The Magic Mountain (14 page)

“Oh, no offense taken,” Hans Castorp said, and provided the information.

“A shipbuilder—how marvelous!” Settembrini cried. “I assure you, I think that’s marvelous, although my own talents lie in a different direction.”

“Herr Settembrini is a literary man,” Joachim said, explaining with some embarrassment. “He wrote the obituary of Carducci for the German papers—Carducci, you know.” And he grew even more embarrassed when his cousin looked at him in amazement as if to say: “What do you know about Carducci? About as much as I do, I bet.”

“That’s right,” the Italian said with a nod. “I had the honor of telling your countrymen about that great poet and freethinker once his life had drawn to a close. I knew him, I may even say that I was a disciple. I sat at his feet in Bologna. I have him to thank for whatever refinement and good cheer I call my own. But we were speaking of you—a shipbuilder? Do you know that you are visibly growing in stature right before my eyes? Suddenly there you sit, the representative of a whole world of labor and practical genius.”

“But Herr Settembrini—I’m really only a student, I’m just beginning.”

“To be sure, and the first step is always the most difficult. Indeed, all labor truly deserving of the name is difficult, is it not?”

“Devil knows that’s right,” Hans Castorp said, and it came from the heart.

Settembrini’s eyebrows flew up. “And you even call upon the Devil,” he said, “to support your opinions? Satan himself? Did you know that my great teacher once wrote a hymn to him?”

“Excuse me,” Hans Castorp said, “to the Devil?”

“The Devil himself. It is even sung on certain festive occasions in my homeland. ‘
O salute, O Satana, O ribellione, O forza vindice della ragione
’ . . . a splendid hymn! But that was most probably not the Devil you had in mind, because
he
is on excellent terms with labor. The one you mean, the Devil who considers labor an abomination because he fears it, is presumably the other one, of whom it is said one shouldn’t give him an inch.”

All this had a very strange effect on Hans Castorp. He did not understand Italian—and felt no more comfortable about the rest of it. There was a preachy flavor to it, although it was delivered in the light, bantering tone of small talk. He looked at his cousin—who simply lowered his eyes—and then said, “Ah, Herr Settembrini, you take my words all too literally. My reference to the Devil was merely a figure of speech, I assure you.”

“Someone must show some wit,” Settembrini said, gazing dolefully into the air. But then he grew animated again, brightened up, and charmingly brought the conversation around. “In any case, I am correct in concluding from your words that you have chosen a profession as demanding as it is honorable. My God, I am a humanist, a
homo humanus
, and understand nothing of such ingenious matters, however sincere my deep respect for them. But I can well imagine that the theoretical side of your profession demands a clear and keen mind and its practice no less than the whole man—is that not so?”

“It certainly is, yes, I can agree with you unconditionally there,” Hans Castorp responded, instinctively attempting to speak with a little more eloquence. “Its demands are colossal nowadays—one dare not be all too aware of just how exacting or one might truly lose all heart. No, it is no fun. And when one’s constitution is not all that strong—I am here only as a guest, true, but my constitution’s not exactly the strongest, and I would be lying were I to claim that work suits me splendidly. Indeed it rather wears me down, I must say. Actually, I only feel really healthy when I am doing nothing at all.”

“Now, for example?”

“Now? Oh, I’m still so new up here—a little confused, as you can well imagine.”

“Ah—confused.”

“Yes, I didn’t sleep all that well, and then the first breakfast was really too sumptuous. I’m used to a good breakfast, but what we had today seemed to me a little too heavy, too ‘rich,’ as the English say. In short, I’m feeling somewhat uneasy, particularly since my cigar didn’t seem to taste good this morning—just imagine! That almost never happens to me, really only when I’m seriously ill. And today it tastes like leather. I had to toss it away, there was no point in forcing it. Are you a smoker, if I may ask? No? Then you can’t imagine what an annoyance, what a disappointment that is for someone like myself, who has smoked with such gusto from youth on.”

“I am inexperienced in that area,” Settembrini replied, “but find myself in rather good company in that lack of experience. A great many noble and prudent minds have detested tobacco smoke. Carducci did not love it, either. But you’ll find sympathy from Rhadamanthus there. He is a devotee of your vice.”

“Now, now—vice, Herr Settembrini . . .”

“Why not? One must apply truth and energy in naming things. It elevates and intensifies life. I have my vices, too.”

“So Director Behrens is also an expert on cigars, I see. A charming man.”

