“Excellent, young man. ‘Impotence’—very good. Very. Gives one the shivers. ‘Corrupt’—very good too. ‘Gifts’—not so good—’claims’ better. The holy, the feminine claims life makes upon manly honour and strength—”
Hans Castorp was suddenly driven to realize that Peeperkorn was very drunk. Still, his drunkenness was not debasing, there was no loss of dignity; rather it combined with the nobility of his nature to produce an immense and awe-inspiring effect. Bacchus himself, thought Hans Castorp, without detriment to his godhead, leaned for support on the shoulders of his troop. Everything depended upon
who
was drunk—a drunken personality was far from being the same as a drunken tinker. He took care not to abate, even inwardly, his respect for this overwhelming person, whose gestures had grown lax, and his tongue stammering.
“Brother,” said Peeperkorn. His great torso lolled back in free and regal intoxication against his chair. His arm lay stretched along the cloth and he tapped the table with fist lightly clenched. “Brother-in-blood—prospective. In the near future—after a proper interval for reflection.—Very good. Set—tled.—Life, young man, is a female. A sprawling female, with swelling breasts close to each other, great soft belly between her haunches, slender arms, bulging thighs, half-closed eyes. She mocks us. She challenges us to expend our manhood to its uttermost span, to stand or fall before her. To stand or fall. To
fall
, young man—do you know what that means? The defeat of the feelings, their overthrow when confronted by life—that is impotence. For it there is no mercy, it is pitilessly, mockingly condemned.—Not a word, young man! Spewed out of the mouth. Shame and ignominy are soft words for the ruin and bankruptcy, the horrible disgrace. It is the end of everything, the hellish despair, the Judgment Day. …”
The Dutchman had flung back his mighty torso more and more, his kingly head sank lower on his breast, he seemed to be dozing as he talked. But with the last word he lifted the fist that had been lying relaxed on the table, and brought it down with a crash, making our slim young Hans Castorp, overwrought as he was with wine and play, and the singularity of the whole scene, jump, and in startled awe look at the mighty one. “The Judgment Day!” How the phrase suited the man! Hans Castorp did not remember ever hearing it uttered, except perhaps at catechism. And no wonder, he said to himself. Who else would have thought of using it like that—or, more correctly, who would have been big enough to take the thunderbolt in his mouth? Naphta, perhaps, when he talked his vindictive rubbish—but it would have been cheek. Whereas Peeperkorn’s utterance seemed to hold the sound of the last trump, majestic, biblical. “Good Lord, what a personality!” he felt for the hundredth time. “At last I’ve come in contact with a real character—and it turns out to be Clavdia’s—.” Not too clear-headed himself, he turned his wineglass about on the table, one hand in his trouser pocket, one eye clipped shut against the smoke of the cigarette he held in the corner of his mouth. Certainly he would have done better to keep quiet. What was his feeble pipe, after the rolling thunder of Jove? But his two democratic mentors had trained him to discussion—for they were both democratic, though one of them struggled against it—and habit betrayed him into one of his naïve commentaries. “Your remarks, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” (what an expression! Does one make “remarks” about the Day of Judgment?) “lead back my mind to what you said previously about vice: that it consists in an affront to the simple, what you call the holy, or, as I might say, the classic, gifts which life offers us; the larger gifts, by contrast with the later and ‘cultivated’ ones, the refinements, which you ‘indulge in,’ as one of us put it, whereas one ‘consecrates oneself’ to the great gifts and pays them homage. But just here, it seems to me, lies the excuse for vice (you must pardon me, but I incline by nature to excuses, though there is nothing ‘large’ about them—I am quite clear on that point) in so far as it is a result of impotence. About the horrors of impotence you have said things of such magnitude that I am quite confounded, as you see me sit here. But in my view, a vicious man appears not at all insensible of your horrors; on the contrary he does them full justice, since it is the abdication of his feelings before the classical gifts of life that drives him to vice. Thus we need not see in vice any affront to life, it may just as well be regarded as homage to it; on the other hand, so far as the refinements represent s
timulantia
, as they say—means of excitation or intoxication—so far as they sustain or increase the power to feel, then life is their purpose and meaning, the desire for feeling, the impotent striving after feeling—I mean—”
What was he talking about? Was it not democratic and unblushing enough that he had said “as one of us put it”—thus coupling himself and a personality like Peeperkorn? Had certain events in the past—which shed a dubious light on present pretensions—given him courage to utter the impertinence? Were the gods wishful to destroy him, when they moved him to embark on this foolhardy analysis of “vice”? Now let him look to it to extricate himself; for surely he has invoked the whirlwind. Mynheer Peeperkorn, during Hans Castorp’s harangue, had sat flung back in his chair, his head still sunk on his breast. It was uncertain even whether he had been listening. But now, slowly, as the young man’s utterance grew more involved, he began to erect himself to his full sitting height, the majestic head inflamed; the pattern of furrows on his brow expanded upwards, his little eyes opened in pallid menace. Obviously a storm was brewing beside which the other had been a passing cloud. Mynheer’s under lip pressed wrathfully against the upper, the corners of his mouth drew down, the chin protruded. Slowly he raised his right arm above his head; the fist clenched and remained poised aloft, ready for summary execution upon the democratic prattler, who for his part was panic-stricken—yet not without a thrill of precarious joy at this spectacle of regal rage.
