“Oh, it’s you!” he said. “The gentleman we met this morning on our walk—at that bench up there—near the—yes, I knew you at once. Can you believe it,” he went on, though conscious of saying something gauche, “can you believe it, I took you for an organ-grinder when I first saw you? Of course, that’s all utter rot,” he added, seeing a coolly inquiring expression on Settembrini’s face. “Perfectly idiotic. I can’t comprehend how in the world I—”
“Don’t disturb yourself, it doesn’t matter,” responded Settembrini, after fixing the young man with a momentary intent regard. “Well, and how have you spent your day, the first of your sojourn in this gay resort?”
“Thanks very much—quite according to the rules,” answered Hans Castorp. “Prevailingly ‘horizontal,’ as I hear you prefer to call it.”
Settembrini smiled. “I may have taken occasion to express myself thus,” he said. “Well, and you found it amusing, this manner of existence?”
“Amusing or dull, whichever you like,” responded Hans Castorp. “It isn’t always so easy to decide which, you know. At all events, I haven’t been bored; there are far too lively goings-on up here for that. So much that is new and unusual to hear and see—and yet, in another way, it seems as though I had been here a long time, instead of just a single day—as if I had got older and wiser since I came—that is the way I feel.”
“Wiser, too?” Settembrini asked, and raised his eyebrows. “Will you permit me to ask how old you are?”
And behold, Hans Castorp could not tell! At that moment he did not know how old he was, despite strenuous, even desperate efforts to bethink himself. In order to gain time he had the question repeated, and then answered: “I? How old I am? In my twenty-fourth year, of course. I’ll soon be twenty-four. I beg your pardon, but I am very tired,” he went on. “ ‘Tired’ isn’t the word for it. Do you know how it is when you are dreaming, and know that you are dreaming, and try to awake and can’t? That is precisely the way I feel. I certainly must have some fever; otherwise I simply cannot explain it. Imagine, my feet are cold all the way up to my knees. If one may put it that way, of course one’s knees aren’t one’s feet—do excuse me, I am all in a muddle, and no wonder, considering I was whistled at in the morning with the pn—the pneumothorax, and in the afternoon had to listen to this Herr Albin—in the horizontal, on top of that! It seems to me I cannot any more trust my five senses, and that I must confess disturbs me more than my cold feet and the heat in my face. Tell me frankly: do you think it is possible Frau Stöhr knows how to make twenty-eight different kinds of fish-sauces? I don’t mean if she actually can make them—that I should consider out of the question—I mean if she said at table just now she could, or if I only imagined she did—that is all I want to know.”
Settembrini looked at him. He seemed not to have been listening. His eyes were set again, they had taken on a fixed stare, and he said: “Yes, yes, yes,” and “I see, I see, I see,” each three times, just as he had done in the morning, in a considering, deriding tone, and giving a sharp sound to the s’s.
“Twenty-four?” he asked after a while.
“No, twenty-eight,” Hans Castorp said. “Twenty-eight fish-sauces. Not sauces in general, special sauces for fish—that is the monstrous part of it.”
“Engineer,” Settembrini said sharply, almost angrily, “pull yourself together and stop talking this demoralized rubbish. I know nothing about it, nor do I wish to. You are in your twenty-fourth year, you say? H’m. Permit me to put another question, or rather, with your kind permission, make a suggestion. As your stay up here with us does not appear to be conducive, as you don’t feel comfortable, either physically or, unless I err, mentally, how would it be if you renounced the prospect of growing older on this spot—in short, what if you were to pack tonight, and be up and away with the first suitable train?”
“You mean I should go away?” Hans Castorp asked; “when I’ve hardly come? No, why should I try to judge from the first day?”
He happened, as he spoke, to direct his gaze into the next room, and saw Frau Chauchat’s full face, with its narrow eyes and broad cheekbones. “What is it, what or whom in all the world does she remind me of?” But his weary brain, despite the effort he made, refused an answer.
“Of course,” he went on, “it is true it is not so easy for me to get acclimatized up here. But that was to be expected. I’d be ashamed to chuck it up and go away like that, just because I felt upset and feverish for a few days. I’d feel a perfect coward. It would be a senseless thing to do, you admit it yourself, don’t you?”
He spoke with a sudden insistence, jerking his shoulders excitedly—he seemed to want to make the Italian withdraw his suggestion in form.
“I pay every homage to reason,” Settembrini answered. “I pay homage to valour too. What you say sounds well; it would be hard to oppose anything convincing against it. I myself have seen some beautiful cases of acclimatization. There was Fräulein Kneifer, Ottilie Kneifer, last year. She came of a
