Hans Castorp smiled, overjoyed, but in confusion. He answered: “I don’t quite understand, Herr Settembrini. Did we have any pomegranates? I don’t recall having tasted—oh, yes, once in my life I had pomegranate juice and soda; it was too sweet.”
The Italian, already in front of him, turned his head to say: “Gods and mortals have been known to visit the nether world and find their way back again. But in that kingdom they know that he who tastes even once of its fruits belongs to them.”
He passed on, in his everlasting check trousers, and left Hans Castorp behind, presumably, and to a certain extent actually, staggered by so much allusiveness; though he was stirred to irritation at its being taken for granted, and muttered through his teeth after the departing back: “Carducci-Latini-humani-spagheti—get along, do, and leave me in peace!”
Yet he was at bottom sincerely glad to have the silence broken. For despite his keepsake, the macabre trophy he wore next his heart, he leaned upon Herr Settembrini, set great store by his character and opinions; and the thought of being cast off would have weighed upon his spirit more heavily than that remembered boyish feeling of being left behind at school and not counting any more, of enjoying, like Herr Albin, the boundless advantages of his shameful state. He did not venture, however, himself to address his mentor; who, for his part, let weeks elapse before he again approached his “delicate child.”
The ocean of time, rolling onwards in monotonous rhythm, bore the Easter-tide on its billows. And they observed the season at the Berghof, as they did consistently all the recurrent feasts of the year, by way of breaking up and articulating the long stretches of time. At early breakfast there was a nosegay of violets at each place; at second breakfast each guest had a coloured egg; while sugar and chocolate hares adorned and made festive the midday table.
“Have you ever made a voyage by steamship, Tenente? Or you, Engineer?” asked Herr Settembrini, strolling up to the cousins’ table, toothpick in mouth. Most of the guests were shortening the main rest-cure in honour of the day, and devoting a quarter-hour to coffee and cognac. “These rabbits and coloured eggs somehow remind me of the life on board a great oceangoing boat, where you stare at a briny waste and a bare horizon for weeks on end, and even the exaggerated ease of the life scarcely avails to make you forget its precariousness, the submerged consciousness of which continues to gnaw at the depths of your being. I still recall the spirit in which the passengers in such an ark piously observe the feasts of terra firma: they have thoughts of the outer world, they are sensitive to the calendar. On shore it would be Easter today, they say; or, today they are celebrating the King’s birthday—and we will celebrate too, as best we may. We are human beings too. Isn’t that the idea?”
The cousins acquiesced. It was precisely that. Hans Castorp, touched by being once more addressed, and pricked by his conscience, praised Herr Settembrini’s words in sounding tones; pronounced them capital; said how spirited they were, how much the language of a literary man. He could not say too much. Undoubtedly, though only superficially, as Herr Settembrini, in his plastic way, had remarked, the comfort on board an ocean steamer did make one forget the element of risk in the circumstances. If he might venture to add anything, he would say it even induced a sort of lightheadedness, a tempting of fate, which the ancients—in his desire to please he quoted the classics!—had called “hubris.” Belshazzar, King of Babylon, and that sort of thing. In short, it came close to being blasphemous. Yet, on the other hand, the luxury of an oceangoing vessel connoted (!) a majestic triumph of the human spirit, it was an honour to humankind, to launch all this comfort and luxury upon the salt sea foam and there sustain it—man thus boldly set his foot, as it were, upon the forces of nature, controlled the wild elements; and that connoted (!) the victory of civilization over chaos—if he might make so free as to employ the phrase.
Herr Settembrini listened attentively, legs and arms crossed, daintily stroking with the toothpick his flowing moustaches.
“It is remarkable,” he said. “A man cannot make general observations to any extent, on any subject, without betraying himself, without introducing his entire individuality, and presenting, as in an allegory, the fundamental theme and problem of his own existence. This, Engineer, is what you have just done. All you have just now said came from the very depths of your personality; even the present stage you have arrived at found there poetic expression, and showed itself to be still the experimental—”
“Placet experiri,” Hans Castorp said, with the Italian c, laughed and nodded.
“Sicuro—if what is involved is not recklessness and loose living, but an honourable passion to explore the universe. You spoke of ‘hubris,’ that was the word you employed. The hubris which the reason opposes to the powers of darkness is the highest human expression, and calls down upon it the swift revenge
