They were hours—more than two of them, to be explicit, counting in a brief intermission in the efforts on Holger’s part which now began, or rather, on the girl Elly’s—of work so hard and so prolonged that they were all toward the end inclined to be fainthearted and despair of any result; out of pure pity, too, tempted to resign an attempt which seemed pitilessly hard, and beyond the delicate strength of her upon whom it was laid. We men, if we do not shirk our humanity, are familiar with an hour of life when we know this almost intolerable pity, which, absurdly enough no one else can feel, this rebellious “Enough, no more!” which is wrung from us, though it
is
not enough, and cannot or will not be enough, until it comes somehow or other to its appointed end. The reader knows we speak of our husband- and fatherhood, of the act of birth, which Elly’s wrestling did so unmistakably resemble that even he must recognize it who had never passed through this experience, even our young Hans Castorp; who, not having shirked life, now came to know, in such a guise, this act, so full of organic mysticism. In what a guise! To what an end! Under what circumstances! One could not regard as anything less than scandalous the sights and sounds in this red-lighted lying-in chamber, the maidenly form of the pregnant one, barearmed, in flowing night-robe; and then by contrast the ceaseless and senseless gramophone music, the forced conversation which the circle kept up at command, the cries of encouragement they ever and anon directed at the struggling one: “Hullo, Holger! Courage, man! It’s coming, just keep it up, let it come, that’s the way!” Nor do we except the person and situation of the “husband”—if we may regard in that light our young friend, who had indeed formed such a wish—sitting there, with the knees of the little “mother” between his own, holding in his her hands, which were as wet as once little Leila’s, so that he had constantly to be renewing his hold, not to let them slip.
For the gas fire in the rear of the circle radiated great heat.
Mystical, consecrate? Ah, no, it was all rather noisy and vulgar, there in the red glow, to which they had now so accustomed their eyes that they could see the whole room fairly well. The music and shouting were so like the revivalistic methods of the Salvation Army, they even made Hans Castorp think of the comparison, albeit he had never attended at a celebration by these cheerful zealots. It was in no eerie or ghostly sense that the scene affected the sympathetic one as mystic or mysterious, as conducing to solemnity; it was rather natural, organic—by virtue of the intimate association we have already referred to. Elly’s exertions came in waves, after periods of rest, during which she hung sidewise from her chair in a totally relaxed and inaccessible condition, described by Dr. Krokowski as “deep trance.” From this she would start up with a moan, throw herself about, strain and wrestle with her captors, whisper feverish, disconnected words, seem to be trying, with sidewise, jerking movements, to expel something; she would gnash her teeth, once even fastened them in Hans Castorp’s sleeve.
This had gone on for more than an hour when the leader found it to the interest of all concerned to grant a brief intermission. The Czech Wenzel, who had introduced an enlivening variation by closing the gramophone and striking up very expertly on his guitar, laid that instrument aside. They all drew a long breath and broke the circle. Dr. Krokowski strode over to the wall and switched on the ceiling lamp; the light flashed up glaringly, making them all blink. Elly, bent forward, her face almost in her lap, slumbered. She was busy too, absorbed in the oddest activity, with which the others appeared familiar, but which Hans Castorp watched with attentive wonder. For some minutes together she moved the hollow of her hand to and fro in the region of her hips: carried the hand away from her body and then with scooping, raking motion drew it towards her, as though gathering something and pulling it in. Then, with a series of starts, she came to herself, blinked in her turn at the light with sleep-stiffened eyes and smiled.
She smiled affectedly, rather remotely. In truth, their solicitude seemed wasted; she did not appear exhausted by her efforts. Perhaps she retained no memory of them. She sat down in the chair reserved for patients, by the writing-desk near the window, between the desk and the screen about the chaise-longue; gave the chair a turn so that she could support her elbow on the desk and look into the room; and remained thus, receiving their sympathetic glances and encouraging nods, silent during the whole intermission, which lasted fifteen minutes.
It was a beneficent pause, relaxed, and filled with peaceful satisfaction in respect of work already accomplished. The lids of cigarette-cases snapped, the men smoked comfortably, and standing in groups discussed the prospects of the seance. They were far from despairing or anticipating a negative result to their efforts. Signs enough were present to prove such doubting uncalled for. Those sitting near the doctor, at the far end of the row, agreed that they had several times felt, quite unmistakably, that current of cool air which regularly whenever manifestations were under way streamed in a definite direction from the person of the medium. Others had seen lightphenomena, white spots, moving conglobations of forces showing themselves at intervals against the screen. In short, no faint-heartedness! No looking backward now they had put their hands to the plough. Holger had given his word, they had no call to doubt that he would keep it.
