A LITTLE time passed, some three or four weeks—this on our own reckoning, since on Hans Castorp’s we cannot depend. They brought no great change. On our hero’s part they witnessed an abiding scorn of the unforeseen circumstances which kept him in undeserved exile, of, in particular, that circumstance which called itself Pieter Peeperkorn, when it took unto itself a glass of gin—the disturbing presence of that kingly, incoherent man, which upset Hans Castorp far more than had the presence of the “organ-grinder” in the old days. His brows took on two querulous vertical wrinkles, and five times daily he contracted them as he sat and looked at the returned traveller—glad despite himself to be able to look at her—and at the high-and-mighty presence sitting there all unaware what a poor light past events shed on his present pretensions.
One evening the social hour happened to be livelier than usual—which it might be at any time without especial cause. A Hungarian student played spirited gipsy waltzes on his fiddle; and Hofrat Behrens, who chanced to be present for a quarter-hour with Dr. Krokowski, got somebody to play the melody of the “Pilgrims’ Chorus” on the bass notes of the piano, while he himself operated in a skipping movement with a brush over the treble, and parodied the violin counterpoint. Everybody laughed; and the Hofrat, nodding benevolent approval of his own sprightly performance, withdrew amid applause. The gaiety prolonged itself, there was more music, people sat down with drinks beside them to dominoes and bridge, trifled with the optical instruments, or stood in groups talking. Even the Russian circle mingled with the others in hall and music-room. Mynheer Peeperkorn was to be seen among them—or rather, he could not but be seen, wherever he was, his kingly head towering high above any scene, and dwarfing it by the sheer weight and majesty of his person. Those who stood about him, drawn first by the reports of the man’s wealth, soon hung absorbed upon his personality. Forgetful of all else, they stood laughing and nodding, spellbound by the pallid eye, by the brow’s mighty folds, by the compulsion of the gestures his longnailed hands performed. And never, for one moment, were they conscious of any lack in his incoherent, rhapsodic, literally futile remarks.
If we look about for our friend Hans Castorp, we shall find him in the reading-and writing-room, where once (but that “once” is vague, not the teller nor the reader of this story, nor yet its hero, being any longer clear upon the degree of its “onceness”)—where once he had received certain very important communications touching the history of human progress. It was quiet here—only two or three other persons shared his retreat. At one of the double tables, under the electric light, a man was writing; and a lady with two pairs of glasses on her nose sat by the bookshelves and turned over the leaves of an illustrated magazine. Hans Castorp sat near the open door to the music-room, with his back to the portières, on a chair that happened to be standing there, a plush-covered chair in Renaissance style, with a high straight back, and no arms. He held a newspaper as though to read it, but instead was listening with his head on one side to the snatches of music and talk from the next room. His brows were dark, his thoughts seemed not on harmonies bent, but rather on the thorny path of his present disillusionment. Bitter, bitter was the weird of our young man, who had borne out the long waiting only to be gulled at the end. Indeed he seemed not far from a sudden determination to fling his paper upon the chair he sat in, to escape by the hall door and exchange the empty gaieties of the salon for the frosty solitude of his balcony, and the society of his Maria.
“And your cousin, Monsieur?” a voice suddenly asked above and behind his shoulder. It was a voice enchanting to his ear; it seemed his senses had been expressly contrived to perceive its sweet-and-bitter huskiness as the very height and summit of earthly harmonies; it was the voice that once had said to him: “Certainly. But be careful not to break it”—a compelling, fateful voice. And if he heard aright, it had asked him about Joachim.
Slowly he let his newspaper fall, and turned his face up a little, so that the crown of his head came against the straight back of his chair. He even closed his eyes, but quickly opened them, and gazed somewhere into space—the expression on the poor wight’s face was well-nigh that of a sleep-walker, or clairvoyant. He wished she might ask again, but she did not, he was not even sure she still stood behind him, when, after all that pause, so tardily and with scarce audible voice he answered: “He is dead. He went down below to the service, and he died.”
He realized that this “dead” was the first word to fall between them; likewise, simultaneously, that she was not sure of expressing herself in his tongue, and chose short and easy phrases to condole in. Still standing behind and above him, she said:
“Oh, woe, alas! That is too bad! Quite dead and buried? Since when?”
“Some time ago. His mother came and took him back with her. He had grown a beard, a soldier’s beard. They fired three salvoes over his grave.”
“He deserved them. He was a very good young man. Far better than most other people—than some others one knows.”
“Yes, he was good and brave. Rhadamanthus always talked about his doggedness. But his body would have it otherwise. Rebellio carnis, the Jesuits call it. He always set store by his body—in the highest sense. However, his body thought otherwise, and snapped its fingers at doggedness. But it is more moral to lose your life than to save it.”
“Monsieur is still the philosophizing fainéant, I see. But Rhadamanthus? Who is that?”
“Behrens. That is Settembrini’s name for him.”
“Ah, Settembrini. Him I know. That Italian who—whom I did not like. He was not hu— man. He had—arrogance.” The voice dwelt on the word human—dreamily, fanatically; and accented arrogance on the final syllable. “He is no longer here? And I am so stupid, I do not know what is Rhadamanthus.”
