AUGUST arrived, and with its entry slipped past the anniversary of our hero’s arrival in these parts. So much the better when it was gone—young Hans Castorp had scarcely looked forward to it with pleasure. And that was the rule. The anniversary was not popular. The old inhabitants passed it by without thought; and—though in general they seized on every pretext for jollification, and took occasion to celebrate their own private anniversaries in addition to these that accented the recurrent rhythm of the year; making merry with popping of corks in the restaurant, over birthdays, general examinations, imminent departures whether “wild” or sanctioned, and the like—they accorded to the anniversary of arrival no other attention than that of a profound silence. They let it slip past, perhaps they actually managed to forget it, and they might be confident that no one else would remember. They set store by a proper articulation of the time, they gave heed to the calendar, observed the turning-points of the year, its recurrent limits. But to measure one’s own private time, that time which for the individual in these parts was so closely bound up with space—that was held to be an occupation only fit for new arrivals and short-termers. The settled citizens preferred the unmeasured, the eternal, the day that was for ever the same; and delicately each respected in others the sentiment he so warmly cherished himself. To say to anybody that this day three years ago was the day of his arrival, that would have been considered brutal, in consummately bad taste—it simply never happened. Even Frau Stöhr, whatever her lacks in other respects, was far too tactful and well disciplined to let it slip out. Certainly she united great ignorance with her infected and feverish physical state. Recently at table she had alluded to the “affectation” of the tip of her lung; and the conversation having taken a historical turn, she explained that dates were her “ring of Polycrates”—a remark which made her hearers stare. But it was unthinkable that she should remind young Ziemssen his year would be up in February—though she had very likely thought of it. For the unhappy creature’s head was full of useless baggage, and she loved to keep track of other people’s affairs. But the tradition of the place held her in check.
Thus also on Hans Castorp’s anniversary. She may have even tried to nod at him meaningfully, at table; but encountering a vacant stare dexterously withdrew. Joachim too had kept silence, though he probably had clearly in mind the date on which he had fetched the guest from the Dorf station. Joachim was ever by nature taciturn; had always talked less than his cousin, even before they came up here—there had never been any comparison between him and the humanists and controversialists of their acquaintance—and in these days his silence had assumed heroic proportions, only monosyllables passed his lips. His manner, however, spoke volumes. It was plain that in his mind the Dorf station was associated with another order of ideas than those of arrival or meeting people. He was conducting a lively correspondence with the flatland; his resolve was ripening, his preparations drawing to a head. July had been warm and bright. But with August bad weather set in, cloudy and damp; with first a sleety drizzle and then actual snow. And it lasted—with interludes of single resplendent days—all through the month, and on into September. At first the rooms held the warmth of the summery period just past: they stood at fifty degrees, which passed for comfortable. But it grew rapidly colder; there were rejoicings when the snowfall whitened the valley, for the sight of it—the sight alone, for the mere drop of the temperature would not have sufficed—compelled the management to heat, first the dining-room, then the chambers as well; so that when one rolled out of the rugs, at the end of a rest period, and re-entered one’s chamber, one might warm one’s stiffened fingers against the hot pipes, though the dry air these gave out did accentuate the burning in the cheeks.
Was it winter again? Almost the senses thought so. On every hand were loud complaints, that they had been cheated out of their summer; though they had really cheated themselves, abetted by conditions both natural and artificial, and by a consumption of time-units reckless alike within and without. Reason was aware that fine autumnal weather was certain to follow, there would be a succession of brilliant days each outvying the other, and so fine that one might still honour them with the name of summer, save for the flatter arc the sun made in its course, and its earlier setting. But the effect of the winter landscape on the spirit was stronger than the power of such consolatory thoughts. The cousins would stand at the closed door into the balcony, and look out with loathing into the whirl of flakes—it was Joachim who stood thus, and in a suppressed voice he said: “So that’s to begin all over again, is it?”
