“What sort of comparison is that?” Hans Castorp asked, severely.
“It looked like that to me—I couldn’t help thinking of it. But listen. They came towards me, marching, quick step, three of them, so far as I remember: the man with the cross, the priest, with glasses on his nose, and a boy with a censer. The priest was holding the Sacrament to his breast, it was covered up, and he had his head bent on one side and looked very sanctified—it is their holy of holies, of course.”
“Exactly,” Hans Castorp said. “And just for that reason I wonder at your making the comparison you did.”
“Yes, but wait a bit—if you had been there, you wouldn’t have known what kind of face you would make remembering it afterwards. It was the sort of thing to give you bad dreams—”
“How?”
“Like this: I ask myself how I am supposed to behave, under the circumstances. I had no hat to take off—”
“There, you see, don’t you?” Hans Castorp interrupted him again. “You see now, one ought to wear a hat. Naturally I’ve noticed that none of you do up here; but you should, so you can have something to take off when it is proper to do so. Well, but what then?”
“I stood against the wall,” Joachim went on, “as respectfully as I could, and bent over a little when they were by me—it was just at little Hujus’s door, number twenty-eight. The priest seemed to be pleased that I saluted; he acknowledged very courteously and took off his cap. But at the same time they came to a stop, and the ministrant with the censer knocks, and lifts the latch, and makes way for his superior to enter. Just try to imagine my sensations, and how frightened I was! The minute the priest sets his foot over the threshold, there begins a hullabaloo from inside, a screaming such as you never heard the like of, three or four times running, and then a shriek—on and on without stopping, at the top of her lungs: Ah‑h‑h‑h! So full of horror and rebellion, and anguish, and—well, perfectly indescribable. And in between came a gruesome sort of begging. Then it suddenly got all dulled and hollow-sounding, as though it had sunk down into the earth, or were coming out of a cellar.”
Hans Castorp had turned with violence to face his cousin. “Was that the Hujus?” he asked abruptly. “And how do you mean—out of a cellar?”
“She had crawled down under the covers,” said Joachim. “Imagine how I felt! The priest stood on the threshold and spoke soothingly, I can see now just how he stuck his head out and drew it back again while he talked. The cross-bearer and the acolyte hesitated, and couldn’t get in. I could see between them into the room. It was just like yours and mine, the bed on the side wall left of the door, and people were standing at the head, the relatives of course, the parents, talking soothingly at the bed, where you could see nothing but a formless mass that was begging and protesting horribly, and kicking about with its legs.”
“You say she kicked?”
“With all her might. But it did her no good, she had to take the Sacrament. The priest went up to her, and the two others went inside the room, and the door closed. But first I saw little Hujus’s head come up for a second, a shock of blond hair, and look at the priest with staring eyes, that were without any colour, and then with a wail go down under the sheet again.”
“And you tell me all that now for the first time?” Hans Castorp said, after a pause. “I can’t understand how you came not to speak of it yesterday evening. But, good Lord, she must have had strength, to defend herself like that. That takes strength. They ought not to fetch the priest before one is quite weak.”
“She was weak,” responded Joachim.—“Oh, there’s so much to tell, one doesn’t have time to pick and choose. She was weak enough! It was only the fright gave her so much strength. She was in a fearful state when she saw she was going to die; and she was such a young girl, it was excusable, after all. But grown men behave like that too, sometimes, and it’s deplorably feeble of them, of course. Behrens knows how to treat them, he takes just the right tone in such cases.”
“What kind of tone?” Hans Castorp asked with drawn brows.
“ ‘Don’t behave like that,’ he tells them,” Joachim answered. “At least, that is what he told somebody lately—we heard it from the Directress, who was present and helped to hold the man. He was one of those who make a regular scene at the end, and simply won’t die. So Behrens brought him up with a round turn: ‘Do me the favour not to behave like that,’ he said to him; and the patient became quite