“You think so? Ah, and so you have already made his acquaintance?”

“Yes, just now, as we were leaving for our walk. It was almost a kind of consultation, but
sine pecunia
, you know. He immediately noticed that I am rather anemic. And suggested that I should adopt my cousin’s style of life here—lie out on the balcony a great deal, even said I should measure my temperature, too.”

“Is that right?” Settembrini exclaimed. “Excellent!” he cried into the air above him, throwing his head back and laughing. “How does that go in the opera of your greatest composer? ‘I am the man who catches birds, am always merry, mark my words!’ In short, that’s very amusing. And you wish to follow his advice, do you? Indubitably. Why shouldn’t you? A devil of a fellow, our Rhadamanthus. And truly ‘always merry’—though at times it’s a little forced. He tends to melancholy. His vice is not good for him—but otherwise, it would be no vice—tobacco only makes him melancholy. Which is why our venerable head nurse has taken charge of his supply and allows him only a small daily ration. It has been said that on occasion he succumbs to the temptation of stealing them, and then slips into melancholy. In a word, a confused soul. You do know our head nurse, do you not? No? But that is a mistake—you are in error not to seek out her acquaintance. From the house of the von Mylendonks, sir! She differs from the Medici Venus only in that where the goddess has a bosom, she wears a cross.”

“Ha ha, excellent!” Hans Castorp laughed.

“Her given name is Adriatica.”

“You don’t say?” Hans Castorp exclaimed. “That is extraordinary—von Mylendonk and Adriatica, to boot. It sounds as if she ought to have been dead for centuries. It has an absolutely medieval ring.”

“My good sir,” Settembrini replied, “there is much here that has a ‘medieval ring’ to it, as you have chosen to express it. I for my part am convinced that our Rhadamanthus has made this fossil the chief supervisor of his palace of horrors simply out of a sense of artistic style. He is after all an artist—you did not know that? He paints in oils. And why not? It is not forbidden, you know—everyone is free to do as he chooses. Frau Adriatica tells anyone who will listen, and others as well, that toward the middle of the thirteenth century a Mylendonk was the abbess of a cloister in Bonn on the Rhine. She herself surely must have first seen the light of the world shortly thereafter.”

“Ha ha ha. What a sarcastic man you are, Herr Settembrini.”

“Sarcastic? You mean malicious. Yes, I am a little malicious,” Settembrini said. “My great worry is that I have been condemned to waste my malice on such miserable objects. I hope that you have nothing against malice, my good engineer. In my eyes it is the brightest sword that reason has against the powers of darkness and ugliness. Malice, sir, is the spirit of criticism, and criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment.” And all of a sudden he began to speak about Petrarch, whom he called the “Father of Modernity.”

“We must return to our rest cure, however,” Joachim said circumspectly.

The literary man, who had underscored all his words with charming gestures, rounded his thoughts off now with a flourish in Joachim’s direction and said, “Our lieutenant is pressing us into service. And so let us depart. We are taking the same path—’to the right, which leads to the walls of mightiest Dis.’ Ah, Virgil, Virgil, gentlemen, he is unsurpassed.

I believe in progress, certainly. But Virgil had a command of epithets beyond that of any modern poet.” And as they made their way home, he began to recite Latin verses with an Italian accent, but broke off when he saw a young girl approaching—a daughter of the town, it appeared, and not an especially pretty one—and switched with a smile to a philanderer’s tune. “Tut, tut, tut,” he clicked his tongue. “Ah, ah, ah! La, la, la! Sweet young thing, won’t you be mine? Ah, behold ‘her flashing eye in the slippery light,’ ” he quoted—God only knew from what—and turned to blow a kiss at the embarrassed girl’s back.