From behind him in the room Hans Castorp responded: “That would be rather early—surely it can’t be settling down to winter already—but it has a terribly final look. If winter consists in darkness and cold, snow and hot pipes, then there’s no denying it’s winter again. And when you think we’d just finished with it and that the snow only just melted—at least, it seems that way, doesn’t it, as though spring were only just over—well, it gives one a turn, I will say. It is actually a blow to one’s love of life—let me explain to you how I mean. I mean the world as normally arranged is conducive to man’s needs and his pleasure in life—isn’t that so? I won’t go so far as to say that the whole natural order of things, for instance the size of the earth, the time it takes to revolve on its axis and about the sun, the division between day and night, summer and winter—in short, the whole cosmic rhythm, if you like to call it that— was especially arranged for our use and behoof; that would be cheek, I suppose, and simple-minded into the bargain. It would be teleological reasoning, as the philosophers express it. No, it would be truer to say that our needs are—thank God that it should be so—in harmony with the larger, the fundamental facts of nature. I say thank God, for it is really ground for praising Him. Now, when summer or winter comes along down below, the past summer or winter is far enough in the past to make one glad to see it again—and therein lies some of the joy we have in life. But up here this order and harmony are destroyed: first because there are no proper seasons, as you yourself said when I first came, but only summer days and winter days all mixed up together; and secondly, because what we spend up here isn’t time at all, and the new winter, when it comes, isn’t new, but the same old winter all the time. All that explains perfectly the disgust you feel when you look out at the window.”
“Thanks,” Joachim said. “And now that you have explained it, you feel so satisfied that you are even satisfied with the situation itself—although in all human—no!” said he. “I’m done. Fed up. It’s beastly. The whole thing is just one tremendous, rotten, beastly sell; and I, for my part—” He went with hasty steps through the room, and shut the door angrily behind him. Unless Hans Castorp was much mistaken, there had been tears in the mild, beautiful eyes.
He left the other staggered. So long as Joachim had confined himself to putting his determination into words, his cousin had not taken it too seriously. But now that silence spoke for him, and his behaviour too, Hans Castorp was alarmed, for he saw that the military Joachim was the man to translate words into deeds—he was so alarmed that he grew pale, and his pallor was for them both. “Fort possible qu’il va mourir,” he thought. And that piece of third-hand information mingled itself with an old, painful, never-quite-to-be-suppressed fear, which made him say to himself: “Is it possible he could leave me alone up here—me, who only came on a visit to him? That would be crazy, horrible; at the bare thought of it I can feel my heart flutter and my cheek pale. Because if I am left up here—as I shall be, if he goes down, for it is out of the question for me to go with him— if I am left up here, it is for ever; alone I should never find my way back. Never back down to the world again. And at the thought my heart stands still.”
Such the course of Hans Castorp’s fearful musings. But that very afternoon, certitude was vouchsafed. Joachim declared himself, the die was cast, the bridges burnt.
They went down after tea to the basement for the monthly examination. This was the beginning of September. On entering the warm air of the consulting-room, they saw Dr. Krokowski sitting at his table, and the Hofrat, very blue in the face, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, tapping his shoulder with the stethoscope, and yawning at the ceiling. “Mahlzeit, children,” said he, languidly. His mood was lax, resigned and melancholic, and he had probably been smoking. There were also, however, some objective grounds for his state, as the cousins had heard: international scandal of a kind only too familiar in the establishment. A certain young girl called Emmy Nolting had entered House Berghof two years before in the autumn, and after a stay of some nine months departed cured. But before September was out she had returned, saying she did not “feel well” at home. In February, with lungs from which all vestige of rhonchi had disappeared, she was sent home again—but by the middle of July was back in her place at Frau Iltis’s table. This Emmy, then, had been discovered in her room at one o’clock at night in company with another sufferer, a Greek named Polypraxios, the same whose shapely legs had attracted favourable attention the night of mardi gras— a young chemist whose father owned dye-works in the Piraeus. The discovery had been made through the jealousy of another young girl, a friend of Emmy, who had found her way to Emmy’s room by the same route the Greek had taken—namely, across the balconies; and, distracted by her jealous rage, had made great outcry, so that everybody came running, and the scandal became known to the sparrows on the house-tops. Behrens had to send all three of them away; and had been at the moment going over the whole unsavoury affair with Krokowski, who had had both girls under private treatment. The Hofrat, as he examined, continued to let fall remarks, in resigned and dreary tones—for he was such a master of auscultation that he could listen to a man’s inside, dictate what he heard to his assistant, and talk about something else all the time.
“Ah, yes, gentlemen,” he said, “this cursed libido. You can get some fun out of the thing, it’s all right for you.—Vesicular.—But a man in my position, verily I say unto you—dullness here—he hath his belly full. Is it my fault that phthisis and concupiscence go together—slight harshness here? I didn’t arrange it that way; but before you know where you are you find yourself the keeper of a stew—restricted here under the left shoulder. We have psycho-analysis, we give the noodles every chance to talk themselves out—much good it does them! The more they talk the more lecherous they get. I preach mathematics.—Better here, the rhonchi are gone.—I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh. Lawyer Paravant was a bad case; he took my advice, he is now busy squaring the circle, and gets great relief. But most of them are too witless and lazy, God help them!—Vesicular.—You see, I know it’s only too easy for young folk to go to the bad up here—I used to try to do something about these debauches. But it happened a few times that some brother or bridegroom asked me to my face what affair it was of mine—and since then I’ve stuck to my last.—Slight rales up on the right.”
