The Magic Mountain (72 page)

Pribislav Hippe no longer appeared living before him, as he had eleven months before. His acclimatization was complete, he had no more visions, his body no longer lay inert on the bench while his innermost self wandered in some distant present—nothing of that sort happened. And when the memory of it came back to him, its vivid clarity stayed within normal, healthy bounds; and then Hans Castorp would pull from his breast pocket the glass memento that he kept in a heavy envelope he carried in his wallet—a little rectangle, which when held parallel to the ground was a black, opaque, reflective surface, but when held up to the sky, grew light and revealed very humanistic things: the transparent picture of a human body, with rib cage, the outline of the heart, the curve of the diaphragm, the bellows of the lungs, plus scapulae and humeri, all surrounded by a pale, hazy halo, the flesh—of which, against all reason, Hans Castorp had tasted on Mardi Gras. Was it any wonder, then, that his skittish heart stopped and did a somersault whenever he looked at this memento? And then to the sounds of the rushing brook and amid blue-blossoming columbine, he would lean back against the crude wooden bench, cross his arms, tilt his head to one shoulder, and begin to reminisce about it “all.”

That sublime image of organic life, the human body, hovered before him just as it had on that frosty, starlit night when he had pursued his learned studies; and in contemplating its inner aspect now, young Hans Castorp was caught up in a great many questions and distinctions—the sort that dear old Joachim did not think it was his duty to be concerned about, but for which, as a civilian, Hans Castorp had begun to feel a responsibility, even though down in the flatlands he had never noticed such questions, probably never would have noticed them, but certainly did here, where one looked down on the world and its creatures from the contemplative retreat of five thousand feet and thought one’s thoughts, even if they were probably the result of enhanced activity of the body, which was caused by soluble toxins and made your face burn with a dry flush. And in considering that inner aspect, he also thought of Settembrini, the pedagogic organ-grinder, whose father had come into the world in Greece and who explained love for that sublime image to be a matter of politics, rebellion, and eloquence, whereby the citizen’s pike was consecrated on the altar of humanity; he thought, too, of Comrade Krokowski and what the two of them had been doing in his darkened suite for some time now, thought of the two sides of analysis and how it was not only beneficial to action and progress, but also a relative of the grave and its foul anatomy. He called up images of the two grandfathers, placing them side by side, the rebel and the faithful servant, who both wore black but for different reasons, and he considered their merits. He went on to deliberate such vast complexities as form and freedom, mind and body, honor and disgrace, time and eternity—and was overcome by a brief, but frantic dizzy spell at the thought that the columbine was blooming again and the year had come full circle.

He had a special term for this responsible preoccupation with his thoughts as he sat at his picturesque, secluded spot: he called it “playing king”—a childish term taken from the games of his boyhood, and by it he meant that this was a kind of entertainment that he loved, although with it came fear, dizziness, and all sorts of heart palpitations that made his face flush even hotter. And he found it not unfitting that the strain of all this required him to prop his chin—and the old method seemed perfectly appropriate to the dignity he felt when “playing king” and gazing at that hovering sublime image.

“
Homo Dei
”—that had been ugly Naphta’s term for the sublime image when he was defending it against English social theory. Was it any wonder, then, that Hans Castorp, given his civilian sense of responsibility and interest in “playing king,” felt that he and Joachim were obliged to pay him a little visit? Settembrini did not like the idea—Hans Castorp was shrewd and sensitive enough to see that quite clearly. The humanist had been displeased by their first meeting, had obviously tried to thwart it and pedagogically prevent the young people—himself in particular, the cunning problem child noted—from making Naphta’s acquaintance, even though he personally associated and argued with him. That is how teachers are. They allow themselves to enjoy the interesting stuff, claiming they are “adults,” but forbid it to young people, even demand that they acknowledge just how “unadult” they are. It was a good thing that the organ-grinder had no real right to forbid young Hans Castorp from doing anything—did not even make the attempt. The problem pupil needed only to ignore his sensitivities and pretend innocence, and there was nothing to prevent him from cordially accepting little Naphta’s invitation—which he did after the main rest cure one Sunday afternoon, only a few days following that first meeting. Joachim had to come along for better or worse.