“A humanistic allusion. Settembrini has moved away. We’ve philosophized a lot of late, he and I and Naphta.”
“Who is Naphta?”
“His adversary.”
“If he is that, then I would gladly make his acquaintance.—Did I not tell you your cousin would die if he went down to be a soldier?”
And Hans Castorp answered as he had vowed and dreamed: “Tu l’as su,” he said.
“What are you thinking of?” she asked him.
There was a long pause. He did not retract, he waited, with the crown of his head pressed against the chair-back, and his gaze half tranced, to hear her voice again; and again he was not sure she was still there, again he was afraid the broken music might have drowned her departing footsteps. At last it came again: “And Monsieur did not go down to his cousin’s funeral?”
He replied: “No, I bade him adieu up here, before they shut him away, when he had begun to smile in his beard. His brow was cold— tu sais comme les fronts des morts sont froids?”
“Again! What a way is that to address a lady whom one hardly knows!”
“Must I speak not humanly, but humanistically?”
“Quelle blague! You were here all the time?”
“Yes. I waited.”
“Waited—for what?”
“For thee!”
A laugh came from above him, a word that sounded like “Madman!”—“For me?
How absurd it is— ils ne t’auraient pas laissé partir.”
“Oh, yes, Behrens would have, once—he was furious. But it would have been folly. I have not only the old scars that come from my school-days, but the fresh places that give me my fever.”
“Still fever?”
“Yes, still, a little—or nearly always. It is intermittent. But not an intermittent fever.”
“Des allusions?”
He was silent. He still gazed somnambulantly, but his brows were gathered. After a while he asked: “Et toi—où as-tu été?”
A hand struck the back of the chair. “Toujours ce tutoyer! Mais c’est un sauvage!—
Where have I been? All over. In Moscow”—the voice pronounced it Muoscow—” in Baku—in some German baths, in Spain.”
“Oh, in Spain. Did you like it?”
“So-so. The travelling is bad. The people are half Moorish. Castile is bare and stark. The Kremlin is finer than that castle or monastery, or whatever it is, at the foot of the mountains—”
“Yes, the Escurial.”
“Yes, Philip’s castle. An inhuman place. I preferred the folk-dancing in Catalonia, the sardana to the bagpipes. Moi, j’ai dansé aussi moi! they take each other’s hands and dance in a ring—the whole square is full of dancing people. C’est charmant. That is hu— man. I bought a little blue cap, such as all the men and boys of the people wear down there, almost like a fez—the boina. I shall wear it in the rest-cure, and other places, perhaps. Monsieur shall judge if it becomes me.”
“What monsieur?”
“Sitting here in this chair.”
“Not Mynheer Peeperkorn?”
“He has already pronounced judgment—he says I look charming in it.”
“He said that—all of it? Did he really finish the sentence, so it could be understood?”
“Ah! It seems Monsieur is out of temper? Monsieur would be spiteful, cutting? He would laugh at people who are much greater and better, and—more hu—man than himself and his—his ami bavard de la Méditerranée, son maître et grand parleur—
put together. But I cannot listen—”
“Have you my x-ray portrait?” he interrupted, crest-fallen.
She laughed. “I must look it out.”
“I carry yours here. And on my bedside table I have a little easel—”
He did not finish. Before him stood Peeperkorn. He had searched for his travellingcompanion, entered through the portières and stood in front of Hans Castorp’s chair, behind which he saw her talking; stood like a tower, so close to Hans Castorp as to rouse the latter from his trance, and make him realize that it was in place to get up and be mannerly. But they were so close he had to slide sidewise from his seat, and then the three stood in a triangle, the centre of which was the chair.
Frau Chauchat complied with the requirements of the civilized West, by presenting the gentlemen to each other, Hans Castorp to Peeperkorn as “an acquaintance of a former stay.” Superfluous to account for Herr Peeperkorn. She gave his name, and the Dutchman bent a look upon the young man, out of his colourless eyes, beneath the astonishing arabesque of wrinkles that made his face so like an old idol’s; gave him a look, and put out his hand, which was freckled on the back, and would have looked like a sea-captain’s, Hans Castorp thought, but for the lanceolate finger-nails. For the first time, he stood under the immediate influence of Peeperkorn’s impressive personality (personality was the word that always occurred to one in reference to this man, one knew straightway that this was a personality; and the more one saw of him the more one was convinced that a personality must look not otherwise than as he did) and his unstable youth felt the weight of this broad-shouldered, red-faced man in the sixties, with his aureole of white hair, his cracked lips and the chin-whisker that strayed long and scanty over the clerical waistcoat. Peeperkorn’s manner was courtesy itself.
“My dear sir,” he said, “with the greatest of pleasure. Don’t mention it. I am entirely your man. In making your acquaintance, I distinctly feel—as a young man, you inspire me with confidence. I like you. I—don’t mention it. Settled, sir, settled. You suit me.”
