case in my room had died just before I got here. "'Have there been many deaths since you came?'

Starting point is 02:28:39 "'Several, certainly,' answered Joachim. "'But they are very discreetly managed, you understand. "'You hear nothing of them, or only by chance afterwards.' everything is kept strictly private when there is a death, out of regard for the other patients, especially in the ladies who might easily get a shock. You don't notice it, even when somebody dies next door. The coffin is brought very early in the morning while you're asleep, and the person in question is fetched away at a suitable time too,

Starting point is 02:29:11 for instance while we're eating. Hmm, said Hans Castorpe and continued to draw. I see. that sort of thing goes on behind the scenes then. Yes, for the most part. But lately, let me see, wait a minute, it might be possibly eight weeks ago. Then you can hardly say lately,

Starting point is 02:29:31 Hans Castor pounced on him crisply. What? Well, not lately then, since you were so precise. I was just trying to reckon. Well then, some time ago it was. I got a glimpse behind the scenes, purely by chance, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was when they brought the sacrament to little Hoogius, Barbara Hooges.

Starting point is 02:29:53 She was a Catholic, the last sacrament, you know. Extreme unction. She was still about when I first came up here. And she could be wildly hilarious, regularly giggly, like a little kid. But after that, it went pretty fast with her. She didn't get up anymore. Her room was three doors off mine. And then her parents arrived, and now the priest was coming to her.

Starting point is 02:30:16 It was while everybody was at tea, not a soul in the passages. But I had gone to sleep in the afternoon rest and overslept myself. I hadn't heard the gong and was quarter-of-an-hour late, so that at the decisive moment I wasn't where all the others were. But behind the scenes, as you call it, as I go along the corridor, they come toward me, in their lace robes with the cross in front, a gold cross with lanterns.

Starting point is 02:30:44 It made me think of the Sheldon-bomb. they march with in front of the regiment. What sort of comparison is that? Hans Castorub asked severely. It looked like that to me. I couldn't help thinking of it. But listen, they came towards me, marching, quick step. Three of them, as far as I remember. The man with the cross, the priest, with glasses on his nose, and a boy with a censor. The priest was holding the sacrament to his breast. It was covered up, and he had his head bent on one side, and looked very sanctif. It was their Holy of Holies, of course.

Starting point is 02:31:20 Exactly, Hans Castorpe said, and just for that reason, I wonder if you're making the comparison you did. Yes, but wait a bit. If you had been there, you wouldn't have known what kind of face you would make, remembering it afterwards. It was the sort of thing to give you bad dreams. How? Like this, I asked myself,

Starting point is 02:31:43 how I am supposed to behave under the circumstances. I had no hat to take off. There, you see, don't you? Hans Castorpe interrupted him again. You see now, one ought to wear a hat. Naturally, I've noticed that none of you do up here, but you should, so you can have something to take off when it is proper to do so. Well, but what then? I stood against the wall, Eakin went on, as respectfully as I could,

Starting point is 02:32:12 and bent over a little when they were by me. It was just a little Hooghuz door, number 28. The priest seemed to be pleased that I saluted. He acknowledged, very courteously, and took off his cap. But at the same time, they came to a stop, and the minstrant, with a censor, knocks, and lifts the latch, and makes way for his superior to enter. Just try to imagine my sensations, and how frightened I was.

Starting point is 02:32:40 The minute the priest sets his foot over the threshold, there begins a hullabaloo from inside, a screaming, such as you never heard the Lykoff, three or four times running, and then a shriek, on and on without stopping at the top of her lungs. So full of horror and rebellion and anguish, and, well, perfectly indescribable. And in between came a gruesome sort of begging. Then it suddenly got all dulled and hollow sounding, as though it had sunk down into the earth and were coming out of a cellar.

Starting point is 02:33:18 Hans Kastrop had turned with violence to face his cousin. Was that the hoo-juice? he asked abruptly. And how'd you mean, out of a cellar? She had crawled down under the covers, said Joachim. Imagine how I felt. The priest stood on the threshold and spoke soothingly.

Starting point is 02:33:42 I can see now just how he shoved his head out. and drew it back again while he talked. The cross-bearer and the acolyte hesitated and couldn't get in. I could see between them into the room. It was just like yours and mine, the bed on the side wall left of the door, and the people standing at the head, the relatives, of course,

Starting point is 02:34:02 the parents, talking soothingly at the bed, where you could see nothing but a formless mass that was begging and protesting horribly and kicking about with its legs. You say she kicked? With all her might, but it did her no good. She had to take the sacrament. The priest went up to her, and the two others went inside the room, and the door closed.

Starting point is 02:34:28 But first I saw Little Hoogh's head come up for a second, a shock of blonde hair, and the look at the priest with staring eyes that were without any colour, and then when the wail go down under the sheet again, "'And you tell me all that now for the first time?' Hans Kastop said after a pause. "'I can't understand how you came not to speak of it yesterday evening. "'But good Lord, she must have had strength to defend herself like that. "'That takes strength.' "'They ought not to fetch priests before one is quite weak.'

Starting point is 02:35:04 "'She was weak,' responded Yolkim. "'Oh, there's so much to tell. "'One doesn't have time to pick and choose. "'She was weak enough. "'It was only the frightful. give her so much strength. She was in a fearful state when she saw that she was going to die. And she was such a young girl. It was excusable, after all. But grown men behave like that too sometimes, and it's deplorably feeble of them, of course. Berens knows how to treat them. He takes

Starting point is 02:35:35 just the right tone in such cases. What kind of tone? Hans Castob asked, withdrawn brows. "'Don't behave like that,' he tells them. "'Yerkum answered. "'At least that is what he told somebody later.' "'We heard it from the directoress, "'who was present and helped to hold the man. "'He was one of those who make a regular scene at the end "'and simply won't die.

Starting point is 02:35:59 "'So Barons brought him up with a round turn. "'Do me the favour not to behave like that,' "'he said to him. "'The patient became quite calm "'and died as quietly. as he pleased. Hans Castop slapped his thigh and threw himself back against the bench, looking up at the sky. I say that's pretty steep, he cried. Goes at him like that and simply tells him not to behave that way to a dying man. But after all, a dying man has something in a way

Starting point is 02:36:30 sacred about him. One can't just perfectly coolly like that. The dying man is sort of holy, I should think. I won't deny it, said Joachim. But when one behaves as feebly as that, no, persisted Hans Castorpe, with a violence out of proportion to the opposition he met. I insist that a dying man is above any chap that is going about and laughing and earning his living and eating his three meals a day. It isn't good enough, his voice quavered, isn't good enough for one to calmly, just calmly. His words trailed off in a fit of laughter that seized and overcame him. of yesterday, a profound, illimitable, body-shaking laughter that shut up his eyes and make tears well from beneath their lids.

Starting point is 02:37:21 Shh, went show him suddenly. Keep quiet, he whispered, and nudged his uncontrollably hilarious cousin in the side. Hans Kastov looked up through tears. A stranger was approaching them from the left, a dark man of graceful carriage, with curling black mustaches, wearing light-coloured check trousers. He exchanged a good morning with Joachim in accents agreeable and precise, and then remained standing before them in an easy posture, leaning on his cane with his legs crossed.

Starting point is 02:37:57 End of Section 8 Section 9 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 9 Chapter 3 Satana His age would have been hard to say probably between thirty and forty for though he gave an impression of youthfulness yet the hair on his temples was sprinkled with silver and gone quite thin on his head two bald bays ran along the narrow scanty parting and added to the height of his forehead

Starting point is 02:38:36 His clothing, loose trousers in light yellowish checks and two long double-breasted pilot coat, with very wide lapels, made no slightest claim to elegance, and his stand-up collar, with rounding corners, was rough on the edges from frequent washing. His black cravat showed wear, and he wore no cuffs, as hands cast up sort once from the lax way the sleeve hung round the wrist. But despite all that, he knew he had a gentleman. before him. The stranger's easy, even charming pose and cultured expression left no doubt of that. Yet by this mingling of shabbiness and grace, by the black eyes and softly waving moustaches, Hans Kastorp was irresistibly reminded of certain foreign musicians who used to come to Hamburg at Christmas to play in the streets before people's doors. He could see them rolling up their velvet eyes and holding out their soft hats for the coins tossed from the,

Starting point is 02:39:36 windows. A hand-organ man, he thought. Thus, he was not surprised at the name he heard, as Joachim rose from the bench, and in some embarrassment presented him. My cousin, Castorpe, Herr Setembrini. Hans Castorpe had got up at the same time, the traces of his burst of hilarity still on his face, but the Italian courteously bade them both not to disturb themselves and made them sit down again, while he maintained his easy pose before them. He smiled, standing there and looking at the cousins in particular at Hans Castorpe, a smile that was a fine, almost mocking, deepening and crisping of one corner of the mouth, just to the point that the full moustache made its beautiful upward curve. It had upon the cousins a singular effect. It somehow constrained them to

Starting point is 02:40:31 mental alertness and clarity. It sobered the reeling Hans Castorpe in a twinker. It sobered the reeling Hans in a twinkling, and made him ashamed. Setimbrini said, You are in good spirits, and with reason too, with excellent reason. What a splendid morning! A blue sky, a smiling sun. With an easy, adequate motion of the arm,

Starting point is 02:40:55 he raised a small, yellowish-skinned hand to the heavens, and sent a lively glance upward after it. One could almost forget where one is, He spoke without accent, only the precise enunciation betrayed the foreigner. His lips seemed to take a certain pleasure in forming the words. It was most agreeable to hear him. You had a pleasant journey hither, I hope, he turned to Hans Castorpe. And do you already know your fate?

Starting point is 02:41:26 I mean, has the mournful ceremony of the first examination taking place? Here, if he had really been expecting a reply, he should have paused. but he had put his questions, and Hans Castorpe prepared to answer. But he went on. Did you get off easily? One might put— Here he paused a second, and the crisping at the corner of his mouth grew crisper. More than one interpretation upon your laughter.

Starting point is 02:41:52 How many months of our minos and raimentos knocked you down for? The slang phrase sounded droll on his lips. Shall I guess? Six, nine. You know we are. are free with the time up here. Hans Castorpe laughed, astonished, and at the same time racking his brains to remember who Minos and Radamantis were, he answered. Not at all, no, really, you are under a misapprehension, Herr Settem. Settembrini, corrected the

Starting point is 02:42:26 Italian, clearly, and with emphasis, making as he spoke, mocking bow. Herr Settimbrini, I beg your pardon. No, you are mistaken. Really, I am not ill. I have only come on a visit to my cousin Zimson for a few weeks, and shall take advantage of the opportunity to get a good rest. Zounds, you don't say. Then you are not one of us. You are well. You are but a guest here, like Odysseus, in the kingdom of the shades. You are bold indeed, thus to descend into these depths, peopled by the vacant and idle dead. Descend. "'Hare Settimbrini, I protest. "'Here I have climbed up some five thousand feet to get here.' "'That was only seeming.

Starting point is 02:43:12 "'Upon my honour, it was an illusion,' the Italian said, "'with a decisive wave of the hand. "'We are sunk enough here, aren't we, Lieutenant?' he said to York him, "'who, no little gratified at this method of address, "'thought to hide his satisfaction and answered reflectively, "'I suppose we do get rather one-sided, "'but we can pull ourselves together afterwards.' if we try.

Starting point is 02:43:35 At least you can. I'm sure. You are an upright man, said. Yes, yes, yes, yes, he said, repeating the word three times with a sharp S, turning to hands cast up again as he spoke,

Starting point is 02:43:49 and then, in the same measured way, clucking three times with his tongue against his palate, I see, I see, I see, I see, he said again, giving the S the same sharp sound as before. He looked the newcomer, steadfastly in the face that his eyes grew fixed in a stare. Then, becoming lively again, he went on. So, you come up quite of your own free will, to us sunken ones, and mean to bestow

Starting point is 02:44:17 upon us the pleasure of your company for some little while. That is delightful. And what term had you thought of putting to your stay? I don't mean precisely. I am merely interested to know what the length of a man's sojourn would be when it is himself, a redamantis who prescribes the limit. Three weeks, Hans Castorpe said, rather pridefully, as he saw himself the object of envy. Oh, dear, three weeks, do you hear, Lieutenant. Does it sound to you impertinent to hear a person say,

Starting point is 02:44:50 I am stopping for three weeks, and then I am going way again? We up here are not acquainted with such an unit of time as the week. If I may be permitted to instruct you, my dear sir, our smallest unit is the month. We reckon in the grand style. That is a privilege we shadows have. We possess other such. They are all of the same quality.

Starting point is 02:45:17 May I ask what profession you practice down below? Or probably, for what profession are you preparing yourself? You see, we put no limits to our thirst for information. Curiosity is another of the process. descriptive rights of shadows. Pray don't mention it, said Hans Castor, and told him. A shipbuilder, magnificent, cried Setebrini. I assure you, I find that magnificent, though my own talents lie in quite another direction.

Starting point is 02:45:49 Herr Settimbrini is a literary man, Yer Kim explained, rather self-consciously. He wrote the obituary notices of Carducci for the German papers. "'Carducci, you know.' "'He got more self-conscious still, "'for his cousin looked at him in amazement "'as though to say, "'Caducci, what do you know about him? "'Not any more than I do, I'll wager.'

Starting point is 02:46:11 "'Yes,' the Italian said nodding. "'I had the honour of telling your countryman "'the story of our great poet and freethinker "'when his life had drawn to a close. "'I knew him. "'I can count myself among his pupils. "'I sat at his feet at Bologna, I may thank him for what culture I can call my own, and for what joyousness of life as well.

Starting point is 02:46:36 But we are speaking of you, a ship-builder. Do you know you have sensibly risen in my estimation? You represent now, in my eyes, the world of labour and practical genius. Here, Settembrini, I am only a student as yet. I am just beginning. Certainly, it is the beginning that is hard, but all work is hard, isn't it, that deserves that name? That's true enough, God knows.

Starting point is 02:47:06 Or the devil does, Hans Kastorp said, and the words came from his heart. Sethambini's eyebrows went up, Oh, he said, so you call on the devil to witness that sentiment, the devil incarnate, Satan himself. Did you know that my great master wrote a hymn to him? I beg your pardon, Hans Kastop said, a hymn to the devil. The very devil himself and no other. It is sometimes sung, in my native land on festal occasions.

Starting point is 02:47:36 O salite, oh satana, oh rebellion, O forcea vindice, de la regione. It is a magnificent song, but it was hardly Caducci's devil, you had in mind when he spoke, for he is on the very best of terms with hard work, whereas yours, who is afraid of work and hates it like poison, is probably the same of whom we are told

Starting point is 02:48:00 that we may not hold out even the little finger to him. All this was making the very oddest impression on our good hands castorpe. He knew no Italian, and the rest of it sounded no less uncomfortable and reminded him of Sunday sermons, though delivered quite casually in a light, even jesting tone. He looked at his cousin and kept his eyes cast down. Then he said, you take my words far too literally,

Starting point is 02:48:28 here said Embrini. When I spoke of the devil, it was just a manner of speaking, I assure you. Somebody must have some esprit, said Mabini said, looking straight ahead with a melancholier. Then, recovering himself, he skillfully got back to their former subject

Starting point is 02:48:45 and went on blithely. At all events, I am probably right in concluding from your words that the calling you have embraced is as strenuous as it is honorable. As for myself, I am a humanist, a homo-humanus. I have no mechanical ingenuity, however sincere my respect for it. But I can well understand that the theory of your craft

Starting point is 02:49:11 requires a clear and keen mind and its practice no less than the entire man. Am I right? You certainly are. I can go all the way with you there, Hans Castorv answered. unconsciously he made an effort to reply with eloquence. The demands made today on a man in my profession are simply enormous. It is better not to have too clear an idea of their magnitude. It might take away one's courage. No, it's no joke. And if one isn't the strongest in the world,

Starting point is 02:49:45 it is true that I am here only on a visit, but I am not very robust. And I cannot with truth assert that my work agrees with me so wonderfully well. it would be a great deal truer to say that it rather takes it out of me. I only feel really fit when I am doing nothing at all. As now, for example. Now, oh, now, I am so new up here, I am still rather bewildered. You can imagine.

Starting point is 02:50:13 Ah, bewildered! Yes, and I did not sleep so very well, and the early breakfast was really too solid. I am accustomed to a fair breakfast, but this was a little too rich, for my blood, as the saying goes. In short, I feel a sense of oppression. And for some reason or other, my cigar this morning hasn't the right taste. Something that as good as never happens to me, or only when I am seriously upset. And today, it is like leather. I had to throw it away. There was no use forcing it. Are you a smoker, may I ask? No. Then you cannot imagine the annoyance and the disappointment it is for anyone like me, who have smoked from my,

Starting point is 02:50:55 my youth up and taken such pleasure in it. I am without experience in that field, Sertimbrini answered, but I find my lack of it is in no poor company. So many fine, self-denying spirits have refrained. Caducci had no use for the practice, but you will find our adamantus,

Starting point is 02:51:16 a kindred spirit. He is a devotee of your vice. Vice, Herr Sartembrini. Why not? one must call things by their right names. Life is enriched and ennobled thereby. I too have my vices. So, Hoffrat Berens is a connoisseur, the charming man.

Starting point is 02:51:39 You find him so. Then you have already made his acquaintance. Yes, just now as we came out, it was almost like a professional visit, but gratis, you know, sine percunia. He saw at once that I am anemic. He advised me to follow my cover. "'to lie out on the balcony a good deal. "'He even said I should take my temperature.'

Starting point is 02:52:02 "'Did he indeed?' said him really, he cried out. "'Capital!' he laughed and threw back his head. "'How does it go, that opera of yours? "'A fowler, bold and me you see, forever laughing, merrily. "'Ah, that is most amusing, and you will follow his advice?' "'Of course, why shouldn't you? "'He is a devil of a fellow, a ralamentous, forever laughing, even if it is rather forced at times.

Starting point is 02:52:29 He is inclined to melancholia, you know. His vice doesn't agree with him. Of course, else it would be no vice. Smoking gives him fits of depression. That is why our respected frau directress has taken charge of his supplies and only deals him out daily rations. It even happens sometimes that he yields

Starting point is 02:52:49 to the temptation to steal it. And then he gets an attack of melancholia. A troubled spirit, in short, do you know your directoress already, too? No? You have made a mistake. You must remedy it at the earliest opportunity. My dear sir, she comes of the noble race of von Milendonk,

Starting point is 02:53:12 and she is distinguished for the Medici Venus by the fact that where the goddess has a bosom, she has a cross. Capital, Hans Castop laughed. Her Christian name is Adriatica. Adriatica, shouted Hans Castor, priceless. Adriatica von Milendonk. Isn't that splendid? Sounds as though she had been dead a very long time.

Starting point is 02:53:37 It is positively medieval. My dear sir, Senator Brinney answered him, there is a good deal up here that is positively medieval, as you express it. Personally, I am convinced that Redamantis was actuated simply and solely by artistic feeling when he made this fossil head overseer of his chamber

Starting point is 02:53:58 of Horace. You know he is an artist, by the by, he paints in oil. Why not? There's no law against it. Anyone can paint that likes. Frau Adriatica tells all who will listen to her, not counting those who won't, that a myelondonk was abyss

Starting point is 02:54:14 of a cloister at Bonn on the Rhine in the 13th century. It can't have been long after that. She herself saw the light of day. Why, Herr Settimbrini, I find you are a mocker. A mocker! You mean I am malicious? Well, yes, perhaps I am a little, said Settembrini.

Starting point is 02:54:35 My great complaint is that it is my fate to spend my malice upon such insignificant objects. I hope, engineer, you have nothing against malice. In my eyes, it is reasons keenest art against the powers of darkness and ugliness. malice, my dear sir, is the animating spirit of criticism, and criticism is the beginning of progress and enlightened. And he began to talk about Petrarch, whom he called the father of the modern spirit. I think, Yoakim said thoughtfully, that we ought to be going to lie down. The man of letters had been speaking to an accompaniment of graceful gestures, one of which he now rounded off in Yoakim's direction and said, our lieutenant presses on to the service. Let us go together. Our way is the same. The path on

Starting point is 02:55:28 the right shall lead to the halls of the mightiest dis. Ah, Virgil, Virgil, Virgil, he is unsuppassable. I am a believer in progress, certainly gentlemen, but Virgil, he has a command of epithet. No modern can approach. And on their homeward path he recited Latin verse with an Italian pronunciation, interrupting himself, however, as he saw coming towards them a young girl, a girl of the village, as it seemed, by no means remarkable for her looks, whom he laid himself out to smile at, an ogle most killing me. "'Oh, la, la, sweet, sweet!' he chirruped. "'Pretty, pretty, pretty! Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty!'

Starting point is 02:56:15 He quoted as they passed, and kissed his hand, the poor girl's embarrassed back. "'What a windbag it is!' Hans Castorpe thought. He remained of that opinion, still, after the Italian had recovered from his attack of gallantry and began to scoff again. His animate versions were chiefly directed upon Herr Hofrad Berens. He jeered at the size of his feet, and at the title he had received from a certain prince who suffered from tuberculosis of the brain. Of the scandalous courses of that royal personage, the whole neighbourhood still talked,

Starting point is 02:56:50 but Radamantus had shut his eye, both eyes in fact, and behaved every inch a Hoffrat. Did the gentleman know that he, the Hoffrat, had invented the summer season? He it was, and no other. One must give the devil his due. There had been a time when only the faithfulest of the faithful had spent the summer in the High Valley. Then our humorist with his unerring eye had perceived that this neglect was simply the result of unfortunate prejudice. He got up the idea that, so far at least as his own sanatorium was concerned, the summer cure was not only not less to be recommended than the winter one,

Starting point is 02:57:28 it was, on the contrary, of great value, really quite indispensable. And he knew how to get this theory put about, to have it come to people's ears. He wrote articles on the subject and launched them in the press, since when the summer season had been as flourishing as the winter one. "'Genius!' said Settumbini. intuition. He went on to criticize the proprietors of all the other sanatoria in the place, praising their acquisitive talents with morden sarcasm. There was Professor Kafka. Every year at the critical moment, when the snow began to melt, and several patients were asking

Starting point is 02:58:05 leave to depart, he would suddenly find himself obliged to be away for a week, and promised to take up all requests on his return. Then he would stop away for six weeks, while the poor wretches waited for him, and while, incidentally, their bills continued to mount. Kafka was once sent for to go to Fume for a consultation, but he would not go until he was guaranteed 5,000 good Swiss francs, and thus two weeks were lost in poor Pallies. Then he went, but the day after the arrival of the great man, the patient died. Dr. Salzman asserted that Kafka did not keep his hypodermic syringes clean, and his patients got infected one from the other.

Starting point is 02:58:45 He also said he wore rubber souls, that his dead might not hear him. On the other hand, Kafka told it about that Dr. Salsman's patients were encouraged to drink so much of the fruit of the vine, the benefit of Dr. Salsman's pocketbook, that they died off like flies. Not of thisis, but cirrhosis of the liver. Thus he went on, Hans cast off laughing with good-natured enjoyment at this glib and prolific stream of slander. It was indeed great fun to listen to, so eloquent was it, so precisely rendered, so free from every trace of dialect. The words came, round, clear-cut, as though newly minted, from his mobile lips.

Starting point is 02:59:28 He tasted his own well-turned, dexterous, biting phrases with an obvious and contagious relish and seemed to be far too clear-headed and self-possessed, ever to misspeak. "'You have such an amusing way of talking,' Herr Setimbrini, Hans Castor upset, so lively, so, I don't quite know how to characterize it. Plastic? Responded the Italian and fanned himself with his handkerchief, though it was far from warm. That is probably the word you see. You mean I have a plastic way of speaking.

Starting point is 03:00:01 But look, he cried. What my eyes behold? The judges of our infernal regions. What a sight! The walkers had already put behind them the turn in the path. Whether, thanks to Setembrini's conversation, the fact that they were walking downhill, or merely that they were much nearer the sanatorium than Hans Kastop had thought, for a path is always longer the first time we traverse it,

Starting point is 03:00:26 at all events, the return had been accomplished in a surprisingly short time. Setembrini was right. It was the two physicians who were walking along the free space at the back of the building. The hoffrat ahead, in his white smock, his neck stuck out, and his hands moving like oars. On his heels, the black-shirted Dr. Krakowski, who looked the more self-conscious, that medical etiquette constrained him

Starting point is 03:00:51 to walk behind his chief when they made their rounds together. Ah, Krakowski, said and Brinney cried. There he goes. He knows all the secrets in the bosoms of our ladies. Pray observe the delicate symbolism of his attire. He wears black to indicate that his proper field of study is the night.

Starting point is 03:01:12 "'The man has but one idea in his head, and that is a smutty one. "'How does it happen, engineer, that we have not talked of him until now?' "'You have made his acquaintance?' Hans Kastorpe answered in the affirmative. "'Well, I am beginning to suspect that you like him, too.' "'I don't know really,' said in Brini. "'I've seen him only casually, and I am not very quick in my judgments. "'I am inclined to look at people and say, "'So that's you, is it?'

Starting point is 03:01:42 Very good. That is apathetic of you. You should judge. To that end, you have been given your eyes and your understanding. You felt that I spoke maliciously just now. If I did, perhaps it was not without intent to teach. We humanists have all of us a pedagogic itch. Humanism and schoolmasters. There is a historical connection between them, and it rests upon psychological fact. The office of schoolmaster should not, cannot be taken from the humanist, for the tradition of the beauty and dignity of man rests in his hands. The priest, who in troubled and inhuman times, arrogated to himself the office of guide to youth, has been dismissed. Since when, my dear says,

Starting point is 03:02:30 no special type of teacher has arisen. The humanistic grammar school. You may call me reactionary engineer, but in abstracto, generally speaking, you understand, I remain an adherent. He continued in the lift to expatiate upon this theme and left off only when the cousins got out

Starting point is 03:02:49 as the second story was reached. He himself went up to the third, where he had, Yolkim said, a little back room. He hasn't much money, I suppose, and Skaestob said, entering Yer Kim's room, which looked precisely like his own. No, I suppose not, Yolkim answered, or only so much as just makes his stay possible.

Starting point is 03:03:11 his father was a literary man too you know and i believe his grandfather as well yes of course hence castob said is he seriously ill not dangerously so far as i know but obstinate keeps coming back he has had it for years and goes away in between soon has to return again poor chap so frightfully keen on work as he seems to be normally chatty goes from one thing to another so easily rather objectionable though it seemed to me with that girl i was quite put off for the moment but when you talked about human dignity afterwards i thought it was great sounded like an address do you see much of him end of section nine section ten of the magic mountain by thomas man this librivox recording is in the public domain section ten chapter three mental gymnastic yokem's reply came impeded and incoherent he had taken a small thermometer from a red leather velvet-lined case on his table and put the mercury-filled end under his tongue on the left side side, so that the glass instrument stuck slantingly upwards out of his mouth. Then he changed into indoor clothes, put on shoes and a braided jacket, took a printed form and pencil from his table, also a book, a Russian grammar, for he was studying Russian with

Starting point is 03:04:47 the idea that it would be of advantage to him in the service, and, thus equipped, took his place in the reclining chair on his balcony, throwing his camel's hair rug lightly across his feet. It was scarcely needed. During the last quarter hour, the layer of cloud had grown steadily thinner, and now the sun broke through in summer-like warmth, so dazzlingly that Joachim protected his head with a white linen shade which was fastened to the arm of his chair, and furnished with a device by means of which it could be adjusted to the position of the sun. Hans Castorpe praised this contrivance. He wished to await the result of Yoakim's measurement, and meanwhile looked about to see how everything was done,

Starting point is 03:05:32 observed the fur-lined sleeping sack that stood against the wall in a corner of the lodger for yoke him to use on cold days, and gazed down into the garden with his elbows on the balustrade. The general rest hall was populated by reclining patients, reading, writing or conversing. He could see only a part of the interior, some four or five chairs. How long does that go on? he asked, turning round. Yoakim raised seven fingers. Seven minutes?

Starting point is 03:06:02 But they must be up. Yoh Kim shook his head. A little later he took the thermometer out of his mouth, looked at it and said, Yes, when you watch it, the time, it goes very slowly. I quite like the measuring, four times a day. For then you know what a minute, or seven of them, actually amounts to, up here in this place,

Starting point is 03:06:24 where the seven days of the week whisk by the way they do. You say actually. "'Hans Castorpe answered. "'He sat with one leg flung over the balustrade, "'and his eyes looked bloodshot. "'But after all, time isn't actual. "'When it seems long to you, then it is long. "'When it seems short, why, then it is short.

Starting point is 03:06:47 "'But how long or how short it actually is, "'that nobody knows.' "'He was accustomed to philosophies, "'yet somehow felt an impulse to do so.' "'Yokim Gain said him, "'how so?' We do measure it. We have watches and calendars for the purpose, and when a month is up, why then up it is for you and for me and for all of us?

Starting point is 03:07:10 Wait, said Hans Castorp. He held up his forefinger, close to his tired eyes. A minute, then, is as long as it seems to you when you measure yourself. A minute is as long, it lasts as long, as it takes the second hand of my watch to complete a circuit. But it takes such a varied length of time to our senses. And as a matter of fact, I say taking it just as a matter of fact, he repeated, pressing his forefinger so hard against his nose that he bent the end of it quite round. It is motion, isn't it? Motion in space. Wait a minute. That means that we measure time by space. But that is no better than measuring space by time. A thing only very unscientific people do. From Hamburg to Davos is 20 hours. That is by train. But on foot, how long is it? And in the mind, how long? Not a second.

Starting point is 03:08:08 I say, Yer Kim said, What's the matter with you? Seems to me it goes to your head to be up here with us. Keep quiet. I'm very clear-headed today. Well then, what is time? asked Hans Castor and bent the tip of his nose so far around

Starting point is 03:08:26 that it became white and bloodless. Can you answer me that? space we perceive with our organs, with our sense of sight and touch. Good. But which is our organ of time? Tell me that if you can. You see, that's where you stick. But how can we possibly measure anything about which we actually know nothing, not even a single one of its properties? We say of time that it passes. Very good. Let it pass. But to be able to measure it, wait a minute, to be susceptible of being measured, time must flow evenly. But whoever said it did that.

Starting point is 03:09:03 As far as our consciousness is concerned, it doesn't. We only assume that it does, for the sake of convenience. And our units of measurement are purely arbitrary, sheer conventions. Good, Yer Kim said, then perhaps it is pure convention that I have five points too much here on my thermometer. but on account of those lines I have to drool about here instead of joining up, which is a disgusting fact. Have you 99.3? It's going down already, and Joachim made the entry on his chart. Last night it was almost 100 degrees. That was your arrival. A visit always makes it go up. But it is a good thing, notwithstanding.

Starting point is 03:09:46 I'll go now, said Hans Castro. I've still a great many ideas in my head about the time. a whole complex, if I may say so, but I won't excite you with them now. You've too many degrees as it is. I'll keep them all, and return to them later, perhaps after breakfast. You will call me when it is time, I suppose. I'll go now and lie down. It won't hurt me, thank goodness. With which he passed round the glass partition into his lodger,

Starting point is 03:10:13 west at his own reclining chair and side table. He fetched ocean steamships, and his beautiful, soft, dark red. and green plaid from within the room, which had already been put into perfect order, and set himself down. Soon he too had to put up the little sunshade. The heat became unbearable as he lay. But it was uncommonly comfortable, he decided, with distinct satisfaction. He did not recall in all his experience so acceptable an easy chair. The frame, a little old-fashioned, perhaps, a mere matter of taste, that the chair was obviously new, was of polished,

Starting point is 03:10:51 red-brown wood, and the mattress was covered in a soft cotton material, or rather it was not a mattress, but three thick cushions, extending from the foot to the very top of the chair back. There was a head row, besides, neither too hard nor too yielding, with an embroidered linen cover, fastened on by a cord to the chair, and wondrously agreeable to the neck. Hans Castorp supported his elbow on the broad, smooth surface of the chair arm, blinked, and reposed himself. The landscape, rather severe and sparse, though brightly sunny, looked like a framed painting as viewed through the arch of the lodger.

Starting point is 03:11:32 Hans Kastok gazed thoughtfully at it. Suddenly he thought of something, and said aloud in the stillness, "'That was a dwarf, wasn't it, that waited on us at breakfast?' "'Shh,' went Yoko. "'Don't speak loud.' "'Yes, a dwarf. "'Why?' "'Nothing. We hadn't mentioned it.'

Starting point is 03:11:55 He mused on. "'It had been ten o'clock when he lay down. "'An hour passed. "'It was an ordinary hour, not long, not short. "'At its close a bell sounded through the house and garden. "'First afar, then near, then from afar again. "'Breakest, Yewkemy said, and could be heard getting up. "'Hans Castorpe, too, finished with his cure for the

Starting point is 03:12:20 time, and went into his room to put himself to rights a little. The cousins met in the corridor and descended the stair. Hans Kastop said, Well, the lying down is great. What sort of chairs are they? If they are to be had here, I'll buy one and take you to Hamburg with me. They are heavenly to lie in. What do you think barons had them made to his design?

Starting point is 03:12:44 Yer Kim did not know. They entered the dining room, where the meal was again in full swing. at every place stood a large glass, probably a half-liter of milk. The room shimmered white with it. No, Hans Kastop said, when he was once more in his seat between the seamstress and the Englishwoman, and had docilely unfolded his serviette, though still heavy, from the earlier meal. No, God help me, milk I never could abide, and least of all now. Is there perhaps some porter?

Starting point is 03:13:15 He applied himself to the dwarf And put his question with the gentlest courtesy But alas, there was none She promised to bring Kulm back a beer And did so It was thick, dark and foaming brownly It made a capital substitute for the porter Hans Kastorp drank it thirstily

Starting point is 03:13:34 From a half-liter glass And ate some cold meat and toast Again there was oatmeal porridge And much butter and fruit He let his eyes dwell upon them incapable of more. And he looked at the guests as well. The groups began to break up for him, and individuals to stand out. His own table was full, except the place at the top, which he learned was the doctor's place. For the doctors, when their work aloud, at the common table,

Starting point is 03:14:02 sitting at each of the seven in turn. At each one a place was kept free. But just now neither was present. They were operating, it was said. The young man with a moustache. The rushes came in again, he sank his chin once for all on his breast, and sat down with his self-absorbed careworn mien. The lean, light blonde, was in her seat, and spooned up yoghurt as it formed her sole article of diet. Next to her appeared a lively little old dame, who addressed the silent young man in Russian. He regarded her uneasily, and answered only by nodding his head, looking as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. opposite him on the other side of the elderly lady there was another young girl

Starting point is 03:14:46 pretty with a blooming complexion and full bosom chestnut hair that waved agreeably round brown childlike eyes and little ruby on her lovely hand she laughed often and spoke Russian Hans Castorp learned that her name was Marushche he noticed further that when she laughed and talked Joachim sat with eyes cast sternly down upon his plate

Starting point is 03:15:11 Setimbrini appeared through the side door, and, curling his mustaches, stowed to his place at the end of the table, diagonally in front of that where Hans Kastorp sat. His tablemates burst out in peals of laughter as he sat down. He had probably said something cutting. Hans Kastorp recognized the members of the Half Lung Club. Haminah Cleefelt, heavy-eyed, slid into her place at the table in front of one of the veranda doors, speaking as she did so to the thick-lipped youth, who had worn his coat in the unseemly fashion that had struck Hans Castor.

Starting point is 03:15:48 The ivory-covered Levi in the fat, freckled Iltis sat side by side at a table at right angles to Hans Castorpe. He did not know any of their table-mates. There are your neighbours, Yon said in a low voice to his cousin, bending forward as he spoke. The pair passed close beside Hans Castorke to the last table on the right. The bad Russian table, apparently. where there already sat a whole family,

Starting point is 03:16:13 one of whom, a very ugly boy, was gobbling great quantities of porridge. The man was of slight proportions with the grey, hollow-cheeked face. He wore a brown leather jacket. On his feet he had clumsy felt boots with buckled clasps. His wife, likewise small and slender,

Starting point is 03:16:32 walked with tripping steps in her tiny, high-heeled russia leather boots. The feathers swayed on her hat. around her neck she wore a soiled feather boa. Hans Castorop looked at them with a ruthless stare, quite foreign to his usual manner. He himself was aware of its brutality, yet at the same time conscious of relishing that very quality.

Starting point is 03:16:56 His eyes felt both staring and heavy. At that moment the glass door on the left slammed shut, with a rattle and ringing of glass. He did not start as he had on the first occasion, but only made a grimace of lazy disgust. When he wished to turn his head, he found the effort too much for him. It was really not worthwhile.

Starting point is 03:17:18 And thus, for the second time, he was unable to fix upon the person who was guilty of behaving in that reckless way about a door. The truth was that the breakfast beer, as a rule only mildly obfuscating to the young man's sense, had this time completely stupefied and befuddled him. He felt as though he had received a blow on the head, His eyelids were heavy as lead.

Starting point is 03:17:42 His tongue would not shape his simple thoughts. When out of politeness he tried to talk to the Englishwoman. Even to alter the direction of his gaze, he was obliged to conquer a great disinclination, and added to all this, the hateful burning in his face had reached the same height as yesterday. His cheeks felt puffy with heat. He breathed with difficulty.

Starting point is 03:18:04 His heart pounded dully, like a hammer muffled in cloth. If all these sensations caused him no high degree of suffering, that was only because his head felt as though he had inhaled a few whiffs of chloroform. He saw as in a dream that Dr. Krakowski appeared at breakfast and took the place opposite to his. The doctor, however, repeatedly looked him sharply in the eye while he conversed in Russian with the ladies on his right. The young girls, the blooming Marushche and the lean consumer of yoghurt, cast down their eyes modestly as the doctor spoke. Hans Castorpe did not, of course, bear himself otherwise than with dignity, in silence, since his tongue refused its office, but managing his knife and fork with particular propriety.

Starting point is 03:18:51 When his cousin nodded to him and got up, he rose too, bowed blindly to the rest of the table, and with cautious steps followed Yoke him out. "'When do we lie down again?' he asked as they left the house. "'It's the best thing up here, as far as I can see. I wish you were back again on a comfortable chair. Do we take a long walk? End of Section 10. Section 11 of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.

Starting point is 03:19:20 This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 11. Chapter 3. A word too much. No, answered Joachim. I am not allowed to go far. At this period I always go down. below, through the village, as far as the plats, if I have time. There are shops and people,

Starting point is 03:19:43 and one can buy what one needs. Don't worry, we rest for an hour again before dinner, and then after it until four o'clock. They went down the drive in the sunshine, cross the water course and the narrow track, having before their eyes the mountain heights of the western side of the valley, the little Shiahon, the green tower, and the Dorfberg. Yerkeum mentioned their names. The little walled cemetery of Davos Dorf lay up there at some height. Joachim pointed it out with his stick. They reached the high road that led along the terrace slope, a story higher than the valley floor. It was rather a misnomer to speak of the village since scarcely anything but the word remained.

Starting point is 03:20:31 The resort had swallowed it up, extending further and further toward the entrance of the valley, until that part of the settlement, which was called the Dauph, passed imperceptibly into the plaits. Hotels and pensions, amply equipped with covered verandas, balconies and reclining halls, lay on both sides of their way, also private houses with rooms to let. Here and there were new buildings, but also open spaces, which preserved a view toward the valley meadows. Hans Castorpe, craving his familiar and wanted indulgence, had once more lighted a cigar. And thanks probably to the beer that had gone before,

Starting point is 03:21:11 he succeeded now and then in getting a whiff of the longed-for aroma, to his inexpressible satisfaction. But only now and then, but only faintly. The anxious receptivity of his attitude was a strain on the nerves, and the hateful leathery taste distinctly prevailed. Unable to reconcile himself to his impotence, he struggled a while to regain the enjoyment which either escaped him wholly or else mocked him by its brief presence. Finally, worn out and disgusted, he flung the cigar away. Despite his benumbed condition, he felt it incumbent upon him to be polite, to make conversation,

Starting point is 03:21:54 and to this end he sought to recall those brilliant ideas which he had previously had on the subject of time. alas they had fled the whole complex of them and left not a trace behind. On the subject of time not one single idea, however insignificant, found lodgment in his head. He began therefore to talk of ordinary matters, of the concerns of the body. What he said sounded odd enough in his mouth. When do you measure again, he asked. After eating? Yes, that's a good time, when the organism is.

Starting point is 03:22:30 is in full activity. It must show itself. Berens must have been joking when he told me to take my temperature. Setembrini laughed like anything at the idea. There's really no sense in it. I haven't even a thermometer. Well, Yer Kim said, that is the least of your difficulties. You can get one anywhere. They sell them in almost every shop. Why should I? No, the lying down is very much the thing. I'll gladly do it, but measuring would be rather too much for a guest. I'll leave that to the rest of you. If only I knew, hence Castrop went on and laid his hands like a lover on his heart, if only I knew why I have palpitations the whole time. It is very disquieting. I keep thinking about it, for you see, a person ordinarily has palpitation of the heart when he is frightened

Starting point is 03:23:23 or when he's looking forward to some great joy. But when the heart palpitates all by itself, without any reason, senselessly of its own accord, so to speak, I feel that's uncanny, you understand, as if the body was going its own gait without any reference to the soul, like a dead body, only it is not really dead. There isn't any such thing, of course. But leading a very active existence, all on its own account, growing hair and nails and doing a lively business

Starting point is 03:23:53 in the physical and chemical line, so I've been told, what kind of talk is that? Yeakim said, with serious reproach. Doing a lively business? And perhaps he recalled the reproaches he had called down on his own head earlier in the day. It's a fact.

Starting point is 03:24:11 It is very lively. Why do you object to that? Hans Castor asked. But I only happened to mention it. I only meant to say that it is disturbing and unpleasant to have the body act as though it had no connection with the soul and put on such airs, by which I mean these senseless palpitations. You keep trying to find an explanation for them, an emotion to account for them,

Starting point is 03:24:35 a feeling of joy or pain, which would, so to speak, justify them. At least it is that way with me. But I can only speak for myself. Yes, yes, Yer Kim said, saying. It is the same thing, I suppose, as when you have fever. There are pretty lively goings-on in the system then too. to talk the way you do. It may easily be that one involuntarily tries to find an emotion which would explain, or even halfway explain, the goings-on. But we are talking such unpleasant stuff, he said,

Starting point is 03:25:09 his voice trembling a little, and he broke off, whereupon Hans Castorp shrugged his shoulders, with the very gesture indeed, which had, the evening before, displeased him in his cousin. They walked a while in silence, until Yokim asked, "'Well, how do you like the people up here? "'I mean the ones at our table.' "'Hans Castor put on a judicial air. "'Dear me,' he said, "'I don't find them so very interesting.

Starting point is 03:25:41 "'Some of the people at the other tables look more so, "'but that may be only seeming. "'Fraussure, what to have her hair shampooed. "'It is so greasy. "'And that mazurka, whatever a name is, "'seemed rather silly to me. "'She kept giggling. and stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth.

Starting point is 03:25:59 Yook him laughed loudly at the twist his cousin had given the name. Mazzurka is capital, he said. Her name is Marushche, with your kind permission. It is the same as Marie. Yes, she really is too undisciplined, and, after all, she has every reason to be serious, he said, for her case is by no means light.

Starting point is 03:26:21 Who would have thought it? said Hans Castorpe. She looks so very fit. "'Chess trouble is the last thing one would accuse her of.' "'He tried to catch his cousin's eye "'and saw that Yo Kim's sun-bent face "'had gone all spotted as a tan complexion will "'when the blood leaves it with suddenness.

Starting point is 03:26:40 "'His mouth, too, was pitifully drawn "'and wore an expression that sent an indefinable chill of fear "'over Hans Kastorp, "'and made him hasten to change the subject. "'He hurriedly inquired about others of their tablemates "'and tried to forget Marishche. and the look on Yoakim's face, an effort in which he presently succeeded.

Starting point is 03:27:03 The Englishwoman with the rose tea was Miss Robinson. The seamstress was not a seamstress, but a schoolmistress at a lise in Conigsburg, which accounted for the precision of her speech. Her name was Froulin Englehart. As for the name of the lively little old lady, Yokkim, as long as he had been up here, did not know it, All he knew was that she was great-aunt to the young lady who had yoghurt, and lived with her permanently in the sanatorium.

Starting point is 03:27:35 The worst case at their table was Dr. Blumencol, Leo Blumencol from Odessa, the young man with the mustaches and the absorbed and careworn air. He had been here years. They were now walking on the city pavement, the main street, obviously, of an international centre. they met the guests of the cure strolling about. Young people, for the most part, gallants in sporting without their hats. White-skirted ladies also hatless. One heard Russian and English. Shops with gay show windows were on either side of the road.

Starting point is 03:28:12 And Hans Castor, his curiosity struggling with intense weariness, forced himself to look into them, and stood a long time before a shop that pervade fashionable male wear. to decide whether its display was really up to the mark. They reached a rotunda with covered galleries, where a band was giving a concert. This was the courthouse. Tennis was being played on several courts

Starting point is 03:28:37 by long-legged, clean-shaven youths, in accurately pressed flannels and rubber-soled shoes, their arms bared the elbow, and sunburnt girls in white frocks, who ran and flung themselves high in the sunny air in their efforts to strike the white ball. The well-kept courts looked as though coated with flour. The cousin sat down an empty bench to watch and criticise the game.

Starting point is 03:29:02 You don't play here, Hans Kastov asked. I am not allowed, Yerkeman said. We have to lie, nothing but lie. Settembrini says we live horizontally. He calls us horizontalists, since one of his rotten jokes. Those are healthy people there, or else they are breaking the rules. But they don't play very much. seriously, anyhow. It's more for the sake of the costume. As far as breaking the rules goes,

Starting point is 03:29:30 there are more forbidden things, besides tennis that get played here, poker and piti chivo, at this and that hotel. At our place there is a notice about it. It is supposed to be the most harmful thing one can do. Even so, there are people who slip out after the evening visit and come down here to gamble. That prince who gave Berens his title always did it, they say. Hans Castor barely attended. His mouth was open, for he could not have breathed through his nose without sniffing. He felt with dull discomfort that his heart was hammering out of time with the music, and with this combined sense of discord and disorder,

Starting point is 03:30:10 he was about to doze off when Yoakim suggested that they go home. They returned almost in silence. Hans Castorpe stumbled once or twice on the level street, and grinned ruefully as he shook his head. The lame man took them up in the lift to their own story. They parted with a brief. See you later at the door of number 34. Hans Castor piloted himself through his room to the balcony,

Starting point is 03:30:37 where he dropped, just as he was, upon his deck chair, and without once shifting to a more comfortable posture, sank into a dull half-slumber, broken by the rapid beating of his unquiet heart. End of Sector Floor, 11. Section 12 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 12

Starting point is 03:31:05 Chapter 3 Of course a female How long it lasted he could not have told. When the moment arrived the gong sounded. But it was not the gong for the meal. It was only the dressing bell, as Hans Castorpe knew. And so he still lay, until the material. metallic drone rose and died away a second time.

Starting point is 03:31:30 When Joachim came to fetch him, Hans Kastorp wanted to change, but this Joachim would not allow. He hated and despised unpunctuality. Would he be likely, he asked, to get on and get strong enough for the service, if he was too feeble to observe the hours for meals? Wherein he was, of course, quite right, and Hans Kastop could only say that he was not ill at all, but only utterly and entirely sleepy. He confined himself to washing his hands, and then for the third time they went down together to the dining hall. The guests streamed in through both entrances. They even came through the open veranda door. Soon they all sat at the

Starting point is 03:32:12 several tables, as though they had never risen. Such at least was Hans Castorpe's impression, a dreamy and irrational impression, of course, but one which his his muddled brain could not for an instant get rid of, in which it even took a certain satisfaction, so that several times in the course of the meal he sought to call it up again, and was always perfectly successful in reproducing the illusion. The gay old lady continued to talk in her semi-fluid tongue at the careworn Dr. Blumenkull, dagging the opposite. Her lean niece actually at last ate something else than yogurt,

Starting point is 03:32:49 namely the thick cream of barley soup, which was handed round in store. soup plates by the waitresses. Of this she took a few spoonfuls and left the rest. Pretty Marushchea, giggled, then stuffed her dainty handkerchief in her mouth. It gave out a scent of oranges. Miss Robinson read the same letters, in the same round script, which she had read at breakfast. Obviously she knew not a word of German, nor wished to do so. Yolkim, Pruechivalier, said something to her in English, which she answered in a monosibule without ceasing to chew, and relapsed again into silence. Fraustor, sitting there in her woollen blouse, gave the table to know she had been examined that forenoon.

Starting point is 03:33:35 She went into particulars, effectively drawing back her upper lip from the rodent-like teeth. There were ronky to be heard in the upper right side, and under the left shoulder-blade the breathing was still very limited. the old man said she would have to stop another five months. It sounded very common to hear her refer thus to Herr Hofrat Berens. She displayed, moreover, a feeling of injury because the old man was not sitting at her table today where he should, by rights, be sitting,

Starting point is 03:34:06 if he had taken them at la tourney, by which she presumably meant in turn, instead of going to the next table again. There, in fact, he really was sitting, his great hands folded before his place. But of course that was Frou Sulemen's table. The fat Frouz Solomon from Amsterdam who came Decolete to table even on weekdays,

Starting point is 03:34:30 a sight which the old man liked to see. Though for her part, Froucaust, she never could understand why, since he could see all he wanted of Frow Solomon at every examination. She related, an exciting whisper, that last night in the general rest hall up under the roof, somebody had put out the light, the purposes which she designated as transparent.

Starting point is 03:34:53 The old man had seen it and stormed so you could hear it all over the place. He had not discovered the culprit, of course, but it didn't take a university education to guess that it was Captain Miklosich from Bucharest, for whom, when in the Society of Ladies, it could never be dark enough. A man without any and all refinement. though he did wear a corset. And by nature, simply a beast of prey. A perfect beast of prey, repeated Froustor, in a stifled whisper. Beads of perspiration on her brow and upper lip.

Starting point is 03:35:31 The relations between him and Froucaux-General Wombrand, from Vienna, were known throughout Dorf and Plots. It was idle any longer to speak of them as clandestine. Not merely did the captain go into Froucaux-General's bedroom, while she was still in bed and remained there throughout her toilet. Last Thursday he had not left the Wombrand's room until four in the morning. That they knew from the nurse, who was taken care of young France in number 19. His pneumothorax operation had gone wrong.

Starting point is 03:36:04 She had, in her embarrassment, mistaken her own door and burst suddenly into the room of Herr Paravant, a Dortmund lawyer. Lastly, Frasdor held forth for some time, the merits of a cosmic establishment down the village where she brought her mouthwash, Joachim gazed stonely downwards at his plate. The meal was as faultlessly prepared as it was abundant. Counting the hearty soup, it consisted of no less than six courses. After the fish followed an excellent meat dish, with garnishings,

Starting point is 03:36:39 then a separate vegetable course, then roast fowl, a pudding, not inferior to yesterday evenings, and lastly, cheese and fruit. Each dish was handed twice and not in vain. At all seven tables they filled their plates and ate. They ate like wolves. They displayed a veracity which would have been a pleasure to see, had there not been something else about it, an effect almost uncanny, not to say repulsive. It was not only the light-hearted who thus laced into the food, those who chattered as they ate, and threw pellets of bread at each other, No, the same appetite was evinced by the silent, gloomy ones as well. Those who in the pauses between courses leaned their heads on their hands and stared before them. The half-grown youth at the next table on the left, by his years a schoolboy, with his wrists coming out of his jacket sleeves and thick, round eyeglasses,

Starting point is 03:37:34 cut all the heaped-up food on his plate into a sort of mash, then bent over and gulped it down. He reached with his serviette. behind his glasses now and then, and dried his eyes. Whether it was sweat or tears he dried, one could not tell. There were two incidents during the course of the meal of which Hans Castorpe took note, so far as his condition permitted. One was the banging of the glass door, which occurred while they were having the fish course.

Starting point is 03:38:03 Hans Castorpe gave an exasperated shrug, and angrily resolved that this time he really must find out who did it. He said this not only within himself, himself, his lips formed the words. I must find out, he whispered, with exaggerated earnestness. Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress both looked at him in surprise. He turned the whole upper part of his body to the left and opened wide his bloodshot blue eyes.

Starting point is 03:38:30 It was a lady who was passing through the room, a woman, or rather girl, of middle height, in a white sweater and coloured skirt. Her reddish-blond hair wound in braids, about her head. Hans Kastorp had only a glimpse of her profile. She moved in singular contrast to the noise of her entrance, almost without sound, passing with a peculiarly gliding step, her head a little thrust forward, to her place at the furthest table on the left, at right angles to the veranda door, the good Russian table, in fact. As she walked, she held one hand deep in the pocket of her close-fitting

Starting point is 03:39:10 jacket. The other she left to the back of her head, and arranged the plaits of her hair. Hans Kastop looked at the hand. He was habitually observant and critical of this feature, and accustomed when he made a new acquaintance to direct his attention first upon it. It was not particularly ladylike this hand that was putting the braids to rights, not so refined and well kept as the hands of ladies in Hans Kastop's own social sphere, rather broad, with stumpy fingers, It had about it something primitive and childish, something indeed of the schoolgirl. The nails, it was plain, knew nothing of the manicurists art. They were cut in rough and ready schoolgirl fashion. And the skin at the side looked almost as though someone was subject to the childish vice

Starting point is 03:39:58 of finger-biting, but Hans Castorpe sensed rather than saw this, going to the distance. The laggard greeted her table-mates with a nod, and took her place on the inner side of the table-sides, of the table with her back to the room, next to Dr. Krakowski, who was sitting at the top. As she did so, she turned her head, with the hands still raised to it, toward the dining room, and surveyed the public. Hans Kastorp had opportunity for the fleeting observation that her cheekbones were broad and her eyes narrow. A vague memory of something, of some body, stirred him slightly and fleetingly as he looked.

Starting point is 03:40:37 of course a female he thought or rather he actually uttered in a murmur yet so that the schoolmistress frauleine englehart understood the poor old spinster smiled in sympathy that is madame shusha she said she is so heedless a charming creature and the downy flush on her cheek grew a shade darker as it did whenever she spoke a french woman hands Castorpe asked with severity. No, she is Russian, was the answer. Her husband is very likely French, or a French descent. I am not sure. Hence Castorpe asked, still irritated, if that was he, pointing to a gentleman with drooping shoulders who sat at the good Russian table. Oh no, the schoolmistress answered.

Starting point is 03:41:30 He isn't here. He has never been here. No one knows him. She ought to learn how to shut a door. Hans Castob said. She always lets it slam. It's a piece of ill-breeding. And on the school mistresses meekly accepting this reproof, as though she herself had been the guilty party, there was no more talk of Madame Shusha. The second event was the temporary absence of Dr. Blumenkoll from the room, nothing more. The mildly disgusted facial expression suddenly deepened.

Starting point is 03:42:04 He looked with sad affixity into space, then unobtrusively moved back his chair and went out. Whereupon, Frouc's essential ill-breeding showed itself in the clearest light, probably out of vulgar satisfaction in the fact that she was less ill than Dr. Blumencol. She accompanied his exit

Starting point is 03:42:22 with comments half-pitying, half-contemptuous. Poor creature! She said, he'll soon be in his last gasp. He had to go out for a talk with his blue Peter. Quite stolidly, without repulsion, she brought out the grotesque phrase. Hans Castor felt a mixture of repugnance and desire to laugh. Presently Dr. Blumenkoll came back in the same unobtrusive way,

Starting point is 03:42:51 took his place and went on eating. He too had a great deal, twice of every dish, always in silence, with the same melancholy preoccupied air. Thus the midday meal came to an end. Thanks to the skilled service, the dwarf at Hans Castorff. table was one of the quickest on her feet. It had lasted only a round hour. Breathing heavily, not quite sure how he got upstairs, Hans Kastop lay once more in his capital chair upon his

Starting point is 03:43:21 lodger. After this meal there was rest-gure, until tea-time, the most important and rigidly adhered to rest period of the day. Between the opaque glass walls that divided him on the one side, from Joachim, on the other, from the Russian couple, he lay and idly dreamed. He, he was, and idly dreamed. his heart pounding, breathing through his mouth. On using his handkerchief, he discovered it to be red with blood, but had not enough energy to think about the fact, though he was rather given to worrying over himself and by nature inclined to hypochondria. Once more he had lighted a Maria Mancini, and this time he smoked it to the end, no matter how it tasted. Giddy and depressed, he considered, as in a dream, how very odd he had felt since he came up here. To

Starting point is 03:44:09 or three times his breasts was shaken by inward laughter of the horrid expression which that ignorant creature Froucestor had used. End of Section 12. Section 13 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 13. Chapter 3, Herr Albin Below in the garden the fanciful banner with the Caduceus lifted itself for now and again in a breath of wind. The sky was once more evenly overcast. The sun was gone. The air had grown almost inhospitably cool.

Starting point is 03:44:51 The general rest hall seemed to be full. Talking and laughter went on below. Herr Albin, I implore you. Put away your knife. Put it in your pocket. There will be an accident with it. A high, uncertain voice besought then. Dear Herr Albin, for heaven's sake,

Starting point is 03:45:10 spare your nerves. "'and take that murderous tool out of our sight,' a second voice chimed in. "'A blonde young man with a cigarette in his mouth, "'sitting in the outside easy chair, responded pertly. "'Couldn't think of it. "'I'm sure the ladies haven't the heart to prevent me "'from amusing myself a little.

Starting point is 03:45:29 "'I bought that knife in Calcutta of a blind wizard. "'He could swallow it, "'and then have his boy dig it up fifty paces from where he stood. "'Do look. "'It is sharper than a razor. You only need to touch the blade. It goes into your flesh like cutting butter. Wait a minute.

Starting point is 03:45:47 I'll show it you close by. And Herr Albin stood up. A shriek arose. Or rather, said he, I'll fetch my revolver. That will be more interesting. Peacot, little tool. Useful to send a bullet through anything.

Starting point is 03:46:02 I'll go up and get it. No, no, don't. Pray don't, don't, Herr Albin. In a loud outcry from many voices. But Herr Albin had a little bit of aubin had a little. already come out to go up to his room. Very young and lanky, with a rosy, childish face, with little strips of side-whisker close to his ears. "'Hare Arbin!' cried a lady's voice from within.

Starting point is 03:46:24 "'Do fetch your greatcoat instead, and put it on. Do it just to please me. Six weeks long you have lain with inflammation of the lungs, and now you sit here without an overcoat, and don't even cover yourself, and smoke cigarettes. That is tempting providence, on my word it is, Herr Albin. He only laughed scornfully as he went off, and in a few minutes returned with the revolver in his hand. The silly geese squawked worse than before, and some of them even made as if they would spring from their chairs, wrap their blankets round them, and flee.

Starting point is 03:46:59 Look at how little and shiny he is, said Her Albin. But when I press him here, then he bites. Another outcry. Of course he is loaded. To the hilt, he continued. in this disc here of six cottages. It turns one hole at each shot. But I don't keep him merely for a joke, he said,

Starting point is 03:47:19 noticing that the sensation was wearing off. He let the revolver slip into his breast pocket, sat down again, flung one leg over the other, and lighted a fresh cigarette. Certainly not for a joke, he repeated, and compressed his lips. What for, then? What for? they asked. Their voice is trembling. "'Corrible,' came a sudden cry, and Herr Albin nodded.

Starting point is 03:47:43 "'I see you begin to understand,' he said. "'In fact, you are right. "'That is what I keep it for,' he went on airily, "'inhaling, despite the recent inflammation of the lungs, "'a mass of smoke and breathing it slowly out again. "'I keep it in readiness for the day "'when I can't face this farce any longer, "'and do myself the honour to bid you a respectful adieu.

Starting point is 03:48:07 "'It is all very simple. I've given the matter some study and I know precisely how to do it. Another screech at the word. I eliminate the region of the heart. The aim is not very convenient there. I prefer to annihilate my consciousness at its very centre by introducing my charming little foreign body direct into this interesting organ.

Starting point is 03:48:29 Here Albin indicated with his index finger a spot on his close-cropped blonde pate. You aim here. He drew the nickel-plated revolver out of his pocket once more and tapped with the barrel against his skull, just here above the artery. Even without a mirror, the thing is simple. A chorus of imploring protest arose,

Starting point is 03:48:49 mingled with heavy sobbing. Herr Albin, Herr Albin, put it away. Take it from your temple. It is dreadful to see you. Herr Albin, you are young. You will get well, you will return to the world. Everybody will love you. But put on your coat and lie down, cover yourself,

Starting point is 03:49:05 go on with your cure. Don't drive the bathing master away next. time he comes to rub you down with alcohol and stop smoking cigarettes. Herr Albin, we implore you for the sake of your young, your precious life. But Herr Albin was inexorable. No, no, he said. Let me alone. I'm all right, thanks.

Starting point is 03:49:25 I've never refused a lady anything yet, but you see it's no good trying to put a spoke in the wheel of fate. I'm in my third year up here. I'm sick of it, fed up, and I can't play the game anymore. Do you blame me for that? incurable ladies, as I sit here before you, an incurable case. The hoffrat himself is hardly at the pains any longer to pretend I am not. Grant me at least the freedom, which is all I can get out of the situation.

Starting point is 03:49:51 In school, when it was settled that someone was not to move up to the next form, he just stopped where he was. Nobody asked him any more questions. He did not have to do any more work. It's like that with me. I am in that happy condition now. I need do nothing more. I don't count. I can laugh at the whole thing. Would you like some chocolate? Do take some. No, you won't be robbing me. I have heaps of it in my room. Eight boxes and five tablets of Galapita and four pounds of lint. The ladies of the sanatorium gave it to me when I was ill with my inflammation of the lungs. From somewhere a bass voice was audible, commanding quiet. Air Albin gave a short laugh, a ragged, wavering laugh. Then stillness reigned in the rest hall.

Starting point is 03:50:40 A stillness as of a vanished dream, a disappearing wraith. Afterwards the voices rose again, sounding strange in silence. Hans Castop listened until they were quite hushed. He had an indistinct notion that Herr Albin was a puppy. It could not resist a certain envy. In particular, the school day's comparison made an impression on him. He himself had stuck in the lower second and well remembered this situation. of course rather to be ashamed of, and yet not without its funny side.

Starting point is 03:51:12 In particular he recalled the agreeable sensation of being totally lost and abandoned, with which in the fourth quarter he gave up the running. He could have laughed at the whole thing. His reflections were dim and confused. It would be difficult to define them. But in effect it seemed to him that, though honour might possess certain advantages, yet shame had others, and not inferior. advantages even that were well-nigh boundless in their scope.

Starting point is 03:51:40 He tried to put himself in Hare Albin's place and see how it must feel to be finally relieved of the burden of a respectable life and made free of the infinite realms of shame and the young man shuddered at the wild wave of sweetness which swept over him at the thought and drove on his laboring heart

Starting point is 03:51:58 to an even quicker pace. End of Section 13. Section 14 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 14. Chapter 3, Satana makes proposals that touch our honour. After a while he lost consciousness. It was half-past three by his watch when he was roused by voices behind the left-hand glass partition. Dr. Krakowski at this hour made the rounds alone, and he was talking in Russian with the unmanally pair on the next balcony, asking the husband how he did, it seemed, and inspecting the fever chart.

Starting point is 03:52:52 He did not, however, continue his route by the balconies, but skirted Hans Kastob's section, passing along the corridor, and entering Yerkim's room by the door. Hans Kastorp felt rather hurt to have Krakowski's circle round and leave him out, even though a tte-a-tete with the gentleman was something he was far from hankering after. Of course he was healthy. He was not included. with the other inmates. Up here, he reflected, it was the sound and healthy person who did not count, who got no attention, and this the young man found vastly annoying. Dr. Krakowski stopped with Yoakim two or three minutes. Then he went on down the row of balconies, and Hans Kastorp

Starting point is 03:53:37 heard his cousin say that it was time to get up and make ready for tea. Good, he answered and rose. but he was giddy from long-lying, and the unrefreshing, half-slumber had made his face burn anew. Yet he felt chilly, perhaps he had not been well enough, covered as he lay. He washed his eyes and hands, brushed his hair, put his clothing to rights, and met Joachim outside in the corridor. Did you hear that hair albin? he asked as they went down the steps. I should say I did, his cousin answered. The man ought to be disciplined, disturbing the whole rest of the rest of the rest of the period, with his gabble, and exciting the ladies, so that it puts them back for weeks,

Starting point is 03:54:18 a piece of gross insubordination, but who is there to denounce him? On the contrary, that sort of thing makes quite a welcome diversion. Do you think he would really do it? Put a bullet into himself? It's a very simple matter, to use his own words. Oh, answered Yolkim, it isn't so out of the question, more's the pity. Such things do happen up here. Two months before I came, a student who had been,

Starting point is 03:54:43 been here a long time, hanged himself down in the wood after a general examination. It was a good deal talked about still, in the early days after I came. Hans Castor gaped excitedly. Well, he declared, I am certainly far from feeling fit up here. I couldn't say I did. I think it's quite possible I shan't be able to stop, that I'll have to leave. You wouldn't take that amiss, would you? Leave?

Starting point is 03:55:12 "'What is the matter with you?' cried Joachim. "'Nonsense. You've just come. You can't judge from the first day.' "'Good Lord. Is it still only the first day?' "'It seems to me I've been up here a long time. Ages. "'Don't begin to philosophize us again about time,' said Joachim. "'You had me perfectly bewildered this morning.' "'No, don't worry. I've forgotten all of it,' answered Hans cast off. "'The whole complex. I've lost all the clear.

Starting point is 03:55:42 headiness I had. It's gone. Well, and so it's time for tea. Yes, and after that we walk as far as the bench again, like this morning. Just as you say, only I hope we shan't meet Setumbrini again. I'm not up to any more learned conversation. I can tell you that beforehand. At tea, all the various beverages were served, which is possible to serve at that meal. Miss Robinson drank again her brew made of rose-hips. The grand-niece spooned up her yoghurt. There were milk, tea, coffee, chocolate, even bonyon, and on every hand the guests, nearly arisen from some two-hour's repose after their heavy luncheon, were busily spreading huge slices of raisin cake with butter. Hans Castop chose tea and dipped Zvibeck in it. He also tasted some marmalade.

Starting point is 03:56:34 The raisin cake, he contemplated with an interested eye, but literally shuddered at the thought of eating any. Once more he sat here in his place, in this vaulted room with its gay yet simple decorations, its seven tables. It was the fourth time. Later, at seven o'clock, he sat there again for the fifth time, and that was supper. In the brief and trifling interval, the cousins had taken a turn as far as the bench, on the mountainside, beside the little watercourse. The path had been full of patience. Hans Castorpe had often to lift his hat. Followed a long. last period of rest on the balcony, a fugitive and empty interlude of an hour and a half. He dressed conscientiously for the evening meal, and, sitting in his place between Miss Robinson

Starting point is 03:57:21 and the schoolmistress, he ate, Julianne soup, baked and roast meats with suitable accompaniments, two pieces of tart made of macaroons, buttercream, chocolate, jam, and marzipan, and lastly, excellent cheese and pumpernickel. as before he ordered a bottle of Kulmbacher. But by the time he had half emptied his tall glass, he became clearly and unmistakably aware that bed was the best place for him. His head roared.

Starting point is 03:57:52 His eyelids were like lead. His heart went like a set of kettle drums, and he began to torture himself with the suspicion that pretty Marushche, who was bending over her plate, covering her face with the hand that wore the ruby ring, was laughing at him, though he had taken enormous peasant.

Starting point is 03:58:07 pains not to give occasion for laughter. At a far distance he heard Froucestor, telling, or asserting, something which seemed to him such utter nonsense that he was conscious of a despairing doubt as to whether he had heard aright, or whether he had turned her words to nonsense in his adult brain. She was declaring that she knew how to make twenty-eight different sources to serve with fish. She would stake her reputation on the fact, though her own husband had warned her. not to talk about it. Don't talk about it, he had told her.

Starting point is 03:58:42 Nobody will believe it, or if they do, they will simply laugh at you. And yet she would say it, say once and for all that it was 28 fish sources she could make, all of which, to our good Hans Kastorp, seemed too mad for words. He clutched his brow with his hand, and in his amazement quite forgot

Starting point is 03:59:01 that he had a bite of pumpernickel and Cheshire, still to be chewed and swallowed. When he rose from table, he had it still in his mouth. They went out through the left-hand glass door, that fatal door, which always slammed, which led directly to the front hall. Nearly all the guests went out the same way. It appeared that after dinner a certain amount of social intercourse took place in the hall and the adjoining salons. Most of the patients stood about in little groups, chatting. Games were begun at two green extension tables, at the one, dominoes, at the other bridge. And here only the young

Starting point is 03:59:37 folk played, among them Hermina Cleefelt and Herr Albin. In the first salon there was some amusing optical diversions, the first a stereoscope, behind the lenses of which one inserted a photograph. For instance, there was one of a Venetian gondolier, and on looking through, you saw the figures standing out in the round, lifelike, though bloodless. Another was a kaleidoscope. You put your eye to the lens and slightly turned a wheel, and all sorts of gay-coloured stars and arabesques, danced and juggles, before it, with the swift changefulness of magic. A third was a revolving drum, into which you inserted a strip of cinematographic film,

Starting point is 04:00:17 and then looked through the openings as it whirled, and saw a miller fighting with a chimney sweep, a schoolmaster chastising a boy, a leaping rope-dancer, and a peasant pair, dancing a folk-dance. Hans Castorpe, his cold hands on his knees, gazed a long time into each of these contrivances. He paused a while,

Starting point is 04:00:37 by the card table, where Herr Albin, the incurable, sat with the corners of his mouth drawn down, and handled the cars with a supercilious man-of-the-worldly air. In a corner sat Dr. Krakowski, absorbed in a brisk and hearty conversation with a half-circle of ladies, among them Fras Stor, Froultes, and Fralane Levy. The occupants of the good Russian table had withdrawn into a neighbouring small salon, separated from the card table by a portier where they formed a small and separate coterie consisting in addition to Madame Shusha

Starting point is 04:01:12 of a languid blonde-bearded youth with a hollow chest and prominent eyeballs a young girl of pronounced brunette type with a droll original face, gold earrings and wild woolly hair besides these Dr. Blumencol who had joined their circle and two other youths with drooping shoulders.

Starting point is 04:01:32 Madam Shusha wore a blue frock with a white lace collar. She sat, the centre of her group, on the sofa behind the round table, at the bottom of the small salon. Her face turned toward the card room. Hans Kastorp, who could not look at the unmannerly creature without disapproval, said to himself,

Starting point is 04:01:52 She reminds me of something, but I cannot tell what. A tall man of some thirty years, growing bald, played the wedding march from the Midsummer Night's Dream, three times on end on the little brown piano. and on being urged by some of the ladies, began the melodious peace for the fourth time, gazing deep and silently into their eyes, one after the other.

Starting point is 04:02:15 May I be permitted to ask after the state of your health, engineer? Inquiet said Embryny, who had lounged up among the other guests, hands in pockets, and now presented himself before Hans Castorpe. He still wore his pilot coat and checked trousers. He smiled as he spoke, and Hans Castorpe felt again the sobering effect, of that fine and mocking curl of the lip

Starting point is 04:02:38 beneath the waving black mustaches. He looked rather stupidly at the Italian with lax mouth and red-veined eyes. Oh, it's you, he said. The gentleman we met this morning on our walk at that bench up there, near the... Yes, I knew you at once. Can you believe it?

Starting point is 04:02:57 He went on, no conscious of saying something, Gosh. Can you believe it? I took you for an organ grinder when I first saw you. Of course, that's all utter. rot, he added, seeing a coolly inquiring expression on Sennambrini's face, perfectly idiotic. I can't comprehend how in the world I— Don't disturb yourself. It doesn't matter, responded Settimbrini, after fixing the young man with a momentary intent regard.

Starting point is 04:03:24 Well, and how have you spent your day, the first of your sojourn, in this gay resort? Thanks very much, quite according to the rules, answered Hans Kastob. prevailingly horizontal, as I hear you prefer to call it, said Imbrini smiled. I may have occasion to express myself thus, he said. Well, and you found it amusing, this manner of existence? Amusing or dull, whichever you like, responded Hans Castorpe. It isn't always easy to decide which, you know. At all events, I haven't been bored.

Starting point is 04:03:59 There are far too lively goings-on up here for that. So much that is new and unusual to hear. and see. And yet, in another way, it seems as though I'd been here a long time, instead of just a single day, as if I had got older and wiser since I came. That is the way I feel. Wiser, too, said and Brinney, asked, and raised his eyebrows. Will you permit me to ask how old you are? And behold, Hans Kastob could not tell. At that moment he did not know how old he was, despite strenuous, even desperate efforts to bethink himself. In order to gain time, he had the question repeated and then answered,

Starting point is 04:04:41 I—how old I am. In my 24th year, of course, I'll soon be 24. I beg your pardon, but I am very tired, he went on. Tired isn't the word for it. Do you know how it is when you are dreaming, and you know that you are dreaming, and try to awake and can't? That is precisely the way I feel. I certainly must have some fever. Otherwise, I simply cannot explain it. Imagine, my feet are cold all the way up to my knees. If one may put it that way, of course, one's knees aren't one's feet. Do excuse me, I am all in a muddle, and no wonder, considering I was whistled at in the morning with the new, the pneumothorax, and in the afternoon I had to listen to this hair albin, in the horizontal on top of that.

Starting point is 04:05:27 It seems to me I cannot anymore trust my five senses, and that I must confess disturbs me more than my cold feet and the heat in my face. Tell me, frankly, do you think it is possible, Frau Stor knows how to make 28 different kinds of fish sources? I don't mean if she actually can make them, that I should consider out of the question. I mean if she set a table just now she could, or if I only imagined she did. That is all I want to know. Setimbrini looked at him. He seemed not to have been listening. His eyes were set again. They had taken on a fixed stare, and he said, Yes, yes, yes. And I see, I see, I see, I see. Each three times, just as he had done in the morning, in a considering deriding tone,

Starting point is 04:06:20 and giving a sharp sound to the S's. Twenty-four, he asked after a while. No, twenty-eight. castorpe said, 28 fish sources, not sources in general, special sources for fish. That is the monstrous part of it. Engineer, said Inbrini, said sharply, almost angrily. Pull yourself together and stop talking this demoralised rubbish. I know nothing about it, nor do I wish to.

Starting point is 04:06:51 You are in your 24th year, you say, hmm, permit me to put another question, or rather, with your kind permission, make a suggestion. As your stay up here with us does not appear to be conducive, as you don't feel comfortable, either physically or, unless I air mentally, how would it be if you renounce the prospect of growing older on the spot? In short, what if you were to pack tonight and be up and away with the first suitable train? You mean I should go away, as Castorov asked, when I've hardly come? No, why should I try to judge from the first day?

Starting point is 04:07:25 He happened, as he spoke, to direct his gaze into the next room and saw Frau Schorchard's full face with its narrow eyes and broad cheekbones. What is it? What or whom in all the world does she remind me of? But his weary brain, despite the effort he made, refused an answer. Of course, he went on, It is true, it is not so easy for me to get acclimatized up here. But that was to be expected. I'd be ashamed to chuck it up and go away like that, just because I felt upset and feverish for a few days.

Starting point is 04:08:00 I'd feel a perfect coward. It would be a senseless thing to do. You admitted to yourself, don't you? He spoke with a sudden insistence, jerking his shoulders excitedly. He seemed to want to make the Italian withdraw his suggestion in form. I pay every homage to reason, said and Brinney answered. I pay homage to valour, too. What you say sounds well. It would be hard to oppose anything convincing against it. I myself have seen some beautiful cases of acclimatization. There was Frouline Naifa, Otterly Naifa last year. She came of good family.

Starting point is 04:08:37 The daughter of an important government official, she was here some year and a half and had grown to feel so much at home that when her health was quite restored, it does happen up here. People do sometimes get well. She couldn't bear to leave. She implored the Hoffrat to let her stop. She could not and would not go. This was her home. She was happy here, but the place was full. They wanted her room, and so all her prayers were in vain. They stood out for discharging her cured. Otterly was taken with high fever. Her curve went well up, but they found out by exchanging her regular thermometer for a silent sister. You aren't acquainted as yet with the term. It is a thermometer. It is a thermometer.

Starting point is 04:09:22 without figures, which the physician measures with the little rule and plots the curve himself. Otterly, my dear sir, had 98.4. She was normal. Then she went bathing in the lake. It was the beginning of May. We were having frost at night. The water was not precisely ice-cold, say a few degrees above. She remained some time in the water, trying to contract some illness or other. Alas, she was and remained quite sound. She departed in anguish and despair, deaf to all the consolations her parents would give. What shall I do down there? She kept crying.

Starting point is 04:10:01 This is my home. I never heard what became of her. But you were not listening, engineer. Unless I am much mistaken, simply remaining on your legs, costs you an effort. Lieutenant! He addressed himself to Joachim, who was just coming up. Take your cousin and put him to bed. He unites the virtues of the.

Starting point is 04:10:20 of courage and moderation. But just now he is a little groggy. No, really, I understand everything you said, protested Hans Kastop. The son and sister is a mercury thermometer without figures. You see, I got it all. But he went up in the lift with Joachim and several other patients as well, for the conviviality was over for the evening. The guests were separating to seek the halls and lodgers for the evening cure. Hans Kastop went into his cousin's room. The corridor floor, with its strip of narrow cocoa matting, billowed beneath his feet. But this, apart from its singularity, was not unpleasant. He sat down in Yoakim's great flowered armchair. There was one

Starting point is 04:11:02 just like it in his own room, and lighted his Maria Mancini. It tasted like glue, like cabbage, like anything but what it should taste like. Still, he smoked on as he watched Yoakim making ready for his cure, putting on his house jacket, then an old overcoat. armed with his night lamp and Russian primer going into the balcony. He turned on the light, lay down with his thermometer in his mouth, and began with astonishing dexterity to wrap himself in the two camel-hair rugs that were spread out over his chair. Hans Kastorp looked on with honest admiration for his skill.

Starting point is 04:11:41 He flung the corners over him, one after the other, first from the left side, all their length up to his shoulders, then from the feet up, then from the right side, so that he formed, when finished, a neat, compact parcel, that of which stuck only his head, shoulders and arms. How well you do that, Hans Kastob said. That's the practice I've had, Yon Kim answered, holding the thermometer between his teeth in order to speak.

Starting point is 04:12:08 You'll learn. Tomorrow we must certainly get you a pair of rugs. You can use them afterwards at home, and up here they're indispensable, particularly as you have no sleeping sack. "'I shan't lie out on the balcony at night,' Hans Kastov declared. "'I can tell you that at once. "'It would seem perfectly weird to me.

Starting point is 04:12:28 "'Everything has its limits. "'I must draw the line somewhere, "'since I'm really only up here on a visit. "'I will sit here a while and smoke my cigar in the regular way. "'It tastes vile, but I know it's good, "'and that will have to do me for today. "'It is close on nine. "'It isn't even quite nine yet,' more's the pity.

Starting point is 04:12:47 but when it is half past, that is late enough for a man to go to bed, at least halfway decently. A shiver ran over him, then several, one after another. And Casdop sprang up, and ran to the thermometer on the wall, as if to catch it in flagrante. According to the mercury, there were 50 degrees of heat in the room. He clutched the radiator. It was cold and dead. He murmured something incoherent to the effect that it was a scandal to have no heating, even if it was August. It wasn't a question of the name of the month, but of the temperature that obtained, which was such that actually he was as cold as a dog, yet his face burned. He sat down, stood up again, and with a murmured request for permission, fetched Joachim's coverlet, and spread it out over

Starting point is 04:13:38 himself as he sat in the chair. And thus he remained, hot and cold by turns, torturing himself. with his nauseous cigar. He was overcome by a wave of wretchedness. It seemed to him he had never in his life before felt quite so miserable. I feel simply wretched, he muttered. And suddenly he was moved by an extraordinary, an extravagant thrill of joy and suspense, of which he was so conscious that he sat motionless, waiting for it to come again. It did not, only the misery remained. He stood up at last, flung Joachim's coverlet on the bed, and got something out that sounded like a good night. Don't freeze to death! Call me again in the morning! His lips hardly shaping the words. Then he staggered along the corridor to his own room. He sang to himself, as he undressed, certainly not from excessive spirits.

