Hans Castorp said never a word—a sure sign that his inward man was indeed pervaded with gloom.
“Right, then, of course, as I always am,” Behrens answered himself. “Well, I can’t have you spreading the toxin of your disaffection all over my community, you disgruntled citizen, you. I must convince you that you are not forgotten of God and man, that the powers above have an eye, an unchanging eye upon you, and ceaselessly ponder your welfare. Old Behrens hasn’t forsaken you yet, my lad. Well, joking aside, I’ve been thinking about your case, and in the watches of the night something has come to me. I might almost speak of a revelation—in short, I promise great things from my new idea, nothing more nor less than your complete cure and triumphal progress down to the flat-land, before you can say Jack Robinson.”
“Yes,” he went on, after a pause for effect, “you may well open your eyes”—Hans Castorp had done nothing of the sort, merely blinked at him rather sleepy and distraught—“of course you haven’t an idea how old Behrens can say such a thing. Well, it’s like this: it cannot have escaped your acute apperceptions that there is something about your case that doesn’t hold water. The symptoms of infection have not for a long time corresponded to the local condition, which is undoubtedly very much improved. It’s not only since yesterday that I’ve been thinking about it. Here is your latest photo, take it and hold it up to the light. See there! The sheerest pessimist and caviller—as the Kaiser says—could not see very much in it to find fault with. Some of the foci are absorbed, the area is smaller and more clearly defined, which you are experienced enough to know is a sign of healing. Nothing here to explain the unreliability of your domestic heater, my man. The doctor finds himself under the necessity of casting about for another cause.” Hans Castorp’s bow conveyes at most a civil interest.
“You would think old Behrens must admit to having made a mistake in the treatment? Well, if you did, you’ve come a cropper again; sized the thing up wrong, and old Behrens too. The treatment was not wrong, but it was just possibly one-sided. The possibility has occurred to me that your symptoms were not necessarily to be referred to tuberculosis alone—because it is out of the question to refer them to it any longer. There must be some other source of trouble. In my view, you’ve got cocci.”
“Yes,” he repeated with increase of emphasis, and in acknowledgment of the bow with which Hans Castorp accepted his statement, “it is my profound conviction that you have streps—which, of course, is not necessarily alarming.”
Of alarm there could be no talk: Hans Castorp’s face expressed at most a sort of ironic recognition, either of his companion’s acuteness, or of the new dignity with which the Hofrat had hypothetically invested him.
“No call for panic,” he varied his theme. “Everybody has cocci. Any ass can have streps. You needn’t be puffed up. It is not very long since we have known that one can have streptococci in the blood without showing any symptoms of infection. And many of my colleagues are as yet unacquainted with the situation which confronts us, namely, that a man can even have tubercular bacilli in his blood without being any the worse for it. We aren’t more than three steps from the conception that tuberculosis is a disease of the blood.”
Hans Castorp politely found that truly remarkable.
“When I say streps,” Behrens began again, “you must not picture a well-known or severe type of illness. If this little one has really settled down and made itself at home in you, the bacteriological blood-test will show it. But whether it is really the cause of the fever—supposing it is present—that we can only tell from the effect of the streptovaccine treatment. This, my dear friend, is the technique, and I promise myself unheard-of results. Tuberculosis is the most long-winded thing in the world; but affections of this sort can be cured very quickly today; if you react to the inoculations, you will be as sound as a bell inside six weeks. Well, what do you say to that? That little ole Behrens has his head on his shoulders, what?”
“It is only a hypothesis for the moment, isn’t it?” Hans Castorp said languidly.
“But a demonstrable hypothesis! A highly fruitful hypothesis!” the Hofrat responded. “You’ll see how fruitful it is, when the cocci begin to grow in our culture. Tomorrow afternoon we’ll rap you; we’ll let your blood according to the sacred rites of the village barber. It’s diverting in itself, and may have miraculous results.”
Hans Castorp declared himself ready for the diversion, and thanked the Hofrat in due form for his efforts in his behalf. He put his head on one side and watched Behrens paddle off. It was true: the intervention had come at the critical moment, Rhadamanthus had not been far out in the description he gave of Hans Castorp’s face and air. The new undertaking was put forth—quite explicitly, there had been no attempt to wrap it up—in order to tide him over the crisis he was in, which betrayed itself by a bearing very like the departed Joachim’s, when he was mentally working himself up to a certain desperate resolve.
And further. It seemed to Hans Castorp that not only he himself had arrived at this point, but that all the world, “the whole show,” as he said, had arrived there with him; he found it