What could Hans Castorp do? Peeperkorn’s gestures were conclusive, peremptory. He liked Hans Castorp. It was “settled.” And his satisfaction gave Peeperkorn an idea, which he indicated by means of speaking gesture. His fair companion, coming to the rescue, elaborated and made it vocal.
“My child,” he said. “Very well. Very well indeed. Very. But how would it be—?
Pray understand me. Our life here is but brief. Our power to do it justice is but—
These are facts, my child. Laws. In—ex—orable. In short, my child, in short and in brief—” He paused, in an impressive attitude, which suggested that he would defer to another’s judgment but disclaim responsibility if, despite his warning, an error were committed.
Frau Chauchat was obviously skilled in interpreting his half-uttered wishes. She said: “Why not? We might remain down a little longer, make a party, perhaps, and drink a bottle of wine together.” She turned to Hans Castorp. “Make haste! Why are you waiting? We must have company, we three are not enough. Who is still in the salon? Ask anyone who is there, fetch some of your friends down from their
balconies. We will ask Dr. Ting-fu from our table.”
Peeperkorn rubbed his hands.
“Very good,” he said. “Absolutely. Capital. Do as you are bid, young man, make haste! Let us make a little company, play, and eat and drink. Let us feel that—settled, young man. Absolutely.”
Hans Castorp took the lift to the second storey. He knocked at Ferge’s door, who in his turn fetched Wehsal and Herr Albin from their chairs in the main rest-hall below. Lawyer Paravant and the Magnus couple were still in the hall, Frau Stöhr and the Kleefeld in the salon. A large table was set up under the centre chandelier, chairs and serving-tables put about. Mynheer courteously greeted each guest as he appeared, with a glance of the pallid eyes and a lifting of the masklike brows. They sat down, twelve together, Hans Castorp between his kingly host and Clavdia Chauchat. Cards and counters were produced, they decided on some rounds of vingt et un. Peeperkorn summoned the dwarf and in his most impressive manner ordered wine—white Chablis of ‘06, three bottles for a start—and dessert, whatever pâtisseries and dried fruits were to be had. He rubbed his hands in high glee as the good things came in, and communicated his sentiments in broken phrases which were none the less entirely successful, at least in the direction of establishing his “personality.” He laid both hands on his neighbour’s arm, then raised his long forefinger with the pointed nail, and claimed and received the admiration of the table for the splendid golden colour of the wine in the rummers, for the sugar that sweated from the Malaga grapes, for a certain sort of little salt and poppy-seed pretzel. These, he declared, were divine, and with an imperious gesture nipped in the bud any possible protest against the strength of his adjective. He had taken charge of the bank at first, but soon turned it over to Herr Albin and was understood to say that the charge of it hindered his unfettered enjoyment.
The gambling was to him quite evidently a minor consideration. The stakes were very low, a mere trifle in his view, though the bidding, at his suggestion, began at fifty rappen, a considerable sum to most of those present. Lawyer Paravant and Frau Stöhr went white and red by turns; the latter suffered pangs of indecision when called on to decide whether it was too high for her to buy at eighteen. She squealed aloud when Herr Albin with chill routine dealt her a card so high as to confound her hopes over and over. Peeperkorn laughed heartily.
“Squeal away, madame, squeal away,” said he. “It sounds shrill and full of life, it wells up from depths—drink, madame, drink and refresh yourself for new efforts.” He filled her glass, also his neighbour’s and his own, ordered three more bottles, and clicked glasses with Wehsal and Frau Magnus the inly wasted one; they two seeming to stand in most need of enlivenment. Faces flushed more and more, from the effects of the truly marvellous wine—only Dr. Ting-fu’s remained unchangingly yellow, with jet-black slits of eyes. He staked very high, with his little suppressed giggle, and was shamelessly lucky. Lawyer Paravant, his gaze a-swim, challenged fate by putting ten francs on an only moderately hopeful opening card, bought until he was pale in the face, and then won twice his money back; for Herr Albin had rashly doubled on the strength of an ace he received. Not only the persons involved felt the shock of these events; the whole circle shared the shattering effect. Even Herr Albin, whose sangfroid outdid the croupiers of Monte Carlo, where, according to him, he was an old habitué, now scarcely mastered his excitement. Hans Castorp played high, so did Frau Stöhr and the Kleefeld, Frau Chauchat as well. They went the rounds: played Chemin de fer, “ My aunt, your aunt,” and the perilous Différence. There were outbursts of jubilation and despair, explosions of rage, attacks of hysterical laughter—all due to the reaction of this unlawful pleasure upon their nerves; and all perfectly serious and genuine. The chances and changes of life itself would have called up in them no other reaction.
