“Do you mean—oh, capital!” laughed Hans Castorp. “Herr Settembrini, you are a wretch! Half past nine—I say, did you get that?” he turned to his cousin. “Herr Settembrini means it would be too early for some of last year’s guests to take part. Ha ha—spooky! He means the ones that have taken leave of the flesh and the things of the flesh in the meantime. But I am all excitement,” he said. “I think it’s quite proper to celebrate the feasts up here as they come, and mark off the time in the usual way. Just a dead level of monotony, without any breaks at all, would be too awful for words. We have had Christmas already, we took notice of the beginning of the New Year; and now comes Shrove Tuesday; after that, Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Easter; then six weeks after that, Whitsunday; then it is almost midsummer, the solstice, and we begin to go toward autumn—”
“Stop, stop, stop!” Settembrini cried, lifting his face to heaven and pressing his temples with the palms of his hands. “Be quiet, I cannot listen to you letting go the reins like that!”
“Pardon me, I mean it just the other way. Behrens will finally have to make up his mind to the injections, to get rid of my infection; my temperature sticks at 99.3° to four, five, six, and even seven. I am, and I continue to be, life’s delicate child! I don’t mean I am a long-termer, Rhadamanthus hasn’t let me in for any definite number of months; but he did say it would be nonsense to interrupt the cure, when I’ve been up here so long already, and invested so much time, so to speak. Even if he did set a term, what good would it do me? When he says, for instance, half a year, that is to be taken as the minimum, it is always more. Look at my cousin; he was to have finished the beginning of the month—finished in the sense of being healed, cured—and the last time Behrens saw him, he stuck on four more to make sure he is entirely sound—well, then, where are we? Why, at the summer solstice, just as I said, without the faintest notion of offending you, and on the way to winter. Well, well, for the present what we have before us is Fasching, and as I say, I consider it fit and proper to celebrate it in the usual way, just as it comes in the calender. Frau Stöhr tells me the concierge sells tin horns in his lodge, did you know that?”
And so it fell out. Shrove Tuesday came on apace; before one had actually seen it on the way, it arrived. All sorts of absurd instruments were snarling and squealing in the dining-hall, even at early breakfast; at midday, paper snakes were launched from the table where Gänser, Rasmussen, and Fräulein Kleefeld sat. Paper caps were mounted; they, like the trumpets, were to be had of the concierge. The round-eyed Marusja was among the first to appear in one. But in the evening—ah, in the evening there were festivities in the hall and the reception-rooms, in the course of which—but we alone know to what, thanks to Hans Castorp’s enterprising spirit, these carnival gaieties led up in their course; and we do not mean to let our knowledge betray us into indiscretion. We shall pay time all the honour due it, and precipitate nothing. Nay, rather, we shall incline to protract the tale, out of feeling for young Hans Castorp’s moral compunctions, which have so long prevented him from crossing his Rubicon.
Everybody went down to the Platz in the afternoon, to see the streets in carnival mood, with harlequins and columbines shaking their rattles, with maskers on foot and in jingling, decorated sleighs, among whom went forward lively skirmishes, and much confetti was flung. Spirits were very high at all seven tables when the guests assembled for the evening meal; there was every indication that the fun begun abroad would continue in the same key within doors. The concierge had done a thriving trade in rattles and tin trumpets; Lawyer Paravant had been the first to go further in the same line, putting on a lady’s kimono and a braid of false hair belonging to Frau Consul-General Wurmbrandt; he wore his moustaches drawn down on each side of his mouth with the tongs, and looked the very picture of a Chinaman, evoking loud applause from all quarters. The management had done its share. Each of the seven tables was decked with a paper lantern, a coloured moon with a lighted candle inside; when Settembrini entered, and passed by Hans Castorp’s, he quoted:
“See the gorgeous tongues of fire—
Club as gay as heart’s desire—”
He brought out the words with his fine, dry smile, and sauntered to his place, where he was greeted with a rain of missiles like tiny pellets, that broke and scattered a spray of perfume where they fell.
Yes, from the first moment the key was high. The bursts of laughter were unintermitted; paper snakes hung down from the chandeliers, swaying to and fro; confetti swam in the sauces; very early the dwarf waitress brought in the first ice-pail, the first bottle of champagne. Inspired by Lawyer Einhuf, the guests drank it mixed with burgundy. Toward the end of the meal the ceiling light went out, and only the colourful twilight of the paper lanterns illumined the room, making of the scene an Italian night, and setting the crown upon the mood of the evening. Settembrini passed