He finished with Joachim, thrust his stethoscope in the pocket of his smock, and rubbed his eyes with both huge hands, as was his habit when he had “backslidden” and become melancholy. Half mechanically, between yawns, he reeled off his patter:
“Well, Ziemssen, just keep your pecker up, you’ll be all right yet. You aren’t like a picture in a physiology-book, there’s a hitch here and there, and you haven’t cleaned up your Gaffky, you’ve even gone up a peg or so, it’s six this time—but never mind, don’t pull a long face, you are better than you were when you came, I can hand it to you in writing. Just another five or six months— monaths, I mean. Did you know that is the earlier form of the word? I mean to say monath, after this—”
“Herr Hofrat,“ Joachim began. He stood bare to the waist, heels together and chest out, with a determined bearing, and as mottled in the face as ever he had been that time when Hans Castorp first made observations on the pallor of the deeply tanned. Behrens ran on without noticing: “—and if you stop another round half year and do particular pipe-clay, why, you’ll be a made man, you can take Constantinople singlehanded; you’ll be strong enough to command a regiment of Samsons—” Who knows how much more nonsense he might have uttered if Joachim’s unflinching determination to make himself heard had not brought him to a stand.
“Herr Hofrat,” the young man said, “I should like to tell you, if you will pardon me, that I have decided to leave.”
“What’s that? So you want to leave? I thought you wanted to go down later as a sound man, to be a soldier.”
“No, I must leave now, Herr Hofrat, in a week, that is.”
“Do you mean what you say? You want to hop out of the frying-pan into the fire?
You’re going to hook it? Don’t you call that desertion?”
“No, Herr Hofrat, I don’t look at it in that light. I must join my regiment.”
“Even though I tell you I can surely discharge you in half a year, but not before?”
Joachim’s bearing became even more correct. He took in his stomach, and replied, repressed and curt: “I have been here a year and a half, Herr Hofrat. I cannot wait any longer. Originally it was to have been three months. Since then it has been increased, first another three, then another six, and so on, and still I am not cured.”
“Is that my fault?”
“No, Herr Hofrat. But I cannot wait any longer. If I don’t want to miss my
opportunity, I cannot wait to make my full cure up here. I must go down now. I need a little time for my equipment and other arrangements.”
“Your family knows what you are doing—do they consent?”
“My mother—yes. It is all arranged. The first of October I join the seventy-sixth regiment as cornet.”
“At all hazards?” Behrens asked, and fixed him with his bloodshot eyes.
“I have the honour,” Joachim answered, his lips twitching.
“Very good, Ziemssen.” The Hofrat’s tone changed; he abandoned his position, he relaxed in every way. “Very well, then. Stir your stumps, go on, and God be with you. I see you know your own mind, and so much is certainly true, that it is your affair and not mine. Every pot stands on its own bottom. You go at your own risk, I take no responsibility. But good Lord, it may turn out all right. Soldiering is an out-of-doors job. It may do you good, you may come through all right.”
“Yes, Herr Hofrat.”
“Well, and what about your cousin, the peaceful citizen over there? He wants to go along with you, does he?” This was Hans Castorp, who was supposed to answer. He stood there as pale as at that first examination, which had ended by his being admitted as a patient. Now, as then, his heart could be seen hammering against his side. He said: “I should like to be guided by your opinion, Herr Hofrat.”
“My opinion. Good.” He drew him to him by the arm and began to tap and listen. He did not dictate. It went rather fast. When he finished, he said: “You may go.”
Hans Castorp stammered: “You—you mean—I am cured?”
“Yes, you are cured. The place above in the left lobe is no longer worth talking about. Your temperature doesn’t go with it. Why you have it, I don’t know. I assume it is of no further importance. So far as I am concerned, you can go “
“But—Herr Hofrat—may I ask—that is—you are perhaps not altogether serious?”
“Not serious? Why not? What do you suppose? And incidentally, what do you think of me, might I be allowed to ask? What do you take me for? A bawdy-house keeper?”
