He had an odd name for the serious mental preoccupations which absorbed him in his picturesque retreat; he called them “taking stock”; the expression, crude as it was, defined for him an employment which he loved, even though it was bound up in his mind with the phenomena of fear and giddiness and palpitation, and made his face burn even more than its wont. Yet there seemed a peculiar fitness in the fact that the mental strain involved obliged him to make use of the ancestral chin-support; that way of holding his head lent him an outward dignity in keeping with thoughts which passed through his brain as he contemplated the image.
“Homo dei”—that was what the ugly Naphta had called the image, when he was defending it against the English doctrine of an economic society. And, by a natural association, Hans Castorp decided that in the interest of these mental activities of his, and his responsible position as a civilian member of society, he must really—and Joachim must too—pay that little man the honour of a visit. Settembrini did not like the idea, as Hans Castorp was shrewd and thin-skinned enough to know. Even the first meeting had displeased the humanist, who had obviously tried to prevent it and protect his pupils from intercourse with Naphta, notwithstanding that he personally associated and discussed with him. His “pupils”—thus life’s delicate child disingenuously put it, knowing all the time that it was himself alone who was the object of Settembrini’s solicitude. So it is with schoolmasters. They permit themselves relaxations, saying that they are “grown up,” and refuse the same to their pupils, saying that they are not “grown up.” It was a good thing, then, that the hand-organ man was not actually in a position to deny young Hans Castorp anything—nor had even tried to do so. It was only necessary that the delicate child should conceal his thin-skinned perceptions and assume an air of unconsciousness; when there was nothing to prevent his taking friendly advantage of Naphta’s invitation. Which, accordingly, he did, Joachim going along with him, willy-nilly, on a Sunday afternoon after the main rest-cure, not many days later than their first meeting.
It was but a few minutes’ walk from the Berghof down to the vine-wreathed cottage door. They went in, passing on their right the entrance to the little shop, and climbed the narrow brown stairs to the door of the first storey. Near the bell was a small plate, with the name of Lukaçek, Ladies’ Tailor. The door was opened by a half-grown boy, in a sort of livery of gaiters and striped jacket, a little page, with shaven poll and rosy cheeks. Him they asked for Professor Naphta, impressing their names on his mind, as they had brought no cards; he said he would go and deliver them to Herr Naphta—whom he named without a title. The door opposite the entrance stood open, and gave a view of the shop, where, regardless of the holiday, Lukaçek the tailor sat crosslegged on a table and stitched. He was sallow and bald-headed, with a large, drooping nose, beneath which his black moustaches hung down on both sides his mouth and gave him a surly look.
“Good afternoon,” Hans Castorp greeted him.
“Grütsi,” answered the tailor, in the Swiss dialect, which fitted neither his name nor his looks and sounded queer and unsuitable.
“Working hard?” went on Hans Castorp, motioning with his head. “Isn’t today Sunday?”
“Something pressing,” the tailor said curtly, stitching.
“Is it pretty? Are you making it in a hurry for a party?” Hans Castorp guessed.
The tailor let this question hang, for a little; bit off his cotton and threaded his needle afresh. After a while he nodded.
“Will it be pretty?” persisted Hans Castorp. “Will it have sleeves?”
“Yes, sleeves; it’s for an old ’un,” answered Lukaçek, with a strong Bohemian accent. The return of the lad interrupted this parley, which had been carried on through the doorway. Herr Naphta begged the gentlemen to come in, he announced, and opened a door a few steps further on in the passage, lifting the portière that hung over it to let them enter. Herr Naphta, in slippers, stood on a mossy green carpet just within, and received his guests.
Both cousins were surprised by the luxury of the two-windowed study. They were even astonished; for the poverty of the cottage, the mean stair and wretched corridor, led one to expect nothing of the kind. The contrast lent to Naphta’s elegant furnishings a note of the fabulous, which of themselves they scarcely possessed, and would not otherwise have had in the eyes of Hans Castorp and Joachim Ziemssen. Yet they were elegant too, even strikingly so; indeed, despite writing-table and bookshelves the room hardly had a masculine look. There was too much silk about—wine-coloured, purplish silk; silken window-hangings, silken portières, and silken coverings to the furniture arranged on the narrow side of the room in front of a wall almost entirely covered with a Gobelin tapestry. Baroque easy-chairs with little pads on the arms were grouped about a small metal-bound table, and behind it stood a baroque sofa with velvet cushions. Bookcases lined the entrance wall on both sides of the door. They and the writing-table or, rather, roll-top desk, which stood between the windows, were of carved mahogany; the glass doors of the bookcases were lined with green silk. But in the corner to the left of the sofa-group stood a work of art, a large painted woodcarving, mounted on a red-covered dais: a pietà, profoundly startling, artlessly effective to the point of being grotesque. The Madonna, in a cap, with gathered brows and wry, wailing mouth, with the Man of Sorrows on her lap—considered as a work of art it was primitive and faulty, with crudely emphasized and ignorant anatomy, the hanging head bristling with thorns, face and limbs blood-besprinkled, great blobs of blood