But it was not solely—or even chiefly—the play and the wine that made the little circle so tense, that flushed their cheeks and opened their eyes so wide, or evoked such breathless excitement, such almost painful concentration on the moment’s business. It was rather the effect of a commanding nature in their midst, a
“personality”; it was Mynheer Peeperkorn who held the gathering in the hollow of his mobile gesturing hand, and enforced it, by the spectacle of his countenance, by his pallid gaze beneath the monumental creases of his brow, by his words, and his compelling pantomime, to take the mood of the hour. No matter what he said; it was highly incomprehensible, and the more so the more wine he drank. Yet they hung on his lips, they could not take their eyes from the little round made by his finger and thumb, with the pointed nails stiffly erect beside it; or from the majestic, speaking face; they utterly succumbed to feelings which for self-forgetfulness and intensity far exceeded the accustomed gamut of these people. The tribute they paid was too much for some of them—Frau Magnus, at least, felt very poorly; threatened to faint, but stoutly refused to retire, and contented herself with the chaise-longue, where she lay awhile with a wet-napkin over her forehead, and then rejoined the group at the table. Peeperkorn put down her plight to lack of nourishment. He expressed himself in this sense, with impressive disjointedness, forefinger aloft. People must nourish themselves properly, he gave them to understand, in order to do justice to life’s manifold claims. And he ordered sustenance for the company: platters of cold meat, joint and roast; tongue, goose, ham, sausage, whole dishes of délectables, all garnished with little radishes, butter-balls, and parsley, gay as flower-beds. They found a welcome, despite the lately consumed supper, which, it were superfluous to tell the reader, had lacked nothing in heartiness. But Mynheer Peeperkorn, after a few bites, dismissed the whole as “kickshaws”—dismissed them with a scorn which gave dismaying evidence of the uncertain temper of this lordly man. Yes, he waxed choleric, turned upon one of the company who tried to defend the collation. He swelled with rage, struck the table with his fist, and cursed the food for garbage, fit for the dust-bin. This reduced the offender to silence, for certainly Peeperkorn, as host and dispenser of the good cheer, might find fault with its quality if he chose. But his rage, however disproportionate, became him magnificently, Hans Castorp saw that. It did not misrepresent or render him petty: it wrought his incoherence, which no one in the group could have had the heart to connect with the mixture of wine he had drunk, to so royal a pitch that they all with one accord agreed, and took not another bite of the offending viands. Frau Chauchat set to work to mollify her companion’s mood. She stroked his great sea-captain’s hand, as it rested on the cloth after the blow he had struck, and said cajolingly that they might order something else, a hot dish, perhaps, if the chef could be won over. “Very good, my child,” Peeperkorn said, assuaged. And passed, without abating his dignity, from a full torrent of wrath to a state of appeasement, as he took Clavdia’s hand and kissed it. He ordered omelets for himself and the company, for each person a fine large omelette aux fines herbes, to help them do justice to the demands life made on them. And accompanied the order with a hundred-franc note as a sweetener for the staff.
His placidity was fully restored by the appearance of the steaming dishes, with their burden of canary-yellow besprent with green, which dispersed a mild warm fragrance of eggs and butter upon the air. They fell to with Peeperkorn, who ate and presided over the enjoyment, with broken words and compelling gesture enjoining upon everybody a perfervid appreciation of these gifts of God. He ordered a Hollands all round to go with the omelets; the transparent liquor gave out a healthy grain odour, mingled with just the faintest whiff of juniper—and Peeperkorn laid upon them all to drink it reverently.
Hans Castorp smoked, Frau Chauchat as well; the latter Russian cigarettes with a mouthpiece, from a lacquered box with a troika going full speed on the lid, which lay to hand on the table before her. Peeperkorn made no objection to his neighbours’
enjoyment, but did not smoke himself—he never had done so. If they understood him aright, he considered the use of tobacco one of those over-refined enjoyments the cultivation of which robbed of their majesty the simpler pleasures of life—those gifts and claims to which our power of feeling was even at best scarcely equal. “Young man,” said he to Hans Castorp, holding him by the power of his pale eye and his developed gesture: “Young man—the simple—the holy. Good—you understand me.
A bottle of wine, a steaming dish of eggs, pure grain spirit—let us absorb such things as these, exhaust them, satisfy their claims, before we—Positively, sir. Not a word. I have known men and women, cocaine eaters, hashish smokers, morphine takers—My dear friend, very good. Very good indeed. Very. Let them. We cannot judge, or condemn. But the simple, the great, the primeval gifts of God—to them they were unequal in the first place. Settled, my friend. Condemned, rejected. They could not respond.—Your name, young man? Good. I knew it, but I had forgotten. Not in cocaine, not in opium, not in vice as such does the viciousness lie. The unpardonable—the—unpardonable—sin—”
He paused. Tall and broad, he bent toward his neighbour; paused and maintained a marvellously expressive silence. His forefinger was raised, his mouth a broken line beneath the bare, red upper lip, which was somewhat raw from the razor, the horizontal folds of his bald forehead rose to meet the white aureole of his hair; the small pale eyes stared wide, and Hans Castorp seemed to read in them some flicker of horror at the crime, the great transgression, the unforgivable sin, which seeking to expound he stood there now, charming the silence with all the force of a commanding though incoherent personality. Hans Castorp thought it a disinterested horror, yet with something too of a personal kind, something that touched the kingly creature near: fear, perhaps, but not of any mean or narrow sort; that was very like panic flickering up momentarily in the eyes. Hans Castorp—despite the grounds he had for hostile misinterpretation of Frau Chauchat’s majestic friend—was by nature too respectful not to feel shocked at the revelation.
