The Magic Mountain (104 page)

“Agreed! Excellent!” Peeperkorn cried and sat up straight. His hands now loosened, parted, were spread and raised, palms outward, as if in heathen prayer. His grand physiognomy, only just now animated with Gothic agony, blossomed with luxurious good cheer; even a sybaritic dimple made a brief appearance on one cheek. “Behold the hour is at hand—” And he told them to deal him a card, set a horn-rimmed pince-nez on his nose, its high bridge jutting up into his brow, and ordered champagne: three bottles of Mumm and Co.,
Cordon rouge, très sec;
plus petits fours—luscious cone-shaped little delicacies, tenderest pastries glazed with colored sugar and marbled with chocolate or pistachio creams, each presented on a paper doily with a lacy trim. Frau Stöhr licked her fingers with gusto. Herr Albin released the first cork from its wire prison, a task of indolent routine, aimed the bottle at the ceiling, let the mushroom-shaped cork slip from its decorated neck with the pop of a toy gun, and then, as dictated by elegant tradition, wrapped the bottle in a napkin before pouring. Noble foam had moistened the linen on the little serving table. They all chinked shallow goblets and drank the first glass down, electrifying their stomachs with its ice-cold, fragrant tickle. Eyes glistened. The card game was over, although no one had troubled to gather up the cards and money from the table. The party gave itself over to its own blissful idleness; they exchanged disconnected small talk, scraps of elevated emotions, which in their primal state as ideas had promised ultimate beauty, but on the way to being spoken turned into fragmentary, slack-lipped gibberish, some of it indiscreet, some of it incomprehensible, all of it likely to have aroused angry embarrassment in any sober person who might have happened upon them, but accepted without complaint by the participants, who were all cradled in the same irresponsible mood. Frau Magnus’s ears had turned red and she admitted that she felt as if life were coursing through her—which did not seem to please Herr Magnus. Hermine Kleefeld leaned her back against Herr Albin’s shoulder and held out her goblet for more champagne. Directing his bacchanalia with long-lanced, cultured gestures, Peeperkorn saw to it that supplies kept corning. He ordered coffee after the champagne, double mochas, which were once again served with “bread,” or sweet liqueurs—apricot brandy, chartreuse, crème de vanille, and maraschino—for the ladies. Later there was pickled herring and beer, and finally tea, including a Chinese chamomile, for anyone who had drunk enough champagne or liqueurs and did not wish to return to more serious wine, as had Mynheer, who, well after midnight, rang for a simple, sparkling Swiss red for himself, Frau Chauchat, and Hans Castorp—and poured down glass after glass in honest thirst.

At one o’clock the festivities were still under way, held together partly by the leaden palsy of drink, partly by the unusual pleasure of making a night of it, partly by the effect of Peeperkorn’s personality, and partly by the deterrent example offered by Saint Peter and friends, whose weakness of the flesh no one wanted to emulate. Generally speaking, the females seemed less endangered in this regard. The men’ sat with legs stretched out before them, puffing up their red or pallid cheeks and merely quaffing mechanically from time to time, apparently no longer inspired by the task at hand; the women, however, were more industrious. Propping her bared elbows on the table, Hermine Kleefeld held both cheeks in her hands and laughed, displaying the enamel of her front teeth to a giggling Dr. Ting-Fu; meanwhile, Frau Stöhr sat with one shoulder rolled forward, her chin tucked up against it, and flirted with the prosecutor, attempting to enslave him. Frau Magnus was so far gone that she was sitting on Herr Albin’s lap, tugging at both his earlobes—to which Herr Magnus reacted with what appeared to be relief. Someone had asked Anton Karlovitch Ferge to entertain them with his tale of pleural shock, but he could not manage his recalcitrant tongue and frankly admitted his incapacity—which was unanimously greeted as cause for another drink. Wehsal wept bitterly for a while, out of the depths of a misery into which he could give them no insight, since his tongue, too, was no longer in service; but coffee and cognac got him back on his mental feet again. His whimpering tones and his wrinkled trembling chin with tears dripping down it aroused Peeperkorn’s eminent interest, and he stood there now with a raised forefinger and a raised brow of arabesques, calling everyone’s attention to Wehsal’s condition.