Starting point is 04:14:36 Mechanically, without the care which was their due, he went through all the motions that made up the ritual of his nightly toilet, poured the pink mouth wash and discreetly gargled, washed his hands with his mild and excellent violet soap, and drew on his long Batiste nightshirt, with H.C. embroidered on the breast pocket. Then he lay down, and put out the light, letting his hot and troubled head fall upon the American woman's dying pillow. He had thought to fall asleep at once, but he was wrong. His eyelids, which he had scarcely been able to hold up, now declined to clothes. They twitched rebelliously open whenever he shut them. He told himself that it was not his regular bedtime, that during the day he had probably rested too much. Someone seemed to be beating a

Starting point is 04:15:24 carpet out of doors, which was not very probable, and proved not to be the case, for it was the beating of his own heart, he heard, quite outside of himself, and away in the night, exactly as as though someone were beating a carpet with a wicker-beater. It had not yet grown in time. It had not yet grown in dark in the room. The light from the little lamps in the loggiers, Yoakim's and the Russian pairs, fell through the open balcony door. As Hans Karstop lay on his back blinking, he recalled an impression amongst the host received that day, an observation he had made, and then, with shrinking and delicacy, sought to forget. It was the look on Yoakim's face when they spoke of Maristia and her physical characteristics, an oddly pathetic, facial distortion and a

Starting point is 04:16:12 spotted pallor on the sun-brown cheeks. Hence Kastorub saw and understood what it meant, saw and understood in a manner so new, so sympathetic, so intimate, that the carpet-beater outside redoubled the swiftness and severity of its blows and almost drowned out the sound of the evening serenade down the plats. But there was a concert again in the same hotel as before, and they were playing a symmetrically constructed, insipid melody that came up through the darkness. Hens Kastop whistled a bar of it in a whisper.

Starting point is 04:16:45 One can whistle in a whisper, and beat time with his cold feet under the plumeau. That was, of course, the right way not to go to sleep, and now he felt not the slightest inclination. Since he had understood in that new, penetrating sense why Yoakim had changed colour, the whole world seemed altered to him. He felt pierced for the second time

Starting point is 04:17:08 by that feeling of extravagant joy and suspense, and he waited for, expected something without asking himself what. But when he heard his neighbours to right and left conclude their evening cure and re-enter their rooms to exchange the horizontal without for the horizontal within, he gave utterance to the conviction that at least this evening the barbaric pair would keep the peace. I can surely go to sleep without being disturbed, they will behave themselves, he said. But they did not. Nor had Hans Castorpe been.

Starting point is 04:17:41 sincere in his conviction that they would. For his part, to tell the truth, he would not have understood it if they had. Notwithstanding which, he indulged in soundless expressions of utter astonishment as he listened. Unheard of, he whispered, it's incredible, who would have believed it? And between such exclamations joined again in the insipid music that swelled insistently up from the plants. Later he went to sleep, but with sleep, but with Leap returned the involved dreams, even more involved than those of the first night, out of which he often started up in fright, or pursued some confused fancy. He seemed to see Hofrat Berens, walking down the garden path, with bent knees and arms

Starting point is 04:18:26 hanging stiffly in front of him, adapting his long and somehow solitary-looking stride to the time of distant march music. As he paused before Hans Kastorp, the latter saw that he was wearing a pair of glasses with thick, round lenses. He was uttering all sorts of nonsense. A civilian, of course, he said, and without saying by your leave, drew down hands cast off's eyelid,

Starting point is 04:18:52 with the first and middle fingers of his huge hand. Respectable civilian, as I saw at once, but not without talent, not at all without talent, for a heightened degree of oxidisation, wouldn't grudge us a year, he wouldn't, just one little short year of service up here, "'Well, hello, hello, gentlemen on the exercise,' he shouted,

Starting point is 04:19:14 and putting his two enormous first fingers in his mouth, emitted a whistle of such peculiarly pleasing quality that from opposite directions Miss Robinson and the schoolmistress, much smaller than life's size, came flying through the air and perched themselves right and left on Hofrat's shoulders, just as they sat right and left of Hans Castorpe in the dining room, and the Hoffrats skipped away, wiping his eyes behind its glasses with a table napkin.

Starting point is 04:19:41 But whether it was tears or sweat he wiped could not be told. Then it seemed to the dreamer that he was in the school courtyard, where for so many years through he had spent his recesses and was in the act of borrowing a lead pencil from Madame Shoshah, who seemed to be there too. She gave him a half-length red pencil in a silver holder and warned him in an agreeable husky voice to be sure to return it to her after the hour.

Starting point is 04:20:06 And as she looked at him, with her narrow blue-grey eyes above the broad cheekbones, he tore himself by violence away from his dream, for now he had it fast and meant to hold it. Of what and whom she so vividly reminded him? Hastily, he fixed this occurrence in his mind to have it fast for the morrow. Then sleep and dream once more overpowered him, and he saw himself in the act of flight from Dr. Krakowski, who had lain in wait for him to want to take some psychoanalysis,

Starting point is 04:20:36 He fled from the doctor, but his feet were leaden, past the glass partitions along the balconies into the garden. In his extremity he tried to climb the red-brown flagstaff and woke perspiring at the moment when the pursuer seized him by his trouserleg. Hartley was he calm when slumber claimed him once more. The content of his dream entirely changed, and he stood, trying to shoulder Set in Brini away from the spot where they stood, the Italians smiling in his subtle, mocking way, under the full upward curving moustaches. And it was precisely this smile which Hans Castob found so injurious. You are a bother, he distinctly heard himself say, get away, you are only a hand-organ man, and you are in the way here.

Starting point is 04:21:23 But said in Brinney would not let himself be budged. Hans Castorpe was still standing, considering what was to be done, when he was unexpectedly vouchsafed a signal insight into the true nature of time. It proved to be nothing more or less than a silent sister, a mercury column without degrees, to be used by those who wanted to cheat. He awoke with the thought in his mind that he must certainly tell Joachim of this discovery on the morrow. In such adventures, among such discoveries, the night wore away. Hermina Clefelt, as well as Herr Albin and Captain McClossage, played fantastic roles.

Starting point is 04:22:00 The last carried off Froustore in his fury, and was pierced through and through with a lance, by lawyer Paravant. One particular dream, however, Hans Castorpe dreamed twice over during the night, both times in precisely the same form, the second time toward morning. He sat in the dining hall with the seven tables, when there came a great crashing of glass as the verandadour banged,

Starting point is 04:22:24 and Madame Shusha entered in a white sweater, one hand in her pocket, the other at the back of her head. But instead of going to the good Russian table, the unmanally female glided noiseless, to Hans Kastop's side, and without a word reached him her hand, not the back, but the palm, to kiss. Hans Kastop kissed that hand, which was not overly well kept, but rather broad, with stumpy fingers, the skin roughen next to the nails, and at that there swept over him anew

Starting point is 04:22:56 from head to foot the feeling of reckless sweetness he had felt for the first time when he tried to imagine himself free of the burden of a good name, and tasted the boundless joy of his of shame. This feeling he experienced anew in his dream, only a thousand-fold stronger than in his waking hour. End of Section 14. Section 15 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 15. Chapter 4. Necessary purchases. Is your summer over now? Hans Castorp ironically asked his cousin on the third day. There had come a violent change of scene. On the visitor's second full day up here, the most brilliant summer weather prevailed.

Starting point is 04:23:53 Above the aspiring, lance-shaped tips of the fir trees, the sky gleamed deepest blue. The village down in the valley glared white in the heat, and the air was filled with the sound, half-gay, half-pensive, of bells from the cows that roamed the slopes, cropping the short, sun-warmed meadow grass. At early breakfast the ladies appeared in lingerie blouses, some with open-work sleeves, which did not become them all alike. In particular, did not suit Froucestor, the skin of whose arms was too porous.

Starting point is 04:24:28 Such a fashion was distinctly not for her. The masculine population, too, had in various ways taken cognizance of the fine weather. They sported mohair coats and linen suits, Yoakim Zimson had put on white flannel trousers with his blue coat, and thus arrayed, looked more military than ever. As for Setimbrini, he had more than once announced his intention of changing. Heavens! how hot the sun is! he said, as he and the cousins strolled down to the village after luncheon. I see I shall have to put on thinner clothes! Yet after this explicit expression of his intentions, he continued to appear.

Starting point is 04:25:10 in his checked trousers and pilot coat with the wide lapels. They were probably all his wardrobe could boast. On the third day it seemed as though nature suffered a sudden reverse. Everything turned topsy-turvy. Hans Castorpe could scarcely trust his eyes. It happened when they were lying in their balconies, some twenty minutes after the midday meal. Swiftly the sun hid its face.

Starting point is 04:25:35 Ugly turf-coloured clouds drew up over the southwestern ridge. and a wind from a strange quarter, whose chill pierced to the marrow, as though it came out of some unknown icy region, swept suddenly through the valley. Down went the thermometer, a new order obtained. Snow, said Yoakim's voice, behind the glass partition. What do you mean snow? Hans Castorpe asked him. You don't mean to say it's going to snow now? Suddenly, answered Joachim, we know that wind.

Starting point is 04:26:09 When it comes, it means. slain. Rubbish, Hans Kastov said. If I remember rightly, it is the beginning of August. But Joachim, versed in the signs of the region, knew whereof he spoke, for in a few minutes, accompanied by repeated claps of thunder, a furious snowstorm set in, so heavy that the landscape seemed wrapped in white smoke, and a village and valley, scarcely anything could be seen. It snowed away all the afternoon. The heat was turned on. Jo Kim availed himself of his fur sack, and was not deterred from the service of the cure. But Hans Castorpe took refuge in his room, pushed up a chair to the hot pipes,

Starting point is 04:26:50 and remained there, looking with frequent head-shakings at the enormity outside. By the next morning the storm had ceased. The thermometer showed a few degrees above freezing, but the snow lay a foot deep, and a completely wintry landscape spread itself before Hans Castorub's astonished eyes. They had turned off the heat. The temperature of the room was forty-five degrees. Is your summer over now? Hans Kastob asked his cousin, in bitter irony.

Starting point is 04:27:20 You can't tell, answered the matter of fact, Jo Kim. We may have fine summer weather yet. Even in September it is very possible. The truth is, the seasons here are not so distinct from each other. They run in together, so to speak, and don't keep to the calendar. The sun in winter is often so strong that you take off your coat and perspire as you walk. And in summer, well, you see for yourself. And then the snow

Starting point is 04:27:45 that puts out all one's calculations. It snows in January, but in May, not much less. And as you observe, it snows in August 2. On the whole, one may say, there is never a month without snow. You may take that for a rule. In short, there are winter days and summer days, spring and autumn days, but regular seasons we don't actually have up here. "'A fine mixed-up state of affairs,' said Hans Castor. "'In overcoat and galoshes he went with his cousin down to the village, "'to buy himself blankets for the out-of-doors cure. "'Since it was plain, his plaid would not suffice.

Starting point is 04:28:24 "'For a moment he even weighed the thought of purchasing a fur sack as well, "'but gave it up, indeed felt a certain revulsion from the idea. "'No, no,' he said, "'we'll stop at the covers. "'I'll have use for them down below, and everybody has covers.' There's nothing strange or exciting about them, but a first sack is altogether too special. If I buy one, it is as if I were going to settle down here, as if I belonged. Understand what I mean?

Starting point is 04:28:51 No, for the present, we'll let it go at that. It would absolutely not be worthwhile to buy a sack for the few weeks I'm up here. Yerkem agreed, and they acquired two camelhair rugs like his own in a fine and well-stocked shop in the English quarter. They were in natural colour, long, broad, and delightfully soft, and were to be sent at once to the International Sanatorium Berkov, Room 34. Hans Kastorp looked forward to using them that very afternoon. This, of course, was after second breakfast, for otherwise the daily programme left no time sufficient to go down into the plaits.

Starting point is 04:29:29 It was raining now, and the snow in the street had turned to slush that spattered as they walked. They overtook Settimbrini on the road, climbing up to the sanatorium under an umbrella bareheaded. The Italian looked sallow. His mood was obviously elegiac. In well-chosen, clearly enunciated phrases he complained of the cold and damp, from which he suffered so bitterly. If they would only heat the building, but the ruling powers, in their pernuriousness, had the fire go out directly, it stopped snowing. An idiotic rule, an insult to human nature.

Starting point is 04:30:04 intelligence. Hans Castorp objected that presumably a moderate temperature was part of the regimen of the cure. It would certainly not do to coddle the patients. But Setimbrini answered with embittered scorn. Oh, of course, the regimen of the cure, those augustine inviolate rules. Hans Castorpe was right in referring to them, as he did with bated breath. Yet it was rather striking, of course only in the pleasantest sense, that the rules most honoured in the observance were precisely those which chimed with the financial interest of the proprietors of the establishment, whereas, on the other hand, to those less favourable, they were inclined to shut an eye. The cousins laughed, and said in Brini, began to speak of his deceased father,

Starting point is 04:30:50 who had been brought to his mind in connection with the talk about heated rooms. "'My father,' he said slowly, in tones replete with filial piety, my father was a most delicately organized man, sensitive in body as in soul. How he did love his tiny, warm little study. In winter, a temperature of 20 degrees, Rhaemu, must always obtain there by means of a small red-hot stove. When you entered it from the corridor on a day of cold and damp, or when the cutting Tramontana blew, the warmth of it laid itself about you.

Starting point is 04:31:29 you like a shawl, so that for very pleasure your eyes would fill with tears. A little room was stuffed with books and manuscripts, some of them of great value. He stood among them at his narrow desk in his blue flannel nightshirt, and devoted himself to the service of letters. He was small and delicately built, a good head shorter than I, imagine, but with great tufts of grey hair on his temples, and a nose how long and pointed it was, and what a Romanist, my friends. One of the first of his time, with a rare mastery of his own tongue, and a Latin stylist, such as no longer exists. Ah, a Omar Leterato, after Boccaccio's own heart. From far and wide, scholars came to converse with him, one from Habiranda, another from Krakow.

Starting point is 04:32:23 They came to our city of Padua expressly to pay him homage, and he received them, with dignified friendliness. He was a poet of distinction, too, composing in his leisure tales in the most elegant Tuscan prose. He was a master of the idioma gentile, Sertimbrini said, rolling his native syllables with the utmost relish on his tongue and turning his head from side to side. He laid out his little garden after Virgil's own plan, and all that he said was sane and beautiful. But warm, warm he must have it in his little room Otherwise he would tremble with cold And he would weep with anger

Starting point is 04:33:03 If they let him freeze And now imagine, engineer And you lieutenant What I, the son of my father must suffer In this accursed and barbarous land Where even at summer's height The body shakes with cold And the spirit is tortured and debased

Starting point is 04:33:21 By the sights it sees Oh, it is hard What types about us? this frantic devil of a hoffrat, Kukkowski, said Timbriny, pretended to trip over the name. Kukowski, the father-confessor, who hates me,

Starting point is 04:33:39 because I have too much human dignity to lend myself to his papist practices. And at my table, what sort of society is that in which I am forced to take my food? On my right sits a brewer from Hal, Magnus, by name, with a moustache, like a bundle of hay. Don't talk to me about literature.

Starting point is 04:33:57 says he. What is it to offer? Anything but beautiful characters? What have I to do with beautiful characters? I am a practical man and in life I come into contact with precious few. That is the idea he has of literature. Beautiful characters. Mother of God. His wife sits there opposite him, losing flesh all the time and sinking further and further into idiocy. It is a filthy shame. Castorp and Joachim were in silent agreement about this talk of Setembrinies. They found it querulous and seditious in tone, if also highly entertaining and plastic in its verbal pungency inanimus. Hans Kastorp laughed good-humidly over the bundle of hay, likewise over the beautiful characters, or rather the droly despairing way, Setting Brini spoke of them. Then he said, Good Lord, yes, the society is always always. is mixed in a place like this, I suppose. One's not allowed to choose one's tablemates. That would lead to goodness knows what. At our table, there is a woman of the same sort, a frau's store.

Starting point is 04:35:09 I think you know her? Gasily ignorant, I must say. Sometimes when she rattles on, one doesn't know where to look. But she complains a lot about her temperature and how relaxed she feels, and I'm afraid she is by no means a light case. That seems so strange to me, diseased and stupid both. know how to express it, but it gives me a most peculiar feeling when somebody is so stupid and then ill into the bargain. It must be the most melancholy thing in life. One doesn't know what to make of it. One wants to feel a proper respect for illness, of course. After all, there is a certain dignity about it, if you like. But when such asininity comes on top of it, cosmic, for cosmetic and other howlers like that, one doesn't know whether to laugh or to weep. It is a regular dilemma

Starting point is 04:35:57 for the human feelings. I find it more deplorable than I can say. What I mean is, it's not consistent. It doesn't hang together. I can't get used to the idea. One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual, at least as a rule. Or I don't know, perhaps I'm saying more than I could stand for. He finished. It was only because we happen to speak of it. He stopped in confusion. Yolkim, too, looked rather uncomfortable, and Setimbrini lifted his eyebrows and said not a word,

Starting point is 04:36:36 with an air of waiting politely for the end of the speech. He was, in fact, holding off until Hans Castorpe should break down entirely, before he answered. But now he said, Sapristi, engineer, you are displaying a most unexpected gift of philosophy. By your own theory, you must be yourself more ailing than you look. You are so obviously possessed of esprit. But if you will permit me to say so, I can hardly subscribe to your deductions.

Starting point is 04:37:07 I must deny them. My position is one of absolute dissent. I am, as you see, rather intolerant than otherwise in things of the intellect. I would rather be reproached as a pedant than suffer to pass unchallenged, a point of view which seems to me so untenable as this of yours. But, here, said, Embryne, I... Permit me. I know what you would say,

Starting point is 04:37:32 that the views you represent are not of necessity your own, that you have only chanced upon that one of all the other possible ones there are, as it were, in the air, and you try it on without personal responsibility. It befits your time of life, thus, to avoid the settled convictions of the mature man, and to make experiments with a variety of points of view. Placet experi, he quoted, giving the Italian pronunciation to the sea.

Starting point is 04:38:02 That is a good saying, but what troubles me is that your experiment should lead you in just this direction. I doubt if it is a question of sheer chance. I fear the presence of a general tendency which threatens to crystallise into a trait of character, unless one makes head against it. I feel it is my duty, therefore, to correct you. You said that the sight of dullness and disease going hand in hand must be the most melancholy in life. I grant you, I grant you that.

Starting point is 04:38:32 I too prefer an intelligent, ailing person to a consumptive idiot. But I take issue where you regard the combination of disease with dullness as a sort of aesthetic inconsistency, an error in taste on the part of nature, a dilemma for the human feelings, as you were pleased to express yourself. When you profess to regard disease as something so refined, so, what did you call it, possessing a certain dignity, that it doesn't go with stupidity? That was the expression you used. Well, I say no. Disease has nothing refined about it, nothing dignified.

Starting point is 04:39:13 Such a conception is in itself pathological, or at least, tends in that direction. Perhaps I may best arouse your mistrust of it if I tell you how ancient and ugly this conception is. It comes down to us from a past seething with superstition, in which the idea of humanity has degenerated and deteriorated into sheer caricature, a past full of fears, in which well-being and harmony were regarded as suspect and emanating from the devil, whereas infirmity was equivalent to a free pass to heaven. Reason and enlightenment have banished the darkest of these shadows

Starting point is 04:39:54 that tenanted the soul of man, not entirely, for even yet the conflict is in progress. But this conflict, my dear sirs, means work, earthly work, labour for the earth, for the honour and the interests of mankind, and by that conflict,

Starting point is 04:40:12 daily steeled anew, powers of reason and enlightenment, will in the end set humanity wholly free and lead it in the path of progress and civilization toward an ever brighter, milder and pure a light. Lord bless us, thought Hans Castorpe in shame-faced consternation. What a humbly! How, I wonder, did I call all that down on his head? I must say, I find it rather prosy.

Starting point is 04:40:42 And why does he talk so much about work all the time? It is his constant theme. Not a very pertinent one up here, one would think. Aloud, he said, How beautifully you do talk, here, said I'mbrini. What you say is very well worth hearing, and could not be more, more plasticly expressed, I should think. Backsliding, continued Setimbrini,

Starting point is 04:41:05 as he lifted his umbrella away above the head of a passerby. Spiritual backsliding, in the direction of that dark and tortured age, that, believe me, engineer, is disease, a disease already sufficiently studied to which various names have been given, one from the terminology of aesthetics and psychology, another from the domain of politics, all of them academic terms, which are not to the point, and which I will spare you. But as in the spiritual life, everything is interrelated. One thing growing out of another, and since one may not reach out one's little finger to the devil, lest he

Starting point is 04:41:43 take the whole hand, and therewith the whole man, since, on the other hand, a sound principle can produce only sound results, no matter which end one begins at, so disease, far from bringing something too refined, too worthy of reverence, to be associated with dullness, is in itself a degradation of mankind, a degradation painful and offensive to conceive. It may, in the individual case be treated with consideration, but to pay it homage is, mark my words, an aberration, and the beginning of intellectual confusion. This woman you have mentioned to me, you will pardon me if I do not trouble to recall her name. Oh, thank you, Frashton. It is not, it seems to me, the case of this ridiculous woman which places the human feelings in the dilemma to which you

Starting point is 04:42:36 refer. She is ill and she is limited. Her case is hopeless and the matter is simple. There is nothing left but to pity and shrug one's shoulders. The dilemma, my dear sir, the tragedy begins where nature has been cruel enough to split the personality, to shatter its harmony by imprisoning a noble and ardent spirit within a body not fit for the stresses of life. Have you heard of "'Eulea Pardy, engineer, or you, Lieutenant, "'an unhappy poet of my own land, "'a crippled, ailing man, "'born with the great soul,

Starting point is 04:43:12 "'which his sufferings were constantly humiliating "'and dragging down into the depths of irony. "'Its lamentations rend the heart to hear.' "'And said in Brini, began to recite in Italian, "'letting the beautiful syllables melt upon his tongue "'as he closed his eyes and swayed his head "'from side to side, heedless that his hearers' understood not a syllable. Obviously it was all done for the sake of impressing his companions

Starting point is 04:43:39 with his memory and his pronunciation. But you don't understand, you hear the words, yet without grasping their tragic import. My dear sirs, can you comprehend what it means when I tell you that it was the love of woman which the cripple of the party was condemned to renounce, that this it principally was, which rendered him incapable of avoiding, the embitterment of his soul. Fame and virtue were shadows to him. Nature and evil power. And so she is.

Starting point is 04:44:13 Stupid and evil both. I agree with him there. He even despaired. Horrible to say. He even despaired of science and progress. Here, engineer, is the true tragedy. Here you have your dilemma for the human feelings. Here, and not in the case of that wretched woman,

Starting point is 04:44:33 with whose name I really cannot burden my memory, do not, for heaven's sake, speak to me of the ennobling effects of physical suffering. A soul without a body is as inhuman and horrible as a body without a soul, though the latter is the rule and the former the exception. It is the body as a rule which flourishes exceedingly, which draws everything to itself, which usurps the predominant place, and lives repulsively emancipated from the soul.

Starting point is 04:45:03 A human being who is first of all an invalid is all body. Therein lies his inhumanity and his debasement. In most cases he is little better than a carcass. Funny, Neokim said, bending forward to look at his cousin on hair Setembrini's father's side, you were saying something quite like that just lately. Was I? said Hans Castor. Yes, it may be something of the kind went through my head.

Starting point is 04:45:31 Setembrini was silent a few paces, then he said, So much the better, so much the better if that is true. I am far from claiming to expound an original philosophy. Such is not my office. If our engineer here has been making observations in harmony with my own, that only confirms my surmise that he is an intellectual amateur, and up to the present, as is the want of gifted youth, still experimenting with various points of view.

Starting point is 04:46:01 The young man with parts is no unwritten page. He is rather one upon which all writing has already been done, in sympathetic ink, the good and the bad together. It is the schoolmaster's task to bring out the good, to obliterate forever the bad by the methods of his profession. You have been making purchases, he asked in a lighter tone. No, Hans Castop said, that is nothing but

Starting point is 04:46:31 We ordered a pair of blankets for my cousin, Yerkim answered, unconcernedly. For the afternoon cure. It's got so beastly cold and I am supposed to do as the Romans do up here, Hans Kastorub said, laughing and looking at the ground. Aha, blankets, the cure, said Nbrini said,

Starting point is 04:46:53 Yes, yes, in fact, Plachet Experi, he repeated with his Italian pronunciation. and took his leave, for their conversation had brought them to the door of the sanatorium, where they greeted the lame concierge in his lodge. Cereembrini turned off into one of the sitting-rooms to read the newspapers before luncheon. He evidently meant to cut the second rest period. Bless us and keep us, Hans Castorub said to yoke him as they stood in the lift. What a pedagogue it is! He said himself that he had the pedagogic itch.

Starting point is 04:47:27 One has to watch out with him, not to say more, than one means, or he is down on you at once, with all his doctrines. But after all it is worth listening to, he talks so well. The words come jumping out of his mouth so round and appetising. When I listen to him, I keep seeing a picture of fresh, hot rolls in my mind's eye. Nick Kim laughed. Better not tell him that. He'd be very put out, I'm sure, to hear the sort of image his words call up in your mind. Think so? I'm not so sure. I get the impression that it is not simply and solely for the sake of edifying us that he talks. Perhaps that's only a secondary motive. The important one, I feel sure, is the talk itself, the way he makes his words roll out,

Starting point is 04:48:12 so resilient, just like a lot of rubber balls. He is very pleased when you notice the effect. I suppose Magnus, the Brewer, was rather stupid, after all, with his beautiful characters. But I do think Setembrini might have said what the point really is in literature, I did not like to ask for fear of putting my foot in it. I am not just clear about it, and this is the first time I have ever known a literary man. But if it isn't the beautiful characters, then obviously it must be the beautiful words. That is the impression I get from being in Settumbrini's society. What a vocabulary!

Starting point is 04:48:49 He uses the word virtue just like that without the slightest embarrassment. What do you make of that? I've never taken the word in my mouth as long as I've lived. In school, when the book said Virtus, we always just said valour, or something like that. It certainly gave me a queer feeling in my inside to hear him. It makes me nervous to hear him scolding about the cold and barons and frau magnus, because she is losing weight and about pretty well everything. He's a born objector, and I saw that at once, down on the existing order,

Starting point is 04:49:24 and that always gives me the impression that a person is spoilt. I can't help it. You say that, Yer Kim answered, considerably, and yet he has a kind of pride about him that makes an altogether different impression, as of a man who has great respect for himself,

Starting point is 04:49:40 or for humanity in general. I like that about him. It has something good, in my eyes. You are right there, Hans Kastop answered. He's even austere. It makes one feel rather uncomfortable, as if you were, well, shall I say, as if you were being taken to task.

Starting point is 04:49:59 That's not such a bad way to describe it. Can you believe it? I had the feeling he was not at all pleased at my buying the blankets. He had something against it. They kept dwelling on it. Oh no, Hakem said after reflecting, in some surprise. How could he have? I shouldn't think so.

Starting point is 04:50:17 And then, thermometer in mouth, with sack and pack, he went to lie down, while Hans Kastorp began at once to wash and change for dinner, which was rather less than, than an hour away. End of Section 15. Section 16 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 16. Chapter 4.

Starting point is 04:50:46 Excursus on the sense of time. When they came upstairs after the meal, the parcel containing the blankets lay on a chair in Hans Castorpe's room. And that afternoon he made use of them for the first time. The experienced Joachim instructed him in the art of wrapping himself up, as practiced in the sanatorium. They all did it, and each newcomer had to learn.

Starting point is 04:51:11 First the covers were spread, one after the other, over the chair, so that a sizable piece hung down at the foot. Then you sat down and began to put the inner one about you, first lengthwise, on both sides, up to the shoulders, then from the feet up, stooping over as you sat, and grasping the folded over end, first from one side and then from the other, taking care to fit it neatly into the length,

Starting point is 04:51:37 in order to ensure the greatest possible smoothness and evenness. Then you did precisely the same thing with the outer blanket. It was somewhat more difficult to handle, and our neophyte groaned not a little as he stooped and stretched out his arms to practice the grips. His cousin showed him. Only a few old hands, Yolkim said,

Starting point is 04:51:57 could wield both blankets at once, flinging them into position with three self-assured motions. This was a rare and enviable facility, to which belonged not only long years of practice, but a certain knack as well. Hans Kastorp had to laugh at this, lying back in his chair with aching muscles. Joachim did not at once see anything funny in what he had said, and looked at him dubiously, but finally laughed too. "'There,' he said, when Hans Castorpe laid glass limbless and cylindrical in his chair, with the yielding roll at the back of his neck, quite worn out with all these gymnastic exercises. "'There, nothing can touch you now, not even if we were to have ten below zero.' He withdrew behind the partition to do himself up in his turn.

Starting point is 04:52:46 "'That about ten below zero Hans Castob doubted. "'He was even now distinctly cold. He shivered repeatedly as he lay looking out through the wooden arch at the reeking, dripping damp outside, which seemed on the point of passing over into snow. It was strange that with all that humidity, his cheeks still burned with a dry heat, as though he was sitting in an overheated room.

Starting point is 04:53:11 He felt absurdly tired from the practice of putting on his rugs. Actually, as he held up ocean steamships to read it, the book shook in his hands. so very fit he certainly was not, and totally anemic, as Hofrat Berens had said. This, no doubt, was why he was so susceptible to cold, but such unpleasant sensations were outweighed by the great comfort of his position, the unanalyzable, almost mysterious properties of his reclining chair, which he had applauded, even on his first experience of it,

Starting point is 04:53:44 and which reasserted themselves in the happiest way when he resorted to it anew. whether due to the character of the upholstring, the inclination of the chair-back, the exact proper width and height of the arms, or only to the appropriate consistency of the neck-roll, the result was that no more comfortable provision for relaxed limbs could be conceived than that pervade by this excellent chair. The heart of Hans Castorbe rejoiced, in the blessed fact that two vacant and securely tranquil hours lay before him, dedicated by the rules of the house to the principal cure of the day. He felt it, though himself but a guest up here, to be a most suitable arrangement.

Starting point is 04:54:27 For he was by nature and temperament, passive, could sit without occupation hours on end, and loved, as we know, to see time spacious before him, and not to have the sense of its passing banished, wiped out or eaten up by prosaic activity. At four o'clock he partook of afternoon tea with cake and jam, followed a little movement in the open air, then rest again, then supper, which like all the other meal-times afforded a certain stimulus for eye and brain, and a certain sense of strain. After that, a peep into one or other of the optical toys, the stereoscope, the kaleidoscope, the cinematograph.

Starting point is 04:55:10 It might be still too much to say that Hans Castorpe had grown used to the life up here, but at least he did have the daily routine at his finger's ends. There is, after all, something peculiar about the process of habituating oneself in a new place, the often laborious fitting in and getting used, which one undertakes for its own sake, and of set purpose to break it all off as soon as it is complete, or not long thereafter, and to return to one's former state. It is an interval, an interlude, inserted with the object of recreation into the tenor of life's main concerns, its purpose, the relief of the organism, which is perpetually busy at its task of self-renewal,

Starting point is 04:55:53 and which was in danger, almost in process of being vitiated, slowed down, relaxed, by the bald, unjointed monotony of its daily course. But what then is the cause of this relaxation, this slowing down that takes place when one does the same thing for too long at a time? It is not so much physical or mental fatigue or exhaustion, For if that were the case, then complete rest would be the best restorative. It is rather something psychical. It means that the perception of time tends,

Starting point is 04:56:25 through periods of unbroken uniformity, to fall away. The perception of time, so closely bound up with the consciousness of life, that the one may not be weakened without the other suffering a sensible impairment. Many false conceptions are held concerning the nature of tedium. In general, it is thought. that the interestingness and novelty of the time content are what make the time pass, that is to say, shorten it, whereas monotony and emptiness check and restrain its flow. This is only true with reservations. Vacuity, monotony have indeed the property of lingering

Starting point is 04:57:05 at the moment and the hour, and of making them tiresome, but they are capable of contracting and dissipating the larger, the very large time units, to the point of religion. reducing them to nothing at all. And, conversely, a full and interesting content can put wings to the hour and the day, yet it will lend to the general passage of time a weightiness, a breadth and solidity which cause the eventful years to flow far more slowly than those poor, bare, empty ones, over which the wind passes, and they are gone. Thus what we call tedium is rather an abnormal shortening of the time consequent upon monotony. Great spaces of time, passed in unbroken uniformity, tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop beating for fear.

Starting point is 04:57:55 When one day is all like the others, then they are all like one. Complete uniformity would make the longest life seem short, as though it had stolen away from us unawares. Abituation is of falling asleep, or fatiguing of the sense of time, which explains why Young Year, has passed slowly, while later life flings itself faster and faster upon its course. We are aware that the intercalation of periods of change and novelty is the only means by which we can refresh our sense of time, strengthen, retard and rejuvenate it, and therewith renew our perception of life itself. Such is the purpose of our changes of air and scene, of all our sojourns, at cures and bathing resorts. It is the secret of the healing power of change.

Starting point is 04:58:43 change an incident. Our first days in a new place, time has a youthful, that is to say, a broad and sweeping flow, persisting for some six or eight days. Then as one gets used to the place, a gradual shrinkage makes itself felt. He who clings, or better express, wishes to cling to life, will shudder to see how the days grow light and lighter, how they scurry by like dead leaves, until the last week of some four, perhaps, is uncannily fugitive and fleet. On the other hand, the quickening of the sense of time will flow out beyond the interval and reassert itself after the return to ordinary existence. The first days at home after the holiday will be lived with a broader flow, freshly and youthfully.

Starting point is 04:59:30 But only the first few. One adjusts oneself more quickly to the rule than to the exception. And if the sense of time be already weakened by age, or, and this is a sign of low vitality, it was never very well developed, one drowses quickly back into the old life. And after four and twenty hours, it is as though one had never been away,

Starting point is 04:59:53 and the journey had been at a watch in the night. We have introduced these remarks here, only because our young Hans Castorpe had something like them in mind, when, a few days later, he said to his cousin, and fixed him with his bloodshot eyes, I shall never cease to find it strange that the time seems to go so slowly in a new place. I mean, of course, it isn't a question of my being bored. On the contrary, I might say I am royally entertained.

Starting point is 05:00:22 But when I look back, in retrospect, that is, you understand, it seems to me I've been up here. Goodness only knows how long. It seems an eternity back to the time when I arrived and did not quite understand that I was there. And you said, just get out here. Don't you remember? that has nothing whatever to do with reason or with the ordinary ways of measuring time.

Starting point is 05:00:44 It is purely a matter of feeling. Certainly it would be nonsense for me to say, I feel I have been up here two months. It would be silly. All I can say is very long. Yes, Yerkim answered, thermometer in mouth. I profit by it too. While you are here, I can sort of hang on by you, as it were.

Starting point is 05:01:07 Hans Castob laughed. to hear his cousin speak thus, quite simply, without explanation. End of Section 16. Section 17 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 17. Chapter 4. He practices his French.

Starting point is 05:01:38 No. After all, he was by no means, even yet, adjusted to his surroundings. Neither in familiarity with the features, peculiar to life has lived up here, a familiarity impossible to achieve in so few days, which, as he was quite aware, and had even said to Yoak him, he could hardly hope to acquire in the three weeks of his stay, nor in the adaptation of his physical organism to the prevailing peculiar atmospheric conditions. For this adaptation was bitterly hard, so hard indeed that it looked as though it would never be a success. The daily routine was clearly articulated, carefully

Starting point is 05:02:16 One fell quickly into step, and by yielding oneself to the general drift, was soon proficient. After that, indeed, within the weekly round, and also within other larger divisions of time, one discovered the existence of certain regular variations of the programme, which showed themselves one at a time. A second one, sometimes appearing only after the first, had repeated itself. But even the phenomena of everyday life held much that Hans Castorpe had still to learn. and faces and facts already noted had to be conned, new ones to be absorbed with youth's receptivity. Those great-bellied vessels, for example, with the short necks, which he had noticed the first evening standing in the corridors before certain doors. They contained oxygen. He had asked, and Joachim had informed him.

Starting point is 05:03:07 That was pure oxygen, six francs, the container. The reviving gas was given the dying in a last effort to kindle or reinforce their strength. They drew it up through a tube. For, behind those doors where such vessels were placed lay the dying. The Moribundi, as Hare Hofrat Berens called them, when Hans Castorke met him one day in the first story. Purple of cheek in his white smock frock, he rode along the corridor, and they went down steps together.

Starting point is 05:03:39 Well, and how are you? You disinterested spectator you, said Berens. Are we finding first of you? favour in your critical eye? What? Thanks very much. Yes, yes. Our summer season. It's not too bad. There's something to be said for it. I've spent a little money myself to push it. But it's a pity you won't be here in the winter. You're stopping only eight weeks, I hear. Ah, three. That's nothing but a weekend. Won't pay you to take off your hat. Oh well, just as you think. And it is a pity you won't be here for the winter. That's when the knobs come, he said comically.

Starting point is 05:04:16 The international knobs down in the plants. They don't come except in winter. You ought to see them, if only for the sake of your education. Regular high flyers. You want to see the springs they make with those skis of theirs. And then the ladies, oh Lord, the ladies, birds of paradise, I tell you, and regularly out for adventure. Well, I must go in here to my moribundas, number 27.

Starting point is 05:04:44 Last stage you know. Off Centre. five dozen fiascos of oxygen he's had altogether yesterday and today the soak but he will be going to his own place by middle day well my dear reuter he was saying as he answered what do you say shall we break the neck of another bottle the sound of his words died away as he closed the door but hans castorpe had had a moment's glimpse into the background of the room where on the pillow lay the waxen profile of a young man with a little chin beard he slowly rolled his great eyeballs toward the open door. This was the first dying man Hans Kastorp had ever seen, for his father and mother, and his grandfather too, had died, so to speak, behind his back. How full of dignity the young man's head, with the little beard thrust upward, had lain upon his pillow.

Starting point is 05:05:39 How speaking the glance those unnatural great eyes had slowly turned upon the door. Hans Kastop still quite. absorbed by that glimpse, instinctively tried to make his own eyes as large, as slowly gazing and meaningful as those of the dying man, walking on as he did, toward the stairs, and encountering a lady, and came out of a room behind him, and overtook him at the landing. He did not at once realise that it was Madame Shusha. She, on her side, smiled at the eyes he was making at her, put her hand to the braids at the back of her head, and passed before him downstairs, soundless.

Starting point is 05:06:16 supple, with her head somewhat thrust out. Acquaintances he made scarcely any in these early days, nor for a long time afterwards. The daily routine was not favourable. Hans Castop too was of a retiring disposition, felt himself very much the disinterested spectator, as Hofred Berens had called him, and was in general content with the society and conversation of his cousin Joachim. The corridor nurse, indeed, continued to crane her neck after them, until Joachim, who had already favoured her with a little converse now and then, introduced his cousin.

Starting point is 05:06:55 She wore the ribbon of her pansney, tucked behind her ear, and spoke with excruciating affectation. On closer acquaintance, indeed, one got the impression that her reason had suffered on the rack of continual boredom. It was hard to get away from her. She showed such evident distress whenever the conversation gave such. of languishing. When the cousins seemed about to go their way, she sought to hold them by a stream of words, by glances and despairing smiles, until, for very pity, they refrained. She spoke at random of her papa, who was a jurist, of her cousin, who was a physician, obviously with the idea of presenting herself in a good light and impressing them with her cultured origin. Her present

Starting point is 05:07:38 charge, she said, was the son of a Coburg doll manufacturer named Rotbine. The disease had attacked young Fritz's intestines. It was hard for all concerned. The gentleman could understand how hard it was, for one who came from cultured surroundings and had the delicacy of feeling of the upper classes, and one couldn't turn one's back a minute. A little time ago she had just gone out a few minutes,

Starting point is 05:08:02 to get some tooth-powder, in fact. When she came back, there sat her patient in bed with a glass of stout, a salami, a thick wedge of rye-bread, and a pickle before him. these clandestine dainties his family had sent to give him strength. The next day, of course, he was more dead than alive. He was himself hastening his own end, but that would be only a mercy for him, of blessed relief. For her, Sister Bertha, however, whose real name was Alfreda Schildknecht, it would mean

Starting point is 05:08:34 little or nothing. She would just go on to another case, in a more or less advanced stage, either here or elsewhere. Such was the prospect that opened before her, and there was no other. Yes, Hans Kastop said, her calling was a hard one, but satisfying, he should think. Of course, she answered it was.

Starting point is 05:08:55 Satisfying, but very hard. Well, kind regards to the patient, and the cousins tried to take leave, but she so hung upon them with words and looks that it was painful to see, putting forth all her powers to hold them only a little longer. It would have been cruel not to have vouchsafed her another few minutes.

Starting point is 05:09:16 "'He is asleep,' she said. "'He does not need me. "'I came out here for a second or so.' She began complaining about Hofrat Berens, whose manner with her was altogether too free, considering her origin. She much preferred Dr. Krakowski. She found himself full of soul.

Starting point is 05:09:35 Then she returned to her papa and her cousin, her mental resources being exhausted. In vain she struggled to hold the young men, letting her voice rise until it was almost a shriek as she saw them moving. They escaped her finally and went. She kept on looking after them a while. Her body bent forward, her gaze so avid,

Starting point is 05:09:55 it seemed as though she would fairly suck them back with her eyes. Her breast was wrung with a sigh, as she turned and went back into her patient's room. Hans Castorpe made but one other acquaintance in these days. The pale, black-clad Mexican lady he had seen in the garden whose nickname was Toulaye-de-er. It came to pass that he heard from her own lips, the tragic formula. Being forarmed preserved a suitable demeanour, and was satisfied with himself afterwards. The cousins met her before the front door, as they were setting forth on their prescribed walk after early breakfast.

Starting point is 05:10:32 She was restlessly ranging there with her pacing step. Her legs bent the knee joints, wrapped in a black Kashmir shawl. A black veil wound about her disordered silver hair and tied under her chin, her raging face with the large rhythm mouth gleaming dead white against her morning. Joachim, bareheaded as usual, greeted her with a bow, which she slowly acknowledged the furrow's deepening in her narrow forehead as she looked at him. Then, seeing a new face, she paused and waited, nodding gently as they came up to her. Obviously, she found it of importance to learn if the stranger was acquainted with her sad case, and to hear what he would say about it.

Starting point is 05:11:15 Yer Kim presented his cousin. She drew her hand out of her shawl and gave it to him, a vain, demaciated, yellowish hand, with many rings, as she continued to gaze in his face. Then it came. "'Tule de, monsieur.' She said, "'Toletre, you know, "'I'll see, Madame,' Hans Kastop answered gently,

Starting point is 05:11:39 "'and I regret, "'Boucault.' The lax pouches of skin under her jet-black eyes were larger and heavier than he had ever seen. She exhaled a faint odor as of faded flowers.

Starting point is 05:11:53 A mild and pensive feeling stole about his heart. "'Merci,' she said, with a loose, clacking pronunciation. oddly consonant with her broken appearance. Her large mouth drooped tragically at one corner. She drew her hand back beneath her mantle, inclined her head and turned away. But Hans Kastop said as they walked on,

Starting point is 05:12:17 You see, I didn't mind it at all. I got on with her quite well. I always do with such people. I understand instinctively how to go at them. Don't you think so? I even think, on the whole, I get on better with sad people, than with jolly ones. Goodness knows why. Perhaps it's because I'm an orphan and lost my parents early. But when people get very serious or down in the mouth or somebody dies, it doesn't deject or embarrass me.

Starting point is 05:12:45 I feel quite in my element, a good deal more so than when everything is going on greased wheels. I was thinking just lately that it is pretty flat of the women up here to take on as they do about death, and things connected with death, so that they take such pains to shield them from contact with it. and bring the Eucharist at meal times and that. I call it very feeble of them. Don't you like the sight of a coffin? I really do. I find it a handsome piece of furniture, even empty.

Starting point is 05:13:15 When someone is lying in it, then in my eyes it is positively sublime. Funerals have something very edifying. I always think one ought to go to a funeral instead of to church, when one feels the need of being uplifted. People have on good black clothes, and they take off their hats and look at the coffin and behave serious and reverent, and nobody dares to make a bad joke, the way they do in ordinary life. It's good for people to be serious, once in a way.

Starting point is 05:13:43 I've sometimes asked myself if I ought not to have become a clergyman. In a certain way, it wouldn't have suited me so badly. I hope I didn't make any mistake in my French. No, Ekeman answered. I le regret beaucoup, was perfectly right, as far as it went. End of Section 17. Section 18 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 05:14:18 Section 18. Chapter 4. Politically suspect. Regular variations in the daily routine began to discover themselves. The first was Sunday. Sunday with a band on the terrace, which, it appeared, played there once a fortnight. Hans Castorp had arrived in the latter half of one of these periods. He had come on a Tuesday, and thus the Sunday was his fifth day up here,

Starting point is 05:14:46 a day whose spring-like character contrasted with the late extraordinary change and relapse into winter. It was mild and fresh, with pure white clouds in a pale blue sky, and gentle sunshine over veil and slopes, which displayed once more the green proper to the season, for the recent snow had been fated to speedy melting. All hands it was plain took pains to observe Sunday and distinguish it from the rest of the week, management and guests seconding each other in their efforts to this end. At early breakfast there was seed cake,

Starting point is 05:15:22 and each guest had before his place a small glass with a few flowers, mountain pinks and even alpine roses, which the gentleman stuck in their buttonholes. lawyer Paravant from Dortmund had put on a black frock-coat with a spotted waistcoat, and the lady's toilets was suitably festal and diaphanous. Frau Schosser appeared in a flowing lace matinee with open sleeves. As she entered and the glass door crashed into its lock behind her, she paused her second, facing the room, and gracefully, as it were, presented herself

Starting point is 05:15:56 before she glided to her table. The garment so became her that hands cast up. Mr. Stavp's neighbour, the Danzig schoolmistress, was quite ravished. Even the barbaric pair at the bad Russian table had taken notice of the day. He, by exchanging his leather jacket for a short coat, and the felt boots for leather shoes, she, though she still wore the soiled feather boa, by putting on a green silk blouse with a neckroosh. Hans Castop wrinkled his brows when he saw them and coloured.

Starting point is 05:16:29 He seemed, since he had been up here, to blush. so easily. Directly after second breakfast the concert began on the terrace. There were all kinds of horns and woodwind, and they played by turn Sprightly and Sostenuto, until nearly luncheon time. The morning rest during the concert was not obligatory. A few guests did regale themselves with this feast for the ears, at the same time lying on their balconies. In the hall in the garden a few chairs were occupied, but the majority sat at the small white taites. on the covered platform, while the more frivolous spirits, finding it too prim to sit upon chairs, encamped on the stone steps that led down into the garden, where they presently gave evidence of

Starting point is 05:17:13 their high spirits. These were youthful patients of both sexes, most of whose names or faces hands cast or knew by now. There were Hermione Clefelt and Herr Albin, who carried about a great flowered box of chocolates and offered them to all the guests, he himself eating none, but with a benevolent paternal air, smoking gold-tipped cigarettes. There was a thick-lipped youth who belonged to the Half-Lung Club, the thin and ivory-coloured Fraulein Levy, an ash-blonde young man who answered to the name of Rasmussen, and carried his hands breast high, with the wrists relaxed, like a pair of flippers. Frouleman from Amsterdam, a woman of full bodily habit in a red frock who had attached

Starting point is 05:17:59 herself to the group of young folk. The tall, thin-haired young man who could play out the mid-summer night's dream, sat on the step behind her, his arms about his bony knees, and gazed steadfastly down on the tan back of her neck. There was a red-haired Greek girl, another of unknown origin with a face like a tapius, the voracious lad with the thick eyeglasses, and another fifteen- or sixteen-year-old youth with a monocle stuck in his eye, who carried his little finger with his face. its abnormally long nail, shaped like a salt-spoon, to his mouth when he coughed, and was manifestly a first-class donkey, these and numerous others.

Starting point is 05:18:40 The person with the fingernail, Yer Kim related in a low voice, had been only a light case when he came. He had had no fever, and had been sent up merely as a precautionary measure, by his father, who was a physician. The Hoff-Rat had advised a stay of three months. the three months had passed, and now he had a hundred to a hundred point five degrees of fever and was seriously ill,

Starting point is 05:19:05 but he lived so wide of all common sense that he needed his ears boxed. The cousins sat at a table by themselves, rather apart from the others, for Hans Castob was smoking with his dark beer, which he had brought out from breakfast. From time to time his cigar gave him a little pleasure. Render torpid as often by the beer and the music,

Starting point is 05:19:27 he sat with his head on one side, at his mouth slightly open, watching the gay, resortish scene, feeling, not as a disturbing influence, but rather as heightening the general singularity, and lending it one mental philip the more. The fact that all these people were inwardly attacked by well-nigh resistless decay, and that most of them were feverish.

Starting point is 05:19:50 They sat at little tables, drinking effervescent lemonade. The group on steps were photographing each other, postage stamps were exchanged. The red-haired Greek girl sketched hair Rasmussen's portrait on a drawing-pad, but would not let him see it. She turned this way and that,

Starting point is 05:20:08 laughing with wide open mouth, showing her broad, far-apart teeth. It was long before he could snatch it from her. Amina Clefelt, perched on her step, eyes half open, beating time to the music with a rolled-up newspaper.

Starting point is 05:20:23 She permitted Herr Albin to fasten a bunch of wildfire. flowers in the front of her blouse. The youth with the voluptuous lips, sitting at Frow Solomon's feet, turned his head upwards to talk with her, while behind them the thin-haired pianist directed his unchanging gaze down at the back of her neck. The physicians came and mingled with the guests of the cure. Hofrat Berens in his white smock, Koukowsky in his black. They passed along the row of tables, the Hofrat letting fall a pleasant tree at nearly every one, till a wave of merriment followed in his wake, and sewed down the steps among the young folk,

Starting point is 05:21:00 the female element of which straightway trooped up sidling and becking about Dr. Kukowski, while Hofrat honoured the Sabbath by performing a stunt with his bootlaces before the gentleman's eyes. He rested one mighty foot upon a step, unfastened the laces, gripped them with practice technique in one hand, and without employing the other, hooked them up again crosswise, with such speed and agility that the beauntled. Holders marvelled, and many of them tried to emulate him, but in vain. Somewhat later, Setimbri appeared on the terrace. He came out of the dining room, leaning on his cane, dressed as usual in his pilot coat and yellow checked trousers,

Starting point is 05:21:39 looked about him with his critical, alert, and elegant air, and approached the cousin's table. Bravo, he said, and asked permission to sit with them. Beer, tobacco and music, he went on. Behold the fatherland. I rejoice to see him. you in your element, engineer. You have a feeling for national atmosphere, it seems. May I bask in the sunshine of your well-being?' Hans Castorpe looked lowering. His features took on that

Starting point is 05:22:06 expression directly. He set eyes on the Italian. He said, you are late for the concert, Herr Setembrini. It must be nearly over. You don't care for music. Not to order, responded Settimbrini, not by the calendar week. Not when it reeks of the prescription counter, and is doled out to me, by the authorities, for the good of my health. I cling to my freedom, or rather to such vestiges of freedom and personal dignity, that remain to the likes of us. At these affairs I play the guest, as you do up here. I come for a quarter hour and go away. It gives me the illusion of independence. That it is more than an illusion, I do not claim. Enough if it please me. It is different with your cousin, for him it all belongs to the service.

Starting point is 05:22:53 That is the light, is it not, Lieutenant, in which you regard it? Ah, yes. I know you have the trick of hugging your pride, even in a state of slavery. A puzzling trick. Not everybody in Europe understands it. Music? You were asking if I profess to be an amateur of music. Well, when you say amateur, Hans Kastob could not recall saying anything of the sort, the word is perhaps not ill-chosen. It has a slight suggestion of superficiality. Yes, very well. I am an amateur of music, which is not to say that I set great store by it, not as I love and reverence the word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming plough share of progress, music, it is the half-articulate art, the dubious, the irresponsible, the insensible. Perhaps you will object that she can be clear when she likes, but so can nature, so can a brook. What good is that to us?

Starting point is 05:23:51 That is not true clarity. It is a dreamy, inexpressive, irresponsible clarity without consequences, and therefore dangerous, because it betrays one into soft complacence. Yet music play her loftiest role, she will thereby but kindle the emotions, whereas what concerns us is to awaken the reason. Music is to all appearance, movement itself, yet for all that, I suspect her of quietism. Let me state my point by the method of exaggeration. My aversion from music rests on political grounds.

Starting point is 05:24:30 Hans Castorpe could not refrain from slapping his knee as he exclaimed that never in his life before had he heard the like. Pray do not on that account refuse to entertain it, said in Brini said with a smile. Music as a final incitement to the spirit of man is invaluable. As a force which draws onward and upward, the spirit she finds prepared for administrations, but literature must precede her. By music alone, the world would get no further forward.

Starting point is 05:24:58 Alone, she is in danger. For you, personally, engineer, she is beyond all doubt dangerous. I saw it in your face as I came up. Hans Castorpe laughed. Oh, you shouldn't look at my face, here said Imbrini. You can't believe how the air up here sets me on fire. It is harder than I thought to get acclimatized. "'I fear you deceive yourself.'

Starting point is 05:25:21 "'How so? I know at least how deucibly hot and tired I am all the time.' "'It seems to me we should be grateful to the management for the concert,' Yer Kim said reflectively. "'I wouldn't contradict you, Herr Seton Brini, "'because you look at the question from a higher point of view, so to speak, as an author. "'But I find one ought to be grateful up here for a bit of music. "'I am far from being particularly musical, "'and then the pieces they play are not exactly elevating.

Starting point is 05:25:48 Neither classic nor modern, but just ordinary band music. Still, it is a pleasant change. It takes up a couple of hours very decently. I mean it breaks them up and fills them in. So there is something to them, by comparison with the other days, hours and weeks that whisk by like nothing at all. You see, an unpretentious concert number lasts perhaps seven minutes, and those seven minutes amount to something. They have a beginning and an end.

Starting point is 05:26:16 They stand out. They don't so easily slip into the regular humdrum round and get lost. Besides, they are again divided up by the figure of the piece that is being played, and these again into beats. So there is always something going on, and every moment has a certain meaning, something you can take hold of, whereas usually I don't know whether I am making myself. Bravo!

Starting point is 05:26:40 cried Settimbrini. Bravo, Lieutenant! You are describing very well indeed an aspect of music, which is indubitably a moral value, namely that her peculiarly, life-enhancing method of measuring time imparts a spiritual awareness and value to its passage. Music quickens time.

Starting point is 05:27:00 She quickens us to the fine enjoyment of time. She quickens, and insofar she has moral value. Art has moral value, insofar as it quickens. But what if it does the opposite? What if it dulls us? Sends us to sleep, works against action. and progress. Music can do that too. She is an old hand at using opiates. But the opiate, my dear says, is a gift of the devil. It makes for lethargy, inertia, slavish inaction,

Starting point is 05:27:31 stagnation. There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen, I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect. He went on in this vein, and Hans Castop listened without precisely following, first on account of his fatigue, and second, because his attention was distracted by the proceedings of the light-headed young folk on steps. Did his eyes deceive him? Or was the tapier-faced girl really occupied in sewing on a button for the monocled youth, and forsooth on the knee-band of his knicker-boggers? She breathed asthmatically as she sewed, and he coughed and carried his little finger of the salt-spoon-shaped nail to his mouth. Of course they were ill,

Starting point is 05:28:20 but after all these young folk up here did have peculiar social standards. The band played a polka. End of Section 18. Section 19 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 19 Chapter 4 HIP Thus Sunday passed. The afternoon was marked by drives undertaken by various groups. Several times after tea, a carriage and pair drove up the winding road

Starting point is 05:29:03 and halted before the portal to receive its occupants, these being, for the most part, Russian ladies. Russians drive a great deal, Joachim said to Hans Castorpe, as they stood before the entrance and amused themselves with watching the carriages move off. They will be going to, or into the valley of the Flewela, or as far as clusters. Those are the usual objectives. We might have a drive, too, while you're up here, if you like. But for the present, I think you have enough to do to get used to things,

Starting point is 05:29:36 and don't require more diversion. To which Hans Castorpe agreed. He had a cigarette in his mouth and his hands in his trouser pockets, and stood so to watch the lively little old Russian lady, as she, with her lean grand-niece and two other ladies, took their seats in a carriage. The ladies were Madame Shoshah and Marushche. Madam Shoshah had put on a thin dust cloak,

Starting point is 05:30:01 belted in at the back, but wore no hat. She sat down beside the old dame in the body of the carriage, while the two girls took their places behind. All four were in lively vein and chattered without stopping in their soft, spineless tongue. They chattered about the top of the carriage, which was hard for them all to get underneath, about the Russian comforts the great aunt had brought for them to munch in a little wooden box, covered with cotton wool and laced paper, and was already handing round.

Starting point is 05:30:30 Hans Kestorp distinguished with interest, Madame Shoshas, slightly husky voice. As always, whenever he set eyes on that heedless creature, the likeness reasserted itself, which had puzzled him for a while, and then been revealed in a dream. But Maristice's laugh, the expression of her round-brown eyes, staring childlike above the tiny handkerchief she held over her mouth, the full bosom, which was yet so ailing within, reminded him of something else,

Starting point is 05:31:00 something which gave him a sudden thrill, and made him glance cautiously at his cousin without turning his head. No, thank goodness, Yer Kim had not gone mottled like that other time. His lips were not so painfully compressed, but he was gazing at Maristia, and his bearing, the expression in his eyes, was anything but, military. Indeed, that absorbed and yearning look could only have been characterized as typically civilian. However, he pulled himself quickly together and stole a glance at Hans Castorpe,

Starting point is 05:31:33 which the latter had only just time to avoid by turning his own eyes away and staring up into the sky. He felt his heart give a sudden beat, without rhyme or reason, of its own accord, as it had taken to doing up here. Sunday was not further remarkable, except perhaps for the meals. which, since they could not well be more abundant than they already were, displayed greater refinement in the menu. At luncheon there was a chau-froix of chicken, garnished with crayfish and stoned cherries. With the ices came pastry served in baskets of spun sugar and fresh pineapple, besides. In the evening, after he had drunk his beer, Hans Castorpe felt heavier in the limbs, and more chilled and exhausted than on the day before.

Starting point is 05:32:19 toward nine o'clock he bade his cousin good night, drew his plume up to his chin, and slept like the dead. But the next day, the first Monday spent by the guest up here, there came another regularly recurring variation in the daily routine, the lectures, one of which Dr. Kukowski delivered every other Monday morning in the dining room, before the entire adult population of the sanatorium, with the exception of the moribund, and those who could not understand the language. The course, Hans Castorp learned from his cousin, consisted of a series of popular scientific lectures under the general title, Love as a Force Contributory to Disease. These instructive entertainments took place after second breakfast. It was not permissible, Yer Kim reiterated, to absent oneself from them. Or at least, absence was frowned upon.

Starting point is 05:33:14 It was thus very daring of Settimbrini, who surely must have more command of the language than anyone else. not only never to appear, but to refer to the entertainment in most disparaging terms. For Hans Castorpe's part, he straightway resolved to be present, in the first place out of courtesy, but also with unconcealed curiosity as to what he should hear. Before the appointed hour, however, he did something quite perverse and ill-judged, which proved worse for him than one could possibly have guessed. He went out for a long, solitary walk. Now listen to me, that had been his first words when Yokim entered his room that morning.

Starting point is 05:33:54 I can see that he can't go on with me like this. I've had enough of the horizontal for the present. One's very blood goes to sleep. Of course it is different with you. You are a patient, and I have no intention of tempting you. But I mean to take a proper walk after breakfast, if you don't mind, just walking at random for a couple of hours. I'll stick a little something in my pocket for a second breakfast,

Starting point is 05:34:17 then I shall be independent. We shall see if I am not quite a different chap when I come back. Joachim warmly agreed, as he saw his cousin was in earnest in his desire and in his project. But don't overdo it, he said. That's my advice. It's not the same thing up here as at home. And be sure to come back in time for the lecture.

Starting point is 05:34:39 In reality, young Hans Kastorp had more ground than the physical for his present resolve. his overheated head, the prevailing bad taste in his mouth, the fitful throbbing of his heart, were, or so he felt, less evil accompaniments to the process of acclimatization than such things as the goings-on of the Russian pair next door, the table-talk of the stupid and afflicted froucestore, the gentleman-rider's pulpy cough, daily heard in the corridor, the utterances of Herr Albin, the impression he received of the manners and morals of the ailing young folk about him, the expression on Yoakim's face when he looked at Maristia.

Starting point is 05:35:18 These and a hundred observations more made him feel it would be good to escape a while from the Berkhov circle, to breathe the air deep into his lungs, to get some proper exercise, and then, when he felt tired at night, he would at least know why. He took leave of Joachim in a spirit of enterprise, when his cousin addressed himself after breakfast to the usual round as far as the bench by the watercourse, then swinging his walking stick he took his own way down the road. It was about nine o'clock on a cool morning with the covered sky. According to the programme, Hans Kastop drew in deep drafts of pure morning air,

Starting point is 05:35:58 the fresh light atmosphere that breathed in so easily that held no hint of damp that was without content, without associations. He crossed the stream and the narrow-gauge road to the street, with its scattered buildings. but left this again soon to strike into a meadow path, which went only a short way on the level, and then slanted steeply up to the right. The climbing rejoiced Hans Kastop's heart. His chest expanded.

Starting point is 05:36:26 He pushed his hat back on his forehead with the crook of his stick. Having gained some little height, he looked back, and seeing in the distance the mirror-like lake he had passed on his journey hither, he began to sing. He sang what songs he had at his command. All kinds of sentimental folk ditties out of collections of national ballads and student songbooks, one of them that went,

Starting point is 05:36:49 Let poets all of love and wine, Yet oft of virtue sing the praises. He sang at first softly, in a humming tone, Then louder, finally at the top of his voice. His baritone lacked flexibility, yet today he found it good, and sang on with mounting enthusiasm. When he found he had been,

Starting point is 05:37:11 pitched the beginning too high, he shifted into falsetto, and even that pleased him. When his memory left him in the lurch, he helped himself out by setting to the melody whatever words and syllables came to hand, heedless of the sense, giving them out like an operatic singer, with arching lips and strong palatal r. He even began to improvise, both words and music, accompanying his performance with theatrical gesturings. It is a good deal of strain to sing and at the same time, and Hans Castorpe found his breath growing scant and scantor. Yet for sheer pleasure in the idea, for the joy of singing, he forced his voice and sang on, with frequent gasps for breath, until he could go no more, and sank, quite out of wind,

Starting point is 05:37:59 half-blind, with coloured sparks before his eyes and racing pulses, beneath a sturdy pine. His exultation gave way on the sudden to a pervading gloom. He fell a prey to dejection, bordering on despair. When his nerves being tolerably restored, he got to his feet again to continue his walk, he found his neck trembling. Indeed, his head shook in precisely the same way now at his age, in which the head of old Hans Lorenz Castop had once shaken, the phenomenon so freshly called up to him the memory of his dead grandfather,

Starting point is 05:38:34 that, far from finding it offensive, he took a certain pleasure in availing himself, of that remembered and dignified method of supporting the chin, by means of which his grandfather had been wont to control the shaking of his head, and to which the boy had responded with such inward sympathy. He mounted still higher on the zigzag path, drawn by the sound of cowbells, and came at length upon the herd, grazing near a hut whose roof was weighted with stones. Two bearded men approached him with axes on their shoulders. They parted a little way off him, and sang ye kindly and God be with ye said the one to the other in a deep guttural voice, shifted his axe to the other shoulder and began breaking a path through crackling pine boughs to the valley.

Starting point is 05:39:21 The words sounded strange in this lonely spot. They came dreamlike to Hans cast off senses, strained and benumbed. He repeated them softly, trying to reproduce the guttural, rustically formal syllables of the mountain tongue. As he climbed another stretch higher, above the hut. He had in mind to reach the height where the trees left off, but on glancing at his watch, resisted. He took the left-hand path in the direction of the village. It ran level for some way, then led downhill among tall trunked pines, where, as he went, he once more began to sing, tentatively, and despite the fact that he felt his knees to tremble more than they had during the ascent.

Starting point is 05:40:02 On issuing from the wood, he paused, struck by the charm of the small enclosed landscape, before him, a scene composed of elements both peaceful and sublime. A mountain stream came flowing in its shallow, stony bed down the right-hand slope, poured itself foaming over the terraced boulders, lying in its path, then coursed more calmly toward the valley, crossed at this point by a picturesque railed wooden footbridge. The ground all about was blue with the bell-like blossoms of a profusely growing bushy plant, sombre fir trees of even mighty stood in the bed of the ravine and climbed its sides to the height. One of them, rooted in the steep bank at the side of the torrent, thrust itself a slant into the picture with bizarre effect.

Starting point is 05:40:51 The whole remote and lovely spot was wrapped in a sounding solitude by the noise of rushing waters. Hans Castorpe remarked a bench that stood on the further bank of the stream. He crossed the footbridge and sat down to regale himself with the sight of the foaming, rushing, waterfall and the idyllic sound of its monotonous, yet modulated prattle. For Hans Castorpe loved like music the sound of rushing water. Perhaps he loved it even more. But hardly had he settled himself when he was overtaken by a bleeding at the nose, which came on so suddenly that he had barely time to save his clothing from Soylia.

Starting point is 05:41:29 The bleeding was violent and persistent, taking to stanch it in early half an hour of going to and fro between bench and brook, snuffing water up his nostrils, rinsing his handkerchief, and lying flat in his back upon the wooden seat with the damp cloth on his nose. He lay there, after the blood at length was staunched, his knees elevated, hands folded behind his head,

Starting point is 05:41:51 eyes closed, and ears full of the noise of water. He felt no unpleasant sensation. The bloodletting had had a soothing effect, but he found himself in a state of extraordinarily reduced vitality, so that when he exhaled the air, he felt no need to draw it in again, and lay there, moveless, for the space of several quiet heartbeats, before taking another slow and superficial breath. Quite suddenly he found himself in the far distant past,

Starting point is 05:42:20 transported to a scene which had come back to him in a dream some nights before, summoned by certain impressions of the last few days. But so strongly, so resistlessly to the annihilation of time and space was he wrapped back into the past, one might have said it was a lifeless body lying there on the bench by the waterside, while the actual Hans Castorpe moved in that faraway time and place, in a situation which was for him, despite its childishness, vibrant with daring and adventure. It happened when he was a lad of thirteen in knee-breeches, in the lower third form at school. He stood in the schoolyard in talk with another boy of like years from a higher form.

Starting point is 05:43:01 The conversation had been begun, rather arbitrarily, by himself, and dealing as it did with a narrowly circumscribed subject of a practical nature could in no case be prolonged. Yet it gave him the greatest satisfaction. It took place in the break between the last two periods, a history and drawing hour for Hans Castorps form. The pupils were walking up and down, or standing about in groups, or lounging against the glazed abutments of the school-building wall. A murmur of voices filled the red-tiled courtyard which was shut off from the street by a wall topped with shingles and provided with two entrance gates.

Starting point is 05:43:40 Supervision was exercised by a master in a slouch hat who munched a ham sandwich the while. He with whom Hans Kastop spoke was called Hibislav Hip. The peculiarity of this given name was that you were to pronounce it as though it was spelled Sibislau and the singularity of the appellations suited the lad's appearance, which did indeed have something exotic about it.

Starting point is 05:44:05 HIP was the son of a scholar and history professor in the gymnasium. He was, by consequence, a notorious model pupil, and though not much older than Hans Castor, already a form higher up. He came from Mecklenburg, and was in his person, obviously the product of an ancient mixture of races, a grafting of Germanic stock with Slavic, or the reverse. True, his close shorn round pate was blonde, but the eyes were a grey blue, or a blue-grey. An indefinite, ambiguous colour, like the hue of far-distant mountain ranges, and with an odd, narrow shape, were even, to be precise, a little slanting, with strongly marked prominent cheekbones directly under them.

Starting point is 05:44:47 It was a type of face which, in this instance, far from seeming an abnormality, was distinctly pleasing, though odd enough to have won for him the nickname of the Kyrgyz. among his schoolmates. Hip already wore long trousers, and a blue jacket belted in at the back, and closed to the throat, the collar of which was usually whitened by a few scales of dandruff.

Starting point is 05:45:10 Now the thing was that Hans Castor, for a long time, had had his eye upon this, Pribislav, had chosen him out of the whole host, known and unknown, in the courtyard of the school, taken an interest in him,

Starting point is 05:45:22 followed him with his eyes, shall we say, admired him? At all events observed him with peculiar sympathy. Even on the way to school, he looked forward with pleasure to watching him among his fellows, seeing him speak and laugh, singling out his voice from the others by its pleasantly veiled husky quality. Granted that there was no sufficient ground for his preference, unless one might refer to Hips' heathenish name, his character as model pupil, this latter was, of course, out of the question, or to the Kyrgyz's eyes,

Starting point is 05:45:54 whose grey blue glance could sometimes melt into a mystery of darkness, when one caught it musing sideways. Whichever it might be, or none of these, hence Castorpe troubled not a wit to justify his feelings, or even to question by what name they might suitably be called. For, since he did not know, HIP, the relation could hardly be one of friendship. But in the first place there was not the faintest need of calling it anything. It could never be a subject of discussion. That would be out of place, and he had no desire for it, and in the second, giving a thing a name, implies, if not passing judgment on it, at least defining it, that is to say, classifying it among the familiar and habitual, whereas Hans Castor was penetrated by an unconscious conviction that an inward good

Starting point is 05:46:40 of this sort was above all to be guarded from definition and classification. But whether well or ill-founded, and however far from being the subject of conversation, or even from being touched on in Hans Kastop's own mind, these feelings of his flourished there in great strength, as they had done for almost a year now, or a year as nearly as one could fix the time, for it was hard to be precise about their beginnings. For about a year, then, he had carried them about in secret, which spoke of the loyalty and constancy of his character, when one reflects what a great space of time a year is at that age. But alas, every characterization of this kind involves a moral judgment, where the face of a face,

Starting point is 05:47:23 or unfavourable, though to be sure each trait of character has its two sides. Thus Hans Kastov's loyalty, upon which, be it said, he was not prone to plume himself, consisted boldly in a certain temperamental heaviness, sluggishness and quiescence, a fundamental tendency to feel respect for conditions of duration and stability, and the more respect, the longer they lasted. He inclined to believe in the permanence of the particular state or circumference, in which he, for the moment, found himself, prized it for that very quality, and was not bent on change. Thus, he had grown used to his silent and remote relation to Pribislav hip, and considered it a regular feature of his life,

Starting point is 05:48:08 loved the emotions it brought in its train, the suspense as to whether he was likely to meet him that day, whether Pribislav would pass close by him, even look at him, loved the subtle and wordless satisfaction imparted by his secret, loved even the disappointments inseparable from it, the greatest of which was Prubislav's absence from school. When this happened, the schoolyard became a desert. The day lacked all charm. Hope alone lingered. The affair lasted a year up to that intrepid and culminating moment,

Starting point is 05:48:41 after which, thanks to Hans Kastob's constancy of spirit, it lasted another. Then it was over, and it is a fact that he marked no more the loosening and dissolving of the bond which united him to Privislav than he had previously marked its beginnings. Moreover, in consequence of his father's taking another position,

Starting point is 05:49:00 Pribislav left the school and the city. But that was all won to Hans Kastok, he had already forgotten him before he went. Or may put it that the figure of the Kirchitz had glided out of the mist into Hans Kastop's life and slowly grown vivid and tangible there, up to that moment of the greatest nearness in corpority in the school court, had stood a while thus in the foreground, then slowly receded, and, with no pain of parting, dissolved again into the mist.

Starting point is 05:49:30 But that moment, that bold, adventurous situation into which Hans Castrop found himself transported after all these years, the conversation, an actual conversation with Pribislav hip, came about thus. The drawing lesson was the next period, and Hans Castorup found himself without a pencil. his classmates needed their own but he had among the other pupils this and that acquaintance of which he might have sought alone yet he found it was pribislav who after all stood nearest to him with whom in secret it had to do and with a joyous impulse of his entire being he determined to seize the opportunity for so he called it and asked pribuslav for a pencil it was rather an odd thing to do since he did not in reality know pribislav at all but this aspect of the affair escaped him in his recklessness or he chose to disregard it so there he stood before pribuslav hip among the bustling crowd that filled the tiled schoolyard and he said to him "'Excuse me, can you lend me a pencil?' And Pribislav looked at him, with his Kyrgyz eyes, above the prominent cheekbones, and spoke in his pleasantly husky voice, without any surprise, or at least without showing any.

Starting point is 05:50:48 "'With pleasure,' he said, "'but you must be sure to give it me back after the period.' And he drew his pencil out of his pocket, a silver pencil holder with a ring in the end, which one screwed in order to make the red lead pencil come out. He displayed the simple mechanism, their two heads bent over it together. Only be careful not to break it, he added. What made him say that? As if Hans Kastop had been intending to handle it carelessly or keep it after the hour.

Starting point is 05:51:21 They looked at each other and smiled. Then, as there remained nothing more to say, they turned, first their shoulders, and then their backs, and went. that was all but never in his life had hans cast off felt so supremely content as in this drawing her drawing with pribislav hips pencil in the immediate prospect of giving it back into the owner's hand which followed as a matter of course out of what had gone before he took the liberty of sharpening the pencil a little and cherished three of the red shavings nearly a year in an inner drawer of his desk no one seeing them there could have guessed what significance that the significance that the same thing there could have guessed what significance they possessed. The return of the pencil was of the simplest formality, quite after Hans Kastop's heart. Indeed, he prided himself on it no little, in the vain-glorious state his intimacy with hip produced. There, he said, and thanks very much. And Pribislav said nothing at all, and he hastily tried the screw, and stuck the pencil in his pocket. Never again did they speak

Starting point is 05:52:26 to each other. But this one time, thanks to the enterprise of Hans Kastorp, they had spoken. He wrenched his eyes open, amazed at the depths of the trance in which he had been sunk. I've been dreaming, he thought. Yes, it was Pribislav. It's a long time since I thought of him. I wonder what became of the shavings. My desk is in the attic at Uncle Teen Apples. They must be there yet, in the little inner back drawer. I never took the mouth. I never took the never thought enough about them to throw them away. That was certainly, Pribislav, his very own self. I shouldn't have thought I could remember him so clearly.

Starting point is 05:53:09 How remarkably like her, he looked, like this girl up here. Is that why I feel interested in her, or is that why I felt so interested in him? What rubbish! Anyhow, I must be stirring and pretty fast, too. But he lay another moment, musing and recalling. before he got up. Then thank ye kindly, and God be we, he said. The tears came up to his eyes, and he smiled.

Starting point is 05:53:38 And with that he would have been off, but instead sat suddenly down again, with his hat and stick in his hand, being forced to the realization that his knees would not support him. Hello, he thought, this won't do. I'm supposed to be back in the dining room, punctually at eleven for the lecture. Taking walks up here is very beautiful,

Starting point is 05:53:58 but appears to have its difficult side. Well, well, I can't stop here. I must have got stiff from lying. I shall be better as I move about. He tried again to get on his legs, and, by dint of great effort, succeeded. But the return home was lamentable indeed, after the high spirits of his setting forth.

Starting point is 05:54:18 He had repeatedly to rest by the way, feeling the colour recede from his face, and cold sweat break out on his brow. The wild beating of his heart, took away his breath. Thus painfully he fought his way down the winding path and reached the bottom in the neighbourhood of the Kerrhus. But here it became clear that his own powers would never take him over the stretch between him and the Berkhov. And accordingly, as there was no tram and he saw no carriages for hire, he held a driver going toward the dwarf, with a load of empty boxes, and asked permission to climb into his wagon. back to back with the man, his legs hanging down out of the end,

Starting point is 05:54:56 swaying and nodding with fatigue and the jolting of the vehicle, regarded with surprise and sympathy by the passers-by, he got as far as the railway crossing, where he dismounted and paid for his ride, whether much money or little he did not heed, and hurried headlong up the drive. "'Depache you, monsieur,' said to him the French concierge. "'The conference of Mr. Krakowski vien de commons.

Starting point is 05:55:21 Hans Castorne tossed hat and stick on the stand and squeezed himself, with much precaution, tongue between his teeth, through the partly open glass door, into the dining room, where the Society of the Cure sat in rows on their chairs, and on the right-hand narrow side of the room, behind a covered table adorned with a water-bottle, Dr. Krakowski, in a frock-coat, stood and delivered his lecture. End of Section 19 Section 20 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain

Starting point is 05:55:55 Section 20 Chapter 4 Analysis Luckily there was a vacant seat in the corner near the door He slipped into it and assumed an air of having been here from the beginning The audience, hanging wrapped on Dr. Krakowski's lips,

Starting point is 05:56:15 paid him no heed, which was as well, for he looked rather ghastly. His face, white as a sheet, His coat spotted with blood. He might have been a murderer, stealing from his crime. The lady in front of him did, indeed, turn her head as he sat down and measure him with narrow eyes. With a sense of exasperation he recognised Madame Shusher. Do you take it?

Starting point is 05:56:41 Was he never to have a moment's peace? He had thought that, having arrived at his goal, he could sit here quietly and rest a little. And now he had to have her under his nose. In other circumstances he might conceivably have found her nearness rather pleasant than otherwise. But now, worn out and harassed as he felt, what was it to him? It could only make new demands on his heart and keep him from drawing a long breath during the whole lecture. With Pribislav's very eyes she had looked at him and at the spots of blood on his coat. Her look had been rather bold and ruthless, too, as a woman's would be who let doors bang behind her.

Starting point is 05:57:22 How badly she held herself! Not like the ladies of hands cast off social sphere, who sat erect at their tables, turned their heads towards their lords and masters, and spoke with mincing correctness. Frau Shoshah sat all relaxed, with drooping shoulders and round back. She even thrust her head forward

Starting point is 05:57:43 until the vertebra at the base of the neck showed prominently above the rounded decollage of her white blouse. Pribislav had held his head like that, but he had been a model pupil full of honours, which was not the reason why Hans Castorpe had borrowed his pencil, whereas it was abundantly clear that Frouche's bad carriage, her door slamming and the directness of her gaze, all had to do with her physical condition. Yes, were even expressive of that want of restraint in which young Herr Albin rejoiced, which was not honourable at all, yet possessed of boundless advantages all its own.

Starting point is 05:58:22 Hans Kastop's thoughts, as he sat and looked at Fras Schocher's flexed back, began to blur. They ceased to be thoughts at all and began to be a reverie, into which Dr. Kukowski's drawling baritone, with the soft-sounding R, came as from afar. But the stillness of the room, the profound attention that wrapped all the rest of the audience, had the effect of rousing him, too. He looked about. Near him sat the thin-haired pianist, with bent head. and folded arms, listening with his mouth open.

Starting point is 05:58:56 Somewhat further on was Frowline Englehart, avid-eyed, with a dull red spot on each cheek. Hans Castorp saw the same signal flame on the faces of other ladies, on Frow Solomons and frow Magnus's, the same who was the wife of the brewer and lost flesh persistently. Frou Stor sat somewhat further back, an expression of ignorant credulity, painted on her face, truly painful to behold. While the ivory-complexioned levee, leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes, her hands lying open in her lap, would have looked like a corpse, had not her breast risen and fallen with such profound and rhythmical breaths as to remind Hans Kastorp of a mechanical waxwork, he had once seen. Many of the guests had their hands

Starting point is 05:59:45 curved behind their ears. Some even held the hand in the air, halfway thither, as though arrested midway in the gesture by the strength of their concentration. Roya Paravant, a sunburnt man, who looked to have had the strength of a bull, even flicked his ear with his forefinger to make it hear better, then turned it again to catch the words that flowed from Dr. Krakowski's lips. And what was Dr. Krakowski saying? What was his line of thought? Hans Kastop summoned his wits to discover, not immediately succeeding, however, since he had not heard the beginning, and lost still more while musing on Frau Schoshat's flabby back. It was about a power, the power which, in short, it was about the power of love. Yes, of course,

Starting point is 06:00:33 the subject was already given out in the general title of the whole course, and, moreover, this was Dr. Krakowski's special field. Of what else should he be talking? It was a bit odd, to be sure, listening to a lecture on such a theme, when previously Hans Kastorbs' courses had dealt only with such matters as geared transmission in shipbuilding. No, really, how did one go about to discuss a subject of this delicate and private nature, in broad daylight, before a mixed audience? Dr. Krakowski did it by adopting a mingled terminology, partly poetic, and partly erudite, ruthlessly scientific, yet with a vibrating sing-song delivery which impressed young Hans castor up as being unsuitable, but may have been the reason why the ladies look at the

Starting point is 06:01:19 flushed, and the gentleman flicked their ears to make them hear better. In particular, the speaker employed the word love, in a somewhat ambiguous sense, so that you were never quite sure where you were with it, or whether he had reference to its sacred or its passionate and fleshly aspect. And this doubt gave one a slightly seasick feeling. Never in his life had Hans Kastop heard the word uttered so many times on end, as he was hearing it now. When he reflected, it seemed to him he had never taken it in his own mouth, nor ever heard it from a stranger's.

