What was all this?
Among the Berghof community was a former business man, some thirty years old. His case was long-standing, he had wandered for years from one establishment to another. This man was a confirmed anti-Semite, out of conviction and the sporting instinct. He devoted a joyous consistency to the game, and the preaching of this negative gospel was the pride and content of his life. Business man he had been, he was so no more, he was nothing more in the world, but he was still an anti-Semite. His illness was serious, he had a burdensome cough, and made a sound as though he sneezed with his lung, a short, high-pitched, uncanny sound. But he was no Jew, and that was his one positive characteristic. His name was Wiedemann, a Christian name, not a filthy Jewish. He took in a paper called the Arian Sun; and would talk in this wise: “I arrive at the A⸺ sanatorium, in B⸺. When I go to sit down in my chair in the rest-hall, whom do I find on my right hand? Herr Hirsch! And whom do I find on my left? Herr Wolf! Of course, I leave.” And so on.
Wiedemann had a quick, threatening glance. It was literally as though he had a punching-ball hanging close in front of his nose, and squinted at it, seeing nothing whatever beyond. The prejudice that haunted him was grown to an itch, a ceaseless persecution-mania, which led him to smell out the vileness hidden or disguised in his neighbourhood and hold it up to scorn. Wherever he went, he suspected, he gibed, he vented his spleen; in short, his days were filled with hunting out and hounding down all his fellow-creatures who did not possess that inestimable advantage which was the only one he had.
The prevailing temper in House Berghof, which we have been indicating, aggravated Wiedemann’s complaint to an abnormal pitch. Naturally, he could not fail here to come into contact with persons suffering from the disability of which he was free; and so it came to a scene, at which Hans Castorp was present, and which will serve us as further illustration of our theme.
For there was another man. No possibility of concealing what he was, the case was clear. The man’s name was Sonnenschein, than which he could bear no filthier; and thus he became for Wiedemann the punching-ball in front of his nose, at which he squinted with his threatening glare, at which he struck, not so much to drive it away as to set it in motion that it might rasp his nerves the more.
Sonnenschein, like the other, was a business man born and bred. He too was critically ill, and illness made him sensitive. A friendly man, not at all a dull one, by nature rather playful, he hated Wiedemann for his gibes and stabs as Wiedemann hated him; and one afternoon things came to a head down in the hall, they fell on each other like beasts.
It was a horrid sight. They scuffled like small boys, but with the grimness of grown men when things have got to such a pitch. They clawed at each other’s faces, clutched throats or noses, grappled, hewed loose from each other and rolled together on the floor, spat, kicked, worried, and foamed at the mouth. The “management” came running and by main strength dragged them asunder, scratched and bitten. Herr Wiedemann, bleeding and frothing, his face brutish with rage, displayed a phenomenon Hans Castorp had never before seen and had always supposed a figure of speech: his hair stood on end. He staggered away. Herr Sonnenschein, with one black eye, a bleeding lacuna in the curling black locks about his brow, was led into the bureau, where he sat down, buried his face in his hands and wept bitterly.
Thus Wiedemann and Sonnenschein. All those who saw the encounter trembled hours after. Let us turn from it to a real affair of honour, which by contrast with such ignominy will seem almost refreshing. This affair of honour occurred at about the same period, and, on account of the solemn formality with which it was conducted, deserved the name, even to the point of absurdity. Hans Castorp did not assist in person at the successive episodes; but was informed of its involved and dramatic course by means of certain documents, protocols and formal declarations, touching the affair, circulated not only in the house and without, not only in the village, the canton, and the country, but even abroad and in America; and presented for the consideration of persons who most certainly were not in the faintest degree interested in the circumstances.
It was a Polish affair, a “pain in the
