“You are in absolute danger of your life,” he had bellowed at her, just like that, without making any bones of it. “What a bear—ah, ha, ha, ha!—you really must please forgive me.”
It remained unclear what aspect of Behrens’s outburst had made her laugh; whether his brusqueness, and because she did not believe what he said, or whether she did believe it—as indeed she must, it would seem—and quite simply found the fact of her imminent danger “too funny for words.” Hans Castorp got the impression that it was the latter; and that she was pealing, trilling, and cascading with laughter only out of childish irresponsibility and the incomprehension of her birdlike brain. He disapproved. He sent her some flowers, but never again beheld the laughter-loving lady—who, indeed, after she had sustained life upon oxygen for some days, expired in the arms of her hurriedly summoned husband. “As big a goose as they make them,” the Hofrat called her, in telling Hans Castorp of her death.
But the young man had by then made further connections among the serious cases, thanks to the Hofrat and the house nurses; and Joachim had to accompany him on the visits he made; for instance to the son of Tous-les-deux—the second, for the room of the first had long since been swept and garnished and fumigated with H2CO. They paid visits as well to Teddy, a boy who had lately been sent up from the “Fridericianum”—as the school below was called—because his case proved too severe for the life there; to Anton Farlowitsch Ferge, the Russo-German insurance agent, a good-natured martyr; and to that unhappy, and yet so coquettish creature, Frau von Mallinckrodt. She, like all the foregoing, received flowers, and was even fed more than once from the hands of Hans Castorp, in the presence of Joachim. They gradually acquired the name of good Samaritans and Brothers of Charity; Settembrini thus referred to their activities one day to Hans Castorp.
“Sapperlot, Engineer! What is this I am hearing of your activities? So you have thrown yourself into a career of benevolence? You are seeking justification through good works?”
“Nothing worth mentioning, Herr Settembrini. Nothing to make a fuss about. My cousin and I—”
“Don’t talk to me about your cousin. When the two of you make yourselves talked about, it is you we are dealing with. Your cousin’s is a good and simple nature, most worthy of respect; exposed to no intellectual perils, the sort that gives a schoolmaster not one anxious moment. You’ll not make me believe he is the moving spirit. No; yours is the more gifted, if also the more exposed nature. You are, if I may so express myself, life’s delicate child, one has to trouble about you. And moreover you have given me permission to trouble about you.”
“Certainly, Herr Settembrini—once and for all. Very kind of you. ‘Life’s delicate child,’ why, that’s very pretty—only an author would think of it. I don’t know if I’ve to flatter myself over the title, but I like the sound of it at least, I must say that. Yes, I do occupy myself rather with the ‘children of death,’ if that is what you refer to. I look in here and there among the serious cases and the dying when I have time, the service of the cure doesn’t suffer from it. I visit the ones who aren’t here for the fun of the thing, leading a disorderly life—the ones who are busy dying.”
“And yet it is written: ‘Let the dead bury their dead,’ ” said the Italian.
Hans Castorp raised his arms, to signify that there was so much written, on both sides, it was hard to know the rights of it. Of course, the organ-grinder had voiced a disturbing point of view, that was to be expected. Hans Castorp was ready, now as ever, of his own free will to lend an ear to Settembrini’s teachings, and by way of experiment to be influenced by them. But he was far from being prepared to give up, for the sake of a pedagogic point of view, enterprises which he vaguely, despite Mother Gerngross and her phrases, despite the uninspiring young Rotbein and the cachinnations of the “Overfilled,” found somehow helpful and significant.
Tous-les-deux’s son was named Lauro. He too received flowers, earthy, heavenly-smelling violets from Nice, “from two sympathetic housemates, with best wishes for recovery”; and as this anonymity had by now become purely formal, since everyone knew the source whence such attentions came, Tous-les-deux herself thanked the cousins when they chanced to meet in the corridor. The pale, dark Mexican mother begged them, with a few incoherent words, and chiefly by means of a pathetic gesture of invitation, to come and receive in person the thanks of her son—son seul et dernier fils, qui allait mourir aussi. They went at once. Lauro proved to be an astonishingly handsome young man, with great glowing eyes, a nose like an eagle’s beak, quivering nostrils, and beautiful lips, with a small black moustache sprouting above them. But his bearing was so theatrical and swaggering that Hans Castorp, this time no less than Joachim Ziemssen, was glad when they closed the invalid’s door behind them. Tous-les-deux had ranged forlornly up and down the room, with her long, bent-kneed stride, in her black cashmere shawl, with the black scarf knotted beneath her chin, her forehead crossed with wrinkles, great pouches of skin under the jet-black eyes, and one corner of her large mouth pathetically drooping. Sometimes she approached them as they sat by the bed, to reiterate her parrotlike speech: “Tous les dé, vous comprenez, messiés—premièrement l’un et maintenant l’autre.” And the handsome Lauro delivered himself of rolling, ranting, intolerably bombastic phrases, also in French, to the effect that he knew how a hero should die