He cast down his eyes, and nodded, to give his neighbour the satisfaction of being understood.
“You are quite right,” he said. “It may easily be a sin—and a sign of impotence—to indulge in the refinements of life, at the same time being inadequate to its great, simple, sacred gifts. If I understood you aright, Herr Peeperkorn, that was your meaning. And though I hadn’t thought of it in that light, I may say that I agree with you, now that you mention it. It probably happens seldom enough that these sound and simple gifts of life have real justice done them. The majority of human beings are too heedless, too flabby, too corrupt, too worn out inwardly to give them their due, I feel sure of that.”
The mighty one was immensely pleased. “Young man,” he said, “positively. Will you permit me—not a word. I beg you to drink with me—no heel-taps—arm-in-arm. I do not, at this moment, propose to you the brotherly thou; I was about to do so, but it would no doubt be precipitate. Somewhat. In the near future, however. Depend upon it. Or, if you insist upon the present—”
Hans Castorp demurred.
“Excellent, young man. ‘Impotence’—very good. Very. Gives one the shivers.
‘Corrupt’—very good too. ‘Gifts’—not so good—‘claims’ better. The holy, the feminine claims life makes upon manly honour and strength—”
Hans Castorp was suddenly driven to realize that Peeperkorn was very drunk. Still, his drunkenness was not debasing, there was no loss of dignity; rather it combined with the nobility of his nature to produce an immense and awe-inspiring effect. Bacchus himself, thought Hans Castorp, without detriment to his godhead, leaned for support on the shoulders of his troop. Everything depended upon who was drunk—a drunken personality was far from being the same as a drunken tinker. He took care not to abate, even inwardly, his respect for this overwhelming person, whose gestures had grown lax, and his tongue stammering.
“Brother,” said Peeperkorn. His great torso lolled back in free and regal intoxication against his chair. His arm lay stretched along the cloth and he tapped the table with fist lightly clenched. “Brother-in-blood—prospective. In the near future—after a proper interval for reflection.—Very good. Set—tled.—Life, young man, is a female. A sprawling female, with swelling breasts close to each other, great soft belly between her haunches, slender arms, bulging thighs, half-closed eyes. She mocks us. She challenges us to expend our manhood to its uttermost span, to stand or fall before her. To stand or fall. To fall, young man—do you know what that means? The defeat of the feelings, their overthrow when confronted by life—that is impotence. For it there is no mercy, it is pitilessly, mockingly condemned.—Not a word, young man! Spewed out of the mouth. Shame and ignominy are soft words for the ruin and bankruptcy, the horrible disgrace. It is the end of everything, the hellish despair, the Judgment Day. …”
The Dutchman had flung back his mighty torso more and more, his kingly head sank lower on his breast, he seemed to be dozing as he talked. But with the last word he lifted the fist that had been lying relaxed on the table, and brought it down with a crash, making our slim young Hans Castorp, overwrought as he was with wine and play, and the singularity of the whole scene, jump, and in startled awe look at the mighty one. “The Judgment Day!” How the phrase suited the man! Hans Castorp did not remember ever hearing it uttered, except perhaps at catechism. And no wonder, he said to himself. Who else would have thought of using it like that—or, more correctly, who would have been big enough to take the thunderbolt in his mouth? Naphta, perhaps, when he talked his vindictive rubbish—but it would have been cheek. Whereas Peeperkorn’s utterance seemed to hold the sound of the last trump, majestic, biblical. “Good Lord, what a personality!” he felt for the hundredth time. “At last I’ve come in contact with a real character—and it turns out to be Clavdia’s—.” Not too clear-headed himself, he turned his wineglass about on the table, one hand in his trouser pocket, one eye clipped shut against the smoke of the cigarette he held in the corner of his mouth. Certainly he would have done better to keep quiet. What was his feeble pipe, after the rolling thunder of Jove? But his two democratic mentors had trained him to discussion—for they were both democratic, though one of them struggled against it—and habit betrayed him into one of his naïve commentaries.
“Your remarks, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” (what an expression! Does one make “remarks” about the Day of Judgment?) “lead back my mind to what you said previously about vice: that it consists in an affront to the simple, what you call the holy, or, as I might say, the classic, gifts which life offers us; the larger gifts, by contrast with the later and ‘cultivated’ ones, the refinements, which you ‘indulge in,’ as one of us put it, whereas one ‘consecrates oneself’ to the great gifts and pays them homage. But just here, it seems to me, lies the excuse for vice (you must pardon me, but I incline by nature to excuses, though there is nothing ‘large’ about them—I am quite clear on that point) in so far as it is a result of impotence. About the horrors of impotence you have said things of such magnitude that I am quite confounded, as you see me sit here. But in my view, a vicious man appears not at all insensible of your horrors; on the contrary he does them full justice, since it is the abdication of his feelings before the classical gifts of life that drives him to vice. Thus we need not see in vice any affront to life, it may just as well be regarded as homage to it; on the other hand, so far as the refinements represent s timulantia, as they say—means of excitation or intoxication—so far as they sustain or increase the power to feel, then life is their purpose and meaning, the desire for feeling, the impotent striving after feeling—I mean—”
What was he talking about? Was it not democratic and unblushing enough that he had said “as one of us put it”—thus coupling himself and a personality like Peeperkorn? Had certain events in the past—which shed a dubious light on present pretensions—given him courage to utter the impertinence? Were the gods wishful to destroy him, when they moved him to embark on this foolhardy analysis of “vice”?