He repressed an inclination to flight, and hastened to say, disarmingly: “Of course, I have failed to express my meaning. The whole thing is simply a question of scale. If a thing has size, one cannot call it vice. Vice is petty. Of their nature, so are the
raffine
ments
. They are never on the grand scale. But since the most primitive times man has had to his hand a resource, a means of mounting to the heights of feeling, which belongs among the classic gifts of life: a resource, simple, sacred, in the grand style, if I may so express myself. I mean the grape, wine, the gift of the gods to man, as we are told of old time. A God invented it, and with its invention civilization began. For we are told that, thanks to the art of planting and treading the vine, man emerged from his barbaric state, and achieved culture; even to-day where the grape grows, those people are accounted, or account themselves, possessed of a higher culture than the Cimmerians, a fact which is worthy our attention. For it indicates that civilization is not a thing of the reason, of being sober and articulate; it has far more to do with inspiration and frenzy, the joys of the winecup—if I may make so bold as to ask, have I not expressed your attitude in the matter?”
A sly dog, this Hans Castorp. Or, as Herr Settembrini with literary feeling had put it, a “wag.” To rush into controversy with personalities, to be even forward of speech—but then to know how to extricate himself when need was, and his coat-tails, as it were, all but on fire! In the first place, he had given them an impromptu but quite respectable
apologia for
drinking; into which,
en passant
, he had slipped a reference to “civilization”—of which there was just then small trace in Mynheer Peeperkorn’s primitive and menacing attitude; and lastly, he had got round him, put him in the wrong, by asking him, quite simply, a question which one can scarcely answer and maintain the threatening pose or the raised fist. And accordingly the Dutchman relaxed from his neolithic rage, slowly his arm sank again till it rested on the table, his face lost its swollen look, the storm passed over with no trace but the last mutter of thunder, he even seemed to entertain the thought of clicking glasses again; and now Frau Chauchat came to the rescue, by calling her companion’s attention to the gradual disintegration of the party.
“My friend,” she said to him, in French, “you are neglecting your other guests. You devote yourself too exclusively to this gentleman—important though your conversation with him doubtless is—and the others have stopped playing, I fear they grow tired—shall we say good-night?”
