“Beautiful, brown, brown curls,” the glass responded, deliberately spelling out the word “brown” twice. There was much merriment over this. The ladies said they were in love with him. They kissed their hands at the ceiling. Dr. Ting-Fu, giggling, said Mister Holger must be rather vain.
Ah, what a fury the glass fell into! It ran like mad about the table, quite at random, rocked with rage, fell over and rolled into Frau Stöhr’s lap, who stretched out her arms and looked down at it pallid with fear. They apologetically conveyed it back to its station, and rebuked the Chinaman. How had he dared to say such a thing—did he see what his indiscretion had led to? Suppose Holger was up and off in his wrath, and refused to say another word! They addressed themselves to the glass with the extreme of courtesy. Would Holger not make up some poetry for them? He had said he was a poet, before he went to hover in the hastening while. Ah, how they all yearned to hear him versify! They would love it so!
And lo, the good glass yielded and said yes! Truly there was something placable and good-humoured about the way it tapped. And then Holger the spirit began to poetize, and kept it up, copiously, circumstantially, without pausing for thought, for dear knows how long. It seemed impossible to stop him. And what a surprising poem it was, this ventriloquistic effort, delivered to the admiration of the circle—stuff of magic, and shoreless as the sea of which it largely dealt. Sea-wrack in heaps and bands along the narrow strand of the broad-flung bay; an islanded coast, girt by steep, cliffy dunes. Ah, see the dim green distance faint and die into eternity, while beneath broad veils of mist in dull carmine and milky radiance the summer sun delays to sink! No word can utter how and when the watery mirror turned from silver into untold changeful colour-play, to bright or pale, to spreading, opaline and moonstone gleams—or how, mysteriously as it came, the voiceless magic died away. The sea slumbered. Yet the last traces of the sunset linger above and beyond. Until deep in the night it has not grown dark: a ghostly twilight reigns in the pine forests on the downs, bleaching the sand until it looks like snow. A simulated winter forest all in silence, save where an owl wings rustling flight. Let us stray here at this hour—so soft the sand beneath our tread, so sublime, so mild the night! Far beneath us the sea respires slowly, and murmurs a long whispering in its dream. Does it crave thee to see it again? Step forth to the sallow, glacier-like cliffs of the dunes, and climb quite up into the softness, that runs coolly into thy shoes. The land falls harsh and bushy steeply down to the pebbly shore, and still the last parting remnants of the day haunt the edge of the vanishing sky. Lie down here in the sand! How cool as death it is, how soft as silk, as flour! It flows in a colourless, thin stream from thy hand and makes a dainty little mound beside thee. Dost thou recognize it, this tiny flowing? It is the soundless, tiny stream through the hourglass, that solemn, fragile toy that adorns the hermit’s hut. An open book, a skull, and in its slender frame the double glass, holding a little sand, taken from eternity, to prolong here, as time, its troubling, solemn, mysterious essence …
Thus Holger the spirit and his lyric improvisation, ranging with weird flights of thought from the familiar seashore to the cell of a hermit and the tools of his mystic contemplation. And there war more; more, human and divine, involved in daring and dreamlike terminology—over which the members of the little circle puzzled endlessly as they spelled it out; scarcely finding time for hurried though rapturous applause, so swiftly did the glass zigzag back and forth, so swiftly the words roll on and on. There was no distant prospect of a period, even at the end of an hour. The glass improvised inexhaustibly of the pangs of birth and the first kiss of lovers; the crown of sorrows, the fatherly goodness of God; plunged into the mysteries of creation, lost itself in other times and lands, in interstellar space; even mentioned the Chaldeans and the zodiac; and would most certainly have gone on all night, if the conspirators had not finally taken their fingers from the glass, and expressing their gratitude to Holger, told him that must suffice them for the time, it had been wonderful beyond their wildest dreams, it was an everlasting pity there had been no one at hand to take it down, for now it must inevitably be forgotten, yes, alas, they had already forgotten most of it, thanks to its quality, which made it hard to retain, as dreams are. Next time they must appoint an amanuensis to take it down, and see how it would look in black and white, and read connectedly. For the moment, however, and before Holger withdrew to the tranquillity of his hastening while, it would be better, and certainly most amiable of him, if he would consent to answer a few practical questions. They scarcely as yet knew what, but would he at least be in principle inclined to do so, in his great amiability?
The answer was yes. But now they discovered a great perplexity—what should they ask? It was as in the fairy-story, when the fairy or elf grants one question, and there is danger of letting the precious advantage slip through the fingers. There was much in the world, much of the future, that seemed worth knowing, yet it was so difficult to choose. At length, as no one else seemed able to settle, Hans Castorp, with his finger on the glass, supporting his cheek on his fist, said he would like to know what was to be the