He was in a towering passion. The blood flared up in his cheeks and turned their blue to violet, his one-sided lip was wrenched so high that the canines of the upper jaw were visible. He advanced his head like a steer, with staring, bloodshot watery eves “I won’t have it,” he bellowed. “In the first place, I’m not the proprietor here!
I’m on hire. I’m a doctor! I’m nothing but a doctor, I would give you to understand. I’m not a pimp. I’m no Signor Amoroso on the Toledo, in Napoti bella. I am a servant of suffering humanity! And if either one of you should perchance have conceived a different opinion of me and my character then you can both go to the devil with my compliments—you can go to the dogs or you can turn up your toes, whichever you like, and a pleasant journey to you!”
He strode across the room and was out of the door that led to the x-ray waitingroom. It crashed behind him. The cousins looked imploringly at Dr. Krokowski, who buried his nose in his papers. They hurried into their clothes. On the stair Hans Castorp said: “That was awful. Have you ever seen him like that before?”
“No, not like that. But the authorities sometimes get these attacks. The important thing is to behave with dignity and let them pass over. He was irritated about the business with Polypraxios and Emmy Nolting. But did you see,” Joachim went on, and the joy of having fought and won his battle mounted in him and almost took away his breath, “did you see how he gave in and showed no more fight, directly he saw I was in earnest? All one has to do is to show some pluck, and not let oneself be shouted down. Now I’ve even got a sort of leave—at least, he said himself I’ll probably pull out of it—and I’m travelling in a week—in three weeks I’ll be with the colours,” he finished, altering his phrase, and confining the joy that trembled in his voice to his own affairs, without reference to Hans Castorp’s.
The latter was silent. He spoke no word, either of Joachim’s “leave” or his own—
which might equally well have been mentioned. He made his preparations for the restcure, put the thermometer in his mouth, flung the camel’s-hair rugs about him with swift, practised hand, the perfected technique of that consecrated art the flat-land knows not of; then he lay still, neat as a sausage-roll, in his excellent chair, in the chill dampness of the early autumn afternoon.
The rain-clouds hung low. Remnants of snow rested on the boughs of the silver fir. The banner of the establishment was furled round its staff. A low murmur of voices rose from the rest-hall, whence last year, at much about this time, the voice of Herr Albin had risen to Hans Castorp’s ear. The cure was going on, the patients sat there with soon-chilled faces and fingertips. To him all this was long-established habit, the inevitable course of life; he knew the gratitude of the settled patient for the blessing of being able to lie, snugly ensconced, and think everything over at leisure.
So it was settled, Joachim was to go. Rhadamanthus had released him; not rite, not with a clean bill of health, yet half approvingly, on the ground, and in recognition, of his constant spirit. He would go down: first with the narrow-gauge road as far as Landquart, then to Romanshorn, then across the wide, bottomless lake, over which in the legend the rider rode, across all Germany, and home. He would stop there, in the valley world, among men with no notion of the way to live, ignorant of “measuring”
and of the whole ritual of rug-wrapping, of fur sleeping-sacks, of the three daily walks, of—it was hard to say, hard to count all the things of which those down below stood in blank ignorance; but the mere picture of Joachim, after a year and a half up here, living in the darkness of that flat-landish incomprehension—a picture only of Joachim, with hardly the faintest hypothetical reference to Hans Castorp himself—so bewildered the young man that he closed his eyes and waved it away with a motion of the hand, murmuring: “Impossible!”
And since it was impossible, he would live on up here, alone, without Joachim?
Yes, it came to that. How long? Until Behrens discharged him cured—in earnest, that is, not as he had to-day. But that was so indefinite a time-limit that he could no more prophesy it than could Joachim, on a like occasion long ago. Again, would the impossible by then have become any more possible? On the contrary, Joachim’s rash departure did—in honesty—offer his cousin a support, now, before the impossible should become utterly so, a guide and companion on a path which of himself he would never, never find again. Ah, if one consulted humanistic pedagogy, how humanistic pedagogy would adjure him to take the hand and accept the offered guidance! But Herr Settembrini was only a representative—of things and forces worth hearing about, it was true, but not the only forces there were. And with Joachim it was the same. He was a soldier. He was leaving—almost at the very time set for the return of the high-breasted one, for it was known that she would return in October. While the departure of the civilian Hans Castorp became impossible precisely because he had to wait for Clavdia Chauchat, whose return, as yet, was not even thought of. “I don’t look at it in that light,” Joachim had answered when Rhadamanthus talked about desertion—though as far as Joachim was concerned that had probably only been some of the Hofrat’s melancholic maundering. But for him, the civilian, the thing was different. For him—ah, here was the right idea, the thought which he had set himself to evolve, as he lay out in the cold and damp—for him the real desertion would lie in his taking advantage of the occasion to dash off unlawfully—or half unlawfully—to the flat-land. It would be the abandonment of certain comprehensive responsibilities which had grown up out of his contemplation of the image called Homo Dei; it would be the betrayal of that appointed task of “stock-taking,” that hard and harassing task, which was really beyond the powers native to him, but yet afforded his spirit such nameless and adventurous joys; that task it was his duty to perform, here in his chair, and up there in his blue-blossoming retreat.