Starting point is 06:01:56 That might not be the case, but whether it were or no, the word did not seem to him to repay such frequent repetition. The slippery monosyllable, with its lingual and labial, and the bleating vowel between, came to sound positively offensive. It suggested watered milk, or anything else that was pale and insipid. the morso, considering the meat for strong men, Dr. Krakowski was in fact serving up. For it was plain that when one said about it like that, one could go pretty far without shocking anybody. He was not content to allude with exquisite tact to certain matters which are known to everybody, but which most people are content to pass over in silence. He demolished illusions.

Starting point is 06:02:39 He was ruthlessly enlightened. He relentlessly destroyed all faith in the dignity of silver hairs and the innocence of the sucking babe. and he wore, with the frock coat, his negligee collar, sandals and grey woolen socks, and thus attired, made an impression profoundly otherworldly, though at the same time not a little startling to young Hans Kastob. He supported his statements with a wealth of illustration, an anecdote, from the books and loose notes on the table before him, several times he even quoted poetry,

Starting point is 06:03:11 and he discussed certain startling manifestations of the power of love, certain extraordinary, painful, uncanny variations which the majestic phenomenon at times displayed. It was, he said, the most unstable, the most unreliable of man's instincts, the most prone of its very essence to error and fatal perversion. In the which there was nothing that should cause surprise, for this mighty force did not consist of a single impulse. It was of its nature complex. It was built up out of components which, however legitimate they might be composition were, taken each by itself, sheer perversity. But, continued Dr. Krakowski, since we refuse, and rightly, to deduce the perversity of the

Starting point is 06:03:56 whole from the perversity of its parts, we are driven to claim, for the component perversities, some part at least, though perhaps not all, of the justification which attaches to their united product. We were driven by sheer force of logic to this conclusion. Dr. Krakowski implored his hearers. having arrived at it, to hold it fast. Now there were psychical correctives. Forces working in the other direction, instincts tending to conformability and regularity.

Starting point is 06:04:27 He would almost have liked to characterize them as bourgeois. These influences had the effect of merging the perverse components into a valid and irreproachable whole, a frequent and gratifying result, which Dr. Krakowski almost contemptuously added, was, as such, of no further concern to the thinker and the physician. But on the other hand, there were cases where this result was not obtained, could not and should not be obtained,

Starting point is 06:04:55 and who, Dr. Krakowski asked, would dare to say that these cases did not, psychically considered, form a higher, more exclusive type, for in these cases the two opposing groups of instincts, the compulsive force of love, the sum of the impulses urging in the other direction, among which he would particularly mention shame and disgust, both exhibited an extraordinary and abnormal height and intensity

Starting point is 06:05:20 when measured by the ordinary bourgeois standards and the conflict between them which took place in the abysses of the soul prevent the airing instinct from attaining to that safe, sheltered and civilised state which alone could resolve its difficulties in the prescribed harmonies of the love-life as experienced by the average human being. This conflict between the powers of love and chastity, for that was what it really amounted to, what was its issue? It ended, apparently, in the triumph of chastity. Love was suppressed, held in darkness and chains by fear, conventionality, aversion, and a tremulous yearning to be pure.

Starting point is 06:06:02 Her confused and tumultuous claims were never allowed to rise to consciousness or to come to proof in anything like their entire strength or multiformity. But this triumph of chastity was only an apparent, a Pyrrhic victory. For the claims of love could not be crippled or enforced by any such means. The love thus suppressed was not dead. It lived. It laboured after fulfilment in the darkest and secretest depths of the being. It would break through the ban of chastity.

Starting point is 06:06:31 It would emerge, if in a form so altered as to be unrecognisable. But what was then this form, this mask, in which suppressed, uncharted love would reappear? Dr. Krakowski asked the question and looked along the listening rows, as though in all seriousness, expecting an answer. But he had to say it himself, who had said so much else already. No one knew save him, but it was plain that he did. Indeed, with his ardent eyes, his black beard, setting off the waxen pallor of his face, His monkish sandals and grey woolen socks, he seemed to symbolise in his own person that conflict between passion and chastity, which was his theme.

Starting point is 06:07:17 At least so thought Hans Castop. As with the others, he waited in the greater suspense to hear in what form love driven below the surface would reappear. The ladies barely breathed. Lawyer Paravant rattled his ear anew that the critical moment might find it open and receptive. And Dr. Krakowski answered his own question and said, In the form of illness, symptoms of disease are nothing but a disguised manifestation of the power of love, and all disease is only love transformed. So now they knew, though very probably not all of them were capable of an opinion on what they heard.

Starting point is 06:08:00 A sigh passed through the assemblage, and lawyer Paravant weightily nodded approbation, as Kukowski proceeded to develop his theme. Hence Kastob, for his part, sat with bowed head, trying to reflect on what had been said and test his own understanding of it. But he was unpracticed in such exercises, and rendered still further incapable of mental exertion by the unhappy effect of the walk he had taken.

Starting point is 06:08:28 His thoughts were soon drawn off again by the sight of Frouchechers' back, on the arm appertaining, which was lifting and bare, bending itself, close before Hans Kastop's eyes, so the hand could hold the braids of hair. It made him uncomfortable to have the hand so close beneath his eye, to be forced to look at it, whether he wished or no, to study it in all its human blemishes and imperfections, as though under a magnifying glass. No, there was nothing aristocratic about this stubby,

Starting point is 06:09:01 schoolgirl hand with the badly cut nails. He was not even quite sure that the ends of the fingers were perfectly clean, and the skin round the nails was distinctly bitten. Hans Kastorp made a face, but his eyes remained fixed on Madame Shoshat's back, as he vaguely recalled what Dr. Krakowski had been saying about counteracting influences of a bourgeois kind, which set themselves up against the power of love.

Starting point is 06:09:28 The arm in its gentle upward curve was better than the hand. It was scarcely clothed, for the material of the sleeve was thinner than that of the blouse, being the lightest gauze, which had the effect of lending the arm a sort of shadowed radiance, making it prettier than it might otherwise have been. It was at once both full and slender, in all probability, cool to the touch.

Starting point is 06:09:52 No, so far as the arm went, the idea of counteracting bourgeois influences did not apply. Hans Castorp mused, his gaze still bent on Frouchechard's arm, The way women dressed, they shared their necks and bosoms, they transfigured their arms by veiling them in the illusion. They did so, the world over, to arouse our desire. Oh God, how beautiful life was!

Starting point is 06:10:20 And it was just such accepted commonplaces as this that made it beautiful, for it was a commonplace that women dressed themselves alluringly. It was so well known and recognised the fact that we never consciously realized it. realized it, but merely enjoyed it, without a thought. And yet he had an inward conviction that we ought to think about it, what to realise, what a blessed, what a well-nigh miraculous arrangement it was. For, of course, it all had a certain end and aim. It was by definite design that women were permitted to array themselves with irresistible allure. It was for the sake of posterity, for the perpetuation of the species, of course.

Starting point is 06:11:03 But suppose a woman were inwardly diseased, unfit for motherhood? What then? What was the sense of her wearing gauze sleeves, and attracting male attention to her physical parts, if these were actually unsound? Obviously there was no sense. It ought to be considered immoral and forbidden as such. For a man to take an interest in a woman inwardly diseased

Starting point is 06:11:28 had no more sense than, well, than the interest Hans Castorp had once. taken in Pribyislav hip. The comparison was a stupid one. It roused memories better forgotten. He had not meant to make it. It came into his head unbidden. But at this point his musings broke off,

Starting point is 06:11:48 largely because Dr. Krakowski had raised his voice and so had drawn attention once more upon himself. He was standing there behind the table with his arms outstretched and his head on one side. Almost, despite the frock-coat, he looked like Christ. on the cross. It seemed that at the end of his lecture, Dr. Krakowski was making propaganda for psychoanalysis. With open arms, he summoned all and sundry to come unto him.

Starting point is 06:12:15 Come unto me, he was saying, though not in those words. Come unto me, all he were weary and heavy-laden. And he left no doubt of his conviction that all those present were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke of secret suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power of the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the unconscious mind and explained how the abnormality was metamorphosed into the conscious emotion. He urged them to have confidence. He promised relief.

Starting point is 06:12:50 Then he let fall his arms, raised his head, gathered up his notes, and went out by the corridor door, with his head in the air, and the bundle of papers held schoolmaster fashion in his left hand against his shoulder. his audience rose pushed back its chairs and slowly began to move towards the same door as though converging upon him from all sides without volition hesitatingly yet with one accord like the throng after the pipe piper hands castob stood in the stream without moving his hand on the back of his chair i am only a guest up here he thought thank god i am healthy that business has nothing to do with me i shan't even be here for the next lecture. He watched, Frau Shoshar, going out, gliding along with her head thrust forward. Did she have herself psychoanalysed, he wondered, and his heart began to thump. He did not notice

Starting point is 06:13:48 Joachim coming toward him, among the chairs, and started when his cousin spoke. You got here at the last minute, Yomim said. Did you go very far? How was it? Oh, very nice, Hans Castorban answered. said, yes, I went rather a long way, but I must confess it did me less good than I thought it would. I won't repeat it for the present. Yokim did not ask how he liked the lecture, neither did Hans Kastorp express an opinion. By common consent, they let the subject rest, both then and thereafter. End of Section 20.

Starting point is 06:14:36 Section 21 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public. domain. Section 21. Chapter 4. Doubts and Considerations Tuesday was the last day of our heroes week up here, and accordingly he found his weekly bill in his room on his return from the morning walk. It was a clear and business-like document in a green envelope with a picture of the Burkhoff building at the top, and extracts from the prospectus carried in a narrow column down the left-hand side of the sheet. psychoanalytic treatment by the most modern methods was called attention to by means of spaced type

Starting point is 06:15:19 the items set down in a calligraphic hand came to 180 francs almost exactly eight francs a day for his chamber 12 for board and medical attendance entrance fee 20 disinfection of room 10 while small charges for laundry beer and the late dinner of the first evening made up the sum Hans Castorpe went over the bill with Joachim and found naught to object to. Of course I made no use of the medical attendance, he said, but that was my own affair. It is included in the price of Ponsion, and I couldn't expect them to make any deduction. How could they? As regards to the disinfection, they must show a neat profit there.

Starting point is 06:16:01 They never could have used ten francs worth of H2CO to smoke the American woman out. But on the whole, I must say I find it cheap, rather than dear, considering what they offer. And before second breakfast, they went down to the management in order that Hans Castorpe might acquit himself of his debt. The management was on the ground floor. You reached it after passing the hall, the guardrobe, the kitchens and domestic offices.

Starting point is 06:16:26 You could not miss the door. It had a porcelain shield. Hans Castorpe took an interest in this glimpse into the business side of the enterprise. There was a neat little office, with a typist busy at her machine, and three clerks bending over death. In an adjoining office, a man who looked like a head or director was working at a desk in the middle of the room. He flung a cool and calculating glance at the clients over the top of his glasses.

Starting point is 06:16:51 Their affair was dispatched at the cashier's window. A note changed. Money received. The bill receded. The cousins, preserving throughout these transactions, the solemn, discreet, almost overawed bearing, which the young Germans' respect for authority leads him to assume in the presence of pens, ink, and paper or anything else which bears to his mind an official stamp. But on the way to breakfast and later in the course of the day, they talked about the direction of the Berkhov's sanatorium, and Joachim, in his character as inmate, answered his cousin's questions. Hofrad Berens was not, though he gave the impression of being,

Starting point is 06:17:28 owner and proprietor of the establishment. Above and behind him stood invisible powers, which, to a certain extent, manifested their existence in the office they had just visited. They consisted of a supervisory head and a stock company, in which it was not a bad thing to hold shares, according to Yochem, since the members of it divided a fat dividend each year. The Hoffrat was a dependent. He was merely an agent, a functionary, an associate of higher powers,

Starting point is 06:17:57 the first and highest, of course, and the soul of the enterprise, with a well-defined influence upon it and upon the management itself. Though, of course, as directing physician, he was relieved of all preoccupation with the business side. He was a native of northwestern Germany, and it was common knowledge that when he took the position, years ago, he had done so contrary to his previous intention and plans. He had come here on account of his wife, whose remains had long reposed in the village churchyard, that picturesque churchyard of Dorf Davos, which lay high up on the right-hand slope, nearer the entrance of the valley. She had been a charming person, to judge from her likenesses, though too large-eyed and is scenic-looking. photographs of her stood about everywhere in the Hofrat's house. Even oil portraits by his own amateur hand hung on the walls.

Starting point is 06:18:47 Two children, a son and a daughter, had been born. Then they had brought her up here, the fragile body already fever-smitten. A few months had seen the completion of the wasting-away process. Berens, they said, had adored her. He was brought so low by the blow, but he got very odd and melancholy. People saw him gesturing, sniggering. and talking to himself on the street. He did not go back to his original place,

Starting point is 06:19:14 but remained where he was, in part no doubt, because he could not tear himself away from her grave, but also from the less sentimental reason that he was himself in poor health and, in his own professional opinion, actually belonged here. He had settled down as one of the physicians

Starting point is 06:19:31 who are companions in suffering to the patients in their care, who do not stand above disease, fighting her in the armour of personal security, but who themselves bear her mark, an odd but by no means isolated case, and one which has its good as well as its bad side. Sympathy between doctor and patient is surely desirable, and a case might be made out for the view that only he who suffers can be the guide and healer of the suffering, and yet can true spiritual mastery over a power be won by him who is counted among her slaves? can he free others who himself is not free?

Starting point is 06:20:08 The ailing physician remains a paradox to the average mind, a questionable phenomenon. May not his scientific knowledge tend to be clouded and confused by his own participation, rather than enriched and morally reinforced. He cannot face disease in a clear-eyed hostility to her. He is a prejudiced party. His position is equivocal.

Starting point is 06:20:31 With all due reserve, it must be asked whether a man who himself belongs among the ailing can give himself to the cure or care of others, as can a man who is himself entirely sound. Hans Kastop expressed some of these doubts and speculations as he and Yochim gossiped about the Burkhov and its professional head. But Yoakim answered that nobody knew whether the Hofrat was still a patient. He was probably long since cured. It was ages ago that he had first begun to practice here, independently at first, and early winning a name for himself as an extraordinarily gifted osculator and skillful surgeon. Then the Burkhov had secured him. It would soon be ten years that he had been in intimate association with it.

Starting point is 06:21:14 His private residence was in the end of the north-west wing of the building. Dr. Kukowski's was not far off. And that lady of the lofty lineage, the nursing sister and directoress of the establishment, of whom Settembrini had made such utter fun, and whom thus far Hans Kastop had had, had scarcely seen, presided over the small household. The Hoffrat was otherwise alone, for his son was at the university, and his daughter already married to a lawyer in one of the French cantons. Young Berens sometimes visited his father in the holidays. He had done so once during Eurkim's time up here. The ladies, he related, had been quite thrilled. Their temperatures had gone up. Petty jealousies had led to bickering and quarrels in the rest hall, and an increase of visits to

Starting point is 06:22:00 Dr Krakowski's private office. The assistant had his own office hours in a special room, which, together with the large examination rooms, the laboratory, the operation rooms and the X-ray studio, was in the well-lighted basement of the building. We call it the basement for the stern steps leading down to it from the ground floor created the impression that it was such. An erroneous impression, for not only was the ground floor somewhat elevated, but the entire building stood on a side hill, partway up the mountain. and these basement rooms faced the front, with a view of the gardens and valley, a circumstance negated, to some extent, by the fact of the steps leading down to them.

Starting point is 06:22:40 One descended, as one supposed, from the ground floor, only to find oneself at the bottom still on it, or practically so. Hans Castob amused himself with this illusion, when he accompanied his cousin one afternoon down to the bathing master, that Yoakim might get himself weighed. A clinical brilliance and spotlessness reigned in this sphere, Everything was as white as white. The doors gleamed with white enamel. The one leading to Dr. Kukowski's receiving room,

Starting point is 06:23:08 with the doctor's visiting card, tacked on it, was reached by two more steps, down from the corridor, which gave the room behind it an air of being more spacious and withdrawn than the rest. This door was at the end of the corridor, on your right as you came downstairs. Hans Kastob kept his eye on it as he walked up and down, waiting for his cousin. He saw a lady come out, a recent arrival, whose name he did not know, a small dainty person with curls on her forehead, and gold earrings.

Starting point is 06:23:37 She bent over as she mounted the steps, and held up her frock with one beringed hand, while with the other she pressed her tiny handkerchief to her lips, and, all stooped as she was, stared up over it into nothing, with great blue, distracted eyes. She hurried with small tripping steps, her petticoat rustling to the stairs, pause suddenly as though something had occurred to her, then went on, tripping upward, and disappeared, still bending over and holding a handkerchief to her mouth. Behind her, when she opened the office door, it had been much darker than in the white corridor. Obviously the brilliant lighting of these lower regions did not extend so far. Hans Kastop remarked that a shadowed dusk, a profound twilight prevailed in Dr. Krakowski's private sanctum.

Starting point is 06:24:25 End of Section 21 Section 22 of the Magic Mountain By Thomas Mann This Librevox recording is in the public domain Section 22 Chapter 4 Table Talk Young Hans Castorp noticed that the ancestral tremor

Starting point is 06:24:54 brought on by his ill-advised walk continued to trouble him He found it rather an embarrassment when in the dining room Almost as a regular thing now his head would begin shaking a table. He found this impossible to prevent and hard to disassemble. He tried various devices to disguise the weakness, for he could not continually support his chin on his collar. He would keep his head in action, turning it to the right and left in conversation,

Starting point is 06:25:22 or bear hard against the table with the left forearm when he carried a spoonful of soup to his mouth and support his head with his hand. In the pauses, he even rested his elbow on the table. this, although it was in his own eyes a piece of ill-breeding, which would not pass in any society, save the lax abnormal one, where he now found himself. But the weakness was burdensome too, and went far to spoil the meal hours for him, which he had otherwise continued to find diverting and full of interesting episode. But the truth was, and Hans Castor was entirely aware of it, that the absurd manifestation against which he struggled was not solely physical in its origin,

Starting point is 06:26:00 not wholly to be accounted for by the air up here and the efforts his system made to adjust itself. Rather, it was the outward expression of his inward stimulation and bore directly upon those very episodes and diversions. Madam Shoshar almost invariably came late to meals. Until she came, Hans Castorpe could not sit and keep his feet still, but must wait in suspense for the crashing of the glass door. He knew it would make him start,

Starting point is 06:26:28 and that his face would feel cold. all over. This was what regularly happened. At first he had jerked round his head, infuriated, and followed the offender with angry eyes to her seat at the good Russian table. He may even have muttered some abusive epithet through his teeth, some outraged cry of protest, but now he only bent over his plate, bit his lips, or deliberately turned his head away. It seemed to him that anger was no longer in place. He even had an obscure feeling that he was partly responsible that he shared the blame with her before the others. In short, it would be no longer so true to say he was ashamed of, Frau Suresha, as that he was ashamed for her, a feeling that he might

Starting point is 06:27:11 well have spared himself, for not a soul in the room troubled either of Frau Schauchat's misconduct or Hans Kastop's sensitivity to it, with the possible exception of the schoolmistress, Fraline Englehart, on his right. This poor creature had perceived that, thanks to his sensibility in the matter of slamming doors, a certain emotional attitude toward the Russian lady had come to subsist in her young neighbour's mind. Further, the grounds of the attitude were of little moment compared to the fact of its existence. And finally, that his assumed indifference, very poorly assumed, for Hans Castorpe had neither talent nor training as an actor, did not mean a decrease in interest, but on the contrary indicated that the affair was passing into a higher

Starting point is 06:27:54 phase. Frale and Englehart was for her own person quite without hopes or pretensions. She therefore launched out into extravagant enthusiasm over Frau Shosha, about which quite the most extraordinary thing was that Hans Castob saw perfectly how she was egging him on, not all at once, perhaps, but in the course of time. Saw through it and even felt disgusted at it, yet without being the less willingly led on by her and made a fool of. slam bang the old spinster said that was she no need to look up to tell who just came in of course there she goes like a kitten to a saucer of milk how pretty it is i wish we might change places so that you could look at her as much as you like naturally you don't care to keep turning your head that would flatter her far too much she is greeting her table you really ought to look it is so refreshing to see her when she smiles and talks as she is doing now a dimple "'comes in one cheek, but not always, only when she likes. "'What a love of a woman, a spoiled child!

Starting point is 06:28:59 "'That is why she is so heedless. "'Creatures like that one has to love, whether one will or know. "'They fix you with their heedlessness, "'but that is only one reason the more for loving them. "'It makes you so happy to have to care for them, in spite of yourself.' "'She whispered on behind her hand for his ear alone. "'The flush that mantled on her downy old cheek "'bespoke a rising temperature,

Starting point is 06:29:24 and the suggestiveness of her talk pierced Hans Castor up to the very marrow. It did him good to hear someone else confirm his view that Madame Shoshar was an enchanting creature. He was a young man of not very independent judgments, and glad to be encouraged in certain feelings he had, upon which both reason and conscience united to frown. But Fral and Englehart, however much she would have liked to, could tell him practically nothing about Fras Chosha. She knew no more than the whole senatorium knew,

Starting point is 06:29:53 and his conversations with her bore little practical fruit. She did not even know the lady to speak to, nor could she boast a single common acquaintance. Her only title to importance was that she lived in Conigsburg, not very far from the Russian border. Also that she knew a few scraps of Russian. These were but meagre distinctions, yet Hans Castorop was prepared to see in them,

Starting point is 06:30:15 something resembling an extensive personal connection with Frau Shosha. I see that she wears no ring, no wedding ring. He said, "'Why is that? "'She is a married woman, I think you told me?' "'The schoolmistress was quite perturbed. "'She seemed to feel driven into a corner "'and sought for words to talk herself out again.

Starting point is 06:30:35 "'So very responsible did she feel for Frau Shosh. "'You must not attach importance to that,' "'she finally said. "'I'm positive she's married. "'There is no doubt of it. "'Of course, I know some foreigners do use the madame "'when they are getting a little on in years, "'for the sake of the greatest respect,

Starting point is 06:30:52 "'people pay a married woman.' but it is not the case here. Everyone knows she really has a husband, somewhere in Russia. Her maiden name was not French, but Russian. Something in a now, or Ucov. I did know it, but I have forgotten. I will ask, if you like, there must be several people here who know it. No, she wears no ring.

Starting point is 06:31:14 I have noticed it myself. Dear me, perhaps she finds it makes her hand look too broad, or she thinks it is too bourgeois and domestic to wear a plain gold wedding ring. She might as well carry a key-basket. No, she's built on broader lines than that. Russian women all have something free and large about them. And then a wedding ring seems so prosaic.

Starting point is 06:31:35 It is almost repellent. It is a symbol of possession. It is always saying, hands off. Turns every woman into a nun. I should not be at all surprised if that is what Fras Shoshah thinks. A charming woman like her, in the bloom of youth, "'Why should she every time she gives a man a hand to kiss "'tell him straightway that she is bound in Whitlock?'

Starting point is 06:31:56 "'Good Lord,' thought Hans Castorpe, "'how she does run on.' He looked into her face, quite alarmed, "'but she counted his gaze with her embarrassed, half-frightened one. "'They were both silent a while and sought to recover themselves. "'Hans Castorpe at his luncheon and supported his chin. "'At length he said, "'And her husband? He doesn't trouble himself about her?'

Starting point is 06:32:20 Does he never visit her up here? Do you know what he does? Official, Russian government official in some distant province, Dagestan, you know, out beyond the Caucasus. He was ordered there. No, as I tell you, no one has ever seen him up here, and this time she has been here going on three months. She was here before then. This is the third time,

Starting point is 06:32:44 and between times she goes to other places, other sanatoriums, but it is she who sometimes visits him, Not often, once in the year, for a little while. What may say, they live separated, and she visits him now and again. Well, of course, she is ill. Yes, of course, but not so ill, not so ill as to have to live all her life in sanatoriums and apart from her husband. There must be other reasons for that. Everyone up here thinks there must be other reasons.

Starting point is 06:33:14 Perhaps she does not like to live out there in Dagestan, the other side of the Caucasus. It would not be strange. such a wild remote place But there must be something about the man too If she can't bear to be with him He has a French name But after all he is a Russian official That is a very rude type

Starting point is 06:33:33 I do assure you I once saw one of them With an iron grey beard and a red face They are all frightfully corrupt too And drink quantities of vodka You know They will eat a little something For the look of the thing

Starting point is 06:33:47 A mushroom marinee some caviar and then drink out of all measure and call it a light lunch. You are putting everything off on him, Hans Kastop said, but we can't know if the responsibility is not hers, or they're not living together, or not to be just. When I look at her and see the unmanly way she behaves about the door, I assure you she's no angel. Excuse me for saying so, I wouldn't trust her across the street.

Starting point is 06:34:14 But you are so partial, you are blinded by prejudice in her favour. This was the line he sometimes took. With a cunning, otherwise foreign to his nature, he would make out that the schoolmistresses ravings over Frau Shoshua were not what he very well knew them to be, but an independent phenomenon of a quaint and amusing kind, about which he, Hans Kastorp, made free to tease the old spinster, feeling his own withers unwrung.

Starting point is 06:34:39 He risked nothing by this attitude, being confident that his accomplice would agree to anything he said, no matter how wide of the mark. "'Good morning,' he greeted her. "'I hope you slept well and dreamed of your charmer.' "'Mistress Mary, quite contrary, or whatever a name is. "'Upon my word, one has only to speak of her to make you blush. "'You have completely lost your head over her.

Starting point is 06:35:01 "'You can't deny it.' "'And the schoolmistress, who really had blushed "'and tucked her head down over her cup, "'would mumble out of the left-hand corner of her mouth. "'Shame on you, Herr Castop. "'It really is too bad of you to embarrass me like this. "'Everyone can see we are talking about her. and that you have said something to make me get red.

Starting point is 06:35:20 It was an extraordinary game, the two of them were playing, each perfectly aware that they lied and double-lied, each knowing that Hans Castob teased the schoolmistress only in order to be able to talk about Frowsho. He took a morbid and extravagant pleasure in thus trifling with Frowline Englehart, and she, on her side, reciprocated, first out of a natural instinct to be the go-between in a love affair,

Starting point is 06:35:43 secondly, because to oblige Hans Castorpe, she had actually contrived to fall victim to Frau Shoshas' charms, and finally, because she felt a pathetic joy in having him tease her and make her blush. He well knew, and she well knew, all this about each other and themselves. Each knew that the other knew, and that the whole situation was equivocal and almost questionable. Equivocal and questionable situations were, in general, repugnant to Hans Castorpe's taste, and the present was no exception. He felt disgusted.

Starting point is 06:36:17 Yet for all that he went on fishing in these troubled waters, quieting his conscience with the assurance that he was only up here on a visit and would soon be leaving. He pronounced upon the young woman's charms with the air of a connoisseur. Said she was slouchy, that she looked younger and prettier a full face than profile, that her eyes were too far apart, that she carried herself in a way that left much to be desired, that her arms, on the other hand, were pretty and soft-looking. He felt his head shaking as he talked. He tried to suppress the trembling, and realised not only that the schoolmistress must see his efforts,

Starting point is 06:36:51 but with profound disgust that her head was actually shaking too. But he went on. He had purposely called Frau Schocher Mistress Mary, in order that he might put the question of her name. So now he said, I suppose her name is not Mary at all. Do you know what it is? I mean her given name. You must know it, being as smitten as you are. The schoolmistress reflected,

Starting point is 06:37:15 "'Wait, half a minute,' she said. "'I knew it once. "'Was it Tatiana? "'No, no, Natasha. "' Natasha Shoshah? "'No, that was not it. "'Wait, I have it. "'It was Avdotia, or at least something very like that.

Starting point is 06:37:33 "'It was not Katyenko or Ninochka, of that I am certain. "'I can't quite get it for the moment, "'but I can surely recall it if you would like to know.' "'And the next day she actually did know the name, and uttered it the moment the glass door slammed. Frashoche's name was Claudia. Hans Kastov did not grasp it at first. He had to have a repeat the name, even to spell it, before he understood.

Starting point is 06:37:58 Then he pronounced it twice or thrice, turning his bloodshot eyes in Frashochus' direction, in order, as it were, to try if it's suited. Claudia, he said, yes, that is probably it. It fits so quite well. He could not hide his pleasure in the degree of interoperative. thus achieved, and from now on referred always to Frau Shoshua as Claudia. Your Claudia appears to me making bread-pills. It's not very elegant, I should think. It depends on who does it, the schoolmistress would answer.

Starting point is 06:38:30 Claudia, it becomes. Yes, unquestionably, the meal times in the hall with the seven tables had great charm for Hans Castro. He hated to have one come to an end, and his consolation was that soon, in two or three hours, he would be back again. While he was sitting there, it was as though he had never risen. And for the time in between, it was nothing. A short turn, as far as the watercourse or the plats, a little rest on his balcony, no great burden, no serious interruption. Not as though he had to look forward to some interest or effort,

Starting point is 06:39:03 which would not have been so easy to overleap in spirit. Effort was not the rule in the well-regulated Berkhov life. Hans Kastop, when he rose from one moment, meal, could straightway by anticipation begin to rejoice in the next. If indeed rejoicing is not too facile, too pleasant and unequivocal a word for the sentiments with which he looked forward to another meeting with the afflicted fair one. The reader, on the other hand, may very likely find such adjectives the only ones suitable to describe Hans Castorpe's personality or emotions, but we suggest that a young man with a well-regulated conscience and the sense of fitness could

Starting point is 06:39:39 not, whatever else he did, simply rejoice in for our Shoshas proximity. In fact, we who must surely know are willing to assert that he himself would have repudiated any such expression if it had been suggested to him. It is a small detail, yet worthy of mention, that he was growing to have a contempt for certain ways of expressing himself. He went about with that dry flush on his face, and hummed continually under his breath, being in a state of mind when music particularly appeals. He hummed a ditty heard he knew not where, in some evening company or charity concert, sung by some thread of a soprano voice. It turned up now in his memory, a soft nothing that went, One word from thy sweet lips can strangely thrill me. He was about

Starting point is 06:40:29 to go on. It within my heart its lips and raptures fill me. But broke off instead with a disdainful shrug. Idiotic, he said, suddenly finding the tender ditty, altogether tasteless, wishy-washy, and sentimental. He put it from him with manly sobriety, almost with regret. It was the sort of thing to satisfy a young man who had given his heart, as we say, given it wholly legitimately, and with quite definite intentions to some healthy little goose in the flatland, and thus might be justified in abandoning himself to his orthodox and gratifying sensations with all the consequences they entailed. But for him and for his relations with Madame Shosha, we are not responsible for the word relations, it was the word Hans Kastop used, not we.

Starting point is 06:41:17 Such songs had nothing to do with them. Silly, he said sententiously, and put his nose in the air. But after pronouncing this aesthetic judgment, he lay silent in his deck chair, not thinking of anything more suitable to sing in its place. One thing there was which pleased him when he lay listening to the beating of his heart, his corporeal organ, so plainly audible in the ordered silence of the rest period, throbbing loud and peremptorily, as it had done almost ever since he came. The sound no longer annoyed him. For now he need not feel that it is so beat of its own accord, without sense or reason or any reference to his non-corporeal part. He could say, without stretching the truth, that such a connection now existed, or was easily induced. He was, he was,

Starting point is 06:42:05 is aware that he felt an emotion to correspond with the action of his heart. He needed only think of Madame Shosha, and he did think of her, and lo, he felt within himself the emotion proper to the heartbeats. End of Section 21. Section 23 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 23 Chapter 4.

Starting point is 06:42:40 Mounting Misgivings of the Two Grandfather and the boat ride in the twilight. Part 1 The weather was vile. In this respect, Hans Castorp had no luck during the brief term of his visit. It did not snow, but rained all day long, a hateful downpour. Thick mist wrapped the valley, while electric storms, an absurd and uncalled-for phenomenon, considering it was so cold that the heat had been turned on, rolled and reverberated disagreeably through the valley.

Starting point is 06:43:14 Too bad. him said. I thought we might take our luncheons and climb up to the Shatshelp, or something like that. But it seems it is not to happen. Let us hope the last week will be better. But Hans Kastrop answered, Let be. I am not so anxious to undertake anything for the moment. My first excursion was no great success. I find it does me more good just to take the day as it comes, without too much variation. I leave that sort of thing to people who have been up here for years. What do I want a variety in my three weeks' time? He did indeed find his time well taken up, just as he was.

Starting point is 06:43:53 Whatever his hopes, they would come to fruition, or else they would not, here on the spot and not on any Shatsalp. Time did not hang heavy on his hands. Rather he began to feel the end of his stay approach all too near. The second week was passing. Soon two-thirds of his holiday would be gone. The third week would no sooner begin than it would be time to think of packing. The refreshment of his sense of time was long since the thing of the past.

Starting point is 06:44:21 The days rushed on. Yes, in the mass they rushed on, though at the same time each single day stretched out long and longer to hold the crowded secret hopes and fears that filled it to overflowing. Ah, time is a riddling thing, and hard it is to expound its essence. Must we put plain a name to those inward experiences which at once both waited and gave wings to Hans Castorpe's days. We all know them. Their emotional inaneity rang true to type. They would have taken no different course, even had their origin been such as to make applicable the silly song on which he had pronounced his severe aesthetic judgment. Impossible that Madame Shoshah should know nothing of the threads that were weaving

Starting point is 06:45:06 between her and a certain table. Indeed, Hans Castorp definitely, willfully purposed that she should know something, or even, again. good deal. We say willfully because his eyes were open. He was aware that reason and good sense were against it. But when a man is in Hans-Castop state, or the state he was beginning to be in, he longs, above all, to have her of whom he dreams aware that he dreams, let reason and common sense say what they like to the contrary. Thus are we made. So, after it had happened, twice or thrice, that Madame Shoshah, impelled by chance or magnetic attraction, had turned and looked in the direction of Hans Kastop's table, and met each time his eyes fixed upon her, she turned the fourth time

Starting point is 06:45:54 with intent, and met them again. On the fifth occasion, she did not catch him in flagrante. He was not at his post. Yet he straightway felt her eyes upon him, turned, and gazed so ardently that she smiled and looked away. rapture and misgiving filled him at the sight of that smile did she take him for a child very well she should see he cast about for the means to refine upon the position on the sixth occasion when he felt he divined an inner voice whispered him that she was looking he pretended to be absorbed in disgusted contemplation of a pimply dame who had stopped to talk with the great aunt He stuck to his guns for a space of two or three minutes, until he was certain the Kyrgy's eyes had been withdrawn. A marvellous piece of play-acting, which Froucheosha not only might,

Starting point is 06:46:50 but was expressly intended to see through, to the end that she be impressed with Hans Kastop's subtlety and self-control. Then came the following episode. Frou Shosha, between courses, turned carelessly about and surveyed the dining-room. Hans Kastop was on guard. their glances met, she, peering at him with a vaguely mocking look on her face. He, with a determination that made him clench his teeth.

Starting point is 06:47:18 And as they looked, her serviette slipped down from her lap, and was about to fall to the floor. She reached after it nervously, and he felt the motion in all his limbs, so that he half rose from his chair, and was about to spring wildly to her aid across eight yards of space and an intervening table, as though some dire catastrophe must ensue. if the serviet were to touch the floor. She possessed herself of it just in time. Then, still stooping, holding it by the corner, and frowning in evident vexation at the contretemps,

Starting point is 06:47:50 for which she seemed to hold him responsible, she looked back once more and saw him with lifted brows, sitting there poised for a spring. Again, she smiled, and turned away. Hans Castop was in the seventh heaven over this occurrence. True, he had to pay for it for full two days. That is to say, for the space of ten meal-times, Madame Shoshah never looked his way.

Starting point is 06:48:17 She even intermitted her habit of pausing on her entrance to survey the room, and, as it were, present herself to it. That was hard to bear. Yet, since it undoubtedly happened on his account, it preserved the relation between them, if only on its negative side. That was something. He saw how right Yoke-M had.

Starting point is 06:48:38 been in saying that it was hard to get acquainted here, except with one's own table companions. For one brief hour after the evening meal, social relations of a sort did obtain, but they often shrank to twenty minutes' length, and always, Madame Shosha spent the time, whether longer or shorter, with her own circle, in the small salon. Her friends were the hollow-chested man, the whimsical girl with the fuzzy hair, the silent Dr. Blumencol, and the youth with the drooping shoulders. The good Russian table had, it seemed, preempted the room for its own use. Furthermore, Yer Kim was always urging an early withdrawal. He said it was in order to spend full time in the evening cure. But there were perhaps other disciplinary reasons left unspecified,

Starting point is 06:49:26 which his cousin surmised and respected. We have reproached Hans Kastor with being willful, but certainly, whatever the goal toward which his wishes led, it was not that of of social intercourse with Madame Shoshah. He concurred, generally speaking, in the circumstances that militated against it. The relation between him and the young Russian, a tense, though tenuous bond, the product of his assiduous glances, was of an extra-social sort. It entailed, and could entail, no obligations. It could subsist, in his mind, along with a degree of distaste for any social approach. It was one thing for our young friend to call Claudia to account for the beatings of his heart, but quite another for him, the grandson of Hans Lorenz Castorpe,

Starting point is 06:50:14 to be shaken in the smallest degree in the sure inward conviction that this door-slamming, finger-nawing, bread-pill-making foreigner, who carried herself so badly, who lived apart from her husband and without a ring on her finger, careered from one resort to another, that this foreigner was indubitably not. a person for him to cultivate. Not, that is, over and above the secret relation we have indicated. A deep gulf divided their two existences. He felt, he knew, that he was not up to defending her in the face of any recognised social authority. Hans Castrop was, for his own person, quite without arrogance. Yet a larger arrogance, the pride of caste and tradition,

Starting point is 06:50:59 stood written on his brow and in his sleepy-looking eyes, and voiced itself, in the conviction of his own superiority, which came over him when he measured Frau Shoshah for what she was. It was this which he neither could nor wished to shake off. Strangely enough, he first became vividly conscious of his conviction on a day when he heard Frau Shosha speaking in his native tongue. She stood in the dining room after a meal, her hands in the pockets of her sweater, and charmingly struggled to converse in German with another patient, probably arrest all acquaintance. Hans Castorp felt an unwanted thrill.

Starting point is 06:51:37 Never before had he been so proud of his mother tongue. Yet at the same time, experienced a temptation to offer up his pride on the altar of quite a different feeling. The rapture which filled him at the sound of her pretty stammerings and manglings of his speech. In a word, Hans Castorp envisaged in this opening affair between him and the heedless creature who was a member of the Burkhov Society,

Starting point is 06:52:00 no more than a holiday adventure. Before the tribunal of reason, conscience and common sense, it could make no claims to be heard. Principally, of course, because when all was said and done, Frowsha was an ailing woman, feeble, fevered, and tainted within. Her physical condition had much to do with the questionable life she led, as also with Hans Castorpe's instinctive reservations. No, it simply did not occur to him to seek her society. While as for the rest, well, however the thing turned out, it would be over in one way or another inside ten days when he would enter upon his apprenticeship at Tundra and Wilms.

Starting point is 06:52:43 For the moment, however, he had begun to live in and for the emotions, roused in him by the pretty patient, the up and down of suspense, fulfilment or disappointment, characteristic of such a state. he came to regard these feelings as the real meaning and content of his stay. His mood depended wholly upon their event. All the circumstances of life up here favoured their development. For the inviolable daily programme brought the two constantly together.

Starting point is 06:53:14 True, Frau Shoshas Chamber was on a different story from his own, and she performed her cure, so the schoolmistress said, in the general rest hall on the roof. the same in which Captain McClossich had lately turned off the light. But there were the five meal-times, and besides them, innumerable occasions in the daily goings and comings, when not only might they meet, but it was practically unavoidable that they should. And that, Hans Castorpe thought, was all to the good. So was the fact that he had little to do between one occasion and the next, except think about them. He found, indeed, something almost breathless about being thus,

Starting point is 06:53:54 as it were, immured with opportunity, which did not prevent him from employing all manner of devices to improve the position. His charmer came regularly late to meals. He did the same, with intent to way Leha. He dallied over his toilet, was not ready when Yoakim knocked, and let his cousin go on before. He would catch up with him. He would wait until the intuition proper to his state warned him of the right moment, then he would hurry down, not by his own stair, but by the one at the end of the corridor, which would take him past a certain door, number seven. In the first story, every moment of the way, every step of the stair, offered a chance. Any instant the door might open, and in practice it often did. Out she would slip, noiselessly. The door would slam behind her.

Starting point is 06:54:47 She would glide to the stairs. She would pass down ahead of him with her, with her hands. hand up to her braids of hair, or else he would be in front of her, feel her gaze in his back, and experience a thrill as from an ant crawling down it. His bearing, of course, was that of a person unaware of her presence, leading a free and independent existence of his own. He would bury his hands in his pockets, walk with a swagger, cough an entirely unnecessary cough, and strike himself on the chest, anything to manifest his utter unconcern. On two occasions he refined yet further. Already seated at the table, he felt himself with both hands and said in a fine show of irritation, there, I've forgotten my handkerchief.

Starting point is 06:55:35 That means I must trot back again to fetch it, and went back to the end that he and she might meet on the way, since that afforded a keener throb than when she merely walked in front of or behind him. The first time he executed this manoeuvre, she measured him, with a very time. her eyes from a distance, swept him from head to foot, quite bold and unblushing. Then, approaching nearer, turned away indifferently, and passed him by, so that he got but little out of the dimash. The second time she stared him in the face without flinching, almost forbiddingly, even turning her head as they crossed, to follow him with her look. It went through our poor young friend like a knife. We need not pity him, for was it not all his

Starting point is 06:56:22 own doing. But the encounter was gripping at the moment, and even more afterwards, for only in retrospect, was he clear as to what had actually happened. He had never seen Fras Choshas' face so close, so clear in all its details. He could have counted the tiny hairs that stood up from the braid she wore wreathed round her head. They were reddish-blonde with a metallic sheen. No more than a hand-breadth or so of space had been between his face and hers. whose outline and features, peculiar though they were, had been familiar to him as long as he could remember, and spoke to his very soul, as nothing else could in all the world. It was an unusual face, and full of character, for only the unusual seems to us to have character.

Starting point is 06:57:10 Its mystery and strangeness spoke of the unknown north, and it teased the curiosity, because its proportions and characteristics were somehow not very easy to determine. its keynote, probably, was the high bony structure of the prominent cheekbones. They seemed to compress the eyes, which were unusually far apart, and unusually level with the face, and squeezed them into a slightly oblique position, while at the same time they appeared responsible for the soft concavity of the cheek, and this, in turn, to result in the full curve of the slightly pouting lips. Then there were the eyes themselves, the narrow Kyrgyz's eyes, whose shape was yet to Hans Kastop a simple enchantment, and whose colour was the grey blue, or blue-grey of distant mountains.

Starting point is 06:58:01 They had the trick of a sideways, unseeing glance which could sometimes melt them into the very hue of mystery and darkness. These eyes of Claudia, which had gazed so forbiddingly into his very face, and which so awfully resembled Pribyislav hips in shape, expression and colour, that they fairly frightened him. Resumbled was not the word, they were the same eyes.

Starting point is 06:58:25 The breadth, too, of the upper part of the face, the flattened nose, everything, even to the flush in the white skin, the healthy colour of the cheek, which in Frau Shoshas' case, as in so many others, merely counterfeited health and was a superficial effect of the open air cure.

Starting point is 06:58:41 Everything was precisely, Pribislav, and no differently would he have looked at Hans Kastop, were they to meet again, as of old, in the school courtyard? It had been staggering in the extreme. Hans Kastop thrilled at the encounter, yet experienced a mounting uneasiness, like that he felt when he realised how narrow was the proximity that enclosed him and the fair Russian, that the long-forgotten Privislav hip should appear to him in the guise of Frau Shosha and look at him with those Kyrgyz's eyes.

Starting point is 06:59:14 This was to be amured, not with opportunity, but with the inevitable, the unescapable, to such an extent as to fill him with conflicting emotions. It was a situation rich in hope, yet heavy with dread. It gave our young friend a feeling of helplessness, and set in motion a vague instinct to cast about, to grope, and feel for help or counsel. One after another, he mentally summoned up,

Starting point is 06:59:41 various people, the thought of whom might serve him as some sort of mental support. There was the good, the upright Joachim, firm as a rock, yet whose eyes in these past months had come to hold such a tragic shadow, and who had never used to shrug his shoulders, as he did so often now. Yoak him with the blue Peter in his pocket, as Froucester called the receptacle. When Hans Castorp thought of her hard, crabbed face, it made him shiver. Yes, there was Joachim, who kept constantly at Huffrat Berens to let him get away and go down to the longed-forced service in the plain, the flatland, as the healthy, normal world was called up here, with a faint yet perceptible nuance of contempt. Yo-Kim served the cure single-mindedly, to the end that he might arrive sooner at his goal, and save some of the time which, those up here, so wantonly flung away.

Starting point is 07:00:37 served it unquestioningly for the sake of speedy recovery, but also, Hans Castrop detected, for the sake of the cure itself, which, after all, was a service like another. And was not duty-duty, wherever performed? Joachim invariably went upstairs after only a quarter-hour in the drawing-rooms, and this military precision of his was a prop to the civilian laxity of his cousin, who would otherwise be likely to loiter unprofitably below, with his eye on the company in the small salon.

Starting point is 07:01:11 But Hans Castor was convinced there was another and private reason why Joachim withdrew so early. He had known it since the time he saw his cousin's face take on the mottled pallor and his mouth assumed the pathetic twist. He perfectly understood, for Marustia was almost always there in the evening, laughter-loving Marustia, with the little ruby on her charmed hand, the handkerchief with the orange scent, and the swelling bosom, tainted within. Hans Castob comprehended that it was her presence which drove Yoakim away, precisely because it so

Starting point is 07:01:48 strongly, so fearfully, drew him toward her. Was Yoakim too immured, and even worse off than himself, in that he had five times a day to sit at the same table with Maristia and her orange-scented handkerchief? However that might be, it was clear that Yo-Kim was preoccupied with his own troubles. The thought of him could afford his cousin no mental support. That he took refuge in daily flight was a credit to him, but that he had to flee was anything but reassuring to Hans Kastop, who even began to feel that Yokim's good example of faithful service of the cure and the initiation he owed to his cousin's experience might also have their bad side. Anne's Castorp had not been up here three weeks, but it seemed longer, and the daily routine which Yoakim so piously observed had begun to take on, in his eyes, a character of sanctity.

Starting point is 07:02:44 When, from the point of view of those up here, he considered life as lived down in the flatland, it seemed somehow queer and unnatural. He had grown skilled in the handling of his rugs and the art of making a proper bundle, a sort of mummy of himself, when lying on his balcony on cold days. He was almost as skillful as Yoakim, and yet, down below, there was no soul who knew ought of such an art, or the practice of it. How strange, he thought,

Starting point is 07:03:13 and yet at the same moment wondered at himself, for finding it strange, and there surged up again that uneasy sensation of groping for support. He thought of Hofrat Berens, and his professional advice, bestowed Sine pecuniiae that he should, while he was up here, order his life like the other patients, even to the taking of his temperature.

Starting point is 07:03:35 He thought of Setembrini, and of how he had laughed at the same advice, and quoted something out of the magic flute. Did thinking of either of these two afford him any moral support? Offrat Berens was a white-head man, old enough to be Hans Castop's father. He was the head of the establishment, the highest authority. And it was of fatherly authority that the young man now felt an uneasy need. But no, it would not do. He could not think with childlike confidingness of the Hofrat. The physician had buried his wife up here,

Starting point is 07:04:07 and been brought so low by grief as almost to lose his mind. Then he had stopped on to be near her grave, and because he himself was somewhat infected. Was he sound again? Was he single-mindedly bent on making his patients whole, so that they could go back to service in the world below? His cheeks had a purple hue. He looked fevered.

Starting point is 07:04:28 That might be only the end. effect of the air up here. Hans Castorpe, without fever, so far as he could judge without a thermometer, felt the same dry heat in his face, day in, day out. Of course, when one heard the Hofrat talk, one might easily conclude he had fever. There was something not quite right about it. It all sounded very jovial and lively, but on the whole forced, particularly when one thought of the purple cheeks and the watery eyes, which seemed to be still weeping for his wife. Hans Castorpe recalled what Setembrini had said about the Hofrat's vices and chronic depression that might have been malicious, it might have been sheer windiness,

Starting point is 07:05:08 but he did not find it sustained or fortified him to think of Hofrat Berens. Then there was Setimbrini himself, of course, the chronic oppositionist, the windbag, the homo-humanist, as he stalled himself. Hans Castorp thought him well over, with his gift of the gab, his florid harangue on the combination of dullness and disease, and how he, Hans Castorpe, have been taken to task for calling it a dilemma for the human intelligence. What about him? Would the thought of him be any way efficacious? Hans Castrop recalled how several times in the extraordinarily vivid dreams that visited his sleep in this place, he had taken umbrage at the dry and subtle smile curling the Italian's lip,

Starting point is 07:05:51 beneath the flowing moustache. How he had railed at him for a hand-organ man and tried to shove him away, because he was a disturbing influence. But that was in his dreams. The waking Hans Castorpe was no such matter, but a much less untrammeled person. Not disinclined either, on the whole, to try out the influence upon him of this novel human type with its critical animus and acumen,

Starting point is 07:06:15 despite the fact that he found the Italian both carping and garrulous. After all, Setembrini had called himself a pedagogue. Obviously he was anxious to exercise influence, and Hans Castorpe, for his part, fairly yearned to be influenced, though of course not to an extent which should cause him to pack his trunk and leave before his time, as Setimbrini had in all seriousness proposed. Placket Experi, he thought to himself with a smile. So much Latin he had, without calling himself a homo-humanus.

Starting point is 07:06:48 The upshot was that he kept his eye on Setimbrini, listened keenly and critically to what he had to say when they met on their prescribed walks to the bench on the mountainside, or down to the plats, or wherever and whenever opportunity offered. Other occasions were there too, for instance, at the end of a meal set and briny would rise from table before anyone else and saunter across among seven tables in his checked trousers, a toothpick between his lips, to where the cousins sat. He did this in defiance of law and custom, standing there in a graceful attitude with his legs crossed, talking and gesticulating with a toothpick.

Starting point is 07:07:25 or he would draw up a chair and sit down at the corner of the table between Hans Castorp and the schoolmistress or between Hans Castorpe and Miss Robinson and look on while they ate their pudding which he seemed to have foregone. May I beg for admission into this charmed circle? He would say, shaking hands with the cousins and comprehending the rest of the table in a sweeping bow.

Starting point is 07:07:48 My brewer over there, not to mention the despairing gaze of the breweress, but really this head. Herr Magnus, just now he has been delivering a discourse on folk psychology. Shall I tell you what he said? The Fatherland, it is true, is one enormous barracks. But all the same, it's got a lot of solid capacity. It's genuine. I wouldn't change it for the fine manners of the rest of them. What could a fine manners to be if I'm cheated right and left? And more of the same kind. I am at the end of my patience. And opposite me, I have a poor creature with churchyard roses blooming in

Starting point is 07:08:25 her cheeks, an old maid from Siebenbergin, who never stops talking about her brother-in-law, a man we none of us either know or wish to know. I could stand it no longer. I shook their dust from my feet. I bolted. You raised your flag and took to your heels, Froustorff stated. Precisely, shouted Sarton Brini. I fled with my flag. Ah, what an apt phrase. I see I've come to the right place. Nobody else here knows how to coin phrases like that. May I be permitted to inquire after the state of your health, Frasdor? It was frightful to see Frasdor preen herself. Good land, she said. It is always the same, you know, yourself, two steps forward and three back. When you have been sitting here five months, along comes the old man and tucks on another six. It is like the torment of Tantalus.

Starting point is 07:09:16 Shove and shove and think you are getting to the top. Ah, how delightful of you. To give poor old tantalus a new job, and let him roll the stone uphill for a change. I call that true benevolence. But what are those mysterious reports I have been hearing of you, Froustor? There are tales going about, tales about doubles, astral bodies and the like. Up to now I have lent them no credence, but this latest story puzzles me, I confess. I know you are poking fun at me, Froustor stated. Not for an instant. I beg you to set my mind addressed about this dark side of your life. After that it would be time to jest. Last night, between half-past nine and ten, I was taking a little exercise in the garden. I looked up at the row of balconies. There was your light gleaming through the

Starting point is 07:10:06 dark. You are performing your cure, led by the dictates of duty and reason. Ah, thought I, there lies our charming invalid, obeying the rules of the house for the sake of an early return to the arms of her waiting husband. And now what do I hear? That you were seen at that very hour at the Kirkhouse in the cinematographer. He said in Brini gave the word the Italian pronunciation, with the accent on the fourth syllable. And afterwards, in the cafe, enjoying punch and kisses, and Proustore wriggled and giggled into her serviette, nudged Joachim and the silent Dr. Blumenkull, in the ribs, winked with coy confidingness, and altogether gave a perfect exhibition of fatuous complacency. She was in the habit of leaving the light burning on her balcony

Starting point is 07:10:53 and stealing off to seek distraction in the quarter below. Her husband, meanwhile, in Kahnstadt, awaited her return. She was not the only patient who practiced this duplicity. And, went on Settembrini, that you are enjoying those kisses in the company of whom do you think, in the company of Captain McClossich, from Bucharest. They say he wears a corset.

Starting point is 07:11:18 But that is little to the point. "'I conjure you, madam, to tell me, have you a double? "'Was it your earthly part which lay there alone on your balcony, "'while your spirit reveled below with Captain McClosage and his kisses?' "'Fraustor wreathed and ridled as though she were being tickled. "'One asks oneself, had it not been better the other way about?' "'Certainer,' said in Brinie went on, "'you enjoying the kisses by yourself, and the rescuer with Captain McClossich.'

Starting point is 07:11:47 "'Tee-he,' tittered Froustor. "'Have the ladies and gentlemen heard the latest?' "'The Italian went on, without pausing for breath. "'Somebody has been flown away with, by the devil. "'Or, to speak literally, by his mama, "'a very determined lady. "'I quite took to her. "'It was young Schneerman, Anton Schneerman,

Starting point is 07:12:08 "'who sat at Mademoiselle Clefelt's table. "'You see, his place is empty. "'It will soon be filled up again. "'I am not worried about that, "'but Anton is off on the wings of, of the wind, in the twinkling of an eye, wrapped away before he knew where he was. Sixteen years old, and had been up here a year and a half, with six months to go. But how did it happen? Who knows? Perhaps somebody dropped a little word to Madame, his mother. Anyhow, she got

Starting point is 07:12:38 wind of his goings on, in Baco, etc., she appears unannounced on the scene, some three heads taller than I am, white-haired and exceeding wrath, fetches Herr Anton a couple of boxes on the ear, takes him by the collar and puts him on the train. If he is going to the dogs, she says, he can do it just as well down below. And off they go. Everybody with an ear-shot laughed. End of Section 23. Section 24 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. 24. Chapter 4. Mounting Misgivings of the two grandfathers and the boat ride in the twilight. Part 2

Starting point is 07:13:32 Hairset Mbrini had such a droll way of telling a story. Despite his contemptuous attitude toward the society of the place, he always knew everything that went on. He knew the name and circumstances of each patient. He knew that such and such a person had been operated on for rib resection, had it on the best authority that from the autumn onward, no one with a temperature of more than 101.3 degrees would be admitted into the establishment. He told them how last night the little dog, belonging to Madame Capizulius, from Mitalin stepped on the button of the electric signal on her mistress's night table and occasioned much commotion and running hither and yon,

Starting point is 07:14:16 particularly because Madame Capizulius had been found not alone, but in the society of a Cessor Dostmund from Friedrichshaagen. Even Dr. Blumenkoll had to laugh at that. Pretty Marustia well-night choked in her orange-scented handkerchief, and Froustor yelled with laughter, holding her breast with both hands. But to the cousins, Ludovico Cetimbrini talked of himself and his early life, whether on the walks they took together, or during the evening in the salon, or perhaps in the dining-room itself, after a meal,

Starting point is 07:14:49 when most of the patients had left and the three sat together at their end of the table, while the waitresses cleared away, and Hans Castob smoked his Maria Mancini, which in the third week had regained a little of its savour. He was critical of what he heard, and often he felt put off, yet he listened receptively to the Italian's talk, for it opened to his understanding a world utterly new and strange. Setimbrini spoke of his grandfather, a Milanese lawyer, but even more a patriot

Starting point is 07:15:20 with something of the political agitator and orator and journalist to boot. He too, like his grandson, had always been in the opposition, though he had been able to perform his role upon a larger stage than had Ludvico. The latter remarked with some bitterness that his own activities had been confined

Starting point is 07:15:39 to heckling and castigating the follies and frailties of the guests at the International Senatorium Berkov and to protest against them in the name of the free and joyous human spirit. But his grandfather had had his finger in the forming of governments. He had conspired against Austria and the Holy Alliance, which had dismembered his native land, and then held it in the heavy bond of servitude. He had been a zealous member of certain

Starting point is 07:16:05 secret societies that had spread over Italy. A carbonaro, said Imbrini, explained, suddenly dropping his voice, as though it might still be dangerous to utter the word. In fact, from his grandson's narrative, the two hearers got a picture of a dark and tempest-tossed figure, a ringleader, political agitator and conspirator. Despite all their pains, they did not quite succeed in hiding a feeling of mistrust, even repulsion. True, the circumstances had been extraordinary. What they heard had happened long ago, almost a hundred years. It was history, and they were familiar in theory, particularly from ancient history, with the traditional. traditional figure of the tyrant-hater and liberator, such as they now heard of, though they had never dreamed of being brought into actual human contact with him like this.

Starting point is 07:16:57 Setumbrini's grandfather, so they were told, united with his conspiratorial zeal, a profound love for his native land, which it was his dream to see free and united. Indeed, it was out of this very combination as a natural consequence that his revolutionary activities flowed. and how strange this mingling of rebellion and patriotism seemed to the cousins, in whose minds an abiding sense of order was on an equal footing with their love of country. But they privately admitted, nonetheless, that at that time and in that situation, it might have been conceivably possible that rebellion should go paired with civic virtue, and law-abidingness lie down with lazy indifference to the public wheel.

Starting point is 07:17:41 But Grandfather Grizepi had been not only an Italian patriot, he had been fellow-citizen and brother-in-arms to any people struggling for its liberties. Thus, after the shipwreck of a certain plot hatched in Turin for the overthrow of the military and civil government, a plot in which he had been deeply involved, he had escaped by a hair's breath, the clutches of Metterling's hirelings, and spent the time of his exile, fighting and bleeding, first in Spain for the cause of constitutionalism, then in Greece for the independence of the Hellenic peoples. It was in Greece that Setembrini's father had seen the light, which probably accounted for his being a humanist and lover of classical antiquity. His mother had been of German stock.

Starting point is 07:18:27 Setimbrini had married her in Switzerland and taken her about with him in his further adventurous career. He had been allowed, after ten years of exile, to return to Milan, where he had practiced his profession, without for a moment ceasing to labour with voice and pen in verse and prose for the establishment of a United Republic and to draw up subversive programmes characterised by dictatorial ardour in which were promulgated in the clearest style

Starting point is 07:18:54 the unification of the liberated people and the attainment of general felicity. One detail mentioned by the grandson made a profound impression upon Hans Castor. Grandfather Guizepi, to the day of his death, wore black. In token, he said, of his mourning for the state of the fatherland, languishing in misery and servitude. Hans Kastorp, at this piece of information, thought of his own grandfather, as he had once or twice before during Settembrini's narrative. He, too, for as long as his grandson had known him, wore black clothes. But for how different a reason? Hans Lorenz Kastorp had worn the quaint old-fashioned to indicate his oneness with a bygone time,

Starting point is 07:19:38 and his essential lack of sympathy with the present. Warn it up to the end of his days, when he had returned in death to his true and adequate presentment with the starched rough. Certainly these were two strikingly different kinds of grandfather. Hans Castor pondered, his eyes fixed in a stare, cautiously shaking his head in a way that might as well be taken for a sign of admiration for Guzepi Settimbrini as for the opposite.

Starting point is 07:20:06 He honourably refrained from judging, what he did not understand, but simply made mental note of the contrast and let it go at that. He could see the narrow head of old Hans Lorenz, as it bent musing over the pale gold rim of the christening basin, that symbol of the passing and the abiding, of continuity through change. He had his mouth open, hands cast up knew the words great, great, great, were about to issue from it. The somber syllables, which always reminded him, of places where one walked with bent head and reverent gait. And then he saw Guseppe set in Brini, with the trickler on his arm, waving his sabre, and breathing a vow to heaven, with dark gaze flung aloft, as he stormed the heights

Starting point is 07:20:51 of despotism at the head of a liberty-loving host. Well, he thought, each of them had his fine and splendid side. He made the greater effort to be fair, because he knew himself to be partisan on personal or partly personal grounds. For grandfather set in Brini, he, he was a man. He made the had fought to obtain political rights, whereas the other grandfather, or his ancestors, had originally had all the rights, and the scoundrels had taken them away from him, in the course of the centuries, by violence or petifoggery. So both grandfathers had worn mourning, the one in the north and the one in the south, and both in the same idea, namely to put a great gulf between them and the evil present. But whereas the one had assumed it, in token of his pious reverence,

Starting point is 07:21:38 for the past and the dead, to whom he felt himself with his whole being to belong, the other had worn it as a sign of rebellion, in the name of progress, and in the spirit of hostility toward the past. Yes, these were two different worlds. As haresed in briny talked, and hands cast upstood, as it were, between them, and cast his critical eye upon one and upon the other, they called back to his conscious mind a scene from his own past life. He saw himself rowing on a lake in Holstein one late summer evening. The sun was down, the almost full moon rising above the bushes that bordered the lake. He rode alone and slowly over the quiet waters,

Starting point is 07:22:19 gazing to right and left at a scene fantastic as any dream. In the west it was still broad day, with a fixed and glassy air. But in the east he looked into a moonlit landscape, wreathed in the magic of rising mists, and equally convincing to his bewildered sense. The strange combination lasted some brief quarter-hour before the balance finally settled in favour of the night and the moon. All that time, Hans Castorpe's dazzled eyes went shifting in lively amazement from one scene to the other, from day to night and back again to day. The picture returned to him now.

Starting point is 07:22:59 At the same time, the thought crossed his mind that lawyer set in Brini could scarcely have been much of a jurist, considering his other occupations. and the extended sphere of his activities. His grandson, as severated, however, and Hans Kastop found it credible that the grandfather had been from early childhood down to the last day of his life, inspired by the fundamental principle of justice. Our hero, all heavy-headed as he was,

Starting point is 07:23:26 and organically preoccupied by the sixth-course Berkov meal he had just eaten, made an effort to understand what Setembrini meant when he called this principle the source and food, found of liberty and progress. Progress up to now had had to do, in Hans Kastop's mind, with such things as the 19th century development of cranes and lifting tackle. He was accordingly gratified to learn that grandfather Settimbrini had not underestimated the importance of such matters. Of course, his own grandfather hadn't either. The Italian paid a tribute to the native land of his two listeners for the invention of gunpowder, whereby the armour of feudalism had

Starting point is 07:24:07 been thrown on the scrap heap, and the printing press, which had made possible the democratic propagation of ideas, and the propagation of democratic ideas, which were one and the same. For these good gifts he praised Germany, praised her for her past, but awarded his own country the palm, because she had been the first to unfurl the banner of freedom, culture and enlightenment at a time when all other lands were wrapped in the darkness of superstition and slavery. Yet in paying due honour, as upon their first meeting, at the bench by the watercourse, to commerce and technology, Hans Katzob's own field, set in Brini apparently did so not for the sake of these forces themselves, but purely with reference to their

Starting point is 07:24:51 significance for the ethical development of mankind. For such a significance, he declared, he joyfully ascribed to them. Technical progress, he said, gradually subjugated nature, by developing roads and telegraphs, minimizing climatic differences, and by the means of communication which it created, proved itself the most reliable agent in the task of drawing together the peoples of the earth, of making them acquainted with each other, of building bridges to compromise, of destroying prejudice, or finally bringing about the universal brotherhood of man.

Starting point is 07:25:26 Humanity had sprung from the depths of fear, darkness and hatred, but it was emerging, it was moving, moving onward and upward, toward a goal of fellow-feeling and enlightenment, of goodness and joyousness. And upon this path, he said, the industrial arts were the vehicle conducive to the greatest progress. But all this made a confused impression on Hans Castor. Here, said Jimbrini, seemed to bring together, in a single breath, categories which in the young man's mind had heretofore been as the poles asunder, for example, technology and morals.

Starting point is 07:25:59 positively he made the statement that Christ had been the first to proclaim the principle of equality and union, that the printing presses had propagated the doctrine, and that finally the French Revolution had elevated it into a law, all which our poor young friend found very muddling. He scarce knew why, though the feeling was definite enough in all conscience, and though hair-setimbrini had couched his thought in the clearest and roundest of periods. once, the Italian went on, once only in his lifetime, and that, in his early manhood, had his grandfather known what it was to feel profound joy. That was at the time of the Paris-July Revolution. He had gone about proclaiming to Allens Sundry that some day men would place those three days

Starting point is 07:26:46 alongside the six days of creation and reverence them alike. Hans Castorpe felt utterly dumbfounded. Involuntarily he slapped the table with his hand. To compare those three summer days of the year 1830, when the Parisians had taken out of themselves a new constitution, to the six in which God had divided the land from the water and created the lights in the firmament of heaven, as well as flowers, trees, birds and fishes, and all other living things. That seemed to him to be going too far. He talked it over later with Cousin Yokim, and gave clear expression to his opinion that it really was pretty thick,

Starting point is 07:27:24 that he, Hans Castorpe, for his part, founded positively offensive. But still open-minded, at least in the sense that he enjoyed the experiment he was making, he restrained the objections which his sense of fitness would have raised against Setimbrini's scheme of things. Restrained them on the theory that what seemed sedition to him might to another seem dauntless courage. And what he called bad taste might have been, in that far-off time and circumstance, but a display of the noble excesses of a high-hearted nature. For instance, when grandfather Settimbrini called the barricades the people's throne, and talked about dedicating the Berger's Pike

Starting point is 07:28:04 on the altar of humanity. Hans Gastop knew, without putting it into so many words, why he lent near to Herr Settembrini. Partly it was out of a sense of duty, though also out of that holiday mood of taking everything as it came, rejecting nothing, in the knowledge that another day or so he would spread his wings and fly back to the wanted order of things. Yes, he knew it was largely the promptings of conscience to which he hearkened. To be precise, the promptings of a conscience not altogether easy. As he sat listening to the Italian, one leg crossed over the other, drawing at his Maria Mancini, or when the three of them climbed the hill from the English quarter.

Starting point is 07:28:50 Two principles, according to the Septimbrinian cosmogony, were in perpetual constern. conflict for possession of the world. Force and justice, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge, the law of permanence and the law of change, of ceaseless fermentation, issuing in progress. One might call the first the Asiatic, the second the European principle, for Europe was the theatre of rebellion, the sphere of intellectual discrimination and transforming activity, whereas the East embodied a conception of quiescence and immobility. There was no doubt as to which of the two would finally triumph.

Starting point is 07:29:30 It would be the power of enlightenment, the power that made for rational advance and development. For human progress snatched up ever more peoples with it on its brilliant course. It conquered more and more territory in Europe itself, and was already pressing Aesiawards. Much still remained to be done. Sublime exertions were still demarcations, were still demarcation, from those spirits who had received the light.

Starting point is 07:29:54 Then only the day would come, when thrones would crash, and outworn religions crumble, in those remaining countries of Europe, which had not already enjoyed the blessings of 18th century enlightenment, nor yet of an upheaval like 1789. But the day would come, said, with his suave smile. It would come, he repeated, if not on the wings of doves, then on the pinions of eagles.

Starting point is 07:30:18 And the dawn would break over Europe. the dawn of universal brotherhood, in the name of justice, science, and human reason. It would bring in its train a new Holy Alliance, the Alliance of the Democratic peoples of Europe, in opposition to that other Holy Alliance, the thrice infamous organ of princes and cabinets, which Grandfather Guseppe had personally regarded as his deadly foe. In a word, it would bring in its train the Republic of the world.

Starting point is 07:30:47 But before that could happen, the Asiatic Prizes. principle must be met and crushed in its very stronghold and vital centre. That was to say, in Vienna. Austria must be crushed, crushed and dismembered, first to take vengeance for the past, and second to lead in the new law of justice with truth on earth. Hans Kastob did not care for this last drift in Hesetimbrini's sonorous flow of words. He mistrusted it. It sounded too much like a personal or national animus. As for Joachim Zimson, whenever the Italian fell into this vein, he scowled and turned away his head, or sought to create a diversion by saying it was time for the rescue. Neither did Hans Castob feel obliged to listen when the conversation took these devious paths.

Starting point is 07:31:36 They clearly fell outside the limits within which his conscience prompted him to profit by hair-set-in-Brinni's words. Yet conscience still urged him to continue in the effort, so clearly that often, as he was a man, opportunity arose, he would even invite the Italian to discourse on the subject of his ideas. Those ideas, ideals and efforts of the aspiring will were, Sertimbrini said, traditional in his family. He inherited them. Grandfather, son and grandson, each in his turn, had dedicated to them their entire lives and all their spiritual energy. The father, in his own way, had done so no less than Grandfather Guseppe. True, he had not been a political agitated. or active, competent in the cause of freedom, but a quiet and sensitive scholar, a humanist

Starting point is 07:32:23 sitting at his writing desk. But what, after all, was humanism, if not love of humankind? And by that token also, political activity, rebellion against all that tended to defile or degrade our conception of humanity. He had been accused of exaggerating the importance of form. But he who cherished beauty of form did so because it enhanced human dignity. Whereas the Middle Ages, in striking contrast, had been sunk not only in superstitious hostility to the human spirit, but also in a shameful formlessness. From the very beginning he had defended the right of the human being to his earthly interests, to liberty of thought and joy in life, and insisted that we could safely leave heaven to take care of itself. Humanism had not Prometheus been the earliest

Starting point is 07:33:12 humanist, and was he not identical with the Satan hymned by Kaducci? if the cousins had only heard that arch-enemy of the church at Bologna pouring the vials of his sarcasm, upon the Christian sentimentalism of the Romanticism, upon Manzoni's Inisacri, upon the shadows and moonlight poetry of the Romantic movement, which he had compared to lunar heaven's pallid nun, per Bacho, that was a joy to listen to, and they ought to have heard Caducci interpretante, celebrating him as the citizen of a great city-estate, who had spoken out against asceticism and the negation of life, and on the side of the world transforming and reforming deed.

Starting point is 07:33:54 It was not the sickly and mysticogic figure of Beatrice, which the poet had celebrated under the name of Donna Gentile Epiatusa. Rather it had been his wife, who represented in the poem the principle of worldly knowledge and practical work-a-day life. Thus Hans Castorpe came to hear something about Dante, and certainly from the lips of authority, he was not too much inclined to believe implicitly all setembrini said he considered him too much of a windbag for that still it was an interesting conception this of dante as the wide-awake citizen of a great metropolis

Starting point is 07:34:30 and now setembrini went on to speak of himself and to explain how the tendencies of his immediate forebears the political from his grandfather the humanistic from his father had united in his own person to produce the writer and independent man of letters for literature was, after all, nothing else than the combination of humanism and politics, a conjunction the more immediate in that humanism itself was politics and politics humanism. Hans Kastorp did his best at this point to listen and comprehend, in the hope of finally learning wherein had consisted the crass ignorance of Magnus, the Brewer, and finding out what else literature actually was, above and beyond beautiful characters. Setembrini asked his audience whether they had ever ever, heard of Brunetto, Brunetto Latini, a Florentine notary, who, about the year 1250, had written

Starting point is 07:35:23 a book on the subject of the virtues and the vices. He it was, who had sharpened the wits of the Florentines, taught them the art of language, and how to guide their state according to the rules of politics. "'There you have it, gentlemen, there you have it,' said Inbrey cried with ardour, and enlarged upon the cult of the word, the art of eloquence, which he called the triumph of the human genius. For the word was the glory of mankind. It alone imparted dignity to life. Not only was humanism bound up with the word and with literature, but so also was humanity itself, man's ancient dignity and manly self-respect. You heard, didn't you, Hans Castorpe said later to his

Starting point is 07:36:05 cousin. You heard him say that literature is a question of beautiful words. I spotted it directly. from which it followed that politics too is bound up with the word, or rather it followed directly from the Union, the unity that subsisted between humanity and literature, for the beautiful word begets the beautiful deed. Two hundred years ago, Settumbrini said, you had a poet in your country, a magnificent old chatterbox who set great store by good handwriting

Starting point is 07:36:35 because he thought it must induce a good style. He should have gone a step further, and said that a good style could lead to good deeds, said in Brini added. For writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection, derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dignity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics.

Starting point is 07:37:03 Yes, they were all one, one in the same force, one and the same idea, and all of them could be comprehended in a single, word. This word? Ah, it was already familiar to their ears. Yet he would wager the cousins, had never before rightly grasped its meaning and its majesty. The word was civilization. And as Setimbrini brought it out, he flung his small, yellow-skinned right-hand in the air,

Starting point is 07:37:32 as though proposing a toast. Well, all that young Hans Castorop found worth listening to, not precisely overwhelming, of a value largely experimental, but still worth listening to. He said as much to Joachim Zimson later, but Joachim had his thermometer in his mouth and could not reply to his cousin, nor had he afterwards leisure, when, on taking it out, he read the figure and entered it in his notebook. But Hans Castor good-naturedly took cognizance of Setembrini's point of view, and tested it by his own inner experiences,

Starting point is 07:38:07 from which self-examination it principally appeared that the waking man has an advantage of the sleeping and dreaming one. For whereas the sleeping-hands castorpe had more than once upbraided the organ-grinder to his face and done his utmost to drive him away because he felt to him a disturbing influence, the waking one lent him an attentive year and made an honest effort to minimise the opposition which his mentor's ideas and conceptions persistently aroused in him. for it cannot be denied that there was such opposition,

Starting point is 07:38:37 some of it such as he must always have felt from the very beginning, the rest arising from the particular situation and is partly vicarious, partly secret, and personal experiences among those up here. What a creature is man, how idly his conscience betrays him, how easy it is for him to think he hears, even in the voice of duty, a licence to passion.

Starting point is 07:39:02 Hans Castorpe listened to hair, Settimbrini out of a sense of duty and fairness in the idea of hearing both sides. With the best of intentions, he tested the latter's views on the subject of the Republic, reason and the Bello Stilea. He was entirely receptive, and all the while he was finding it more and more permissible to give his thoughts and dreams free reign in another and quite opposite direction. Indeed, to give expression to all that we suspect or divine, we think it not unlikely that Hans Castorpe Harkened to Herr Settembrinis D'Ey's

Starting point is 07:39:34 discourse in order to get from his own conscience an indulgence which otherwise might not have been forthcoming. But what or who was it that drew down the other side of the scales when weighed over against patriotism, bell letters and the dignity of man? It was Claudia Shosha, Kyrgyz-eyed, relaxed and tainted within. When he thought of her, the thinking is far too tame a word to characterize the impulse that turned all his being in her direction, it was as though he was sitting again in his boat, on the lake at Holstein, looking with dazzled eyes from the glassy daylight of the western shore to the mist and moonbeams that wrapped the eastern heavens.

Starting point is 07:40:22 End of Section 24. Section 25 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 25 Chapter 4 The Thermometer Part 1 Hans Castop's week here

Starting point is 07:40:47 ran from Tuesday to Tuesday for on a Tuesday he had arrived two or three days before he had gone down to the office and paid his second weekly bill. A modest account of around 160 francs, modest and cheap enough even without taking into consideration the nature of some of the advantages of a stay-up

Starting point is 07:41:07 up here. Advantage is priceless in themselves, though for that very reason they could not be included in the bill, and even without counting extras like the fortnightly concert and Dr. Krakowski's lectures which might conceivably have been included. The sum of 160 francs represented simply and solely the actual hospitality extended by the Berghoff to Hans Castel, his comfortable lodgment and his five stupendous meals. much. It is rather cheap than otherwise, remarked the guest to the old inhabitant. You cannot complain of being overcharged up here. You need around 650 francs a month for board and lodging, treatment included. Let us assume that you spend another 30 francs for tips, if you are

Starting point is 07:41:54 decent and like to have friendly faces about you. That makes 680. Good. Of course, I know there are fixed fees and other sorts of small expenses. Toilet articles, tobacco, dry, and excursions, now and then a bill for shoes or clothing. Very good. But all that won't bring it up to a thousand francs. Say what you like. Not 800 even. That isn't 10,000 francs a year. Certainly not more. That is what it costs you. Mental arithmetic, very fair, Yer Kim said. I never knew you were such a shot at doing sums in your head. And how broad-minded of you to calculate it by the year like that? You've learnt something since you've been up here. But your figure is too high. I don't smoke, and I certainly don't expect to buy any suits while I'm up here.

Starting point is 07:42:41 Thank you. Then it would be lower still, Hans Castorp answered, rather confused. Why, indeed, he should have included tobacco and a new wardrobe in his calculation of Yoakim's expenses is a puzzle. But, for the rest, his brilliant display of arithmetic had simply been so much dust thrown in his cousin's eyes, for here, as elsewhere, his mental processes were rather slow than fast. And the truth is that a previous calculation with a pencil and paper underlay his present facility. One night on his balcony, for even took the evening cure out of doors now, like the rest, a sudden thought had struck him, and he had got out of his comfortable chair to fetch pencil and paper. As the result of some simple figuring, he concluded that his cousin,

Starting point is 07:43:28 or, speaking generally, a patient at the Berkhov, would need 12,000 francs a year to cover the sum total of his expenses. Thus he amused himself by establishing the fact that he, Hans Castorpe, could amply afford to live up here, if he chose, being a man of 18,000 or 19,000 francs yearly income. He had, as we have said, paid his second weekly bill three days before, and accordingly found himself in the middle of the third and last week of his appointed stay. The coming Sunday, as he remarked to himself and to his cousin, would see the performance of another of the fortnightly concerts, and the Monday, another lecture by Dr. Krakowski. Then, on Tuesday or Wednesday, he would be off, and Joachim would be left up here alone.

Starting point is 07:44:15 Poor Joachim, for whom Radamantis would prescribe God-know-know-many more months. Already there came a shade over his gentle black eyes whenever Hans Castorpe's swiftly approaching departure was spoken of. Where in heaven's name had the holiday gone? It had rushed past. It had flown. and left one wondering how. For, after all, three weeks, twenty-one days, is a considerable stretch of time, too long at least for one to see the end at the beginning. And now, on a sudden,

Starting point is 07:44:47 there remained of it no more than a miserable three or four days, nothing worth mentioning. They would, it was true, comprehend the lecture and the concert, those two recurrent variations in the weekly programme, and thus waited might move a little more slowly. but on the other hand they would be taken up with packing and leave-taking. Three weeks up here was as good as nothing at all. They had all told him so in the beginning.

Starting point is 07:45:14 The smallest unit of time was the month, Setembrini had said. And as Hans Castor-Opstay was less than that, it amounted to nothing. It was a weekend visit, as Hofrat Berens put it. Had the swift flight of time up here, anything to do with the uniformly accelerated rate of organic combustion. At any rate, here was a consoling thought for Joachim during his five remaining months, in case he really got off with five. But Hans Castorpe felt that during these three weeks, they ought to have paid more attention, to have kept better watch, as Yoakim did, in his daily measurings, during which the seven minutes seemed like quite a considerable stretch of time.