“What a windbag,” Hans Castorp thought, and did not change his mind when Settembrini moved on from this fit of flirtation and returned to casting aspersions. His primary object was Director Behrens—he sneered at the size of the man’s feet and lingered over his title of
Hofrat
, which had been bestowed on him by a prince suffering from tuberculosis of the brain. The prince’s scandalous behavior was still the talk of the valley, but Rhadamanthus had simply winked an eye, both eyes—every inch a
Hofrat
. Did the gentlemen know, by the way, that Behrens had been the inventor of the summer season? Yes, he and he alone. Honor to whom honor is due. In days past, only the most faithful of the faithful had held out over the summer in this valley. But then “our humorist” with his incorruptibly keen eye had realized that this unhappy state of affairs was nothing less than the fruit of prejudice. He had set forth the theory that, at least as far as
his
institution was concerned, the summer cure was to be recommended no less than the winter, that it was especially efficacious, indeed absolutely indispensable. And he had known how to spread his theory among the public—among other methods, by writing popular articles that he had then passed on to the press. And since then business in summer was as lively as that in winter. “A genius!” Settembrini said. “What in-tu-i-tion!” he said. And then he scoffed at the other sanatoriums in town and sarcastically praised the business acumen of their owners. There was Professor Kafka—every year, at the critical moment of thaw, when a great many patients demanded to leave, Professor Kafka would suddenly be called away for a week or so, promising to take care of discharges on his return. But then he would stay away for six weeks while the poor things waited—and, let it be noted, their bills increased. Kafka had once been summoned to consult on a case in Fiume, but he refused to depart before he had been assured of a fee of five thousand

Swiss francs, and that had taken a good two weeks. The day after the
celebrissimo’s
arrival, the patient had died. And as for Dr. Salzmann, he claimed that Professor Kafka did not keep his syringes sterile and infected his patients with other diseases. He glided on rubber soles, so Salzmann said, to keep the dying from hearing his approach. Whereas Kafka claimed that Salzmann demanded his patients drink “the vine’s gladdening gift” in such quantities—likewise with a view to rounding off their bills—that people were dying like flies, and not of phthisis, but of cirrhosis.

And so he continued, while good-natured Hans Castorp laughed heartily at this torrent of glib slander. There was something curiously agreeable in the flow of the Italian’s words, spoken as they were in pure and precise German, free of every trace of dialect. Each one emerged taut, neat, and brand-new from his mobile lips; he savored every educated, biting, nimble turn of phrase that he used, taking obvious, effusive, and exhilarating enjoyment even in grammatical inflections and conjugations, and seemed to have far too much clear presence of mind ever to misspeak himself.

“You have such a droll way of speaking, Herr Settembrini,” Hans Castorp said. “It’s so—lively. I don’t really know how to put it.”

“Graphic, perhaps?” the Italian responded, fanning himself with his handkerchief, although the air was actually rather cool. “That would be the word you’re looking for. I have a graphic way of speaking, is what you want to say. But wait,” he cried, “what do I see? Behold the judges of the dead out for a stroll! What a sight!”

The hikers already had the hairpin turn behind them. Whether it was Settembrini’s conversation, the steepness of the path, or their not having left the sanatorium nearly so far behind them as Hans Castorp had thought—because a path always seems considerably longer when we first walk it than when we have come to know it—in any case, the return trip had taken a surprisingly short time. Settembrini was right: there were the two doctors striding across the open area at the back of the sanatorium—the director in his white smock leading the way, his head thrust forward, his hands rowing in the air; and in his wake, Dr. Krokowski, still in his black smock, looking about with an even more self-assured air, because clinical custom demanded he walk behind his supervisor as they made their rounds.

“Ah, Krokowski,” Settembrini exclaimed. “There he goes, filled with all the secrets of our ladies. I beg you, please regard the delicate symbolism of his garb. He wears black to indicate that his particular specialty is the night. The man has but one thought in his head, and it is a filthy one. My good engineer, how is it that we have not yet spoken of the man? Have you made his acquaintance?”

Hans Castorp said he had.

“Well, then? I am beginning to surmise that you liked him as well.”

“I really don’t know, Herr Settembrini. I’ve only had the most fleeting introduction. And, then, I’m not all that rash about forming opinions. I look at people and think: So that’s how you are? Well, fine.”

“That’s pure sluggishness,” the Italian replied. “Form opinions! That’s why nature gave you eyes and reason. You remarked that I speak maliciously, but if I have done so, then it was not without a pedagogic purpose. We humanists all have a pedagogic streak. Gentlemen, the historical connection between humanism and pedagogy only proves the psychological basis of that connection. One should not deny the humanist his position as an educator—indeed it cannot be denied to him, for he alone preserves the tradition of man’s dignity and beauty. There came a time when he took over from the priest, who in murky and misanthropic eras of the past was permitted to arrogate the education of youth to himself. But since then, gentlemen, absolutely no other type of educator has ever emerged. Schools based on humanistic education—you may call me backward if you like, sir, but on principle and
in abstracto
, do understand me correctly, I beg you—I remain their firm supporter.”