Nothing for it but that the good Joachim must go along. Hans Castorp’s charitable impulse was stronger than his cousin’s distaste; which the latter, moreover, could only manifest by silence and averted eyes, since he could not stand for it except by betraying a lack of Christian feeling. Hans Castorp saw that very well, and drew advantage from it. Equally he perceived the military grounds for the distaste; but if he himself felt the happier and stronger for such undertakings, if they seemed to him conducive to good ends? In that case, he must simply override Joachim’s silent disapproval. He deliberated with his cousin whether they might send or bring flowers to Fritz Rotbein, he being a man. He desired to do so. Flowers, he felt, were proper to the occasion, and the purchase of the pretty, well-shaped purple hortensia had greatly pleased him. He came to the conclusion that Fritz Rotbein’s sex was, so to speak, neutralized by his mortal state; also that there was no need of a birthday to serve as excuse, since the dying are to be treated as though in enjoyment of a permanent birthday. Thus minded, he sought once more with his cousin the warm, earthy, scent-laden air of the flower-shop, and brought back a dewy fragrant bunch of roses, wallflowers, and carnations, with which they entered Herr Rotbein’s room, ushered by Alfreda Schildknecht.
The sufferer was not more than twenty years old, if so much, but rather bald and grey. He looked waxen and wasted, with large hands, nose, and ears; showed himself glad unto tears for the kindness of the visit, and the diversion it afforded him, and indeed, out of weakness, did weep a little as he greeted the two and received the bouquet. His first words, uttered almost in a whisper, were with reference to the flowers, and he went on to talk about the European flower trade, and its ever-increasing proportions—about the enormous exportation from the nurseries of Nice and Cannes, the shipments by trainload and post that went off daily from these places all over Europe; about the wholesale markets of Paris and Berlin, and the supplies for Russia. For he was a business man; his point of view was the commercial one, and would be so long as life remained to him. His father, a doll-manufacturer in Coburg, had sent him to England to be educated, he told them in a whisper, and there he had fallen ill. They had taken his fever for typhoid, and treated it accordingly, with liquid diet, which had much reduced him. Up here they had let him eat, and eat he had; in the sweat of his brow he had sat in his bed and tried to build himself up. But it was all too late, the intestinal tract was already involved. In vain they sent him tongue and spiced eel from home—he could not digest it. His father, whom Behrens summoned by telegraph, was now on the way from Coburg; for decisive action was to be taken, they would try at least what they could do with rib resection, though the chances of success diminished daily. Rotbein conveyed all this in a whisper, and with great objectivity. Even in the matter of the operation he took a business view, for, so long as he lived, that would be his angle of approach. The expense, he whispered, was fixed at a thousand francs, including the anesthesia of the spinal cord; practically the whole thoracic cavity was involved, six or eight ribs, and the question was whether it would pay. Behrens would like to persuade him; but the doctor’s interest in the matter was single, whereas his own seemed equivocal; he was not at all clear that he would not do better just to die in peace, with his ribs intact.
It was hard to advise him. The cousins thought the Hofrat’s brilliant reputation as a surgeon should be considered. It was agreed at length to leave the decision to the elder Rotbein, soon to arrive. Young Fritz wept again a little as they took their leave; his tears fell in strange contrast to the dry matter-of-factness of his thought and speech. He begged the gentlemen to repeat their visit, and they willingly promised to do so, but it did not come about. The doll-manufacturer arrived in the evening, next morning they proceeded to operate, and after that young Fritz was in no condition to receive callers. Two days later, passing the room with Joachim, Hans Castorp saw that it was being turned out. Sister Alfreda had already packed her little trunk and left the Berghof, to go to another moribundus in another establishment. Heaving a sigh, her eyeglass ribbon behind her ear, she had betaken herself thither, since such and only such was the prospect life held out to her.
An empty room, a room that had been “vacated”—with its furniture turned topsy-turvy, and both doors standing wide, as one saw it in passing, on the way to the dining-room or one’s daily walks—was a most significant, and yet withal such an accustomed sight that one thought little of it, especially when one had, in one’s time, taken possession of just such a “vacated” room, and settled down to feel at home in it. Sometimes you knew whose room it had been, and that indeed gave you to think. Thus a week later