Starting point is 07:45:55 Hans Castop grieved for his cousin, reading in his eyes his pain at the approaching parting. He felt the strongest possible sympathy at the thought of the poor chaps having to stop on up here when he himself was down in the flatland, helping bring the nations together through the development of commerce and communications. His own regret was at times so lively

Starting point is 07:46:16 as to burn in his breast and cause him to doubt whether he would have the heart when the time came to leave Yoakim alone. And this vicarious suffering was probably the reason why he himself referred less and less to his impending departure it was Joachim who came back to it, for Hans Castor, moved by native tact and delicacy, seemed to wish to forget it, up to the last moment.

Starting point is 07:46:40 At least, Yochim said more than once in these days, let us hope it has done you good to be up here, and that you will feel the benefit when you are at home again. I'll remember you to everybody, Hans Castrop responded, and say you are coming back in five months at the outside. Done me good? if it has done me good to be up here, I should like to think so. Some improvement must surely have taken place, even in this short time. I have received a great many new impressions, new in every sense of the word, very stimulating, but a good deal of strain too, physically and mentally. I have not

Starting point is 07:47:18 at all the feeling of having really got acclimatized, which would certainly be the first necessary step toward improvement. Maria, thank goodness, is her old self. For Several days now I have been able to get the aroma. But my handkerchief still becomes red from time to time when I use it. And this damned heat in my face, and these idiotic palpitations, I shall apparently have them up to the last minute. No, it seems I can't talk about being acclimatized. How could I, either, in so short a time?

Starting point is 07:47:51 It would take longer than this to overcome the change of atmosphere and adjust oneself perfectly to the unusual conditions, so that a real recovery could begin, and I could commence to put on flesh. It is too bad. It was certainly a mistake not to have given myself more time, for, of course, I could have had it. I have the feeling that once I am at home again, I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I've had. That shows you how tired I sometimes feel.

Starting point is 07:48:20 And now, to cap the climax, I get this Qatar. It looked, in fact, as though Hans Castor would be. return home in possession of a first-class cold. He had caught it, probably, in the rescue, and again probably in the evening rescue, which for almost a week now he had been taking in the balcony, despite the long spell of cold, wet weather. He was aware that the weather of this kind was not recognised as bad. Such a conception hardly existed up here, where the most inclement conceivable went unheeded, and had no terrors for anyone. With the easy adaptability of youth, which suits itself to any environment, Hans Castorp had begun to imitate this indifference.

Starting point is 07:49:01 It might rain in bucketfuls, but the air was not supposed to be the more damp for that. Nor was it, in all probability, for the dry heat in the face persisted, as though after drinking wine, or sitting in an overheated room. And however cold it got, the radiators were never heated, unless it snowed, so that it was no avail to take refuge in one's chamber, since he was quite as comfortable on the balcony where one lay in one's excellent chair, wrapped in a palatot, and two good camel-hair rugs put on, according to the ritual. As comfortable, it was incomparably more so.

Starting point is 07:49:37 It was, in Hans Castop's reasoned judgment, a state of life which more appeal to him than any in all his previous experience, as far as he could remember. He did not propose to be shaken in this view for any Cabanaro or Quill-driver in existence, no matter how many malicious and equivocal jokes he made on the subject of the horizontal. Especially he liked it in the evening, when, with his little lamp on the stand before him, and his long-lost and now restored Maria a light between his lips, he enjoyed the ineffable excellencies of his reclining chair. True, his nose felt frozen, and the hands that held his book,

Starting point is 07:50:15 he was still reading ocean steamships, were red and cramped from the cold. He looked through the arch of his lodger over the darkening valley, jewelled with clustered or scattering lights, and listened to the music that drifted up nearly every evening for almost an hour. There was a concert below, and he could hear, pleasantly subdued by the distance, familiar operatic selections, snatches from Carmen Iltrothatore, freesuits, or well-built facile waltzes, marches so spirited that he could not help keeping time with his head, and gay mazurkas.

Starting point is 07:50:51 Mazurka? No, Marustia was her name. Morustja of the little ruby. And in the next lodger, behind the thick wall of milky glass, lay Joachim, with whom Hans Castorpe exchanged a word now and then, low-toned, out of consideration for the other horizontalers.

Starting point is 07:51:10 Yokim was as well off in his lodger as Hans Castorpe in his, though, being entirely unmusical, he could not take the same pleasure in the concerts. Too bad. He was probably studying his Russian primer instead. But Hans Kastorp let ocean steamships fall on the coverlet and gave himself up to the music. He contemplated with such inward gratification the translucent depth of a musical invention full of individuality and charm, that he thought with nothing but hostility of Setembrini and the irritating things he had

Starting point is 07:51:44 said about music. That it was politically suspect was the worst, and a little better than the the remark of Grandfather Gwisepi about the July Revolution and the six days of creation. Joachim, though he could not partake of Hans Castop's pleasure in the music, nor the pungent gratification pervade by Maria, lay as snugly ensconced as his cousin. The day was at an end. For the time, everything was at an end. There would be no more emotional alarums, no more strain on the heart muscles.

Starting point is 07:52:16 But equally, there was the assurance that tomorrow, it would begin all over again, all the favouring probabilities afforded by propinquity and the household regimen. And this pleasing combination of snugness and confident hope, together with the music and the restored charms of Maria,

Starting point is 07:52:34 made the evening cure a state almost amounting to beatification for young Hans Castor. All which had not prevented the guest and novice from catching a magnificent cold, either in the evening rescuer or elsewhere. He felt the onset of Qatar with oppression in the frontal sinus, an inflamed avula. He could not breathe easily through the passage, provided by nature. The air stuck cold and painfully, as it struggled through, and caused constant coughing.

Starting point is 07:53:04 His voice took on overnight the tonal quality of a hollow base, the worse for strong drink. According to him, he had not closed an eye, his parched throat, making him start up every five minutes from his pillow. very vexatious Yergim said and most unfortunate colds you know are not the thing at all up here they are not Rousseau

Starting point is 07:53:25 the authorities don't admit their existence the official attitude is that the dryness of the air entirely prevents them if you were a patient you would certainly fall of Berens if you went to him and said you had a cold

Starting point is 07:53:38 but it is a little different with a guest you have a right to have a cold if you want to it would be good if we could check the catawans There are things to do down below, but here I doubt if anyone would take enough interest in it. It is not advisable to fall ill up here. You aren't taken any notice of. It's an old story, but you are coming to hear it at the end. When I was new up here, there was a lady who complained of her ear for a whole week and told everybody how she suffered. Berens finally looked at it.

Starting point is 07:54:10 "'Make yourself quite easy, madam,' he said. "'It is not tubercula.' That was an end of the matter. Well, we must see what can be done. I will speak to the bathing master, early tomorrow morning, when he comes to my room. Then it will go through the regular channels, and perhaps something will come of it. Thus, Yochem, and the regular channels proved reliable. On Friday, after Hans Kastop returned from the morning round, there was a knock on his door, and he was vouchsafed the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with Fraulein von Milendonk,

Starting point is 07:54:43 "'Frault, as she was called. "'Up to now, he had seen this over-occupied person only from a distance, "'crossing the corridor from one patient's room to another, "'or when she had popped up for a moment in the dining-room, "'and he had been aware of her raucous voice, "'but now he himself was the object of her visit. "'His Qatar had fetched her. "'She knocked a short, bony-knock,

Starting point is 07:55:06 "'entered almost before he had said come in, "'and then, upon the threshold, bent round to make sure the number of the room. "'Thirty-four,' she croaked briskly. "'Right. Well, young un, "'Ommody, that you have before. "'Va cacchagia. "'Prostitigti, high, refrefridato. "'I hear you of course are cold.

Starting point is 07:55:29 "'What language do you speak? "'Ah, I see, you are young Zimson's guest. "'I am due in the operating room. "'Somebody there is to be chlorofermed, "'and he has just been eating bean salad. "'I have to have my eyes every, everywhere. Well, young un, so you have a coal?

Starting point is 07:55:47 Hans Castop was taken aback by this mode of address, in the mouth of a dame of ancient lineage. In her rapid speech she slurred over her words, all the time restlessly moving her head about with a circular motion, the nose sniffingly in the air, the motion of a caged bird of prey. Her freckled, right hand, loosely closed with the thumb uppermost, she held in front of her, and waved it to and fro on the wrist, as though to say, come, make haste, don't attend to what I say, but say what you have to and let me be off. She was in the forties of stunted growth,

Starting point is 07:56:22 without form or comeliness, clad in a belted pinaforeish garment of clinical white, with a garnet cross on her breast. Sparse reddish hair showed beneath the white quaff of her profession. Her eyes were a watery blue, with inflamed lids, and one of them, as a finishing touch, had a sty in a well-advanced state of development in the corner. Their glance was unsteady and flickering. Her nose was turned up, her mouth like a frog's, unfinished to boot with a rye and protruding lower lip,

Starting point is 07:56:54 which she used like a shovel to get her words out. Hans Castorpe looked at her, and all the modest and confiding friendliness native to him spoke in his eyes. "'What's so a cold is it, eh?' repeated the directoress. She seemed to try to concentrate her gaze and make it penetrate, but it slipped aside. We don't care for such colds. Are you subject to them? Your cousin has been too, hasn't he? How old are you? Twenty-four?

Starting point is 07:57:22 Yes, it's the age, and you come up here to get a cold. Huh, there ought not to be any talk about coals up here. That sort of tummy rot belongs down below. It was fearsome to see how she shoveled out this word with her lower lip. You have a beautiful bronchial guitar. That is plain. Again she made that curious effort to pierce him with her gaze, and again she could not hold it steady.

Starting point is 07:57:50 But catars are not caused by cold. They come from an infection, which one takes from being in a receptive state. So the question is, are we dealing with a harmless infection, or with something more serious? Everything else is Tommy rot. It is possible that your receptivity inclines to the harmless kind,

Starting point is 07:58:08 she went on, and looked at him with her own. overripe stye. He knew not how. Yeah, I will give you a simple antiseptic. It may do you good. And she took a small packet out of the leather bag that hung from her girdle. It was former mint. But you look flushed, as though you had fever. She never stopped trying to fix him with her gaze, and always the eyes glided off to one side. Have you measured? He answered in the negative. Why not? She asked, and her protruding low, her lip hung in the air after she spoke.

Starting point is 07:58:43 He made no answer. The poor youth was still young. He had never got over his schoolboy shyness. He sat, so to speak, on his bench, did not know the answer and took refuge in dumbness. Perhaps you never do take your temperature? Oh yes, Fry-Dector, when I have a fever. My dear chap, one takes it in the first instance to see whether one has fever.

Starting point is 07:59:10 According to you, you have none. now? I can't tell, Fradrector. I cannot really tell the difference. Ever since I came up here, I have been a little hot and shivery. Uh-huh. And where is your thermometer? I haven't one with me, Fradrector. Why should I? I am not ill. I am only up here on a visit. Tommy Rot. Did you send for me because you weren't ill? No, he laughed politely. It was because I caught a little... "'Cold!' "'We've often seen such colds.

Starting point is 07:59:43 "'Here, Young-un,' she said, "'and rummaged again in her bag. "'She brought out two longish leather cases, "'one red and one black, "'and put them on the table. "'This one is three francs fifty, the other five. "'The five franc one is better, of course. "'It will last your lifetime, if you take care of it.'

Starting point is 08:00:00 "'Smiling, he took up the red case and opened it. "'The glass instrument lay like a jewel within, "'fitted neatly into its red velvet groove. "'The degrees of the red, were marked by red strokes, the tenths by black ones. The figures were in red, and the tapering end was full of glistening quicksilver. The column stood below blood-heat. Hans Castorup knew what was due to himself and his upbringing. "'I will take this one,' he said, not even looking at the other. The one at five francs. May I?' "'Then that's settled,' quote the directoress.

Starting point is 08:00:36 "'I see you don't niggle over important purchases. No hurry. It will come on the bill. Give him to me. We will drive him right down. She took the thermometer out of his hand and plunged it several times through the air until the mercury stood below 95 degrees. He'll soon climb up again, she said.

Starting point is 08:00:54 Here is your new acquisition. You know how we do it up here? Straight under the tongue. Seven minutes, four times a day and shut the lips well over it. Well, young un, I must get on. Good luck. And she was out of the door.

Starting point is 08:01:09 Hans Castor bowed her. her out, then stood by the table, staring from the door through which she had disappeared, to the instrument she had left behind. So that, he thought, was directress von Mildonk. Sietimbrini doesn't care for her, and certainly she has her unpleasant side. The sty isn't pretty. But of course she does not have it all the time. But why does she call me Youngen like that? Rather rough and familiar, seems to me. So she has sold me a thermometer. I suppose. she always has one or two in her pocket. They are to be had everywhere here, Yolkim said,

Starting point is 08:01:46 even in the shops where he would least expect it. But I didn't need to take the trouble to buy it. It just fell into my lap. He took the article out of its case, looked at it and walked restlessly up and down the room. His heart beat strong and rapidly. He looked toward the open balcony door and considered taking counsel of Yokim,

Starting point is 08:02:06 but thought better of it, and paused again by the table. He cleared his throat by way of testing his voice, then he coughed. Yes, he said, I must see if I have the fever that goes with the cold. Quickly he put the thermometer in his mouth, the mercury beneath the tongue, so that the instrument stuck slantingly upward from his lips. He closed them firmly, that no air might get in. Then he looked at his wristwatch.

Starting point is 08:02:32 It was six minutes after the half hour, and he began to wait for the seven minutes to pass. not a second too long he thought and not one too short they can depend on me in both directions he didn't give me a silent sister like that otley knifah said in briny dolosov he walked about pressing down the thermometer with his tongue end of section twenty five section twenty six of the magic mountain by thomas man this librovoc's recording is in the public domain section twenty six Chapter 4 The Thermometer Part 2 The time crept on. The term seemed unending.

Starting point is 08:03:25 When he looked at his watch, two and a half minutes had passed, and he had feared the seven minutes were already more than up. He did a thousand things, picked up objects about the room and set them down again, walked out on the balcony, taking care that his cousin should not notice his presence, and looked at the landscape

Starting point is 08:03:44 of this high valley, now so familiar to him in all its phases, with its horns, its crests, and walls, with the projecting wing of the Bremble, the ridge of which sloped steeply down to the valley, its flanks covered with rugged undergrowth, with its formations on the right side of the valley, whose names were no less familiar than the others, and the Altine Wend, which from this point appeared to close in the valley on the south. He looked down on the garden beds and paths, the grotto and the silver fir. He listened to the murmur that rose from the rest-hall, and he returned to his room,

Starting point is 08:04:22 settling the thermometer under his tongue. Then, with a motion of the arm, which drew away the sleeve from his wrist, he brought the forearm before his eyes, and found that by dint of pushing and shoving, pulling and hauling, he had managed to get rid of full six minutes. The last one he spent standing in the middle of the room,

Starting point is 08:04:41 but then, unfortunately, he let his thoughts wander, and fell into a dose, so that the sixty seconds flew by on the wings of the wind, and when he looked again, the eighth minute had already passed its first quarter. It doesn't really matter, so far as the result is concerned, he thought, and tearing the instrument out of his mouth, he stared at it in confusion. He was not immediately the wiser.

Starting point is 08:05:06 The gleam of the quicksilver fell with the reflection of the glass case, where the light struck it, and he could not tell whether the mercury, had ascended the whole length of the column, or whether it was not there at all. He brought the instrument close to his eyes, turned it hither and thither, all to no purpose.

Starting point is 08:05:25 But at last a lucky turn gave him a clearer view. He hastily arrested his hand and brought his intelligence to bear. Mercurius, in fact, had climbed up again, just as the frow director said. The column was perceptibly lengthened. It stood several of the black strokes, above normal. Hans Kastorp had 99.6 degrees.

Starting point is 08:05:51 99 and 6 tenth degrees in broad daylight between 10 and half past in the morning. That was too much. It was temperature. It was fever, consequent, on an infection, for which his system had been eager. The question was now, what kind of infection? 99.6. Why, Yoakim had no more, nor any one. one else up here, except the moribund and bedridden, not Fraline Clefelt with her pneumothorax, nor, nor Madame Shusher. Naturally, in his case, it was not the same kind, certainly not. He had what would have been called at home a feverish cold, but the distinction was not such a simple one to make. Hans Castorpe doubted whether the fever had only come on when the colded,

Starting point is 08:06:40 and he regretted not having consulted at the thermometer at the outset when the Hoffrat suggested it, he could see now that this had been very reasonable advice setimbrini had been wrong to sneer at it as he had set imbrini with his republic and his bellosteeler hands cast off loathed and condemned the republic and the bellosteeler as he stood there consulting his thermometer he kept on losing the mark and turning the instrument this way in that to find it again yes it registered ninety nine point six and this in the early part of the day He was thoroughly upset. He walked the length of the room, twice or thrice. The thermometer held horizontally in his hand, so as not to jiggle it and make it read differently. Then he carefully deposited it on the wash-hand stand

Starting point is 08:07:31 and went with his overcoat and rugs into the balcony. Sitting there, he threw the covers about him, with practised hand, first from one side, then from the other, and lay still, waiting until it should be time for Joachim to fetch him for second breakfast. Now and then he smiled. It was precisely as though he smiled at somebody. And now and then his breast heaved as he caught his breath and was seized with his bronchial cough. Joachim found him still lying when he entered at eleven o'clock at the sound of the gong for second breakfast.

Starting point is 08:08:05 Well, he asked in surprise, coming up to his cousin's chair. Hans Kastorp sat a while, without answering, looking in front of him. Then he said, "'Well, the latest is that I have some fever.' "'What do you mean?' "'Yuki must. Do you feel feverish?' "'Again Hans Castob let him wait a little for the answer, then delivered himself airily as follows.

Starting point is 08:08:30 "'Feverish, my dear fellow, I have felt for a long time, "'all the time I have been up here, in fact. "'But at the moment it is not a matter of subjective emotion, "'but a fact. "'I have taken my temperature.' "'You've taken your temperature. What with?' Yolkim cried, startled. With a thermometer, naturally, answered Hans Kastop,

Starting point is 08:08:51 not without a caustic tinge to his voice. Frouder Ector sold me one. Why she should call me young un, I can't imagine. It is distinctly not comilful. But she lost no time in selling me an excellent thermometer. If you would like to convince yourself, you can. It is there on the wash-hand stand. It is only slight fever.

Starting point is 08:09:12 Yolkim turned on his heel and went into the bed, room. When he came back, he said hesitatingly, Yes, it is 99.5.5 degrees. Then it has gone down a little, his cousin responded hastily. It was six. But you can't call that a slight fever, Eukim said. Certainly not for the forenoon. This is a pretty how-do you do. He stood by his cousin's side, as one stands before a how-do-do,

Starting point is 08:09:40 arms a kimbo and head dropped. You'll have to go to bed. Hans Castorpe had his answer already. I can't see, he remarked, why I should go to bed with a temperature of 99.6, when the rest of you, who haven't any less, can run about as you like. But that is different, Hugh Kim said. Your fever is acute and harmless, the result of a cold. In the first place, said Hans Castorpe, speaking with dignity and dividing his remarks into categories,

Starting point is 08:10:09 I cannot comprehend why, with a harmless fever, assuming for the moment that there is such a thing, one must keep one's bed, while with one that is not harmless, you needn't. And secondly, I tell you the fever has not made me hotter than I was before. My position is that 99.6 is 99.6. If you can run about with it, so can I. But I had to lie for four weeks when I first came, objected Joachim.

Starting point is 08:10:38 And they only let me get up when it was clear that the fever persisted even after I had lain in bed. "'Ands Kastob smiled. "'Well, and?' he asked. "'I thought it was different with you. "'Seems to me you are contradicting yourself. "'First you say our cases are different, "'then you say they are alike.

Starting point is 08:10:56 "'That seems utter tommy-rot, to me. "'Yok Kim made a right-about turn. "'When he turned round again, "'his sun-tanned visage showed an even darker shade. "'No,' he said. "'I'm not saying they're alike. "'You're getting muddled. I only mean that you've had a very nasty cold.

Starting point is 08:11:15 I can hear it in your voice, and you ought to go to bed, to cut it short, if you mean to go home next week. But if you don't want to, I mean go to bed, why don't? I'm not prescribing for you. Anyhow, let's go to breakfast. Make haste.

Starting point is 08:11:31 We are late already. Right, oh, said Hans Kastop, and flung off his covers. He went into his room to run the brush over his hair, and Iokim looked again at the thermometer on the wash-hand. stand. Hans Castorpe watched him. They went down silently, and took their places in the dining room, which, as always at this hour, shimmered white with milk. The dwarf waitress brought Hans Castorpe his comb back a beer, as usual, but he put on a long face and waved it away. He would drink no beer today. He would drink nothing at all, for at most a swallow of water.

Starting point is 08:12:10 The attention of his table-mates was attracted. They wanted to know the cause of his caprice. Hans Kastrop said carelessly that he had a little fever, really minimal, 99.6 degrees. Then how altogether ludicrous it was to see them. They shook their fingers at him, they winked maliciously, they put their heads on one side, crooked their four fingers beside their ears, and waggled them in a pantomime suggestive of their delight at having found him out, who had played the innocent so long. "'Aha!' said the schoolmistress, the flushed mounting in her ancient cheek, what sort of scandal is this? And aha, aha, went Froustor, too, holding her stumpy finger next to her stumpy nose.

Starting point is 08:12:54 So our respected guest has some temperature, too. Foxy-Loxy is in the same boat with the rest of us, after all. Even the great aunt, when the news travelled up to her end of the table, gave him a meaningful glance and smile. Pretty Maroostia, who had barely looked at him up to now, leaned over and stared. with her round brown eyes, her handkerchief to her lips, and shook her finger too. Froucestor whispered the news to Dr. Blumencol, who could hardly do otherwise than joining the game, though without looking at Hans Castorpe. Only Miss Robinson, sat as she always did, and took no share in what was going on. Yolkim kept his eyes on the tablecloth.

Starting point is 08:13:38 It flattered Hans Castob's vanity to be taken so much notice of, but he felt that modesty required him to discreet. their attentions. No, no, he said. You are all mistaken. My fever is the most harmless thing in the world. I simply have a cold. My eyes run, and my chest is stopped up. I have coughed half the night.

Starting point is 08:13:58 It is thoroughly unpleasant, of course. But they would not listen. They laughed and flapped their hands at him. Yes, of course, we know all about it. We know these colds. They're all gammon, you can't fool us. And with one accord, they challenged Hans Castorne to an examination on the spot.

Starting point is 08:14:16 The news excited them. Throughout the meal their table was the liveliest among the seven. Frouc's store became almost hysterical. Her peevish face looked scarlet above her neckroosh, and tiny purple veins showed in the cheeks. She began to talk about how fascinating it was to cough. It was a solid satisfaction when you felt a tickling come in your chest, deep down, and grow and grow, to reach down after it and get at it, so to say.

Starting point is 08:14:43 Sneezing was much the same thing. You kept on wanting to sneeze until you simply couldn't stand it any longer. You looked as if you were tipsy. You drew a couple of breaths, then out it came, and you forgot everything else in the bliss of the sensation. Sometimes the explosion repeated itself two or three times. That was the sort of pleasure life gave you free of charge. Another one was the joy of scratching your chillblains in the spring.

Starting point is 08:15:09 When they itched so gorgeously, you took a furious pleasure in scratch. scratching till the blood came, and if you happen to look in the glass, you would be astonished to see the ghastly face you made." The coarse creature regaled the table with these repulsive details throughout the brief but hearty meal. When it was over, the cousins walked down to the plats. Yoh Kim seemed preoccupied.

Starting point is 08:15:32 Hans Kastop was in an agony of snuffles and cleared his rasping throat continually. On the way home, Yerikim said, I'll make you a suggestion. "'Tomorrow, after midday meal, I have my regular monthly examination. "'It is not the general. "'Berons just auscultates a little, and has Krakowski make some notes. "'You might come along and ask them to listen to you a bit. "'It is too absurd. "'If you were at home, you would send for Hydekind,

Starting point is 08:15:59 "'and up here, with two specialists in the house, you run about, "'and don't know where you are, not how serious it is, "'and if it would not be better for you to go to bed.' "'Very good,' said Hans Castro. "'It's as you say, of course. I can do that. It will be interesting to see an examination. Thus it was settled between them, and it fell out that as they arrived before the sanatorium, they met the Hofrat himself, and took the occasion to put their request at once. Berens came out of the vestibule,

Starting point is 08:16:29 tall and stooped, a bowler hat on the back of his head, a cigar in his mouth, purple-cheeked, watery-eyed, in the full flow of his professional activities. He'd just come from the operating room, so he said, and was on his way to private practice in the village. "'Monging, gentlemen, morning,' he said. "'Always on the jump, eh? "'How's everything in the big world? "'I've just come from an unequal duel with sore and scalpel. "'Great thing you know.

Starting point is 08:16:56 "'Resection of ribs. "'Fifty percent of the cases used to be left on the table. "'N Nowadays we have it down finer than that. "'But even so, it's a good plan to get the mortis-coza fixed up beforehand. "'The chap today knew how to take the joke. "'Put up a good fight for a minute or so. "'Crazy thing, a human thorax, that's all gone. "'Palppy, you know.

Starting point is 08:17:16 "'Nothing to catch hold of. "'Slight confusion of ideas, so to speak. "'Well, well. "'And how are your constitutionalities? "'S sanctified metabolisms, functioning okay, "'doing their duty in sight of the Lord? "'The walks go better in companies, I'm so no fellow what?' "'Hello.

Starting point is 08:17:34 "'Hello, what are you crying about, Mr. Tripper?' "'He suddenly turned on Hans Castor. "'It's against the rules to cry in public. "'Somebody might come.' "'It's only my cold, Herr Hofrat,' answered Hans Castor. "'I don't know how I did it, but I have a simply priceless guitar. It's right down on my chest, and I cough a good deal, too.' "'Indeed,' Beron's remarked,

Starting point is 08:17:56 "'you ought to consult a reliable physician.' Both cousins laughed, and Joachim answered, heels together. "'We were just going to, Herr Hoffrat. I have my examination to-morrow, and we wanted to ask if you would be so kind as to look my cousin over as well.' The question is whether he will be well enough to travel on Tuesday. "'AYS,' said Bairns. "'At your service, with all the pleasure in life, ought to have done it long ago.

Starting point is 08:18:25 Once you're up here, why not? But one doesn't like to seem forthputting. Very good, then. Tomorrow or two, directly after grub. "'I have a little fever, too,' Hans Castop further observed. "'You don't say,' Bairns cried out. "'I suppose you think you are telling me news. "'Do you think I'm no eyes in my head?'

Starting point is 08:18:45 He pointed with his great index finger to his goggling bloodshot-watery eyes. "'Well, and how much?' Hans Kastop modestly mentioned the figure. "'Fourn, eh? "'That's not too bad, not bad at all, for a beginner. "'Show's talent. "'Very good, then, the two of you. "'Tomorrow are two.

Starting point is 08:19:04 "'Very much honoured. "'Well, so long. "'Enjoy yourselves.' "'He paddled away downhill. his knees bent, leaving a long streamer of cigar smoke behind him. Well, that came out just as he wanted it to, Hans Kastop said. We couldn't have struck it luckier, and now I am in for it. You won't be able to do much, of course.

Starting point is 08:19:24 He may prescribe some sort of pectoral syrup or some cough lozenges. However, it is good to have a little encouragement, and you feel the way I do. But for heaven's sake, what makes him rattle on so? It struck me as funny at first, but in the long run, I can't say I like it. Sanctified metabolism. What sort of gibberish is that?

Starting point is 08:19:45 If I understand what he means by metabolism, it is nothing but physiology. And to talk about it's being sanctified, irreverent, I call it, I don't enjoy seeing him smoke either. It distresses me, because I know it is not good for him, and gives him melancholia.

Starting point is 08:20:00 Setembrini said his joviality is forced, and one must admit that Setembrini has his own views and knows whereof he speaks. I probably ought to have more opinions of my own, as he says, and not to take everything as it comes, the way I do. But sometimes one starts out with having an opinion and feeling righteous indignation and all that, and then something comes up. There is nothing to do with the judgments and criticism, and then it is all up with your severity and you feel disgusted with the Republic and the

Starting point is 08:20:26 bell-o-stile. He rambled on incoherently, not clear himself as to what he wanted to say. His cousin merely gave him a side-glance, then turned away with an au revoir, and each betook him to his own balcony. How much? asked Joak him softly after a while, as though he had seen Hans Castor consult his thermometer. And the latter answered indifferently, Nothing new. He had in fact directly he entered,

Starting point is 08:20:55 taken up his new acquisition from the wash-hand stand, and plunged it repeatedly through the air to obliterate the morning's record. Then he went into the balcony with the glass cigar in his mouth, like an old hand. But contrary to some rather exaggeration, expectations, the curious climbed no further than before, though Hans Castor kept the instrument under his tongue eight minutes for good measure. But after all, 99.6 degrees was unquestionably

Starting point is 08:21:21 fever, even though no higher than the earlier record. In the afternoon, the gleaming column mounted up as far as 99.7 degrees, but declined to 99.5 degrees by evening, when the patient was weary with the excitement of the day. Next morning it showed 99.6. degrees, climbing during the morning to the same level as before. And so arrived the hour for the main meal of the day, bringing the examination in its wake. Hans Castorpe later recalled that Madame Shoshar was wearing that day a golden yellow sweater, with large buttons and embroidered pockets. It was a new sweater, at least new to Hans Castorpe, and when she made her entrance, tardily as usual, she had paused an instant, and, in the way he knew so well, presented herself

Starting point is 08:22:07 to the room. Then she had glided to her place at the table, slipped softly into it and began to eat and chatter with her tablemates. All this was as it happened every day, five times a day. Hans Castorpe observed it as usual, or perhaps even more poignantly than usual, looking over at the good Russian table, past Setembrini's back as he sat at the crosswise table between. He saw the turn of her head in conversation, the rounded neck, the stooping back. Frau Schorcher, for her part, never once turned round, during the whole meal. But when the suite had been handed, and the great clock on the wall above the bad Russian table struck two, it actually happened to Hans Kastop's amazement and mystification that precisely as the hour struck,

Starting point is 08:22:54 one, two, the fair patient turned her head and a little twisted her body and looked over her shoulder quite openly and pointedly at Hans Kastop's table. And not only at his table, no, she looked at her. looked at himself, unmistakably and personally, with a smile about the closed lips and the narrow Pribislav eyes, as though to say, well, it is time. Are you going? And the eyes said thou, for that is the language of the eyes, even when the tongue uses a more formal address. This episode shook and bewildered, Hans cast up to the depths of his being. He hardly trusted his senses, and at first gazed enraptured in Frau Shoshua's face, then, lifting his eyes,

Starting point is 08:23:40 stared into vacancy over the top of her head. Was it possible she knew he was to be examined at two o'clock? It looked like it. But that was as impossible as that she should be aware of the thought that had visited his mind in the last minute, namely that he might as well send word to the Hofrat, through Joachim, that his cold was better, and he considered an examination superfluous. This idea had presented itself to him in an advantageous light, but now withered away under that searching smile, transmuted into a hideous sense of futility. The second after, Joachim had laid a rolled-up serviette beside his plate, signalled to his cousin, by raising his eyebrows, and with a bow to the company risen from the table. Whereat, Hans Castorpe, inwardly reeling,

Starting point is 08:24:29 though outwardly firm in step and bearing, rose too, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and feeling that look and smile upon his back, followed cousin Joachim out of the room. Since the previous morning they had not spoken of what lay before them, and silently now they moved down the corridor together. Yokim hastened his steps, for it was already past the appointed hour, and Hofrat Berens laid stress on punctuality. They passed the door of the office and went down the clean,

Starting point is 08:24:56 linoleum-covered stairs to the basement. Yokim knocked at the door, facing them. It bore a porcelain shield with the word consulting room. Come in, called Berens, stressing the first word. End of Section 26. Section 27 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 27.

Starting point is 08:25:28 Chapter 4. The thermometer. Part 3. Come in, called Berens, stressing. the first word. He was standing in the middle of the room, in his white smock, holding the black stethoscope in his hand and tapping his thigh with it. Tempo, tempo, said he, directing his goggling gaze to the clock on the wall. Un poc-upuis, presto signore. We are not here simply and solely for the Honourable Gentleman's convenience. Dr. Krakowski was sitting at the double-barreled

Starting point is 08:26:02 writing table by the window. He wore his usual black alpaca shirt, setting off the pallor of his face. His elbows rested on the table, in one hand a pen, the other fingering his beard, while before him lay various papers, probably the documents in reference to the patients to be examined. He looked at the cousins as they entered, but it was with the idle glance of a person who is present only in an auxiliary capacity. "'Well, give us your report card,' the Hoffrette answered to Jo Kim's apologies and took the fever chart out of his hand. He looked it over while the patient made haste to lay off his upper garments down to the waist and hang them on the rack by the door. No one troubled about Hans Castor. He looked on a while standing, then let himself down in a little

Starting point is 08:26:50 old-fashioned easy-chair with bob tassels on the arms, beside a small table with a carafe on it. Bookcases lined the walls full of pamphlets and brought-backed medical works. Other furniture, there was none. except an adjustable shez-long, covered with allcloth. It had a paper serviette spread over the pillow. 0.7, 0.9, 0.8, Beron said, running through the weekly card, whereon were entered the results of Joachim's five daily measurings. Still a little too lighted up, my dear Zamsun.

Starting point is 08:27:24 Can't exactly say you've got more robust just lately. By lately, he meant during the past four weeks. Not free from infection, He said, "'Well, that doesn't happen between one day and the next. We're not magicians.' Yo Kim nodded and shrugged his bare shoulders. He refrained from saying that he'd been up here since a good deal longer than yesterday.

Starting point is 08:27:47 "'How about the stitches in the right hylum, where it always sounded so sharp? Better, eh? Well, come along. Let me thump you about a bit.' And the auscultation began. The Hoffrat stood leaning backwards, feet wide apart. his stethoscope under his arm and tapped from the wrist,

Starting point is 08:28:06 using the powerful middle finger of his right hand as a hammer, and the left as the support. He tapped first high up on Yoakim's shoulder blade at the side of the back, above and below. The well-trained Joachim lifted his arm to let himself be tapped under the armpit. Then the process was repeated on the left side. Then the Hoffrat commanded,

Starting point is 08:28:26 Turn! and began tapping the chest. First next, the collarbone, then above and below the breast. right and left. When he had tapped to his satisfaction, he began to listen, setting his stethoscope on Yercombe's chest and back, and putting his ear to the earpiece. Then Yolkim had to breathe deeply and cough, which seemed to strain him, for he got out of breath, and tears came in his eyes. And everything that the Hoffrad heard, he announced in curt technical phrases to his assistant over at the writing table, in such a way that Hans Kastop was forcibly reminded of the

Starting point is 08:29:02 proceedings at the tailor's, when a very correctly groomed gentleman measures you for a suit, laying the tape about your trunk and limbs, and calling off the figures in the order hallowed by tradition for the assistant to take them down in his book. Faint? Diminished, dictated Hoffrat Berens, vesicular, and then again, vesicular. That was good, apparently. Rough, he said, and made a face. Very rough. Ronky. And Dr. Krakowski entered a all in his book, just like the tailor's assistant. Hans Castob followed the proceedings with his head on one side, absorbed in contemplation of his cousin's torso. The ribs, thank heaven he had them all, rose under the taut skin as he took deep inolations, and the stomach

Starting point is 08:29:50 fell away. Hans Castorub studied that youthful figure, slender, yellowish bronze, with a black fell along the breastbone and the powerful arms. On one wrist, Yoakim wore a gold, chain bracelet. These are the arms of an athlete, thought Hans Castor. I never made much of gymnastics, but he always liked them, and that is partly the reason where he wanted to be a soldier. He has always been more inclined than I to the things of the body, or inclined in a different way. I've always been a civilian, and cared more about warm baths and good eating and drinking, whereas he has gone in for manly exertion, and now his body has come into the foreground in another sense, and made itself important and independent of the rest of him, namely through illness.

Starting point is 08:30:36 He is all lit up within and can't get rid of the infection and become healthy. Poor Joachim, no matter how much he wants to get down to the valley and be a soldier. And yet look how he is developed, like a picture in a book, a regular Apollo Belvedere, except for the hair. But the disease makes him ailing within and fevered without. disease makes men more physical. It leaves them nothing but body. His own thoughts startled him,

Starting point is 08:31:05 and he looked quickly at Joachim with a questioning glance that travelled from the bared body up to the large, gentle black eyes. Tears stood out in them from the effort of the forced breathing and coughing, and they gazed into space with a pathetic expression as the examination went on. But at last, Hofrat Berens came to an end.

Starting point is 08:31:27 Very good, Siamson! He said, everything in order, so far as possible. Next time, that would be in four weeks, it is bound to show further improvement. And, Herr Hofrad, how much longer do you think? So you're going to pester me again. How do you expect to give your lads the devil down below, in the lit-up state you are in?

Starting point is 08:31:48 I told you the other day to call it half a year. You can reckon from then, if you like, but you must regard it as a minimal. Have a little ordinary politeness. It is a decent enough life up here after all. It's not a convict prison, nor a Siberian penal settlement, or perhaps you think it is. Very good, Simson. Be off with you.

Starting point is 08:32:10 Next, step lively. He stretched out his arm and handed the stethoscope to Dr. Krakowski, got up and began some supernumerary tapping on Yoakim's person. Hans Kastorp had sprung up, with his eyes fixed on the Hofrat, standing there with his legs apart, and his mouth open, lost in thought, the young man began in all haste to make ready, with the result that he defeated his own purpose and fumbled in getting out of his shirt. But finally he stood there,

Starting point is 08:32:40 blonde, white-skinned and narrow-chested, before Hofrat Berens. Compared with Yo-Kim, he looked distinctly the civilian type. The Hoff-Rat, still lost in thought, let him stand. Dr. Krakowski had finished and sat down, and Yokim was dressing before Berens finally decided to take no notice. Oh, ho, he said.

Starting point is 08:33:01 So that's you, is it? He gripped hands cast up on the upper arm with his mighty hand, pushed him away, and looked at him sharply. Not in the face as one man looks at another, but at his body, turned him round as one would turn an inanimate object, and looked at his back. Hmm, he said, well, we shall see, and began tapping as before. He tapped all over, as he had with Yoakim, and several times went back and tapped again. For some while, for the purposes of comparison, he tapped by turns on the left-hand side, near the collar-burn, and then somewhat lower down.

Starting point is 08:33:39 "'Hear that?' he asked Dr. Krakowski, and the other, sitting at the table five paces off, nodded to signify that he did. He sunk his head on his chest with a serious mane, and the points of his whiskers stuck out. "' Breathe deep. Cough,' commanded the Hoff-frat. who had taken up the stethoscope again, and Hans Kastop worked hard for eight or ten minutes while the Hofrat listened. He uttered no word, simply set the instrument here and there, and listened with particular care at the places he had tapped so long. Then he stuck the stethoscope under his arm, put his hands on his back,

Starting point is 08:34:14 and looked at the floor between himself and Hans Kastop. Yes, Kastop, he said. This was the first time he had called the young man simply by his last name. the thing works out Prater-Propter, as I thought it would. I had my suspicions, I can tell you now, from the first day I had the undeserved honour of making your acquaintance. I made a pretty shrewd guess

Starting point is 08:34:38 that you were one of us, and that you would find it out, like many another who's come up here on a lark and gone about with his nose in the air, only to discover one fine day that it would be as well for him, and not only as well, mark that, to make a more extended stay, without reference to the beauties of the scenery. Hans Kastorp had flushed.

Starting point is 08:35:00 Joachim, in act to button his braces, paused as he stood, and listened. You have such a kind, sympathetic cousin over there, went on the Hoffrat, motioning with his head in Yoakim's direction and balancing himself on his heels. Very soon we hope we will be able to say that he has been ill. But even when he gets that far, it will still be true. that he has been ill. And the fact, a priori, as the philosophers say, cast a certain light upon yourself, my dear Castorpe.

Starting point is 08:35:33 But he is only my step-cous, Herr Hofratt. Tut, you won't disown him, will you? Even a step-cousin is a blood relation. On which side? The mother's, Herr Hoffrat. He is the son of a step. And your mother? She's pretty jolly?

Starting point is 08:35:50 No, she's dead. She died when I was little. "'And of what?' "'Of a blood clot,' Herr Hofrat. "'A blood clot, eh? "'Well, that's a long time ago, and your father?' "'He died of pneumonia,' Hans Kastop said. "'And my grandfather, too,' he added.

Starting point is 08:36:09 "'Both of them, eh?' "'Good. So much for your ancestors. "'Now about yourself. "'You've always been rather chlorotic, haven't you? "'But you didn't tire easily at physical or mental work.' "'Or did you? What?' "'A good deal of palpitation? Only of late? "'Good. And a strong inclination to cataral and bronchial trouble?

Starting point is 08:36:32 "'Did you know you had been infected before now?' "'I?' "'Yes, you. I have you personally in mind. "'Can you hear any difference?' "'The Hoffrat tap by turns on Hans Castor's left side, "'first above and then lower down.' "'It sounds rather duller there,' said Hans Castor. "'Capital, you ought to be a specialist.

Starting point is 08:36:53 Well, that is a dullness, and such dullnesses are caused by the old places where fibrosis has supervened. Scars, you know. You are an old patient, Castorpe. But we wouldn't lay it up against anybody that you weren't found out. The early diagnosis is very difficult, particularly for my colleagues down below. I won't say we have better ears, though the regular practice does do something, but the air helps us here, if you understand what I mean, this thin, dry air up here. "'Certainly, of course,' Hans Castorpe said.

Starting point is 08:37:27 "'Very good, Castor, and now listen, young man, to my words of wisdom. "'If that were all the trouble with you, "'if it was a case of nothing but the dullness and the scars on your backpipes in there, "'I should send you back to your lairs and penits "'and not trouble my head further about you. "'But as things stand, and according to what we find, "'and since you are already up here, "'well, there is no use in you're going down,

Starting point is 08:37:49 "'for you'd only have to come up again.' "'Hans Castorp felt the blood, rushed back to his heart. It hammered violently, and Joachim stood still with his hands on his back buttons, his eyes on the floor. For besides the dullness, said the Hoff-Frant, you have on the upper left side a rough breathing, that is almost bronchial, and undoubtedly comes from a fresh place. I won't call it a focus of softening, but it is certainly a moist spot. And if you go down below and begin to carry on, why you'll have the whole lobe at the devil, before you can say Jack Robinson?

Starting point is 08:38:23 Hans Castor up stood motionless. His mouth twitched fearfully, and the hammering of his heart against his ribs was plain to see. He looked across at Yoak him, but could not meet his cousin's eye. Then again at the Hofrat's face with its blue cheeks, blue goggling eyes and little crooked moustache. For independent confirmation, Behance continued, we have your temperature of 99.6 degrees at 10 o'clock in the morning, which corresponds pretty well to the indication. given by the auscultation. I thought, Hans Castorpe said, that the fever came from my cold. And the cold, rejoined the Hofrat, where does that come from? Listen, Castorpe, let me tell you something and mark my words, for so far as I can tell, you've all the cerebral convolutions the body needs. Now, our air up here is good for disease.

Starting point is 08:39:17 I mean good against the disease, you understand. You think so, don't you? Well, it is true. Also, it is good for the disease. It begins by speeding it up in that it revolutionizes the whole body. It brings the latent weakness to the surface and makes it break out. Your guitar, fortunately for you, is a breaking out of that kind. I can't tell if you were febrile down below, but it is certainly my opinion that you have been from your first day up here, and not merely since you've had your Qatar. Yes, Hans Kastop said. I think so too. You were probably

Starting point is 08:39:53 fuddled right from the start, in my opinion. The Hoffrad confirmed him. Those were the soluble toxins thrown off by the bacteria. They act like an intoxicant upon the central nervous system and give you a hectic flush. Now, Castor, we'll stick you into bed and see if a couple of weeks' rest will sober you up.

Starting point is 08:40:12 What follows will follow. We'll take a handsome X-ray of you. You'll enjoy seeing what goes on in your own inside. But I tell you straightway, a case like yours doesn't get well from one day to the next. It isn't a question of miracle cures you read about in advertisements. I thought when I first clapped eyes on you that you would be a better patient than your cousin, with more talent for illness than our Brigadier General here.

Starting point is 08:40:36 Who wants to clear out directly has a couple of points less fever, as if lie down isn't just as good a word of command as stand up. It is the citizen's first duty to be calm, and impatience never did any good to anyone. Now, cast off, watch out you don't disappoint me, and give the lie to my knowledge of human nature. Get along now. Into the caboose with you. March. With that, Hoffrat Berens closed the interview and sat down at the writing table.

Starting point is 08:41:05 This man of many occupations began to fill in his time with writing until the advent of the next patient. Dr. Krakowski arose from his place and strode up to Hans Kastor, with his head tip back sideways and one hand on the man's shoulder, smiling so heartily that the yellowish teeth showed in his beard, he shook him warmly by the hand. End of Section 27. Section 28 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 08:41:42 Section 28. Chapter 5. Soup Everlasting. Part 1 And now we are confronted by a phenomenon upon which the author himself may well comment, lest the reader do so in his sense. Our account of the first three weeks of Hans Castorpe's stay with those up here, 21 midsummer days, to which his visit, so far as human I could see, should have been confined, has consumed in the telling, an amount of time and space, only too well confirming the author's half-confessed expectations. While our narrative of his next three weeks will scarcely cost as many lines, or even words and minutes, as the earlier three did pages,

Starting point is 08:42:29 choirs, hours and working days. We apprehend that these next three weeks will be over and done with in the twinkling of an eye, which is perhaps surprising, yet quite in order, and conformable to the laws that govern the telling of stories and the listening to them, for it is in accordance with these laws that time seems to us just as long, or just as short, that it expands or contracts precisely in the way, and to the extent that it did for young Hans Castor. our hero, whom our narrative now finds visited with such an unexpected blow from the hand of fate. It may even be well at this point to prepare the reader for still other surprises, still other phenomena, bearing on the mysterious element of time, which will confront us,

Starting point is 08:43:16 if we continue in our hero's company. For the moment, we need only recall the swift flight of time, even of quite a considerable period of time, which we spend in bed when we are ill. All the days are nothing, but the same day repeating itself. Or rather, since it is always the same day, it is incorrect to speak of repetition, a continuous present, an identity, an everlastingness.

Starting point is 08:43:42 Such words as these would better convey the idea. They bring you your midday broth, as they brought it yesterday, and will bring it tomorrow. And it comes over you, but whence or how you do not know, it makes you quite giddy to see the broth coming in, that you are losing a sense of the demarcation of time, that its units are running together, disappearing,

Starting point is 08:44:03 and what is being revealed to you, as the true content of time, is merely a dimensionless present in which they eternally bring you the broth. But in such a connection, it would be paradoxical to speak of time as passing slowly, and paradox, with reference to such a hero, we would avoid. Hans Kastob then went to bed on the Saturday afternoon, as it had been ordained by Hoffrad Berens, the highest authority in our little world. There he lay in his nightshirt with the embroidered monogram on the pocket.

Starting point is 08:44:37 His hands clasped at the back of his head, in his cleanly white bed, the deathbed of the American woman, and in all probability of many another person. Lay there with his confiding blue eyes, somewhat glassy with his cold, directed toward the ceiling, and contemplated the singularity of his fate. This is not to say that if he had not had a cold, His gaze would have been any clearer or more single-minded.

Starting point is 08:45:02 No, just as it was, it accurately mirrored his inner state, and that, whatever its simplicity, was full of troubled, involved, dubious, not quite ingenuous thoughts. For, as he lay, he would be shaken from deep within him by a frantic burst of triumphant laughter, while his heart stood still with an anguish of extravagant anticipation like nothing he had ever known before. again he would feel such a shudder of apprehension as sent the colour from his cheek,

Starting point is 08:45:32 and then it was conscience itself that knocked, in the very throbs of his heart as it pulsed against his ribs. On that first day, Joachim left him to his rest, avoiding all discussion. He went two or three times tactfully into the sick-room, nodded to the patient, and inquired if he could do anything. It was easy for him to understand and respect Hans Castorpe's reserve, the more in that he shared it, even feeling his own position to be more difficult than the others. But on the Sunday forenoon, when he came back from the walk which for the first time in weeks had been solitary, there was no putting it off any longer. They must take counsel together over the necessary next step.

Starting point is 08:46:14 He sat down by the bed and said with a sigh. Yes, it's no good. We must act. They are expecting you down home. "'Not yet,' Hans Castorpe answered. "'No, but inside the next few days, Wednesday or Thursday.' "'Oh, they aren't expecting me so precisely on a particular day,' Hans Castorpe said. "'They have other things to do besides counting the days until I get back. "'I'll be there when I get there.' "'An uncle Tienaple will say,

Starting point is 08:46:45 "'Oh, there you are again.' "'An Uncle James, well, had a good time. "'And if I don't arrive, it'll always. be some time before they notice it. You may be sure of that. Of course, after a while, we'd have to let them know. You can see how unpleasant the thing is for me, Yer Kim said, sighing again. What is to happen now? I feel in a way responsible. You come up here to pay me a visit. I take you in, and here you are, and who knows when you can get away and go into your position down below. You must see how extremely painful that is to me. Just a moment.

Starting point is 08:47:23 said Hans Castorpe, without removing his hands from their class position behind his neck. Surely it is unreasonable for you to break your head over it. Did I come up here to visit you? Well, of course, in a way I did. But after all, the principal reason was to get the rest, Hydekind, prescribed. Well, and now it appears I need more of a rest than he or any of us dreamed. I am not the first who thought of making a flying visit up here,

Starting point is 08:47:47 for whom it fell out differently. Remember about Toulé-deau's second son, and how it turned out with him. I don't know whether he is still alive or not. Perhaps they have fetched him away already while we were sitting at our meal. That I am somewhat infected is naturally a great surprise to me. I must get used to the idea of being a patient and one of you, instead of just a guest. And yet in a way I am scarcely surprised, for I never have been in such blooming health,

Starting point is 08:48:15 and when I think how young birth my parents were when they died, I realise that it is natural I shouldn't be particularly robust. "'We can't deny that you had a weakness that way. "'We make no bones of it, even if it is as good as cured now. "'And it may easily be that it runs a little in the family, as Berens suggested. "'Anyhow, I have been lying here since yesterday, thinking it all over, "'considering what my attitude has been, how I felt toward the whole thing, "'to life, you know, and the demands it makes on you.

Starting point is 08:48:46 "'A certain seriousness, a sort of disinclination to rough and noisy ways, has always been a part of my nature. We were talking about that lately, and I said I sometimes should have liked to be a clergyman, because I took such an interest in mournful and edifying things. A black paw, you know, with a silver cross on it, or RIP, Requiscat in Pache, you know. That seems to me the most beautiful expression.

Starting point is 08:49:12 I like it much better than he's a jolly good fellow, which is simply rowdy. I think all that comes from the fact that I have had a weakness myself and always felt at home with illness, the way I do now. But things being as they are, I find it very lucky that I came here, and that I was examined. Certainly you have no call to reproach yourself. You heard what he said. If I were to go down and continue as I have been, I should have the whole lobe at the devil, before I could say Jack Robinson.

Starting point is 08:49:41 You can't tell, Yerkem said. That is just what you never can tell. They said you had already had places, of which nobody took any notice. and they healed of themselves, and left nothing but a few trifling dullnesses. It might have been the same way with the moist spot you are supposed to have now, if you hadn't come up here at all. One can never know. No, as far as knowing goes, we never can. But just for that reason, we have no right to assume the worst.

Starting point is 08:50:10 For instance, with regard to how long I shall be obliged to stop here. You say nobody knows when I should be free to go into the shipyard, but you say it in a pessimistic sense. And that I find premature, since we cannot know. Berens did not set a limit. He is a long-headed man and doesn't play the prophet. There are the X-ray and the photographic plate yet to come before we can definitely know the facts. Who knows whether they will show anything worth talking about,

Starting point is 08:50:38 and whether I shall not be free of fever before that, and can say goodbye to you. I am all for our not striking before the time and crying wolf to the family down below. It is quite enough for the present if we write to you. and say, I can do it myself with a fountain pen if I sit up a little, that I have a severe cold and unfabrile, that I am stopping in bed and shall not travel for the present. The rest will follow. Good, said Joachim, we can do that for the present, and for the other matters we can wait and see. What other matters? Don't be so irresponsible. You only came for three weeks and brought a steamer trunk. You will need underwear and linen and winter clothes and more footwear. And anyhow,

Starting point is 08:51:21 you will want money sent. If, said Hans Castorke, if I need it. Very well, we'll wait and see, but we ought not. Yoh Kim paced up and down the room as he spoke. We ought not to behave like ostriches. I have been up here too long not to know how things go. When Beron says there's a rough place, almost ronky, oh well, of course we can wait and see. There, for the time, the matter rested, and the weekly and fortnightly variations of the normal day set in. Hans Castor could partake of them, even in his present state, if not at first hand, then through the reports Yoakim gave when he came, and sat by the bedside for fifteen minutes. His Sunday morning breakfast-tray was adorned with a vase of flowers, and they did not fail to send him his share of the Sunday pastries. after luncheon the sounds of social intercourse floated up from the terrace below.

Starting point is 08:52:19 And with tantara and squealing of clarinets, the fortnightly concert began. During his progress, Yokeymented and sat down by the open balcony door. His cousin, half reclined in his bed, with his head on one side, and his eyes swimming with pious enjoyment as he listened to the mounting harmonies and bestowed a momentary metaphorical shoulder shrug. Upon Setimbrini's twaddle about more, music being politically suspect. And, as we have said, he had Yoakim post him upon the sights and events of the sanatorium life.

Starting point is 08:52:53 Had there, he asked, been any toilets made in honour of the day? Lace matinees, or that sort of thing. Though for lace matinees, the weather was too cold. Whether there were people going driving. Certain expeditions had in fact been undertaken, among others, by the Half-Lung Club, which had gone in a body to Claverdale. On the next day, Monday, he demanded to hear all about Dr. Krakowski's lecture, when Yochim came from it and looked in upon his cousin on his way to the rest cure. Yoakim did not feel like talking. He appeared disinclined to make a report. He would have let the subject drop, as it had after the previous lecture, had not Hans Castor persisted and demanded to hear the details.

Starting point is 08:53:34 I am lying up here, he said, paying full pension. I am entitled to have all that is gone. going. He recalled a Monday of two weeks ago, and his solitary walk, which had done him so little good, and he committed himself to the view that it was that walk which had revolutionised his system, and brought to the surface the latent infection. But what a stately and solemn way the people hear about have of talking, he said, I mean the common people, almost like poetry. Then thank ye kindly and God be with ye, he repeated, giving the word. words the woodman's intonation. I heard that up in the woods, and I shall remember it all my life. You get to associate a thing like that with other memories and impressions, you know,

Starting point is 08:54:20 and you never forget it as long as you live. Well, Sokakowski held forth again on the subject of love, did he? What did he say about it today? Oh, nothing in particular. You know from the other time how he talks. But what did he offer that was new? Nothing different. Oh, well, The stuff today was pure chemistry. Yerkin unwittingly condescended to enlighten his cousin. It seemed there was a sort of poisoning and auto-infection of the organisms, so Dr. Krakowski said. It was caused by the disintegration of a substance,

Starting point is 08:54:55 of the nature of which we were still ignorant, but which was present everywhere in the body. And the products of this disintegration operated like an intoxicant upon the nerve centres of the spinal cord, with an effect similar to that of certain poisons, such as morphia or cocaine, when introduced in the usual way from outside. And so you get the hectic flush, said Hans Castop. But that's all worth hearing.

Starting point is 08:55:20 What doesn't the man know? He must have simply lapped it up. You just wait. One of these days he will discover what that substance is that exists everywhere in the body and sets free the soluble toxins that act like a narcotic on the nervous system. Then he will be able to fuddle us all more than ever. perhaps in the past they were able to do that very thing. When I listened to him, I could almost think there is some truth in the old legends about love potions and the like.

Starting point is 08:55:48 Are you going? Yes, Yer Kim said. I must go lie down. My curve has been rising since yesterday. This affair of yours has had its effect on me. That was the Sunday and the Monday. The evening and the morning made the third day of Hans Castorpe sojourn in the caboose. It was a day without distinction.

Starting point is 08:56:08 an ordinary weekday, that Tuesday, but after all it was the day of his arrival in this place. He had been here around three weeks, and time pressed. He would have to send a letter home and inform his uncle of the state of affairs, even though cursorily and without reference to their true inwardness. He stuffed his down quilt behind his back and wrote upon the note-pecker of the establishment to the effect that his departure was being delayed beyond the appointed time.

Starting point is 08:56:37 He was in bed with a feverish. cold, which Hofrat Berens, over-conscientious, as he probably was, refused to take lightly, insisting on regarding it as immediately connected with his, Hans Kastop's, Constitution, and general state of health. The physician had perceived directly he saw him that he was decidedly anemic, and take it all in all, it seemed as though the limit he had originally set for his stay was not regarded by the authorities as long enough for a full recovery. He would write again as soon as he could. That's the idea, thought Hans Castorpe, not too much or too little, and whatever the issue, it will satisfy them for a while.

Starting point is 08:57:16 The letter was given to the servant, with instructions that it be taken direct to the station, and sent off by the earliest possible train, instead of being posted in the usual way in the house letterbox, with consequent delays. Our adventurous youth felt much relieved to have set affairs in such good train, if otherwise a good deal plagued by his cough, and the heavy-headedness caused by his Qatar. And now he began to live each day as it came. A day which never varied, which was always broken up into a number of sections and which, in its abiding uniformity,

Starting point is 08:57:50 could not be said either to pass too fast or to hang too heavy on the hands. In the morning the bathing master would give a mighty thump on the door and enter, a nervous individual named Turnhair, who wore his sleeves rolled up, and had great standing veins upon his forearms, and a gurgling, impeded speech. He addressed Hans Castorpe, as he did all the patients,

Starting point is 08:58:13 by the number of his room, and rubbed him with alcohol. Not long after he left, Jo Kim would appear ready-dressed to greet his cousin, inquire after his seven o'clock temperature, and communicate his own. While he breakfasted below, Hans Castob did the same above. His down quilt, tucked behind his back, in enjoyment of the good appetite at change in genders.

Starting point is 08:58:36 He was scarcely disturbed, by the bustling and business-like entrance of the two physicians, who at this hour made a hurried round of the dining-hall, and the rooms of the bedridden, and Moribund. Hans Castor, with his mouth full of jam, announced himself to have slept splendidly, and looked over the rim of his cup at the Hoffrat, who leaned with his fists on the centre table,

Starting point is 08:58:57 and hastily scanned the fever chart. Both physicians wished him good morning, and he responded in an unconcerned draw, as they went out. Then he lighted a signal. and beheld Yo-Kim returning from the morning walk, almost before he realised his departure. Again they chatted of this and that. Yokim went to lie down until second breakfast, and the intervals seemed so short that even the emptiest headed could hardly have felt bored. Hans Kastob, indeed, had so much food for thought in the events of the past three weeks,

Starting point is 08:59:29 so much to ponder in his present state and what might come of it, that although two-bound volumes of an illustrated periodical from the Berkov Library lay upon his night-table, he had no need to resort to them. It was no different with the brief hour, during which Joachim took his regular walk down to the plaits. He came in to Hans Kastorp afterwards, told him whatever of interest he had seen, and sat or stood a few minutes by the sick-bed, before he withdrew to his own balcony for the midday rest. And how long did that last? again only a brief hour. It seemed to Hans Castob he had barely settled to commune a little with his own thoughts. Hands folded behind his head and eyes directed upon the ceiling, before the gong droned through the house,

Starting point is 09:00:14 summoning all those not bedridden nor Moribund to prepare for the principal meal of the day. Joachim went down and the midday broth was brought. Broth, in a symbolic sense, merely, considering in what it consisted. Hans Castop was not on sick-dirt. He lay there, and paid full Pension, and what they brought him in the abiding present of that midday hour was by no means broth. It was the full six-course Berkhov dinner, in all its amplitude, with nothing left out. Even on weekdays, this was a sumptuous meal. On Sundays it was a gala banquet, and gaudy, prepared by a cosmopolitan chef in the kitchens of the establishment, which were precisely those of a European Hotel de Lux. The dining-room girl, whose duty it was to

Starting point is 09:00:59 served the bedridden, brought it to him in dainty cookpots, under nickel-plated dish-covers. She produced an invalid table, a marvel of one-legged equilibrium, adjusted it across his bed, and Hans Castorpe banqueted like the tailor's son in the fairy story. As he finished, Joachim would return, and it might be as late as half-past two before the latter went into his lodger, and the hush of the main rest period fell upon the Berkov. Not quite, perhaps. perhaps it would be nearer the truth to call it a quarter after. But these odd quarter hours outside the round figures do not count. They are swallowed up unregarded in places where one reckons time in large units,

Starting point is 09:01:39 on long train journeys of many hours on end, or wherever one is in a state of vacant suspense, with all one's being concentrated on putting the time behind one. A quarter-past two will pass for half-past, will even pass for three, on the theory that it is already well on the way toward it. The 30 minutes had taken as a sort of onset to the full hour from three to four, and inwardly discounted. In this wise, the duration of the main rest period was finally reduced to no more than an hour,

Starting point is 09:02:08 and even this hour was lopped off at its latter end, elided, as it were. Dr. Krakowski played the part of apostrophe. Yes, nowadays when Dr. Krakowski went his independent afternoon round, he no longer made a circle around Hans Castle. Our young man was no longer an interval and hiatus. He counted as much as the others. He too was a patient. He was questioned, not ignored, as had so long been the case, to his slight and concealed but daily recurring annoyance. It was on Monday that Dr. Krakowski for the first time manifested himself in the room,

Starting point is 09:02:43 manifested being the only proper word for the phenomenon, as Hans Kastor, with an involuntary start, perceived it. He lay in half, or quarter, slumber, and became aware that the assistant was beside him, having entered not through the door, but approaching from outside. His round at this time lay not through the corridor, but along the balconies, and he had come through the open door of the lodger with an effect of having flown through the air. There he stood at Hans Kastop's bedside, in all his pallor and blackness, broad-shouldered and squat. His lips parted in a manly smile which showed the yellowish teeth through his beard. The apostrophe!

Starting point is 09:03:24 You seem surprised to see. me, Herr Castorpe, he said, mildly baritone, drawling, unquestionably rather affected. He gave the R a foreign, palatal sound, not rolled, but pronounced with a single impact of the tongue against the upper front teeth. But I am only performing my pleasant duty in seeing after your welfare. Your relations with us have entered upon a new phase. Overnight the guest has become the comrade. His patient was rather alarmed by the word comrade. Who would have thought it? He gested fraternally. Who would have thought it on that evening when I had the honour of making your acquaintance? And you replied to my mistaken supposition,

Starting point is 09:04:05 at that time mistaken, with the explanation that you were perfectly healthy. I believe I expressed some doubt, but I assure you I did not mean it in that sense. I will not pretend being more sharp-sighted than I am. I was not thinking of a moist spot. My remark was meant only in the general, philosophic sense, as a doubt whether the two conceptions, man and perfect health, were, after all, consistent one with the other. Even today, after the examination, I confess that I personally, as distinguished from my honoured chief, cannot regard the moist spot as the most important factor in the situation. It is, for me, a secondary phenomenon. The organic is always secondary. Hans Kastop drew a short breath, and thus your Qatar is, in my view, a third-line phenomenon.

Starting point is 09:04:54 phenomenon. Dr. Krakowski concluded very softly, How is it? The rest in bed will undoubtedly be efficacious in this respect. What have you measured today? And from then on, the assistance visit was in the key of an ordinary professional call to which it kept during the following days and weeks. Dr. Krakowski would enter by the open balcony door at a quarter to four, or earlier, greet the patient with manly readiness, put the usual professional questions, with perhaps a little personal touch as well, a jest or two, and if all this had a slight aura of the questionable about it, yet one can get used even to the questionable, provided it keeps within bounds.

Starting point is 09:05:35 It was not long before Hans Kastob forgot any feeling he may have had about Dr. Kukovsky's visits. They took their place in the programme of the normal day, and performed, as it were, an elision in the latter end of the main rest period. The assistant would return along the balconies at four o'clock, or thereabouts, that is to say, mid-arming. afternoon. Yes, thus suddenly, before one realized it, there one was, in the very deep of the afternoon, and steadily still deepening on toward twilight. Before tea was finished drinking, up above and down below, it was well on the way toward five o'clock. By the time Yoakim returned from his daily third round, and looked in on his cousin, it will be near enough to six, to reduce the remaining

Starting point is 09:06:17 rest period to no more than a single hour, reckoned always in round numbers. It was an easy matter to kill that much time, if one had ideas in one's head and a whole Orbis picked us on the table to boot. Yolkim, on his way to the evening meal, stopped to say goodbye. Hans Kastop's tray was brought. The valley had long since filled with shadow and darkened a pace as yet. When he had done, he leaned back against his down quilt, with the magic table cleared before him, and looked into the growing dusk, "'Today is dusk, yet scarcely distinguishable "'from the dusk of yesterday or last week. "'It was evening, and it had just been morning.

Starting point is 09:06:57 "'The day, artificially shortened, broken into small pieces, "'had literally crumbled in his hands and was reduced to nothing. "'He remarked it to himself with a start. "'Or, at any rate, he did at least remark, "'for to shudder at it was foreign to his years. "'It seemed to him that from the beginning of time "'he had been lying and looking thus, End of Section 28.

Starting point is 09:07:29 Section 29 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 29. Chapter 5. Soup everlasting. Part 2. One day, some 10 or 12 had passed since Hans Castorp retired to bed, there was a knock on his door at about this hour, before Yoakim had returned from dinner and the social half-hour.

Starting point is 09:07:58 Upon Hans Castorpe's inquiring, Come in, it opened, and Ludovico Settembrini appeared. And lo, on the instant, the room was flooded with light. For the visitor's first motion, while still on the threshold, had been to turn on the electric light, which filled the room in a trice with vibrating brilliance, and reverberated from the gleaming white ceiling and furniture. The Italian had been the only one of the guests,

Starting point is 09:08:24 after whom Hans Castorpe had expressly asked in these days. Yoak him, indeed, when he stood or sat by his cousin for ten or fifteen minutes, and that happened ten times in the course of the day, would relate whatever there was of interest or variation in the daily life of the community, and Hans Castop's questions, whenever he put any, had been of a general nature. The exile wished to know whether there were new guests, or if any of the familiar faces were absent. It seemed to gratify him that only the former was the case. There was one newcomer. a hollow-cheeked, green-complexioned young man, who had been given a place at the next table on the right, with Frau Iltis and the ivory-skinned levee. Hans Kastop might look forward to the pleasure of seeing him. So no one had left? Yer Kim answered in a curt negative, his eyes on the ground.

Starting point is 09:09:19 But he had to reply to this question every day or so, until at last he became restive and sought to answer once for all by saying that, so far as he knew no one was purposing to leave. Nobody did leave very much up here, as a matter of fact. But Hans Castorp had asked after Setembrini by name, and desired to hear what he had said to it. To what? Why that I am in bed and supposed to be ill? Setimbrini, it seemed, had expressed himself on the subject, though briefly. On the very day of Hans Castorpe's disappearance he had come to find out his whereabouts of Joachim, obviously prepared to hear that the guest had departed, and on learning the explanation had responded only in Italian,

Starting point is 09:10:00 first, Eko, and then Poveretto, as much as to say, there you are, poor chap. It needed no more Italian than the cousins could boast to understand the sense in which he uttered the words. Why Poveretto? Hans Castor, being quiet. He sits here with his literature made of politics and humanism, and he is very little good for the ordinary interests of life.

Starting point is 09:10:24 He needn't look down his nose and pity me like that. I shall get down to the flatland before he does. And now, Herr Setembrini stood here in the suddenly illuminated room. Hans Kastorp, who had raised himself on his elbow, and turned blinking toward the door, recognized him and flushed. Setembrini wore, as usual, his thick coat with the wide lapels, afraid turnover collar and the Czech trousers. As he came from supper, he was armed with the usual wooden toothpick.

Starting point is 09:10:54 The corner of his mouth, beneath the beautiful curve of his moustache, displayed the familiar, fine, dry, critical smile. Good evening, engineer. May I be permitted to look in on you? If so, I need light. You will pardon me my taking it upon myself. And he waved his small hand toward the lamp in the ceiling. You were absorbed in contemplation. I should not wish to disturb you. A tendency to meditate. is surely natural under the circumstances, and if you want to talk, you have your cousin. You see, I am well aware that I am superfluous, but even so we live here close together. A sympathy springs up between man and man, intellectual and emotional sympathy. It has been a full week that we have not seen you.

Starting point is 09:11:43 I began to think you had left, as I saw your place empty down in the refectory. The lieutenant told me better. or should I say worse, if that would not sound impolite? Well, and how are you? How do you feel? Not too much cast down, I hope. Ah, that is you, Herr Set, Sett, Inbrini. How friendly of you? Refactory. Oh, I say that is good. Always at your jokes. But do sit down. You are not disturbing me in the least. I was lying here, musing. No, musing is too much to say. I was simply too lazy to turn on the light. very much. I am subjectively as good as normal, and my cold is much better from lying in bed.

Starting point is 09:12:25 But it was the secondary phenomenon, so everybody tells me. My temperature is still not what it should be. I have 99.5 degrees to 99.7 degrees all the time. You take your temperature regularly. Yes, six times a day, like the rest of you. Pardon me, I am still laughing at you're calling our dining room a refectory. That is what they are called in a cloister, isn't it? After all, there is some resemblance. Not that I have been in a cloister, but I imagine they are something like this,

Starting point is 09:12:56 and I have the rule at my finger's ends, and observe it faithfully. As a pious brother should, one might say that your novitiate is at an end, and you have made your profession. My formal congratulations, you even say our dining hall, but without meaning to affront your manly dignity,

Starting point is 09:13:14 you remind me more of a young nun than a monk, a regular new shorn, innocent bride of Christ, with great martyr-like eyes. I have seen such lambs here and there about the world, never without a certain excess of sensibility. Yes, your cousin has told me about it, so you had yourself examined, after all, at the 11thire. Since I was feebrow, of course, hair set in Brini, what do you want? If I had been at home, I should have consulted a physician. And here, at the sauce and fount, so to speak, with two specialists in the house, it would have been very strange. Of course, of course. You took your temperature, too, before they told you to.

Starting point is 09:13:58 But they did recommend it from the beginning. And the mylandong slipped you the thermometer. Slipped me? Since the occasion arose, I bought one from her. I understand, an irreproachable transaction. And how many months did the chief knock you down for? "'Good heavens! "'I've asked you that before. "'Do you remember?'

Starting point is 09:14:19 "'You had just come. "'You answered with such assurance.' "'Of course I remember. "'I have had many new experiences since that time, "'but I remember as though it were yesterday. "'You were so amusing and spoke of Behrens "'as the judge of the lower regions. "'Radamese, was it?

Starting point is 09:14:36 "'No, wait, that is something else. "'Radomantus? "'Yes, I may have called him that. "'I am afraid I do not remember "'every phrase that happens to well up to my lips. Radamantus, of course. Minos and Radamantus, and you spoke to us of Caducci at the same time. Pardon me, my dear young friend. We will, if you please, leave him out. The name at this moment

Starting point is 09:15:00 sounds too strange upon your tongue. That's good too, laughed Hans, cast off, but I have learned a good deal about him through you. Yes, at that time I had not the faintest suspicion. I answered you that I was here for three weeks. I did not know any different. The Clefelt girl had just been whistling at me with her pneumothorax. I hardly knew where I was, but I was feeling febrile even then. For the air up here is not only good against illness, you know, it is also good for it. It sometimes brings it to the surface, which is, of course, a necessary step in the cure. An alluring hypothesis, and has Hofrat Berens also told you about the German-Russian woman we had here last year?

Starting point is 09:15:43 No, year before last, for five months. He did not. He should have. A charming woman of Russian-German origin. Married, a young mother. She came from the Baltic provinces somewhere, lymphatic, anemic, but probably some more serious trouble as well. She spent a month here and complained that she felt ill all the time. They told her to be patient. Another month passed.

Starting point is 09:16:11 She continues to assert that she is actually working. worse instead of better. They point out to her that only the physician can judge how she is. She herself only knows how she feels, which does not signify. They are satisfied with the condition of her lung. Good, she says no more. She goes on with the cure and loses weight by the week. The fourth month she faints during the examination. That is nothing, says Berens. Her lung is perfectly satisfactory. But by the fifth month she cannot get about. She goes to bed and writes to her husband out in the Baltic provinces. Berens gets a letter from him, marked personal and urgent, in a very firm hand. I saw it myself. Yes, says Berens, and shrugs his shoulders. It seems to be

Starting point is 09:16:58 indicated that she certainly cannot stand the climate up here. The woman was beside herself. He ought to have said that before. She had felt it from the beginning, she declared. They had killed her among them. Let us hope she recovered her strength. when she went back to her husband. Oh, that's good. That's very good. You do tell stories capitally, Herr Setimbrini. Every word is so plastic. And that story about the girl that went bathing in the lake,

Starting point is 09:17:27 the one they gave the silent sister to take her temperature with, I have often laughed at it all by myself. Yes, what strange things do happen. One lives and learns. But my own case is still quite uncertain. The Hoffrat is supposed to have discovered a trium. lifeling weakness, places where I was infected long ago. I heard them myself when he tapped me, and some fresh places he can hear now. What a funny word fresh is to use in such a connection.

Starting point is 09:17:56 But so far there are only the acoustic indications. Real diagnostic certainty we shall only arrive at when I am about again, and the x-ray and photography have taken place. Then we shall have positive knowledge. You think so. You know that the photographic plate often shows spots that are taken for cavities when there are none there, and that sometimes it shows no spots, although there is something there. Madonna, the photographic plate. There was a young numismatian up here with fever, and since he had fever, there were cavities plain to be seen on the plate. They even hear them. They treated him for thisis, and he died. The post-mortem showed his lung to be sound, the cause of his death, some coccas or other.

Starting point is 09:18:45 Oh, come, Herr Setimbrini, talking about post-mortems already. I haven't got that far yet, I assure you. Engineer, you are a wag, and you are an out-and-out critic and skeptic, I must say. You do not even believe in science. Can you see spots on your plate, Herr Seton-Brinny? Yes, it shows some spots. And you really are ill, too? "'Yes, I am unfortunately rather ill,' replied Settimbrini, and his head dropped. There was a pause in which he gave a little cough. Hans cast off from his bed, regarded his guest, whom he had reduced to silence. It seemed to him that with his two simple inquiries he had refuted Setimbrini's whole position,

Starting point is 09:19:32 even the Republic and the Bello Steeler, and he did nothing on his side to resume the conversation. After a while, Hare said in Brini straightened himself with a smile. Tell me, engineer, he said. How have your family taken the news? What news do you mean? Of my delayed return? Oh, my family, you know, consists of three uncles, a great uncle, and his two sons, who are more like my cousins.

Starting point is 09:19:57 Other family I have none. I was doubly orphaned when I was very small. As to how they took it, they know as much and as little as I myself. At first, when I had to go to bed, I wrote that I had a severe cold and could not travel. Yesterday, as it seemed rather long after all, I wrote again, saying that my Qatar had drawn Hoffrat Berens's attention to the condition of my chest, and that he insisted I should remain until he is clear what the condition is. You may be perfectly sure they took it calmly.

Starting point is 09:20:27 It didn't upset them. And your position? You spoke of a sphere of practical activity, where you're intending to enter shortly on certain duties. Yes, as volunteer apprentice, I have asked them to excuse me for the present. You must not imagine they are in despair over my defection. They can carry on indefinitely without an assistant. Good. Everything is in order, then, in that direction.

Starting point is 09:20:53 Perfect equanimity all along the line. It is a phlegmatic race of people in your part of the country, is it not? But energetic, certainly. "'Oh, yes, very energetic,' said Hans Castro. "'He mentally assayed the temper of his native city, "'and found that his interlocutor had characterized it justly. "'Flegmatic and energetic. "'Yes, I should say they are.'

Starting point is 09:21:18 "'I assume,' continued Hare, said in Brittany, "'in case your stay is prolonged, "'we shall make the acquaintance of your uncle. "'I mean your great-uncle. "'Shall we not? "'He will undoubtedly come up to ascertain your condition.' "'Out of the question,' cried Hans Castor, "'under no conceivable circumstance,

Starting point is 09:21:38 "'wild horses could not drag him up here. "'My uncle is apoplectic, you understand. "'He has almost no neck at all. "'No, he has to have a reasonable atmospheric pressure. "'It would be worse for him up here "'than it was for your lady from the Baltic provinces. "'He would be in a dreadful way.' "'I am disappointed, and apoplectic.

Starting point is 09:21:59 "'Eenergy and phlegm are not much use under those circumstances. Your uncle is rich, I suppose. You are all rich down your way. Hans Kasop smiled at hareset in Brinney's literary generalisations. And again, from his distant couch, he cast a metaphorical eye upon the sphere from which he had been snatched. He called up memories. He made an effort to judge objectively, and found that distance enabled him to do so. He answered, One is rich or else one isn't. And if not, so much the way. worse. I myself am no millionaire, but what I have is secure to me. I have enough to live on and be independent. But personalities aside, well, if you had said one must be rich, I should have agreed with you.

Starting point is 09:22:46 If you aren't rich, or if you leave off from being, then woe be unto you. Oh, he, they will say about this or that person, he hasn't any money, has he? Literally that and making just such a face. and I have often heard them, and see now it made an impression on me, which it would not have done, of course, unless it had struck me as strange. Or don't you think that follows? No, I don't think you, for instance, as Homo Humanus, would feel very comfortable down there. It often struck me that it was pretty strong, as I can see now, though I was a native of the place and for myself have never had to suffer from it.

Starting point is 09:23:23 If a man does not serve the best and dearest wines at his dinners, people don't go. and his daughters are left on his hands. That is what they are like. Lying here and looking at it from this distance, I find it pretty gross. What were the words you used? Flegmatic and energetic. That's very good, but what does it mean? It means hard, cold. And what do hard and cold mean? They mean cruel. It is a cruel atmosphere down there, cruel and ruthless. When you lie here and look at it from a distance it makes you shiver. Setimbrini listened and nodded, nodded after Hans Castorpe had come to an end

Starting point is 09:24:03 for the present of his pronouncement and fallen silent. Then he took a breath and said, I will not seek to extenuate the specific forms which life's normal cruelty assumes in your native sphere. It is all one, for the reproach of cruelty rests upon somewhat sentimental grounds. You could scarcely even have levelled it, while you're in that atmosphere,

Starting point is 09:24:23 for fear of being ridiculous in your own eyes. You left it to the drones to make, and rightly. That you make it now bears witness to a certain estrangement, which I should be sorry to see increase, since he who falls in the habit of making it is in danger of being lost to life, to the manner of life to which he was born. Do you know, engineer, what I mean by being lost to life? I, I know it. I see it here every day,

Starting point is 09:24:51 six months at most after they get here these young people and they are mostly young who come have lost every idea they had except flotation and temperature and if they remain a year they will have lost the power of grasping any other they will find any other

Starting point is 09:25:08 cruel or more precisely ignorant and inadequate you are fond of anecdote I could serve your turn I could tell you of a young man I know a husband and son who was up here for 11 months "'He was a little older than you, yes, rather older. "'He let him go home provisionally, as much improved.

Starting point is 09:25:28 "'He returned to the bosom of his family. "'Not uncles, you understand, but his wife and his mother. "'The whole day he lay with a thermometer in his mouth. "'He took no interest in anything else. "'You don't understand,' he said. "'No one understands who has not lived up there. "'Down here, the fundamental conception is lacking. "'In the end, it was the mother who settled it,

Starting point is 09:25:51 "'Go back,' she said. "'There is nothing to be done with you any more.' "'He went back. Went back home. "'You know, don't you, that they call this home, "'when they have once lived here?' "'He was entirely estranged from his young wife. "'She lacked the fundamental conception, "'and she gave up trying to get it.

Starting point is 09:26:11 "'It was borne in upon her "'that he would find a mate up here, "'who had it, and that he would stop with her. "'Hans Castrop seemed only to be half-listening. He went on staring into the incandescent brilliance of his white room, as into far space. He laughed, belatedly, and said, He called it home? That is sentimental, as you say.