Now let him look to it to extricate himself; for surely he has invoked the whirlwind. Mynheer Peeperkorn, during Hans Castorp’s harangue, had sat flung back in his chair, his head still sunk on his breast. It was uncertain even whether he had been listening. But now, slowly, as the young man’s utterance grew more involved, he began to erect himself to his full sitting height, the majestic head inflamed; the pattern of furrows on his brow expanded upwards, his little eyes opened in pallid menace. Obviously a storm was brewing beside which the other had been a passing cloud. Mynheer’s under lip pressed wrathfully against the upper, the corners of his mouth drew down, the chin protruded. Slowly he raised his right arm above his head; the fist clenched and remained poised aloft, ready for summary execution upon the democratic prattler, who for his part was panic-stricken—yet not without a thrill of precarious joy at this spectacle of regal rage.
He repressed an inclination to flight, and hastened to say, disarmingly: “Of course, I have failed to express my meaning. The whole thing is simply a question of scale. If a thing has size, one cannot call it vice. Vice is petty. Of their nature, so are the raffine- ments. They are never on the grand scale. But since the most primitive times man has had to his hand a resource, a means of mounting to the heights of feeling, which belongs among the classic gifts of life: a resource, simple, sacred, in the grand style, if I may so express myself. I mean the grape, wine, the gift of the gods to man, as we are told of old time. A God invented it, and with its invention civilization began. For we are told that, thanks to the art of planting and treading the vine, man emerged from his barbaric state, and achieved culture; even to-day where the grape grows, those people are accounted, or account themselves, possessed of a higher culture than the Cimmerians, a fact which is worthy our attention. For it indicates that civilization is not a thing of the reason, of being sober and articulate; it has far more to do with inspiration and frenzy, the joys of the winecup—if I may make so bold as to ask, have I not expressed your attitude in the matter?”
A sly dog, this Hans Castorp. Or, as Herr Settembrini with literary feeling had put it, a “wag.” To rush into controversy with personalities, to be even forward of speech—but then to know how to extricate himself when need was, and his coat-tails, as it were, all but on fire! In the first place, he had given them an impromptu but quite respectable apologia for drinking; into which, en passant, he had slipped a reference to “civilization”—of which there was just then small trace in Mynheer Peeperkorn’s primitive and menacing attitude; and lastly, he had got round him, put him in the wrong, by asking him, quite simply, a question which one can scarcely answer and maintain the threatening pose or the raised fist. And accordingly the Dutchman relaxed from his neolithic rage, slowly his arm sank again till it rested on the table, his face lost its swollen look, the storm passed over with no trace but the last mutter of thunder, he even seemed to entertain the thought of clicking glasses again; and now Frau Chauchat came to the rescue, by calling her companion’s attention to the gradual disintegration of the party.
“My friend,” she said to him, in French, “you are neglecting your other guests. You devote yourself too exclusively to this gentleman—important though your
conversation with him doubtless is—and the others have stopped playing, I fear they grow tired—shall we say good-night?”
Peeperkorn turned his attention to the circle. It was true: they were demoralized. Lethargy and boredom sat on every brow; the guests were out of hand, like a neglected class. Several were on the point of falling asleep. Peeperkorn took a firm grip on the reins he had let fall. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he summoned them, with raised forefinger—and that pointed finger was like a waving standard or the flash of an unsheathed sword, as his words were like the rallying-cry of the leader, which brings to a stand the threatened rout. It had its effect in a trice. They picked themselves up, they pulled themselves together, they looked again with smiles into their host’s pale eyes beneath his masklike brows. He held them all, he pressed them afresh into service of his personality, sinking the tip of his forefinger till it met the tip of his thumb, and erecting the three others straight and stiff with their long nails. He stretched out his sea-captain’s hand, checking them, warning them, and words issued from his cracked lips—words utterly irrelevant and indistinct, yet exerting on their spirits a resistless power, thanks to the reserves of personality behind them.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Very good, very good indeed. Very. The flesh, ladies and gentlemen, is—not another word. No, permit me to say—weak, so the Scripture has it. Weak. Inclined to be unequal to claims—but I appeal to your—in short, ladies and gentlemen, in short and in brief, I ap—peal! You will say to me: ‘Sleep.’ Very good, ladies and gentlemen, very good, very. I love and honour sleep. I venerate the deep, sweet, refreshing bliss of it. Sleep is one of the—what did you call them, young man?—one of the classic gifts of life—the first, the very first, the highest, ladies and gentlemen. But you will recall, you will remember—Gethsemane. ‘And took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. . . Then saith he unto them:. . . Tarry ye here and watch with me.’ You remember? ‘And he cometh unto the disciples and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter: What, could ye not watch with me one hour?’ Immense, my friends. Heart-piercing moving to the last—very. ‘And came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. And saith unto them: Sleep on now, and take your rest, behold the hour is at hand.’ Ladies and gentlemen, that pierces the heart, it sears—”
In truth, they were all cut to the quick, they were crushed. He had folded his hands across his chest, upon His scanty beard, and laid his head on one side. His eyes had grown dim with feeling as the words expressive of the lonely anguish of death fell from his chapped lips. Frau Stöhr sobbed. Frau Magnus heaved a heavy sigh. Lawyer Paravant saw it was incumbent upon him to represent the sense of the meeting. In a voice solemnly sunk, he assured their honoured host that the circle was his to command. Herr Peeperkorn mistook them. Here they were, blithe as the dawn, jolly as sand-boys, ready for anything. This, he said, was a priceless evening, so festive, so out of the ordinary. Such was their feeling, and no one of them had any present idea of availing himself of life’s good gift of sleep. Mynheer Peeperkorn could count on them, one and all.
