They had got up meantime to the Berghof. Then the three who lived there walked back with the others as far as their door, where they stood about in the snow for some further while, and Settembrini and Naphta continued to dispute. It was apparent to Hans Castorp that their zeal was the zeal of the schoolmaster, bent on making an impression upon his plastic mind. Herr Ferge reiterated that it was all too much for him; while Wehsal, so soon as they had got off the themes of torture and corporal punishment, showed small interest. Hans Castorp stood with bent head and burrowed with his stick in the snow, pondering the vasty confusion of it all.
They broke off at last. There were no limits to the subject—but they could not go on forever. The three guests of the Berghof took their way home, and the two disputants had to go into the cottage together, the one to seek his silken cell, the other his humanistic cubbyhole with the pulpit-desk and the water-bottle. Hans Castorp betook himself to his balcony, his ears full of the hurly-burly and the clashing of arms, as the army of Jerusalem and that of Babylon, under the dos banderas, came on in battle array, and met each other midst tumult and shoutings.
Snow
Daily, five times a day, the guests expressed unanimous dissatisfaction with the kind of winter they were having. They felt it was not what they had a right to expect of these altitudes. It failed to deliver the renowned meteorological specific in anything like the quantity indicated by the prospectus, quoted by old inhabitants, or anticipated by new. There was a very great failure in the supply of sunshine, an element so important in the cures achieved up here that without it they were distinctly retarded. And whatever Herr Settembrini might think of the sincerity of the patients’ desire to finish their cure, leave “home” and return to the flat-land, at any rate they insisted on their just dues. They wanted what they were entitled to, what their parents or husbands had paid for, and they grumbled unceasingly, at table, in lift, and in hall. The management showed a consciousness of what it owed them by installing a new apparatus for heliotherapy. They had two already, but these did not suffice for the demands of those who wished to get sunburnt by electricity—it was so becoming to the ladies, young and old, and made all the men, though confirmed horizontallers, look irresistibly athletic. And the ladies, even though aware of the mechanico-cosmetical origin of this conquering-hero air, were foolish enough to be carried away by it. There was Frau Schönfeld, a red-haired, red-eyed patient from Berlin. In the salon she looked thirstily at a long-legged, sunken-chested gallant, who described himself on his visiting-card as “Aviateur diplomé et Enseigne de la Marine allemande.” He was fitted out with the pneumothorax and wore “smoking” at the midday meal but not in the evening, saying this was their custom in the navy. “My God,” breathed Frau Schönfeld at him, “what a tan this demon has—he gets it from the helio—it makes him look like a hunter of eagles!” “Just wait, nixie!” he whispered in her ear, in the lift, “I’ll make you pay for looking at me like that!” It made gooseflesh and shivers run over her. And along the balconies, past the glass partitions, the demon eagle-hunter found his way to the nixie.
But the artificial sun was far from making up for the lack of the real one. Two or three days of full sunshine in the month—it was not good enough, gorgeous though these were, with deep, deep velvety blue sky behind the white mountain summits, a glitter as of diamonds and a fine hot glow on the face and the back of the neck, when they dawned resplendent from the prevailing thick mantle of grey mist. Two or three such days in the course of weeks could not satisfy people whose lot might be said to justify extraordinary demands from the external world. They had made an inward contract, by the terms of which they resigned the common joys and sorrows proper to flat-land humanity, and in exchange were made free of a life that was, to be sure, inactive, but on the other hand very lively and diverting, and carefree to the point of making one forget altogether the flight of time. Thus it was not much good for the Hofrat to tell them how favourably the Berghof compared with a Siberian mine or a penal settlement, nor to sing the praises of the atmosphere, so thin and light, well-nigh as rare as the empty universal ether, free of earthly admixture whether good or bad, and even without actual sunshine to be preferred to the rank vapours of the plain. Despite all he could say, the gloomy disaffection gained ground, threats of unlicensed departure were the order of the day, were even put into execution, without regard for the warning afforded by the melancholy return of Frau Salomon to the fold, now a “life member,” her tedious but not serious case having taken that turn by reason of her self-willed visit to her wet and windy Amsterdam.
But if they had no sun, they had snow. Such masses of snow as Hans Castorp had never till now in all his life beheld. The previous winter had done fairly well in that respect, but it had been as nothing compared to this one. The snowfall was monstrous and immeasurable, it made one realize the extravagant, outlandish nature of the place. It snowed day in, day out, and all through the night. The few roads kept open were like tunnels, with towering walls of snow on either side, crystal and alabaster surfaces that