Dr. Krokowski signed for the resumption of the sitting. He led Elly back to her martyrdom and seated her, stroking her hair. The others closed the circle. All went as before. Hans Castorp suggested that he be released from his post of first control, but Dr. Krokowski refused. He said he laid great stress on excluding, by immediate contact, every possibility of misleading manipulation on the part of the medium. So Hans Castorp took up again his strange position vis-à-vis to Elly; the white light gave place to rosy twilight, the music began again, the pumping motions; this time it was Hans Castorp who announced “trance.” The scandalous lying-in proceeded. With what distressful difficulty! It seemed unwilling to take its course—how could it? Madness! What maternity was this, what delivery, of what should she be delivered? “Help, help,” the child moaned, and her spasms seemed about to pass over into that dangerous and unavailing stage obstetricians call eclampsia. She called at intervals on the doctor, that he should put his hands on her. He did so, speaking to her encouragingly. The magnetic effect, if such it was, strengthened her to further efforts. Thus passed the second hour, while the guitar was strummed or the gramophone gave out the contents of the album of light music into the twilight to which they had again accustomed their vision. Then came an episode, introduced by Hans Castorp. He supplied a stimulus by expressing an idea, a wish; a wish he had cherished from the beginning, and might perhaps have profitably expressed before now. Elly was lying with her face on their joined hands, in “deep trance.” Herr Wenzel was just changing or reversing the record when our friend summoned his resolution and said he had a suggestion to make, of no great importance, yet perhaps—possibly—of some avail. He had—that is, the house possessed among its volumes of records—a certain song, from Gounod’s
Faust
, Valentine’s Prayer, baritone with orchestral accompaniment, very appealing. He, the speaker, thought they might try the record. “Why that particular one?” the doctor asked out of the darkness.
“A question of mood. Matter of feeling,” the young man responded. The mood of the piece in question was peculiar to itself, quite special—he suggested they should try it. Just possible, not out of the question, that its mood and atmosphere might shorten their labours.
“Is the record here?” the doctor inquired.
No, but Hans Castorp could fetch it at once.
“What are you thinking of?” Krokowski promptly repelled the idea. What? Hans Castorp thought he might go and come again and take up his business where he had left it off? There spoke the voice of utter inexperience. Oh, no, it was impossible. It would upset everything, they would have to begin all over. Scientific exactitude forbade them to think of any such arbitrary going in and out. The door was locked. He, the doctor, had the key in his pocket. In short, if the record was not now in the room—
He was still talking when the Czech threw in, from the gramophone: “The record is here.”
“Here?” Hans Castorp asked.
“Yes, here it is,
Faust
, Valentine’s Prayer.” It had been stuck by mistake in the album of light music, not in the green album of
arias
, where it belonged; quite by chance—or mismanagement or carelessness, in any case luckily—it had partaken of the general topsyturvyness, and here it was, needing only to be put on.
What had Hans Castorp to say to that? Nothing. It was the doctor who remarked: “So much the better,” and some of the others chimed in. The needle scraped, the lid was put down. The male voice began to choral accompaniment: “Now the parting hour has come.”
No one spoke. They listened. Elly, as the music resumed, renewed her efforts. She started up convulsively, pumped, carried the slippery hands to her brow. The record went on, came to the middle part, with skipping rhythm, the part about war and danger, gallant, god-fearing, French. After that the finale, in full volume, the orchestrally supported refrain of the beginning. “O Lord of heaven, hear me pray…”
Hans Castorp had work with Elly. She raised herself, drew in a straggling breath, sighed a long, long, outward sigh, sank down and was still. He bent over her in concern, and as he did so, he heard Frau Stöhr say, in a high, whining pipe: “Ziems— sen!”
He did not look up. A bitter taste came in his mouth. He heard another voice, a deep, cold voice, saying: “I’ve seen him a long time.”
The record had run off, with a last accord of horns. But no one stopped the machine. The needle went on scratching in the silence, as the disk whirred round. Then Hans Castorp raised his head, and his eyes went, without searching, the right way.