He tore the thermometer out of his mouth, violently as never before save when the Oberin had sold him the toy and he had first used it. He looked at it with the same avid curiosity now as then. Ah, Mercurius had indeed bounded upwards: he stood at 100.5°, almost .6°.
Hans Castorp threw off his covers, sprang up and strode to the corridor door and back. Then he lay down again, called softly to Joachim, and asked him what he measured. “I’m not measuring any more,” replied his cousin.
“Well, I’ve some temperament,” Hans Castorp said, emulating Frau Stöhr; Joachim, behind the glass pane, answered never a word.
He said no more, on that day or the following; made no effort to find out his cousin’s plans—which would, indeed, be driven to declare themselves in no long time, by his either taking certain steps or refraining from them. They did so—by the latter. Hans Castorp seemed to hold with that quietism in whose view all action was an insult to God, who prefers to act by Himself. At all events, the young man’s activity during these days confined itself to a visit to Behrens; a consultation of which Joachim was aware, the result of which he could have accurately predicted
beforehand. His cousin had explained that he took the liberty of placing more reliance upon the Hofrat’s oft-repeated exhortations to stop up here long enough to perfect his cure than he did upon an ill-considered verdict pronounced in the heat of the moment. His temperature was 100.5°, one could not regard himself as discharged in form; and unless the Hofrat’s recent statement was to be regarded in the light of an expulsion, to which he, the speaker, was not aware he had laid himself open, he wished to say that upon mature consideration he had decided to remain and await the event of a complete cure. To all which the Hofrat had merely responded: “Bon! Werry good—no offence intended, none taken,” or words to that effect. That was talking like a sensible man; hadn’t he seen first off that Hans Castorp had more talent as a patient than that fire-eater his cousin? And so on.
All of this corresponded pretty accurately to Joachim’s guess. He said nothing, only noting in silence that Hans Castorp made no move to join in his preparations for departure. But the good Joachim was busy enough, in all conscience, with his own affairs. He had no more time to concern himself with his cousin’s fate or further sojourn. Within his own bosom the tempest raged. It was as well he no longer took his temperature—he had, so he said, let his instrument fall, and broken it—for the thermometer might have given contrary counsel: so fearfully wrought up was he, now darkly glowing, now pale with joyful agitation. He could no longer lie still in the cure; Hans Castorp heard how he went up and down all day in his room, throughout those hours, four times each day, when all over House Berghof the horizontal obtained. A year and a half it had been. And now at last, at last, he was off for the flat-land, for home and his regiment! Even though with only half a discharge. It was no trifling event—Hans Castorp’s heart went out to his cousin as he heard his restless pacing. Eighteen months, the wheel full circle and halfway round again, he had lived up here, deep, deep into the life of the place, the inviolable ebb and flow of it, for seven times seventy days; and now he would go down to live among strangers and the uninitiate. What difficulties would he not have, to acclimatize himself? Would it be surprising if Joachim’s agitation consisted only in part of joyful emotion, and also in part of dread—if it was not also the pang of parting with all this familiar life that made him stride thus up and down his room? We leave Marusja out of account.
But joy weighed down the scale. The good Joachim’s heart overflowed at his lips. He spoke always of himself, he made no reference to Hans Castorp’s future. He said how fresh and new the world would seem, himself, all life, and every day, every hour of the time. Once more he would rejoice in real, solid time, the long, vital years of youth. He spoke of his mother, Hans Castorp’s step-aunt Ziemssen, who had the same gentle black eyes as her son. She had never visited him up here in all this time; put off like him from month to month, from half-year to half-year, she had delayed for the entire term of his stay in the mountains. He spoke of the oath of fidelity to the colours, which he would soon be taking—spoke ardently, with a smile on his face. It was a solemn ceremony: in the presence of the standard he would be sworn to it, literally, to the standard—” You don’t say! Seriously?” Hans Castorp asked. “To the flag-pole?
