One prophecy, indeed, made on that carnival evening, made in mockery, was fulfilled: Hans Castorp’s fever chart did display a sharply rising curve. He marked it down with a feeling of solemnity. Thereafter it fell a trifle, and then ran on, unchanged save for slight undulations, well above its accustomed level. It was fever, the degree and persistency of which, according to the Hofrat, was out of all proportion to the condition of his lung. “H’m, young fellow me lad, you’re more infected than one would take you for,” he said. “We’ll have to come on to the hypos. They’ll serve your turn, or I’m a Dutchman. In three or four months you ought to be as fit as a fiddle.” Thus it came about that Hans Castorp had to produce himself, twice in the week, Monday and Saturday after the morning exercise, down in the “lab,” where he was given his injections.
These were given by either physician indifferently; but the Hofrat performed the operation like a virtuoso, with a fine sweep, squeezing the little syringe at the very moment he pressed the point home. And he cared not a doit where he thrust his needle, so that the pain was often acute, and the spot hard and inflamed long afterwards. The effect of the inoculations on the entire organism was very noticeable, the nervous system reacted as after hard muscular exertion; and their strength was displayed in the heightened fever which was their immediate result. The Hofrat had said they would have this effect, and so it fell out. The whole affair, each time, took but a second; one after another, the row of patients received their dosage, in thigh or arm, and turned away. But once or twice, when the Hofrat was in a more lively mood, not depressed by the tobacco he had smoked, Hans Castorp came to speech with him, and conducted the brief conversation somewhat as follows:
“I still remember the coffee and the pleasant talk we had last autumn, Herr Hofrat,” he would say. “Only yesterday, or perhaps the day before, was it, I was reminding my cousin of how we happened to—”
“Gaffky seven,” said the Hofrat. “Last examination. The chap simply can’t part with his bacilli. And yet he keeps at me worse than ever, to let him get away so he can wear a sword tied round his middle. What a child it is! Makes me a scene over a month or so of time, as though it were aeons passing over our heads. Means to leave, whether or no—does he say the same to you? You ought to give him a pretty straight talking-to. Take it from me, you’ll have him hopping the twig if he is too previous about going down and breathing the nice damp air into his weak spot. A sword-swallower like that doesn’t necessarily possess so much grey matter; but you, as the steady civilian, you ought to see to it he doesn’t make an ass of himself.”
“I do talk to him, Herr Hofrat,” Hans Castorp responded, taking the reins again into his hands. “I do, often, when he begins to kick against the pricks—and I think he will listen to reason. But the examples he has before his eyes are all the wrong kind. He is always seeing people going off on their own, without authority from you; it looks mighty gay, as though they were really leaving for good, and that is a temptation to all but the strongest characters. For instance, lately—who was it went off? A lady, from the ‘good’ Russian table, that Frau Chauchat. She’s gone to Daghestan, they say. Well, Daghestan—I don’t know the climate, it is probably better, when all is said and done, than being right down on the water. But after all, it is the flat-land, according to our ideas up here—though for aught I know it may be mountainous, geographically speaking; I am not much up on the subject. But how can a person who isn’t sound live out there, where all the proper ideas are totally lacking, and nobody has a notion of the regimen, the rest-cure, and measuring, and all that? Anyhow, she will be coming back, she told me so herself—happened to. How did we come to speak of her?—Yes, Herr Hofrat, I remember as thought it was yesterday, how we met you in the garden, or, rather, you met us, for we were sitting on a bench—I could show you the very bench, today, that we were sitting on—we were sitting and smoking. Or, rather, I was smoking, for my cousin doesn’t smoke, oddly enough. You were smoking too, and we exchanged our brands, I recall. Your Brazil I found excellent; but I suspect one has to go about them a little gingerly, or something may happen as it happened to you that time with the two little imported—when your bosom swelled with pride, and you nearly toddled off, you know. I may joke about it, since it turned out all right. I’ve ordered another couple of hundred of my Maria lately. I’m very dependent on her, she suits me in every respect. But the carriage and customs make the cost rather mount up—so if you have anything good to suggest, Herr Hofrat, I’m ready to have a go at the domestic product—I see some attractive weeds in the windows. Yes, we were privileged to look at your paintings, I remember the whole thing so well. And I was perfectly amazed at your oil technique, I’d never venture anything like it. You showed us the portrait you made of Frau Chauchat, simply