There was one more person in the room than before. There in the background, where the red rays lost themselves in gloom, so that the eye scarcely reached thither, between writing-desk and screen, in the doctor’s consulting-chair, where in the intermission Elly had been sitting, Joachim sat. It was the Joachim of the last days, with hollow, shadowy cheeks, warrior’s beard and full, curling lips. He sat leaning back, one leg crossed over the other. On his wasted face, shaded though it was by his head-covering, was plainly seen the stamp of suffering, the expression of gravity and austerity which had beautified it. Two folds stood on his brow, between the eyes, that lay deep in their bony cavities; but there was no change in the mildness of the great dark orbs, whose quiet, friendly gaze sought out Hans Castorp, and him alone. That ancient grievance of the outstanding ears was still to be seen under the head-covering, his extraordinary head-covering, which they could not make out. Cousin Joachim was not in mufti. His sabre seemed to be leaning against his leg, he held the handle, one thought to distinguish something like a pistol-case in his belt. But that was no proper uniform he wore. No colour, no decorations; it had a collar like a
litewka
jacket, and side pockets. Somewhere low down on the breast was a cross. His feet looked large, his legs very thin, they seemed to be bound or wound as for the business of sport more than war. And what was it, this headgear? It seemed as though Joachim had turned an army cook-pot upside-down on his head, and fastened it under his chin with a band. Yet it looked quite properly warlike, like an old-fashioned foot-soldier, perhaps. Hans Castorp felt Ellen Brand’s breath on his hands. And near him the Kleefeld’s rapid breathing. Other sound there was none, save the continued scraping of the needle on the run-down, rotating record, which nobody stopped. He looked at none of his company, would hear or see nothing of them; but across the hands and head on his knee leaned far forward and stared through the red darkness at the guest in the chair. It seemed one moment as though his stomach would turn over within him. His throat contracted and a four- or fivefold sob went through and through him. “Forgive me!” he whispered; then his eyes overflowed, he saw no more.
He heard breathless voices: “Speak to him!” he heard Dr. Krokowski’s baritone voice summon him, formally, cheerily, and repeat the request. Instead of complying, he drew his hands away from beneath Elly’s face, and stood up.
Again Dr. Krokowski called upon his name, this time in monitory tones. But in two strides Hans Castorp was at the step by the entrance door and with one quick movement turned on the white light.
Fräulein Brand had collapsed. She was twitching convulsively in the Kleefeld’s arms. The chair over there was empty.
Hans Castorp went up to the protesting Krokowski, close up to him. He tried to speak, but no words came. He put out his hand, with a brusque, imperative gesture. Receiving the key, he nodded several times, threateningly, close into the other’s face; turned, and went out of the room.
Hysterica Passio
WITH the swift-changing years, a spirit began to walk in House Berghof: a spirit of immediate descent, or so Hans Castorp surmised, from that other demon whose baleful name we have spoken. With the facile curiosity of inquiring youth on its travels, he had studied this new demon, yes, had even discovered in himself an alarming aptitude, in common with the rest of the world up here, to pay him extensive homage. This new evil genius had, like the other, always been present, as it were, in the germ, but now it began to spread itself; Hans Castorp had by nature no great predilection for becoming its slave; yet with something like horror he observed that even he, when he let himself go ever so little, fell victim to a contagion so general that scarce anyone in the circle escaped it.
What was this, then, that was in the air? A rising temper. Acute irritability. A nameless rancour. A universal tendency to envenomed exchange of words, to outbursts of rage—yes, even to fisticuffs. Embittered disputes, bouts of uncontrolled shrieking, by pairs and by groups, were of daily occurrence; and the significant thing was that the bystanders, instead of being disgusted with the participants, or seeking to come between them, actually sympathized with one side or the other to the extent of being themselves involved in the quarrel. They would pale and tremble, their eyes would glitter provocatively, their mouths set with passion. They envied those actively engaged the chance, the justification for screaming; a gnawing desire to do likewise possessed mind and body, and he who could not summon strength to flee apart, was soon willy-nilly in the midst of the mêlée. The fruitless dissensions, the mutual recriminations, in the face of authorities bent on accommodation but themselves falling with alarming ease a prey to the general temptation to brawl—these become frequent occurrences in House Berghof. A patient might issue forth of the house in tolerable tranquillity and not know at all in what frame he would return. A member of the “good” Russian table, an elegant dame from the provinces, from Minsk, still young, and a light case, with only three months prescribed, betook herself one day to the village to make purchases at the French
lingerie
shop; fell there into a quarrel with the modiste, of such dimensions that she came back in a state of violent excitement, suffered a hemorrhage, and was thenceforth incurable. The husband was summoned, and informed that her stay up here would terminate only with her life.