To that scrap of bunting?” Even so! It was symbolic; in the artillery they were sworn to the gun. What fanatical customs, the civilian remarked; extravagantly emotional he found them. Joachim nodded, full of pride and joy.
He spent his time in preparations; settled his last account with the management, and days ahead of time began to pack. He packed his summer and winter clothing, and had the sleeping-bag and camel’s-hair rugs sewed up in sacking by one of the servants. They might be useful at manœuvres. He began to make his farewells; paid visits to Naphta and Settembrini—alone, for his cousin did not offer to go with him, nor did he ask what Settembrini had said to Joachim’s imminent departure and to Hans Castorp’s imminent stopping-behind. Whether Settembrini had remarked “Yes, yes,” or “I see, I see,” or both, or merely “Poveretto!” To Hans Castorp it was evidently all one. Came the eve of departure. Joachim performed for the last time each act of the daily round: each meal, each rest period, each walk; he took leave of the physicians and the Oberin. The morning dawned. He came to table with cold hands and burning eyes; he had not closed them all night. He ate scarce a mouthful; and when the dwarf waitress came to say that his trunks had been strapped, he started up from his chair to take leave of his table-mates. Frau Stöhr wept, the easy, brineless tears of the simpleminded; and after, behind Joachim’s back, shook her head at the schoolmistress and turned her hand about in the air, with the fingers spread out, thus expressing a cheap and common scepticism on the score of Joachim’s competence to depart, and his future welfare. Hans Castorp saw her do it, as he drank out his cup standing, in act to follow his cousin. Then came the business of tipping, and receiving the management’s official farewell in the vestibule. The usual group of spectators stood about: Frau Iltis with her “steriletto,” the ivory Levi, the inordinate Popoff and his wife. They waved their handkerchiefs as the wagon went down the drive with the brake on. Joachim had been presented with roses. He wore a hat, Hans Castorp none.
The morning was glorious, with the first sunshine after days of gloom. The
Schiahorn, the Green Towers, the round top of the Dorfberg stood out unchangeable and unmistakable against the blue; Joachim’s eyes rested on them. Hans Castorp said it was almost a pity the weather had turned so fine on the last day. There was a sort of spite about it; partings were always easier if some inhospitable impression was left at the end. To which Joachim: he didn’t need anything to make it easier, and this was excellent weather for manœuvres, he could do with it down below. They said little else. Things being as they were between them, and the situation for them both, there was indeed not much to say. The lame porter sat on the box with the driver. Erect and bouncing on the hard cushions, they laid the watercourse behind them, the narrow-gauge track; drove along the irregularly built-up street beside the latter, and drew up in the paved square before the station of the Dorf, that was little more than a shell. Hans Castorp with a thrill recalled first impressions. Since his arrival, thirteen months before, in the twilight, he had not seen the station. “Here was where I arrived,” he remarked superfluously, to Joachim, who only said: “So you did,” and paid the coachman.
The nimble lame man attended to tickets and luggage. They stood together on the platform by the miniature train, in one of whose grey-upholstered compartments Joachim kept a place with his overcoat, travelling-rug and roses. “Well, get along, and take your fanatical oath,” Hans Castorp told his cousin, and Joachim answered: “I mean to.” What else was there to say? Last greetings to exchange, greetings to those down below, to those up here. Hans Castorp drew patterns on the asphalt with his cane. “Take your places!” shouted the guard. Hans Castorp started; looked at Joachim, Joachim at him. They put out their hands. Hans Castorp was vaguely smiling; the other’s eyes looked sad, beseeching. “Hans!” he said—yes, incredible and painful as the thing was, it happened: he had called his cousin by his first name. Not with the thou, not “old fellow,” or “man,” by which forms they had addressed each other their lives long. No, in defiance of all reserve, almost gushingly, he called his cousin by his first name. “Hans!” he said, and pressed his hand imploringly—and the latter noted that the excitement of the journey, the sleepless night, the emotion, made Joachim’s head tremble on his neck, as his own did when he “took stock”—“Hans,” he said earnestly, “come down soon!” He swung himself up. The door banged, the train whistled, the carriages shunted together. The little engine puffed and pulled off, the train glided after. The traveller waved his hat from the window, the other, on the platform, his hand. Desolately he stood, after that, a long time, alone. Then slowly he retraced the path that more than a year ago he had first traversed with Joachim.