“That is—,” he said. “That is indeed—no, permit me to say: holy! Dry his chin, my child—here, take my napkin. Or no, better still, refrain. He himself chooses not to do it. Ladies and gentlemen—holy! Holy in every sense of the word, both Christian and heathen. A primal phenomenon. A phenomenon of first—of highest—no, no, that is—”

This “that is—that is indeed—” supplied the keynote for the directive, explanatory comments with which he steered the party along—always accompanied by precise cultured gestures that were close to burlesque by now. He would typically raise the circle he made with bent forefinger and thumb to just above his ear, while coyly tilting and turning his head away—and the emotions this evoked were much like those one might feel watching an elderly priest of some alien cult hitch up his robes and dance with strange grace before the sacrificial altar. Then he would sprawl back again in all his grandeur, lay one arm across the back of a neighboring chair, and bewilder them all by demanding they plunge with him into his vivid, keen imaginings of morning—of a frosty, dark winter morning, when the yellowish glow of a nightstand lamp is mirrored in the window-pane and shines out into bare branches, stiff in the icy fog of a morning harsh with the cries of crows. With a few suggestive phrases, he could turn a prosaic everyday scene into stark reality, so that they all shivered when he now spoke of the ice-cold water in the sponge that you pressed to the back of your neck on such a morning—and called it holy. It was a mere digression, an instructive example to sensitize them to the basics of life, an impromptu fantasy, which he then dropped to turn his official and emphatic emotional engagement back to the immediate demands of the late hour’s festive abandon. He was manifestly, indiscriminately in love with each and every female in sight—without respect of person. His advances to the dwarf were such that the crippled woman grinned until her aged, oversize face was a wreath of wrinkles; he paid Frau Stöhr compliments that made the vulgar woman roll her shoulder forward even farther and turned her affectations into almost crazed antics; he asked Fräulein Kleefeld to kiss him on his great, ragged lips and charmed even disconsolate Frau Magnus—and all without any detriment to the tender devotion he showed his traveling companion, whose hand he gallantly and frequently pressed to his lips. “Wine,” he said, “women—that is—that is indeed—permit me to say—doomsday—Gethsemane—”

Around two o’clock the rumor sprang up that “the boss”—Director Behrens, that is—was moving toward the social rooms at a forced march. And in that same moment, panic raged among the unnerved guests. Chairs and ice-buckets were upended. People fled via the library. In a fit of royal fury at the sudden disruption of his feast of life, Peeperkorn first banged his fist on the table and then called out after the scattering company—something about “spineless slaves”—but nevertheless reconciled himself somewhat to the idea presented by Hans Castorp and Frau Chauchat that his banquet had lasted for almost six hours now and would have to come to an end at some point in any case, even lent his ear to a reminder about sleep’s holy refreshment, and at last consented to let them escort him to bed.

“Assist me, my child. Assist me on the other side, young man,” he said to Frau Chauchat and Hans Castorp. And so the two of them helped him heave his ponderous body out of the chair and now offered their arms; linked together with them, he walked, or staggered, down the path toward bed, with legs spread wide and mighty head tilted toward one raised shoulder, lurching now toward one of his escorts and now toward the other. In allowing them to support and pilot him, he was in fact treating himself to a kind of regal luxury. Presumably, had it been necessary, he could have walked on his own—he disdained such an effort, however, which could have served only one small, inferior purpose: to hide his drunkenness out of embarrassment. And he was evidently not in the least embarrassed by it; on the contrary, he luxuriated grandly in it and took royal delight in jostling his escorts to the right or left as he tottered along.

On the way, he commented: “Children—nonsense—one is absolutely not—if at this moment—you would see for yourselves—ridiculous—”

“Ridiculous,” Hans Castorp confirmed. “No doubt about it. One gives the classic gifts of life their due by boldly staggering in their honor. But in all seriousness . . . I, too, have had my share, but despite any so-called drunkenness, I am perfectly aware what a special honor it is for me to bring a manifest personality to his bed. Indeed the effects of intoxication are so minor that in terms of stature, where there can truly be no comparison—”

“Come, come, my little chatterbox,” Peeperkorn said; he lurched, forcing Hans Castorp against the banister and pulling Frau Chauchat along with him.

It was obvious now that the rumor about the director’s approach had been an idle threat. Perhaps the weary dwarf had invented it to break up the party. In light of which, Peeperkorn stopped in his tracks and was about to turn back to continue drinking; but from both sides came better council, and so he let them set him back into motion.

The Malayan valet, a little man in a white necktie and black silk slippers, stood waiting in the corridor outside the door to his master’s apartment, and he received him with a bow, laying one hand across his chest.

“Kiss one another!” Peeperkorn commanded. “Place a good-night kiss upon the brow of this charming woman, young man,” he said to Hans Castorp. “She will have no objection, and will repay you in kind. Do it for my sake and with my blessing.” But Hans Castorp declined.

