The Magic Mountain

reported, in an effort to arouse and discipline her slumbering potentialities, to make researches into her previous psychic life. Hermine Kleefeld, who mothered and patronized the child, tried to do the same; and under the seal of secrecy a certain number of facts were ascertained, which under the same seal she spread throughout the house, even unto the porter’s lodge. She learned, for example, that he who⁠—or that which⁠—whispered the answers into the little one’s ear at games was called Holger. This Holger was the departed and etherealized spirit of a young man, the familiar, something like the guardian angel, of little Elly. So it was he who had told all that about the pinch of salt and the tune played with Lawyer Paravant’s forefinger? Yes, those spirit lips, so close to her ear that they were like a caress, and tickled a little, making her smile, had whispered her what to do. It must have been very nice when she was in school and had not prepared her lesson to have him tell her the answers. Upon this point Elly was silent. Later she said she thought he would not have been allowed. It would be forbidden to him to mix in such serious matters⁠—and moreover, he would probably not have known the answers himself.

It was learned, further, that from her childhood up Ellen had had visions, though at widely separated intervals of time; visions, visible and invisible. What sort of thing were they, now-invisible visions? Well, for example: when she was a girl of sixteen, she had been sitting one day alone in the living-room of her parents’ house, sewing at a round table, with her father’s dog Freia lying near her on the carpet. The table was covered with a Turkish shawl, of the kind old women wear three-cornered across their shoulders. It covered the table diagonally, with the corners somewhat hanging over. Suddenly Ellen had seen the corner nearest her roll slowly up. Soundlessly, carefully, and evenly it turned itself up, a good distance toward the centre of the table, so that the resultant roll was rather long; and while this was happening, the dog Freia started up wildly, bracing her forefeet, the hair rising on her body. She had stood on her hind legs, then run howling into the next room and taken refuge under a sofa. For a whole year thereafter she could not be persuaded to set foot in the living-room.

Was it Holger, Fräulein Kleefeld asked, who had rolled up the cloth? Little Brand did not know. And what had she thought about the affair? But since it was absolutely impossible to think anything about it, little Elly had thought nothing at all. Had she told her parents? No. That was odd. Though so sure she had thought nothing about it, Elly had had a distinct impression, in this and similar cases, that she must keep it to herself, make a profound and shamefaced secret of it. Had she taken it much to heart? No, not particularly. What was there about the rolling up of a cloth to take to heart? But other things she had⁠—for example, the following:

A year before, in her parent’s house at Odense, she had risen, as was her custom, in the cool of the early morning and left her room on the ground-floor, to go up to the breakfast-room, in order to brew the morning coffee before her parents rose. She had almost reached the landing, where the stairs turned, when she saw standing there close by the steps her elder sister Sophie, who had married and gone to America to live. There she was, her physical presence, in a white gown, with, curiously enough, a garland of moist water-lilies on her head, her hands folded against one shoulder, and nodded to her sister. Ellen, rooted to the spot, half joyful, half terrified, cried out: “Oh, Sophie, is that you?” Sophie had nodded once again, and dissolved. She became gradually transparent, soon she was only visible as an ascending current of warm air, then not visible at all, so that Ellen’s path was clear. Later, it transpired that Sister Sophie had died of heart trouble in New Jersey, at that very hour.

Hans Castorp, when Fräulein Kleefeld related this to him, expressed the view that there was some sort of sense in it: the apparition here, the death there⁠—after all, they did hang together. And he consented to be present at a spiritualistic sitting, a table-tipping, glass-moving game which they had determined to undertake with Ellen Brand, behind Dr. Krokowski’s back, and in defiance of his jealous prohibition.

A small and select group assembled for the purpose, their theatre being Fräulein Kleefeld’s room. Besides the hostess, Fräulein Brand, and Hans Castorp, there were only Frau Stöhr, Fräulein Levi, Herr Albin, the Czech Wenzel, and Dr. Ting-Fu. In the evening, on the stroke of ten, they gathered privily, and in whispers mustered the apparatus Hermine had provided, consisting of a medium-sized round table without a cloth, placed in the centre of the room, with a wineglass upside-down upon it, the foot in the air. Round the edge of the table, at regular intervals, were placed twenty-six little bone counters, each with a letter of the alphabet written on it in pen and ink. Fräulein Kleefeld served tea, which was gratefully received, as Frau Stöhr and Fräulein Levi, despite the harmlessness of the undertaking, complained of cold feet and palpitations. Cheered by the tea, they took their places about the table, in the rosy twilight dispensed by the pink-shaded table-lamp, as Fräulein Kleefeld, in concession to the mood of the gathering, had put out the ceiling light; and each of them laid a finger of his right hand lightly on the foot of the wineglass. This was the prescribed technique. They waited for the glass to move.

That should happen with ease. The top of the table was smooth, the rim of the glass well ground, the pressure of the tremulous fingers, however