Starting point is 09:26:34 You know no end of stories. I was still thinking of what we said about hardness and cruelty. The same idea has gone through my head a number of times in these days. You see, a person has to have a rather thick skin to find it natural, the way they have of thinking and talking down there. The, has he got money? and the face they make when they say it. It never came quite natural to me,

Starting point is 09:26:56 though I was no homo-humanus. I can see, now I look back, that I was almost struck by it. Perhaps that had to do with my tendency to illness, though I did not know about it at the time. Those old places which I heard myself the other day, and now Berence has found a fresh place. That, I must say, was a surprise to me,

Starting point is 09:27:16 and yet, in a way, I don't know that it was. After all, I never have felt myself as firm as a rock, and my parents, both of them, dying so young, for I have been doubly orphaned from youth up, you know. Here Setimbrini described a single gesture with head, hand and shoulders. Pleasantly, courteously, it put the question, well, and what of it? You are an author, Hans Kastop said, a literary man. It must be easy for you to understand a thing like that. You can feel how under those circumstances a man might not be of tough enough

Starting point is 09:27:52 fibre to find that sort of cruelty quite natural. The cruelty of ordinary people who go about joking and making money and filling their bellies. I don't know if I am expressing myself,' said in Brinney bowed. "'You mean,' he interpreted, "'that the early and repeated contact with death developed in you a tendency which made you sensitive to the harshness and crudity. Let us say the cynicism of our everyday, worldly existence.' "'Precisely,' cried Hans Castorub, in honest in enthusiasm. You have expressed it to a tea, Herr Settembrini. Contact with death. I am sure that you, as a literary man, Sertimbrini put out his hand, laid his head on one side and closed his eyes. It was a mild and beautiful gesture, a plea for silence and further hearing. He held it for

Starting point is 09:28:41 some seconds, even after Hans Kastorp had ceased to speak, and was waiting in suspense for what was to come. But, at length, he opened his black eyes, organ-grim. winder eyes and spoke. Permit me, permit me, engineer, to say to you and to bring it home to you that the only sane, noble,

Starting point is 09:29:02 and I will expressly add, the only religious way to think of death is as a part and parcel of life, to regard it with the understanding and with the emotions as the inviable condition of life. It is the very opposite

Starting point is 09:29:16 of sane, noble, reasonable, or religious to divorce it in any way from life, or to play it off against it. The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols. In the religions of antiquity,

Starting point is 09:29:33 the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death, for death is worthy of homage, as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis. Severed from life, it becomes a specter, a distortion, and worse, for death as an independent power is a lustful power

Starting point is 09:29:55 whose vicious attraction is strong indeed to feel drawn to it, to feel sympathy with it, is without any doubt at all the most ghastly aberration in which the spirit of man is prone. Here said Imbrini left off speaking. He finished with this generalisation and made the definite period of his discourse. He had spoken in a very serious vein

Starting point is 09:30:17 and by no means with conversational intent He even refrained from giving Hans Kastorp the opportunity for a rejoinder, but simply dropped his voice at this point and concluded his remarks. He sat now with his lips closed, his hands folded in his lap, one leg in his checked trouser flung over the other, slightly swinging the foot, which he regarded with austere expression. Hans Kastorp, too, preserved silence. He leaned back in his plumeau, turned his head to the wall,

Starting point is 09:30:46 and drummed with his finger-ends on the coverlet. he felt set to rights, chidden, corrected. In his silence there was no childish obstinacy. The pause lasted some time. At length, Herr Set and Brinney lifted his head and said with a smile, You very likely recall, engineer, that we have had a similar discussion once before. One might say the same discussion. We were talking about disease and dullness.

Starting point is 09:31:13 I think we were taking a walk. And you found the combination a paradox, on the ground of your own. your reverence for ill health. I called that reverence a dismal fantasy, which dishonoured human thought, and I was gratified to find you not disinclined to entertain my plea. We spoke of the neutrality and the intellectual indecision of youth, of its liberties of choice, of its inclination to play with all possible points of view, and that one should not, or need not, regard these experimentations as final and definite elections. Will you permit me? Herr said in Brieckon. "'Mirini smiled and bent forward as he sat,

Starting point is 09:31:51 "'his feet close together on the floor, "'his hands between his knees, "'his head stretched out, "'and a little on one side. "'Will you permit me?' "'And his voice had the faintest tremor in it, "'to be beside you in your assays and experiments, "'and to exercise a corrective influence

Starting point is 09:32:07 "'when there appears to be a danger of your taking up "'a destructive position?' "'Why, certainly,' Herr Set Imbrini. "'Hans Castorpe hastened to abandon his forced and even peevish attitude, stopped drumming on the bed cover, and turned to his guest with friendliness, even with contrition.

Starting point is 09:32:26 It is uncommonly kind of you. I must ask myself if I really... That is, if there is anything... Sine pecuniya, of course, quoted hair set in Brinia as he rose. I can't let myself be outdone. They both laughed. The outer door opened.

Starting point is 09:32:43 Next moment, the inner one as well. It was Joachim, returned from society. When he saw the Italian, he flushed, as Hans Kastop had done. The deep bronze of his face deepened to another shade. Oh, you have company, he said. How nice for you. I was detained. They made me make one of a table of bridge. They call it bridge, he said, shaking his head, as they do outside. But it was really something else entirely. I won five marks.

Starting point is 09:33:12 Only so it doesn't become a vice with you, Hans Kastop laughed. Aham! "'Hairset Inbrini has beguiled the time for me.' "'No, that is not the proper expression, though it may be all right for your Mock Bridge. "'Hairset Inbrini has filled the time for me, and given it content, "'whereas when Mock Bridge breaks out in our midst, "'a respectable man feels he has to fight his way out, "'and yet to have the privilege of listening to Hair Set Mbrini,

Starting point is 09:33:38 "'to get the benefit of his good counsel, "'I could almost wish to keep my fever and stop up here with you indefinitely. "'You would have to give me a silent sister.' to measure with. I repeat, engineer, you are a wag, said the Italian. He took leave gracefully and went. Alone with his cousin, hands cast up heaved a sigh. Oh, what a schoolmaster, he said.

Starting point is 09:34:03 A humanistic one, of course. He never leaves off setting you right. First by means of anecdote, then by abstractions. The things one gets to talk about with him, things you would never have thought you could talk about, or even understand. And if I had met him down below, he added, I never should have understood.

Starting point is 09:34:21 At this hour, Yoakim would remain with him for a while, sacrificing a half or three-quarters of an hour of the evening cure. Sometimes they played chess on Hans Kastob's magic table. Yokim had brought a set of chessmen from below. Then he would take his wrappings and go into the balcony, thermometer in mouth, and Hans Kastob too took his temperature for the last time, while soft music, near or far, stole up from the dark valley. The cure ended at ten. He heard Joachim, he heard the pair from the bad Russian table,

Starting point is 09:34:53 he turned on his side and invited slumber. The night was the harder half of the day, for Hans Kastorpe woke often and lay not seldom hours awake, either because his slightly abnormal temperature kept him stimulated, or because this horizontal manner of life detracted from the power or the desire to sleep. To make up for their briefness, his hours of slumber were animated by extreme, lively and varied dreams, which he could ponder on awaking. And if the hours of the day were shortened by their frequent division into small sections, it was the blurred monotony of the marching hours of the night which operated with the like effect. Then, as dawn came on, he

Starting point is 09:35:34 found it diverting to watch the gradual grey, the slow emergence of the room and the objects in it, as though by the drawing of veils. To see day kindling outside, with smouldering or with lively glow, and it was always a surprise when the moment came round again, and the thump of the bathing-master on his door announced to Hans Castorpe that the daily programme was again in force. He had brought no calendar with him on his holiday, and did not always find himself sure of the date. Now and then he asked his cousin, who in turn was not always quite sure either. True, the Sundays, particularly the fortnightly one with the concert, it was the second Hans Castorpe had spent in this situation, gave him.

Starting point is 09:36:16 him a fixed point. So much was certain that little by little, they had now got well on in September, close on to the middle. Since he went to bed, the cold and cloudy weather had given place to his succession of wonderful midsummer days. Every morning, Joachim appeared, arrayed in white flannel trousers, to greet his cousin, and Hans Kastop felt a pang of regret, in which both heart and youthful muscles joined, at the loss of all this splendid weather. He murmured that it was a shame, but added to console himself, that even if he were up and about, he would hardly know how to take advantage of it, since it seemed it did not answer for him to exert himself much. And the wide-open balcony door did afford him some share of the warm, shimmer, outside. But toward the end of his prescribed

Starting point is 09:37:02 term of lying, the weather veered again. It grew misty and cold overnight. The valley was hid by gusts of wet snow, and the dry heat of the radiator filled the room. Such was the day on which Hans Kastop reminded the doctor, on his morning round, that the three weeks were out, and asked leave to get up. "'What the deuce you don't say?' said Berence. "'Time's up, is it? Let's see. Yes, you're right.

Starting point is 09:37:28 Good Lord, how fast we grew old. Things haven't changed much with you, in the meantime. Normal yesterday? Yes, up to six o'clock in the afternoon. Well, Kastob, I won't grudge you human society any longer. Up with you, man. Get on with your walks. within the prescribed limits, of course.

Starting point is 09:37:47 We'll take a picture of the inside of you. Make a note of it, he said as he went out, jerking his great thumb over his shoulder at Hans Kastop and looking at the pallid assistant with his bloodshot watery blue eyes. Hans Kastop left the caboose. In Galoshes, with his collar turned up, he accompanied his cousin once more to the bench by the watercourse and back. On the way, he raised the question of how long the Hofrat

Starting point is 09:38:11 might have let him lie if he had not been reminded, and Joachim, looking worried, opened his mouth to emit a single, pessimistic syllable, spread out his hands in an expressive gesture, and gave it up. End of Section 29. Section 30 of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 30 Chapter 5.

Starting point is 09:38:45 Sudden Enlightenment Part 1 A week passed before Hans Castorp received, through the directoress von Milendonk, the summons to present himself in the X-ray laboratory. He had not liked to press matters. The Berkov was a busy place. Doctors and assistants had their hands full. New guests had recently come in, two Russian students with shocks of hair and black blouses, closed to the throat, showing not a vestige of linen, a Dutch-married couple who were given places at Set in Brinney's table, and a hunchbacked to Mexico.

Starting point is 09:39:21 who frightened his table by fearful attacks of asthma, when he would clutch his neighbour, whether man or woman, in an iron grip like a vice, and draw him, as it were, struggling and crying for help into the circle of his own extremity. The dining-room was nearly full, though the winter season did not actually begin until October, and Hans Kastop's case was scarcely of such severity

Starting point is 09:39:45 as to give him any special claim to attention. Frou Stor, for all her stupidity, and ill-breeding, was unquestionably worse off than he, not to mention Dr. Blumencol. One must have lacked all discrimination not to have behaved retiringly in Hans Kastop's place, particularly since discrimination was in the atmosphere of the house. The mal cases were of no great account, that he had often heard. They were slightingly spoken of, looked out askance, not only by the more serious and very serious cases, but even by each other.

Starting point is 09:40:21 Logically, of course, each mild case was thus driven to think slightingly of itself, yet preserved its individual self-respect by merging it with the general, as was natural and human. Oh, they would say of this or that patient, there's not much amiss with him. He hardly even ought to be up here. He has no cavities at all. Such was the spirit. It was aristocratic in its own special sense, and Hans Castob deferred to it, out of an inborn respect for law and order. of every sort. It was natural to him to conform to the proverb which bids us, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and indeed travellers show small breeding when they jeer at the customs and

Starting point is 09:41:04 standards of their hosts, for of characteristics that do honour to their possessors there are all sorts and kinds. Even toward Joachim Hans Castorpe felt a certain deference. Not so much because he was the older inhabitant, his guide and Cicerooney in these new surroundings, as because he was unquestionably the more serious case of the two. Such being the attitude, it was easy to understand that each patient inclined to make the most he could of his individual case, even exaggerating its seriousness, so as to belong to the aristocracy, or come as close to it as possible. So Hans Castop, when asked a table, might add a couple of tenths to his temperature, and could never help feeling flattered when they shook their fingers at him and called him an artful dodger,

Starting point is 09:41:51 but even when he laid it on a little, he still remained a member of the lower orders, in whom an attitude of unassuming diffidence was only right and proper. He took up the life of his first three weeks, that familiar, regular, well-regulated life with Joachim, and it went as pat as though he had never left it off. The interruption, indeed, had been insignificant, as he saw when he resumed his seat at table. Joachim, who laid deliberate stress on such occasions, had decorated his place with a few flowers. But there was no great ceremony about the greetings of the other guests. They were almost what they would have been after a separation of three hours instead of three weeks.

Starting point is 09:42:33 This was not due to indifference toward his simple and sympathetic personality, nor to preoccupation with their own absorbing physical state, but merely because they had actually not been conscious of the interval, and Hans Castorp could readily follow them in this. Since sitting there in his place at the end of the table between the schoolmistress and Miss Robinson, it was as though he had sat there no longer ago than yesterday at the furthest. Even at his own table, the end of his retirement caused no stir. How should it have been remarked in the rest of the dining-room,

Starting point is 09:43:06 and literally no soul had taken notice of it, save Setimbrini, who strolled over at the end of the meal to exchange a lively greeting? Hans Castorpe, indeed, would have made a mental reservation, in which he may or may not have been justified. He told himself that Claudia Shosha had noticed his return, that she had no sooner made her tardy entrance and let the glass door slam behind her than she rested her narrow gaze upon him, but she had met with his own, and that even after she sat down, she had turned and looked toward him, smiling over her shoulder, as she had three weeks before on the day of his examination. The movement had been so open, so regardless, regardless of both himself and the other guests, that he did not know whether to be in ecstasies over it, or to take it as a mark of contempt and feel angry.

Starting point is 09:43:58 At all events his heart had contracted beneath this glance, which so markedly and intoxicatingly gave the lie to the lack of social relations subsisting between him and the fair patient. It had contracted almost painfully at the moment when the glass door slammed, for to that moment he had looked forward with his breath coming thick and fast. It must be said that Hans Kastop's sentiments toward the patient of the good Russian table had made distinct progress during his retirement. The sympathy he entertained in his mind and his simple heart for this medium-sized person with the gliding-gate and the Kirkkitz eyes as good as amounted to being in love. We shall let the word stand, though in strictness it is a conception of down below, a word of the plains, capable of giving rise to a misconception, namely that the tender ditty beginning one word from thy sweet lips was to some extent applicable to his state. Her picture had hovered before him, in those early hours when he had lain awake and watched the dawn unveil his chamber, or at evening when the twilight thickened. It had been vividly present, the night set in Brini had suddenly entered his room and turned on the light.

Starting point is 09:45:14 It was the reason why he had coloured under the humanistic eye. In each hour of his diminished day, he had thought of her. Her mouth, her cheekbones, her eyes, whose colour, shape and position bit into his very soul. Her drooping back, the posture of her head, her cervical vertebra, above the rounding of her blouse. her arms enhanced by their thin gauze covering. Possessed of these thoughts, his hours had sped on soundless feet. If we have concealed the fact, we did so out of sympathy for the turmoil of his conscience, which mingled with the terrifying joy his visions imparted.

Starting point is 09:45:53 Yes, he felt both terror and dread. He felt a vague and boundless, utterly mad and extravagant anticipation, a nameless anguish of joy, which at times a time. so oppressed the young man's heart, his actual and corporal heart, that he would lay one hand in the neighbourhood of that organ while he carried the other to his brow, and held it like a shield before his eyes, whispering, oh my God! For behind that brow were thoughts, or half-thoughts, which imparted to the visions their perilous sweetness, thoughts that had to do with Madame Shoshas' recklessness and abandon, her ailing state, the heightening and accentuation of her

Starting point is 09:46:35 physical parts by disease, the corporalisation, so to speak, of all her being, as an effect of disease, an effect in which he, Hans Kastorp, by the physician's verdict, was now to share. He comprehended the grounds of her audacity, her total disregard in smile and glance, of the fact that no social relation existed between them, that they did not even know each other. It was as though they belonged to no social system, as though it were not even necessary. that they should speak to each other. Precisely this it was that frightened, Hans Castorpe, for frightened he was,

Starting point is 09:47:13 in the same sense as when, in the consulting room, he had looked from Joachim's nude body with panic-stricken searching up to his eyes, only that then the grounds of his fear had been pity and concern, whereas here something quite different was in play. But now the Berkov life, that wonderfully favoured and well-regulated existence,

Starting point is 09:47:35 was once more in full swing on its narrow stage. Hans Castorup, whilst awaiting his x-ray examination, continued to enjoy its measured course, together with good cousin Joachim, and to do hour for hour precisely as he did. No question but his cousin's society was beneficial to our young man, for though Yochim's were but a companionship in suffering, yet he suffered, as it were, conformably, with military etiquette,

Starting point is 09:48:02 even though unconsciously, to the point of, finding satisfaction in the service of the cure, of substituting it for the service down below, and making of it an interim profession. Hans Kastop was not so dull as not to perceive all this, yet at the same time he was aware of its corrective and restraining influence upon his more civilian temper. It might have been this companionship, its example and the control it exercised, which held him back from overt steps and rash undertakings, for he saw all that Yoakim had to endure from the daily assaults of an orange-scented atmosphere, commingled of such elements as round brown eyes, a little ruby, a great deal of unwarranted laughter, and a bosom fair to outward eyes.

Starting point is 09:48:49 The honour and good sense which made Joachim flee these enticements gripped Hans Castor, kept him under control and prevented him from borrowing a lead pencil, so to speak, from the narrow-eyed one, a thing which he otherwise, from what we know of him, might well have been ready to do. Yo-Kim never spoke of the laughter-loving Maroostya, and thus Hans Kastop could not mention Claudia Shosha. He made up for this by his stolen commerce with the schoolmistress at table, when he would sit supporting his chin after the manner of old Hans Lorenz,

Starting point is 09:49:25 and taxed the spinster with her weakness for the charming invalid, until her face positively flamed. He pressed her to find out new and interesting facts about Moucels. Madame Shoshat's personal affairs, her origin, her husband, her age, the particulars of her illness. He wanted to know if she had children. Oh, no, she had none. What should a woman like her do with children? Probably she was strictly forbidden to have any.

Starting point is 09:49:52 And if she did, what kind of children would they be? Hans Castorpe was forced to acquiesce. And now it was probably too late, he threw out, with prodigious objectivity. but I'm sure she has profile at times seemed to him already a little sharp she must be over thirty Feraline Englehart rejected the idea with scorn 30? At worst not more than 28

Starting point is 09:50:15 she forbade her neighbour to use such words about Claudia's profile it was the softest, sweetest and most youthful profile in the world and at the same time interesting of course it was not the profile of any ordinary healthy bread and butter miss To punish him, she went on to say that she knew Frau Shoshua entertained a male visitor,

Starting point is 09:50:39 a certain fellow-countryman who lived down in the plats. She received him afternoons in her chamber. It was a good shot. Hans Kastop's face changed in spite of himself. He tried to react, saying, Well, well, you don't say so. But the words sounded strained. He was incapable of treating lightly the existence of this fellow-countryman of Frau Shosha

Starting point is 09:51:02 much as he wished to appear to do so, and came back to it again and again, his lips twitching. A young man. Young and good-looking, according to all accounts, the schoolmistress answered. She could not say from her own observation. Was he ill? Only a light case at most. Let us hope, Hans Castop remarked with scorn, that he displays more linen than the other two at the bad Russian table. Frowline Englehart, on punishment intent, said she could voucherchief. for that. He gave in and admitted that it was a matter for concern. He earnestly charged her to find out all she could about this young man who came and went between the Platts and Frau Shoshas' room. A few days later, she brought him, not information about the young Russian,

Starting point is 09:51:50 but a fresh and startling piece of news. She knew that Claudia Shosha was having her portrait painted and asked Hans Kastor if he knew it too. If not, he might be assured she had it on the best authority. She had been sitting for some time to a person here in the house, and the person was the Hoffrat. Yes, Herr Hoffrat Barons, no less, and he received her for the purpose almost daily in his private dwelling. This intelligence affected Hans Kastob even more than the other. He made several false jokes about it. Why, certainly the Hoffrat was known to occupy himself with oil painting. Why not? It wasn't a crime.

Starting point is 09:52:34 Anybody was free to paint. And the sittings took place in the widow's own house. He hoped at least that Fraline von Milendonk was present. The schoolmistress objected that the directoress was probably too busy. No busier than the doctor ought to be, Hans Castorpe severely rejoined. The remark was final, but he was far from letting the subject drop. He exhausted himself in questions. about the picture, what size it was, and whether it was a head or knee-length,

Starting point is 09:53:02 about the hours of the sitting. But Fraline Englehart could not gratify him with these particulars and had to put him off until she made further inquiry. Hans Castorne measured 99.7 degrees, as a result of this communication. The visits Frowsha received upset him far less than these she made. Her personal and private life, quite aside from what went on in it, had begun to be a source of anguish and unrest. How much keener then were his feelings

Starting point is 09:53:32 when he heard such questionable things about the way she spent her time? Speaking generally, it was altogether possible that her relations with the Russian visitor had a disinterested and harmless character, but Hans Kastorp had been for some time now inclined to reject harmless and disinterested explanations as being in the nature of Tommy Rutt.

Starting point is 09:53:52 Nor could he regard in any other light, this oil painting, considered as a bond of interest between a widower with a robust vocabulary and a narrow-eyed, soft-stepping young female. The taste displayed by the Hoffrat in his choice of a model was too like Hans Kastob's own for him to put great faith in the disinterested character of the affair, and the thought of the Hoffrat's purple cheeks and bloodshot, goggling eyes, and he strengthened his scepticism.

Starting point is 09:54:21 An observation which he made in these days, of his own accord, and quite by chance, had a different effect upon him, though here again what he saw confirmed his own taste. There sat at the same table with Frouce Solomon and the greedy schoolboy with the glasses, at the cousins left, near the side door, a patient who was, so Hans Kastop had heard, a native of Mannheim. He was some thirty years old. His hair was thin, his teeth poor, and he had a self-deprecating manner of speech. He it was who played the piano evenings, usually the wedding march from Midsummer Night's Dream. He was said to be very religious,

Starting point is 09:55:00 as those up here naturally often were. Every Sunday he went to service down in the plaits, and in the rescuer he read devotional books with a chalice or palm branch on the front cover. This man's eyes, so Hans Castop one day observed, travelled the same road as his own. They hung upon Madame Shoshas' lice and figure, with timid, dog-like devotion.

Starting point is 09:55:24 Once Hans Kastop had remarked this, he could not forbear corroborating it again and again. He saw him stand of an evening in the card-room, among the other guests, quite lost in gazing at the lovely, contaminant creature on the sofa in the small salon, in talk with the whimsical, fuzzy head, Tamara, Dr. Blumencall, and the hollow-chested, stooping young men who were her table-mates. He saw him turn away, then twist his head with a piteous expression of the upper lip. and roll his eyes back over his shoulder in her direction. He saw him colour and not look up, but then gaze avidly, as with a crash the glass door fell to,

Starting point is 09:56:05 and Fras Shosha slipped to her place. And more than once he saw how the poor soul would place himself after the meal between the good Russian table and the exit, in order that she might pass close by him. She gave him neither glance nor thought, while he devoured her at close range, with eyes full of sorrow to their very depths. This discovery of his affected young Hans Kastop no little,

Starting point is 09:56:32 though the plaintive, devouring gaze of the Mannheimer did not trouble his rest like the thought of Claudia Shoshas' private relations with Hoffrad Berens, a man so much his superior in age, person and position. Claudia took no interest in the Mannheimer. Had she done so, it would not have escaped Hans Kastop's perception. in this case it was not the dart of jealousy he felt pierce his soul but he did have all the sensations which the drunkenness of passion knows when it sees its own case duplicated in the outer world and which form a most fantastic mixture of disgust and fellow-feeling to explore and lay open all the windings of his emotions would keep us far too long suffice it to say that his observation of the manheimer gave our poor young friend enough to think on and to suffer In this wise passed the eight days before his x-ray examination.

Starting point is 09:57:27 He had not known it was so long, but one morning at early breakfast he received the order through the directress. She had another sty, so this harmless, though disfiguring, ailment was clearly constitutional, to present himself in the laboratory that afternoon. And behold, when he came to think of it, eight days had passed. He and his cousin were to go together, a half-hour before tea. The occasion would serve for your own.

Starting point is 09:57:53 Jo Kim to have another x-ray taken, as the old one was by now out of date. They shortened the main rest period by 30 minutes, and, promptly, as the clock struck half-past three, descended the stairs to the so-called basement and sat down in the small antechamber between the consulting room and the laboratory. Yoakim was quite cool, this being for him no new experience. Hans Castorke, rather feverishly expectant, as no one, up to the present, had ever had a view of his organic interior. They were not alone. Several other patients were already sitting when they entered, with tattered, illustrated magazines on their laps, and they all waited together. A young swede of heroic proportions who sat at Sedimbrini's table, of whom one heard that when he entered the previous April, he had been so ill they had almost refused to take him, but he had put on nearly six stone and was about to be discharged, cured. There was also a mother from the bad Russian table, herself in lamentable case, with her long-nosed, ugly boy named Sasha, whose case was more lamentable still. These three had been waiting longer than the cousins, and would therefore go in before them.

Starting point is 09:59:03 Evidently there had been some sort of hitch in the laboratory, and a cold tea was on the cards. They were busy in there. The voice of the Hoffrat could be heard, giving directions. It was somewhat past the half hour when the door was opened by the technical assistant to admit the Swedish giant and Fortune's minion. His predecessor had evidently gone out by another door, but now matters moved more rapidly. After no more than ten minutes, they heard the Scandinavian stride off down the corridor, a walking testimonial to the establishment and the health resort, and the Russian mother was admitted with her Sasha.

Starting point is 09:59:40 Both times as the door opened, Hans Kastob observed it was half dark. in the X-ray room, an artificial twilight prevailed there, as in Dr. Krakowski's analytic cabinet. The windows were shrouded, daylight was shut out, and two electric lights were burning. But as Sasha and his mother went in, and Hans Castorpe gazed after them, the corridor door opened, and the next patient entered the waiting room. She was, of course, too early on account of the delay in the laboratory. It was Madame Shosha. End of Section 30. Section 31 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

Starting point is 10:00:21 This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 31 Chapter 5 Sudden Enlightenment Part 2 It was Claudia Shoshar who appeared thus suddenly in the little waiting room. Hans Kastorp recognized her, staring-eyed, and distinctly felt the blood leave his cheeks.

Starting point is 10:00:46 his jaw relaxed, his mouth was on the point of falling open. Her entrance had taken place so casually, so unforeseen, she had not been there, and then, all at once, there she was, and sharing these narrow quarters with the cousins. Yul Kim flung a quick glance at Hans Kastop, afterwards not only casting down his eyes, but taking up again the illustrated sheet he had laid aside and burying his face in it. Hans Castor could not summon resolution to do the same. He grew very red, after his sudden pallor, and his heart pounded.

Starting point is 10:01:23 Froucheer seated herself by the laboratory door, in a little round easy chair, with stumpy, as it were, rudimentary arms. She leaned back, crossed one leg lightly over the other, and stared into space. She knew she was being looked at, and her Pribislav eyes shifted their gaze nervously, almost squinting. She wore a white sweater and blue skirt and had a book from the lending library in her lap. She tapped softly with the sole of the foot

Starting point is 10:01:53 that rested on the floor. After a minute and a half, she changed her position, looked round, stood up, with an air of not knowing what she was to do or where to go, and began to speak. She was asking something. She addressed a question to Joachim, though he sat there apparently deep in his magazine,

Starting point is 10:02:11 while Hans Kastop was doing nothing at all. She shaped the words with her lips and gave them voice out of her white throat. It was the voice, not deep, but with the slightest edge and pleasantly husky that Hans Kastop knew, had known so long ago, and yet heard so lately, saying, With pleasure, only you must be sure to give it me back after the lesson. Those words had been uttered clearly and fluently. these came rather hesitatingly and brokenly. The speaker had no native right to them.

Starting point is 10:02:46 She only borrowed them, as Hans Kastop had heard her do before, when he experienced the mingled feeling of superiority and ecstasy, we have described. One hand in her sweater pocket, the other at the back of her head, Frau Shoshah asked, May I ask for what time you had an appointment? And Joach him, with a quick look at his cousin, answered, drawing his heels together.

Starting point is 10:03:09 as he sat. For half-past three, she spoke again. Mine was for a quarter to four. What is it then? It is nearly four. Some people have just gone in, did they not? Yes, two people. They were ahead of us. There seems to be some delay. Everything is a half-hour late. It is disagreeable, she said, nervously touching her hair. Rather, responded Joachim, we have been waiting nearly half an hour already. Thus they conversed, and Hans Kastop listened as in a dream. For his cousin to speak to Froucheosha was almost the same as his doing it himself, and yet how altogether different. That rather had affronted him, it sounded odd and brusque, if not worse, in view of the circumstances, to think that Yoakim could speak to her like that, to think that he could speak to her at all,

Starting point is 10:04:08 and very likely he prided himself on his person. rather, much as Hans Kastorp had played up before Yoakim and Setimbrini when he was asked how long he meant to stay and answered three weeks. It was to Yoak him, though he had the paper in front of his nose, that she had turned with her question, because he was the older inhabitant, of course, whom she had known longer by sight. But perhaps for another reason as well, because they two might meet on a conventional footing and carry on an ordinary conversation in articulate words, because nothing wire. and deep, mysterious and terrifying held sway between them. Had it been somebody brown-eyed with a ruby ring and orange perfume,

Starting point is 10:04:50 who sat there waiting for them, it would have been his Hans Kastop's part to lead the conversation and say rather in the purity and detachment of his sentiments. Yes, madam, certainly rather unpleasant, he would have said, and might have taken his handkerchief out of his breast pocket with a flourish and blown his nose. Have patience. case is no better than yours. How surprised Joachim would have been at his fluency, but without seriously wishing himself in Hans Castob's place. No, and Hans Castob was not

Starting point is 10:05:23 jealous of Joachim for being able to talk to Frau Schocher. He was satisfied that she should have addressed herself to his cousin. It showed that she recognised the situation for what it was. His heart pounded. After Joachim's cavalier treatment of Madame Shoshar, in which Hans Castorub seemed to savour something almost like faint hostility on his cousin's part towards their fair fellow patient, a hostility at which he could not help smiling, despite commotion in his mind. Claudia tried a turn up and down the room. Then, finding the space too confined, she too took up an illustrated paper and returned to the easy chair with the rudimentary arms. Hans Castorpe looked at her with his chin in his collar, like his grandfather. It was laughable to see how like the old man

Starting point is 10:06:10 he looked. Frowsha had crossed one leg over the other again, and her knee, even the slender line of the thigh, showed beneath the blue skirt. She was only of middle height, a thoroughly proper and delightful height in Hans Kastop's eyes, but relatively long-legged and narrow in the hips. She sat leaning forward, with her crossed forearms supported on her knee, her shoulders drooping, and her back rounded, so that the neck bone stuck out prominently, and only the whole spruce. wine was marked out under the close-fitting sweater. Her breasts, which were not high and voluptuous, like maurustias, but small and maidenly, were pressed together from both sides. Hans Castorpe recalled suddenly that she, too, was sitting there waiting to be x-rayed. The Hoffrat painted her,

Starting point is 10:06:57 he reproduced her outward form with oil and colours upon the canvas, and now, in the twilighted room he would direct upon her the rays which would reveal to him the inside of her body. When this idea occurred to Hans Castor, he turned away his head and put on a primly detached air, a sort of seemly obscurantism, presented itself to him as the only correct attitude in the presence of such a thought. The waiting together in the little room did not last for long. They evidently gave rather short shrift to Sasha and her mother in their effort to make up for lost time. The technician in his white smock once more appeared. Joachim stood up and tossed his paper back onto the table,

Starting point is 10:07:41 and Hans Castor, not without inward hesitation, followed him to the open door. He was struggling with chivalrous scruples, also with the temptation to put himself, after all, upon conventional terms with Frau Schosha, to speak to her and offer her precedence, in French, if he could manage. Hastily he sought to muster the words,

Starting point is 10:08:01 the sentence structure, but he did not know if such courtesies were practised up here, probably the established order was more powerful than the rules of chivalry. Yolkin must know, and as he made no motion to defer to sex, even though Hans Castor looked at him imploringly, the latter followed his cousin, past Frau Shoshar, who merely glanced up from her stooping posture as they went through the door into the laboratory. He was too possessed by the events of the last ten minutes,

Starting point is 10:08:28 and by what he left behind, for his mind to pass immediately with his body over the threshold of the X-ray laboratory. He saw nothing, or only vaguely, in the artificially lighted room. He still heard Fras Choshas pleasantly veiled voice, with which she had said, What is it then? Some people have just gone in. It is disagreeable. The sound of it still shivered sweetly down his back. He saw the shape of her knee under the cloth skirt, saw the bone of her neck under the short, reddish-blond hairs,

Starting point is 10:09:01 that were not gathered up into the braids. And again the shiver ran down. his back. Then he saw Hofrat Barron's, with his back to them, standing before a sort of built-in recess, looking at a black plate, which he held at arm's length, toward the dim light in the ceiling. They passed him and went on into the room, followed by the assistant who made preparations to dispatch their affair. It smelled very odd in here. The air was filled with a sort of stale ozone. The built-in structure, projecting between the two black-hung windows, divided the room into two unequal parts. Hans Castob could distinguish physical apparatus, lenses, switchboards,

Starting point is 10:09:42 towering measuring instruments, a box like a camera on a rolling stand, glass diapositives in rows set in the walls. What to say whether this was a photographic studio, a dark room, or an inventor's workshop and technological which is kitchen. Yer Kim had begun, without more ado, to lay bare the upper half of his body. The helper, a square-built, rosy-cheeked young native in a white smock, motioned Hans Castorpe to do the same. It went fast, and he was next in turn. As Hans Castorpe took off his waistcoat, Barons came out of a smaller recess where he was standing, into the larger one. "'Hello!' said he. "'Here are our dear Scourri, Castor and Pollux. If you feel any inclination to blub, kindly suppress it. Just wait. We shall soon see through,

Starting point is 10:10:33 through you both. I expect, Castorpe, you feel a little nervous about exposing your inner self to our gaze. Don't be alarmed. We preserve all the amenities. Look yet, have you seen my picture gallery? He led Hans Castorpe by the arm before the rows of dark plates on the wall and turned on a light behind them. Hans Castorpe saw various members, hands, feet, knee-pans, thigh and leg-bones, arms and pelvices. But the rounded living form of these portions of the human body was vague and shadowy, like a pale and misty envelope,

Starting point is 10:11:08 within which stood out the clear, sharp nucleus, the skeleton. Very interesting, said Hans Gaston. Interesting, sure enough, responded the Hoffrat. Useful object lesson for the young, X-ray anatomy, you know, triumph of the age. There is a female arm. you can tell by its delicacy. That's what they put around you and they make love, you know.

Starting point is 10:11:34 He laughed, and his upper lip, with the close-cropped moustache, went up still more on one side. The pictures faded. Hans Castorpe turned his attention to the preparations for taking Yercombe's x-ray. It was done in front of that structure on the other side of which Hoffrat Berens had been standing when they entered. Yolkim had taken his place on a sort of shoemaker's bench in front of a board, which he embraced with his arms and pressed his breast against it, while the assistant improved the position, massaging his back with kneading motions,

Starting point is 10:12:06 and putting his arms further forward. Then he went behind the camera, stood just like a photographer would, legs apart and stooped over to look inside. He expressed his satisfaction, and going back to Jo Kim, warned him to draw in his breath, and hold it until all was over. Yokim's rounded back, expanded, and so remained.

Starting point is 10:12:26 The assistant of the switchboard pulled the handle. Now, for the space of two seconds, fearful powers were in play. Streams of thousands, of 100,000 of volts, hands cast up seem to recall, which were necessary to pierce through solid matter. They could hardly be confined to their office. They tried to escape through other outlets. There were explosions like pistol shots, blue sparks on the measuring apparatus. Long lightnings crackled along the walls.

Starting point is 10:12:54 somewhere in the room appeared a red light like a threatening eye and a file in Yerkin's rear filled with green then everything grew quiet the phenomena disappeared and Yerquim let out his breath with a sigh it was over

Starting point is 10:13:10 next delinquent said the Huffrat and nudged hands castor with Zelbo don't pretend you're too tired you will get a free copy castor then you can project the secrets of your bosom on the wall for your children and grandchildren to see.

Starting point is 10:13:26 Yo Kim had stepped down. The technician changed the plate. Offrat Barons personally instructed the novice how to sit and hold himself. Put your arms about it, he said. Embrace the board. Pretended something else, if you like. Press your breast against it

Starting point is 10:13:42 as they'd filled you with rapture. Like that. Draw a deep breath, hold it, he commanded. Now, please. Hands cast up, waited, blinking his His lungs distended. Behind him the storm broke loose. It crackled, lightened, detonated, and grew still. The lens had looked into his inside. He got down, dazed and bewildered, notwithstanding he had not been physically sensible of the penetration in the slightest degree.

Starting point is 10:14:14 Good lad, said the Hoffrat. Now we shall see. Experienced Joachim had already moved over toward the entrance door and taken position at a stand. At his back was the lofty structure of the apparatus, with a bulb half full of water and distillation tubes. In front of him, breast-high, hung a framed screen on pulleys. On his left, between switchboard and instrumentarium, was a red globe. The hoffrat, bestriding a stool in front of the screen, lighted the light. The ceiling light went out, and only the red glow illuminated the scene. Then the master turned this two off with a quick motion, and thick darkness.

Starting point is 10:14:53 enveloped the laboratory. We must first accustom the eyes, the hot frat was heard to say in the darkness. We must get big pupils, like a cat's, to see what we want to see. You understand our everyday eyesight would not be good enough for our purposes. We have to banish the bright daylight

Starting point is 10:15:12 and its pretty pictures, out of our minds. Naturally, said Hans Castor, he stood at the Hofrat's shoulder, closed his eyes, since the darkness was so profound that it did not matter whether he had them open or shut. First we must wash our eyes with darkness

Starting point is 10:15:27 to see what we want to see, that is, plain. I find it quite right and proper, as a matter of fact, that we should collect ourselves a little beforehand in silent prayer, as it were. I am standing here with my eyes shut and have quite a pleasant, sleepy feeling, but what is it I smell?

Starting point is 10:15:44 Oxygen, said the Hoffrad. What you notice in the air is oxygen, atmospheric product of our little private thunderstorm, you know. Eyes open. He commanded, The magicing is about to begin. Hands cast up hastened to obey. They heard a switch go on.

Starting point is 10:16:01 A motor started up and sang furiously higher and higher until another switch controlled and steadied it. The floor shook with an even vibration. The little red light at right angles to the ceiling looked threateningly across at them. Somewhere lightning flashed, and with a milky gleam a window of light emerged from the darkness. It was the square hanging.

Starting point is 10:16:23 screen, before which Hofrat Berens bestrode his stool. His legs sprawled apart with his fists supported on them, his blunt nose close to the pain, which gave him a view of man's interior organism. Do you see it, young man? he asked. Hans Castorpe leaned over his shoulder, but then raised his head again to look toward the spot where Yucum's eyes were presumably gazing in the darkness, with the gentle, sad expression they had worn during the other examination. May I? he asked. Of course, Joachim replied magnanimously, out of the dark.

Starting point is 10:16:57 And to the pulsation of the floor, and the snapping and cracking of the forces at play, hands cast off peered through the lighted window, peered into Yochim Zimson's empty skeleton. The breastbone and spine fell together in a single dark column. The frontal structure of the ribs was cut across by the paler structure of the back. Above, the collar bones branched off on both sides, and the framework of the shoulder of the shoulder, with the joint in the beginning of Joachim's arm showed sharp and bare through the soft

Starting point is 10:17:26 envelope of flesh. The thoracic cavity was light, but blood vessels were to be seen, some dark spots, a blackish shadow. Clear picture, said the Hoffrat, quite decent leanness. That's the military youth.

Starting point is 10:17:42 I've had paunches here. You couldn't see through them. Hardly recognise the thing. The rays are yet to be discovered that will go through such layers of fat. This is not. nice, clean work. Do you see the diaphragm? he asked, and indicated with his finger the dark arch in the window that rose and fell. Do you see the bulges here on the left side, the little

Starting point is 10:18:03 protuberances? That was the inflammation of the pleura he had when he was 15 years old. Breathe deep, he commanded, deeper, deeper, I tell you. And Yoakim's diaphragm rose quivering as high as it could. The upper parts of the lungs could be seen to clear up, but the hofrat was not satisfied. Good enough, he said. Can you see the Hylis glands? Can you see the adhesions? Look at the cavities here. That is where the toxins come from that fuddled him.

Starting point is 10:18:33 Hans Kastop's attention was taken up by something like a bag, a strange animal shape, darkly visible behind the middle column, or more on the right side of it. The spectator's right. It expanded and contracted regularly a little after the fashion of a swimming jellyfish. Look at his heart. and the Hofrat lifted his huge hand again from his thigh and pointed with his forefinger at the pulsating shadow.

Starting point is 10:18:58 Good God, it was the heart. It was Yerkim's honour-loving heart that hands cast up soar. I am looking at your heart, he said in a suppressed voice. Go ahead, answered Yerkem again. Probably he smiled politely up there in the darkness, but the Hoffrat told him to be quiet and not betray any sensibility. Barron studied the spots and the lines, the black festoon in the intercostal space,

Starting point is 10:19:26 while Hans Castorpe gazed without wearying at Yokim's graveyard shape and bony tenement, this lean memento mory, this scaffolding for mortal flesh to hang on. Yes, yes, I see, I see, he said several times over. My God, I see. He had heard of a woman, a long-dead member of the Tienapel connection,

Starting point is 10:19:48 who had been endowed or afflicted, with a heavy gift, which she bore in all humility, namely that the skeletons of persons about to die would appear before her. Thus now Hans Castorke was privileged to behold the good Joachim, but with the aid and under the auspices of physical science, and by his cousins expressed permission, so that it was quite legitimate and without gruesome significance. Yet a certain sympathy came over him with the melancholy destiny of his clairvoyant relative. He was strongly moved by what he saw. or, more precisely, by the fact that he saw it, and felt stirrings of uneasy doubt as to whether it was really permissible and innocent to stand here in the quaking, crackling darkness and gaze like this.

Starting point is 10:20:32 His itch to commit the indiscretion, conflicted in his bosom with religious emotion and feelings of concern. But, a few minutes later, he himself stood in the pillory, in the midst of the electrical storm. Marni Okim, his body closed up again, put on his clothes. Again the Hoffrat peered through the milky glass, this time into Hans Castorps' own inside, and from his half-utterances, his broken phrases and bursts of scolding, the young man gathered that what he saw corresponded to his expectations. He was so kind as to permit the patient at his request to look at his own hand through the screen, and Hans Castorps saw precisely what he must have expected,

Starting point is 10:21:12 but what it is hardly permitted man to see, and what he had never thought it would be vouched saved him, to see. He looked into his own grave. The process of decay was forestalled by the powers of the light ray. The flesh in which he walked disintegrated, annihilated, dissolved in a vacant mist, and there within it was the finely turned skeleton of his own hand. The seal ring he had inherited from his grandfather hanging loose and black on the joint of his ring finger, a dark material object with which man adorns the body that is fated to melt away beneath it. when it passes on to another flesh that can wear it for yet a little while.

Starting point is 10:21:52 With the eyes of his Tienapel ancestors, penetrating, prophetic eyes, he gazed at this familiar part of his own body, and for the first time in his life he understood that he would die. At the thought there came over his face the expression it usually wore when he listened to music, a little dull, sleepy, and pious, his mouth half open, his head inclined toward the shoulder. The Hoffrat said, Spooky, what? Yes, there's something distinctly spooky about it.

Starting point is 10:22:24 He closed off the current. The floor ceased to vibrate, the lightnings to play, the magic window was quenched in darkness. The ceiling light came on, and Hans Kastop flung on his clothes. The Huffrat gave the two young men the result of his observations in non-technical language out of regard for their lay minds.

Starting point is 10:22:41 It seemed that in Hans Kastop's case, the test of the eye, confirmed that of the ear, in a way to add luster to science. The Hofrat had seen the old as well as the fresh spots and strands that ran from the bronchial tubes rather far into the organ itself. Strands with nodules. Hans Castor would be able to see for himself later

Starting point is 10:23:01 in the diapositive which they would give him for his very own. The word of command was calm. Patience, manly self-discipline, measure, eat, lie down, wait and drink tea. They left. Hans Castorp, going out behind Joachim, looked over his shoulder. Ushered in by the technician, Fraus Schocher was entering the laboratory. End of Section 31

Starting point is 10:23:28 Section 32 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 32 Chapter 5 Freedom How did it seem now to our young Hans Castorpe? Was it as though the seven weeks which, demonstrably and without the shadow of a doubt, he had spent with them up here, were only seven days?

Starting point is 10:24:01 Or, on the contrary, did they seem much longer than had actually been the case? He asked himself inwardly, and also by way of asking Yoakim. But he could not decide. Both were probably true. When he looked back, the time seemed both unnaturally long and unnaturally short, or rather it seemed anything but what it actually was, in saying which we assume that time is a natural phenomenon and that it is admissible to associate with it the conception of actuality.

Starting point is 10:24:34 At all events October was before the door. It might enter any day. The calculation was an easy one for Hans Castor-Oct-to-Make and he gathered the same result from the conversation of his fellow patients. Do you know that in five days it will be the first time? again, he heard Hermina Cleefelt say to two of her familiars, the student Rasmussen and the thick-lipped young man whose name was Ganza. It was after luncheon and the guests lingered chatting in the dining room, though the air was heavy with the odours of the meal just served,

Starting point is 10:25:06 instead of going into the afternoon rescue. The first of October, I saw it on the calendar in the office. That makes the second of its kind I've spent in this pleasure resort. Well, "'Well, summer is over, insofar as there has been a summer, that is. "'It has really been a cell like life in general.' She shook her head, fetched a sigh from her one lung, and rolled up to the ceiling her dull and stolid eyes. "'Cheer up, Rasmussen,' she said, and slapped her comrade on the drooping shoulder.

Starting point is 10:25:37 "'Make a few jokes.' "'I don't know many,' he responded, "'letting his hands flap fin-like before his breast. "'And those I do, I can't tell. I'm so tired all the time. Not even a dog, Ganser said through his teeth, would want to live longer if he had to live like this. They laughed and shrug their shoulders.

Starting point is 10:26:00 Setum Brini had been standing near them, his toothpick between his lips. As they went out, he said to Hans Kastob, Don't you believe them, engineer. Never believe them when they grumble. They all do it without exception, and all of them are only too much at home up here. They lead a loose and idle life And imagine themselves

Starting point is 10:26:20 Entitled to pity And justified of their bitterness, irony and cynicism This pleasure resort, she said Well, isn't it a pleasure resort then? In my humble opinion it is And in a very questionable sense too So life is a cell up here at this pleasure resort But once let them go down below

Starting point is 10:26:40 And their manner of life Will be such as to leave no doubt That they mean to come back again irony forsooth guard yourself engineer from the sort of irony that thrives up here guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind it makes for depravity it becomes a drawback to civilization an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction vice and materialism as the atmosphere in which we live

Starting point is 10:27:14 is obviously very favourable to such miasmic growth. I may hope, or rather I must fear, that you understand my meaning.' Truly, the Italian's words were of the sort that seven weeks ago, down in the flatland, would have been empty sound to hands cast up his ears, but his stay up here had made his mind receptive to them, receptive in the sense that he comprehended them with his mind, if not with his sympathies, which would have meant even more, for although he was at bottom glad that set him briny,

Starting point is 10:27:43 after all that had passed, continued, as he did, still to talk to him, admonishing, instructing, seeking to establish an influence upon his mind, yet his understanding had reached the point where he was critical of the Italian's words, and at times, up to a point, withheld his assent. Imagine, he said to himself, he talks about irony, just as he does about music. He'll soon be telling me that it is politically suspect, that is, from the moment it ceases to be a direct and classic device of oratory. But irony, that is, not for a moment equivocal. What kind of irony would that be?

Starting point is 10:28:19 I should like to ask, if I may make so bold as to put in my awe. It would be a piece of dried-up pedantry. Thus ungrateful is immature youth. It takes all that is offered, and bites the hand that feeds it. But it would have seemed too risky to put his opposition into words.

Starting point is 10:28:37 He confined himself to commenting upon what Hare Setimbrini had said about Hermina Clefelt, which he found ungenerous, or rather had his reasons for wishing to find it so. "'But the girl is ill,' he said. "'She is seriously ill, without the shadow of a doubt. She has every reason for pessimism. What do you expect of her?'

Starting point is 10:28:57 "'Disease and despair,' said in Brini said, "'are often only forms of depravity.' "'And Leopardi,' thought Hans Castor, who definitely despaired of science and progress, and our schoolmaster himself? He is infected too, and keeps coming back here. And Carducci would have had small joy of him. Aloud, he said, You are good.

Starting point is 10:29:19 Why, the girl may lie down and die any day, and you call it depravity. You'll have to make that a little clearer. If you said that illness is sometimes a consequence of depravity, that would at least be sensible. Very sensible indeed, said Inbrini put in, my word. So if I stopped at that,

Starting point is 10:29:38 you would be satisfied? Or if you said that illness may serve as a pretext for depravity, that would be all right too. Grazie tanto. But illness is a form of depravity, that is to say, not originating in depravity but itself, depravity. That seems to me a paradox. I beg you, engineer, not to impute to me anything of the sort. I despise paradoxes. I hate them. All that I said to you about irony, I would say over-acquake. about paradoxes, and more besides.

Starting point is 10:30:11 Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all. Moreover, I note that you are once more defending disease. No, what you are saying interests me. It reminds me of things Dr. Krakowski says in his Monday lectures. He too explains organic disease as a secondary phenomenon. Scarcely the pure idealist.

Starting point is 10:30:38 What have you against him? Just that. You are down on analysis? Not always. I am for it and against it, both by turns. How am I to understand that? Analysis as an instrument of enlightenment and civilization is good. Insofar as it shatters absurd convictions,

Starting point is 10:30:58 acts as a solvent upon natural prejudices, and undermines authority. Good, in other words, in that it sets free, refines, humanizes, makes slaves, makes slaves ripe for freedom. But it is bad, very bad, insofar as it stands in the way of action, cannot shape the vital forces,

Starting point is 10:31:17 maim's life at its roots. Analysis can be a very unappetising affair, as much so as death, with which it may well belong, a lie to the grave and its unsavoury anatomy. Well-roared, Lion, Hans Castor could not help thinking, as he often did when hair-set-in-breened delivered himself,

Starting point is 10:31:37 of something pedagogic. Aloud, he only said, we've been having to do with x-ray anatomy in these days, down on our lower floor. Berens called it that when he x-rayed us. Oh, so you have made that stage too. Well, I saw the skeleton of my hand, Hans Castop said,

Starting point is 10:31:57 and sought to call up the feeling that had mounted in him at the sight. Did you get them to show you yours? No, I don't take the faintest interest in my skeleton, But what was the physician's verdict? He saw strands, strands with nodules. The scoundrel! I have heard you call Hoffrat Berens that before, Herr said Imbrini. What do you mean by it?

Starting point is 10:32:21 I assure you the epithet was deliberately chosen. No, Herr said Imbrini. There I find you are unjust. I admit the man has his faults. His manner of speech becomes disagreeable in the long run. There is something forced about it, especially when one remembers he had the great sorrow of losing his wife up here. But what an estimable and meritorious man he is, after all, a benefactor to suffering humanity. I met him the other day coming from an

Starting point is 10:32:48 operation, resection of ribs, much of life and death, you know. He made a great impression on me, to see him fresh from such exacting and splendid work, in which he is so much the master. He was still warm from it, and had lighted a cigar by way of reward. I envied him. "'That was commendable of you. "'Well, and your sentence?' "'He has not set any definite time.' "'That is good, too. "'And now let us betake us to our cure, engineer,

Starting point is 10:33:19 "'each to his own place.' "'They parted at the door of number 34. "'You are going up to the roof now,' here said in Brinney. "'It must be more fun to lying company than alone. "'Do you talk? Are they pleasant people?' "'Oh, they are nothing but Parthians and Scythians. "'You mean Russians?' "'Russians, male and female,' said Settingbrini,

Starting point is 10:33:43 and the corner of his mouth spanned a little. "'Good-bye, engineer.' He had said that of malice of forethought, undoubtedly. Hans Castorpe walked into his own room in confusion. Was Settingbrinny aware of his state? Very likely, like the schoolmaster he was, he had been spying on him and seen the way his eyes were going. Hans Castorpe was angry with the Italian.

Starting point is 10:34:07 and also with himself, for having, by his lack of self-control, invited the thrust. He took up his writing materials to carry them with him into the balcony, for now it was no more use. The letter home, the third letter, must be written. And as he did so, he went on whipping up his anger, muttering to himself about this windbag and logic-chopper who meddled with matters that were no concern of his, and chirruped to the girls in the street. He felt quite disinclined to the effort of writing. The organ-grinder had put him off it, all to him. together with his innuendo. But no matter what his feelings, he must have winter clothing, money, footwear, linen. In brief everything he might have brought with him had he known he was

Starting point is 10:34:48 coming, not for three short summer weeks, but for an indefinite stay, which was certain to last for a piece into the winter. Or rather, considering the notions about time current up here, was quite likely to last all winter. It was this he must let them know at home, even if only as a possibility. He must tell the whole story, and not put them or himself off any longer with pretexts. In this spirit, then he wrote, practising the technique he had so often seen Joachim practice, with a fountain pen in his deck-chair, with his knees drawn up, and the portfolio laid upon them. He wrote upon the letter-paper of the establishment, of which he kept a supply in his table-drawer, to James Tienapel, who stood closest to him among the three uncles, and

Starting point is 10:35:33 asked him to pass the news on to the consul. He spoke of an unfortunate occurrence, of suspicions that had proved justified, of the medical opinion that it would be best for him to remain where he was for a part, perhaps for all of the winter, since cases like his often prove more obstinate than those that began more alarmingly, and it was clearly advisable to go after the infection energetically and root it out once for all. From this point of view, he considered, it had been a most fortunate circumstance that he had chance to come here, and had been induced to submit to an examination, for otherwise he might have remained for some time in ignorance of his condition, and been apprised of it later, and more alarmingly. As for the length of time which would

Starting point is 10:36:16 probably be required for the cure, they must not be surprised to hear the whole winter might easily slip away before his return, in short that he might come down hardly earlier than Yoakim. Ideas about time were different up here from those ordinarily held about the length of stay at the baths or at an ordinary cure. The smallest unit of time, so to speak, was the month, and a single month was almost no time at all. The weather was cool. He sat in his overcoat, with a rug about him, and his hands were cold. At times he looked up from the paper, which he was covering with these reasonable and sensible phrases, at the landscape now so familiar, he scarcely saw it. anymore. This extended valley, with its retreating succession of peaks at the entrance, they look pale

Starting point is 10:37:03 and glassy today, with its bright and populous floor, which glistened when the sun shone full upon it, and its forest-clad or meadowy slopes whence came the sound of cow-bells. He wrote with growing ease, and wondered why he had dreaded to write, for, as he wrote he felt that nothing could be clearer than his presentation of the matter, and that there was no doubt it would meet with perfect comprehension at home. A young man of his class and circumstances acted for himself, when it seemed advisable. He took advantage of the facilities which existed expressly for him and his like. So it was fitting. If he had taken the journey home, they would have made him come back again on hearing his report. He asked them to send what things he needed, and at the

Starting point is 10:37:47 end he asked to have money sent. A monthly cheque of 800 marks would cover everything. He signed his name. It was done. This last letter was exhaustive. It covered the case, not according to the time conceptions of down below, but according to those obtaining up here, as it asserted Hans Kastorpe's freedom. This was his own word, albeit not expressed. He would hardly have shaped syllables, even in his mind, but he felt the full sense of its meaning, as he had come to know it during his stay up here, a sense which had little to do with Settumbrian significance. and his breast was shaken with that excited alarm which swept over him in a wave as it had done before. His head was hot with the blood that had gone to it, as he wrote.

Starting point is 10:38:35 His cheeks burned. He took the thermometer from his lampstand and measured, as though to make use of an opportunity. Mercurius had gone up to a hundred degrees. Look at that, he thought, and added a postscript to his letter. It did strain me rather, after all, to write this. My temperature is a hundred degrees. I see that I must be very quiet, for the present. You must excuse me if I don't write often.

Starting point is 10:39:03 Then he lay back and held up his hand toward the light, palm outward, as he had held it behind the light screen. But the light of day did not encroach upon its living outline. Rather, it looked more substantial and opaque from its background of bright air. When its outer edges were rosily illuminated. this was his living hand that he was used to see to use to wash not that uncanny scaffolding which he had beheld through the screen the analytic grave then opened was closed again end of section thirty two section thirty three of the magic mountain by thomas man this librivox recording is in the public domain section thirty three chapter five whims of macurious October began as months due. Their entrance is in itself an unostentatious and soundless affair,

Starting point is 10:40:05 without outward signs and tokens. They, as it were, steal in softly, and unless you are keeping close watch, escape your notice altogether. Time has no divisions to mark its passage. There is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month, or year. Even when a new century begins, it is only we mortal, who ring bells and fire off pistols. To Hans Castorpe the first day of October and the last day of September were as like as two peas. Both were equally cold and unfriendly, and those that followed were the same. In the rescuer one used one's overcoat and both camel hair rugs, not only on the evening, but in the daytime.

Starting point is 10:40:49 The fingers that held the book was stiff and clammy. However, the cheeks burned and Joachim was strongly tempted to resort to his first. a sack, but resisted in order not to pamper himself thus early in the season. Some days later, however, that is, between the beginning and middle of the month, there came another change. A latter summer set in, with amazing splendour. The praises of this mountain in October, which Hans Castorpe had heard, were not idly sung. For some two and a half weeks, all the glories of heaven reigned over valley and mountain. One day outvied another, in blueness and clarity, and and the sun burned down with such immediate power that everyone felt impelled to don the lightest of wear,

Starting point is 10:41:33 muslin frocks and linen trousers already put aside. The adjustable canvas parasol, without a handle, was called into requisition, and fitted by its cunning device of holes and pegs onto the arm of the reclining chair, and even its shelter was felt to be insufficient against the midday glare. "'I'm glad I'm here still, for this,' said Hans Castorpe to his cousin. It has been so wretched at times, and now it is as though we had the winter behind us, and only good weather to look forward to. He was quite right.

Starting point is 10:42:06 There were indeed not many signs that pointed to the true state of the calendar, and even those that were did not strike the eye. Aside from the few oak trees that had been set out down the plaits, where they had just managed to survive, and long before now had despondently shed their leaves, the whole region held no deciduous trees to give the landscape an alternative. tuminal cast. Only the hybrid alpine alder, which renews its soft needles as though there were leaves, showed a wintry baldness. The other trees of the region, whether towering or stunted,

Starting point is 10:42:38 were evergreen pines and furs, invincible against the assaults of this irregular winter, which might scatter its snowstorms through all the months of the year. Only the many-shaded, rust-red tone that lay over the forest gave notice, despite the glowing sunshine of a declining year. yet, looking closer, there were the wild flowers, speaking, though softly, yet to the same effect. The meadow orchis, the bushy aquilidia were no longer in bloom. Only the gentian and the lowly autumn crocus, bearing witness to the inner sharpness of the superficially heated air that could pierce one to the bone as one sat, like a chill in fever, though one glowed outwardly from the ardour of the sun.

Starting point is 10:43:20 Hans Castob did not keep inward count of the time, as does the man who husbands it, notes its passing, divides and tells and labels its units. He had not heeded the silent entry of the tenth month, but he was arrested by its appeal to the senses, this glowing heat that concealed the frost within and beneath it. It was a sensation which, to anything like this degree, he had never before experienced, and it aroused him to the culinary comparison

Starting point is 10:43:46 which he made to yoke him of an omelette en supri, holding an ice concealed within the hot froth, the beaten egg. He often made such comments, talking headlong and volubly, as a man does in a feverish chill. But between whiles he was silent, we shall not say self-absorbed, for his attention was presumably directed outwards, though upon a single point. All else, whether of the animate or inanimate world, swam about him in a mist. A mist of his own making, which Hofrat Berens and Dr. Kukowski would doubtless have explained as the product of soluble toxins, as the befuddled one himself did also, though without having the slightest power or even desire to rid himself of the state they induced. For that is an intoxication by which one is possessed, under the influence of which one abhors nothing more than the thought of sobriety.

Starting point is 10:44:38 It asserts itself against impressions that would weaken its force. It will not admit them. It wards them off. Hans Castorpe was aware, and had even spoken of the fact, that Madame Shoshas' profile was not her strong point. that it was no longer quite useful, was even a little sharp. And the consequence? He avoided looking at her in profile.

Starting point is 10:45:00 He literally closed his eyes when he caught that view of her, even at a distance. It pained him. Why? Should not reason have leaped to take advantage of the favourable moment, to reassert itself? But what do we ask? He grew pale with rapture,

Starting point is 10:45:15 when, tempted by the brilliant weather, she appeared at second breakfast in the white-lace matinee, which made her look so ravish. appeared late accompanied by the banging of the door, smiling, her arms raised in a pretty posture and presented herself thus to the dining room before she glided to her seat. But he was enraptured not so much because she looked so charming as because her charm added strength to the sweet intoxication in his brain, the intoxication that will to be that cared only to be justified and nourished.

Starting point is 10:45:48 An authority of Lodovico set in Brini's way of thinking might have characterized as depravity, as a form of depravity, such a lack of good intention. Hans Castorpe sometimes pondered over the literary things. The Italian had said about illness and despair, which he had found incomprehensible, or at least pretended to himself, to find him so. He looked at Claudia Shosha, at the flexibility of her back, the posture of her head. He saw her come habitually late to table, without reason or excuse solely out of a lack of order and disciplined energy. He saw the same lack when she let slam every door through which she passed, when she moulded red pellets at the table, when she gnawed her fingers,

Starting point is 10:46:32 and he had a suspicion which he did not put into words, that if she was ill, that if she was probably incurably, since she'd been up here so often and so long, her illness was in good part, if not entirely, a moral one. As Setembridey had said, neither the ground or the consequence of her slackness, but precisely one of the same thing. He recalled the contemptuous gesture of the humanist when he spoke of the Parthians and Scythians, in whose company he was forced to take the rescue.

Starting point is 10:47:01 It had been a gesture not only of deliberate, but also of natural and instinctive disdain, and that feeling was quite comprehensible to Hans Castorpe. Had he not once, who always sat so erected at table, loathed and despised the banging of doors, and never, never was tempted to gnaw his fingers, because to that end, Maria had been given him instead. Had he not once taken deep offence at the unmanly behaviour of Fras-osha

Starting point is 10:47:27 and felt an unconquerable sense of superiority when he heard the narrow-eyed one essay to speak his mother-tong? The present state of his feelings, however, had put on one side any such sentiments as these. It was now the Italian who was the object of his irritation, because he, in his benightedness, had spoken of Parthians and Scythians, and had not meant thereby the persons at the bad Russian table, the shock-headed, linenless students who sat there disputing endlessly in their outlandish tongue,

Starting point is 10:47:59 which was obviously the only one they knew, and which, in its soft, spineless character, reminded Hans Kastob of the thorax without ribs, Huffrad Berens had described to him. True, the manners and customs of such people might readily aware, feelings of disgust in the breast of a humanist. They act with their knives, and unmentionably mess the front of their blouses. Setembrini asserted that one of them, a medical student, well on in his training, was so ignorant of Latin as not to know, for example, what the word vacuum meant.

Starting point is 10:48:31 As for the married couple in number 32, Hans Castob's own daily experience of them was such as to render quite credible, Froustore's report, that when the bathing master entered their room in the morning for the daily massage, received him lying in bed together. All this might well be true, but after all the distinction between good and bad was a plain one. It did not exist for nothing. Hans Castrop assured himself that he felt only contempt for any propagandist of the Republic and the bellow steel, who went about with his nose in the air, and calmly, with particular calm, although at the same time both feebrile unfuddled,

Starting point is 10:49:07 lumped the members of both tables together under the title of Pardians and Scythians. of understood only too well the sense in which he used it, since he had begun to understand the connection between Fras Shoshas' illness and her slackness. But as he had one day put it to yoke him, one begins by being angry and disgusted, and then all at once something quite different enters in, and has nothing to do with moral judgment. And it is all up with your severity.

Starting point is 10:49:36 You are simply not at home to pedagogic influences, however republican, however eloquent. But, we are impelled to ask, probably again in the spirit of Ludovico Settimbrini, what sort of questionable experience is this, which Pulse sees a man's judgment, robs him of all claim to it, or even makes him waive that claim, an experience in so doing the abandonment of ecstasy. We do not ask its name, for that everyone knows. Our question rather refers to its moral quality, and we confess that we do not anticipate any very self-confident reply. In Hans Kastop's case, its nature was evident in the extent to

Starting point is 10:50:16 which he not only ceased to exercise his judgment, but even began to experiment for his own part and upon his own moral vesture. He tried, for instance, how it would feel to sit at table with his back all relaxed, and discovered that it afforded sensible relief to the pelvic muscles. Again one day, instead of punctiliously closing a door behind him, he let it slam. And this too, he did, he found both fitting and agreeable. It corresponded to the shoulder-shrug, with which Joachim had greeted him at the station, and which was so habitual among those up here. In brief, our traveller was now head over heels in love with Claudia Shosha. We may still use the phrase, since we have already obviated any possible misunderstanding on the score of it.

Starting point is 10:51:02 We have seen that the essence of his passion was something quite other than the tender and pensive mood of that oft-quoted ditty. Rather it was a wild and vagrant variation upon the love-sick lute. It was mingled frost and fire, like the state of a fever patient, or the October air in these high altitudes. What he actually lacked, in fact, was an emotional bridge between two extremes. On the one hand his passion dwelt with an immediacy that left the young man pale and staring upon Frau Schorcher's knee, the line of her thigh, her back, her neckbone, her arms that pressed together her little breasts, in a word it dwelt upon her body, her idle, accentuated body, exaggerated by disease, and rendered twice over body. And on the other hand,

Starting point is 10:51:50 it was something in the highest degree fleeting and tenuous, a thought near dream, the frightful, infinitely alluring dream of a young man whose unspoken, unconscious questioning of the universe has received no answer save a hollow silence. We have as much right to. We have as much right, as the next person to our private thoughts about the story we are relating, and we would hear hazard the surmise that young Hans Kastob would never have overstepped so far the limits originally fixed for his stay, if to his simple soul there might have been vouchsafed, out of the depths of his time, any reasonably satisfying explanation of the meaning and purpose of man's life. For the rest, his love-sick state afforded him all the joy and all the anguish proper to it

Starting point is 10:52:34 the world over. The anguish is acute. It has, like all anguish, a mortifying element. It shatters the nervous system to an extent that takes the breath away, can wring tears from the eyes of a grown man. As for the joys, to do them justice, they were manifold, and no less piercing than the anguish, though their occasion might be trifling indeed. Almost any moment of the Berkhoff day might bring one forth.

Starting point is 10:53:00 For example, about to enter the dining room, Hans Castrop would perceive the object of his dreams behind him, an experience clear and simple in anticipation, but inwardly ravishing to the point of tears. Their eyes meet at close range, his own and her grey-green ones, whose slightly oriental shape and position pierce him to the very marrow. He is incapable of connected thought, but unconsciously steps back to give her precedence through the door. With a half-smile, a half-audible merci, she accepts his conventional courtesy, and, passing him by, enters the room.

Starting point is 10:53:38 He stands there within the aura of her personality as it sweeps past, idiotic with happiness at the encounter, and at the word which has been uttered by her mouth directly for his ear. He follows her, he moves unsteadily to his own table, and sinking into his chair becomes aware that Claudia, as she takes her place, has turned to look at him. He thinks she wears an expression as though musing on their encounter at the door. Oh, unbelievable adventure!

Starting point is 10:54:07 Oh joy, rapture and boundless exaltation! Arno, this drunkenness of fantastic bliss, hands cast up could never have experienced, at the glance of any healthy little goose down in the flatland, to whom he might have calmly, correctly, and with most definite intentions, given his heart, and devoted the sentiments described in the song. He greets the schoolmistress with feverish sprightliness.

Starting point is 10:54:32 she has seen the whole thing, and her downy old cheek wears its dusky signal, and then bombards Miss Robinson with English conversation, so absurdly that she, not versed in the ecstatic, fairly recoils, and measures him with mistrustful eyes. Another time, as they sit at the evening meal, the serene rays of the setting sun fall upon the good Russian table. The curtains have been drawn over the window, and the veranda door, but somewhere there is a little crack, and through it the red gleam,

Starting point is 10:55:02 The gleam finds its way, not hot, but dazzling, and falls upon Fras Soshas' face, so that she shields it with her hand as she sits talking with the concave countryman on her right. It is annoying, but not serious. Nobody troubles about it, probably not even the fair one herself, but across the dining-room, hands cast off sees it, quiescent a while, like the others. He examines the situation, follows the course of the ray of light, makes up his mind where it enters. It comes from the bay window in the right-hand corner, between the veranda door and the bad Russian table, at a goodish distance from Frasur's place, and almost equally far from

Starting point is 10:55:42 Hans Kastops. Without a word, he gets up, and, serviet in hand, crosses over among the tables, draws the cream-coloured curtains, so that they lap well over one another, convinces himself by a glance over his shoulder that the ray from the setting sun is shut out, and Frou Choshaer relieved, and with an air of perfect equanimity goes back to his place. An observant young man, who takes it upon himself to perform a needful courtesy neglected by others, but few of them even notice his act. Frau Schorchard, however, instantly felt the relief, and turned round, remaining in that position until Hans Castorpe had resumed his place, and, sitting down, looked over at her, when she thanked him with a friendly, rather surprised smile

Starting point is 10:56:27 and a bow that was less an inclination than a shoving forward of the head. He acknowledged by a bow in his turn. His heart stood stock still. It seemed not to beat. Only after the whole thing was over did it begin again and hammered. And only then did he become conscious

Starting point is 10:56:46 that Joachim had kept his eyes directed upon his plate. Afterwards, too, he realised that Frou Stor had nudged Dr. Broubaudel lumenscol in the side, and then looked about their own and other tables trying to catch people's eyes. All this is the sheerest commonplace, but the commonplace becomes remarkable when it springs from remarkable soil. There were periods of strain and periods when the tension between them beneficently relaxed. There perhaps the tension existed less between them than it did in Hans Kastorpe's thievered imagination. For how far Madame Shawshare was affected, we can only guess.

Starting point is 10:57:21 In these days of fine weather The majority of the guests He took themselves to the veranda After the midday meal And stood about in group Sunning themselves for a quarter hour or so In a scene much like that on the Sunday afternoons Of the fortnightly concerts

Starting point is 10:57:37 All these young people Absolutely idle Overfed on a meat and sweet diet And without exception feverish Chattered and laughed Philandered made eyes Frows Solomon from Amsterdam Would perch on the balustrade

Starting point is 10:57:51 hard pressed on the right by the knees of the thick-lipped ganser, on the left by the Swedish minion, who it appeared was quite recovered, but extending his cure for a little space before going home. Frau Iltis was apparently a widow, for she had rejoiced only lately in the visit of a fiancée, a melancholy, inferior-looking person whose presence had not in the least prevented her from accepting the attentions of the hook-nose, fiery-eyed Captain Mikoszsche, him of the wax moustachios and swelling chest. New figures turned up on the terrace, ladies of various nationalities from the general rest halls,

Starting point is 10:58:29 and new arrival since the 1st of October, whom Hans Castorpe barely knew by name. Then there were the cavaliers of Hare Albin's kidney, monocled youths of 17, a spectacled, rosy-faced young Dutchman with a mania for collecting postage stamps. Certain Greeks, with pomaded hair and almond-shaped eyes, inclined to overreach at table, and a pair of young dandies who were nicknamed Max and Moritz,

Starting point is 10:58:53 and bore a great reputation for breaking out of bounds. The humpbacked Mexican, whose ignorance of any language, save his own, lent him the facial expression of a deaf person, took endless photographs, dragging his tripod from one point to another on the terrace. Sometimes the hoffrat would appear and perform his stunt with the bootplaces, and somewhere in the thick of the crowd would lurk solitary, the religious devotee from Mannheim. Hans Castorpe would watch disgustedly to see his great sad eyes take their secret way. But to return, by way of example, to some of those strains and stresses to which Hans Castorpe's state was prone. Our young man was sitting on a painted

Starting point is 10:59:35 garden chair with his back against the wall, talking with his cousin, whom he had forced against his will to come outside. In front of him, by the balustrade, Froucheosha stood smoking with her tablemates. He talked for her benefit. She turned her back. His thirst for conversation was not satisfied by Yolkin. He must needs and make an acquaintance. And whose? No other than Hermina Clefels.

Starting point is 11:00:00 He directed a casual word toward that young lady, then presented himself and his cousin by name, and drew up another chair in order to carry on the game. Did she know, he asked, what a deuce of a fright she had put him in in their first encounter, when she had whistled him in such an in spirit, welcome. He did not mind owning that she had accomplished her purpose. He had felt as though someone had hit him on the head. She might ask his cousin. He called it an outrage, frightening, harmless

Starting point is 11:00:28 strangers like that, piping at them with her pneumothorax, and so forth and so on. Joachim, quite aware of the role that was being forced upon him, sat with his eyes on the ground. Even Frowland Kleifelt gradually perceived, from Hans Kastop's distraught and wandering eye that she was being made a tool of and felt piqued accordingly. And still the poor youth went on, smirking and turning phrases and modulating his voice, until at last he succeeded in making Fras Chosha, turn round and look him in the face.

Starting point is 11:00:58 But only for a moment. Her Privislav eyes glided rapidly down his figure, as he sat there one knee over the other, with a deliberate insouciance, which had all the effect of scorn. They paused for a space upon his yellow boots, and then carelessly, with perhaps a smile in their dear, withdrew. It was a bitter, bitter blow. Hans Castorpe talked on a while, feverishly.

Starting point is 11:01:22 Then, inwardly smitten by the power of that gaze upon his boots, he fell silent almost in the middle of a word, and lapsed into deep dejection. Frowline Clefelt, bored and offended, went her way. Yolkin remarked, not without irritation, that perhaps they might go up to the rescuer now, and a broken spirit answered feebly that they might. Hans Castorpe anguished, piteously for two days. Nothing occurred in that time to be bulsome to his smarting wound. What had she meant by her look? Why, in the name of reason, had she visited him with her scorn?

Starting point is 11:01:59 Did she regard him merely as a healthy young noodle from down in the flatland, whose receptivity was sure to be of a harmless sort? As a guileless, ordinary chap who went about laughing and earning his daily bread and filling his belly full? as a model pupil in the school of life with no comprehension of anything but the tedious advantages of a respectable career, was he, he asked himself, a mere feckless tourist and three weeks guest, or was he a man who had made his profession on the score of a moist spot, a member of the order, one of those up here with a good two months to his credit, and had not me curious only yesterday evening climbed up to a hundred degrees.

Starting point is 11:02:39 Ah, here, even here lay the bitter day. drop that overflowed his cup. Mercurius had ceased to mount. The fearful depression of these days had a chilling, sobering, relaxing effect upon Hans Kastov's system, which to his profound chagrin displayed itself in a reduced degree of fever, scarcely higher than normal. He had the cruel experience of proving to himself that all his anguish, all his dejection, had no other result than to separate him still further from Claudia, and from that which was significant, in her existence. The third day brought the blessed release.

Starting point is 11:03:18 It was early upon a magnificent October morning, sunny and fresh. The meadows were covered with silver-gray webs. The sun and the waning moon both hung high up in a lucent heaven. The cousins were abroad earlier than usual, meaning to honour the fine weather by extending their morning walk a little further than the prescribed limits, and continuing the forest path beyond the bench by the watercourse. Yerkim's curve, too, had lately shown a gratifying decrease.

Starting point is 11:03:45 He had accordingly suggested this refreshing irregularity, and Hans Kastop had not said no. We seemed to be cured, he said, no fever, free of infection, as good as ripe for the world again. Why shouldn't we have our fling? They set out with walking sticks and hatless, for since his profession, Hans Kastop had resigned himself to the prevailing custom, despite the original assertion of his own contrary-minded,

Starting point is 11:04:10 conventions. But they had not yet covered the initial ascent of the reddish pass, had arrived only at about the point where the novice had once encountered the pneumatic crew, when they saw at some distance ahead of them, slowly mounting Froucheosha. Frau Shosha in white, a white sweater, white flannel skirt, even white shoes. Her red blonde hair gleamed in the morning sun. To be precise, Hans Kastop saw her. Yurkin was made aware of her presence by an untow. pleasant sensation of being dragged and pulled along by his cousin, which started up at a great pace, after having suddenly checked and almost stood still on the path. Joachim found the compulsion exceedingly annoying.

Starting point is 11:04:52 His breath came shorter. He began to cough. Lens Castro, with his eyes on his goal, and his breathing apparatus, apparently in splendid trim, gave little heed. And Yoakim, having recognized the situation for what it was, drew his brows together and kept step for step, feeling it out of the question to let his cousin go on alone. The lovely morning made hands cast off sprightly, and his soul, in that period of black depression, had secretly assembled its powers.

Starting point is 11:05:22 He felt a sure intuition that the moment was come to break the ban. He strode on, dragging the panting and reluctant Yoakim in his train. And they had as good as overtaken, Frau Shoshar, at the point where the path grew level, and turned to the right along the wooded hillock. Here the young man slackened his pace, not to be breathless with exertion in the moment of carrying out his purpose. And just beyond the bend in the path between mountain and precipice, where the sunlight slipped or thwart the bows of the rust-coloured furs, it actually fell out. The wonder came to pass that Hans Kastob, on Yoakim's left, overtook the fragile fair one.

Starting point is 11:06:01 He went by her with a manly stride, and then, at the moment when he was beside her, on her right, greeted her with a profoundly respectful, hatless inclination of the head, and a murmured, Good Morning, to which she answered with a friendly bow, that showed no trace of surprise, and a good morning in her turn. She said it in Hans Kastov's mother tongue, and smiled with her eyes, and all that was something different, something fundamentally and blessedly other than that look she had bent upon his boots. It was a gift of fortune, an unexampled turn in affairs, a joy well-nigh beyond comprehending,

Starting point is 11:06:37 It was the blessed release. Transported by that word, look and smile, half-blinded by his senseless joy, Hans Castor, trod on winged feet, hurrying the misused Joachim with him, who uttered not a word and gazed away down the steep. It had been a manoeuvre of a rather unscrupulous sort. In Yochim's eyes, as Hans Castorkew well knew,

Starting point is 11:07:00 it looked very like treachery, yet it was not the same thing as borrowing a lead pencil of a perfect stranger, one might even say it would have been ill-bred to pass by a lady with whom one had been for months under the same roof and not salute her. They had even been in conversation with her, that time in the waiting-room. That was why Joachim could say nothing. But Hans Castor well knew another reason that made his honour-loving cousin walk on in silence with averted head, while he himself was so supremely happy, so glad all over at the success of his manoeuvre. never a man down in the flatland who had given his heart to some healthy, commonplace little goose,

Starting point is 11:07:41 been successful in his suit and experienced all the orthodox and anticipatory gratifications proper to his state, never could such a man be blissfuler, no, not half so blissful as hands cast up now, over this momentary joy which he had snatched. And so, after a while, he clapped his cousin heartily on the shoulder and said, "'Hello. What's the matter with you? Isn't it magnificent today? Let's go down to the courthouse afterwards. There will probably be music. Perhaps they'll play that thing from Carmen. What's the matter? Was anything got under your skin?' "'No,' Yokey answered.