“Splendid, excellent,” Peeperkorn cried, and stood erect again. He unclasped his hands and spread them wide and high before him, palms outward—it looked like a heathen prayer. His majestic physiognomy, but now imprinted with Gothic anguish, blossomed once more in pagan jollity. Even a sybaritic dimple appeared in his cheek.
“The hour is at hand,” said he, and sent for the wine-card. He put on a horn-rimmed pince-nez, the nose-piece of which rode high up on his forehead, and ordered champagne, three bottles of Mumm & Co., Cordon rouge, extra dry, with petits fours, toothsome cone-shaped little dainties in lace frills, covered with coloured frosting and filled with chocolate and pistache cream. Frau Stöhr licked her fingers after them. Herr Albin nonchalantly removed the wire from the first bottle, and let the mushroomshaped cork pop to the ceiling; elegantly he conformed to the ritual, holding the neck of the bottle wrapped in a serviette as he poured. The noble foam bedewed the cloth. Every glass rang as the guests saluted, then drank the first one empty at a draught, electrifying their digestive organs with the ice-cold, prickling, perfumed liquid. Every eye sparkled. The game had come to an end, no one troubled to take cards or gains from the table. They gave themselves over to a blissful far niente, enlivened by scraps of conversation in which, out of sheer high spirits, no one hung back. They uttered thoughts that in the thinking had seemed primevally fresh and beautiful, but in the saying somehow turned lame, stammering, indiscreet, a perfect gallimaufry,
calculated to arouse the scorn of any sober onlooker. The audience, however, took no offence, all being in much the same irresponsible condition. Even Frau Magnus’s ears were red, and she admitted that she felt “as though life were running through her”—
which Herr Magnus seemed not over-pleased to hear. Hermine Kleefeld leaned against Herr Albin’s shoulder as she held her glass to be filled. Peeperkorn conducted the Bacchanalian rout with his long-fingered gestures, and summoned additional supplies: coffee followed the champagne, “Mocha double,” with fresh rounds of
“bread,” and pungent liqueurs: apricot brandy, chartreuse, crême de vanille, and maraschino for the ladies. Later there appeared marinated filets of fish, and beer; lastly tea, both Chinese and camomile, for those who had done with champagne and liqueurs and did not care to return to a sound wine, as Mynheer himself did; he, Frau Chauchat, and Hans Castorp working back after midnight to a Swiss red wine. Mynheer Peeperkorn, genuinely thirsty, drank down glass after glass of the simple, effervescent drink.
The party held together for another hour, partly because they were all too leadenfooted and befuddled to rise, partly because this method of spending the hours of the night appealed to them by its novelty; partly by the weight of Peeperkorn’s personality, and the blasting example of Peter and his brethren, to which they all shamed to yield. Generally speaking, the female section seemed less compromised than the male. For the men, flushed or sallow, sat with their legs sprawled before them, puffing out their cheeks. Now and then they would make a half-mechanical effort to lift the glass, but their hearts were no longer in it. The women were more enterprising. Hermine Kleefeld, bare elbows on the table, propped up her head, her cheeks in her hands, and showed the giggling Ting-fu all the enamel of her front teeth. Frau Stöhr, with her chin and shoulder coquettishly meeting, sought to reawaken Lawyer Paravant to desire. Frau Magnus’s state was such that she had seated herself on Herr Albin’s lap and was pulling both his ears by their lobes—a sight in which Herr Magnus appeared to find relief. The company had urged Anton Karlowitsch Ferge to regale them with the story of the pleura-shock; but his tongue was too thick, he could not manage it, and honourably avowed his incapacity, which was greeted by the company as occasion for another drink. Wehsal all at once began to weep bitterly, from some unplumbed depth of wretchedness. They brought him round with coffee and cognac; but the episode roused Peeperkorn’s lively interest, who looked at his quivering chin, from which tears dripped, and with raised forefinger and lifted masklike brows called the attention of the company to the phenomenon.