It was only a few minutes’ walk from the Berghof down to the little house with the grapevine twined about its door. They entered, passed the door to the grocery on the right, and climbed a set of narrow brown stairs that brought them to another door. There was only one name on the plate beside the bell: Lukaček, Ladies’ Tailor. The door was answered by a half-grown lad with close-trimmed hair and red cheeks; he was dressed in a kind of uniform—a striped footman’s jacket and gaiters. They asked for Professor Naphta and, since they had no calling cards, made sure he could repeat their own names. He left them there, saying he would inform Herr Naphta—he used no title. A door stood open immediately opposite, and they could see into the tailor’s shop, where Lukaček, despite its being Sunday, was sitting cross-legged atop a table, sewing. He was a pale, bald man; from beneath an oversize, drooping nose, a black moustache hung down morosely on both sides of his mouth.

“Good afternoon,” Hans Castorp said.

“How do,” the tailor said in Swiss dialect, although that seemed to match neither his name nor appearance and sounded rather false and odd.

“Working so hard, even on a Sunday?” Hans Castorp added with a nod.

“It’s urgent,” Lukaček replied curtly and took a stitch.

“Something elegant, I suppose,” Hans Castorp guessed. “It’s needed right away for a ball or party, is that it?”

The tailor left the question unanswered, bit off his thread, and threaded again. After a while he nodded in agreement.

“Will it be pretty?” Hans Castorp asked anew. “Will it have sleeves?”

“Yep, sleeves, it’s for an ol’ lady,” Lukaček replied with a heavy Bohemian accent. The page returned to interrupt their conversation, which had been carried on through the open door. Herr Naphta would be pleased to receive the gentlemen, he reported, and asked them to follow; he opened another door, two or three steps farther on the right, behind which was a heavy portiere that he also lifted aside for the young men to enter. Standing there in slippers on a moss-green carpet, Naphta greeted his guests.

Both cousins were surprised by the luxury of the two-windowed study into which they had stepped—indeed, they were dazzled, for they had not expected anything of the sort given the shabby little house with its dingy corridor and stairway, in contrast to which Naphta’s furnishings seemed almost fabulously elegant, when in point of fact they weren’t, nor would Hans Castorp or Joachim Ziemssen normally have regarded them as such. But the decor was first-rate, and so ornate that despite the desk and bookcases the room did not have much of a masculine look. There was too much silk, burgundy and purple silk: silk curtains to conceal the shoddy doors, silk valances above the windows, and silk upholstery on a sofa and armchairs grouped at the far end of the room, opposite a second door and directly below a tapestry covering almost the entire wall. The baroque chairs, with little upholstered cushions on the arms, were placed around a circular, brass-trimmed table; behind this stood the sofa, likewise baroque and strewn with silk plush pillows. The bookcases, fitted with glass doors and green silk curtains, filled the walls at the sides of both doors; they were mahogany, as was the desk, or rather the rolltop secretary, which had been placed between the two windows. In the corner, to the left of the sofa and chairs, was a work of art: a painted wooden sculpture set atop a large pedestal draped in red, a profoundly terrifying work, a naive pietà—very effective, almost grotesque. The Mother of God, her hood drawn up, her brows furrowed in agony, her mouth skewed and gaping in lamentation; the Man of Sorrows on her lap, a primitive figure, badly out of scale, the crudely fashioned body revealing an ignorance of anatomy, the drooping head studded with thorns, the face and limbs splattered and dripping with blood, thick globs of congealed blood at the wound in the side, nail marks on the hands and feet—this showpiece definitely lent the silk room a special accent. The wallpaper visible above the bookcases and at the sides of the windows was also apparently the work of the tenant, with vertical stripes in the same green as the soft carpet spread over the simple red floor-covering. Only the low ceiling was more or less beyond help; it was cracked and bare—although a small Venetian chandelier had been hung. The windows were hidden by floor-length cream-colored curtains.

“We’ve come by for our little colloquy,” Hans Castorp said, his eyes directed more at the pious horror in the corner than at the occupant of this surprising room, who was commending the cousins for having kept their word. Gesturing hospitably with his little right hand, he was trying to lead them to the silk-upholstered chairs, but Hans Castorp, as if spellbound, headed straight for the wooden sculpture and stopped in front of it, his hands on his hips and his head tilted to one side.

“What is this you have here?” he said softly. “It’s frightfully good. I’ve never seen such suffering. Very old, of course, is it not?”