Starting point is 11:08:16 "'But you look so hot. I'm afraid your curve has gone up again.' It had. The greeting he had exchanged with Claudia Shoshar had overcome the mortifying depression. It was at bottom the consciousness of this which had lain at the root of Hans Castor, gratification. Yes, yes, Yol Kim was right. Mercurius was mounting again. When Hans Castor consulted him, on the return from their walk, he had climbed up to a hundred point four degrees. End of Section 33. Section 34 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 34. Chapter 5. Encyclopedic. Heart 1. If certain insinuations on hair set in Brini's part had angered Hans Kastorp,

Starting point is 11:09:18 the annoyance was quite unjustified, as also the feeling that the schoolmaster had been spying on him. A blind man must have seen how it stood with the youth. He himself did nothing to conceal his state, being prevented by a certain native and lofty simplicity. He inclined rather to wear his heart upon his sleeve, in contrast, if you like, favourable contrast to the devotee from Mannheim with his thin hair and furtive mane. But in general we would emphasise the fact that people in hands cast off state regularly feel a craving for self-revelation, an impulse to confess themselves, a blind preoccupation with self, and a thirst to possess the world of their own emotions, which is the more offensive to the sober onlooker, the less sense reasonableness or hope their

Starting point is 11:10:08 lies in the whole affair. How people in this state go about to portray themselves is hard to define, but it seems they can neither do nor leave undone anything which would not have that effect, doubly so then, in a society like that of the Berkov, where, as the critically-minded Hairsteat and Brinney once expressed it, people were possessed of two ideas, and only two. Temperature, and then again, temperature. By the second temperature, he meant preoccupation and with such question as, for instance, with whom Frau Consul-General Vermbrandt from Vienna consult herself for the defection of Captain McClosich, whether with the Swedish minion or lawyer Paravant from Dortmund or both. Everybody knew that the bond between the lawyer and

Starting point is 11:10:54 Frou Salomon from Amsterdam, after subsisting for several months, had been broken by common consent, and that Frou Salomon had followed the leanings of her time of life and taken up with the callow youth. The thick-lipped ganser from Herminacly-Felt's table was for the present under her wing. She had taken him to have and to hold, as Frou Stor, in legal parlance, yet not without perspicuity, had put it, and thus Lawyer Paravant was free either to quarrel or to compound with the Swede over the favours of the Frow Consul-General, as seemed to him advisable. These affairs, then, in which, of course, the passage along the balconies, at the end of the glass partitions played a considerable role, were rife in Berkov's society, particularly among

Starting point is 11:11:38 the fevered youth. They occupied people's minds. They were a salient feature of life up here. And even in saying thus much, we are far from having precisely defined the position with regard to them. Hans Castorp on this subject received a singular impression. It was that a certain fundamental fact of life, which is conceded the world over to be of great importance, and is the fertile theme of constant allusion, both in jest and earnest, that this fundamental fact of life bore up here an entirely altered emphasis. It was weighty with a new weight. It had an accent, a value, and a significance which were utterly novel, and which set the fact itself in a light to make it look much more alarming than it had been before. Thus far, whenever we have referred

Starting point is 11:12:25 to any questionable performances at the Berkov, we have done so in what may have seemed a light and jesting tone. This, without prejudice to our real opinion, as to the levity or otherwise of the performances, and solely for the usual obscure reasons which prompt other people to adopt the same. But as a matter of fact, that tone was far less usual in our present sphere than it is elsewhere in the world. Hans Castorp had considered himself pretty well informed, on the subject of the above named Fact of Life, which has always and everywhere been such a favourite target for shafts of wit. and he may have been right in so considering, but now he found that the knowledge he had had down in the flatland

Starting point is 11:13:06 had been most inadequate, that he had actually been in a state of simple ignorance, for his personal emotions in the time of his stay up here, upon the nature of which we have been at some pains to enlighten the reader, and which have been at moments so acute as to ring from the young man that cry of, oh my God, had opened his eyes, that made him capable of hearing and comprehending the wild, the overstrained, the namelessly extravagant key in which all the affairs up here were set. Not that even up here they did not make jests on the subject,

Starting point is 11:13:38 but up here, far more than down below, jests seemed out of place. They made one's teeth to chatter and took away one's breath. They betrayed themselves too plainly for what they were, a thin and obvious disguise for a hidden extremity, or rather an extremity impossible to hide. Hans Castor well remembered the mottled pallor, of Joachim's skin when, for the first and only time, he had innocently alluded to Marustja's

Starting point is 11:14:04 physical charms in the light tone he might have assumed at home. He remembered the chill withdrawal of the blood from his own face. The time he had drawn the curtain to shield Madame Shosha from the sun. He knew that he had seen the same look on other faces up here, both before and since. He usually remarked it in pairs, as, for example, on the faces of Frow Solomon and young Ganser, in the beginning of that relation between them so happily described by Frouz-Dor. Hans Kastop, we say, recalled all this and realised that under such circumstances it would not only have been very hard for him not to betray himself, but that the effort would not have been worth his pains. In other words, not alone the noble simplicity which did him honour, but also a certain

Starting point is 11:14:48 sympathetic something in the air urged him not to do violence to his feelings or make any secret of his condition. Yo-kim had, as we know, early spoken of the difficulty of forming acquaintances up here. In reality this arose chiefly from the fact that the cousins formed a miniature group for themselves in the society of the cure. But also because the soldierly Joachim was bent on nothing else but speedy recovery, and hence objected on principle to any closer contact or more social relations with his fellow sufferers.

Starting point is 11:15:20 It was a good deal this attitude of his that prevented his cousin from exposing his feelings more freely to the world at large. Even so, there came an evening when Iokim might behold his cousin, the centre of a group composed of Hermina Clefelt, Gansa, Rasmussen, and the youth of the monocle, and the fingernail, making an impromptu speech on the subject of Frasho's peculiar and exotic facial structure, and betraying himself by his unsteady voice and the excited glitter of his eyes, until his listeners exchanged glances nudging each other, tittered. This was painful for Joachim, but the object of their mirth seemed insensible to his

Starting point is 11:16:01 own self-betrayal. Perhaps he felt that his state, if concealed and unregarded, would never come to any proof. He might count, however, on a general understanding of it, and as for the inevitable malice that went with it, he took that for granted. People, not only at his own table, but at neighbouring ones as well, enjoyed seeing him flush and pale, then the glass door slammed, and even this gratified him. It was like an outward confirmation and assertion of his inner frenzy, which seemed to him calculated to forward his affair, and encourage his vague and senseless hopes. And so it too made him happy. It came to this, that people actually stood about in groups to observe the infatuated youth, after dinner on the terrace, or on a Sunday afternoon before the porter's lodge, where the letters

Starting point is 11:16:49 were distributed, for on that day they were not carried to the patient's rooms. He was quite generally known to be very far gone, drunk as a lord, and not caring who knew it. Fraustor, Fralline Engelhart, Hermina Clefelt and her friend the tap her face girl, Herr Albin, the young man with fingernail, and perhaps others amongst the guests, would stand together and watch him, with the corners of their mouths drawn back, fairly chortling, whilst he, poor White, his face aglow with the heat that from the first had never left him, with the glittering eye the gentleman-rider's cough had kindled, would gaze forlornly and frantically smiling in one certain direction. It was really splendid of hair set

Starting point is 11:17:32 in Brini, under these circumstances to go up to Hans Castorpe, engage him in conversation, and ask him how he did. But it is doubtful whether the young man knew how to value and to be grateful for such benevolence and freedom from prejudice. One Sunday afternoon the guests were thronging about the Porta's lodge, stretching out their hands for letters. Joachim was among the foremost, but Hans Castorpe had stopped in the rear, angling in the fashion we had described, for a look from Claudia Shosha. She was standing nearby, among a group of her tablemates, waiting until the press about the lodge should be lightened. It was an hour when all the patients mingled, an hour rich in opportunity, and for that reason beloved of our

Starting point is 11:18:14 young man. The week before he had stood at the window so close to Madam Shosha, that she had in fact jostled him, and then, with a little bow, had said, Pardon? Whereat he, with a feverish presence of mind for which he thanked his stars, had responded, Pad to qua, madame. What a blessed dispensation of providence, he thought, that there should be a regular Sunday afternoon distribution of letters.

Starting point is 11:18:38 One might say that he spent the week in waiting for the next week's delivery, and waiting means a hurrying on ahead. It means regarding time and the present moment, not as a boon but an obstruction. It means making their actual content null and void, by mentally overleaving them. Waiting, we say, is long. We might just as well, or more accurately, say it is short, since it consumes whole spaces of time without our living them, or making any use of them as such. We may compare him who lives on expectation to a greedy man, whose digestive apparatus works through quantities of food without converting them into anything of value or nourishment to his system.

Starting point is 11:19:17 system. We might almost go so far as to say that as undigested food makes man no stronger, so time spent in waiting makes him no older. But in practice, of course, there is hardly such a thing as pure and unadulterated waiting. Well, the week had been somehow devoured and the hour for the Sunday afternoon post came round again. So like the other, it seemed never to have changed. Like to that other, what thrilling opportunities it offered, what prospects lay concealed within it, of coming into social relations with Frau Shosha, prospects that made the heart of young Hans Kastob leap and contract, yet without actually issuing an action. For against their doing so lay certain obstacles of a nature partly military, partly civil. In other words,

Starting point is 11:20:05 they were in part the fruit of Joachim's presence, in part the result of Hans Kastop's own moral compunctions. But also in part they rested upon his intuition that social relations with Froucheosha, conventional relations, in which one made bows and addressed her as madame, and spoke French as far as possible, were not the thing at all, were neither necessary nor desirable. He stood and watched her laugh as she spoke, precisely as Privislab Hippé had laughed as he spoke, that time in the school yard. She opened her mouth rather wide, and her slanting grey-green eyes narrowed themselves to slits above the cheek-bones. That was, to be sure, not beautiful, but when one is in love, The aesthetic judgment counts for as little as the moral.

Starting point is 11:20:50 You are expecting dispatches, engineer. Only one person could talk like that, and he a disturber of Hans Kastop's peace. The young man started, and turned toward Hare Settimbrini, who stood there smiling the same fine, humanistic smile that had sat upon his features when he greeted the newcomer at the bench by the watercourse. Now, as then, it mortified Hans Kastorp. We know how often in his dreams he had sought to drive away the organ-grinder

Starting point is 11:21:19 as an element offensive to his peace. But the waking man is more moral than the sleeping, and as before the sight of that smile not only had a sobering effect upon Hans Castorpe, but gave him a sense of gratitude as though it had responded to his need. "'Dispatches,' said Embryny. "'Good Lord, I'm no ambassador.

Starting point is 11:21:40 There might be a post-guard there for one of us. My cousin is just asking.' "'That devil on two sticks in there has handed mine out to me already,' "'Hairs Setembeini said, and carried his hand to the side pocket of the inevitable pilot coat. "'Interesting matter, I must confess, of literary and social import, "'it is about an encyclopedic publication to which a philanthropic institution "'has considered me worthy to contribute. "'Beautiful work, in short.'

Starting point is 11:22:09 "'Hare Setembrini interrupted himself. "'But how about you?' he asked. "'How are your affairs?' going. For instance, how far has the process of a climatisation gone? You have not been so far long among us, but that one may still put the question. Thanks, Hare said Inbrini. It still has its difficulties, it seems. It very likely will have, up to the last day. My cousin told me when I came that many people never get used to it, but one gets used in time to not getting used. A complicated process, laughed the Italian,

Starting point is 11:22:42 an odd way of settling down in a place, but of course youth is capable of anything. Doesn't get used to things, but strikes roots. But after all, this isn't a Siberian penal settlement. No. Ah, you have a fancy for oriental simile. Natural enough, Asia surrounds us. Wherever one's glance rests,

Starting point is 11:23:04 a tartar physiognomy. He said in Brini, gave a discreet glance over his shoulder. Genghis Khan, he said, wolves of the steps, snow, vodka, the canout, Schlosselberg, holy Russia. They ought to set up an altar to Palis Atheney here in the vestibule to ward off the evil spell. Look yonder, there is a species of Ivan Ivanovitch without a shirt front, having a disagreement with lawyer Paravan. Both of them want to be in the front rank to receive their letters. I can't tell which of them is in the right, but for my mind. My part, lawyer Paravan fights under the aegis of the goddess.

Starting point is 11:23:43 He is an ass, of course, but at least he knows some Latin. Hans Kastop laughed, a thing Hessey and Breeney never did. One could not imagine him, laughing heartily. He never got further than the fine, dry, crisping of the corner of his mouth. He looked at the laughing young man and presently asked, Have you received your diapositive? I have received it, Hans Kastov wad wadth, wadthew, affirmed. Just the other day.

Starting point is 11:24:08 Here it is. And he felt for it in his inner breast pocket. Ah, you carry it in a case. Like a certificate, as it were. A sort of membership card. Very good. Let me see it. And hair set in Brini held it against the light,

Starting point is 11:24:23 between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. A little glass plate framed in strips of black paper. The gesture was a common one up here. One often saw it. His face, with the black almond-shaped eyes, displayed a slight grimace as he did so. But whether this happened in the effort to see more clearly, or from other causes he did not permit it to appear.

Starting point is 11:24:43 Yes, yes, he said, after a little. Here is your identity card. Thanks very much. And he handed the plate back to Hans Castor over his shoulder without looking. Did you see the strands? asked Hans Castor, and the nodules. You know, here said Imbini, answered him very deliberately. My opinion of these productions, you know, too, that those spots and shadows there are very largely of physiological origin. I have seen a hundred such pictures, looking very like this of yours.

Starting point is 11:25:12 The decision as to whether they offer definite proof or not was left more or less to the discretion of the person looking at them. I speak as a layman, but a layman of a good many years' experience. Does your own look much worse than this one? Rather worse. I am aware, however, that our lords and masters do not base any diagnosis on the evidence of these toys alone. Then you, purpose, stop the winter up here with us? Yes, Lord knows, I am beginning to get used to the idea of not going back until my cousin does. Getting used, that is, to not getting used. You put that very wittily. I hope you have received supplies from home. Winter clothing, start foot gear. Everything, all in the proper order. I informed my relatives, and our housekeeper sent me everything by express delivery.

Starting point is 11:26:02 I shall do nicely now. I am relieved. But, But hold, you need a bag, a fur sack. What are we thinking of? This late summer is treacherous. It can turn to winter inside an hour. You'll be spending the coldest months up here. Yes, the sleeping sack, Hans Castorpe said. That is a requisite, I suppose.

Starting point is 11:26:24 It had crossed my mind that we must be going down to the plats one of these days soon to buy one. One never needs the thing again, of course, but even for the five or six months it is worthwhile. It is, it is, engineer. said Hare, Set in Brinney in a low voice, coming close to the young man as he addressed him, don't you know there is something frightful in the way you fling the months about? Frightful because unnatural, inconsistent with your character. It is due solely to the facility of your time of life. Ah, the fatal facility of youth.

Starting point is 11:26:55 It is the despair of the teacher, for its proneness to display itself in the wrong direction. I beg you, my young friend, not to adopt the phrases current up here, but to speak the language of European culture native to you. Up here there is too much Asia. It is not without significance that the place is full of Muscovite and Mongolian types. These people, here said in brain in motion with his chin over his shoulder, do not put yourself in tune with them, do not be infected with their ideas. Rather set yourself against them.

Starting point is 11:27:28 Oppose your nature, your higher nature against them. Cling to everything which to you is by nature and to do. tradition holy, as a son of the godlike West, a son of civilization. And, for example, time. This barbaric lavishness with time is in the Asiatic style. It may be a reason why the children of the East feel so much at home up here. Have you never remarked that when a Russian says four hours, he means what we do when we say one? It is easy to see that the recklessness of these people, where time is concerned, may have to do with the space conceptions proper to people of such endless territory. Great space, much time. They say, in fact, that they are the nation that has

Starting point is 11:28:11 time and can wait. We Europeans, we cannot. We have as little time as our great and finely articulated continent has space. We must be as economical of the one as of the other. We must husband them, engineer. Take our great cities, the centres, the fokey of civilization, the crucibles of thought. Just as the soil there increases in value, and space becomes more. more and more precious. So in the same measure does time. Capadiem. That was the song of a dweller in a great city. Time is a gift of God, given to man that he might use it. Use it, engineer, to serve the advancement of humanity. Whatever difficulty, if any, his phrases offered hair set in Brini's Mediterranean palate, he brought them out with a clarity, a euphony,

Starting point is 11:29:01 one might almost say a plasticity, which was truly refreshing. And, and the words, Hansa Kastop made no answer, say the short, stiff, embarrassed, bow of a pupil receiving a reprimand. What could he have said? He said Imbrini had delivered a private lecture, almost whispered it into his ear, with his back to the rest of the people in the room. It had been so pointed, so unsocial, so little conversable in its nature, that merely to commend its eloquence seemed lacking intact. One does not tell a schoolmaster that he has expressed himself well. Hans Kastop, indeed, had done so. once or twice in the early days of their acquaintance, probably from an instinct to preserve the

Starting point is 11:29:39 social equilibrium. But the humanist's utterances had never before reached quite such a didactic pitch. There was nothing for it but to pocket the admonition, feeling as embarrassed as a schoolboy, at so much moralising. Moreover, one could see by hair set in Brini's expression that he had not finished his train of thought. He still stood so close to Hans Castro up that the young man was constrained to bend a little backwards, and his black eyes gaze fixedly into the other's face. "'You suffer, engineer,' he went on. "'You are like one distraught.

Starting point is 11:30:13 "'Who could help seeing it? "'But your attitude towards suffering can be a European attitude. "'It should not be the Oriental, "'which in its soft abandonment inclines so readily to seek this spot. "'The Oriental attitude towards suffering "'is one of pity and boundless patience. That cannot. It ought not to be ours, to be yours. Look, we were speaking of what the post had brought us.

Starting point is 11:30:39 Look at these. Or better, come with me. It is impossible here. Let us withdraw, and I will disclose to use certain matters. Come with me. And, turning, he drew hands cast up away, and they entered one of the small reception rooms, the first on the right next to the vestibule, which stood empty. It was furnished as a reading and writing room, with oak panelling and a light, to the ceiling, bookcases, a centre table covered with newspapers in holders and surrounded with seats, and writing appurtenances arranged in the bay windows. Hairset in Brinney advanced as far as the neighbourhood of one of the windows, Hans Castorp followed. The door remained open. End of Section 34. Section 35 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 11:31:34 Section 35 Chapter 5 Encyclopedic Part 2 The Italian sought the baggy side pocket of his pilot coat and drew thence with impetuous hand a bundle of papers in a large already opened envelope Its contents, various printed matter and a sheet of writing

Starting point is 11:31:58 he ran through his hand under Hans Castob's eye These papers, he said, bear the stamp in French, of the International League for the Organisation of Progress. I have them from Lugano, where there is an office of a branch of the League. You inquire after its principles, its scope. I will define them for you in two words. The League of the Organization of Progress deduces from Darwinian theory the philosophic concept that man's profoundest natural impulse

Starting point is 11:32:30 is in the direction of self-realization. From this it follows that all those, who seek satisfaction of this impulse, must become co-labourers in the cause of human progress. Many are those who have responded to the call. There is a considerable membership in France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and in Germany itself. I myself have the honour of having my name inscribed on the role. A comprehensive and scientifically executed programme has been drawn up, embracing all the projects for human improvement conceivable at the moment.

Starting point is 11:33:05 We are studying the problem of our health as a race and the means of combating the degeneration which is a regrettable accompanying phenomenon of our increasing industrialism. The League envisages the founding of universities for the people the resolution of the class conflict by means of all the social ameliorations which recommend themselves for the purpose

Starting point is 11:33:28 and finally the doing away with national conflicts the abolition of war through the development of international law. You perceive that the objects towards which the League directs its efforts are ambitious and broad in their scope. Several international periodicals are evidence of its activities. Monthly reviews which contain articles in three or four languages on the subject of the progressive evolution of civilized humanity.

Starting point is 11:33:59 Numerous local groups have been established in the various countries. It is expected that they will be. exert an edifying and enlightening influence by means of discussion evenings and appropriate Sunday observances. Above all, the League will strive its utmost to aid with the material at its disposal, the political party of progress in every country. You follow me, engineer. Absolutely, Hans Castop replied with precipitation. He had, as he spoke, the feeling of a man who finds himself slipping, but for the moment contrives to keep his feelings. feet. Here, Settimbrini, appeared satisfied. I assume that these are new and surprising ideas to you.

Starting point is 11:34:43 Yes, I confess this is the first time I have heard of these endeavors. Ah, said Imbrini murmured, ah, if you had only heard of them earlier, but perhaps it is not yet too late. These circulars, you would like to know what they say? Listen, last spring, a formal meeting of the league was called at Barcelona. you are aware that that city can boast of a quite special affinity with progressive political ideas. The Congress sat for a week with banquets and festivals. I wanted to go. Good God, I yearn to be there and to take part in the deliberations. But that scurvy rascal of Hoffrat forbade me on pain of death. So, well, I was afraid I should die and I didn't go.

Starting point is 11:35:27 I was in despair, as you may imagine, over the trick my unreliable health had played me. Nothing is more painful than to be prevented by our physical, our animal nature, from being of service to reason. My satisfaction, therefore, over this communication from Lugano is the more lively. You are curious to know what it says. I can imagine. But first, a few brief explanations. The League for the Organisation of Progress, mindful of its task of furthering human happiness, in other words of combating human suffering by the available social methods, to the end of finally eliminating it altogether,

Starting point is 11:36:06 mindful also of the fact that this lofty task can only be accomplished by the aid of sociology, the end and aim of which is the perfect state, the league in session at Barcelona, determined upon the publication of a series of volumes bearing the general title, The Sociology of Suffering. It should be the aim.

Starting point is 11:36:29 of the series to classify human suffering according to classes and categories and to treat it systematically and exhaustively you ask what is the use of classification arrangement systemization I answer you order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of the subject the actual enemy is the unknown we must lead the human race up out of the primitive stages of fear and patient stupidity and set its feet on the path of conscious activity. We must enlighten it upon two points.

Starting point is 11:37:03 First, that given effects become void when one first recognizes and then removes their causes, and second, that almost all individual suffering is due to disease of the social organism. Very well, this is the object of the sociological pathology. It will be issued in some 20 folio volumes, treating every species of human suffering from the most personal and intimate to the great collective struggles arising from the conflicting interests of classes and nations.

Starting point is 11:37:35 It will, in short, exhibit the chemical elements whose combination in various proportions results in all the ills to which our human flesh is heir. The publication will in every case take as its norm the dignity and happiness of mankind and seek to indicate the measures and remedies calculated to remove the cause of each deviant. aviation, famous European specialists, physicians, psychologists and economists will share in the composition of this encyclopedia of suffering. And the General Editorial Bureau at Lugano will act as the reservoir to collect all the articles which shall flow into it. I can read in your eyes the question as to what my share is to be in all these activities. Hear me to the end. this great work will not neglect the belletrist insofar as he deals with human suffering. A volume is projected which shall contain a compilation and brief analysis of such

Starting point is 11:38:37 masterpieces of the world's literature as come into question by depicting one or other kind of conflict for the consolation and instruction of the suffering. This then is the task entrusted to your humble servant in the letter you see here. "'You don't say, Herr Settembrini, "'allow me to offer you my heartiest congratulations. "'That is a magnificent commission, "'just in your line, I should think. "'No wonder the league thought of you,

Starting point is 11:39:07 "'and what joy you must feel "'to aid in the elimination of human suffering. "'It is a work very broad in its scope,' "'Hare Settimbrini said thoughtfully, "'and will require much consideration and wide reading. "'Especially,' he added, "'and his gaze seemed to lose itself "'in the immensity of his own.

Starting point is 11:39:25 task, since literature has regularly chosen to depict suffering, and even second and third-rate masterpieces, treat of it in one form or another. But what of that? So much the better, however comprehensive the work may be, it is at least of a nature that will permit me to carry it on, if needs must, even in this accursed place, though I hope I need not be here long enough to bring it to a conclusion. That is something, he said, moving closer to Hans Castor, and subduing his voice nearly to a whisper. That is something which can hardly be said of the duties nature lays upon you, engineer. This is what I wanted to bring out. This is the word of warning, I've been trying to utter. You know what admiration I feel for your profession, but as it is a

Starting point is 11:40:13 practical and not an intellectual calling, you are differently situated from myself, in that you can only pursue it down in the world. Only there can you be a true European. Only there can you actively fight suffering, improve the time, further progress, with your own weapons and in your own way. If I have told you of the task that has fallen to my lot, it is only to remind you, only to recall you to yourself, only to clarify certain conceptions of yours, which the atmospheric conditions up here are obviously beginning to be clouded. I would urge it upon you, hold yourself upright, preserve your self-respect, do not give ground to the unknown, flee from this sink of iniquity, this island of Cessi,

Starting point is 11:40:57 whereon you are not odysseous enough to dwell in safety. You will be going on all fours. Already you are inclining toward your forward extremities, and presently you will begin to grunt. Have a care. The humanist had uttered these admonitions in the same low voice, shaking his head impressively. He finished with drawn brows and eyes directed toward the ground.

Starting point is 11:41:22 To answer him, slightly. or jestingly, as Hans Castor would once have done, was out of the question. The young man weighed that possibility for a second, standing with lowered lids. Then he lifted his shoulders and spoke. No louder than Hare said Imbrini. What shall I do? What I told you? You mean, go away?

Starting point is 11:41:45 Hair said Imbrini was silent. What you mean to say is that I should leave for home? It was the advice I gave you on the first evening. engineer. Yes, and then I was free to do so, though it seemed to me silly to throw up the sponge, just because the air up here put me about a bit. But now it is rather a different state of affairs. I have been examined, and Hoffrad Berens told me in so many words that it would be no good my going home. I should only have to come back again, and that if I stopped down there, the whole lobe would be at the devil before you could say Jack Robinson.

Starting point is 11:42:18 I know, and now you have the evidence in your pocket. You say that so ironically, with the right kind of irony, of course, that cannot for a moment be misunderstood, the direct and classic device of oratory. You see, I remember the things you say, but do you mean that after you have seen this photograph, after the x-ray and Behrenz's diagnosis, you take it upon yourself to advise me to go home? Setembrini hesitated for a second. Then he drew himself up and directed the gaze of his black eyes full upon Hans Castop's face. he answered with an emphasis not quite without theatrical effect. Yes, engineer, I take it upon myself. But Hans Kastop's bearing too had stiffened.

Starting point is 11:43:05 He stood with his heels together and looked straight at Hairsetimbrini in his turn. This time it was a duel. Hans Kastop stood his ground. Influences from not far off gave him strength. Here was a schoolmaster, but yonder was a woman with narrow, eyes. He made no apologies for his words. He did not beg, Herr Setimbrini, not to take offence.

Starting point is 11:43:29 He answered, Then you are more prudent for yourself than for others. You did not go to Barcelona in the face of the doctor's orders. You were afraid of death, and you stopped up here. To a certain point, Herr Setembrinie's pose was undeniably shaken.

Starting point is 11:43:45 His smile, as he answered, was slightly forced. I know how to value a ready answer, even though your logic smacks of surfistry, it would disgust me to enter the lists in the sort of rivalry that is too current up here. Otherwise, I might reply that my case is far more serious than yours, so much more, in fact, that it is only by artificial means, almost by deliberate self-deception, that I can keep alive the hope of leaving this place and having sight of the world below, before I die.

Starting point is 11:44:16 In the moment when that hope can no longer be decently sustained, in that moment I shall turn my back on this establishment and take private lodgings somewhere in the valley. That will be sad, but as the sphere of my labours is the freest, the least material in the world, the change cannot prevent me from resisting the forces of disease, and serving the cause of humanity up to my last breath. The difference between us, in this respect, I have already pointed out to you, engineer, you are not the man to assert your better self in these surroundings. I saw it at our first meeting. You reproach me with not having gone to Barcelona. I submitted to the prohibition, not to destroy myself untimely, but I did so with the most stringent reservations. My spirit

Starting point is 11:45:03 protested in pride and anguish against the dictates of my wretched body. Whether that protest survives in you, as you comply with the behests of our powers that be, whether it is not rather the body, the body and its evil propensities to which you lend a ready ear. What have you against the body? Interrupted Hans Castorpe suddenly, and looking at him with white blue eyes, the whites of which were veined with blood. He was giddy with his own temerity and showed as much. Whatever am I saying, he thought, I'm getting out of my depth.

Starting point is 11:45:38 But I won't give way, now I have begun. I won't give him the last word if I can help it. Of course he would have it anyhow, but never. a mind, I will make the most of it while I can.' He enlarged upon his objection. "'But you are a humanist, are you not? What can you have to say against the body?' Set Embreni's smile this time was unforced and confident. "'What have you against analysis?' he quoted, with his head on one side. "'Are you down on analysis?'

Starting point is 11:46:08 "'You will always find me ready to answer you, engineer,' he said with a bow, and a sweeping downward motion of the hand, particularly when your opposition is spirited. You parry not without elegance. Humanist, yes, certainly I am a humanist. You could never convict me of ascetic inclinations. I affirm, honour and love the body. As I protest, I affirm, honour and love form, beauty, freedom,

Starting point is 11:46:37 gaiety, the enjoyment of life. I represent the world, the interest of this life, against a sentimental withdrawal and negation, classicism against romanticism. I think my position is unequivocal. But there is one power, one principle which commands my deepest descent, my highest and fullest allegiance in love, and this power, this principle, is the intellect.

Starting point is 11:47:04 However much I dislike hearing that conception of moonshine and cobwebs people call the soul, played off against the body, yet within the antithesis of body and mind the body is the evil the devilish principle for the body is nature and nature within the sphere i repeat of her antagonism to the mind and to reason is evil mystical and evil you are a humanist by all means i am a humanist because i am a friend of mankind like prometheus a lover of humanity and human nobility that nobility is comprehended in the mind, in the reason, and therefore you will level against me in vain the reproach of Christian obscurantism. Hands cast up demurred. You will, here said Imbrini persisted, level this approach in vain, if humanistic pride one day

Starting point is 11:47:59 learns to feel as a debasement and disgrace the fact that the intellect is bound up with the body and with nature. Did you know that the great plot in us is said to have made the remark that he was ashamed to have a body? asked Settimbrini. He seemed eager for a reply, and Hans Castorpe was constrained to confess that this was the first time he had heard of it. We have it from Porphyrius, an absurd remark, if you like, but the absurd is the intellectually honourable, and nothing can be more pitiable than the reproach of absurdity, levelled against a mind as it asserts its dignity against nature, and refuses to abdicate before her.

Starting point is 11:48:36 Have you heard of the Lisbon earthquake, engineer? An earthquake? No. I see no. I see no. newspapers appear. You misunderstand me. On passant, let me say it is a pity, and very indicative of the spirit of this place, that you neglect to read the papers, but you misunderstand me. The convulsion of nature to which I refer is not modern. It took place some hundred and fifty years ago. I see. Oh, wait, I have it. I have read that Gertes said to his servant that night in his bedchamber. No, it was not of that I was speaking, said him Brinie interrupted him, closing his eyes,

Starting point is 11:49:11 and shaking his small, sallow hand in the air. Besides, you are confusing two catastrophes. You are thinking of the earthquake of Messina. I have in mind the one that visited Lisbon in the year 1755. Pardon? Well, Voltaire was outraged by it. Outraged? That is, how do you mean?

Starting point is 11:49:33 He rebelled. Yes, he declined to accept that brutal fatum metfactum. His spirit refused to abdicate. before it, he protested in the name of reason and the intellect against that scandalous dereliction of nature to which were sacrificed thousands of human lives and three-quarters of a flourishing city. You are astonished, you smile, you may well be astonished. But as for smiling, give me leave to tell you, it is out of place. Voltaire's attitude was that of a worthy descendant of those old Gauls that shot their arrows against the heavens. There, engineer, you have the

Starting point is 11:50:09 hostility the intellect feels against nature. Its proud mistrust, its high-hearted insistence upon the right to criticise her and her evil reason-denying power. Nature is force, and it is slavish to suffer force to abdicate before it, to abdicate that is, inwardly. And there too you have the humanistic position, which runs not the slightest risk of involving itself in contradictions, or of relapsing into churchly hypocrisy, when it sees in the body the antagonist. the representative of the evil principle. The contradiction you imagine you see is at bottom always the same. What have you against analysis?

Starting point is 11:50:50 Nothing when it serves the cause of enlightenment, freedom, progress. Everything when it is pervaded by the horrible ut-gut of the grave. And thus too with the body, we are to honour and uphold the body when it is a question of emancipation, of beauty, of freedom of thought, of just joy of desire. We must despise it insofar as it sets itself up as the principle of gravity and inertia. When it obstructs the movement toward light, we must despise it insofar as it represents the principle of disease and death, insofar as its specific essence is the essence of perversity, of decay, sensuality and shame. These last words, Setimbrini had uttered standing

Starting point is 11:51:37 close to Hans Castor, very rapidly and tonelessly, as though to me. make an end of the subject. Sucker was nigh for the youth. Yer came entered the reading-room with two postcards in his hand. The Italian broke off, and the dexterity with which he altered his tone, for one in a lighter and fitting social key, was not lost upon his pupil. If so, Hans Castorpe may be called. There you are, Lieutenant. Have you been looking for your cousin? I must apologise. We had fallen into conversation. If I am not mistaken, we have even had a slight disagreement. He is not a bad reasoner, your cousin,

Starting point is 11:52:12 a by no means contemptible antagonist in an argument when he takes the notion. End of Section 35. Section 36 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 36 Chapter 5 Humanaioa Part 1

Starting point is 11:52:41 Hans Castorp on Joachim Zimson arrayed in white trousers and blue blazers, was sitting in the garden after dinner. It was another of those much lauded October days, bright, without being heavy, hot and yet with a tang in the air. The sky above the valley was a deep southern blue and the passages beneath, with the cattle tracks running across and across them, still a lively green. From the rugged slopes came the sound of cowbells, the peaceful, simple, melodious, tin tinnobulation came floating unbroken through the quiet, thin, empty air, enhancing the mood of solemnity that broods over the valley heights. The cousins were sitting on a bench at the end

Starting point is 11:53:27 of the garden in front of a semicircle of young firs. The small open space lay at the northwest of the hedged-in platform, which rose some fifty yards above the valley, and formed the foundations of the Berkhov building. They were silent. Hans Castorpe was smoking. He was also wrangling inward with Yo-Kim, who had not wanted to join the society on the veranda after luncheon, and had drawn his cousin against his will into the stillness and seclusion of the garden, until such times they should go up to their balconies. That was behaving like a tyrant. When it came to that, they were not Siamese twins.

Starting point is 11:54:04 It was possible for them to separate, if their inclinations took them in opposite directions. Hence Kastor was not up here to be company for Joachim. He was a patient himself. Thus he grumbled on, and could endure to grumble, for had he not Maria. He sat, his hands at his blazer pockets, his feet in brown shoes, stretched out before him, and held the long, greyish cigar between his lips, precisely in the centre of his mouth, and drooping a little.

Starting point is 11:54:33 It was in the first stages of consumption. He had not yet knocked off the ash from its blunt tip. Its aroma was peculiarly grateful after the heavy meal just enjoyed. it might be true that in other respects getting used to life up here had mainly consisted in getting used to not getting used to it. But for the chemistry of his digestion, the nerves of his mucous membrane, which had been parched and tender, inclined to bleeding, it seemed that the process of adjustment had completed itself. For imperceptibly, in the course of these nine or ten weeks, his organic satisfaction in that excellent brand of vegetable stimulant or narcotic had been entirely restored. He rejoiced in a faculty regained.

Starting point is 11:55:16 His mental satisfaction heightened the physical. During his time in bed he had saved on the supply of 200 cigars which he had brought with him, and some of these were still left. But at the same time, with his winter clothing from below, there had arrived another 500 of the Bremen make, which he had ordered through Chaline to make quite sure of not running out. They came in beautiful little varnished boxes, ornamented in gilt with a globe, several medals and an exhibition building with a flag fluttering above it.

Starting point is 11:55:47 As they sat, behold, there came Hofrat Berens through the garden. He had taken his midday meal in the dining room today, folding his gigantic hands before his place at Frow Salomon's table. After that he had probably been on the terrace, making the suitable personal remark to each and everybody, very likely displaying his trick with the bootplaces for such of the guests as had not seen it. Now he came lounging through the garden, wearing a Czech tailcoat instead of his smock, and his stiff hat on the back of his head.

Starting point is 11:56:18 He too had a cigar in his mouth, a very black one, from which he was puffing great white clouds of smoke. His head and face were the overheated purple cheeks, the snub nose, watery blue eyes, a little clipped moustache, looked small in proportion to the lank, rather warped and stooping figure, and the enormous hands and feet. He was nervous, visibly started when he saw the cousins, and seemed embarrassed over the necessity of passing them. But he greeted them in his usual, picturesque and expansive fashion with, Behold, behold, Timotheaerce, going on to invoke the usual blessings on their metabolisms,

Starting point is 11:56:57 while he prevented their rising from their seats, as they would have done in his honour. Sit down, sit down, no formalities with a simple man like me. of place, too, you being my patience, both of you. Not necessary, no objection to the status quo. He remained standing before them, holding the cigar between the index and middle fingers of his great right hand. How's your cabbage leaf, Castob? Let me see. I'm a connoisseur. That's a good ash. What sort of brown beauty have you here? Maria Mancini, Poster do Banquet. Bremen, Herr Hofrat, costs little or nothing. 19 phoenix in plain colours,

Starting point is 11:57:39 but a bouquet you don't often come across at the price. Sumatra Havana tobacco wrapper, as you see. I am very wedded to them. It's a medium mixture, very fragrant, but cool, on the tongue. Suites it to leave the ash long. I don't knock it off more than a couple of times. She has her whims, of course, has Maria, but the inspection must be very thorough,

Starting point is 11:58:00 for she doesn't vary much, and draws perfectly even. May I offer you one? Thanks, we can explain. change, and they drew out their cases. There's a thoroughbred for you, the Hoffrat said, as he displayed his brand. Temperament, you know, juicy, got some guts to it. St. Felix, Brazil, I've always stuck to this sort. Regular, begone, dull care.

Starting point is 11:58:25 Burns like brandy has something fulminating toward the end. But you need to exercise a little caution. Can't like one from the other, you know. More than a fellow can stand. However, better one good mouthful than any number of nibbles. They twirl their respective offerings between their fingers, felt connoisseur-like the slender shapes that possessed, so one might think, some organic quality of life, with their ribs formed by the diagonal, parallel edges of the raised, here in their porous wrapper, the exposed veins that seem to pulsate,

Starting point is 11:58:59 the small inequalities of the skin, the play of light on planes and edges. Hans Castorpe expressed it. A cigar like that is alive. It breathes. Fact. Once at home, I had the idea of keeping Maria in an airtight tin box to protect her from damp. Would you believe it? She died. Inside of a week she perished. Nothing but leathery corpses left. They exchanged experiences upon the best way to keep cigars, particularly imported ones. The Hoffrat loved them. He would have smoked nothing but heavy havannas.

Starting point is 11:59:34 but they did not suit him. He told Hans Castorpe about two little Henry Clay's he had once taken to his heart in an evening company, which had come within an ace of putting him under the sod. I smoked them with my coffee, he said, and thought knew more of it, but after a while it struck me to wonder how I felt, and I discovered it was like nothing on earth.

Starting point is 11:59:55 I don't know how I got home, and once there, well, this time I said to myself, you're a goner, feet and legs like ice, you know, reeking with cold sweat. White is a tablecloth. Heart going always for Sunday. Sometimes just a thread of a pulse. Sometimes pounding like a trip hammer.

Starting point is 12:00:15 Cerebration phenomenal. I made sure I was going to toddle off. That is the very expression that occurred to me because at the time I was feeling as jolly as a sandboy. Not that I wasn't in a funk as well, because I was. I was just one large blue funk all over. Still, funk and Felicity aren't mutually exclusive. Everybody knows that.

Starting point is 12:00:37 Take a chap who's going to have a girl for the first time in his life. He is in a funk too, and so is she. Yet both of them are simply dissolving with Felicity. I was nearly dissolving too. My bosom swelled with pride, and there I was, on the point of toddling off. But the Mylandong got hold of me and persuaded me it was a poor idea. She gave me a camp for injection, applied ice compresses and friction, and here I am, saved for humanity. The Hoffrat's large, goggling blue eyes watered as he told this story. Hans Castor up, seated in his capacity of patient, looked up at him with an expression that betrayed mental activity.

Starting point is 12:01:19 You paint sometimes, don't you, hear Hoffrat? He asked suddenly. The Hoffrat pretended to stagger backwards. What the deuce? What do you take me for, youngster? I beg your pardon, I happen to hear somebody say so, and it just crossed my mind. Well, then, I want trouble to lie about it. We're all poor creatures. I admit such a thing has happened. And kiosonobit, as the Spaniard used to say. Landscape, Hans Castro asked him, succinctly, with the air of a connoisseur, circumstances betraying him to this turn. As much as you like, the Hoffrat answered, swaggering out of sheer self-consciousness. Landscape, still-life, animals, chap like me, shrinks from nothing.

Starting point is 12:02:07 No portraits. I've even thrown in a portrait or so. Want to give me an order? No, but it would be very kind of you to show us your pictures sometime. We should enjoy it. Yer Kim looked blankly at his cousin, but then hastened to add his assurances that it would be very kind indeed of the Hoffrad. Berens was enchanted at the flattery.

Starting point is 12:02:30 He grew red with pleasure. His tears seemed this time actually on the point of falling. "'With greatest pleasure!' he cried. "'On the spot, if you like. Come on, come along with me. I'll brew us a Turkish coffee in my den.' He pulled both young men from the bench and walked between them arm in arm, down the gravel path which led, as they knew, to his private quarters in the northwest wing of the building. "'I've dabbled a little in that sort of thing myself,' Hans Castorpe explained. "'You don't say. gone in for it properly? Oils? Oh no, I never went further than a watercolour or so. A ship, a sea-piece, childish efforts, but I'm fond of painting, and so I took the liberty.

Starting point is 12:03:14 Joachim, in particular, felt relieved and enlightened by this explanation of his cousin's startling curiosity. It was, in fact, more on his account than on the Hoffrats that Hans Castro had offered it. They reached the entrance, a much simpler one than the impressive portal on the drive, with its flanking lantern. A pair of curving steps led up to the oaken house door, which the Hoffrat opened with a latch key from his heavy bunch. His hand trembled. He was plainly in a nervous state. He entered an ante chamber with clotheswrecks,

Starting point is 12:03:46 where Behrens hung his bowler on a hook, and thence passed into a short corridor, which was separated by a glass door from that of the main building. On both sides of this corridor lay the rooms of the small private dwelling. Berens called a servant and gave an order. then to a running accompaniment of whimsical remarks ushered them through a door on the right. They saw a couple of rooms furnished in banal, middle-class taste, facing the valley and opening one into another through a doorway hung with portiers.

Starting point is 12:04:17 One was an old German dining-room, the other a living and working-room, with woollen carpets, bookshelves and sofa, and a writing-table above which hung a pair of cross-swords under a student's cap. Beyond was a Turkish smoking cabinet. Everywhere were paintings, the work of the Hoffrat. The guests went up to them at once on entering, courteously ready to praise. There were several portraits of his departed wife in oil. Also, standing on the writing table, photographs of her.

Starting point is 12:04:47 She was a thin, enigmatic blonde, portrayed in flowing garments with her hands, their fingertips just lightly enlaced against her left shoulder, and her eyes either directed toward heaven or else cast upon the ground, shaded by long, thick, obliquely outstanding, eyelashes. Never once was the departed one shown looking directly ahead of her toward the observer. The other pictures were chiefly mountain landscapes, mountains in snow and mountains in summer green, mist-wreathed mountains, mountains whose dry, sharp outline was cut out against a deep blue sky.

Starting point is 12:05:23 He's apparently under the influence of Segentini. Then there were cowherds huts and julep'd cattle standing or lying in sun-drenched high pastures. There was a plucked fowl, with its long, writhened neck hanging down from a table, among a setting of vegetables. There were flower pieces, types of mountain peasantry, and so on. All painted with a certain brisk dilettanteism, the colours boldly dashed onto the canvas, and often looking as though they had been squeezed on out of the tube. It must have taken a long time to dry, but were sometimes effective by way of helping out the other shortcomings. They passed as they would along the walls of an exhibition, accompanied by the master of the house,

Starting point is 12:06:06 who now and then gave a name to some subject or other, but was chiefly silent with the proud embarrassment of the artist, tasting the enjoyment of looking on his own works with the eyes of strangers. The portrait of Claudia Shosha hung on the window wall of the living room, Hans Castorpe spied out with the quick glance as he entered, though the likeness was but a distant one. Purposely he avoided the spot, detaining his companions in the dining-room, where he affected to admire a fresh green glimpse into the valley of the Serbi, with ice-blue glaciers in the background. Next he passed of his own accord into the Turkish cabinet,

Starting point is 12:06:44 and looked at all it had to show with praises on his lips. thence back to the living room, beginning with the entrance wall and calling upon Iokim to second his incommiums. But at last he turned with a measured start and said, But surely that is a familiar face? You recognise her? No, how Frad wanted to know. It is not possible, I am mistaken, the lady of the good Russian table with the French name. Right, Shosha.

Starting point is 12:07:14 Glad you think it's like her. speaking, Hans Castor bled, he did so less from insincerity than in the consciousness that on the face of things he ought not to have been able to recognise her. Joachim could never have done so. Good, Joachim, who saw the whole affair now in its true light, after the false one Hans Castor but first cast upon it, saw how the wool had been pulled over his eyes, and with a murmured recognition applied himself to help look at the painting. his cousin had paid him out for not going into society after luncheon. It was a bust length in half-profile, rather under-life size in a wide, beveled frame, black, with an inner beading of guilt. Neck and bosom were bare or veiled, with a soft drapery laid about the shoulders. Crowshaw appeared ten years older than her age, as often happens in amateur portraiture, where the artist is bent on making a character study.

Starting point is 12:08:10 There was too much red all over the face. The nose was badly out of drawing. The colour of the hair badly hit off, two straw colour. The mouth was distorted. The peculiar charm of the features ungrasped, or at least not brought out, spoiled by the exaggeration of their single elements. The whole was a rather botched performance, and only distantly related to its original.

Starting point is 12:08:34 But Hans Castor was not particular about the degree of likeness, The relation of this canvas to Fras Soshas person was close enough for him. It purported to represent her in these very rooms she had sat for it. That was all he needed. Much moved, he reiterated the very image of her. Oh no, the Hoff front demurred. It was a pretty clumsy piece of work. I don't flatter myself.

Starting point is 12:08:58 I hit her off very well. There we had, I suppose, twenty sittings. What can you do with a rumb sort of face like that? You might think she would be. easy to capture with those hyperborean cheekbones and eyes like quacks in a loaf of bread. Yes, there's something about her. If you get the detail right, you botched the ensemble, the riddle of the Sphinx. Do you know her? It would probably be better to paint her from memory instead of having her sit. Did you say you knew her? No, that is only superficially the way one knows people up here.

Starting point is 12:09:33 Well, I know her under her skin, subcutaneously, you know, blood pressure, tissue tension, lymphatic circulation, all that sort of thing. I've good reason to. It's the superfaces, makes the difficulty. Have you ever noticed her walk? She slinks. It's characteristic, shows in her face. Take the eyes, for example, not to mention the complexion, that that is tricky too. I don't mean their colour. I'm speaking of it. the cut, the way they sit in the face. You'd say the eye slit was cut obliquely, but it only looks so. What deceives you is the epicanthus, a racial variation consisting in a sort of ridge of integument that runs from the bridge of the nose to the eyelid and comes down over the inside corner of the eye. If you take your finger and stretch the skin at the base of the nose, the eye

Starting point is 12:10:26 looks as straight as any of ours. Quite a taking little dodge, but as a matter of fact, the Epicanthers can be traced back to an atavistic vestige. It's a developmental arrest. So that's it, Hans Castorpe said. I never knew that, but I've wondered for a long time what it is about eyes like that. Vanity, said the Hoffrad, and vexation of spirit. If you simply draw them in slanting, you are lost. You must bring about the obliquity the same way nature does. You must add illusion to illusion. and for that you have to know about the epicanthus. What a man knows always comes in handy. Now look at the skin, the epidermis.

Starting point is 12:11:08 Do you find I've managed to make it lifelike or not? Enormously, said Hans Castob. Simply enormously, I've never seen skin painted anything like so well. You can fairly see the paws. And he ran the edge of his hand lightly over the bare neck and shoulders, the skin of which, especially by contrast with the exaggerated red of the face, was very white, as though seldom exposed, whether this effect was premeditated or not.

Starting point is 12:11:35 It was rather suggestive. And still, Hans Kastoff's praise was as deserved. The pale shimmer of this tender, though not emaciated bosom, losing itself in the bluest shadows of the drapery was very lifelike. It was obviously painted with feeling, a sort of sweetness emanated from it, yet the artist had been successful in giving it a scientific realism. and precision as well.

Starting point is 12:12:01 The roughness of the canvas texture showing through the paint had been dexterously employed to suggest the natural unevenness of the skin. This is especially in the neighbourhood of the delicate collarbones. A tiny mole at the point where the breasts began to divide had been done with care

Starting point is 12:12:17 and in their rounding surfaces one thought to trace the delicate blue veins. It was as though a scarcely perceptible shiver of sensibility beneath the eye of the beholder were passing over this nude flesh, as though one might see the perspiration, the invisible vapour which the life beneath threw off.

Starting point is 12:12:36 As though, where one to press one's lips upon this surface, one might perceive not the smell of paint and fixative, but the odour of the human body. Such at least were Hans Castorpe's impressions, which we here reproduce. And he, of course, was in a peculiarly susceptible state, but it is nonetheless true that Froucheche's portrait was by far the most telling piece of painting in the room.

Starting point is 12:13:02 Alfred Berens rocked back and forth on his heels and the balls of his feet, his hands in his trouser pockets, as he gazed at his work in the company of the cousins. Delighted, he said, delighted to find favour in the eyes of a colleague. If a man knows a bit about what goes on under the epidermis, that does no harm either. In other words, if he can paint a little below the surface and stands in another relation to nature,

Starting point is 12:13:26 than just the lyrical, so to say. An artist who is a doctor, a physiologist, an anatomist on the side, and has his own little way of thinking about the undersides of things. It all comes in handy, too. It gives you the pa, say what you like. That birthday suit there is painted with science.

Starting point is 12:13:46 It is organically correct. You can examine it under the microscope. You can see not only the horny and mucous strata of the epidermis, but I've suggested the texture of the corium. underneath, with the oil and sweat glands, the blood vessels and tubercles, and then under that still the layer of fat, the upholstering, you know, full of oil ducts, the underpinning of the lovely female form.

Starting point is 12:14:10 What is in your mind as you work runs into your hand and has its influence? It isn't really there, and yet somehow or other, it is, and that is what gives the lifelike effect. All this was fuel to Hans Castob's fire. His brow was flushed, his eyes fairly sparkled. He had so much to say he knew not where to begin. In the first place he had it in mind to remove the picture of Frau Schocher from the window wall, where it hung somewhat in shadow

Starting point is 12:14:39 and place it to better advantage. Next, he was eager to take up the Hofrat's remarks about the constitution of the skin, which had keenly interested him, and finally he wanted to make some remarks of his own, of a general and philosophical nature, which interested him no less, mightily. End of Section 36. Section 37 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.

Starting point is 12:15:11 This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 37. Chapter 5 Humanaura, Part 2. Laying his hands upon the painting to unhook it, he eagerly began, Yes, yes indeed, that is all very important. What I'd like to say is, I mean, you said, Herr Hofrat, if I understand rightly, you said, in another relation. You said it was good when there was some other relation besides the lyric. I think that was the word you used, the artistic, that is. In short, when one looked at the thing from another point of view, the medical, for example, that's all so enormously to the point, you know. I do beg your pardon, Herr Hofrat, but what I mean is that it is so exactly and precisely right, because, after all,

Starting point is 12:16:03 It is not a question of any fundamentally different relations or points of view. But at bottom, just variations of one and the same, just shadings of it, so to speak. I mean, variations of one and the same universal interest. The artistic impulse itself being a part and a manifestation of it too, if I may say so. Yes, if you will pardon me, I will take down this picture. There's positively no light here where it hangs. Permit me to carry it over to the sofa. We shall see if it won't look entirely.

Starting point is 12:16:33 What I mean to say was, what is the main concern of the study of medicine? I know nothing about it, of course, but after all, isn't its main concern with human beings? And jurisprudence, making laws, pronouncing judgment. Its main concern is with human beings too, and philology, which is nearly always bound up with the profession of pedagogy. And theology, with the care of souls, the office of spiritual shepherd. All of them have to do with human beings. All of them are degrees of one same important, the same fundamental interest, the interest in humanity.

Starting point is 12:17:10 In other words, they are the humanistic callings. And if you go in for them, you have to study the ancient languages by way of foundation for the sake of formal training, as they say. Perhaps you are surprised at my talking about them like that, being only a practical man and on the technical side. But I have been thinking about these questions lately in the rescue, and I find it wonderful. I find it as simply priceless arrangement of things

Starting point is 12:17:34 that the formal, the idea of form, of beautiful form, lies at the bottom of every sort of humanistic calling. It gives it such nobility, I think, such a sort of disinterestedness and feeling too, and courtliness. It makes a kind of chivalrous adventure out of it. That is to say, I suppose I'm expressing myself very ridiculously, but you can see how the things of the mind

Starting point is 12:17:59 and the love of beauty come together and that they always really have been one and the same. In other words, science and art, and that the calling of being an artist surely belongs with the others as a sort of fifth faculty, because it is too a humanistic calling, a variety of humanistic interest, in so far as its most important theme or concern is with man.

Starting point is 12:18:20 You will agree with me on that point. When I experimented in that line in my youth, I never painted anything but ships and water, of course, but notwithstanding in my eyes the most interesting branch of painting is and remains portraiture because it has man for its immediate object that was why i asked at once if you had done anything in that field wouldn't this be a far more favourable place for it to hang both of them barons no less than yokim looked at him amazed was he not ashamed of this confused impromptu harang but no hans castor was far too preoccupied to feel self-conscious He held the painting against the sofa wall and demanded to know if it did not get a much better light. Just then the servant brought a tray with hot water, a spirit lamp and coffee cups. Berens motioned them into the cabine, saying,

Starting point is 12:19:13 Then you must have been more interested in sculpture originally than in painting, I should think. Yes, of course, it gets more light there, if you think it can stand it. I should suppose so, because sculpture concerns itself more purely and exclusively with the human form. But we mustn't let the water boil away. Quite right, sculpture, Hans Castorpe said, as they went. He forgot either to hang up or put down the picture he had been holding, but tugged it with him into the neighbouring room. Certainly a Greek Venus or athlete is more humanistic.

Starting point is 12:19:48 It is probably at bottom the most humanistic of all the arts, when one comes to think about it. Well, as far as little Shoshah goes, she is a much better subject for painting than sculpture. Phidias, or that other chap with the mosaic ending to his name, would have stuck up their noses at her style of physiognomy. Hello, where are you going with the ham? Pardon me, I'll just lean it here against the leg of my chair. That will do very well for the moment.

Starting point is 12:20:14 The Greek sculptors did not trouble themselves about the head and face. Their interest was more with the body. I suppose that was their humanism and the plasticity of the female form. So that is fat, is it? That is fat? The Huffright said concisely. He had opened a hanging cabinet and taken thence the requisites for his coffee-making. A cylindrical Turkish mill, a long-handled pot, a double receptacle for sugar and ground coffee, all in brass.

Starting point is 12:20:43 Palmitin, stirring, Oliin, he went on, shaking the coffee beans from a tin box into the mill, which he began to turn. You see, I make it all myself. It tastes twice as good. Did you think it was ambrosia? No, of course I knew. only it sounds strange to hear it like that, Hans Castorpe said. They were seated in the corner between door and window at a bamboo tabaret, which held an oriental brass tray, upon which Berens had set the coffee machine among the smoking utensils. Joachim was next Berens on the ottoman, overflowing with cushions.

Starting point is 12:21:17 Hans Castorpe sat in a leather armchair on casters, against which he had leaned Frowshaas' picture. A gaily coloured carpet was beneath their feet. The hoffrat ladled coffee and sugar into the long-handled pot, added water, and let the brew boil up over the flame of the lamp. It foamed brownly in the little onion-patter cups and proved on tasting both strong and sweet. Your own as well, Beron said. Your plasticity, so far as you have any, is fat too, though of course not to the same extent as with a woman. With us, fat is only about 5% of the body weight.

Starting point is 12:21:54 In females it is 1.16. of the whole. Without that subcontaneous cell structure of ours, we should all be nothing but fungoy growth. It disappears with time, and then comes the unethetic wrinkles in the drapery. The layer is thickest on the female breast and belly, on the front of the thighs, everywhere, in short, where there is a little something for heart and hand to take hold of. The soles of the feet are fat and ticklish. Hans Castob turned the cylindrical coffee mill about in his hands. It was, like the rest of the set, Indian or Persian rather than Turkish. The style of the engraving showed that, with the bright surface of the pattern standing out against the purposely

Starting point is 12:22:35 dulled background. He looked at the design without immediately seeing what it was. When he did, he blushed, unawares. Yes, that is a set for single gentleman, Baron said. Keep it locked up, you see. My kitchen queen might hatter eyes looking at it. It won't do you gentleman any harm, I take it. It was given to me by a patient, an Egyptian princess who once honoured us with the Eurrosur of her presence. You see the pattern repeats itself on the whole set. Pretty rogueish, what? Yes, it is quite unusual, Hans Castor answered. No, it doesn't trouble me, but one can take it perfectly seriously, solemnly, in fact. Only then it is rather out of place on a coffee machine. The ancients are said to have used such

Starting point is 12:23:24 motifs on their sarcophagy. The sacred and the obscene were more or less the same thing to them. I should say the princess was more for the second, Beron said. Anyhow, she still sends me the most wonderful cigarettes, superfinissimos, you know, only sported on first-class occasions. He fetched the garish-coloured box from the cupboard and offered them. Yokim drew his heels together as he received his cigarette. Hans Kastorp helped himself to his. It was unusual. usually large and thick, and had a gilt sphinx on it. He began to smoke. It was wonderful, as Berens had said.

Starting point is 12:24:02 Tell us some more about the skin, he begged the hoffrat. That is, if you will be so kind. He had taken Fras Choshas portrait on his knee, and was gazing at it, leaning back in his chair, the cigarette between his lips. Not about the fat layer, we know about that now, but the human skin in general, that you know so well how to paint. "'About the skin. You are interested in physiology?' "'Very much. Yes. I've always felt a good deal of interest in it.

Starting point is 12:24:32 "'The human body.' "'Yes. I've always had an uncommon turn for it. "'I've sometimes asked myself whether I ought not to have been a physician. "'It wouldn't have been a bad idea, in a way. "'Because if you're interested in the body, you must be interested in disease. "'Especially interested. Isn't that so?' "'But it doesn't signify. "'I might have been such a lot of things.

Starting point is 12:24:52 "'For example, a clergyman. Indeed. Yes, I've sometimes had the idea I should have been decidedly in my element there. How did you come to be an engineer then? I just happened to, it was more or less outward circumstances that decided the matter. Well, about the skin, what do you want to hear about your sensory sheath? You know, don't you, that it is your outside brain. ontogenetically the same as that apparatus in the so-called higher centres up there in your cranium. The central nervous system is nothing but a modification of the outer skin layer.

Starting point is 12:25:31 Among the lower animals, the distinction between central and peripheral doesn't exist. They smell and taste with their skin. It is the only sensory organ they have. Must be rather nice if you can put yourself in their place. on the other hand in such highly differentiated forms of life as you and I are the skin has fallen from its higher state it has to confine itself to feeling ticklish that is to say it being simply a protective and registering apparatus

Starting point is 12:26:01 but devilishly on the quiviva for anything that tries to come too close about the body it even puts out feelers the body has which are nothing but hardened skin cells and they get wind of the approach of whatever it is, before the skin itself is touched. Just between ourselves, it is quite possible that this protecting and defending function of the skin extends beyond the physical. Do you know what makes you go red and pale?

Starting point is 12:26:30 Not very precisely. Well, neither do we. Very precisely, to be frank, at least as far as blushing is concerned. The situation is not quite clear for the dilatory muscles which are presumably set in aggregate, by the vasameter nerves haven't yet been demonstrated in relation to the blood vessels.

Starting point is 12:26:48 How the cock really swells its comb, or any of the other well-known instances come about, is still a mystery, particularly where it is a question of emotional influences in play. We assume that a connection subsists between the outer rind of the cerebrum and the vascular center of the medulla, certain stimuli, for example, let us say, like you're being powerfully embarrassed, set up the connection and the nerves that control the blood vessels functioned toward the face and they expand and fill

Starting point is 12:27:18 and you get a face like a turkey cock all swelled up with blood so you can't see out of your eyes on the other hand suppose you're in suspense something is going to happen maybe something tremendously beautiful for what I care

Starting point is 12:27:32 the blood vessels that feed the skin contract gets pale and cold and sunken you look like a dead man with big lead-colored ice-colored eye sockets and a peaked nose. But the Sympathicus makes your heart thump away like a good fellow. So that is how it happens, Hans Castorpe said. Something like that.

Starting point is 12:27:53 Those are reactions, you know. But it is the nature of reactions and reflexes to have a reason for happening. We are beginning to suspect, we physiologists, the phenomena accompanying emotion are really defense mechanisms, protective reflexes of the system. Goose flesh now. Do you know how you come to have goose flesh? Not very clearly either, I'm afraid.

Starting point is 12:28:15 That is a little contrivance of the sebuchadous glands which secrete the fatty, albuminous substance that oils your skin and keeps it supple and pleasant to feel of. Not very appetising, maybe, but without it the skin would be all withered and cracked. Without the cholesterol, it is hard to imagine touching the human skin at all. These sebuchadase glands have little erectorum muscles that act upon them, and when they do so, then you are like the lad. when the princess poured the pale of minnows over him,

Starting point is 12:28:45 your skin gets like a file. And if the stimulus is very powerful, the hair ducts are erected too. The hair on your head bristles up, and little hairs on your body, like quills upon the fretful porcupine, and you can say, like the youth in the story, that now you know how to shiver and shake.

Starting point is 12:29:02 Oh, said Hans Castoff, I know how already. I shiver rather easily on all sorts of provocation. What surprises me is that the glands I erected for such different reasons. It gives one goose flesh to hear a slate pencil run across a piece of glass. And when you hear particularly beautiful music, you suddenly find you have it too. And when I was confirmed and took my first communion, I had one shiver after another. It seemed as though the prickling and stickling would never leave off.

Starting point is 12:29:29 Imagine those little muscles acting for such different reasons. Oh, Barron said, tickling's tickling. The body doesn't give a hang for the content of the stimulus. It may be minnows, maybe the Holy Ghost. but the Sebuchas glands are erected just the same. Hans Castorpe regarded the picture on his knee. Heffrat, he said, I wanted to come back to something you said a moment ago about internal processes, emphatic action, and that sort of thing.

Starting point is 12:29:57 Tell us about it, particularly about the lymphatic system. It interests me tremendously. I believe you, parents responded. The lymph is the most refined, the most rarefied, the most intimate of the body juices. I dare say you had an inkling of the fact in your mind when you asked. People talk about the blood and the mysteries of its composition, and what an extraordinary fluid it is.

Starting point is 12:30:22 But it is the lymph that is the juice of juices, the very essence, you understand. I call blood milk creme de la creme. As a matter of fact, after a fatty diet, it does look like milk. And he went on in his lively and whimsical phraseology to gratify Hans Castorp's desire. But first he characterized the blood A serum composed of fat Albuman, iron, sugar and salt

Starting point is 12:30:47 Crimson as an opera cloak The product of respiration and digestion Saturated with gases Laden with waste products Which was pumped at 98.4 degrees of heat From the heart through the blood vessels And kept up metabolism And animal warmth throughout the body

Starting point is 12:31:02 In other words, sweet life itself But he said the blood did not come Into immediate contact with the body cells What happened was that the pressure at which it was pumped caused a milky extract of it to sweat through the walls of the blood vessels and sew into the tissues so that it filled every tiny interstasy and cranny

Starting point is 12:31:21 and caused the elastic cell tissue to distend the distension of the tissues or turgore pressed the lymph after it had nicely swirled out of the cells and exchanged matter with them into the vasa lymphatica the lymphatic cells and sewed back into the blood again

Starting point is 12:31:37 at the rate of a litre in a heart half a day. He went on to speak of the lymphatic tubes and absorbent vessels, described the secretion of the breast milk, which collected lymph from legs, abdomen and breast, one arm and one side of the head, described the very delicately constructed filters called lymphatic glands, which were placed at certain points in the lymphatic system, in the neck, the armpit, and the elbow joint, the hollow under the knee, and other soft and intimate parts of the body. swellings may occur in these places, Bairns explained, in durations of the lymphatic glands, let us say,

Starting point is 12:32:12 in the knee pan or the arm joint, dropsical tumours here and there, and we base our diagnosis on them. They always have a reason, though not always a very pretty one. Under such circumstances, there is more than a suspicion of tubercular congestion of the lymphatic vessels.

Starting point is 12:32:30 Hans Castor up was silent a little space. Yes, he said then, in a low voice. It is true I might very well have been a doctor. The flow of the breast milk, the lymph of the legs. All that interests me very, very much. What is the body? He erapsotically burst forth. What is the flesh? What is the physical being of man? What is he made of? Tell us this afternoon, Herr Hofford. Tell us exactly, and once and for all, so that we may know. Of water, answered Berence. Say you're interested in organic chemistry too. The human body consists much the larger part of it, of water.

Starting point is 12:33:10 No more and no less than water, and nothing to get wrought up about. The solid parts are only 25% of the whole, and of that 20 are ordinary white of egg, protein, if you want to use a handsomer word. Besides that, a little fat and a little salt, that's about all. But the white of egg, what is that? various primary substances, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, oxygen, sulphur, sometimes phosphorus. Your scientific curiosity is running away with itself. Some albumans are in composition with carbohydrates.

Starting point is 12:33:44 That is to say, grape sugar and starch. In old age, the flesh becomes tough. That is because the collagen increases in the connective tissue. The lime, you know, the most important constituent of the bones and cartilage. What else shall I tell you? In the muscle plasma, we have an album called fibrin. When death occurs, it coagulates in the muscular tissue and causes the rigormortis. Right, oh, I see, the rigormortis, Hans Castorub said, blithely.

Starting point is 12:34:14 Very good, very good. And then comes the general analysis, the anatomy of the grave. Yes, of course, but how well you put it? Yes, the movement becomes general. You flow away, so to speak. Remember all that water? The remaining constituents are very unstable. Without life, they are resolved by putrefaction into simpler combinations, an organic.

Starting point is 12:34:38 Dissolution, putrefaction, said Hans Castor. Yeah, the same thing as combustion. Combination with oxygen. Am I right? To a T. Oxidization. And life? Oxidization, too.

Starting point is 12:34:53 The same. Yes, young man, life too is primarily oxidization. of the cellular albumin, which gives us that beautiful animal warmth, of which sometimes we have more than we need. TAT. Living consists in dying. No use, mincing the matter.

Starting point is 12:35:09 Un destruction organic, as some Frenchman with his native levity has called it. Smells like that, too. If we don't think so, our judgment is corrupted. And if one is interested in life, one must be particularly interested in death, mustn't one?

Starting point is 12:35:26 Oh well, after all, there is some sort of difference, life is life, which keeps the form through change of substance. Why should the form remain? said Hans Gaston. Why? Young man, what you are saying now sounds far from humanistic. Form is folderol. Well, you are certainly in great form today. You're regularly kicking over the traces. But I must drop out now, said the Hoffrat.

Starting point is 12:35:53 I am beginning to feel melancholy. And he laid his huge hand over his eyes. I can feel it coming on. You see, I've drunk coffee with you, and it tasted good to me, and all of a sudden it comes over me that I'm going to be melancholy. You gentlemen must excuse me. It was an extra occasion. I enjoyed it, no end.

Starting point is 12:36:13 The cousins had sprung up. They reproached themselves for having taxed the Hofrat's patient so long. He made proper protest. Hans Castro hastened to carry Froucheus's portrait into the next room and hang it once more on the wall. They did not need to re-traverse the garden to arrive at the house. their own quarters. Berens directed them to the building and accompanied them to the dividing glass door. In the mood that had come over him so unexpectedly, his goggling eyes blinked, and the bone of his neck stuck out, both more than ever. His upper lip, with that clipped, one-sided moustache, had taken

Starting point is 12:36:45 on a querulous expression. As they went along the corridor, Hans Castop said to his cousin, "'Confess that it was a good idea of mine.' "'It was a change, at least,' responded Eur Kim. and you certainly took occasion to air your views on a good many subjects. It was a bit complicated for me. It is high time now that we went into the rescue. We shall have at least 20 minutes before tea. You probably think it is fold-dural to pay so much attention to it

Starting point is 12:37:13 now that you've taken to kicking over the traces. But you don't need it so much as I do, after all. End of Section 37. Section 38 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is is in the public domain. Section 38. Chapter 5. Research.

Starting point is 12:37:42 Part 1. And now came on, as come it must, what Hans Kastorp had never thought to experience. The winter of the place. The winter of these high altitudes. Joachim knew it already. It had been in full blast when he arrived the year before. But Hans Kastorp rather dreaded it,

Starting point is 12:38:03 however well he felt himself equipped. Yoakim sought to reassure him. You must not imagine it grimmer than it is, he said. Not really Arctic. You will feel the cold less on account of the dryness of the air and the absence of wind. It's the thing about the change of temperature above the fog line. They've found out lately that it gets warmer in the upper reaches,

Starting point is 12:38:26 something they did not know before. I should say it is actually colder when it rains. But you have your sleeping bag. and they turn on the heat when they absolutely must. And, in fact, there could be no talk of violence or surprises. The winter came Marlion, at first no different from many a day they had seen in the height of summer. The wind had been two days in the south. The sun bore down.

Starting point is 12:38:52 The valley seemed shrunken. The side walls at his mouth looked near and bald. Clouds came up behind Pizmichel and Tinsenhorn and drove north-eastwards. It rained heavily. Then the rain turned foul, a whitish grey mingled with snowflakes. Soon it was all snow, the valley full of flurry. It kept on and on, the temperature fell appreciably, so that the fallen snow could not quite melt, but lay covering the valley with a wet and threadbare white garment, against which showed black the pines on the slopes. In the dining room the radiators were lukewarm.

Starting point is 12:39:30 That was at the beginning of November, all cells, and there was no novel to. about it. In August it had been even so. They had long left off regarding snow as a prerogative of winter. White traces lingered after every storm in the crannies of the rocky Raticon, the chain that seemed to guard the end of the valley, and the distant monarchs to the south were always in snow. But the storm and the fall in the temperature both continued. A pale grey sky hung low over the valley. It seemed to dissolve in flakes and fall soundlessly and ceaselessly. till one almost felt uneasy. It turned colder by the hour.

Starting point is 12:40:10 A morning came when the thermometer in Hans Kastop's room registered 44 degrees. The next morning it was only 40 degrees. That was cold. It kept within bounds, but it persisted. It had frozen at night. Now it froze in the daytime, as well, and all day long. And it snowed with brief intervals

Starting point is 12:40:29 through the fourth, the fifth, and the seventh days. The snow mounted a pace, it became a nuisance. Paths had been shoveled as far as the bench by the watercourse, and on the drive down to the valley, but these were so narrow that you could only walk single file. And if you met anyone, you must step off the pavement and at once sink knee-deep in snow. A stone-roller, drawn by a horse with a man at his halter,

Starting point is 12:40:55 rolled all day long up and down the streets of the cure, while a yellow diligence on runners, looking like an old-fashioned Frankish post-coach, plied between village and cure, with a snowplough attached in front, shoveling the white masses aside. This world, this narrow, lofty, isolated world up here, look now well-wadded and upholstered indeed. No pillar or post but wore its white cap. The steps up to the entrance of the Berkov had turned into an inclined plane. Heavy cushions in the drollar shapes weighed down the branches of the Scotch firs. Now and then one slid off and raised up a cloud of.

Starting point is 12:41:32 powdery white dust in its fall. Round about, the heights lay smothered in snow. Their lower regions rugged with the evergreen growth. Their upper parts, beyond the timber line, softly covered up to their many-shaped summits. The air was dark, the sun but a pallid apparition behind a veil. Yet a mild reflected brightness came from the snow, a milky gleam whose light became both landscape and human beings, even though these latter did show red noses under their white or gaily-colored wool and caps. In the dining room, the onset of winter, the season of the region, was the subject to conversation at all seven tables. Many tourists and sportsmen were said to have arrived and taken up residence at the hotels in the Dorf and the plats. The height of the piled up snow was estimated

Starting point is 12:42:20 at two feet. Its consistency was said to be ideal for skiing. The bob run, which led down from the north-western slope of the Shatsalp, into the valley, was zealously worked on. It would be possible to open it in the next few days, unless a thaw put out all calculations. Everyone looked forward eagerly to the activities of these sound people down below, to the sports and races which it was forbidden to attend, but which numbers of the patients resolved to see by cutting the rescuer and slipping out of the burkof. Hans Kastop heard of a new sport that had come from Scandinavia, ski-yering. It consisted in races in which the participants were drawn by horses while standing on their skis

Starting point is 12:43:01 It was to see this that so many of the patients had resolved to slip out. There was talk, too, of Christmas. Christmas? Hans Castorpe had never once thought of it. To be sure he had blithely said and written that he must spend the winter up here with Yokim, because of what the doctors had discovered to be the state of his health. But now he was startled to realise that Christmas would be included in the programme. Perhaps because, and yet not entirely because,

Starting point is 12:43:27 he had never spent the Christmas season anywhere but in the bosom of the programme. the family. Well, if he must, he must. He would have to put up with it. He was no longer a child. Eukim seemed not to mind, or else to have adjusted himself uncomplainingly to the prospect. And, after all, he said to himself, think of all the places and all the conditions in which Christmas has been celebrated before now. Yet it did seem to him rather premature to begin thinking about Christmas, even before the Advent season, six weeks at least before the holiday. such an interval was easily overleaped by the guests in the dining hall. It was a mental process in which Hans Castorpe had already some facility, though he had not yet learned to practice it in

Starting point is 12:44:11 the grand style as the older inhabitants did. Christmas, like other holidays in the course of the year, served them for a fulcrum, or a vaulting pole, with which to leap over empty intervening spaces. They all had fever, their metabolism was accelerated, their bodily process accentuated, keyed up. All this perhaps accounted for the wholesale way they could put time behind them. It would not have greatly surprised him to hear them discount the Christmas holiday as well, and go on at once to speak of the New Year and Carnival. But no, so capricious and unstable as this they were not in the Berkoff dining room. Christmas gave them pause. It gave them even matters for concern and brain-wracking.

Starting point is 12:44:54 It was customary to present Hoffrat Berens with a gift on Christmas Eve, for which a collection was taken up among the guests. And this gift was the subject of much deliberation. A meeting was called. Last year, so the old inhabitants said, they had given him a travelling trunk. This year a new operating table had been considered, an easel, a fur coat, a rocking chair,

Starting point is 12:45:18 an inlaid ivory stethoscope. Setimbrini, asked for suggestions, proposed that they give the Hofrat a newly projected encyclopedic work called the sociology of suffering, but he found only one person to agree with him, a book dealer who sat at Herminickels' table. In short, no decision had been reached. There was difficulty about coming to an agreement with the Russian guests. The divergence of views arose. The Muscovites declared their preference for making an independent gift. Frou Stor went about for days quite outraged on

Starting point is 12:45:51 account of a loan of ten francs which she inadvisedly laid out for Frau Iltis at the meeting, and which the latter had forgotten to return. She forgot it. The shades of meaning, Frau Stor, contrived to convey in this word, were many and varied, but one and all expressive of an entire disbelief in Frau Iltis's lack of memory, which it appeared had been proof against the hints and prodding's, Frau Stor freely admitted, having administered. Several times she declared she would resign herself,

Starting point is 12:46:21 make Frau Iltis a present of the sum. I'll pay for both of us. She said. Then my skirts will be cleared. But in the end she hit upon another plan and communicated it to her table-mates, to their great delight. She had the management refund her the ten francs, and inserted in Frau Iltas's weekly bill.

Starting point is 12:46:42 Thus was the reluctant debtor outwitted, and at least this phase of the matter settled. It had stopped snowing. The sky began to clear. The blue-gray cloud masses parted to admit glimpses of the sun, whose rays gave a bluish cast to the scene. Then it grew altogether fair, a bright hard frost and settled winter splendour

Starting point is 12:47:04 reigned in the middle of November. The arch of the Lodgia framed a glorious panorama of snow-powded forest, softly filled passes and ravines, white sun-lit valleys and radiant blue heavens above all. In the evening, when the almost full moon appeared, the world lay an enchanted splendour, marvellous, Crystal and diamond it glittered far and white.

Starting point is 12:47:27 The forest stood up very black and white. The quarter of the heavens where the moon was not showed deeply dark, embroidered with stars. On the flashing surface of the snow, shadows so strong, so sharp and clearly outlined that they seemed almost more real than the objects themselves, fell from houses, trees and telegraph poles. An hour or so after sunset there would be some 14 degrees of frost.

Starting point is 12:47:52 The world seemed spellbound in icy, purity. Its earthly blemishes veiled. It lay fixed in a death-like, enchanted trance. Hans Kastorp stopped until far into the night in his balcony above the insawcilled winter scene, much longer than Joachim, who retired at ten or a little later. His excellent chair with the sectional mattress and the necro, he pulled close to the snow-cushioned balustrade. At his hand was the white table with the burning nightlight, a stack of books, and a glass of creamy milk, the evening milk which was brought to each of the guest's rooms at nine o'clock. Hans Castor put a dash of cognac in his to make it more palatable.

Starting point is 12:48:34 Already he had availed himself of all his means of protection against the cold, the entire outfit, lay ensconced well up to his chest in the buttoned-up sleeping-sack he had acquired in one of the well-furnished shops in the plats, with the two camel-hair rugs folded over in accordance with the ritual. He wore his winter suit, with a short fur jacket, atop, a woolen cap, felt boots, and heavily lined gloves, which, however, could not prevent the stiffening of his fingers. What held him so late, often until midnight and beyond, long after the bad Russian pair had left their lodge, was partly the magic of the winter night, into which, until eleven, were woven the mounting strains of music from near and far. But even more it was

Starting point is 12:49:17 the inertia and excitement, both of these at once and in combination, bodily inertia, the physical fatigue, which hated any idea of moving, and mental excitement, the busy preoccupation of his thoughts with certain new and fascinating studies upon which the young man had embarked and which left his brain no rest. The weather affected him. His organism was stimulated by the cold. He ate enormously, attacking the mighty Berkhov meals, where the roast goose followed upon the roast beef, with the usual Burkhov appetite, which was always even larger in winter than in summer. At the same time, he had a perpetual craving for sleep. In the daytime, as well as on the moonlit evenings, he would drop off over his books, and then, after a few minutes unconsciousness,

Starting point is 12:50:03 betake himself again to research. Talk fatigued him. He was far more inclined than had been his habit to rapid, unrestrained, even reckless speech. But if he talked with Joachim, as they went on their snowy walks, he was liable to be overtaken by giddiness and trembling, would feel dazed and tipsy, and the blood would mount to his head. His curve had gone up since the oncoming of winter, and Hofrat Berens had let fall something about injections. These were usually given in cases of obstinate high temperature, and Joachim and at least two-thirds of the guests had them, but he himself felt sure that the increase in his bodily heat had to do with the mental activity and excitation which kept him in his chair on the balcony until deep into the glittering, frosty night.

Starting point is 12:50:48 The reading which held him so late suggested such an explanation to his mind. No little reading was done in the rest halls and private lodgers of the International Sanatorium Berkoff. Largely, however, by the newcomers and short-timers, for the patients of many months or years standing, had long learned to kill time without mental effort or means of distraction by dint of a certain inner virtuosity they came to possess. They even considered it beginner's awkwardness to glue yourself to a book. It was enough to have one lying in your lap or on your little table, in case of need. The collection of the establishment was an amplification of the literature found in the dentist's waiting room in many languages, profusely illustrated and offered free of charge. The guests exchanged

Starting point is 12:51:35 volumes from the lone library down in the plats. Now and again there would be a book for which everybody scrambled, even the condescending old inhabitants reaching out their hands with ill-concealed eagerness. At the moment it was a cheap paperbacked volume introduced by Herr Albin and entitled The Art of Seduction. A very literal translation from the French, preserving even the syntax of that language, and thus gaining in elegance and pungency of presentation. In matter, it was an exposition of the philosophy of sensual passion, developed in a spirit of debonair and man-of-the-worldly paganism.