“That is—” he said. “Ah—with your permission, that is—holy. Dry his chin, my child, take my serviette—or, still better, let it drip. He himself has done so. Holy, holy, my friends. In every sense. Christian and pagan. A primitive phenomenon, of the first—the very first—No. No, that is to say—”
This oft-repeated phrase set the key for all the running comment with which he accompanied his production of gesture—gesture that by now, in all conscience, had grown more than a little burlesque. He had a way of lifting that little circlet formed by thumb and forefinger to a poise above his ear, and coyly twisting his head away from it—one watched him as one might an elderly priest of some oriental cult, with the skirts of his robe snatched up, doing a dance before the sacrificial altar. Again, flung back in Olympian repose, with one arm stretched out on the back of his neighbour’s chair, he beguiled them all to their confusion, by painting a vivid and irresistible scene of a dark, frosty winter morning, when the yellow gleam of the night-lamp reveals the network of bare boughs outside the pane, rigid in the harsh and penetrating mist of early dawn. So telling was the picture, so universal its appeal—actually, they all shivered; particularly when he went on to speak of rising in such a dawn, and squeezing a great sponge filled with ice-cold water over neck and shoulders. The effective sensation he characterized as “holy.” But all this was a digression, an aside thrown out to illustrate receptivity for life; a fantastic impromptu, let fall merely to renew and reassert the whole irresistible compulsion of his presence and his sensations upon the scene of abandoned night-revelry. He made love to every female creature within reach, without discrimination or respect of person; tendering such offers to the dwarf that the crippled creature’s large old face was wreathed in smiles. He paid Frau Stöhr compliments that made the vulgar creature bridle more
extravagantly than ever, and become almost senseless with affectation. He supplicated—and received—a kiss from Fräulein Kleefeld, upon his thick, chapped lips. He even coquetted with the forlorn Frau Magnus—and all this without detriment to the delicate homage he paid his companion, whose hand he would every now and then carry gallantly to his lips. “Wine—” he said, “women; they are—that is—pardon me—Gethsemane—Day of Judgment. . .”
Toward two o’clock word flew about that “the old man”—in other words, Hofrat Behrens—was approaching by forced marches. Panic reigned among the nerveless company. Chairs and ice-pails were upset. They fled through the library. Peeperkorn raged at the precipitate breaking-up of the festivities, in kingly choler struck the table with his fist and called after the retreating “cowardly slaves”—but allowed Frau Chauchat and Hans Castorp to calm him with the consideration that the banquet had already lasted some six hours, and must in any case some time come to an end. He lent an ear when they murmured something about the “holy” boon of sleep, and yielded to their efforts to lead him away to bed.
“Let me lean upon you, my child! And you, young man, on my other side,” he said. They helped him lift his unwieldy body from table, gave him the support of their arms, and he walked with wide steps between them bedwards, his mighty head sunk on his lifted shoulder. First one and then the other of his aides was carried to one side by his staggering pace. It is probable that he was merely indulging himself in the regal luxury of being thus supported and piloted; presumably he could have gone by himself. But he scorned the effort. If made it would have been solely for the unworthy purpose of disguising his state, and of this he was royally unashamed, revelling in the fun of making his companions stagger with him from side to side. He even said, on the way: “Children—nonsense. Of course I’m not—at this moment. You ought to see—ridiculous—”
“Ridiculous, of course,” Hans Castorp agreed. “It certainly is. We are giving the classical gifts of life their due, staggering in their honour. Seriously, on the other hand: I’ve had my share too; but any so-called drunkenness to the contrary, I fully recognize the honour of helping such a tremendous personality to bed; I am not so drunk I don’t know that in the matter of size I don’t hold a candle—”
“Come, come, chatterbox,” Peeperkorn said, and they moved rhythmically on toward the stairs, drawing Frau Chauchat with them.
The report of the Hofrat’s approach had been a bogy. Perhaps the weary little waitress was responsible, thinking thereby to break up the party. Peeperkorn scented the false alarm, and would have turned back for another drink. But they both set to work to talk him out of the idea, and he let himself be moved on.
The Malayan valet, in white cravat and black silk slippers, awaited his master in the corridor before their apartments. He bowed low, laying his hand upon his breast.
“Kiss each other,” commanded Peeperkorn. “Young man, kiss this lovely woman good-night, upon her brow,” said he to Hans Castorp. “She will have no objection to receiving and responding to—do it to my health, with my blessing.” But Hans Castorp declined.
“No, Your Majesty,” he said. ‘fl beg your pardon. It would not do.”
Peeperkorn, in the arms of his valet, drew up his arabesques and demanded to know why.
“Because your companion and I can exchange no kisses on the brow,” Hans Castorp responded. “I hope you sleep well. No, no, that is the sheerest nonsense, however you look at it.”
Frau Chauchat, for her part, was moving toward her door; Peeperkorn gave way, and let the unwilling suitor go, though looking at him awhile over his and the Malay’s shoulders, his wrinkled brows drawn high in astonishment at an insubordination his kingly temper was seldom called upon to brook.