“Very sensible indeed!” Settembrini put in. “My word! So if I stopped at that, you would be satisfied?”
“Or if you said that illness may serve as a pretext for depravity—that would be all right, too.”
“Grazie tanto!”
“But illness a form of depravity? That is to say, not originating in depravity, but itself depravity? That seems to me a paradox.”
“I beg of you, Engineer, not to impute to me anything of the sort. I despise paradoxes, I hate them. All that I said to you about irony I would say over again about paradoxes, and more besides. Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all! Moreover, I note that you are once more defending disease—”
“No; what you are saying interests me. It reminds me of things Dr. Krokowski says in his Monday lectures. He too explains organic disease as a secondary phenomenon.”
“Scarcely the pure idealist.”
“What have you against him?”
“Just that.”
“You are down on analysis?”
“Not always—I am for it and against it, both by turns.”
“How am I to understand that?”
“Analysis as an instrument of enlightenment and civilization is good, in so far as it shatters absurd convictions, acts as a solvent upon natural prejudices, and undermines authority; good, in other words, in that it sets free, refines, humanizes, makes slaves ripe for freedom. But it is bad, very bad, in so far as it stands in the way of action, cannot shape the vital forces, maims life at its roots. Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as death, with which it may well belong—allied to the grave and its unsavory anatomy.”
“Well roared, lion,” Herr Castorp could not help thinking, as he often did when Herr Settembrini delivered himself of something pedagogic. Aloud he only said: “We’ve been having to do with X-ray anatomy in these days, down on the lower-floor. Behrens called it that, when he X-rayed us.”
“Oh, so you have made that stage too? Well?”
“I saw the skeleton of my hand,” Hans Castorp said, and sought to call up the feeling that had mounted in him at the sight. “Did you get them to show you yours?”
“No, I don’t take the faintest interest in my skeleton. But what was the physician’s verdict?”
“He saw ‘strands’—strands with nodules.”
“The scoundrel!”
“I have heard you call Hofrat Behrens that before, Herr Settembrini. What do you mean by it?”
“I assure you the epithet was deliberately chosen.”
“No, Herr Settembrini, there I find you are unjust. I admit the man has his faults; his manner of speech becomes disagreeable in the long run, there is something forced about it, especially when one remembers he had the great sorrow of losing his wife up here. But what an estimable and meritorious man he is, after all, a benefactor to suffering humanity! I met him the other day coming from an operation, resection of ribs, a matter of life and death, you know. It made a great impression on me, to see him fresh from such exacting and splendid work, in which he is so much the master. He was still warm from it, and had lighted a cigar by way of reward. I envied him.”
“That was commendable of you. Well, and your sentence?”
“He has not set any definite time.”
“That is good too. And now let us betake us to our cure, Engineer. Each to his own place.”
They parted at the door of number thirty-four.
“You are going up to the roof now, Herr Settembrini? It must be more fun to lie in company than alone. Do you talk? Are they pleasant people?”
“Oh, they are nothing but Parthians and Scythians.”
“You mean Russians?”
“Russians, male and female,” said Settembrini, and the corner of his mouth spanned a little. “Goodbye, Engineer.”
He had said that of malice aforethought, undoubtedly. Hans Castorp walked into his own room in confusion. Was Settembrini aware of his state? Very likely, like the schoolmaster he was, he had been spying on him, and seen which way his eyes were going. Hans Castorp was angry with the Italian and also with himself, for having by his lack of self-control invited the thrust. He took up his writing materials to carry them with him into the balcony—for now it was no more use; the letter home, the third letter, must be written—and as he did so he went on whipping up his anger, muttering to himself about this windbag and logic chopper, who meddled with matters that were no concern of his, and chirruped to the girls in the street. He felt quite disinclined to the effort of writing, the organ-grinder had put him off it altogether, with his innuendo. But no matter what his feelings, he must have winter clothing, money, footwear, linen—in brief, everything he might have brought with him had he known he was coming, not for three short summer weeks, but for an indefinite stay which was certain to last for a piece into the winter—or rather, considering the notions about time current up here, was quite likely to last all the winter. It was this he must let them know at home, even if only as a possibility; he must tell the whole story, and not put them, or himself, off any longer with pretexts.
In this spirit, then, he wrote, practising the technique he had so often seen Joachim practise; with a fountain-pen, in his deck-chair, with his knees drawn up and the portfolio laid upon them. He wrote upon the letter-paper of the establishment, of which he kept a supply in his table drawer, to James Tienappel, who stood closest to him among the three uncles, and asked him to pass the news on to the Consul. He spoke of an unfortunate occurrence, of suspicions that had proved justified, of the medical opinion that it would be best for