Starting point is 12:52:13 Frou Stor had read it early, and pronounced it simply ravishing. Frau Magnus, the same who had lost her albumin tolerance, agreed, unreservedly. Her husband, the brewer, purported to have profited personally by a perusal, but regretted that his wife should have taken up that sort of thing, because such readings spoiled the woman, and gave them immodest ideas. His remarks not a little increased the circulation of the volume. Two ladies of the lower rest hall, frau reddish, a wife of a Polish industrial magnate, and Frau Hesselfield, a widow from Berlin, both of these new arrivals since October, claimed the book at the same time, and a regrettable incident arose after dinner. Yes, more than

Starting point is 12:52:55 regrettable, for there was a violent scene, overheard by Hans Castrop, in his lodger above. It ended in spasms of hysteria on the part of one of the women. It might have been Frow Reddish, but equally well it might have been Frow Heselfield, and she was born away beside herself to her own room. The youth of the place had got hold of the treaties before those of riper years, studying it in part in groups after supper in their various rooms. Hans Castop himself saw the youth with the fingernail handed to Franchon Oberdank in the dining room. She was a new arrival and a light case,

Starting point is 12:53:29 a flexen-haired young thing whose mother had just brought her to the sanatorium. There may have been exceptions, there may have been those who employed the hours of the rescue with some serious intellectual occupation, some conceivably profitable study, either by way of keeping in touch with life in the lowlands, or in order to give weight and depth to the passing hour, that it might not be pure time and nothing else besides.

Starting point is 12:53:53 Perhaps here and there was one, not of course to mention hair-setimbrini with his zeal for eliminating human suffering, or yoke him with his Russian primer. Yes, there might be one, or two thus occupied, if not among the guests in the dining-room, which seemed not very likely, then among the bed-ridden and moribund. Hence Castor being inclined to believe it. He himself, after imbibing all that ocean's steamship,

Starting point is 12:54:16 had to offer him, had ordered certain books from home, some of them bearing on his profession, and they had arrived with his winter clothing, scientific engineering, technique of shipbuilding and the like. But these volumes lay now neglected, in favour of other textbooks, belonging to quite a different field, an interest in which had seized upon the young man. Anatomy, physiology, biology, works in German, French and English, sent up to the Berkov by the book dealer in the village. obviously because Hans Castorpe had ordered them, as was indeed the case. He had done so of his own motion without telling anyone. On a solitary walk he took down to the plaits, while Joachim was occupied with the weekly weighing or injection.

Starting point is 12:55:00 His cousin was surprised when he saw the books in Hans Castob's hands. They were expensive, as scientific works always are. The prices were marked on the wrappers and inside the front covers. Yercombe asked why, if his cousin wanted to read such books, he had not borrowed them from the Hoffrat, who sure. possessed a well-chosen stock. The young man answered that it was quite a different thing to read when the book was one's own. For his part he loved to mark them and underlined passages in pencil. Yo-Kim could hear hours on end the noise made by the paper-knife, going through the uncut leaves.

Starting point is 12:55:34 The volumes were heavy, unhandy. Hans Castor propped them against his chest or stomach as he lay. They were heavy, but he did not mind. Lying there, his mouth half open, he let his eye glide down the learned page, upon which fell the light of his red-shaded lamp, though he might have read, if need were, by the brilliance of the moonlight alone. He read, following the lines down the page with his head, until at the bottom his chin lay sunk upon his chest, and in this position the reader would pause, perhaps, for reflection, dozing a little or musing in half-slumber, before lifting his eyes to the next page. He probed profoundly, while the moon took its appointed way above the crystalline splendors of the mountain valley, he read of organized matter, of the

Starting point is 12:56:19 properties of protoplasm, that sensitive substance maintaining itself in extraordinary fluctuation between building up and breaking down, of form developing out of rudimentary, but always present primordia, read with compelling interest of life and its sacred, impure mysteries. End of Section 38. Section 39 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 39 Chapter 5

Starting point is 12:56:59 Research Part 2 What was life? No one knew. It was undoubtedly aware of itself, so soon as it was life, but it did not know what it was. Consciousness, as exhibited by susceptibility to stimulus,

Starting point is 12:57:17 was undoubtedly, to a certain degree, present in the lowest, most undeveloped stages of life. It was impossible to fix the first appearance of conscious processes at any point in the history of the individual of the race, impossible to make consciousness contingent upon, say, the presence of a nervous system. The lowest animal forms had no nervous systems, still less a cerebrum, yet no one would venture to deny them the capacity for responding to stimuli. One could suspend life, not merely particularly,

Starting point is 12:57:49 sense organs, not only nervous reactions, but life itself. One could temporarily suspend the irritability to sensation of every form of living matter in the plant, as well as in the animal kingdom. One could narcotise over and spermatozoa with chloroform, chloral hydrate or morphine. Consciousness then was simply a function of matter organized into life, a function that in higher manifestations turned upon its avatar and became an effort to explore and explain the phenomenon it displayed. A hopeful, hopeless, project of life to achieve self-knowledge, nature in recall. And vainly, in the event, since she cannot be resolved in knowledge, nor life, when all is said, listen to itself.

Starting point is 12:58:36 What was life? No one knew. No one knew the actual point whence it sprang, whence it kindled itself. Nothing in the domain of life seemed uncausated, or insufficiently causated from that point on. But life itself seemed without antecedent. If there was anything that might be said about it, it was this. It must be so highly developed structurally

Starting point is 12:58:57 that nothing, even distantly related to it, was present in the inorganic world. Between the protein amoeba and the vertebrate, the difference was slight, unessential, as compared to that between the simplest living organism and that nature which did not even deserve to be called dead because it was inorganic. for death was only the logical negation of life.

Starting point is 12:59:20 But between life and inanimate nature yawned a gulf, which research strove in vain to bridge. They tried to close it with hypotheses, which had swallowed down without becoming any the less deep or broad. Seeking for a connecting link, they had condescended to the preposterous assumption of structuralist living matter, unorganized organisms, which darted together of themselves

Starting point is 12:59:43 in the album and solution, like crystals in the mother liquor. Yet organic differentiation still remained at one's condition and expression of all life. One could point to no form of life that did not owe its existence to procreation by parents. They had fished the primeval slime out of the depth of the sea, and great had been the jubilation, but the end of it all had been shame and confusion, for it turned out that they had mistaken a precipitate of sulphate of lime,

Starting point is 13:00:13 for protoplasm, but then, to avoid giving pause before a miracle, for life that built itself up out of and fell in decay into the same sort of matter as inorganic nature would have been, happening of itself, miraculous. They were driven to believe in a spontaneous generation, that is, in the emergence of the organic from the inorganic, which was just as much of a miracle. Thus they went on, devising intermediate stages and transitions, Assuming the existence of organisms which stood lower down than any yet known,

Starting point is 13:00:48 but themselves had as forerunners still more primitive efforts of nature to achieve life, primitive forms of which no one would ever catch sight, for they were all of less than microscopic size, and previously to whose hypothetical existence the synthesis of protein compounds must already have taken place. What then was life? It was warmth, the warmth generated by a form-preserving instability, a fever of matter, which accompanied the process of ceaseless decay and repair of albumin molecules that were too impossibly complicated, too impossibly ingenious in structure. It was the existence of the actually impossible to exist, of a half-sweet, half-painful balancing,

Starting point is 13:01:30 or scarcely balancing in this restricted and feverish process of decay and renewal upon the point of existence. It was not matter, and it was not spirit, but something between. the two, a phenomenon conveyed by matter, like the rainbow on a waterfall, and like the flame. Yet why not material? It was sentient to the point of desire and disgust. The shamelessness of matter becomes sensible of itself, the incontinent form of being. It was a secret and ardent stirring in the frozen chastity of the universal. It was a stolen and voluptuous impurity of sucking and secreting, an exhalation of carbonic acid gas, and material impurities of mysterious origin and composition. It was a pululation, an unfolding, a form building, made possible by the overbalance

Starting point is 13:02:22 of its instability, yet controlled by the laws of growth inherent within it, of something brewed out of water, albumin, salt and fats, which was called flesh, in which became form, beauty, a lofty image, and yet all the time the essence of sensuality and desire. For this form and beauty were not spirit-born, nor like the form and beauty of sculpture conveyed by a neutral and spirit-consumed substance, which could, in all purity, make beauty perceptible to the senses. Rather, it was conveyed and shaped by the somehow awakened voluptuousness of matter, of the organic, dying, living substance itself, the reeking, flesh. As he lay there above the glittering valley, lapped in the bodily warmth, preserved to him

Starting point is 13:03:12 by fir and wool, in the frosty night illumined by the brilliance from a lifeless star, the image of life displayed itself to young Hans Castor. It hovered before him, somewhere in space, remote from his grasp, yet near his sense. This body, this opaquely whitish form, giving out exhalations, moist, clammy, the skin with all its blemish, and native impurities, with its spots, pimples, discolourations, irregularities, its horny, scale-like regions, covered over by soft streams and walls of rudimentary lanugo. It learned there, set off against the cold lifelessness of the inanimate world, in its own vaporous sphere, relaxed, the head crowned with something cool, horny and

Starting point is 13:04:01 pigmented, which was an outgrowth of its skin. The hands clasped the back of the neck, It looked down at him beneath drooping lids, out of eyes made to appear slanting, by a racial variation in the lid formation. Its lips were half open, even a little curled. It rested its weight on one leg. The hip bone stood out sharply under the flesh, while the other, relaxed, nestled its slightly bent knee against the inside of the supporting leg, and poised the foot only upon the toes. It leaned thus, turning to smile, the gleaming elbows akimbo. in the paired symmetry of its limbs and trunk,

Starting point is 13:04:39 the acrid, steaming shadows of the armpits corresponded in a mystic triangle to the pubic darkness, just as the eyes did to the red epithelial mouth-opening, and the red blossoms of the breast to the navel lying perpendicularly below. Under the impulsion of a central organ and of the motor nerves, originating in the spinal marrow, chest and abdomen, functioned. The peritoneal cavity expanded and contracted. The breath, warmed and moistened by the mucus membrane of the respiratory canal, saturated with secretions, streamed out between the lips,

Starting point is 13:05:17 after it adjoined its oxygen to the hemoglobin of the blood in the air cells of the lungs. For Hans Castorpe understood that this living body, in the mysterious symmetry of its blood-nourished structure, penetrated throughout by nerves, veins, arteries and capillaries, with its inner framework of bones, marrow-filled, tubular bones, blade bones, vertebrae, which, with the addition of lime, are developed out of the original gelatinous tissue and grown strong enough to support the body weight, with the capsules and well-oiled cavities,

Starting point is 13:05:52 ligaments and cartilages of its joints. It's more than 200 muscles, its central organs that served for nutrition and respiration, for registering and transmitting stimuli, its protective membranes, serious cavities, its glands, rich in secretions, with the system of vessels and fissures of its highly complicated interior surface,

Starting point is 13:06:14 communicating through the body openings with the outer world. He understood that this ego was a living unit of a very high order, remote indeed from those very simple forms of life which breathed, took in nourishment, even thought with the entire surface of their body. He knew it was built up out of the myriads of such small organisms, which had had their origin in a single one, which had multiplied by recurrent division, adapted themselves to the most varied uses and functions, separated, differentiated themselves, thrown out forms which were the condition and result of their growth. This body then, which hovered before him, this individual living eye, was a monstrous multiplicity of breathing and self-nourishing individuals. which, through organic confirmation and adaptation to special ends,

Starting point is 13:07:06 had parted to such an extent with their essential individuality, their freedom and living immediacy, had so much become anatomic elements that the functions of some had become limited to sensibility toward light, sound, contact, warmth. Others only understood how to change their shape or produced digestive secretions through contraction. Others again were developed and functional

Starting point is 13:07:30 to no other end than protection, support the conveyance of the body juices or reproduction. There were modifications of this organic plurality united to form the higher ego. Cases where the multitude of subordinate entities were only grouped in a loose and doubtful way to form a higher living unit. The student buried himself in the phenomenon of cell colonies.

Starting point is 13:07:54 He read about half organisms, algae, whose single cells enveloped in a mantle of gelatine oftenly apart from one another, yet were multiple cell formations, which, if they had been asked, would not have known whether to be rated as a settlement of single-celled individuals, or as an individual single unit, an imbearing witness would have vacillated quaintly between the eye and the we. Nature here presented a middle stage between the highly social union of countless elementary individuals to form the tissues and organs of a superior eye, and the free individual existence of these simpler forms. The multiple-celled organism was only a stage in the cyclic process, which was the course of life itself, a periodic revolution from procreation to procreation.

Starting point is 13:08:42 The act of fructification, the sexual merging of two-cell bodies, stood at the beginning of the upbuilding of every multiple-celled individual, as it did at the beginning of every row of generations of single elementary forms, and led back to itself. For this act carried through, many species, which had no need of it to multiply by means of proliferation, until a moment came when the non-sexual produced offspring found themselves once more constrained to a renewal of the copulative

Starting point is 13:09:12 function, and the circle came full. Such was the multiple state of life, sprung from the union of two parent cells, the association of many non-sexually originated generations of cell units. Its growth meant their increase, and the generative circle came full again, when the sex cells, specially developed elements for the purpose of reproduction, had established themselves and found the way to a new mingling that drove life on afresh. Our young adventurer, supporting a volume of embryology in the pit of his stomach, followed the development of the organism. from the moment when the spermatozoan, first among a host of its fellows, forced itself forward by a lashing motion of its hind apart, struck with its forepart against the gelatin mantle of the egg, and bored its way into the mount to conception which the protoplasm of the outside of the oven arched against its approach. There was no conceivable trick or absurdity which would not have pleased nature to commit by way of variation upon this fixed procedure. In some animals the male was a parasite in the intestine of the female. In others the male parent reached with his arm down the gullet of the female to deposit the semen within her.

Starting point is 13:10:31 After which, bitten off and spat out, it ran away by itself upon its fingers to the confusion of scientists, who for long had given it Greek and Latin names as an independent form of life. Hans Kastorp lent an air to the learned strife between ovists and animaculists, the first of whom asserted that the egg was in itself the complete little frog, dog or human being, the male elements being only the incitement to its growth, while the second saw in a spermatozoan, possessing head, arms and legs, the perfected form of life shattered forth to which the egg performed only the office of nourisher in life's feast. In the end they agreed to concede equal meritoriousness to ovum and semen,

Starting point is 13:11:16 both of which, after all, sprang from originally indistinguishable procreative cells. He saw the single-celled organism of the fructified egg on the point of being transformed into a multiple-celled organism by striation and division, saw the cell bodies attach themselves to the lamellae of the mucus membrane, saw the germinal vesicle, the blastula, close itself in to form a cup or basin-shaped cavity and begin the functions of receiving and digesting food.

Starting point is 13:11:45 There was the gastrilla, the protozoan, primeval form of all animal life, primeval form of flesh-born beauty. Its two epithelia, the outer and the inner, the ectoderm and the entoderm, proved to be primitive organs, out of whose foldings in and out were developed the glands, the tissues, the sensory organs, the body processes. The strip of the outer germinal layer, the ectoderm, thickened, folded into a groove, closed itself into a nerve canal, became a spinal column, became a brain. And as the fetal slime condensed into fibrous connective tissue, into cartilage,

Starting point is 13:12:26 the colloidal cells beginning to show gelatinous substance instead of mucin, he saw in certain places the connective tissue take lime and fat to itself out of the cera that washed it and begin to form bone. Embryonic man squatted in a stooping posture, tails, indistinguishable from embryonic pig, with enormous abdomen and stumpy formless extremities. The facial mask bowed over the swollen paunch. The story of his growth seemed a grim, unflattering science like the cursory record of a zoological family tree. For a while he had gill pockets, like a roach.

Starting point is 13:13:05 It seemed permissible or rather unavoidable, contemplating the various stages of development through which he passed, to infer the very little humanistic aspect presented to primitive man in his mature state. His skin was furnished with twitching muscles, keep of insects. It was thickly covered with hair. There was a tremendous development of the mucus membrane of the olfactory organs. His ears protruded, were movable, took a lively part in the play of the features, and were much better adapted than ours for catching sounds. His eyes were protected by a third, titing lid. They were placed sideways, accepting the third of which the pineal gland was the rudimentary trace, and which was able, looking upwards, to guard him from the dangers from the

Starting point is 13:13:52 upper air. Primitive man had a very long intestine, many molars, and sound pouches on the larynx, the better to roar with. Also, he carried his sex glands on the inside of the intestinal cavity. End of Section 39. Section 40 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 40 Chapter 5 Research Part 3

Starting point is 13:14:27 Anatomy presented our investigator with charts of human limbs skinned and prepared for his inspection. He saw their superficial and their buried muscles, sinews and tendons, those of the thighs, the foot, and especially of the arm,

Starting point is 13:14:46 the upper and the forearm. He learned the Latin names with which medicine, that subdivision of the humanities, had gallantly equipped them. He passed on to the skeleton, the development of which presented new points of view. Among them a clear perception of the essential unity of all that pertains to man, the correlation of all branches of learning. For here, strangely enough, he found himself reminded of his own field, or shall we say his former field, the scientific calling,

Starting point is 13:15:19 which he had announced himself as having embraced, introducing himself thus to Dr. Krakowski and Hare Setimbrini on his arrival up here. In order to learn something, it had not much mattered what, he had learned in his technical school about statics, about supports capable of flexion, about loads, about construction as the advantageous utilization of mechanical material. It would, of course, be childish to think that the science of engineering, the rules of mechanics had found application to organic nature,

Starting point is 13:15:52 but just as little might one say they had been derived from organic nature. It was simply that the mechanical laws found themselves repeated and corroborated in nature. The principle of the hollow cylinder was illustrated in the structure of the tubular bones, in such a way that the static demands were satisfied with the precise minimum of solid structure. Hans Castorpe had learned that a body, which is put together out of staves and bands of mechanically utilisable matter, conformably to the demands made by draft and pressure upon it, can withstand the same weight as a solid column of the same material. Thus, in the development of the tubular bones, it was comprehensible that,

Starting point is 13:16:37 step for step with the formation of the solid exterior, the inner parts, which were mechanically superfluous, changed to a fatty tissue, the marrow. The thigh bone was a crane in the construction of which organic nature, by the direction she had given the shaft, carried out to a hair the same draft and pressure curves, which Hans Castob had had to plot in drawing an instrument serving a similar purpose. He contemplated this fact with pleasure. He enjoyed the reflection that his relation to the femur, or to organic nature generally, was now threefold. It was lyrical, it was medical, it was technological, it was technological, and all of these he felt were one in being human.

Starting point is 13:17:19 They were variations of one and the same pressing human concern. They were schools of humanistic thought. But with all this, the achievements of the protoplasm remained unaccountable. It seemed forbidden to life that it should understand itself. Most of the biochemical processes were not only unknown. It lay in their very nature that they should escape attention. Almost nothing was known of the structure or composition of the living, unit called the cell. What use was there in establishing the components of lifeless muscle when the

Starting point is 13:17:51 living did not let itself be chemically examined? The changes that took place when the rigormortis set in were enough to make worthless all investigation. Nobody understood metabolism. Nobody understood the true inwardness of the functioning of the nervous system. To what properties did the taste corpuscles owe their reaction? In what consisted the various kinds of excitation of certain sensory nerves by odour-possessing substances. In what, indeed, the property of smell itself? The specific odours of man and beast consisted in the vaporization of certain unknown substances. The composition of the secretion called sweat was little understood. The glands that secreted it produced aromata, which among mammals undoubtedly played an important

Starting point is 13:18:37 role, but whose significance for the human species we were not in a position to explain. The physiological significance of certain important regions of the body was shrouded in darkness. No need to mention the vermiform appendix, which was a mystery. In rabbits it was regularly found full of a pulpy substance, of which there is nothing to say as to how it got in or renewed itself. But what about the white and grey substance which composed the medulla? What of the optic thalamus and the grey inly of the ponds varroli? The substance composing the brain and marrow

Starting point is 13:19:12 was so subject to disintegration there was no hope whatever of determining its structure. What was it relieved the cortex of activity during slumber? What prevented the stomach from digesting itself, as sometimes in fact did happen after death? One might answer, life, a special power of resistance of the living protoplasm. But this would be not to recognise the mystical character

Starting point is 13:19:38 of such an explanation. The theory of such an everyday phenomenon as fever was full of contradictions. Heightened oxidisation resulted in increased warmth. But why was there not an increased expenditure of warmth to correspond? Did the paralysis of the sweat secretions depend upon contraction of the skin? But such contraction took place only in the case of chills and fever. For otherwise in fever, the skin was more likely to be hot. prickly heat indicated the central nervous system as the seat of the causes of heightened catabolism,

Starting point is 13:20:14 as well as the source of that condition of the skin which we are content to call abnormal because we did not know how to define it. But what of all this ignorance compared with our utter helplessness in the presence of such phenomenon as memory, or of that other more prolonged and astounding memory, which we call the inheritance of acquired characteristics? out of the question to get even a glimpse of any mechanical possibility of explication of such performances on the part of the cell substance. The spermatozoan that conveyed to the egg countless complicated individual and racial characteristics of the father was visible only through a microscope.

Starting point is 13:20:54 Even the most powerful magnification was not enough to show it as other than homogenous body or to determine its origin. It looked the same in one animal as in another. These factors forced one to the assumption that the cell was in the same case as with the higher form it went to build up, that it too was already a higher form, composed in its turn by the division of living bodies, individual living units. Thus one passed from the supposed smallest unit to a still smaller one. One was driven to separate the elementary into its elements. No doubt at all, but just as the animal kingdom was composed of various species of animals, as the human animal organism was composed of a whole animal kingdom of cell species,

Starting point is 13:21:38 so the cell organism was composed of a new and varied animal kingdom of elementary units, far below microscopic size, which grew spontaneously, increased spontaneously, according to the law that each could bring forth only after its kind, and, acting on the principle of a division of labour, served together the next higher order of existence. Those were the genes, the living germs, bioblasts, biophores. Lying there in the frosty night, hands cast up rejoice to make acquaintance with them by name. Yet how, he asked himself excitedly, even after more light on the subject was forthcoming,

Starting point is 13:22:19 how could their elementary nature be established? If they were living, they must be organic, since life depended upon organisation. But if they were organised, then they could not be elementary. because an organism is not single but multiple. They were units within the organic unit of the cell they built up. But if they were, then, however impossibly small they were, they must themselves be built up, organically built up, as a law of their existence. For the conception of a living unit meant by definition that it was built up out of smaller units, which were subordinate, that is, organized with reference to a higher form. As long as division, yielded organic units possessing the properties of life, assimilation and reproduction, no limits were set to it. As long as one spoke of living units, one could not correctly speak of elementary units, for the conception of unity carried with it in perpetuity the concept of subordinated, upbuilding unity. And there was no such thing as elementary life, in the sense

Starting point is 13:23:23 of something that was already life, and yet elementary. And still, though without logical existence, something of the kind must be eventually the case, for it was not possible to brush aside like that the idea of the original procreation, the rise of life out of what was not life. That gap which in exterior nature we vainly sought to close, that between living and dead matter, had its counterpart in nature's organic existence, and must somehow either be closed up or bridged over. Soon or late, division must yield units, which, even though in composition, were not organized, and which mediated between life and absence of life. Molecular groups, which represented the transition between vitalized organization and mere chemistry.

Starting point is 13:24:11 But then, arrived at the molecule one stood on the brink of another abyss, which yawned yet more mysteriously than that between organic and inorganic nature. The gulf between the material and the immaterial. For the molecule was composed of atoms, and the atom was nowhere near large enough, even to be spoken of as extraordinarily small. It was so small, such a tiny, early transitional mass, a coagulation of the unsubstantial, of the not yet substantial,

Starting point is 13:24:40 and yet substance-like, of energy that it was scarcely possible yet, or, if it had been, was now no longer possible, to think of it as material, but rather as mean and borderline between material and immaterial. The problem of another original procreation arose. far more wild and mysterious than the organic, the primeval birth of matter out of the immaterial. In fact, the abyss between material and immaterial yawned as widely.

Starting point is 13:25:09 Press does importunately, yes, more importantly, to be closed as that between organic and inorganic nature. There must be a chemistry of the immaterial. There must be combinations of the insubstantial, out of which sprang the material. The atoms might represent protozoa of material. by their nature substance, and still not yet quite substance. Yet arrived at the not even small, the measure slipped out of the hands, for not even small meant much the same as enormously large,

Starting point is 13:25:42 and the step to the atom proved to be without exaggeration portentous in the highest degree, for at the very moment when one had assisted at the final division of matter, when one had divided it into the impossibly small, at that moment there suddenly appeared upon the horizon, the astronomical cosmos. The atom was a cosmic system, laden with energy, in which heavenly bodies rioted, rotating about a centre like a sun,

Starting point is 13:26:08 through which ethereal space comets drove with the speed of light years, kept in their eccentric orbits by the power of the central body. And that was as little a mere comparison as it would be were one to call the body of any multiple-celled organism, a cell state.

Starting point is 13:26:24 The city, the state, the social community, regulated according to the principle of division of labour, not only might be compared to organic life, it actually reproduced its conditions. Thus, in the inmost recesses of nature, as in an endless succession of mirrors, was reflected the macrocosm of the heavens, whose clusters, throngs, groups, and figures paled by the brilliant moon, hung over the dazzling frostbound valley above the head of our muffled adept. Was it too bold a thought that among the planets of the atomic solar system, those myriads and milky ways of solar systems which constituted matter, one or other of these inner-worldly, heavenly bodies might find itself in a condition

Starting point is 13:27:07 corresponding to that which made it possible for our earth to become the abode of life. For a young man already rather befuddled inwardly, suffering from abnormal skin conditions, who is not without all and any experience in the realm of the illicit, it was a speculation which, far from being absurd, appeared so obvious, has to leap to the eyes, highly evident and bearing the stamp of logical truth. The smallness of these inner-worldly, heavenly bodies would have been an objection irrelevant to the hypothesis, since the conception of large or small had ceased to be pertinent at the moment when the cosmic character of the smallest particle of matter had been revealed, while at the same time, conceptions

Starting point is 13:27:50 of outside and inside had also been shaken. The atom world was an outside, as very probably The earthly star on which we dwelt was organically regarded deeply inside. Had not a researcher once, audaciously fanciful, referred to the beasts of the Milky Way, cosmic monsters whose flesh, bone and brain were built up out of solar systems. But in that case, Hans Castor up mused, Then in the moment when one thought to have come to the end, it all began over again from the beginning. For then, in the very innermost of his nature,

Starting point is 13:28:24 and in the inmost of that innermost, perhaps there was just himself, just Hans Castle, again and a hundred times Hans Castel, with burning face and stiffening fingers, lying muffled on a balcony, with a view across the moonlit, frost-nighted high valley, and probing with an interest both humanistic and medical into the life of the body. He held a volume of pathological anatomy in the red ray from his table lamp, and conned its text and numerous reproductions. He read of the existence of parasitic cell juncture and of infectious tumours. These were forms of tissue, and very luxuriant forms too,

Starting point is 13:29:06 produced by foreign cell bodies in an organism which had proved receptive to them, and in some way or other, one must probably say perversely, had offered them peculiarly favourable conditions. It was not so much that the parasite took away nourishment from the surrounding tissues, as that in the process of building up and breaking down, which went on in it, as in every other cell, it produced organic combinations which were extraordinarily toxic, undeniably destructive, to the cells where it had been entertained. They had found out how to isolate the toxin from a number of microorganisms and produce it in concentrated form. And it was amazing to see

Starting point is 13:29:45 what small doses of this substance, which simply belonged to a group of protein combinations, could, when introduced into the circulation of an animal, produce symptoms of acute poisoning and rapid degeneration. The outward sign of this inward decay was a growth of tissue. The pathological tumour, which was the reaction of the cells to the stimulus of the foreign baccally. Tubicles developed the size of a millet seed, composed of cells resembling mucous membrane,

Starting point is 13:30:12 among or within which the baccally lodged. Some of these were extraordinarily rich in protoplasm, very large and full of nuclei. However, all this good living soon led to ruin, for the nuclear of these monster cells began to break down, the protoplasm they contained to be destroyed by coagulation and further areas of tissue to be involved. They were attacked by inflammation, the neighbouring blood vessels suffered by contagion, white blood corpuscles were attracted to the seat of the evil.

Starting point is 13:30:41 The breaking down proceeded apace, and meanwhile the soluble toxins, released by the bacteria, had already poisoned the nerve centres. The entire organisation was in a state of high fever and staggered, so to speak, with heaving bosom, towards dissolution. Thus far, pathology, the theory of disease, the accentuation of the physical through pain. Yet insofar as it was the accentuation of the physical, at the same time accentuation through desire.

Starting point is 13:31:12 Disease was a perverse, a dissolute form of life. And life, life itself, Was it perhaps only an infection, a sickening of matter? Was that which one might call the original procreation of matter only a disease, a growth produced by morbid stimulation of the immaterial? The first step toward evil, toward desire and death, was taken precisely then, when there took place that first increase in the density of the spiritual, that pathologically luxuriant morbid growth,

Starting point is 13:31:42 produced by the irritant of some unknown infiltration, This, in part pleasurable, in part emotion of self-defense, was the primeval stage of matter, the transition from the insubstantial to the substance. This was the fall. The second creation, the birth of the organic, out of the inorganic, was only another fatal stage in the progress of the corporeal towards consciousness. Just as disease in the organism was an intoxication, a heightening and unlicensed accentuation of its physical state.

Starting point is 13:32:15 And life, life was nothing but the next step on the reckless path of the spirit dishonoured. Nothing but the automatic blush of matter, roused a sensation, and become receptive for that which awaked it. The books lay piled upon the table. One lay on the matting next his chair. That which he had latest read rested upon hands cast up stomach and oppressed his breath. Yet no order went from the cortex to the muscles in charge to take it away. He had read down the page, his chin had sunk upon his chest. Over his innocent blue eyes, the lids had fallen. He beheld the image of life in flower, its structure, its flesh-born loveliness.

Starting point is 13:32:58 She had lifted her hands from behind her head. She opened her arms. On their inner side, particularly beneath the tender skin of the elbow points, he saw the blue branchings of the larger veins. These arms were of unspeakable sweetness. She leaned above him, she inclined unto him, and bent down over him. He was conscious of her organic fragrance and the mild pulsation of her heart. Something warm and tender clasped him round the neck.

Starting point is 13:33:27 Melted with desire and awe, he laid his hands upon the flesh of her upper arms, where the fine-gwain skin over the triceps came to his sense so heavenly cool, and upon his lips he felt the moist clinging of her kiss. End of Section 40 Section 41 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann This Libravox recording is in the public domain Section 41 Chapter 5

Starting point is 13:34:03 The Dance of Death Part 1 Not long after Christmas the gentleman rider died But before that event The Christmas holidays came and went The two, or if you reckoned Holy Night The three feast days to which Hans Castorp had looked forward, with some alarm and head-shaking dubiety,

Starting point is 13:34:26 as to what they would be really like up here. In the event they came on and passed like other days, with a morning, an afternoon, and an evening. Only moderately unreasonable in respect of weather. It thawed a little, and not greatly different from others of their kind. Outwardly they had been somewhat garnished and set off. Inwardly they held sway in the heads and hearts of men, appointed time. Then, leaving behind them some depositive impressions out of the common run,

Starting point is 13:34:57 they slipped away into the recent, then into the distant past. The Hofrat's son, Knut, by name, came for the holidays and lived with his father in the wing of the building. A good-looking young man, save that his cervical vertebra, was already too prominent. The presence of the young barons could be felt in the air. The ladies showed a proneness to laugh, to bicker, and to adorn their persons. They boasted in conversation of having met Kunut in the garden, the wood, or the English quarter. He himself had guests.

Starting point is 13:35:30 A number of his fellow students came up to the valley, six or seven young men who lodged in the village, but at the Hofrat's table, and with others of their core, scoured the region in the body. Hans Kastob avoided them. He gave them a white berth with Yoakim whenever necessary. He felt no least desire to meet them. A whole world divided those up here from these singing, roving, staff brandishing youths.

Starting point is 13:35:55 He wished neither to see nor hear anything of them. They looked, most of them, like northerners. There might be hamburgers among them, and Hans Castorpe felt very shy of meeting his fellow townsmen. He had often uncomfortably considered the possibility that somebody or other from home might arrive at the Berkov. Had not the Hofrat said that Hamburg always furnished a handsome contingent to the establishment? There might be some among the bedridden and moribund, but the only one visible

Starting point is 13:36:24 was a hollow-cheek businessman, said to come from Cookshaven, who had been sitting for two weeks at Frau Iltus's table. Hans Castorpe, seeing him, rejoiced in the knowledge that one came little into touch with guests at other tables than one's own, and further that his native sphere was an extended one. He saw that the presence of the man from Cookshaven made no difference to his happiness, and this went far to relieve his fears about the arrival of other hamburgers. Christmas Eve came on a pace. One day it was at hand, the next it was here. When first it had been talked of at table,

Starting point is 13:37:02 to Hans Kastop's great surprise, it had been yet a good six weeks away, as much time as his original term up yet, plus the three weeks in bed. But those first six weeks, as he thought of them in retrospect, seemed a very long time, while the six just passed had been insignificant. His fellow guests were right to make light of them.

Starting point is 13:37:23 Six weeks, why, that was not so many as the week had days. Little indeed when one considered what a small affair a week was, from Monday to Sunday, and then Monday again. One needed only to see how valueless the next smaller time unit was to realise that not much could come even of a whole row of them put together. Rather, the total effect was to intensify the process, of contraction, shrinkage, blurring and effacement. What was one day, taken, for instance, from the moment one sat down to the midday meal,

Starting point is 13:37:56 to the same moment, 24 hours afterwards? It was, to be sure, four and 20 hours. But equally it was the simple sum of nothings. Or take an hour spent in the rescuer, at the dinner table, or on the daily walk. And these ways of employing the time unit practically exhausted its possibilities. what was an hour? Again, nothing. And nothing were all these nothings. They were not serious in the nature of them, taken together. The only unit it was possible to regard with seriousness was the smallest one of all. Those seven times sixty seconds during which one held the thermometer

Starting point is 13:38:32 between one's lips and continued one's curve. They indeed were full of matter and tenacious of life. They could expand into a little eternity. They formed little concretions of high density. within the scurrying shadows of time's general course. The holidays disturbed but little the even tenor of the Berkhov ways. A well-grown fir-tree had been set up a few days beforehand, on the right-hand wall of the dining-room, the side wall next to the bad Russian table. A waft of its fragrance came to the noses of the diners now and then,

Starting point is 13:39:06 above the heavy odours of the food, and wakened something like pensiveness, in the eyes of a few among the guests, seated at the seven tables. When they came to supper on the 24th, they found the tree gaily decked with tinsel, little glass balls, gilded pine cones, tiny apples in nets and varied confections. The coloured wax tapers burned throughout the meal and afterwards, and a tiny taper-decked tree burned likewise, it was said, in the rooms of the bedridden and Moribund. Each had his own.

Starting point is 13:39:38 The parcel post in the last few days had been very heavy. Yoh Kim Zimson and Hans Kastob received carefully packed remembrances from their faraway home, and spread them out in their rooms. Judicious gifts of cravats and other articles of clothing, expensive trifles in leather and nickel and quantities of Christmas cakes, nuts, apples and marzipan. The cousins looked doubtfully at these last supplies, wondering whenever they should have occasion to consume them. Shaline, as Hans cast up knew, had not only packed his presents, but bought them after consultation with the uncles. There was a letter, too, James Tienapel, type script, to be sure, but upon heavy paper with his private letterhead,

Starting point is 13:40:20 communicating his own and his father's best wishes for the holidays, and for a speedy recovery, and including at once greetings for the oncoming New Year as well. A sensible and practical procedure which followed Hans Castop's own, he having sent his Christmas messages betimes, under cover with the monthly clinical report. The tree in the dining room burned, crackled and dispensed its phrase, fragrance, waking the minds and hearts of the guests to a realization of the day. People had dressed for dinner. The men wore evening clothes and the women jewels. Mayhap presents from loving husbands down below. Claudia Shoshar had exchanged the customary sweater for a frock with a hint of the fanciful about it, suggesting a national costume, Russian peasant or Balkan, perhaps Bulgarian. A light-coloured, flowing and girdled arrangement, embroidered and set with time. tinsel ornaments. Such a garment gave her figure an unwanted softness and fullness and suited what Setembrini called her Tata physiognomy, particularly the prairie wolf eyes.

Starting point is 13:41:28 They were gay at the good Russian table. There the first champagne cork was heard to pop. It set the example which was followed by nearly all the others. At the cousin's table it was the great aunt to dispense champagne for her niece and Marustia and treated the others as well. The menu was choice. It finished with cheese straws and bonbons, to which the guests added coffee and liqueurs. Now and then a twig would flare up on the Christmas tree. There would be work to put it out, and shrill, immoderate panic among the ladies. Toward the end of the meal, Setembrini came to sit for a while at the end of the cousin's table. He wore his everyday clothes and sported his toothpick. He quizzed frau's store with spirit and made a few remarks about the carpenter's son and rabbi,

Starting point is 13:42:14 humanity whose birthday they fancied they were celebrating today. Whether he actually lived, Setonbury said, was uncertain, yet his time had given birth to an idea, which had continued its triumphant course even up to today, the idea of the dignity of the human spirit, the idea of equality. In a word, they were celebrating the birth of individualistic democracy, and to it he would empty the glass they gave him. Froucestor found his remarks equivoc and unfeeling. She rose under protest to the toast, and as the other tables were being emptied,

Starting point is 13:42:50 they followed the general movement toward the drawing rooms. Hoffrat Berens, with Kunut and Fraline von Milendonk, attended the social evening for half an hour. The occasion was to be signalised with the presentation of the gift to the head of the establishment, which accordingly took place in the room with the optical apparatus. The Russians presented their gift, a large round silver plate, with the Hofrat's monogram engraved in the middle. Its utter inutility was plain to every eye. He might at least lie on the shares long,

Starting point is 13:43:22 which was the gift of the rest of the guests, though it was at present without cover or cushions, having merely a cloth drawn over it. The head end was adjustable. Berens stretched out full length, and his silver plate under his arm closed his eyes and began to snore like a sawmill, giving out that he was fuff near with the treasure-board. Much laughter and applause ensued. Frowshoche laughed so hard that her eyes became two cracks, and her mouth stood open. Precisely, Hans Castor, remarked,

Starting point is 13:43:51 as had been the case, with Privislav hip, when he laughed. Directly the head went out, the guests sat down to cards, the Russians occupying, as usual, the small salon. Some of the patients stood still about the room, where the Christmas tree was, watching the candle-stumps die down, in their sockets, and munching the goodies, hanging from the boughs. Here and there at the tables, which were already laid for breakfast, sat a solitary person with his head on his hand,

Starting point is 13:44:19 silently brooding. Christmas Day was damp and misty. These were clouds they were among, Beren's asserted. Mist there was none up here. But mist or clouds, the damp was perceptible. The surface of the lying snow began to thaw, grew soft and porous. In the rescuer, one's face and hands were stiff and red, one suffered far more than in colder, sunny weather. The feast day was marked by an evening concert, a real concert with rows of chairs and printed programmes, offered to the guests by House Berkov, consisting of songs by a professional singer who lived up here and gave lessons. She wore two medals pinned side by side on her corsage, had arms like sticks, and a voice whose peculiar, toneless quality cast a saddening light,

Starting point is 13:45:08 upon the grounds for her stay in these regions. She sang, I traje my mina, with meer, Herm. Her accompanist was likewise a resident. Frau Schorcher sat in the first row, took advantage of the intermission to go out, leaving Hans Castorp free to enjoy the music in peace.

Starting point is 13:45:28 After all, it was music, and to read the text of the songs, as printed upon the programme. Here, Settimbrini, sat a while beside him, and made a few plastic and resilient phrases upon the dull quality of the singer's Belcanto, expressing also ironic satisfaction over the home talent displayed in the entertainment.

Starting point is 13:45:46 It was so charming, he said, that they were just among themselves. Then he too went away. To tell the truth, Hans Castor was not sorry to see the backs of them both, the narrow-eyed one and the pedagogue. He could the better devote himself to the singing and draw comfort from the reflection

Starting point is 13:46:04 that all over the world, even in the most extraordinary places, music was made, very likely even on polar expeditions. One had a slight differentiating consciousness of the day after Christmas, something that just made it not quite the same as an ordinary Sunday or weekday. Then it was over, and the whole holiday lay in the past, or equally it lay in the distant future a year away. Twelve months would bring it round again,

Starting point is 13:46:32 seven more than the time Hans Castorup had spent up here. But just after the Christmas season, and before the New Year broke, the Gentleman Rider died, the cousins learnt of the death from Fritz Rothbine's nurse, Alfreda Schultnecht, called Sister Berta, who met them in the corridor and discreetly communicated the sad event. Hans Castorp felt a profound interest, partly because the signs of life he had heard from the Gentleman Rider were among the earliest impressions of his stay up here. Those which had first, or so it seemed to him, called up the flush to his face, which had since never left it, but partly also upon moral, one might almost say upon spiritual grounds.

Starting point is 13:47:14 He detained Joachim long in talk with Deaconess, who hung with the extreme of pleasure upon their conversation. It was a wonder, she said, that the gentleman rider had lived over the holidays. He had long since shown himself a doughty cavalier, but what it was he breathed with, at the end, nobody could tell. for days and days he had lived only by the aid of enormous quantities of oxygen. Yesterday alone he had consumed 40 containers at six francs apiece. That mounted up. The gentleman could reckon the cost themselves, and his wife, in whose arms he had died, was left wholly penniless.

Starting point is 13:47:52 Yerkem expressed disapproval of the expenditure. Why delay by these torturing and costly artificial expedients are death absolutely certain to supervene? one could not blame the man for blindly consuming the precious gas they urged upon him, but those in charge should have behaved with more reason. They should have let him go his way, in God's name, quite aside from the circumstances, more so when taking them into consideration. The living, after all, had their rights, and so on.

Starting point is 13:48:21 Hans Castorpe disagreed emphatically. His cousin, he said, talked almost like Settimbrini, without any regard or reverence for suffering. the man had died in the end. That finished it. There was no more to be done to show one's concern, and it had been due to the dying to spend what one could. Thus, Hans Castorpe. He only hoped that the hoffrat had not showed a lack of decent feeling, by railing at the poor man at the end. There had been no need, Fralind Schildenect said. Only one little thoughtless effort he had made to escape, to spring out of bed. But the merest hint of the fertility of such a proceeding had been enough to

Starting point is 13:48:59 make him desist once and for all. Hans Castrop went to view the gentleman rider's mortal remains. He did this of set purpose, to show his contempt for the prevailing system of secrecy, to protest against the egotistical policy of seeing and hearing nothing of such events, to register by his act his disapproval of the other's practice. He had tried to introduce the subject of the death at table, but was met with such a flat and callous rebuff on all sides as to both anger and embarrass him. Froucestor had been downright gruff. What did he mean by introducing such a subject?

Starting point is 13:49:38 What kind of upbringing had he had? The House regulations protected the patients from having such things come to their knowledge, and now here was a young whippersnapper, bringing it up at table, and even in the presence of Dr. Blumencol, whom the same fate might any day overtake. This, behind her hand,

Starting point is 13:49:56 if it happened again, she would complain. Then it was that, thus reproved, Hans Kastop had taken and expressed a resolve. He would visit their departed comrade, and discharge the last duty of silent respect toward his remains. He persuaded, Yerke him to do the same. Sister Berta arranged that they be admitted to the gentleman rider's room, which lay in the first story beneath their own. The widow received them, a small, distracted blonde, much reduced by night watching, with a red nose. her handkerchief before her mouth and wearing a plaid cloak

Starting point is 13:50:32 with the collar turned up as it was very cold in the room. The heat was turned off, the balcony door stood open. The young people said what was fitting to say in voices respectfully subdued. Then upon a woeful gesture from the widow they passed through the room to the bed,

Starting point is 13:50:49 walking on their tiptoes and weaving reverently forward. They stood by the dead each after his fashion. yoke him with heels together, half inclined in a salute. Hans Castorpe relaxed and pensive, with hands clasped before him, and head one side, much as he often stood to listen to music. The gentleman, Ryder, lay with his head pillared high, so that his body, that elongated structure, the outgrowth of life's manifold processes, with the elevation of the feet at the end beneath the sheet,

Starting point is 13:51:23 looked very flat, almost like a board. A golland of flowers layered about the knees. A palm leaf, outstanding from it, touched the great yellow, bony hands, resting crossed upon the sunken breast. Yellow and bony was the face, too, with its bald skull and hooked nose, its angular cheekbones and bushy, reddish-y yellow moustaches, whose full curve gave the grey and stubbly hollows of the cheeks a yet hollower look. The eyes were closed with a certain unnatural definiteness. down, not shut, thought Hans Castorpe. That was what they called the last service of love. But it happened rather as a service to the survivors than to the dead. It must be done betimes, too, soon after death, for if the myosin process went far in the muscles, it would be too late.

Starting point is 13:52:15 He would lie there and stare, and one could no longer sustain the illusion of his slumber. Perfectly at home, in more than one respect in his element, Hans Castorp stood at the beer, expertly reverential. He seems to sleep, said he, humanely, though such was far from being the case. Then, in a voice appropriately subdued, he began a conversation with the widow, eliciting information about the sufferings, the last days and moments of her departed husband, and the arrangements for transporting the body to Corinthia, displaying a sympathy and conversance that was in part physicianly, in part priestly and moralising.

Starting point is 13:52:53 The widow, speaking in her, her drawling, nasal, Austrian accent, with now and then a sob, found it remarkable that young folk should so occupy themselves with the stranger's pain. Hans Kastop answered that he and his cousin were themselves ill, that he, when still very young, had stood at the deathbed of near relatives. He was a double orphan, and, if you might say so, long familiar with the sight of death. She asked what profession he had chosen. He replied that he had been an engineer.

Starting point is 13:53:25 "'Had been,' she queried. "'Had been,' he replied, in the sense that his illness and a stay up here of still undetermined length had come between him and his work. That might mean a considerable interruption, even a turning point in his career. He could not tell. Joachim at this searched his face with some alarm. And his cousin? He was a soldier, at present in training for an officer. "'Ah,' she said, "'the trade of a soldier is another serious. calling. One must be prepared to come into close touch with death. It is well to accustom oneself to the sight beforehand. She dismissed the cousins with thanks and expressions of friendliness,

Starting point is 13:54:07 which could not but touch them, considering her distressed state, and the bill for oxygen her departed husband had left behind him. End of Section 41. Section 42 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 42 Chapter 5 The Dance of Death Part 2 They returned to their own story

Starting point is 13:54:44 Hans Castor, greatly pleased and edified by the visit. Requiscat in Pache, he said, sit Tibi Terra Levis, Requium Eternum, Donna E, Domine. You see, when death is in question, when one speaks to or of the dead, then the Latin comes in, in force. It is, so to say, the official language. So then you see that death is a thing apart.

Starting point is 13:55:11 But it isn't a humanistic gesture, speaking Latin in honour of dead. And the Latin isn't what you learn at school either. The spirit of it is quite different. One might almost say hostile. It is ecclesiastical Latin, monkish Latin, medieval dialect, a sort of dull, monotonous, underground chanting. Setumbrini has no use for it. It is nothing for. It is nothing for humanists and Republicans and such like pedagogues. It comes from quite another point of the compass. I find one ought to be clear about these two intellectual trends, or perhaps it would be better to say states of mind.

Starting point is 13:55:47 I mean the devout and the free-thinking. They both have their good sides. What I have against Sethambrenies, the free-thinking line, is that he seems to imagine it has a corner in human dignity. That's exaggerated, I consider, because the other has its own kind of dignity. too, and makes for a tremendous lot of decorum and correct bearing and uplifting ceremony. More, in fact, than the free-thinking, when you remember it has our human infirmity and proneness to air directly in mind, and thoughts of death and decay, play such an important role in it.

Starting point is 13:56:20 Have you seen Don Carlos given at the theatre? Do you remember at the Spanish court when King Philip comes in, all in black with the garter and the golden fleece and takes off his hat? It looks pretty much like one of our melons. He lifts it from the top and says, Cover my lords, or something like that. That is the last degree of formality, I should think. No talk of any free and easy manners there. The Queen herself says, in my own France, how different? Of course it is too precise for her, too fussy. She would like it a little gayer and more human. But what is human? Everything is human. I find all that strict punctilio and god-fearing solemnity of the

Starting point is 13:57:00 Spanish is a very dignified kind of humanity. While on the other hand, the word human can be used to cover up God knows what loosens slovenly ways. You know that yourself. I do indeed, Yer Kim said. Naturally, I can't abide any kind of looseness and slovenliness. There must be discipline. Yes, you say that as a soldier, and I must admit, the military have an understanding of these matters. The widow was right when she said your trade is a solemn one that has to reckon on coming to grips with death. You have your tight-fitting immaculate uniform with a stiff collar. There's your bien-seance for you. Then your regulations of rank and military obedience, and all the forms you preserve toward each other. Quite in the Spanish spirit, there is something reverent about it. I can do with

Starting point is 13:57:49 it very well at bottom. We civilians ought to show more of the same spirit in our customs and manners. I should really like it, and find it fitting. I think the world and life generally, is, you is such as to make it appropriate for us all to wear black with a starched rough instead of your stand-up collar, and for all our intercourse with each other to be subdued and ceremonial and mindful of death. That would seem right and moral to me. There is another of Setimbrini's arrogant ideas. I may tell him so sometime. He thinks he has a monopoly of morals as well as of human dignity,

Starting point is 13:58:23 with his talk about practical life work, and Sunday services in the name of progress, as though one hadn't something else to think about on Sundays, besides progress, and his systematic elimination of suffering. You have not heard anything about that, but he has instructed me on the subject, and it is to be systematically eliminated by means of a lexicon. I may find all that positively immoral, but what of it? I don't tell him so, naturally.

Starting point is 13:58:51 He fairly goes for me, you know, of course, in his plastic way, and says, I warn you engineer. but a person can take leave to think what he pleases at least. Sire, grant freedom of thought. Let me tell you something, he went on. They had by now arrived at Yokim's room when Yokim was making ready for the rescue. Let me tell you something I propose to do.

Starting point is 13:59:14 We live up here, next door to the dying, close to misery and suffering, and not only we act as though we had nothing to do with it, but it is all carefully arranged in order to spare us and prevent our coming into contact with it. or seeing anything at all. They will take away the gentleman rider while we are at breakfast or tea,

Starting point is 13:59:33 and that I find immoral. The storewoman was furious, simply because I mentioned his death. That's too absurd for words. She is ignorant, to be sure, and thinks that lease from Weiss comes out of Tannouser. She said so the other day, but even so she might have a little human feeling,

Starting point is 13:59:52 and the rest of them too. Well, I have made up my mind to concern myself a bit in future with the severe cases and the moribund. It will do me good. I feel our visit just now has done me good already. That poor chap Reuter in number twenty-five, whom I saw through the door when we first came, he has most likely long ago been gathered to his fathers and been spirited away on the quiet. His eyes were so enormous even then, but there are more of them. The house is full, and they keep coming. Sister Alfrida, or the directoress, or even Behrens himself, would most likely be glad to put us in the way of it.

Starting point is 14:00:29 Say that one of the Moribund was having a birthday, and we hear of it, that could easily be brought about. Good. We send him, or her, whichever it is, a pot of flowers, an attention from two fellow guests, who prefer to remain anonymous with best wishes for recovery. It is always polite to say that. Then, afterwards, of course, it is found out who sent it, and he, or she, in her instance. infirmity lets us greet her in a friendly way through the doorway. She may even ask us in for a minute, and we have a little human intercourse with him before he sinks away. That's how I imagine it. Are you agreed? For my part my mind is made up. Yokim had not much to bring up against the plan. It is against the rules of the house, he said. In a certain way you would be transgressing them.

Starting point is 14:01:18 But Berens would probably be willing to make an exception and give permission, if you would, wanted it, I should think. You might refer to your interest in the medical side. Yes, among other things, Hans Castorpe answered, for in truth somewhat involved motives lay at the bottom of his desire. His protest against the prevailing egotism was only one of these. There was also, and in particular, a spiritual craving to take suffering and death seriously, and pay them the respect that was their due. Contact with the suffering and dying would, or so he hoped feed and strengthen this craving of the spirit, by counteracting the manifold woundings to which it was daily and hourly subjected,

Starting point is 14:02:02 and which he felt the more keenly on account of the Settumbrynean critique. Instances there were only too many. If one had asked Hans Castorpe for them, he would probably have mentioned certain persons who were admittedly not much ailing and not under the smallest compulsion, but who made a pretext of slight illness to live up here for their own pleasure, and because the life soon. them. Such was the widow Hesonfield, whom we have mentioned in passing. Her passion was

Starting point is 14:02:29 betting. She staked against the gentleman every conceivable object upon every conceivable subject. The weather, the dishes at dinner, the result of the monthly examination, the prescribed length of stay of this or that person, the champions in the skating, slaying, bob racing and skiing competitions, the duration of this or that, Amour, among the guests of the cure, and a hundred other, often quite indifferent or trifling subjects. Staked chocolate, champagne and caviar, which were then ceremonially partaken of in the restaurant, or money, or cinematographed tickets, or even kisses, given and received. In brief, she brought with her passion for betting much life and excitement into the dining room, though her proceedings were not such as could be

Starting point is 14:03:15 taken seriously by Hans Castorpe, who even felt that her mere presence was prejudicial to the dignity of a serious cure. For he was inwardly concerned to protect that dignity and uphold it in his own eyes, though now, after nearly half a year among those up here, it cost him something to do so. The insight he gradually won into their lives and activities, their practices and points of view, was not encouraging. We have mentioned the too slim young elegance, 17 and 18 years old, nicknamed Max and Moritz, whose exploits with the talk of the cure, and who were in the habit of climbing out of the window at night in order to play poker and dissipate down below in female society. Only lately, that is to say, perhaps a week after the new year,

Starting point is 14:04:01 for we must bear in mind that while we tell the story, time streams silently and ceaselessly on, it had been spread about at breakfast that the bathing master had just caught the pair in crumpled evening clothes, lying on their beds. Even Hans Kastop laughed, but this, however humiliating it was to his better feelings, was nothing compared to the tales that circulated about a certain lawyer from Yutobog, Einhoof by name, a man, perhaps forty years old, with a pointed beard and very hairy hands who had taken the Swedes' place at Hare Sedingbuni's table. It was reported of him, not only that he came home drunk every night,

Starting point is 14:04:40 but that recently he had failed to do even that, having been discovered, lying in the meadow. He passed for a Don Juan, for our store could point out the damsel, of whom it was also known that she had an affianced lover down in the flatland, who was seen at a certain hour coming out of lawyer Einhoof's room, clad in a fur coat with combinations underneath and nothing more. That was a scandal, not only to the general, but even more to Hans Castrop's private sense and derogatory to his spiritual endeavours. It even came to this that the thought of lawyer Einhoof could not enter his mind without calling up there, by association of ideas, the thought of Franchion Obadank, the little creature with the sleek blonde head, whose mama, a worthy dame from the provinces, had brought her up to the Berkov a few weeks before. Fransian's case, on her arrival, and even after the examination, had been thought a light one,

Starting point is 14:05:37 but perhaps she had failed in the service of the cure. Perhaps hers was one of those cases in which the air proved, in the first instance, to be good, not against, but for the disease. Or perhaps the child may have become involved in some intrigue, the excitement of which was seriously bad for her. Four weeks after her arrival, she entered the dining room, fresh from a second examination, tossing a little handbag in the air, and crying out in her fresh young voice, Hurrah! Hurrah! I shall have to stop a year! at which the whole room resounded with hermeric laughter. But two weeks later, the whisper went round that lawyer Einhoof had behaved like a blackguard to Franchion Obedank.

Starting point is 14:06:19 The expression is ours, or rather, Hans Castorps. For those who spread the news, found it too old a story to be moved to the use of strong language. They shrugged their shoulders, and gave it out as their view that it took two to play at such games, and that it was unlikely anything had happened against the will of either participant. This, at least, was Frau Storr's demeanour, her ethical reaction to the affair in question. Caroline Storr was dreadful. If anything had power to distract our young Hans Castorp, in the course of his sincerely felt spiritual strivings, it was the personality, the very existence of this woman. Her perpetual malapropisms were quite enough. She said insolvent when she meant insolent,

Starting point is 14:07:01 and uttered the most amazing rubbish by way of explaining the astronomical phenomena involved in an eclipse of the sun. One day she almost reduced hair set in Brini to permanent stupidection by telling him that she was reading a book from the library which would interest him, namely Schiller's translation of Benedetto Chalini. She adored expressions of a cheap and common stamp,

Starting point is 14:07:23 worn threadbare by overuse, which got on Hans Castob's nerves, as, for example, you haven't the faintest idea, or how utterly tutu! It had for long been the fashionable jargon to say, simply gorgeous, to express the idea of brilliant or excellent. This phrase now proved to have outlived its usefulness. It was entirely prostituted, the juice quite sucked out of it,

Starting point is 14:07:48 and Frouce Stor clutched eagerly at the newest currency. Everything, whether in jest or earnest, was devastating, the bob run, the sweet for dinner, her own temperature, and this sounded equally offensive in her mouth. She had a boundless appetite for gossip. One day she might relate that Frow Solomon was wearing the most costly lace underwear in preparation for her examination and prided herself very much upon her appearance before the physicians on these occasions. There was probably more truth than poetry in the statement. Hans Castorpe himself had the impression that the examinations, quite aside from their result, had their pleasurable side for the ladies, and that they adorned themselves accordingly. But what should one say to Frouc Stor's

Starting point is 14:08:30 assertion that Frou Reddish, from Posen, who it was feared, suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, had to walk up and down entirely naked before Hoffrat-Berens for ten minutes once a week. This statement was almost as improbable as it was objectionable. But Frouz Stor swore to it by all that was holy, though it was hard to understand how the poor creature could expend so much zeal and energy and be so dogmatic upon matters like these when her own personal condition gave so much cause for concern. She was sometimes seized by attacks of panic and whimpering, caused by the lassitude which seemed to be constantly on the increase, or by her rising curve. When she would come sobbing to table, the chapped red cheeks streaming with tears and wail into her handkerchief,

Starting point is 14:09:17 Berens wanted to send her to bed. She would like to know what he had said behind her back was the matter with her. She wanted to look the truth in the face. One day she had remarked to her horror that her bed had been placed with the foot in the direction of the, the entrance door. The discovery nearly sent her into spasms. It was not easy to understand her rage and terror. Hans Kastorub did not see at once what she meant and inquired, well, and what then? What was there about the bed standing like that? For God's sake, couldn't he understand? Feet first. She had made desperate outcry, and the position of the bed had to be altered at once,

Starting point is 14:09:54 though it caused her to lie with her face to the light and thus disturbed her sleep. But none of this was really serious. It could not meet Hans Kastop's spiritual needs. A frightful occurrence, which happened at about this time, during a meal, made a profound impression upon him. Among the newer patients was a schoolmaster named Popoff, a lean and silent man with his equally lean and silent wife. They sat together at the good Russian table, and one day, while the meal was in full swing, the man was seized with a violent epileptic fit, and with that oft-described demoniac unearthly shriek fell to the floor, where he lay beside his chair, striking about him with dreadfully distorted arms and legs. To make matters worse, it was a fish-dish that had

Starting point is 14:10:41 just been handed, and there was ground for fear that pop-off in his spasm might choke on the bone. The uproar was indescribable. The ladies, frauze and the lead, with Madame's Salomon, Reddish, Hessenfeld, Magnus, Iltis, Levy and the rest, following hard upon, We're taken in a variety of ways, some of them almost as badly as Poppaw. Their yells resounded. Everywhere were twitching eyelids, gaping mouths, writhing torsos. One of them elected to faint silently. There were cases of choking, some of them having been in the act of chewing and swallowing when the excitement began.

Starting point is 14:11:19 Many of the guests at the various tables fled through every available exit, even actually seeking the open, though the weather was very cold and damp. The whole occurrence, however, took on a peculiar cast. offensive even beyond the horror of it, through an association of ideas due to Dr. Krakowski's latest lecture. In the course of his exposition of love, as a power making for disease, the psychoanalyst had touched upon the falling sickness. This affliction, which in pre-analytic times, he said, men had by turns interpreted as a holy, even a prophetic visitation, and as a devilish possession, he went on to treat of, half poetically, half in ruthlessly scientific

Starting point is 14:11:58 terminology as the equivalent of love and an orgasm of the brain. In brief he had cast such an equivocal light upon the disease that his hearers were bound to see in Popov's seizure an illustration of the lecture, an awful manifestation and mysterious scandal. The flight on the part of the ladies was accordingly a disguised expression of modesty. Hoffrat himself had been present at the meal. He, with Fraline von Malendonk, and one or two more robust guests carried the ecstatic from the room, blue, rigid, twisted and foaming at the mouth as he was. He put him down in the hall, where the doctors, the directress, and other people could be seen hovering over the unconscious man, whom they afterwards bore away on a stretcher.

Starting point is 14:12:44 But a short time thereafter, hair pop-off, quite happy and serene, with his equally serene and happy wife, was to be seen sitting at the good Russian table, finishing his meal as though nothing had happened. Hans Castorpe was present at this episode and evinced all the outward signs of concern and alarm, but at bottom he was not edified. God help him. True, Popov might have choked on his mouthful of fish, but he had not. Perhaps in all his unconscious mouthings and goings on, he had all the while somehow taken jolly good care not to. Now he was sitting there, eating blithely away, as though he had never been behaving like a drunken berserk. Very probably he remembered nothing at all about it. But in his person, he was not a man to strengthen Hans Castop's respect for suffering. His wife, too,

Starting point is 14:13:29 after her fashion, only added to those impressions of frivolous irregularity against which Hans Castrop wrestled, and which he sought to counteract by coming into closer touch, despite the prevailing attitude with the suffering and dying in the establishment. In the same story with the cousins, not far from their rooms, lay a young girl named Lila Gerngros. According to Sister Berta, she was about to die. Inside ten days she had had four violent hemorrhages, and her parents had come in the hope to take her home while she still lived. But it was impossible. The Hofrat said poor little Gerngross could not stand the journey.

Starting point is 14:14:08 She was sixteen or seventeen years old. Hans Kastop saw here the opportunity to carry out his plan with the pot of flowers and the good wishes for speedy recovery. There was, it is true, no birthday feast to celebrate. In all human probability, little Leila would never see a... another. It came in the spring, Hans Castobland. But he felt the fact need not prevent his offering his respectful sympathy. When he went down with his cousin for their morning walk, he entered a flower shop near the courthouse, and breathing in agreeably the moist, earthy, scent-laden air, he chose with care from the array a charming Hortensia, and ordered it convey to the little

Starting point is 14:14:46 Suffra's room with a card upon which he wrote no names, but simply from two housemates with best wishes for recovery. All this was an exquisite activity to Hans Castorpe. He enjoyed the fragrant breath of the plants. The soft warmth of the shop, after the cold outside, made his eyes filled with tears. His heart beat with a feeling of an adventure and audacity, a conviction of the good sense of his modest enterprise, to which privately he ascribed a certain symbolic value. Leila Gerngros had no private nursing. She was under the immediate supervision of Fraline von Mildonk and the physicians. Sister Berta, too, went in and out of her room,

Starting point is 14:15:25 and it was she who gave the young people news of the result of their attention. The little one, in her hopeless and circumscribed state, was as pleased as a child with the stranger's greeting. The pot stood at her bedside, she caressed it with eyes and hands, saw that it was kept watered, and even in her severest fits of coughing,

Starting point is 14:15:43 rested her tortured gaze upon it. Likewise the parents, retired Major Gengros and wife, were touched and pleased. and since it was impossible for them as complete strangers to guess the givers, frulein Schillconnect could not, she confessed it, refrained from revealing the cousin's identity. She transmitted the desire of the whole family

Starting point is 14:16:03 that they should come and receive the thanks due their gift, and thus on the next day but one, the deaconess ushered the two on tiptoe into Leila's apartment. End of Section 42 Section 43 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 43. Chapter 5.

Starting point is 14:16:35 The Dance of Death Part 3. The dying girl was indeed a charming blonde creature with eyes of true forget-me-not-blue. Despite great loss of blood and the effort to breathe with an utterly insufficient

Starting point is 14:16:50 remnant of sound lung tissue, she looked fragile indeed, yet not too distressing. She thanked them and talked a little in a pleasant, though, voice, while a faint rosy glow overspread her cheeks and lingered there. Hans Castorpe, suitably explained and excused his seeming intrusion,

Starting point is 14:17:11 speaking in a low, moved voice, with delicate reverence. He did not lack much, the impulse was present in him of falling upon his knees by the bedside, and he clasped the patient's hot little hand long and closely in his, despite its being not moist, but actually wet. for the child's sweat secretion was so great. She perspired so much that the flesh must have been shriveled if the transudation had not been counteracted by copious draughts of lemonade, a carafe of which stood on the bedside table.

Starting point is 14:17:44 The parents, afflicted as they were, sustained the brief colloquy with courteous inquiries as to the state of the cousin's health and other conversational devices. The major was a broad-shouldered man, with a low forehead and bristling mustaches. a tower of strength. His organic innocence of his little daughter's sythical tendency was plain to any eye.

Starting point is 14:18:07 It was rather the mother who was responsible for the inherited taint. She was small, and of a distinctly consumptive type, and her conscience seemed burdened with the knowledge of her fatal bequest. Leila, after ten minutes' talk, gave signs of fatigue, or rather of overexitement,

Starting point is 14:18:25 the flush deepened in her cheek, and her forget-me-not-our-our-and-a-or-hect-me-not-hack. eyes glittered disquietingly. The cousins, on a sign from the nurse, made their adieu. And then the poor mother followed them into the corridor and broke out into self-reproachings, which affected Hans Castorpe very painfully. From her, from her alone it came, she said remorsefully, again and again. Her husband had nothing whatever to do with it. Even she, she assured them, had been only temporarily affected, only a slight and superficial case when she was quite a young girl. She had outgrown it entirely, had been sure that she was quite cured.

Starting point is 14:19:03 For she had wished to marry, she had so longed to marry and live, and she had done it. Healed and sound she had wedded her dear husband, himself was sound as a berry, who on his side had no notion of all of such things. But sound and strong as he was, that had not helped. The dreadful, hidden and forgotten thing had come to light in the child. It would end by destroying her. She, the mother, had escaped and entered into a healthy old age, but the poor, lovely darling would die. The physicians gave them no hope, and she, she alone was to blame, with her buried past. The young people sought to console her, to say something about the possibility of a turn for the better, but the Major's wife only sobbed and thanked them for all they had done,

Starting point is 14:19:50 for the gift of the plant, and the diversion and pleasure their visit had brought her child. She lay there, poor little thing, lonely and suffering upon her bed, while other young creatures were glad of life and could dance with fine young men to their heart's desire. And even the disease could not kill the desire to dance. They had brought her a ray of sunshine. My God, it would be the last. The Hortensia had been like homage at a ball, the brief chat with the two fine young cavaliers, a tiny affair de cur.

Starting point is 14:20:23 She, the mother, had seen it. All this impressed Hans Castorpe rather painfully, and she had pronounced the French badly too, which irritated him beyond words. He was no fine cavalier. He had visited little Leila only as a protest against the ruling spirit of egotism in the place, and in a physicianly and priestly capacity. He was rather put out over the turn the affair had taken, and the interpretation the mother had put upon it. But on the other hand, he felt a lively pleasure at having actually carried out his undertaking. Two impressions in particular lingered from the enterprise. One, the earthy odours of the flower shop. The other, Leila's wet little hand. They had sunk into his mind and so. And as thus a beginning had been made, he arranged on the same day with Alfredo Schilknecht,

Starting point is 14:21:14 a visit to her patient, Fritz Rotbine, who was as bored with life as his nurse, though to him, unless all signs failed, only a short term still remained. Nothing for it but that good, york him must go along. Hans Kastop's charitable impulse was stronger than his cousin's distaste, which the latter, moreover, could only manifest by silence and averted eyes, since he could not stand for it except by betraying a lack of Christian feeling.

Starting point is 14:21:41 Hans Kastop saw that very well, and drew advantage from it. Equally, he perceived the military grounds for the distaste. But if he himself felt the happier and stronger for such undertakings, if they seemed to him conducive to good ends? In that case, he must simply override Joachim's silent disapproval. He deliberated with his cousin, whether they might send or bring flowers to Fritz Rotbein, he being a man. He desired to do so.

Starting point is 14:22:08 Flowers, he felt, were proper to the occasion, and the purchase of the pretty, well-shaped purple Hortensia, had greatly pleased him. He came to the conclusion that Fritz-Rotbine's sex was, so to speak, neutralised by his mortal state, also that there was no need of a birthday to serve. service excuse, since the dying are to be treated as though in enjoyment of a permanent birthday. Thus minded, he sought once more with his cousin the warm, earthy, scent-laden air of the flower-shop, and brought back a dewy, fragrant bunch of roses, wallflowers and carnations, with which they entered Herodd Rheinser room, ushered by Alfredo Schilknecht.

Starting point is 14:22:47 The sufferer was not more than twenty years old, if so much, but rather bald and grey. He looked waxen and wasted. with large hands, nose, and ears, showed himself glad unto tears for the kindness of the visit, and the diversion it afforded him, and indeed out of weakness did weep a little, as he greeted the two and received the bouquet. His first words, uttered almost in a whisper, were with reference to the flowers, and he went on to talk about the European flower trade and its ever-increasing proportions, about the enormous exportation from the nurseries of Nice and Cannes, the shipments by train-load, and posts that went off daily from these places all over Europe, about the wholesale markets of

Starting point is 14:23:30 Paris and Berlin, and the supplies for Russia. For he was a businessman. His point of view was the commercial one, and would be so long as life remained to him. His father, a doll manufacturer in Kourberg, had sent him to England to be educated, he told them in a whisper, and there he had fallen and ill. They had taken his fever for typhoid and treated it accordingly with liquid diet, which had much reduced him. Up here they had let him eat, and eat he had. In the sweat of his brow he had sat in his bed and tried to build himself up. But it was all too late. The intestinal tract was already involved. In vain they sent him tongue and spiced eel from home. He could not digest it. His father, whom Behrens had summoned by telegraph, was now on the way from Coburg.

Starting point is 14:24:18 For decisive action was to be taken. They would try at least what they could do with rib resection, though the chances of success diminished daily. Rotbein conveyed all this in a whisper and with great objectivity. Even in the matter of the operation, he took a business view, for, so long as he lived, that would be his angle of approach. The expense, he whispered, was fixed at a thousand francs, including the anaesthesia of the spinal cord.

Starting point is 14:24:46 practically the whole thoracic cavity was involved, six or eight ribs, and the question was whether it would pay. Berens would like to persuade him, but the doctor's interest in the matter was single, whereas his own seemed equivocal. He was not at all clear that he would not do better to die in peace with his ribs intact. It was hard to advise him. The cousins thought the Hoffrat's brilliant reputation as a surgeon should be considered.

Starting point is 14:25:14 It was agreed at length to leave the decision to the elder Rotbock, mine soon to arrive. Young Fritz wept again a little as they took their leave. His tears fell in strange contrast to the dry matter-of-factness of his thought and speech. He begged the gentleman to repeat their visit, and they willingly promised to do so, but it did not come about. The doll manufacturer arrived in the evening. Next morning they proceeded to operate, and after that young Fritz was in no condition to receive callers. Two days later, passing the room with Joachim, Hans Kastorp saw that it was being turned out. Sister Alfrida had already packed her little trunk and left the Burkhoff to go to another Moribundas in another establishment. Heaving a sigh,

Starting point is 14:25:57 her eyeglass ribbon behind her ear, she had betaken herself thither, since such and only such was the prospect life held out to her. An empty room, a room that had been vacated, with its furniture turned topsy-turvy, and both doors standing wide, as one saw it in passing, on the way the dining-room or one's daily walks, was a most significant, and yet with all such an accustomed sight that one thought little of it, especially when one had, in one's time, taken possession of just such a vacated room, and settled down to feel at home in it. Sometimes you knew whose room it had been, and that indeed gave you to think. Thus, a week later, Hans Castro passed by and saw Le Le Le Gerngros's room in just that condition, and in this instance his understanding rebelled

Starting point is 14:26:44 for the moment against what he saw. He stood and looked, perplexed and startled, and the Huffrat came that way to whom he spoke. I see it as being turned out here. Good morning, Herr Hofrat. Then little Leila, I, answered Berens, and shrugged his shoulders. After a pause for the meaning of the gesture to take effect, he added, So you paid court to her in form, just before the doors were shut. Decent of you, to take an interest in my lungers, considering you are relatively sound. yourself. Shows a pretty trait of character. But no, no, don't be shy. Quite a pretty trait. Shall I introduce you a bit here and there what? I have all sorts of jailbirds in their little

Starting point is 14:27:26 cells if you want to see them. Just now, for instance, I am on my way to visit my overfill. Want to come? I'll introduce you as a sympathetic fellow-suffer." Hans Kastrop replied that the Hofrat had taken the words out of his mouth and offered him what he was on the point of asking. He would gratefully accept the permission to accompany him. But who was the overfilled, and how did Hoffrat Berens mean him to understand the title? Quite literally, said the Hoffrat. Quite exactly. No metaphors. She'll tell you about herself.

Starting point is 14:27:59 A few paces brought them before the door, and the Hoffrat entered, bidding his companion wait. As the double doors opened, the visitor heard the sound of clear and hearty laughter, which yet sounded short-winded, as though the person within were gasping for breath. Then it was shut away, but he heard it again when, a few minutes later, he was bidden to enter, and Berens presented him to the blonde lady lying there in bed and looking at him with curiosity out of her blue eyes. She lay half-sitting, supported by pillows, and seemed very restless. She laughed incessantly, struggling the while for breath. A high, purling, silver laughter, as though her plight excited or amused her.

Starting point is 14:28:41 She was amused, too, very likely by the Hoffrat's turns of frown. in introducing the visitor, and called out repeated thanks and good-byes as he went off, waved her hand at his departing back, sighed melodiously with runs of silver merriment, and pressed her hand against her heaving breast under the Batiste nightgown. Her legs, it seemed, were never still. The lady's name was Frau Zimmerman. Hans Kastop knew her by sight. She had sat for some weeks at the table with Frou Selleman and the lad who boated his food. then she had disappeared, and so far as Hans Castorpe may have troubled about it, he supposed that she had gone home.

Starting point is 14:29:19 Now he found her again, under the name of the Overfilled, and awaited an explanation. Ha ha ha, ha, ha, she caroled in high glee, holding her fluttering bosom. Frightfully funny man is, Berens, killingly funny, makes you die of laughing. But sit down, Herr Caston, or Castan, whatever your name is, you have such a funny name. "'You must please excuse me.

Starting point is 14:29:43 "'Do sit down on that chair near my feet, "'but please don't mind if I thrush about with my legs. "'I cannot help it.' "'She was almost pretty, with clear-cut, "'rather too well-defined, though-agreable features, "'and a tiny double chin. "'Her lips and even the tip of her nose were blue, "'probably from lack of air.

Starting point is 14:30:00 "'Her hands had an appealing thinness. "'The laces of the night-dress set them off, "'but she could keep them quiet no more than her feet. "'Her throat was like a little. girls with salt cellars above the delicate collar-bones, and her breast, heaving and struggling under the nightgown with her laughter and gasping breaths, looked tender and young. Hans Castor decided to send or bring her flowers, a bouquet from the nurseries of niece and can, dewy and fragrant. With some misgiving, he joined in her breathless and volatile mirth.

Starting point is 14:30:32 "'And so you go round visiting the fever cases?' she asked. "'That's very amusing and friendly of you. But I'm not a fever case.' That is, I wasn't in the least until just now, until this business. Listen, and tell me if it isn't just the funniest thing you ever heard in all your life. And wrestling for air amid the trills and rouelards of laughter, she related her story. She had come up a little ill. Well, ill, of course, for otherwise she would not have come, perhaps not quite a slight case, but rather slight than grave.

Starting point is 14:31:04 The pneumothorax, that newest triumph of modern surgical technique, so rapidly become, popular, have been brilliantly successful in her case. She made most gratifying progress, her condition was entirely satisfactory. Her husband, for she was married, though childless, might hope to have her home again in three or four months. Then to divert herself, she made a trip to Zurich. There had been no other reason for her going, save simply to amuse herself. She had amused herself to her heart's content, but found herself overtaken by the need to be filled up again, and entrusted the business to a physician, where she was. A nice, amusing young man, but what was the result? Here she was overtaken by a

Starting point is 14:31:47 perfect paroxysm of laughter. He had filled her too full. There were no other words to describe it. That said it all. He had meant too well by her. He had probably not too well understood the technique. The long and short of it was, in that condition, not able to breathe, suffering from cardiac depression, she had come back. And, ha ha! ha! And Beron's cursing and storming with the vengeance, had stuck her into bed. For now she was ill indeed, not actually in high fever, but finished, done with, made a mess of. Oh, what a face he was making, how funny he looked. She pointed at Hans Castorpe and laughed so hard that even her brow grew blue. The funniest thing of all, she said, was the way Barons raved and reviled. It had made her laugh, at first,

Starting point is 14:32:34 when she discovered that she was overfilled. "'You are in absolute danger of your life,' he had bellowed at her. Just like that, without making any bones of it. What a bear! You really must forgive me. It remained unclear what aspect of Berens' outburst had made her laugh, whether his brusqueness and because she did not believe what he said, or whether she did believe it, as indeed she must, it would seem, and quite simply found the fact of her imminent danger too funny for words.

Starting point is 14:33:03 Hans Castor got the impression that it was the latter, and that she was peeling, trilling and cascading with laughter, only out of childish irresponsibility and the incomprehension of her bird-like brain. He disapproved. He sent her some flowers, but never again beheld the laughter-loving lady, who, indeed, after she had sustained life upon oxygen for some days, expired in the arms of her hurriedly summoned husband. As bigger goose as they make them! the Hofrat called her, in telling Hans Castor of her death.

Starting point is 14:33:36 But the young man had by then made further connections among the same. serious cases, thanks to the Hoffrat and the house nurses, and Joachim had to accompany him on the visits he made, for instance, to the son of Tullida. The second, for the room of the first, had long since been swept and garnished and fumigated with H2CO. They paid visits as well to Teddy, the boy had lately been sent up from the Frida Karium, as the school below was called, because his case proved too severe for the life there. To Anton Kahlovich, Fudge, the Russian German insurance agent, a good-natured martyr, and to that unhappy and yet so coquettish figure, Fraau von Balincront.

Starting point is 14:34:17 She, like all the foregoing, received flowers and was even fed more than once from the hands of Hans Castor, in the presence of Joachim. They gradually acquired the name of Good Samaritans and brothers of charity, Setimbrini thus referred to their activities one day to Hans Castor. "'Sappalo, engineer, what is this I am hearing of your activities?' so you have thrown yourself into a career of benevolence. You are seeking justification through good works.

Starting point is 14:34:47 Nothing worth mentioning, hair set in Brinney, nothing to make a fuss about. My cousin and I, don't talk to me about your cousin. When the two of you make yourselves talked about, it is you we are dealing with. Your cousins are good and simple nature, most worthy of respect,

Starting point is 14:35:04 exposed to no intellectual perils, the sort that gives a schoolmaster, and not one anxious moment. You will not make me believe he is the moving spirit. No, yours is the more gifted, if also the more exposed nature. You are, if I may so express myself, Life's delicate child. One has to trouble about you,

Starting point is 14:35:26 and moreover, you have given me permission to trouble about you. Certainly, hair set in Brinney, once and for all, very kind of you, life's delicate child, why, that's very pretty, only an author would think of it. I don't know if I have to flatter myself over the title, but I like the sound of it at least. I must say that. Yes, I do occupy myself rather with the children of death,

Starting point is 14:35:49 if that is what you refer to. I look in here and there among the serious cases and the dying when I have time. The service of the cure doesn't suffer from it. I visit the ones who aren't here for the fun of the thing, leading a disorderly life, the ones who are busy dying. And yet it is written, let the dead, bury the dead, said the Italian. Hans Castorpe raised his arms to signify that there was so much written on both sides,

Starting point is 14:36:15 it was hard to know the rights of it. Of course, the organ-grinder had voiced a disturbing point of view. That was to be expected. Hans Castorpe was ready, now as ever, of his own free will, to lend an ear to set him bring his teachings, by way of experiment, to be influenced by them. But he was far from being prepared to give up, for the sake of a pedagogic point of view,

Starting point is 14:36:35 enterprises which he vaguely, despite Mother Gerngross in her phrases, despite the uninspiring young rockbine and the caccianations of the overfilled, found somehow helpful and significant. Toulé des son was named Loro. He too received flowers, earthy, heavenly-smelling violets from niece, from two sympathetic housemates with best wishes for recovery. And as this anonymity had by now become purely formal, since everyone knew the source when such attentions came, Touladeo herself thanked the cousins when they chanced to meet in the corridor.