Peeperkorn turned his attention to the circle. It was true: they were demoralized. Lethargy and boredom sat on every brow; the guests were out of hand, like a neglected class. Several were on the point of falling asleep. Peeperkorn took a firm grip on the reins he had let fall. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he summoned them, with raised forefinger—and that pointed finger was like a waving standard or the flash of an unsheathed sword, as his words were like the rallying-cry of the leader, which brings to a stand the threatened rout. It had its effect in a trice. They picked themselves up, they pulled themselves together, they looked again with smiles into their host’s pale eyes beneath his masklike brows. He held them all, he pressed them afresh into service of his personality, sinking the tip of his forefinger till it met the tip of his thumb, and erecting the three others straight and stiff with their long nails. He stretched out his sea-captain’s hand, checking them, warning them, and words issued from his cracked lips—words utterly irrelevant and indistinct, yet exerting on their spirits a resistless power, thanks to the reserves of personality behind them.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Very good, very good indeed. Very. The flesh, ladies and gentlemen, is—not another word. No, permit me to say—weak, so the Scripture has it. Weak. Inclined to be unequal to claims—but I appeal to your—in short, ladies and gentlemen, in short
and
in brief, I ap—peal! You will say to me: ‘Sleep.’ Very good, ladies and gentlemen, very good, very. I love and honour sleep. I venerate the deep, sweet, refreshing bliss of it. Sleep is one of the—what did you call them, young man?—one of the classic gifts of life—the first, the very first, the highest, ladies and gentlemen. But you will recall, you will remember—Gethsemane. ‘And took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee… Then saith he unto them:… Tarry ye here and watch with me.’ You remember? ‘And he cometh unto the disciples and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter: What, could ye not watch with me one hour?’ Immense, my friends. Heart-piercing moving to the last—very. ‘And came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. And saith unto them: Sleep on now, and take your rest, behold the hour is at hand.’ Ladies and gentlemen, that pierces the heart, it sears—”
In truth, they were all cut to the quick, they were crushed. He had folded his hands across his chest, upon His scanty beard, and laid his head on one side. His eyes had grown dim with feeling as the words expressive of the lonely anguish of death fell from his chapped lips. Frau Stöhr sobbed. Frau Magnus heaved a heavy sigh. Lawyer Paravant saw it was incumbent upon him to represent the sense of the meeting. In a voice solemnly sunk, he assured their honoured host that the circle was his to command. Herr Peeperkorn mistook them. Here they were, blithe as the dawn, jolly as sand-boys, ready for anything. This, he said, was a priceless evening, so festive, so out of the ordinary. Such was their feeling, and no one of them had any present idea of availing himself of life’s good gift of sleep. Mynheer Peeperkorn could count on them, one and all.
“Splendid, excellent,” Peeperkorn cried, and stood erect again. He unclasped his hands and spread them wide and high before him, palms outward—it looked like a heathen prayer. His majestic physiognomy, but now imprinted with Gothic anguish, blossomed once more in pagan jollity. Even a sybaritic dimple appeared in his cheek. “The hour is at hand,” said he, and sent for the wine-card. He put on a horn-rimmed pince-nez, the nose-piece of which rode high up on his forehead, and ordered champagne, three bottles of Mumm & Co.,
Cordon rouge
, extra dry, with
petits fours
, toothsome cone-shaped little dainties in lace frills, covered with coloured frosting and filled with chocolate and
pistache
cream. Frau Stöhr licked her fingers after them. Herr Albin nonchalantly removed the wire from the first bottle, and let the mushroomshaped cork pop to the ceiling; elegantly he conformed to the ritual, holding the neck of the bottle wrapped in a serviette as he poured. The noble foam bedewed the cloth. Every glass rang as the guests saluted, then drank the first one empty at a draught, electrifying their digestive organs with the ice-cold, prickling, perfumed liquid. Every eye sparkled. The game had come to an end, no one troubled to take cards or gains from the table. They gave themselves over to a blissful
far niente
, enlivened by scraps of conversation in which, out of sheer high spirits, no one hung back. They uttered thoughts that in the thinking had seemed primevally fresh and beautiful, but in the saying somehow turned lame, stammering, indiscreet, a perfect gallimaufry, calculated to arouse the scorn of any sober onlooker. The audience, however, took no offence, all being in much the same irresponsible condition. Even Frau Magnus’s ears were red, and she admitted that she felt “as though life were running through her”— which Herr Magnus seemed not over-pleased to hear. Hermine Kleefeld leaned against Herr Albin’s shoulder as she held her glass to be filled. Peeperkorn conducted the Bacchanalian rout with his long-fingered gestures, and summoned additional supplies: coffee followed the champagne, “Mocha double,” with fresh rounds of “bread,” and pungent liqueurs: apricot brandy, chartreuse,
crême de vanille
, and maraschino for the ladies. Later there appeared marinated
filets
of fish, and beer; lastly tea, both Chinese and camomile, for those who had done with champagne and liqueurs and did not care to return to a sound wine, as Mynheer himself did; he, Frau Chauchat, and Hans Castorp working back after midnight to a Swiss red wine. Mynheer Peeperkorn, genuinely thirsty, drank down glass after glass of the simple, effervescent drink.