“But the white of egg—what is that?”
“Various primary substances: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur. Sometimes phosphorus. Your scientific curiosity is running away with itself. Some albumens are in composition with carbohydrates; that is to say, grape-sugar and starch. In old age the flesh becomes tough, that is because the collagen increases in the connective tissue—the lime, you know, the most important constituent of the bones and cartilage. What else shall I tell you? In the muscle plasma we have an albumen called fibrin; when death occurs, it coagulates in the muscular tissue, and causes the rigor mortis.”
“Right-oh, I see, the rigor mortis,” Hans Castorp said blithely. “Very good, very good. And then comes the general analysis—the anatomy of the grave.”
“Yes, of course. But how well you put it! Yes, the movement becomes general, you flow away, so to speak—remember all that water! The remaining constituents are very unstable; without life, they are resolved by putrefaction into simpler combinations, anorganic.”
“Dissolution, putrefaction,” said Hans Castorp. “They are the same thing as combustion: combination with oxygen—am I right?”
“To a T. Oxidization.”
“And life?”
“Oxidization too. The same. Yes, young man, life too is principally oxidization of the cellular albumen, which gives us that beautiful animal warmth, of which we sometimes have more than we need. Tut, living consists in dying, no use mincing the matter—une destruction organique, as some Frenchman with his native levity has called it. It smells like that, too. If we don’t think so, our judgment is corrupted.”
“And if one is interested in life, one must be particularly interested in death, mustn’t one?”
“Oh, well, after all, there is some sort of difference. Life is life which keeps the form through change of substance.”
“Why should the form remain?” said Hans Castorp.
“Why? Young man, what you are saying now sounds far from humanistic.”
“Form is folderol.”
“Well, you are certainly in great form today—you’re regularly kicking over the traces. But I must drop out now,” said the Hofrat. “I am beginning to feel melancholy,” and he laid his huge hand over his eyes. “I can feel it coming on. You see, I’ve drunk coffee with you, and it tasted good to me, and all of a sudden it comes over me that I am going to be melancholy. You gentlemen must excuse me. It was an extra occasion, I enjoyed it no end—”
The cousins had sprung up. They reproached themselves for having taxed the Hofrat’s patience so long. He made proper protest. Hans Castorp hastened to carry Frau Chauchat’s portrait into the next room and hang it once more on the wall. They did not need to re-traverse the garden to arrive at their own quarters; Behrens directed them through the building, and accompanied them to the dividing glass door. In the mood that had come over him so unexpectedly, his goggling eyes blinked, and the bone of his neck stuck out, both more than ever; his upper lip, with the clipped, one-sided moustache, had taken on a querulous expression.
As they went along the corridors Hans Castorp said to his cousin: “Confess that it was a good idea of mine.”
“It was a change, at least,” responded Joachim. “And you certainly took occasion to air your views on a good many subjects. It was a bit complicated for me. It is high time now that we went in to the rest-cure, we shall have at least twenty minutes before tea. You probably think it is folderol to pay so much attention to it, now you’ve taken to kicking over the traces. But you don’t need it so much as I do, after all.”
Research
And now came on, as come it must, what Hans Castorp had never thought to experience: the winter of the place, the winter of these high altitudes. Joachim knew it already: it had been in full blast when he arrived the year before—but Hans Castorp rather dreaded it, however well he felt himself equipped. Joachim sought to reassure him.
“You must not imagine it grimmer than it is,” he said, “not really arctic. You will feel the cold less on account of the dryness of the air and the absence of wind. It’s the thing about the change of temperature above the fog line; they’ve found out lately that it gets warmer in the upper reaches, something they did not know before. I should say it is actually colder when it rains. But you have your sleeping-bag, and they turn on the heat when they absolutely must.”
And in fact there could be no talk of violence or surprises; the winter came mildly on, at first no different from many a day they had seen in the height of summer. The wind had been two days in the south, the sun bore down, the valley seemed shrunken, the side walls at its mouth looked near and bald. Clouds came up, behind Piz Michel and Tinzenhorn, and drove northeastwards. It rained heavily. Then the rain turned foul, a whitish-grey, mingled with snowflakes—soon it was all snow, the valley was full of flurry; it kept on and on, the temperature fell appreciably, so that the fallen snow could not quite melt, but lay covering the valley with a wet and threadbare white garment, against which showed black the pines on the slopes. In the dining-room the radiators were lukewarm. That was at the beginning of November—All Souls’—and there was no novelty about it. In August it had been even so; they had long left off regarding snow as a prerogative of winter. White traces lingered after every storm in the crannies of the rocky Rhätikon, the chain that seemed to guard the end of the valley, and the distant