Starting point is 14:37:10 The pale, dark, Mexican mother begged them with a few incoherent words, and chiefly by means of a pathetic gesture of invitation, to come and receive in person the thanks of her son. They went at once. Loro proved to be an astonishingly handsome young man, with great glowing eyes, a nose like an eagle's beak. quivering nostrils and beautiful lips with a small black moustache sprouting above them. But his bearing was so theatrical and swaggering that Hans Castor, this time no less than Yochim Zimson, was glad when they closed the invalid's door behind them. Touladur had ranged forlornly up and down the room with her long, bent-need stride in her black cashmere shore, with the black scarf knotted beneath her chin, her forehead crossed with wrinkles, great pouches of skin under the jet-black eyes,

Starting point is 14:38:01 and one corner of a large mouth pathetically drooping. Sometimes she approached them as they sat by the bed to reiterate her parrot-like speech. To les days, you comprehend, monsieur, premier man, la and now an other. And the handsome Loro delivered himself of rolling, ranting, intolerably bombastic phrases, also in French,

Starting point is 14:38:22 to the effect that he knew how a hero should die and meant to do it. Like his young brother. De memme than his young friend. Fernando, who likewise had died like a Spanish hero. He gesticulated he tore open his shirt to offer his yellow breast to the stroke of fate, and continued thus until an attack of coughing, which forced a thread of red foam to his lips, quenched his harangue, and gave the cousins an excuse to go out, on tiptoe.

Starting point is 14:38:53 End of Section 43. Section 44 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 44 Chapter 5 The Dance of Death Part 4 They did not mention the visit to Lorrow's bedside. Even to themselves they refrained from comment on his behaviour,

Starting point is 14:39:27 but both were better pleased with their call upon Anton Kahlovich Fudge from St. Petersburg, who lay in bed with his great good-natured beard and his just as good-natured-looking great Adam's apple, recovering slowly from the unsuccessful attempt which had been made to install the pneumothorax in his interior economy and which had been within a hair's breadth of costing Harefuge's life on the spot. He had suffered a frightful shock, the pluro shock, a quite frequent occurrence in cases where this fashionable technique was applied.

Starting point is 14:40:00 But Herr Ferge's shock had been exceptionally dangerous, a total collapse and critical loss of consciousness, in a word so severe an attack that the operation had been broken off at once. once and was indefinitely postponed. Herr Ferdge's good-natured grey eyes grew large and round. His face went ashen-coloured when he came to speak of the operation, which must have been horrible indeed. No anaesthesia, my dear sir.

Starting point is 14:40:28 In this case it doesn't do. A sensible man understands that and accepts the situation as it is. But the local doesn't reach very far down. It only benumbs the surface flesh. You feel it when they lay you open, like a pinching and squeezing. I lie there with my face covered, so I can't see anything. The assistant holds me on one side and the directress on the other.

Starting point is 14:40:51 I feel myself being pinched and squeezed. That is the flesh there laying back and pegging down. Then I hear the Hofrat say, Very good. And then he begins with a blunt instrument. It must be blunt, not to pierce through too soon, to go over the plurra and find the place where he can make an incision and let the gas in.

Starting point is 14:41:11 And when he begins moving about over my pleura with his instrument, Oh Lord, oh Lord, I felt like, I felt it was all up with me. It was something perfectly indescribable. The plurra, my friends, is not anything that should be felt of. It does not want to be felt of, and it ought not to be. It is taboo. It is covered up with flesh and put away once and for all. Nobody and nothing ought to come near it.

Starting point is 14:41:34 And now he uncovers it and feels all over it. My God, I was sick at my stomach. Horrible, awful. Never in my life have I imagined there could be such a sickening feeling outside hell in its torments. I fainted. I had three fainting fits, one after the other, a green, a brown and a violet. And there was a stink. The shock went to my sense of smell, and I got an awful stench of hydrogen sulfide, the way it must smell in the bad place. With all that, I heard myself laughing as I went off. Not the way a human being laughs. It was the most indecent, ghastly kind of laughing I ever heard.

Starting point is 14:42:10 Because, when they go over your plura like that, I tell you what it is, it is as though you are being tickled, horribly, disgustingly tickled. That is just what the infernal torment of the pluror shock is like, and may God keep you from it. Often, and never without blanching and shuddering, did Anton Kullovich Farge come back to this infernal experience of his and torture himself with it in retrospect. He had, from the first, professed himself a simple man. the higher things of this life, he said, were utterly beyond him. He expressly stipulated that no intellectual or emotional demands be made upon him. He, for his part, made none upon anybody else. This bargain once struck, he turned out to talk not unattainingly of his experiences in the life

Starting point is 14:42:57 from which his illness had withdrawn him. He had been in the employ of a fire insurance company and made constant extended journeys from St. Petersburg up and down the whole of Russia, visiting insured factory buildings and spying out those which were financially suspect, for it was a fact supported by statistics that the larger percentage of fires occurred in just those factories where business was not going too well. Thus he was sent out to study a plant under this or that pretext and to render a count to his company so that serious loss could be provided against bitimes by increased counter-insurance or dividing the risk.

Starting point is 14:43:34 He told of winter journeys through the length and breadth of. the rush of night travel in extreme cold, in sledges that you lay down in, under sheepskin covers, and when you roused, you could see the eyes of wolves, gleaming like stars across the snow. He carried his provisions frozen, cabbage soup and white bread in boxes. When they stopped to change horses at a station, these could be thawed out as required, and the bread would be as fresh as on the day it was baked. But when there came a sudden mild spell, he would find that The soup he had brought with him in chunks had melted and run away. Thus, Herr Fudge, now and then interrupting his narrative with a sigh,

Starting point is 14:44:15 and the remark that it was all very well, if only they did not try the pneumothorax again. His talk was devoid of the higher things, but it was full of facts and interesting to listen to, particularly for Hans Kastorp, who found it profited him to hear about Russia and the life as it was lived there, about samovars and pirogues, Cossacks and wooden churches, with so many towers shaped like onion tops as to look like a whole colony of mushrooms. He led Hare Fudge to talk about the people, the strange and exotic northern types with their asiatic tincture, the prominent cheekbones and Finnish Mongolian slant to the eye,

Starting point is 14:44:52 listening with anthropological interest to all that he heard. At his request, Herr Fudge spoke Russian to him. The outlandish, spineless, washed-out idiom came pouring from under the good-natured mustaches, out of the good-natured Adam's apple, and Hans Castorpe enjoyed it the more, youth-like, because all this was, pedagogically considered, forbidden fruit he was tasting.

Starting point is 14:45:15 He and Joachim spent many a quarter hour with Anton Kolovic. Also, they visited the lad Teddy from the Fredericanum, a young exquisite of 14 years, blonde and elegant with a private nurse, and a raid in white silk corded pyjamas. He was rich, he told them, and an orphan. He was here,

Starting point is 14:45:35 awaiting the moment for a serious operation they intended to try for the removal of certain infected parts. Now and again, when he had a good day, he would leave his bed and dress in his neat sports attire to mingle for an hour in the company below. The ladies like to dally with him, and he listened to their talk, for example to that concerning lawyer Einhoff, the young lady in the combinations, and Fransian Obadank. Then he would return to his bed. Thus idly and elegantly passed the time for the lad Teddy, and it was very plain that he expected nothing more from life than just this which he had. Then there was Frow Malincrond in number 50, Natalie by name, with the black eyes and the gold rings in her ears, coquettish, fond of dress, but a perfect

Starting point is 14:46:22 Lazarus and Job in female form, whom God had pleased to afflict with every kind of infirmity. Her entire organism seemed infected, and she suffered from all possible complaints by turns and simultaneously. The skin was sympathetically involved being covered in large tracts by an itching eczema, with open sores here and there, even on the mouth, which made feeding difficult. Then she suffered from internal inflammations of various kinds, of the pleura, the kidneys, the lungs, the periosteum, even of the brain, so that she was subject to loss of consciousness. Finally, cardiac weakness, the result of constant pain and fever, gave her the greatest distress, and even made it at times impossible for her to swallow,

Starting point is 14:47:05 so that a mouthful of food would remain stuck in her throat. The woman's state was truly pitiable, and she was alone in the world, for she had left home and children for the sake of a lover, a mere youth, only to be forsaken in her turn. All this she herself related to the cousins, and now was without a home, if not without means, since her husband saw that she should not want.

Starting point is 14:47:28 She accepted with no false pride the fruits of his charity. or his unquenched love, whichever it was, seeing herself quite humbly as a dishonoured and sinful creature, and so bore all the plagues of Job, with astounding patience and resiliency, with the elementary powers of resistance of her sex, which triumphed over all the misery of her tawny body, and even made of the gauze dressings which she had to wear about her head, a becoming personal ornament. She changed her jewels many times in the day, began with corals in the morning, and ended at night with pearls. Hans Castop's flowers greatly delighted her. She obviously regarded them as the expression of gallant rather than charitable sentiments and invited both young men to tea in her room. She drank from an

Starting point is 14:48:16 invalid cup, all her fingers decked to the joint with opals, amethysts and emeralds. In no long time she had told her guests her story, the golden earrings swaying as she talked, told of her respectable, tiresome husband, her no less respectable and tiresome children, who were precisely like their father, and for whom she had not been able to feel great warmth of affection, of the half-boy, half-man with whom she had fled, whose poetic tenderness she never tired of describing. But his family had taken him away from her, by guile and force commingled, and perhaps he too had been revolted by her illness, which had then suddenly and violently broken out. Perhaps the gentleman and were revolted too, she asked coquettishly, and her inborn femininity triumphed even over the

Starting point is 14:49:05 eczema that covered half her face. Hans Kastop felt only contempt for the revolted lover, and expressed it by a shoulder- shrug. The poetic youth's defection was as a spur to himself, and he began to take occasion to perform what services he could for the unhappy woman in the repeated visits he made to her room, services that required no nursing skill, as, for instance, feeding her the midday broth after his own meal, giving her to drink when the food stuck in her throat, helping her to change her position in bed. For to add to everything else, she had a wound from an operation which made lying difficult. He practised himself in these acts of benevolence, looking in on her on his way to the dining hall, or when returning from a walk, and telling Joachim to go on ahead he would

Starting point is 14:49:53 stop for a moment in number 50 to see after a case. He experienced a pleasing sense of expanded being, the fruit of his conviction, that what he did was both useful in itself and possessed of a secret significance. There was also a malicious satisfaction he had in the blamelessly Christian stamp his activities bore. It was so clear that on no ground whatever, either the military or the humanistic or pedagogic, were they open to any serious reproach. It was some time after this that they took up Karen Karstett, and both Hans Kastop and Joachim felt peculiarly drawn to her. She had been up here for years, and was an outpatient of the Hoffrat, who had commended her to the cousin's benevolence. She was entirely without private means and dependent upon unfeeling relatives.

Starting point is 14:50:42 Once, in fact, they had taken her away, since she was sure to die in any case, and only at the Hofrat's intercession did they send her back. She lived in a modest pension in the village, a 19-year-old undersized little person with sleek, oily hair, and eyes forever timidly trying to hide a brilliance that accorded only too well with the hectic flush on her cheek. Her voice had the characteristic huskiness, but was sympathetic. She coughed almost constantly, and all her finger-ends were plastered up as they had running sores. The Hoff-rat then had appealed to the cousins on Karen's behalf. There were such kind-hearted chaps, and they made her their special ward, beginning with the gift of flowers, following on with a visit to the poor child upon her little balcony in the village, and continuing with various outings which the three took together to see a skating race or a bobsleigh competition. For the winter sports season was now at its height.

Starting point is 14:51:38 There was a special week overcrowded with events, those feats and displays to which the cousins had previously paid only cursory attention. Joachim was a verse from every kind of distraction up here. He was not here, he said on their account. He was not here to enjoy life and to put up with his sojourn in the measure in which it furnished him agreeable change and diversion. He was here solely and simply to get well as quickly as he could in order to join the service below, real service, not the service of the cure, which was but a substitute, though to be sure he grudged any falling off in the duty he owed it.

Starting point is 14:52:13 He was forbidden to join in the sports, to go and gape at them he did not like. As for Hans Kastorp, he took too seriously, in too stern and inward a sense, his own share in the life of those up here, to have a thought or a glance for the doings of people who made a sports station of the valley. But now his benevolent preoccupation

Starting point is 14:52:33 with poor Frowline Kastead made some change in these views, and Joachim could hardly dissent without seeming unchristian. They fetched the patient at her humble lodging in glorious, frosty, sunny weather. and escorted her through the English quarter, so named after the Hotel D'Oglater, and along the main street, lined with luxurious shops.

Starting point is 14:52:54 Slays were jingling up and down. There were hosts of people, the idle rich and pleasure-loving from all over the world, who filled the Kerr House and the other hotels at the place. All hatless, all clad in sports costumes, which were the last word in elegance and beauty of fabric, all bronzed with winter sunburn and the glaring reflections from snowy slopes. All this world, including the cousins and their protégé, were betaking themselves to the rink, which lay in the depth of the valley, not far from the courthouse. In summer it was a meadow used for football.

Starting point is 14:53:28 Music was playing, the courhouse band stationed in the gallery of the wooden pavilion, above the four-cornered racecourse. Beyond all lay the mountains in deep snow against a dark blue sky. Our young people passed through the entrance and the crowd that, seated in ascending tears, surrounded the course on three sides. They found places for themselves and sat down to look on. The professional skaters in close-fitting costumes of black trico with furred and braided jackets, cut figures, hovered and balanced, leaped and spun.

Starting point is 14:54:00 A pair of virtuosi, male and female, professionals and awe concour, perform which they alone in all the world could perform and evoked storms of applause and fanfares of trumpets. six young men of various nationalities competed for the speed prize and laboured six times round the four-sided course, bent over with their hands behind their backs, some with handkerchiefs tied round their mouths. A bell rang in the midst of the music

Starting point is 14:54:25 and the crowd would burst out now and again with shouts of encouragement and applause. It was a gay company in which the three invalids, the cousins and their protege, sat and looked about them. There were white-teethed Englishmen in Scotch caps, talking in French to highly scented ladies, dressed from head to foot in bright-coloured woolens. Some of them even wore knickerbockers. Americans with small, neat heads on which the hair was plastered down,

Starting point is 14:54:52 pipe in mouth and wearing shaggy furs the skin side out, bearded, elegant Russians looking barbarically rich, and Malian Dutchmen. All these, sitting among the German and Swiss population, as well as a sprinkling of indeterminate types, all speaking French, perhaps from the Balkans or the Levant. Hans Kastorp showed a certain weakness for this motley, semi-barbarious world, but Joachim put it aside as mongrel and questionable. At intervals there were events for children,

Starting point is 14:55:22 who staggered over the course with a snow shoe on one foot and a ski on the other. In one race each boy pushed a girl before him on a shovel. In another, the winner carried a lighted taper and must arrive at the goal with it still burning, or must climb over obstacles in his path, or pick up potatoes with a tin spoon and dipute. deposit them in watering pots, placed along the course. Everybody was in extravagant spirits.

Starting point is 14:55:45 The richest children were pointed out, the prettiest and those from well-known families. They were the little daughter of a Dutch multi-millionaire, the son of a Prussian prince, and a 12-year-old lad who bore the name of a champagne known the world over. Young Karen was gay with the rest, and coughed persistently as she laughed, clapping for joy and very gratitude her poor hands with the running finger-ends. End of Section 44. Section 45 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 14:56:27 Section 45. Chapter 5 The Dance of Death Part 5 The Cousins took her to see the bobsley races as well. It was no distance to the terminus, either from Karen's lodging or from the Berkov, for the track came down from the Shatsalp and ended in the village,

Starting point is 14:56:47 among the houses on the western slope. At that point a hut had been erected, where word was received by telephone of the departures up above. Then the slow sleds would come singly, with long intervals between, around the curves of the white course that shone metallic between frozen barriers of snow. The riders were men and women in white woolens,

Starting point is 14:57:10 with gay-coloured scarves of all nationalities wound about them. They were all red and lusty, and it snowed into their faces as they came on. Sledges would skid and upset, rolling their riders into the snow, and the onlookers would take photographs of the scene. Here too, music played. The spectators sat in small tribunes, or pressed upon the narrow path that had been shoveled alongside the course, or thronged the wooden bridges which spanned it, watching the sleds that from time to time whizz beneath. This was the path taken by the corpses from the sanatorium above, Hans Kastop thought. round these curves under these bridges they came down down to the valley below he spoke of it to the others they even took carron one afternoon to the bioscope theatre in the plats she loved it also very much the bad air they sat in was offensive to the three used as they were to breathing the purest it oppressed their breathing and made their heads feel heavy and dull life flitted across the scream before their smarting eyes life chopped

Starting point is 14:58:15 into small sections, fleeting, accelerated, a restless, jerky fluctuation of appearing and disappearing, performed to a thin accompaniment of music, which set its actual tempo to the phantasmagoria of the past, and with the narrowest of means at its command, yet managed to evoke a whole gamut of pomp and solemnity, passion, abandon, and gurgling sensuality. It was a thrilling drama of love and death, they saw, silently reeled off. The scenes, laid at a court of an oriental despot, galloped past, full of gorgeousness and naked bodies, thirst of power and raving, religious self-abnegation, full of cruelty, appetite and deathly lust, and slowing down to give a full view of the muscular development of the executioner's arms,

Starting point is 14:59:04 constructed in short to cater to the innermost desires of an on-looking international civilization. Set Imbrini as critic, Hans Castob thought, and whispered as much to his cousin, would doubtless have sharply characterised what they saw as repugnant to a humanistic sense, and have scarified with direct and classic irony the prostitution of technical skill to such a humanly contemptible performance. On the other hand, Froustor, who was sitting not far from our three friends, seemed utterly absorbed. Her ignorant red face was twisted into an expression of the hugest enjoyment. And so were the other faces about them. But when the last flicker of the last picture in a reel had faded away, when the lights of the auditorium went up,

Starting point is 14:59:49 and the field of vision stood revealed as an empty sheet of canvas, there was not even applause. Nobody was there to be applauded, to be called before a curtain and thanked for the rendition. The actors who had assembled to present the scenes they had just enjoyed were scattered to the winds. Only their shadows had been here. Their activity had been split up into millions of pictures. each with the shortest possible period of focus, in order to give it back to the present, and reel it off again at will.

Starting point is 15:00:20 The silence of the crowd, as the illusion passed, had about it something nerveless and repellent. Their hands lay powerless in the face of the nothing that confronted them. They rubbed their eyes, stared vacantly before them, blinked in the brilliant light, and wishing themselves back in the darkness, looked at sights which had had their day, and then, as it were, had been transplanted into fresh time and be dizzed up with music.

Starting point is 15:00:47 The despot died beneath the knife, with a soundless shriek, then came scenes from all parts of the world, the president of the French Republic, in Top Hat and Corden, sitting in a landau and replying to a speech of welcome, the Viceroy of India at the wedding of a Raja, the German crown prince in the courtyard of a Potsdam garrison. There was a picture of life in a new Mecklenburg village, a cockfight in Borneo,

Starting point is 15:01:12 naked savages blowing on nosehorns, a wild elephant hunt, a ceremony at the court of the King of Siam, a courtesan street in Japan, with geishas sitting behind wooden lattices. Samoyads, bundled in furs, driving sledges drawn by reindeer through the snowy wastes of Siberia,

Starting point is 15:01:31 Russian pilgrims praying at Hebron, a Persian criminal under the canout. They were present at all these scenes. Space was another, violated, the clock put back, the then and there, played on by music and transformed into a juggling, scurrying, now and here. A young Moroccan woman in a costume of striped silk, with trappings in the shape of chains, bracelets and rings, her swelling breasts half-bared, was suddenly brought so close to the camera as to be life-sized. One could see the dilated nostrils, the eyes full of animal life, the features in play, as she showed her white teeth in a laugh, and held one of her hands. with its blanched nails for a shade to her eye,

Starting point is 15:02:14 while with the other she waved to the audience, who stared, taken her back, into the face of the charming apparition. It seemed to see and saw not. It was not moved by the glances bent upon it. Its smile and nod were not of the present, but of the past, so that the impulse to respond was baffled

Starting point is 15:02:31 and lost in a feeling of impotence. Then the phantom vanished. The screen glared white and empty, with the one word, "'Finice,' written across it. "'The entertainment was over. "'In silence the theatre was emptied. "'A new audience took the place of that going out.

Starting point is 15:02:50 "'And before their eager eyes, "'the cycle would presently unroll itself again. "'Incited by Frouwester, who joined them at the exit, "'they paid a visit to the cafe at the Kerr House, "'Caron clapping her hands in delighted gratitude. "'Here, too, there was music, "'a small red-uniformed orchestra, "'conducted by a bohemian, or hung-groom.

Starting point is 15:03:12 Gerrian first violin, who stood apart from the others among the dancing couples and belaboured his instrument with frantic writhings of his body. Life here was Mondain. Strange drinks were handed at the tables. The cousins ordered orange aid for the refreshment of their charge and themselves, while Frou's store took a brandy and sugar. The room was hot and dusty. At this hour, she said, the cafe life was not yet in full swing. The dancing became much livelier as the evening and numerous patients from the sanatoria, as well as dissipated folk from the hotels and the courthouse. Many more than were here as yet, came later to join the fun. More than one serious case had here danced himself into eternity, tipping up the beaker of life to drain the last drop,

Starting point is 15:04:00 and in Dulci Jubilo, suffering his final hemorrhage. The Dulce Jubilo became, on her unlettered lips, something extraordinary. The first word she pronounced Dolce, with some reminiscence of her musical husband's Italian vocabulary, but the second suggested Jubilee, or an attempt to yodel, or goodness alone knew what. The cousins both devoted themselves assiduously to the straws in their glasses, while this Latin was given out. But Froucestor took no offence. She began, drawing back her lips and showing her rodent-like teeth, to drop hints and make insinuations on the subject of the relation.

Starting point is 15:04:39 of the three young people. As far as poor Karen was concerned, it was all pretty obvious. And, as Froucestor said, she could not but enjoy being chaperoned on her little outings by such fine cavaliers. But the other side was not so easy to come at. However, ignorance and stupidity notwithstanding, the creature's feminine intuition helped her to a glimpse, even though a partial and vulgarized one of the truth. For she saw, and even teasingly aimed at the fact, that Hans Kastop was the cavalier, and young Zimson merely in attendance. Further, for she was aware of the state of Hans Kastop's feelings towards Madame Shosha, that he was playing the gallant to poor little Kastead because he did not know how to approach the other.

Starting point is 15:05:25 It was a simple guess, lacking profundity and not actually covering all the facts of the case. In short, it was only too worthy of Froucestor, and when she came out with it, flat-footed, he did not even answer, save by a faint smile and an impenetrable stare. So much was true, after all, that poor Karen did afford him a substitute, an intangible yet real support, as did the rest of his charitable activities. But at the same time, they were an end in themselves, too. The inward satisfaction he experienced whenever he fed the afflicted Frau Malincrunk

Starting point is 15:06:00 her broth, or suffered her fudge to tell him once more the tale of the infernal pluroshok, or saw poor Karen clapping her ravaged and mortifying hands in grateful joy was perhaps of a vicarious and relative kind, yet it was nonetheless pure and immediate. It was rooted in a tradition diametrically opposed to the one Hesse Tembrini as pedagogue represented, yet seemed to him, young Hans Castor, for all that, not unworthy of having applied to it the placate experi. The little house where Karen Kastet lived lay near the railway track and the watercourse on the way to the Dorf, quite conveniently for the cousins to fetch her after breakfast for the morning walk. Going thence toward the village to arrive upon the main street, one had before one the little shearhorn, and on its right three peaks, which were called the green towers, but were now covered like the rest with snow that gleamed blindingly in the sun. Still further to the right came the round summit of the Dorfburg,

Starting point is 15:07:01 and a quarter of the way up its slope was visible the cemetery of the dwarf surrounded by a wall obviously commanding a fine view very likely of the distant lake and thus suggesting itself naturally as the goal of a promenade Thither they went one lovely morning. Indeed, all the days now were lovely, with a hot sun, a sparkling frost, a deep blue, windless air, and a scene that glittered whitely all abroad. The cousins, one of them brick-red in the face, the other bronzed, walked without overcoats, which would have been intolerable in this sunshine. Young Zimson in sports clothes, with Arctic's. Hands cast up in Arctic's as well, but with long trousers, not feeling worldly enough to dawn, short ones. This was the new year, between the beginning and middle of February. Yes, the last figure in the date had changed since Hans Castorpe came up here. It was written now with the next higher digit. The minute-hand in Times clock had moved one space further on. Not one of the large spaces, not one which measured the centuries or decades, it was only the year that had been shoved forward by one figure.

Starting point is 15:08:08 Though Hans Castrop had been up here not a whole year yet, but scarcely more than half a one, it had jerked itself on, as does the minute hand of certain large clocks, which only register by five minutes at a time, and was now pointing motionless, awaiting the moment to move forward again. But the hand that marked the months would have to move on for ten spaces more,

Starting point is 15:08:29 only two more, in fact, than it had moved since he came up here, for February did not count, being once begun, as money changed, counts as money spent. To the graveyard then, on the slope of the Dorfberg, the three wended their way. We tell it to complete the tale of their excursions. It was Hans Kastop's idea. Yolkim probably had scruples at first on the score of poor Karen,

Starting point is 15:08:54 but in the end agreed that it was useless to pretend with her, or to carry out Fraustor's cowardly policy of shielding her from all that could remind her of her end. Karen Kastet was not yet so far on as to display the self-deception which marks the last stage. She knew quite well how it stood with her, and what the necrosis of her fingertips meant. knew too that her unfeeling relatives would not hear of the unnecessary expense of having her sent back home, and that it would be her lot after her exit to fill a modest space up yonder. In short, it might even be said that such an excursion was more fitting, morally speaking, than many another, than the cinematograph or the bobsleigh races, for example, and surely it was no more than proper to make those lying up there a visit, once in a way, as a comradely attention, provided one day,

Starting point is 15:09:43 did not regard it as in the same class with an ordinary walk or excursion to a point of interest. Slowly they went in single file, up the narrow path that had been made in the snow, leaving the highest villas behind and below them, and watching the familiar scene unroll in its winter splendour, a little altered in perspective and opening out to the north-west, toward the entrance of the valley. There was the hope-for view of the lake, now a frozen and snow-covered round, bordered with trees. The mountains seemed to slope directly down to its further shore, while beyond these again showed unfamiliar peaks, all in full snow, over-topping each other against the blue sky.

Starting point is 15:10:25 The young folk looked at the view, standing in the snow before the stone gateway to the cemetery. Then they entered through the ironwork grill, which was on the latch. Here too they found paths shoveled between the small enclosures, each of which was surrounded with its railing, each containing a number of graves. The snow rounded over and built up each smooth and even elevation, with its cross of stone or metal, its small monument adorned with medallions and inscriptions. No soul was to be seen or heard. The quiet remoteness and peace of the spot seemed deep and unbroken in more than one sense. A little stone angel or cupid, finger on lip, a cap of snow, a skew on its head, stood among the bushes,

Starting point is 15:11:08 and might have passed for the genius of the place. the genius of a silence so definite that it was less a negation than a refutation of speech. The silence it guarded was far from being empty of content or character. Here it would have been in place for our two male visitors to take off their hats had they had any on. But they were, even Hans Castor, bareheaded, and could only walk reverently their weight on the balls of their feet,

Starting point is 15:11:34 making instinctive inclinations on one side and the other, single file in the wake of Karen Castor. as she led the way. The cemetery was irregular in shape, having begun as a narrow rectangle facing the south, and then thrown out other rectangles on both sides. Successive increases in size

Starting point is 15:11:53 had evidently been necessary and ploughed land had been taken in. Even so, the present enclosure seemed fairly full, both along the wall and in the less desirable inner plots. One could hardly see or say just where another interment

Starting point is 15:12:07 was to take place. The three wandered some time discreetly along the paths, among the enclosures, stopping to decipher a name or date here and there. The tablets and crosses were modest affairs, which must have cost but little. The inscriptions bore names from every quarter of the earth. They were in English or Russian, or other Slavic tongues, also German, Portuguese and more. The dates told their own sad story. For the time they covered was generally a short span indeed, the age between birth and death, averaging not much more than 20 years. Not crabbed age, but youth people to spot, folk not yet

Starting point is 15:12:45 settled in life, who from all corners of the earth had come together here to take up the horizontal for good and all. Somewhere in the thick of the graves, near the heart of the acre, lay a small, flat, leveled place, the length of a man between two rounded mounds, with wreaths of everlasting, hanging on their headstones. Involuntarily, the three paused here, the young girl first, to read the mournful inscriptions. Hans Kastop stood relaxed, his hands clasped before him, his eyes veiled, and his mouth somewhat open.

Starting point is 15:13:19 Young Zimson, very self-controlled, and not only erect, but even bending a thought backward. Both the cousins stole a glance at Karen's face. She stood there, aware of their glance, with modest and shame-faced mane. Her head bent on her shoulder, blinking her eyes and smiling, astrained.

Starting point is 15:13:39 Little smile. End of Section 45. Section 46 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Section 46. Chapter 5. Valpergis Knight Part 1

Starting point is 15:14:05 Within the next few days it would be seven months since Hans Kastop's advent among those up here, while Cousin Yokim, who had already had five to his credit, would soon be able to look back upon twelve, that is to say, upon a whole round year. Round, indeed, in a cosmic sense, for since the doughty little locomotive had set him down at these heights, the earth had completed one full course round the sun, and was returned to the point when it had then set out. The carnival season was at hand, and Hans Kastop inquired among the old inhabitants of the Berkov what it would be like. Magnific, answered said Embriene, whom the

Starting point is 15:14:47 the cousins had again encountered on the morning walk. "'Gorgeous,' he said, "'every bit as lively as it is in the Prater. "'You shall see, engineer, the gayest gallance of the night, "'in brilliant rows, advancing,' he quoted, "'and went on in his most mocking vein, "'couching his gibes in sounding phrases "'with a telling accompaniment of arm, shoulder, and head movements.

Starting point is 15:15:11 "'What do you expect? "'Even in Maison de Saint-é, they have their balls, for the fools and idiots I've read. Why not up here as well? The programme includes various dance macabre, as you may imagine, but unfortunately some of last year's guests will not be here. The party being over at half-past nine, you perceive. Do you mean, ha, ha, oh capital, laughed Hans Castor.

Starting point is 15:15:38 Herr Set Inbrini, you are a wretch. Half-bast nine, I say, did you get that? He turned to his cousin. Hair-setimbrini means it would be two, early for some of last year's guests to take part. Spooky! He means the ones that have taken leave of the flesh and the things of the flesh in the meantime. But I am all excitement, he said. I think it quite proper to celebrate the feasts up here as they come. Mark off the time in the usual way. Just a dead level of monotony without any breaks at all

Starting point is 15:16:08 would be too awful for words. We have had Christmas already. We took notice of the beginning of the new year. and now comes Shrove Tuesday, after that, Palm Sunday, Holy Week Easter, then six weeks after that, with Sunday. Then it is almost midsummer, the solstice, and we begin to go toward autumn. Stop, stop, stop, said Imbrini cried, lifting his head up to heaven and pressing his temples with the palms of his hands. Be quiet, I cannot listen to you letting go the rains like that. Pardon me, I mean it just the other way. Berens will finally have to make up his mind, to the injections, to get rid of my infection. My temperature sticks at 99.3 degrees, to 4, 5, 6, and even 7. I am, and I continue to be, life's delicate child. I don't mean I am a long-termer. Radamantis hasn't let me in

Starting point is 15:17:02 for any definite number of months, but he did say it would be nonsense to interrupt the cure when I've been up here so long already, and invested so much time, so to speak. Even if he did set a term, what good would it do mean? When he says, for instance, half a year, that is to be taken as the minimum. It is always more. Look at my cousin. He was to have finished the beginning of the month, finished in the sense of being healed, cured. And last time Beron saw him, he stuck on four more to make sure he is entirely sound.

Starting point is 15:17:32 Well, then, where are we? Why at the summer solstice, just as I said, without the faintest notion of offending you, and on the way to winter? Well, well, for the present, what we have. before us is fashing, and, as I say, I consider it fit and proper to celebrate it in the usual way, just as it comes in the calendar. Fraustor tells me the concierge sells tin horns in his lodge. Did you know that? And so it fell out. Shrove Tuesday came on a pace. Before one had actually seen it on the way, it arrived. All sorts of absurd instruments were snarling and squealing in

Starting point is 15:18:09 the dining hall, even at early breakfast. At midday, paper snakes were. launched from the table where Ganser, Rasmussen and Fraline-Klefeldt sat. Paper caps were mounted. They, like the trumpets, were to be had of the concierge. The round-eyed Maristio was among the first to appear in one. But in the evening, ah, in the evening there were festivities in the hall and the reception rooms, in the course of which, but we alone know to what, thanks to Hans Castorp's enterprising spirit, these carnival gaieties led up in their course.

Starting point is 15:18:40 And we do not mean to let our knowledge betray us, in the course. into indiscretion. We shall pay time all the honour due to it, and precipitate nothing. Nay, rather, we shall incline to protract the tale out of feeling for young Hans Castorpe's moral compunctions, which have so long prevented him from crossing his Rubicon. Everybody went down to the plaits in the afternoon, to see the streets in carnival mood, with holliquins and columbines shaking their rattles, with masks on foot and in jingling, decorated sleighs, among whom went forward lively skirmishes, and, and, and, you know, and much confetti was flung.

Starting point is 15:19:16 Spirits were very high at all seven tables where the guests assembled for the evening meal. There was every indication that the fun begun abroad would continue in the same key within doors. The concierge had done a thriving trade in rattles and tin trumpets. Lawyer Paravant had been the first to go further in the same line, putting on a lady's kimono and a braid of false hair,

Starting point is 15:19:38 belonging to Froucault-General Vermbrandt. He wore his moustaches drawn down on each side of his mouth, with the tongs, and looked the very picture of a Chinaman, evoking loud applause from all quarters. The management had done its share. Each of the seven tables was decked with a paper lantern, a coloured moon with a lighted candle inside. When Setimbrini entered and passed by Hans Kastorps, he quoted, "'See the gorgeous tongues of fire, club as gay at heart's desire.' He brought out the words with his fine dry smile and sauntered to his place, where he was greeted with a reign of missiles,

Starting point is 15:20:14 like tiny pellets, that broke and scattered a spray of perfume where they fell. Yes, from the first moment the key was high. The bursts of laughter were unremitted. Paper snakes hung down from the chandeliers, swaying to and fro. Confetti swam in the sauces. Very early, the dwarf waitress brought in the first ice-pail, the first bottle of champagne.

Starting point is 15:20:37 Inspired by lawyer Einhoff, the guests drank it mixed with Burgundy. Toward the end of the meal the ceiling light went out, and only the colourful twilight of the paper lanterns illumined the room, making of the scene an Italian night, and setting the crown upon the mood of the evening. Setimbrini passed over a paper to Hans Kastop's table by the hand of Maristja, who sat nearest him, with a green tissue paper jockey cap on her head.

Starting point is 15:21:04 On it he had written with a pencil, But mind, the mountain's magic mad to-night, and if you choose a willow-wisp to light your path, take care to lead you all astray. This was received with enthusiasm. Though Dr. Blumenkoll, whose state had now much altered for the worse, muttered something to himself, with the expression peculiar to him upon his face, or rather upon his lips. He seemed to be asking what sort of verses were these. But Hans Kastorpe considered that an answer was due,

Starting point is 15:21:35 he felt it incumbent on him to cap the quotation, though it was unlikely he would, have produced anything very striking. He searched his pockets for a pencil, but found none. Nor could yoke him, or the schoolmistress, supply his need, and his bloodshot eyes looked to the east for aid, to the further left-hand corner of the room. It was plain that his fleeting purpose was dissipated in a widening circle of associations. He paled a little, and entirely lost sight of his original intention. Other good ground there was for paling. Froucheosha had made special toilette for carnival. She wore a new gown, or at least one new to our hero, of thin, dark silk, probably black, or at most shot with a golden brown. It was cut with a modest little

Starting point is 15:22:21 round neck, like a schoolgirl's frock, hardly so much as to show the base of the throat, or the collarbones, or the slightly prominent bone at the back of the neck, beneath the soft fringes of her hair. But it leapt free to the shoulder, Claudia's arms, so tender and yet so full, so cool, so amazingly white, set off against the dark silk of her frock, with such ravishing effect that it made Hans Castorke close his eyes and murmur within himself, Oh my God! He had never seen such a mode before. Ball gowns he had seen, stately and ceremonial, cut in conformity with a fashion that exposed far more of the person than this one did, without achieving a jot of his sensational effect. Poor Hans Castorpe. He was reminded of a theatre

Starting point is 15:23:07 he had once held about these arms on making their acquaintance for the first time, veiled in diaphanous gauze, that it was the gauze itself, the illusion, as he called it, which had lent them their indescribable, unreasonable seductiveness. Folly, the utter accentuated, blinding nudity of these arms, these splendid members of an infected organism, was an experience so intoxicating compared with that earlier one as to leave our young man no other recourse than again, with drew head to whisper soundlessly. Oh, my! Later on, another paper was handed over, on which was written,

Starting point is 15:23:46 Society to Hart's desire, in faith of brides a party, and jolly bachelors on fire, with forward hopes and hearty. Bravo, bravo, they shouted. They were drinking coffee by now, served in little brown earthenware jugs, and some of them liqueurs as well, for instance, for our store, who adored the sweet and spiritual. The company began to rise from table, to move about, to pay visits. Part of the guests had already moved into the reception rooms.

Starting point is 15:24:18 Others remained seated, still faithful to the drink they had mingled. Set in Brini, coffee cup in hand, sporting his toothpick, crossed over and sat down between Hans Castorp and the schoolmistress. "'The hearts,' he said, near Scherke and Ellend. "'Did I exaggerate, engineer? "'Here's a bedlam for you.' But wait, the fun is not over so soon. Far from leaving off, it has not even reached its height.

Starting point is 15:24:44 From what I hear, there will be more masquerading. Certain people have left the room. We are justified in anticipating almost anything. Even as he spoke, new mask has entered. Women dressed as men with beards and mustaches of burnt cork, betraying themselves by their figures and looking like characters in comic opera. Men in women's clothes, tripping over their skirts. Here was the student Rasmussen in a black jet-trimmed toilette, displaying a pimpled decolete and fanning himself front and back with a paper fan.

Starting point is 15:25:17 There was a piero, costumed in white underwear with a lady's felt hat, a powdered face that gave his eyes in unnatural expression, and lips garish with blood-red pomade. The youth with the fingernail. A Greek from the bad Russian table, who rejoiced in beautiful legs, strutted in tights with short cloak, paper-ropeer. rough and dagger, personating a fairy prince or a Spanish grandee. All these costumes had been improvised since the end of the meal. Frouc's store could sit still no longer. She too disappeared and presently returned, dressed as a charwoman, with skirt, looped up, and sleeves rolled back. A paper cap tied under her chin, armed with pale and brush. She began scrubbing about under the tables, among the feet of those still sitting. See Bedlam Bobo, riding now, quoted.

Starting point is 15:26:08 Settimbrini, as she appeared, and gave the next line two in his clear and plastic delivery. She heard it, and retorted by calling him a turkey-cock, and bidding him keep his filthy jokes to himself. With the licence of the season, she addressed him, Hare, Settimbrini, with the thou. But indeed this familiarity had become quite general during the meal. He girded himself to reply when a fresh stir and laughter in the hall interrupted him, and those in the dining-room looked up expectantly. followed by a troop of guests two singular figures entered.

Starting point is 15:26:41 One was dressed like a nurse, but her black uniform was marked off from head to foot by short white strips, close under each other, with a longer one at regular intervals, like degrees on a thermometer. She had one finger laid to her pallid lips, and in the other hand a fever chart.

Starting point is 15:26:58 Her companion was all in blue, with blue paint on lips, brows, throat, cheeks and chin, and a blue will uncap, or wry over one ear. He was dressed in a pullover of glazed blue linen, tied round the ankles, and stuffed out into a great paunch round the middle. These were Frou Iltis and Hare Albin. They wore cardboard placards on which were written The Silent Sister and The Blue Peter, together with sidling gait they moved through the room. What applause there was, what ringing shouts.

Starting point is 15:27:30 Frou's store, her broom under her arm and her hands on her knees, laughed like the charwoman, she impersonated. Only Sethimbrini was unmoved. He cast one glance at the successful maskers, and his lips became a fine, thin line beneath the waving mustaches. Among the troops, streaming in the rear of the blue and silent ones, came Claudia Shoshar, together with the woolly-haired Tamara and the man with a hollow chest, named Bulligan, who was dressed in evening clothes.

Starting point is 15:27:59 Claudia brushed Hans Castor's table with the folds of her new gown, and crossed the room to wear young Ganser and the clefelt were sitting. Her companions followed the route out of the dining hall after the two allegorical maskers, but she stood there, her hands behind her back, laughing and chatting, her eyes like narrow slits. She too had mounted a cap. It was not a bought one, but the kind one makes for children, a simple cocked hat of white paper, set rakishly on her head,

Starting point is 15:28:28 and suiting her, of course, to a marvel. Her feet showed beneath the dark, golden-brown silk of her frock, whose skirt was somewhat draped. Of her arms we shall say no more in this place. They were bare to the shoulder. Look at her well, Hans Kastop heard Hairsetimbrini say, as though from a distance, following her with his glance as she presently left the room. The fair one, see? Lelith.

Starting point is 15:28:54 Who? asked Hans Kastor. Hairsetimbrini's literary soul was pleased. He answered, Adam's first wife is she? Besides themselves, there was only Dr. Blumenkoll at the table, sitting in his place at the other end. Everyone else, even Yoakim, was now in the drawing-rooms. Hans Kastop said, and he too addressed his companion with the licence of the season,

Starting point is 15:29:16 and said thou to him, Dear me, you're full of poetry tonight. What Lily do you mean? Did Adam marry more than once? I didn't know it. According to Hebrewic mythos, Lilith became a night-tripping fairy, a belle-dam-sommercy, dangerous to young men, especially on account of her beautiful treacherous.

Starting point is 15:29:36 tresses. What the deuce, a hobgoblin with beautiful tresses? You couldn't stand that, could you? You would come along and turn on the electric light and bring the young men back to the path of virtue. That's what you do, isn't it? Hans Kastop said, whimsically. You had drunk rather freely of the mixed burgundy and champagne. Hark ye engineer and take heed what I say, said in Brinney, answered, frowning, you will kindly address me with the accepted form employed in the educated countries of the West, the third person pluralis, if I may make bold to suggest it. Why, isn't this carnival? The other is the accepted form everywhere tonight.

Starting point is 15:30:16 Yes, it is, and its charm lies in its very abandon. When strangers, who would regularly use the third person, speak to each other in the second, it is an objectionable freedom. It is wantonly playing with the roots of things, and I despise and condemn it, because at the bottom the usage is audaciously and shamelessly leveled, Against our civilization and our enlightened humanity,

Starting point is 15:30:40 do not for one moment imagine I addressed you with this form just now. I was quoting from the masterpiece of your national literature. I used poetic license. So did I. I am using a sort of poetic license now, because it seems to me to suit the occasion, and that is why I do it. I don't say I find it perfectly natural and easy to say thou to you.

Starting point is 15:31:01 On the contrary, it costs me an effort. I have to poke myself up to it, but I do so freely, gladly, and with all my heart. With all your... Yes, quite sincerely, with all my heart. We have been up here for some time together. Do you realise it is seven months? That is not much, perhaps, as they reckon time here,

Starting point is 15:31:23 but in the ordinary way it is a good deal, after all. Well, we have spent it with each other, because life brought us together. We have met almost daily, and had interesting conversations, in part, upon subjects of which down below I should not have had the faintest understanding. But up here I have. They seem to me very real and pertinent. And I was always very keen in our discussions, or rather when you explain things to me as a homo-humanus, for of course I was too

Starting point is 15:31:52 inexperienced to contribute to anything, and could only feel that all you said was highly worth listening to. It is through you I have learned to understand such a lot. That about Carducci was the least part of it. Take the Republic and the bellow steel, and how they hang together, or time with human progress, and how if there was no time there could be no human progress, and the world would only be a standing drain and stagnant puddle. What should I have known of all that if it weren't for you? So I simply address you as though we were old and close friends, without further ceremony, and you must excuse me because I don't know any other way. You sit there and I speak to you like this, and it is all that's necessary.

Starting point is 15:32:35 For you are not, to me, just any man with a name like another. You are a representative, Herr Sett-Imbrini, an ambassador to this place and to me. Yes, that is what you are. Hans Kastrop asserted, and struck the table with the flat of his hand. So now I will thank you, he went on, and shoved his champagne and burgundy along the table towards Hare Set-Mbrinny's coffee cup, as though to touch glasses with him. I thank you for having taken trouble for me in these sorts of.

Starting point is 15:33:01 seven months, for having lent a hand to a young donkey in all the new experiences that came to him and tried to influence him for his good, sinair pecuniary, of course, partly by means of anecdote and partly in abstractions. I distinctly feel the moment has come to thank you for all you have done, and to beg your pardon for being a troublesome pupil, a difficult, no, a delicate child of life. That was what you called me. It touched me very much to have you say that, and I feel touched every time I think of it. The troublesome child. That I have been for you in your capacity as pedagogue. You remember you came to speak of that on the first day we met. It is one of the associations you have taught me, the relation between humanism and pedagogy. And there are many

Starting point is 15:33:47 others I shall think of as time goes on. You must forgive me then, and not think too hardly of me. I drink your health, here said in Bruni. I drink to those literary endeavors of yours for the elimination of human suffering. He ceased speaking, bent over and drained his glass, hiccoughed twice and stood up. Now let us join the others. End of Section 46. Section 47 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 15:34:30 Section 47 Chapter 5 Valpergis Knight Part 2 "'Why, engineer, what has come over you?' The Italian asked in surprise, rising in his turn. "'That sounds like a parting.' "'A parting? No, why?' Hans Castorpe evaded him, not only in words but in action,

Starting point is 15:34:53 for he turned as he spoke, describing a curve with the upper part of his body, and coming to a stop before Frouline Englehart, who had just entered to fetch them. She said that a carnival punch, contributed by the management, was being dispensed by no lesser person than the Hoffrat himself, and bade them come if they cared for a glass. So they went together. The little round, white-covered table, with Hoffrat Berence behind it, stood the centre of a press of guests, each holding out a sherbet cup to be filled, into which the dispenser ladled the steaming drink out of a Turin. He, too, had made concessions to the carnival spirit. He wore his usual white surgeon's coat, for even today his professional activity must go on, but he had added a genuine Turkish fez crimson with a black tassel dangling over one ear.

Starting point is 15:35:46 His appearance, of itself sufficiently striking, needed no more than this to render it quite outlandish. The long white smock exaggerated his height. One felt that if he were to stand erect and hold up his head, he would be more than life-size, and atop was the small head, with its high colour and unique castor feature. Never before had Hans Castro been so impressed with its oddity as when he saw it today under this absurd headgear, the flat, snub-nosed, purple-flushed physiognomy, the watery, goggling blue eyes beneath toe-coloured brows, and the blonde, close-trimmed moustache mounted crookedly above the full bow-shaped lips. turned away from the steam that wreathed upward from the bowl,

Starting point is 15:36:30 he held the ladle high and let the sweet Iraq punch run in a brown flowing stream into the glasses they held toward him, rattling on the while with his usual flow of whimsical jargon. Herr Urion sits up above, Settembrini interpreted in a low voice with a wave of the hand. Dr. Krakowski was there too, short, stout, solid, with black alpaca shirt fastened like a domino on his shoulders. sleeves dangling. He was holding the punch-glass with his hand at the level of his eyes, and twisting the wrist round as he talked and gestured with a group of masqueraders. Music was heard. The tapir-faced lady was playing Handel's Largo on the violin, and then a drawing-room sonata by Grieg, characteristically Northern in mood.

Starting point is 15:37:16 The Mannheimer accompanied her on the piano. There was good-natured applause, even from the bridge tables, which had been set up and occupied by maskers, with bottles in coolers at their sides. The doors were all open, and some of the guests stood in the hall as well. A group about the punch table watched the Hoffrat, who was introducing a new diversion. Bent over the table, with his eyes closed and his head thrown back in evidence of good faith, he was sketching with his mighty hand a figure on the back of a visiting card, the outline of a pig. It was rather more fanciful than realistic, yet undoubtedly the lineaments of a pig, which under these difficult conditions, without the help of a pig, which, under these difficult conditions,

Starting point is 15:37:55 without the help of his eyes, he had managed to trace. It was a feat, and he could perform it. The little eyes were almost in the right place. So was the pointed ear, and the tiny legs under the rounded little belly. The curving line of the back ended in a small, neat ringlet of tail. There was a general, ah, as he finished. Then everyone was fired with an ambition to emulate the master. What abortions were brought forth!

Starting point is 15:38:22 They lacked all coherence. The eyes were outside the head. the legs inside the paunch, the line of the latter came nowhere near joining, little tail curled away by itself without organic connection with the figure, an independent arabesque. They nearly split with laughing. The group increased. The notice of the bridge party was attracted.

Starting point is 15:38:42 The players were drawn by curiosity and came up holding their cards, fan-shaped in their hands. The bystanders watched the performer to see he did not wink, which his feeling of powerlessness made him sometimes do. They giggled and goffawed while he committed his frantic blunders and burst out in extravagant mirth when he at last opened his eyes and looked down upon his ridiculous handiwork. Blatent self-confidence lured everyone on to try his hand.

Starting point is 15:39:09 The card, a large one, was soon filled on both sides with overlapping failures. The hoffrat contributed a second from his case, whereupon lawyer Paravant, after taking thought, assayed to draw a pig without lifting the pencil. and lo, the measure of his unsuccess led all the rest. His creation had no faintest likeness, either to a pig or to anything else on the broad earth. It was greeted with hilarity and boisterous congratulations. Menu cards were fetched from the dining room, and now several people could draw at the same time, each performer having his own circle of onlookers and aspirants waiting for the pencil he was using.

Starting point is 15:39:48 There were three pencils. They snatched them out of each other's hands. The hoffron having set the sport afoot and seen it thriving, withdrew with his adjutants. Hans Kastorp stood in the thick of the crowd at Yoakim's back, watching. He rested his elbow on his cousin's shoulder and supported his chin with all five fingers of that hand. His other arm set akimbo on his hip. He was talking and laughing, anxious to try his skill, asked on all sides for a pencil, and at length received a stump of a thing, hardly to be held between thumb and forefinger. Then he shut his eyes, lifted his face to the ceiling, and drew, all the time uttering

Starting point is 15:40:28 objugations against the pencil. Some horrible inanity upon the paper, in his haste spoiling even this, and running off the paper onto the tablecloth. "'That doesn't count,' he cried, as his audience burst out in well-merited jeers. "'What can you do with a pencil like that? Deuce take it!' And he flung the offending morsel into the punchbowl. Has anybody a decent one? "'Who will lend me a pencil? I must have another try. A pencil, a pencil, who has a pencil?' he shouted, leaning with his left hand on the table and shaking the other high in the air. There was no answer. Then he turned, and passing through the rooms, went straight up to Claudia Shosha,

Starting point is 15:41:12 who, as he was well aware, was standing near the door of the little salon, watching with a smile, the throng round the punch table. Behind him he heard someone calling. "'Eufonious words in a foreign tongue. "'E, engagenia, expect, what what does? "'Enginea, appo de regionis sa. "'May matto, this rachosso.' "'But he drowned out the voice with his own, "'and hair set in Brini, flinging up his hand with a swing of the arm,

Starting point is 15:41:40 "'a gesture common in his own country, "'whose meaning it would be hard to put into words, "'and giving vent to a long-drawn, "'E-E, eh,' turned his back on the room, "'and the carnival Gerties. but Hans Castorpe was standing on the tiled court of the school yard, gazing at close quarters into those blue-gray-green epicanthus eyes above the prominent cheekbones and saying, do you happen to have a pencil?

Starting point is 15:42:07 He was deadly pale, as pale as when he had come back, blood-spattered to the lecture from that walk of his. The nerves controlling the blood vessels that supplied his face functioned so well that the skin robbed of all its blood went quite cold. The nose looked peaked, and the hollows beneath the young eyes were lead-coloured, like any corpses. And the Sympathus caused his heart, Hans Castob's heart, to thump in such a way that it was impossible to breathe, except in gasps. And shivers ran over him, due to the functioning of the sebaceous glands, which, with the hair follicles, erected themselves. She stood there in her paper cap and looked him up and down with a smile that betrayed no trace of pity, nor any concern for the ravages written on his brow. The sex knows

Starting point is 15:42:58 no such compassion, no mercy for the pangs that passion brings. In that element the woman is far more at home than the man, to whom, by his very nature, it is foreign. Nor does she ever encounter him in it, save with mocking and malignant joy. Compassion. indeed he would have none of. He had used the second person singular. She answered, I? Perhaps I have, let me see. Her voice and smile did betray an excitement,

Starting point is 15:43:28 a consciousness, such as comes when the first word is uttered in a relationship long secretly sustained, a subtle consciousness, which concentrates all the past in a single moment of the present. You are so eager, you are very ambitious. She continued thus to mock him, in her slightly veiled, pleasantly husky voice with her quaint pronunciation, giving a foreign sound to the R, and making the vowels too open, even accenting the word ambitious on the first syllable with exotic effect, rummaging and peering the while in her leather bag, when she fetched out, first a handkerchief,

Starting point is 15:44:06 and then a little silver pencil, slender and fragile, a pretty trinket, scarcely meant for use. the other the first one had been something more to take hold of. Voila, she said, and held the toy by its end before his eyes, between thumb and forefinger, and lightly turned it to and fro. Since she both gave and withheld it, he took it, so to speak, without receiving it. That is, he held out his hand with the fingers ready to grasp the delicate thing, but actually not touching it. His eyes, in their leaden sockets, went from the lest of the little object to Claudia's tartar physiognomy. His bloodless lips were open, and so remained.

Starting point is 15:44:49 He did not use them to utter the words, as he said. You see, I knew you would have one. Prunegard, he is a fragile, she said. Their heads bent over it together, and she showed him the mechanism. It was quite ordinary. The little needle of hard, probably worthless lead, came down as one loosened the screw. They stood bent toward each other. The stiff collar of his evening dress served him to support his chin. A poor thing but yours,

Starting point is 15:45:24 he said, brow to brow with her, speaking down upon the pencil, stiff liped so that most of the labials went unsounded. Ah, you are even witty, she answered him with a short laugh. She straightened up and surrendered the pencil. It is a question by what means he was witty.

Starting point is 15:45:42 since it was plain there was not a drop of blood in his head. Well, away with you. Go and draw. Draw yourself out. And wittily in her turn she seemed to drive him away. But you have not drawn yet. You must draw too, he said, without managing the M in must, and drew a step backwards, invitingly. I, she said again, with an inflection of surprise, which seemed to have reference to something else than his invitation. She stood a moment in smiling confusion. Then, as if magnetised, followed him a few steps toward the punch table. But interest in the activity there seemed to have fallen

Starting point is 15:46:25 away. Someone was still drawing, but without an audience. The cards were covered with futilities. They had all done their worst, and now the current had set in another direction. Directly the doctors had left the scene. The word had gone round for a dance. Already the tables were being pushed back. Spies were posted at the doors of the writing and music rooms with orders to give the sign in case the old man, Krakowski, or the Oberon, should show themselves. A young Slavic youth attacked Con Expressione, the keyboard of the little nut-wood piano, and the first couple began to turn about within an irregular circle of chairs and tables on which the spectators perched themselves. Hans Kastorp dismissed the departing punch table with a wave of the hand, and

Starting point is 15:47:11 indicated with his chin two empty seats in a sheltered corner of the small salon near the portiers. He did not speak, perhaps because the music was too loud. He drew up a seat. It was a reclining chair with plusha pustre, for Frau Schorcher, in the corner he had indicated, and took for himself a creaking, crackling basket chair with curling arms, in which he sat down, bent forward toward her, his own arms on the arms of the chair, her pencil in his hand and his feet drawn. back under his seat. She lay buried in the plushy slope, her knees brought high, notwithstanding which she crossed one leg over the other and swung her foot in the air, with its black patent leather shoe and black silk stocking spanned over the ankle-bone. There was a coming and

Starting point is 15:47:59 going in the room, some of the guests standing up to dance while others took their places to rest. You've a new frock-on, he said, as an excuse for looking at her, and heard her her answer. New, so you are acquainted with my wardrobe. Am I right? Yes, I had it made lately. The tailor down in the village, Lubacek, did it. He does work for several of the ladies up here. Do you like it? Very much, he said, surveying her once more and then casting down his eyes. Would you like to dance? He added. Would you like to? She asked, with lifted brows, yet smiling, and he answered, I would if you wished.

Starting point is 15:48:48 That is not so brave as I thought you were, she said. And when he laughed deprecatingly, she went on, Your cousin has gone up already. Yes, he is my cousin, he confirmed her, unnecessarily. I noticed he had gone. He is probably in the rescue by now. "'It's a young man "'treé, very adroit,

Starting point is 15:49:09 "'tre unette, "'tre almond. "'Edrouin, honest, "'he repeated. "'I understand French "'better than I speak it. "'You mean he is pedantic? "'You think we are pedantic,

Starting point is 15:49:21 "'we Germans? "'Nu otter almond. "'Nu croissant "'de vot of your cousin. "'But it's true. "'You are a little bourgeois. "'You're more than the liberty. "'To the Europe,

Starting point is 15:49:34 Lece. Eme? Eme? What's the monque de definition, this word there.

Starting point is 15:49:42 We love what we have not. That is proverbial. Hence Kastop asserted.

Starting point is 15:49:48 Lately, he went on, I've thought very much about liberty. That is, I've heard the words

Starting point is 15:49:52 so often, I've begun to think about it. I'd tell it in French,

Starting point is 15:49:57 what I have been thinking. What I Europe Nome La Liberte, it

Starting point is 15:50:02 could be a things as a pardont and a bourgeois in comparison

Starting point is 15:50:06 of our business of order. It's that. Tien, it's amusing.

Starting point is 15:50:13 It's your cousin to think to say to say a strange like that

Starting point is 15:50:17 the real a good am. A simple nature not exposed

Starting point is 15:50:22 to intellectual dangers, you say, but he is not

Starting point is 15:50:25 bojoas, he is military. Not exposed, she repeated his word

Starting point is 15:50:31 not without difficulty. "'You mean a nature "'tut a fair, "'sure her own "'surely, "'but he is seriously "'malade,

Starting point is 15:50:40 "'ton poor cousin. "'Who told you, sir? "'We all know "'about each other at "'upy. "'Was it Hoffretty "'Hawfretting's? "'Petter,

Starting point is 15:50:50 "'Ome has made "'se tableau. "'Cet to "'and, "'on, "'Pon't you, "'you've found "'reuced,

Starting point is 15:50:58 "'you've been "'Deagh, "'he's "'Earns' Berens has very exactly rended your paw, oh, really, very fidelment.

Starting point is 15:51:09 I'd like to be a portraitist, me also, for having an occasion to study your like he. Parle,

Starting point is 15:51:18 Alman, if you please. Oh, I speak German, even in French. It's a sort of artistic and medical,

Starting point is 15:51:26 in a word, it's a letter human to comprehend. What do you say? shall we dance? Oh no, it would be childish behind their backs. Ossito that Berens revriendra,

Starting point is 15:51:40 all the monde vae precipitate on the chaise. It's a far ridicule. Have you such respect for him as that? For whom? she said, giving her query a curt for an intonation. For Berens?

Starting point is 15:51:57 But va don't with your Berens. There really is not room to dance. "'And then, on, on?' "'Guesslets,' he assented and gazed beyond her, with his blue eyes, "'his grandfather's musing eyes in his pale young face, "'at the antics of the masked patients in salon and writing-room. "'There was the silent sister, capering with the blue peter.

Starting point is 15:52:21 "'There was Frow Solomon, as Master of Ceremonies, "'dressed in evening clothes with a white waistcoat and swelling shirt-front. "'She wore a monocle with a tiny painted moustache, and twirled upon tiny, high-heeled, patent-leather shoes that came out oddly beneath her black trousers as she danced with the piero, whose blood-red lips stared from his ghastly white face with the eyes of an albino rabbit. The Greek flourished his symmetrical legs in their lavender tights,

Starting point is 15:52:50 alongside the darkly glittering Rasmussen in his low-cut gown, lawyer Paravant in his kimono. Frou Consul-General Vermbrant and young Gancer danced all three together, with their arms round each other. As for Frau Stor, she danced with her broom, pressing it to her heart, and caressing the bristles as though they were a man's hair. End of Section 47.

Starting point is 15:53:21 Section 48 of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Section 48. Chapter 5 Valperger's Night Part 3. Yes. Let's, Hans Castorpe repeated mechanically.

Starting point is 15:53:44 They spoke in low tones covered by the music. Let us sit here and look on as though in a dream, for it is like a dream to me that we are sitting like this. Common reve singularly profound, because it's a profounder very profoundly for revee like that. I mean, it's a rave bien-connew, "'Reveigh of all time, long, eternal, "'wee, being saty, pre of you,

Starting point is 15:54:13 "'com at present. "'Ve'a-laternity. "'Poet,' she said, "'bojoa, humanist, and poet. "'Wala, the world, "'of-complea, as, as it for. "'I think we know we "'ne we not to dole-n-n-n-n-nulment

Starting point is 15:54:32 "'com he said. "'sue, "'sue no regard, "'we are "'we are "'deaelike "'t' children of life. "'Too simply.

Starting point is 15:54:42 "'Joly mo! "'Dy me, "'don't, "'he not "'it had been "'hardtie "'to reve this "'reve-la,

Starting point is 15:54:50 "'plute. "'It's a little "'that Mr. "'Sue "'to address "'the power "'a son humble servant. "'Purquois

Starting point is 15:55:00 "'de parol, "'he said, "'Purquare "'Pr' "'Parl "'Parl "'Parl "'Parl "'Palal. "'Parlay, discoverer "'Cat an thing "'replican, I lear "'but I doubt

Starting point is 15:55:11 "'that it's a poetic "'o m'am "'degrad. "'One of our pensioners "'that is a little "'tovenue, "'Much, Mr. Settembrini, "'he has been

Starting point is 15:55:23 "'to you lance "'ke some power. "'And, well, "'it's a grand "'parlour, "'sondu't, "'he even "'be much a recited

Starting point is 15:55:32 "'to be of be a beauver, but is a poet, this man that? I regret sincerely, to not have never, oh, the pleasure to make the concessance of this chevalier.

Starting point is 15:55:46 I do it quite. Ah, you know you know? It's a phrase quite indifferent, what I did there. I, you know, I remarked well,

Starting point is 15:56:00 I don't speak gay, the French, "'Porto, with you, "'I prefer this language to the Mien, "'car for me, "'parly French, "'s and to speak "'in' "'in some way,

Starting point is 15:56:12 "'sone responsibility, "'or, like, "'we, we, "'parlant, "'in' we, "'an pretty. "'It's a few pre. "'It's just.

Starting point is 15:56:23 "'Prne Hans Castro. "'Pover affair. "'In the eternity, "'on the eternity, you know, "'on fernity, you know, "'we can do you see, "'and we're Designant, a little cochant, we'll punch the head in arreire, and we're

Starting point is 15:56:38 very, it's a lot, that. You are at your own time, without any doubt, you know the connoeufant. It's a few rebeer, a sequeurier. And thence castor, if I had talked earlier, it might have fallen before, it would have to tell you. "'Eh, well, is that you have the intention to me tutet for "'tou? But, yes, I tautuay to tutuay, and I tutuet eternally. "'It's a bit far, for example.

Starting point is 15:57:17 "'In all the case, you never have not too long time to me to, "'I go partier.' "'It took time for the words to penetrate his consciousness. "'Then he started up, staring about, staring about. him as though roused out of a dream. The conversation had proceeded rather slowly, for hands cast up spoke French uneasily, feeling for the sense. The piano had been silent a while, now it sounded again, under the hands of the man from Mannheim, who had relieved the Slavic youth. He put some music in place, and Freeline Englehart sat down beside him to turn the leaves.

Starting point is 15:57:55 The party was thinning out. Many of the guests had presumably taken up the horizontal. from where they sat they could see no one, but there were players at the card tables in the writing room. You are going to... What? Hans Castorba asked, quite dashed. I am going away, she repeated, smiling with pretended surprise at his discomfiture. Impossible, he said.

Starting point is 15:58:19 You are jesting. Not at all. I am perfectly serious. I am leaving. When? Tomorrow. After dinner. It took place within him a feeling of general collapse.

Starting point is 15:58:35 He said, where? Far away. To Dagestan? You ne'n't mal-instrued, perhaps, for the moment. You are cured, then? Count of that. No.

Starting point is 15:58:51 But Perens thinks there is not greatly more to be gained here for the present. That's why I will risk a little changement of air. Then you were coming back? That is the question, or rather the question is when. Cont to me, you know, I am the liberty, avant all, and notably, the same, cell, to choose my domicile. You know what it is,

Starting point is 15:59:19 to be obscened of independence. It's of my race, perhaps. And your marie, or Dagestine, you accord, your liberty? "'It's the malady who me la rend. "'Me-weller at this end-to-the-troarthe third time. "'I've passed a year, this time. "'Possible that I revienn,

Starting point is 15:59:43 "'but then you're very long, "'degu'll be long time.' "'You think so, Claudia?' "'Mond prom, also, "'vrame, you'll be pran, "'the coutune, the coutume, "'the coutume of carnival.' "'Then you know about my case, too?'

Starting point is 16:00:00 "'Yes. No, how is it these things here? You have a little tach humid, there's a bit of

Starting point is 16:00:11 fever, isn't it? 37 and 8, or new, the afternoon, said Hans Castorpe,

Starting point is 16:00:18 and you? Oh, my case, you know, it's a bit more complicated, not all

Starting point is 16:00:25 a quite simple. There is something in this branch of the human,

Starting point is 16:00:30 Dite la medicine, Hans Kastop said, Kone appellement tuberculous de vases de l'olmph. Ah, too amosharty, my cher, we see well. And you, forgive me, let me ask you a question. Ask it in all earnestness. Six months ago, when I left the table for my first examination, you looked round after me. Do you remember?

Starting point is 16:00:58 What question? "'No, there six months.' "'Did you know where I was going?' "'Cert. "'Cette, it was a "'perin's had told you.' "'Tusure, Sir Behrens. "'Oh, he has represented

Starting point is 16:01:13 "'tapeau, in a fashion "'tel-monde exact. "'Dareur, it's a vef "'o-jou ard-ond "'and who possess a-calfe "'tray-remarkable. "'I think he'll "'that he can't your core,

Starting point is 16:01:28 not only as medicine, but also as an other discipline of the human. You have decidedly reason to say, that you talk in a dream, my name. So, let me revee to new, after my voice, reveighed so cruellyll by this cloche of alarm of your departure, set me, so teardue,

Starting point is 16:01:54 and at present, or in reality, I have made your consciousness you may talk to depart. I repeat,

Starting point is 16:02:02 that we have could cause more you would have liked it?

Starting point is 16:02:08 I, you never may be chaperra not, it's it's

Starting point is 16:02:12 to your interest to you are, is that too timid

Starting point is 16:02:18 to to you approach to an woman to

Starting point is 16:02:20 to talk in we have there there there

Starting point is 16:02:24 there was there someone to to impish. I tell you I did,

Starting point is 16:02:29 I don't want to tell you. Fase, respond so Mr.

Starting point is 16:02:35 Bo-parleur this Italian that who has quitted the night. Is he

Starting point is 16:02:41 he had launched Tinto? I don't have heard

Starting point is 16:02:46 absolutely I I'm soci very very very so much

Starting point is 16:02:50 when my eyes to see and to be it had you been so easy to do have

Starting point is 16:02:57 been so easy to do do have been the world. There were also my cousin with which I was there and who

Starting point is 16:03:05 incline very poor to be to be able to he's a thing, he can't return in

Starting point is 16:03:12 the plain for so for the poor diabble he is in effect more

Starting point is 16:03:19 malade than he has, your friend Italian, the rest, not very not more. He said,

Starting point is 16:03:27 but my cousin, is it true? You me afraid. Fort possible that he will be more if he may be

Starting point is 16:03:36 a soldier in the plains. That he will be the more terribly mo, not?

Starting point is 16:03:44 But it's strange, he no I'm impression not so today, this

Starting point is 16:03:49 moment. It's a way to talk conventional when I said you're

Starting point is 16:03:55 afraid. The idea of the word not she's I'm afraid I'm

Starting point is 16:04:03 not pitey I do my good Joachim or by

Starting point is 16:04:08 when I'm on intend that he will might might

Starting point is 16:04:10 be that it's very his state resomble both

Starting point is 16:04:15 to my and I don't not particularly imposant. He is Moriband, and I am I'm ameoerous, and well, you have

Starting point is 16:04:26 talked to my cousin at the atalier of photography intimate in the antechamble. You do you seein. I'm a little. So, this day, Berens has made your portrait transparent? But, yes. My God, and there, do you, on you? No. I'm in my chamber. Ah, in your chamber, count on my, I'm still

Starting point is 16:04:55 in my port-few. Do you that I do you do you do let's see? My curiosity is not invincible. It's a aspect very innocent. I've seen your portrait

Starting point is 16:05:11 exterior. I'd like very more to see your portrait interior, who is in your room? Let me

Starting point is 16:05:21 demand other other things, sometimes a Monsieur Rousse who

Starting point is 16:05:25 loge in village, come to see? Who is in what bue

Starting point is 16:05:30 vien he's he is jolly in espionage, I've well,

Starting point is 16:05:37 I'm respond, yes, it's a compatriot suffraught, a man, I've

Starting point is 16:05:44 made his Konezance to a other station bannier

Starting point is 16:05:48 there a year a few years our relations we're

Starting point is 16:05:52 we're we're we're we're we're we're fomom two or

Starting point is 16:05:58 three papyr and we bavardon we we philosophing we we're

Starting point is 16:06:02 we're about of the human of the world of many

Starting point is 16:06:07 of many things here my count Rondue Are you

Starting point is 16:06:11 satisfied? Of the moral also Is what you have found in fact of moral, by example? The moral? SELATTS.

Starting point is 16:06:24 It is very, it seems that it would chichet the moral, non, in the virtue, it's to say in the reason, the discipline, the bonn more, the honesty, but,

Starting point is 16:06:37 but, in the contrary, I mean, in the pache and s abandonment of danger, to what is the nuzer, to what we consume. It seems that it is more moral

Starting point is 16:06:49 to be rid of and even to becky than to be deserer than to be able to be the

Starting point is 16:06:56 great moralists were not of virtue but desaventure in the mal of vicious

Starting point is 16:07:05 of the great pecheos who us ensignment to us inclined Christian

Starting point is 16:07:10 before the miser all that "'To play a Bucco, ne'ssepa?' "'He was silent, sitting as before with his feet entwined together, thrust back beneath the creaking wicker chair, leaning toward the figure opposite in its cocked hat,

Starting point is 16:07:27 her pencil between his fingers. With Hans Lorenz Kastop's blue eyes, he looked out into the room. It was empty, the company dispersed. The piano in the corner, diagonally opposite, was being touched softly and lightly with one hand by the Mannheimer. by whose side sat Fraline Englehart, turning the leaves of a music-book she held on her knee. At this pause which had ensued in the conversation between Hans Kastop and Claudia Shosha, the pianist left off playing and sat with his hand in his lap,

Starting point is 16:07:59 while Fraline Engelhardt continued to turn the pages of her music book. These four alone remained from all the carnival merry-makers. They sat here motionless. The silence lasted several minutes, deeper and deeper. under its weight sank the heads of the pair at the piano. His toward his keyboard, hers toward her book. But at last the two, as by common consent, stood up, cautiously, and carefully refraining from any glance in the direction of the opposite corner. Their heads drawn down in their shoulders, their arms hanging stiffly at their sides, disappeared together, on tiptoe, through the writing-room.

Starting point is 16:08:39 "'Everyone is going,' said Frosha. "'Cete the "'It's the last. "'It's a fete' "'And bien, "'lafeu'cée' "'She raised her arms "'to remove the paper cap

Starting point is 16:08:52 "'from her head "'with its reddish braid "'wound round it like a wreath. "'You knowse the consequences, monsieur?' "'But Hans Castorpegain said them, "'closing his eyes "'and not otherwise changing his position. "'He answered,

Starting point is 16:09:08 "'Jame, Claudia. "'Jame, jeetre, jeetre, you? If one may say that, one should be able to. If one may say that, one should be able to. This form to address to a person who is the occidentate cultivated and of the civilization humanitar, me seems far bourgeois and pedant. Why, in the form?

Starting point is 16:09:37 The form is the pedantary, it is the pedantary, it is. what you have fixed at the regard of the moral, you and your compatriot, suffering. You want seriously that that me superintend? For what sort of me, you, say, what's what you think of me? It's a subject

Starting point is 16:10:00 who doesn't know a lot of thought. You are a pretty, bonoom, conventable, of a bonnetism, of a pettisant, disciple, docile, of his preceptor,

Starting point is 16:10:13 and who retorned soon to forget completely, that he has never talked in reweb, here and

Starting point is 16:10:21 to help to make his pay grand and puissant by his work on onette

Starting point is 16:10:27 onette on on the chante, here your photographie intimate, fete

Starting point is 16:10:32 his appearance, you know it's exact, I expect. There there

Starting point is 16:10:37 Mank some detain that Berens I have found. Ah, the medicines in truvening always, they're so you talk like

Starting point is 16:10:48 Mr. Cetembrini, and my fiev? Where do come to her? Alland, so, it's an incident

Starting point is 16:10:55 without consequence that will not, Cladier, you know, that you know that

Starting point is 16:11:01 you say there is not true, and you do it is without conviction, I'm

Starting point is 16:11:06 sure. the fief of my core and the batement of my cure harassed and the frissonement of my members, it's the contrary of incident, because there's nothing other. And his pale face with the twitching lips bent closer over hers. "'Rien of other than my love for you, "'wee. "'Sett a word who has sassied at an instant, "'or my eyes t'n't have seen,

Starting point is 16:11:33 "'or, or, rather, that I reconno, when I've recognized you, reconno, and it's he, obviously, who made to that way,

Starting point is 16:11:43 "'What folly! Oh, the love is nothing, if it not of

Starting point is 16:11:48 the folly, a thing insensate, defundue and an adventure in the mal.

Starting point is 16:11:55 Othermore, it's a banality agreeable, bonn for on fair to

Starting point is 16:12:00 little songs paisible in the plain, but as as I I've been recognized and that I've recognized my

Starting point is 16:12:08 love for you. Yes, it's very, I've already known, ancienement. You and your eyes mervellously

Starting point is 16:12:16 oblique, and your mouth and your voice with which you talk a one before I

Starting point is 16:12:24 were a collegian, I'd you'd demand your crayon to find your concess

Starting point is 16:12:29 monaceace mundane because I'm irresanableable and it's of that "'sondut, it's of my ancient

Starting point is 16:12:37 "'amot for to-wa' "'that his monk me rest "'that Berens has found in my "'and, who indicates "'that I did also, "'I'm mad.' "'His teeth stuck together. "'As he raved, he had drawn one foot

Starting point is 16:12:52 "'from under his chair and moved it forward, "'so that the other knee touched the floor "'where he kneeled before her, "'his head bent, his whole body quivering. "'Jetem,' he babbled. "'I t'et hemey, de T'all de T'all of my life, "'my rave, my soul, my envy, my internal desire.' "'Alan, along,' she said,

Starting point is 16:13:16 "'sit a preceptor to voyeur.' But he shook his head violently, "'bowed as it was toward the carpet and replied, "'I'm o'clock, I'm fischere. "'I'm not, I'm fich to all these carducci "'and of the republic and the count "'and of progress human in the time, "'ca, I'm sorry, I'm "'we,'

Starting point is 16:13:34 She caressed softly the close-cropped hair at the back of his head. "'Petie bourgeois,' she said. "'Jolet bojua, a petit tach humid. "'Esse of re that you ma'am, T'O'n?' And beside himself at her touch, now on both knees, with bowed head and closed eyes, he went on, "'Oh, the amor, tusset. "'The core, l'amor, la more, the more,

Starting point is 16:13:59 "'the three ne' fon can, "'ca, the core, it's the malady and la volupte, and it's he who is he did the war. Yes,

Starting point is 16:14:08 they are chanel two-de the love and the love, and

Starting point is 16:14:11 there their terror and their great magic. But the more,

Starting point is 16:14:16 you understand, it's a part a something malfam impudant

Starting point is 16:14:21 that makes rugire to ha and other part

Starting point is 16:14:25 it's a power very solonel and very maj

Starting point is 16:14:28 much more more more more than the very

Starting point is 16:14:32 riant, gainant of the money, and facissing his pence, much more venerable than the progress that bavarde by the tomb, because she is the history and the nobleness and the piteous and the eternal, and the sacre who makes tir the chapeau and marches on the point of the feet. Or, de mame, the core, he also, and the love of the core, are an affair indecente and facheous, and the core ruggie and pallied at his suffice

Starting point is 16:15:05 by fire and haunt of him but also he is a grand glory adorable image miraculous of the life organic

Starting point is 16:15:15 saint merveille of the form and of the beauty and the love for him for the core human it's even

Starting point is 16:15:24 an interest extremely humanitar and a puisance more educative than all the pedagogy of the world.

Starting point is 16:15:34 Oh, enchantant, beauty, organic, which no can't pose any of tinture

Starting point is 16:15:40 to the oil, nor the pire, but of material vivante and corruptible, plain of

Starting point is 16:15:45 secret febrile, of the life and of the puriture. Look the

Starting point is 16:15:52 symmetry merveue of the edific human, the the epos, the emmble

Starting point is 16:15:58 fluricic of the bar and of other on the poitrine, and the coat arranging by pair, and the nombrile in the molest of the vort, and the sex obscure under the quies. Look, the homoplata, be re-moved, soothe's soyeous of the dough, and the chine who descend towards the luxuriance double and fresh of fess, and the grand

Starting point is 16:16:24 branch of vases, and the nerves, who pass to tronk, or ramo, by the estes, and the and as well as the structure of the brores correspond to the cell of the jones. Oh, the dous regions of the genture interior of cudd and jarrie, with their abundance of delicatess organic, so their cussin of chere! What fete immense to the caress, these on-drailicious of the core human! Fet to mourn't, after!

Starting point is 16:16:58 Yes, my God, Let me feel the odor of the Pau of your rotul, on which the ingenious capsule articular secretes on the wheel glissant. Let me touch and devotement of my bush, lateria femoralis, which bat at the front of your cuis

Starting point is 16:17:19 and that's devis more bad and in the two arteries of Tibia. Let me resentire the exhalation of your paw and tate t'et on duvé, image human, do and lalbumine, destined for the anatomy of tombos, and lest me peri,

Starting point is 16:17:38 my l'evre o'etienne. He did not stir, or open his eyes, on his knees with bowed head, his hands holding the silver pencil outstretched before him, he remained swaying and quivering. She said,

Starting point is 16:17:57 "'Tu is, in effect, a gallon who has solicited an manner profound to the almond. And she set the paper cap on his head. Adieu, my prince, Cannaval.

Starting point is 16:18:11 You have a mauves line of fievre this night. I've you'll pre-die. She slipped from her chair and glided over the carpet to the door, where she paused an instant,

Starting point is 16:18:23 framed in the doorway. Half turned toward him with one bare arm lifted high, her hand upon the hinge. Over her shoulder, she said softly, "'Noblié not to me rendre, my crayon,' and went out. End of Section 48.

Starting point is 16:18:47 End of Volume 1 of the Magic Mountain.

Classic Audiobook Collection - The Magic Mountain Vol1 by Thomas Mann ~ Full Audiobook [drama]

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