What a joy that was, what a boon to the eyes, after so much white! But there was another green, surpassing in its tender softness even the hue of the new grass, and that was the green of young larch buds. Hans Castorp could seldom refrain from caressing them with his hand, or stroking his cheeks with them as he went on his walks—their softness and freshness were irresistible. “It almost tempts one to be a botanist,” he said to his companion. “It’s a fact, I could almost wish to be a natural scientist, out of sheer joy at the reawakening of nature, after a winter like this up here. That’s gentian, man, that you see up there on the cliffs; and this is a sort of little yellow violet—something I’m not familiar with. And this is ranunculus, they look just the same down below, the natural order Ranunculaceae: compound, I remember, a particularly charming plant, androgynous, you can see a lot of stamens and pistils, an androecium and a gynaeceum, if I remember rightly. I really must root out some old volume of botany or other, and polish up my knowledge in this field.—My hat, how gay it’s getting to look in the world!”
“It will be even more so in June,” Joachim said. “The flowering-time in these parts is famous. But I hardly think I’ll be here for it.—That’s probably from Krokowski, that you get the idea of studying botany?”
Krokowski? What made him say that? Oh, very likely because Dr. Krokowski had been uttering himself botanically in one of his lectures of late. Yes, we shall be in error if we assume that because time has brought about many changes at the Berghof, Dr. Krokowski no longer delivers his lectures. He delivers them as before, one every two weeks, in a frock-coat, though no longer in sandals, for those he wears only in the summer, and soon will be donning them again: delivers them every second Monday, in the dining-room, as on that far-off day when Hans Castorp returned late and blood-bespattered from his walk. For three-quarters of a year now had the analyst held forth on the subject of love and disease. Never much at one time, in little chats, from half to three-quarters of an hour long, he had dealt out the treasures of his intellect; and one received the impression that he need never leave off, that he could as well go on forever. It was a sort of half-monthly Thousand and One Nights’ Entertainment, spinning itself out at will, calculated, like the stories of Scheherazade, to gratify the curiosity of a prince, and turn away his wrath. Dr. Krokowski’s theme, in its untrammelled scope, reminded one, indeed, of the undertaking to which Settembrini had vowed himself, the Encyclopaedia of Suffering. And the extent to which it offered points of departure could be seen from the circumstance that the lecturer had lately talked about botany—to be precise, about mushrooms. But he had perhaps slightly changed his theme by now. He was at present discussing love and death; finding occasion for observations in part subtly poetic in their nature, in part ruthlessly scientific. And thus it was, in this connection, that the learned gentlemen, speaking with his drawling, typically Eastern cadence, and his softly mouthed r, came upon the subject of botany; that is to say, upon the subject of mushrooms. These creatures of the shade, luxuriant and anomalous forms of organic life, were fleshly by nature, and closely related to the animal kingdom. The products of animal metabolism, such as albumen, glycogen, animal starch, in short, were present in them. And Dr. Krokowski went on to speak of a mushroom, famous in classical antiquity and since, on account of its form and the powers ascribed to it—a fungus in whose Latin name the epithet impudicus occurred; and which in its form was suggestive of love, in its odour of death. For it was a striking fact that the odour of the Impudicus was that of animal decay: it gave out that odour when the viscous, greenish, spore-bearing fluid dripped from its bell-shaped top. Yet even today, among the ignorant, the mushroom passed for an aphrodisiac.
All that, Lawyer Paravant found, had been a bit strong for the ladies. He was still here, having hearkened to the Hofrat’s propaganda, and stuck out the melting season. Likewise Frau Stöhr, who had shown strength of character and set her face against every temptation to unlawful departure, expressed herself at table to the effect that Krokowski had been positively “obscure” today, with his classical mushroom. She had actually said obscure, the poor creature, and gone on making one howler after another.
But what surprised Hans Castorp was that his cousin should have mentioned Dr. Krokowski and his botanical allusions; for the psychoanalyst had been as little referred to between them as Clavdia Chauchat or Marusja. By common consent they had passed over his ways and works in silence. But now Joachim had mentioned him—though in an irritable tone. His saying, too, that he would not be here for the flowering season had sounded very much
