“We will now form the chain,” finished Dr. Krokowski; and they did so, laughing when they could not find each other’s hands in the dark. Dr. Ting-Fu, sitting next Hermine Kleefeld, laid his right hand on her shoulder and reached his left to Herr Wehsal, who came next. Beyond him were Herr and Frau Magnus, then A. K. Ferge; who, if Hans Castorp mistook not, held the hand of the ivory Levi on his right—and so on. “Music!” the doctor commanded, and behind him his neighbour the Czech set the instrument in motion and placed the needle on the disk. “Talk!” Krokowski bade them, and as the first bars of an overture by Millöcker were heard, they obediently bestirred themselves to make conversation, about nothing at all: the winter snowfall, the last course at dinner, a newly arrived patient, a departure, “wild” or otherwise—artificially sustained, half drowned by the music, and lapsing now and again. So some minutes passed.
The record had not run out before Elly shuddered violently. A trembling ran through her, she sighed, the upper part of her body sank forward so that her forehead rested against Hans Castorp’s, and her arms, together with those of her guardians, began to make extraordinary pumping motions to and fro.
“Trance,” announced the Kleefeld. The music stopped, so also the conversation. In the abrupt silence they heard the baritone drawl of the doctor. “Is Holger present?”
Elly shivered again. She swayed in her chair. Then Hans Castorp felt her press his two hands with a quick, firm pressure.
“She pressed my hands,” he informed them.
“He,” the doctor corrected him. “He pressed your hands. He is present. Wel‑come, Holger,” he went on with unction. “Wel‑come, friend and fellow comrade, heartily, heartily wel‑come. And remember, when you were last with us,” he went on, and Hans Castorp remarked that he did not use the form of address common to the civilized West—“you promised to make visible to our mortal eyes some dear departed, whether brother soul or sister soul, whose name should be given to you by our circle. Are you willing? Do you feel yourself able to perform what you promised?”
Again Elly shivered. She sighed and shivered as the answer came. Slowly she carried her hands and those of her guardians to her forehead, where she let them rest. Then close to Hans Castorp’s ear she whispered: “Yes.”
The warm breath immediately at his ear caused in our friend that phenomenon of the epidermis popularly called gooseflesh, the nature of which the Hofrat had once explained to him. We mention this in order to make a distinction between the psychical and the purely physical. There could scarcely be talk of fear, for our hero was in fact thinking: “Well, she is certainly biting off more than she can chew!” But then he was straightway seized with a mingling of sympathy and consternation springing from the confusing and illusory circumstance that a blood-young creature, whose hands he held in his, had just breathed a yes into his ear.
“He said yes,” he reported, and felt embarrassed.
“Very well, then, Holger,” spoke Dr. Krokowski. “We shall take you at your word. We are confident you will do your part. The name of the dear departed shall shortly be communicated to you. Comrades,” he turned to the gathering, “out with it, now! Who has a wish? Whom shall our friend Holger show us?”
A silence followed. Each waited for the other to speak. Individually they had probably all questioned themselves, in these last few days; they knew whither their thoughts tended. But the calling back of the dead, or the desirability of calling them back, was a ticklish matter, after all. At bottom, and boldly confessed, the desire does not exist; it is a misapprehension precisely as impossible as the thing itself, as we should soon see if nature once let it happen. What we call mourning for our dead is perhaps not so much grief at not being able to call them back as it is grief at not being able to want to do so.
This was what they were all obscurely feeling; and since it was here simply a question not of an actual return, but merely a theatrical staging of one, in which they should only see the departed, no more, the thing seemed humanly unthinkable; they were afraid to look into the face of him or her of whom they thought, and each one would willingly have resigned his right of choice to the next. Hans Castorp too, though there was echoing in his ears that large-hearted “Of course, of course” out of the past, held back, and at the last moment was rather inclined to pass the choice on. But the pause was too long; he turned his head toward their leader, and said, in a husky voice: “I should like to see my departed cousin, Joachim Ziemssen.”
That was a relief to them all. Of those present, all excepting Dr. Ting-Fu, Wenzel, and the medium had known the person asked for. The others, Ferge, Wehsal, Herr Albin, Paravant, Herr and Frau Magnus, Frau Stöhr, Fräulein Levi, and the Kleefeld, loudly announced their satisfaction with the choice. Krokowski himself nodded well pleased, though his relations with Joachim had always been rather cool, owing to the latter’s reluctance in the matter of psychoanalysis.
“Very good indeed,” said the doctor. “Holger, did you hear? The person named was a stranger to you in life. Do you know him in the Beyond, and are you prepared to lead him hither?”
Immense suspense. The sleeper swayed, sighed, and shuddered. She seemed to be seeking, to be struggling; falling this way and that, whispering now to Hans Castorp, now to the Kleefeld, something they could not catch.
