Then it was that Hans Castorp laughed. His excitement, while Joachim was speaking, had fixed for its outlet upon laughter rather than tears; and he laughed as he walked, his hand over his eyes, his shoulders bent, shaken by a succession of subdued chuckles.
“Are they incorporated?” he asked as soon as he could speak. His voice sounded weak and tearful with suppressed laughter. “Have they any bylaws? Pity you aren’t a member, you could get me in as a guest, as—as associate half-lunger.—You ought to ask Behrens to put you out of commission, then perhaps you could learn to whistle too; it must be something one could learn—well, that’s the funniest thing ever I heard in my life!” he finished, heaving a deep sigh. “I beg your pardon for speaking of it like this, but they seem very jolly over it themselves, your pneumatic friends. The way they were coming along—and to think that was the Half-Lung Club. Tootle-ty-too, she went at me—she must be out of her senses! It was utter cheek—will you tell me why they behave so cheekily?”
Joachim sought for a reply. “Good Lord,” he said, “they are so free— I mean, they are so young, and time is nothing to them, and then they may die—perhaps—why should they make a long face? Sometimes I think being ill and dying aren’t serious at all, just a sort of loafing about and wasting time; life is only serious down below. You will get to understand that after a while, but not until you have spent some time up here.”
“Surely, surely,” Hans Castorp said. “I’m sure I shall. I already feel great interest in the life up here, and when one is interested, the understanding follows.—But what is the matter with me—it doesn’t taste good,” he said, and took his cigar out of his mouth to look at it. “I’ve been asking myself all this time what the matter was, and now I see it is Maria. She tastes like papier mâché, I do assure you—precisely as when one has a spoilt digestion. I can’t understand it. I did eat more than usual for breakfast, but that cannot be the reason, for she usually tastes particularly good after a too hearty meal. Do you think it is because I had such a disturbed night? Perhaps that is how I got out of order. No, I really can’t stick it,” he said, after another attempt. “Every pull is a disappointment, there is no sense in forcing it.” And after a hesitating moment he tossed the cigar off down the slope, among the wet pine-boughs. “Do you know what I think it has to do with?” he asked. “I feel convinced it is connected with this damned heat I feel all the time in my face. I have suffered from it ever since I got up. I feel as though I were blushing the whole time, deuce take it! Did you have anything like that when you first came?”
“Yes,” said Joachim. “I was rather queer at first. Don’t think too much of it. I told you it isn’t so easy to accustom oneself to the life up here. But you will get right again after a bit. Look, that bench is in a pretty place. Let’s sit down awhile and then go home. I must take my cure.”
The path had become level. It ran now in the direction of Davos-Platz, some third of the height, and kept a continuous view, between high, sparse, windblown pines, of the settlement below, gleaming whitely in the bright air. The bench on which they sat leaned against the steep wall of the mountainside, and near them a spring in an open wooden trough ran gurgling and plashing to the valley.
Joachim was for instructing his cousin in the names of the mist-wreathed Alpine heights which seemed to enclose the valley on the south, pointing them out in turn with his alpenstock. But Hans Castorp gave the mountains only a fleeting glance. He sat bent over, tracing figures on the ground with the ferrule of his cityish silver-mounted walking-stick. There were other things he wanted to know.
“What I meant to ask you,” he began, “the case in my room had died just before I got here; have there been many deaths, since you came?”
“Several, certainly,” answered Joachim. “But they are very discreetly managed, you understand; you hear nothing of them, or only by chance afterwards; everything is kept strictly private when there is a death, out of regard for the other patients, especially the ladies, who might easily get a shock. You don’t notice it, even when somebody dies next door. The coffin is brought very early in the morning, while you are asleep, and the person in question is fetched away at a suitable time too—for instance, while we are eating.”
“H’m,” said Hans Castorp, and continued to draw. “I see. That sort of thing goes on behind the scenes, then.”
“Yes—for the most part. But lately—let me see, wait a minute, it might be possibly eight weeks ago—”
“Then you can hardly say lately,” Hans Castorp pounced on him crisply.
“What? Well, not lately, then, since you’re so precise. I was just trying to reckon. Well, then, some time ago, it was, I got a glimpse behind the scenes—purely by chance—and I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was when they brought