“No, Your Majesty,” he said. “I beg your pardon, but it would not do.”

Leaning against his valet now, Peeperkorn raised those arabesques high and demanded to know why it would not do.

“Because I cannot exchange kisses on the brow with your traveling companion,” Hans Castorp said. “I wish all a pleasant rest. No, from any point of view, that would be utter nonsense.”

And since Frau Chauchat was already moving toward the door to the room, Peeperkorn let this headstrong young man go, although he stared after him for a good while, gazing over both his own shoulder and the Malayan’s, his brow deeply creased in amazement at such an act of insubordination, to which his royal nature was quite unaccustomed.

Mynheer Peeperkorn remained at the Berghof the entire winter—as much of it as was left—and well into spring, so that toward the end of his stay there was a quite memorable excursion (which included Settembrini and Naphta) to Flüela Valley and its waterfall. —The end of his stay? So he did not stay on longer than that? —No, no longer. —So he departed? —Yes and no. —Yes and no? No mystery-mongering, please. Surely it can be said straight out. Lieutenant Ziemssen died, not to mention a good many less honorable folks who have joined the dance of death. And so our vague Peeperkorn was carried off by his malignant tropical fever, is that it? —No, that’s not what happened to him. But why this impatience? Not everything can be known right off. That must still be taken as one of the conditions of life and of storytelling, and surely no one is about to rebel against God-given forms of human understanding. Let us honor time at least to the extent that the nature of our story allows. There is not that much time left in any case, it’s rushing by slapdash as it is, or if that’s too noisy a way of putting it, it’s whisking past hurry-scurry. A little hand measures our time, minces along as if measuring seconds; and yet, whenever it cold-bloodedly moves past a high-point without bothering to stop, that still means something, though God only knows what. We have been up here years now, that much is certain—a dizzying stay, an addict’s dream, but without opium or hashish. The censor will soon be after us. And yet to counter all this nasty befuddlement we have intentionally introduced a great deal of clear reason and rigorous logic. It is not by accident, please note, that we have chosen to associate with minds like those of Messrs. Naphta and Settembrini, instead of surrounding ourselves with vague Peeperkorns—which leads us, in fact, to a comparison that in many respects and particularly in regard to
stature
can only be resolved in favor of this late arrival, just as it was resolved in Hans Castorp’s own mind as he lay on his balcony and admitted that those two hyperarticulate mentors, tugging at both sides of his soul, simply shrank beside Pieter Peeperkorn, until he was inclined to call them the same name the Dutchman had called him in a fit of drunken royal banter—“little chatterboxes”—and decided it was a piece of good luck that hermetic pedagogy had also brought him into contact with such a manifest personality.

This personality had appeared on the scene as Clavdia Chauchat’s traveling companion and therefore as a tremendous disruption—but Hans Castorp did not let that alter his judgment of the man. He did not, we repeat, let it alter his honestly deferential, if at times slightly brash sympathy for a man of stature—simply because that man shared traveling expenses with a lady from whom Hans Castorp had borrowed a pencil on Mardi Gras evening. That would not have been like him—though we are quite aware that many a lady or gentleman in our circle of readers may be offended by such a “lack of temperament” and would prefer that he despise and avoid Peeperkorn, that he refer to him, at least to himself, as nothing but an ass, a babbling old sot, instead of visiting the Dutchman during his intermittent attacks of fever, when he would sit down beside the bed for a chat (a word that applies, of course, only to
his
contribution to the conversation, not to the words of the grand Peeperkorn) and let the power of that personality work upon him the way new sights work upon a tourist thirsty for knowledge. For that is what he did, and we recount the fact, indifferent to the danger of its reminding anyone of Ferdinand Wehsal and of how he carried Hans Castorp’s overcoat. There is no resemblance. Our hero was no Wehsal; the depths of misery were not for him. He was simply not a “hero,” which is to say, he did not let his relationship with the man be determined by the woman. Holding to our principle of not making him any better or worse than he was, we can state that he simply refused—not consciously, not expressly, but quite naively refused—to let ideas out of novels undermine his sense of justice when dealing with his own sex or limit the experiences he needed for growth in this arena of life. That may not please the ladies—we believe we can say that Frau Chauchat was instinctively annoyed by it, one or two pointed remarks that she let slip, and which we shall insert at some juncture, indicated as much. But perhaps it was this personality trait that made him such a suitable object for pedagogic rivalry.