“Fourteenth century,” Naphta replied. “Presumably from the Rhineland. You’re impressed, aren’t you?”

“Enormously,” Hans Castorp said. “It couldn’t help making an impression on one. I would never have thought that anything could be simultaneously so ugly—beg your pardon—and so beautiful.”

“Works of art from a world in which the soul expresses itself,” Naphta responded, “are always beautiful to the point of ugliness and ugly to the point of beauty. It is indeed a law. We are dealing with beauty of the Spirit, not of the flesh, which is basically stupid. And abstract, as well,” he added. “The beauty of the body is abstract. Only inner beauty, the beauty of religious expression, possesses true reality.”

“How kind of you to define and differentiate the matter so clearly,” Hans Castorp said. “Fourteenth?” he inquired, just to be sure. “Thirteen hundred and something? Yes, perfect textbook Middle Ages
—
I see in it, as it were, some notions about the Middle Ages that I’ve been working on of late myself. Actually, I never knew anything about the period. I’m a man of technology and progress, to the extent my opinions count in this world. But up here the whole issue of the Middle Ages has been brought home to me in various ways. Certainly there was no economic social theory in those days, that much is clear. Do you know the artist’s name?”

Naphta shrugged. “What does it matter?” he said. “We should not even ask, because at the time it was created no one asked, either. There is no miracle-worker, no Mr. Individual Creator behind it—it is an anonymous, communal work of art. It comes, of course, from the very advanced Middle Ages, the Gothic
—signum mortificationis
. You’ll not find the crucifixion glossed over and prettified here, the way the Romanesque period thought it best to deal with things—no kingly crown, no majestic triumph over the world and martyrdom. The entire work is a radical proclamation of suffering and the weakness of the flesh. It is not until the Gothic that tastes turn to true pessimistic asceticism. You’re probably unfamiliar with
De miseria humanae conditionis
by Innocent the Third—a very witty literary work, from the end of the twelfth century. But only later did this sort of art provide the illustrations for it.”

“Herr Naphta,” Hans Castorp said, heaving a sigh, “every word of everything you’ve said interests me. ‘
Signum mortificationis
,’ was that it? I shall make a note of it. And just before that you mentioned ‘anonymous and communal,’ which also appears worth some serious thought. Sad to say, you guessed correctly about my not knowing the writings of that pope
—
I assume Innocent the Third was a pope. Did I understand you to say that the work is ascetic and witty? I must admit I’ve never thought those two things could go hand in hand, but now that I consider it, it seems quite plausible—any discussion of human misery would offer a chance for witty remarks at the expense of the flesh. Is the work to be had somewhere? If I brush up on my Latin perhaps I can read it.”

“I have the book,” Naphta replied, pointing his head toward one of the bookcases. “It is at your disposal. But won’t you please sit down? You can regard the pietà from the sofa. And here’s our afternoon snack—”

The little page had brought tea, plus a pretty silver-trimmed basket containing slices of layer cake. And who should come through the open door behind him—gliding swiftly, smiling delicately, exclaiming, “Zounds!” and “
Accidenti!
” It was Herr Settembrini, who lived one floor up and just happened to drop by to keep these gentlemen company. He had seen the cousins coming, he said, from his little window and had quickly finished off the encyclopedic page he had been working on, so that he, too, could join the party. His arrival seemed the most natural thing in the world—justified both by his old acquaintance with the Berghof residents and his relationship with Naphta, which despite profound differences of opinion was evidently characterized by regular and very lively visiting back and forth. And, indeed, the host showed no surprise as he casually greeted him as one of their number. All this, however, did not prevent Hans Castorp from gaining two distinct impressions from his arrival. First, he had the feeling that Herr Settembrini had dropped by in order to keep him and Joachim—or, actually, just him—from being left alone with ugly little Naphta and to provide a pedagogic counterweight by his presence; second, it was quite evident that he had no objection to using the occasion to leave his lodgings in the attic for a while, exchanging them for Naphta’s silk-adorned room and a properly served tea. He first rubbed his yellow hands—and a line of black hair grew down the side of each, to just below the little finger—and then helped himself. With obvious relish, indeed with open praise, he dined on layer cake, each narrow, curving slice of which was richly veined with chocolate.