“Why, Wehsal, what’s the matter with you? You are off your head, you don’t know how you are going on—”
“But that is just it,” pursued the unhappy wretch, “that she has a soul, that she is a creature made up of soul and body. And her soul will have absolutely nothing to do with mine, nor her body either, and thence come, oh, God, the torments I suffer, and therefore is my desire condemned to shame, and my body must mortify itself forever. Why will she know nothing of me, Castorp, either body or soul, and why is my desire a horror to her? Am I not a man? Even if I am repulsive? I swear to you that I am, that I would give her more than all the others who have lain there, once she opened to me the bliss of her embrace, of her arms, which are beautiful because her soul is so. There is not a glory of the flesh I would not offer her, Castorp, if it were only a matter of the body, not of the countenance, if it were not her accursed soul that will have none of me, without which I should have no longing for her body—that is the devil’s treadmill in which I eternally go round and round.”
“Hush, Wehsal, hush, the coachman can understand you. He does not turn his head, on purpose, but I can see by the expression of his back that he is listening.”
“Yes, you’re right, he is listening, and he understands. There you have again the thing I am talking about, and can see what it is like. If I were speaking of—of palingenesis, or hydrostatics, he would not understand, and would not listen, he would not have the faintest idea about it, nor care to have. There is no popular understanding for those things. But this business of body and soul, the last and highest and most ghastly private matter in the world, is also the most universal—everybody can understand it and laugh at anyone suffering from it, whose days are a torture of desire and his nights a torment of hell. Castorp, dear Castorp, let me make my little moan to you—you don’t know the sort of nights I have. Every night I dream of her, ah, what do I not dream of her, it makes me burn inside even to think of it! And all the dreams end the same way: she gives me a box on the ear, slaps me in the face, sometimes spits at me, with her face all distorted with disgust, and then I awake, covered with sweat and drowned in shame and desire—”
“That will do, Wehsal. We will sit quiet now, and make up our minds to hold our tongues until we reach the grocer’s and someone gets in with us. That is my wish. I don’t want to wound you, and I admit that your mental state is a quite choice and particular mess. But you know the story about the maiden who by way of being punished for something had snakes and toads hop out of her mouth, a snake or a toad for every word she spoke. The book does not say what she did about it, but I should think she finally had to keep her mouth shut.”
“But every human being needs to express what he feels,” said Wehsal complainingly, “to relieve himself, my dear Castorp, when he is in the state I am in!”
“And every human being has the right to do it, too, if you like. But my dear Wehsal, it seems to me there are certain rights a man simply does not assert.”
After which, according to Hans Castorp’s desire, they were silent. Moreover, they were now arrived at the grocer’s vine-clad cottage, where they needed not to linger at all, for Naphta and Settembrini stood waiting in the street; the one in his shabby fur, the other in a yellowish-white spring overcoat, copiously stitched, and looking almost foppish. They all bowed and exchanged greetings, and Naphta took his place beside Ferge in the first landau, which now contained four persons, while Herr Settembrini added himself to the other two in the second carriage. Wehsal gave up his place on the back seat, and the Italian lolled there elegantly, as though on his native Corso; in his very best mood, and bubbling over with esprit.
He talked about the pleasure of driving, the charm of sitting still and being moved along at the same time amid a changing scene; showed a fatherly interest in Hans Castorp, even patted the forlorn Wehsal’s cheek and bade him forget his own unsympathetic ego in admiration of the blithe exterior world, to which the Italian pointed with a spacious gesture of his hand in its worn leather glove.
It was a delightful drive. The horses, all four of them sturdy, glossy, well-fed beasts, with a blaze on each forehead, covered the excellent road at a steady pace. There was no dust. The route was bordered here and there
