The latter was silent. He spoke no word, either of Joachim’s “leave” or his own—which might equally well have been mentioned. He made his preparations for the rest-cure, put the thermometer in his mouth, flung the camel’s-hair rugs about him with swift, practised hand, the perfected technique of that consecrated art the flat-land knows not of; then he lay still, neat as a sausage-roll, in his excellent chair, in the chill dampness of the early autumn afternoon.
The rain-clouds hung low. Remnants of snow rested on the boughs of the silver fir. The banner of the establishment was furled round its staff. A low murmur of voices rose from the rest-hall, whence last year, at much about this time, the voice of Herr Albin had risen to Hans Castorp’s ear. The cure was going on, the patients sat there with soon-chilled faces and fingertips. To him all this was long-established habit, the inevitable course of life; he knew the gratitude of the settled patient for the blessing of being able to lie, snugly ensconced, and think everything over at leisure.
So it was settled, Joachim was to go. Rhadamanthus had released him; not rite, not with a clean bill of health, yet half approvingly, on the ground, and in recognition, of his constant spirit. He would go down: first with the narrow-gauge road as far as Landquart, then to Romanshorn, then across the wide, bottomless lake, over which in the legend the rider rode, across all Germany, and home. He would stop there, in the valley world, among men with no notion of the way to live, ignorant of “measuring” and of the whole ritual of rug-wrapping, of fur sleeping-sacks, of the three daily walks, of—it was hard to say, hard to count all the things of which those down below stood in blank ignorance; but the mere picture of Joachim, after a year and a half up here, living in the darkness of that flat-landish incomprehension—a picture only of Joachim, with hardly the faintest hypothetical reference to Hans Castorp himself—so bewildered the young man that he closed his eyes and waved it away with a motion of the hand, murmuring: “Impossible!”
And since it was impossible, he would live on up here, alone, without Joachim? Yes, it came to that. How long? Until Behrens discharged him cured—in earnest, that is, not as he had today. But that was so indefinite a time-limit that he could no more prophesy it than could Joachim, on a like occasion long ago. Again, would the impossible by then have become any more possible? On the contrary, Joachim’s rash departure did—in honesty—offer his cousin a support, now, before the impossible should become utterly so, a guide and companion on a path which of himself he would never, never find again. Ah, if one consulted humanistic pedagogy, how humanistic pedagogy would adjure him to take the hand and accept the offered guidance! But Herr Settembrini was only a representative—of things and forces worth hearing about, it was true, but not the only forces there were. And with Joachim it was the same. He was a soldier. He was leaving—almost at the very time set for the return of the high-breasted one, for it was known that she would return in October. While the departure of the civilian Hans Castorp became impossible precisely because he had to wait for Clavdia Chauchat, whose return, as yet, was not even thought of. “I don’t look at it in that light,” Joachim had answered when Rhadamanthus talked about desertion—though as far as Joachim was concerned that had probably only been some of the Hofrat’s melancholic maundering. But for him, the civilian, the thing was different. For him—ah, here was the right idea, the thought which he had set himself to evolve, as he lay out in the cold and damp—for him the real desertion would lie in his taking advantage of the occasion to dash off unlawfully—or half unlawfully—to the flat-land. It would be the abandonment of certain comprehensive responsibilities which had grown up out of his contemplation of the image called Homo Dei; it would be the betrayal of that appointed task of “stocktaking,” that hard and harassing task, which was really beyond the powers native to him, but yet afforded his spirit such nameless and adventurous joys; that task it was his duty to perform, here in his chair, and up there in his blue-blossoming retreat.
He tore the thermometer out of his mouth, violently as never before save when the Oberin had sold him the toy and he had first used it. He looked at it with the same avid curiosity now as then. Ah, Mercurius had indeed bounded upwards: he stood at 100.5°, almost .6°.
Hans Castorp threw off his covers, sprang up and strode to the corridor door and back. Then he lay down again, called softly to Joachim, and asked him what he measured.
“I’m not measuring any more,” replied his cousin.
“Well, I’ve some temperament,” Hans Castorp said, emulating Frau Stöhr; Joachim, behind the glass pane, answered never a word.
He said no more, on that day or the following; made no effort to find out his cousin’s plans—which would, indeed, be driven to declare themselves in no long time, by his either taking certain steps or refraining from them.
