“Thanks,” Joachim said. “And now that you have explained it, you feel so satisfied that you are even satisfied with the situation itself—although in all human—no!” said he. “I’m done. Fed up. It’s beastly. The whole thing is just one tremendous, rotten, beastly sell; and I, for my part—” He went with hasty steps through the room, and shut the door angrily behind him. Unless Hans Castorp was much mistaken, there had been tears in the mild, beautiful eyes.
He left the other staggered. So long as Joachim had confined himself to putting his determination into words, his cousin had not taken it too seriously. But now that silence spoke for him, and his behaviour too, Hans Castorp was alarmed, for he saw that the military Joachim was the man to translate words into deeds—he was so alarmed that he grew pale, and his pallor was for them both. “Fort possible qu’il va mourir,” he thought. And that piece of third-hand information mingled itself with an old, painful, never-quite-to-be-suppressed fear, which made him say to himself: “Is it possible he could leave me alone up here—me, who only came on a visit to him? That would be crazy, horrible; at the bare thought of it I can feel my heart flutter and my cheek pale. Because if I am left up here—as I shall be, if he goes down, for it is out of the question for me to go with him—if I am left up here, it is forever; alone I should never find my way back. Never back down to the world again. And at the thought my heart stands still.”
Such the course of Hans Castorp’s fearful musings. But that very afternoon, certitude was vouchsafed. Joachim declared himself, the die was cast, the bridges burnt.
They went down after tea to the basement for the monthly examination. This was the beginning of September. On entering the warm air of the consulting-room, they saw Dr. Krokowski sitting at his table, and the Hofrat, very blue in the face, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, tapping his shoulder with the stethoscope, and yawning at the ceiling. “Mahlzeit, children,” said he, languidly. His mood was lax, resigned and melancholic, and he had probably been smoking. There were also, however, some objective grounds for his state, as the cousins had heard: international scandal of a kind only too familiar in the establishment. A certain young girl called Emmy Nolting had entered House Berghof two years before in the autumn, and after a stay of some nine months departed cured. But before September was out she had returned, saying she did not “feel well” at home. In February, with lungs from which all vestige of rhonchi had disappeared, she was sent home again—but by the middle of July was back in her place at Frau Iltis’s table. This Emmy, then, had been discovered in her room at one o’clock at night in company with another sufferer, a Greek named Polypraxios, the same whose shapely legs had attracted favourable attention the night of mardi gras—a young chemist whose father owned dye-works in the Piraeus. The discovery had been made through the jealousy of another young girl, a friend of Emmy, who had found her way to Emmy’s room by the same route the Greek had taken—namely, across the balconies; and, distracted by her jealous rage, had made great outcry, so that everybody came running, and the scandal became known to the sparrows on the housetops. Behrens had to send all three of them away; and had been at the moment going over the whole unsavoury affair with Krokowski, who had had both girls under private treatment. The Hofrat, as he examined, continued to let fall remarks, in resigned and dreary tones—for he was such a master of auscultation that he could listen to a man’s inside, dictate what he heard to his assistant, and talk about something else all the time.
“Ah, yes, gentlemen,” he said, “this cursed libido. You can get some fun out of the thing, it’s all right for you.—Vesicular.—But a man in my position, verily I say unto you—dullness here—he hath his belly full. Is it my fault that phthisis and concupiscence go together—slight harshness here? I didn’t arrange it that way; but before you know where you are you find yourself the keeper of a stew—restricted here under the left shoulder. We have psychoanalysis, we give the noodles every chance to talk themselves out—much good it does them! The more they talk the more lecherous they get. I preach mathematics.—Better here, the rhonchi are gone.—I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh. Lawyer Paravant was a bad case; he took my advice, he is now busy squaring the circle, and gets great relief. But most of them are too witless and lazy, God help them!—Vesicular.—You see, I know it’s only too easy for young folk to go to the bad up here—I used to try to do something about these debauches. But it happened a few times that some brother or bridegroom asked me to my face what affair it was of mine—and since then I’ve stuck to my last.—Slight rales up on the right.”
He finished with Joachim, thrust his stethoscope in the pocket of his smock, and rubbed his eyes with both huge hands, as was his habit when he had “backslidden” and
