Joachim laughed. “Better not tell him that. He’d be very put out I’m sure, to hear the sort of image his words call up in your mind.”
“Think so? I’m not so sure. I get the impression that it is not simply and solely for the sake of edifying us that he talks; perhaps that’s only a secondary motive. The important one, I feel sure, is the talk itself, the way he makes his words roll out, so resilient, just like a lot of rubber balls! He is very pleased when you notice the effect. I suppose Magnus, the brewer, was rather stupid, after all, with his ‘beautiful characters’; but I do think Settembrini might have said what the point really is in literature. I did not like to ask, for fear of putting my foot in it; I am not just clear about it, and this is the first time I have ever known a literary man. But if it isn’t the beautiful characters, then obviously it must be the beautiful words, and that is the impression I get from being in Settembrini’s society. What a vocabulary! and he uses the word ‘virtue’ just like that, without the slightest embarrassment. What do you make of that? I’ve never taken the word in my mouth as long as I’ve lived; in school, when the book said ‘virtus,’ we always just said ‘valour’ or something like that. It certainly gave me a queer feeling in my inside, to hear him. And it makes me nervous to hear him scolding, about the cold, and Behrens, and Frau Magnus because she is losing weight, and about pretty well everything. He is a born objector, I saw that at once, down on the existing order; and that always gives me the impression that the person is spoilt—I can’t help it.”
“You say that,” Joachim answered consideringly, “and yet he has a kind of pride about him that makes an altogether different impression: as of a man who has great respect for himself, or for humanity in general; and I like that about him; it has something good, in my eyes.”
“You are right, there,” Hans Castorp answered. “He’s even austere; he makes one feel rather uncomfortable, as if you were—well, shall I say as if you were being taken to task? That’s not such a bad way to describe it. Can you believe it, I had the feeling he was not at all pleased at my buying the blankets? He had something against it, and he kept dwelling on it.”
“Oh, no,” Joachim said after reflecting, in some surprise. “How could he have? I shouldn’t think so.” And then, thermometer in mouth, with sack and pack, he went to lie down, while Hans Castorp began at once to wash and change for dinner—which was rather less than an hour away.
Excursus on the Sense of Time
When they came upstairs after the meal, the parcel containing the blankets lay on a chair in Hans Castorp’s room; and that afternoon he made use of them for the first time. The experienced Joachim instructed him in the art of wrapping himself up, as practised in the sanatorium; they all did it, and each newcomer had to learn. First the covers were spread, one after the other, over the chair, so that a sizable piece hung down at the foot. Then you sat down and began to put the inner one about you: first lengthwise, on both sides, up to the shoulders, and then from the feet up, stooping over as you sat and grasping the folded-over end, first from one side and then from the other, taking care to fit it neatly into the length, in order to ensure the greatest possible smoothness and evenness. Then you did precisely the same thing with the outer blanket—it was somewhat more difficult to handle, and our neophyte groaned not a little as he stooped and stretched out his arms to practise the grips his cousin showed him. Only a few old hands, Joachim said, could wield both blankets at once, flinging them into position with three self-assured motions. This was a rare and enviable facility, to which belonged not only long years of practice, but a certain knack as well. Hans Castorp had to laugh at this, lying back in his chair with aching muscles; Joachim did not at once see anything funny in what he had said, and looked at him dubiously, but finally laughed too.
“There,” he said, when Hans Castorp lay at last limbless and cylindrical in his chair, with the yielding roll at the back of his neck, quite worn out with all these gymnastic exercises; “there, nothing can touch you now, not even if we were to have ten below zero.” He withdrew behind the partition, to do himself up in his turn.
That about the ten below zero Hans Castorp doubted; he was even now distinctly cold. He shivered repeatedly as he lay looking out through the wooden arch at the reeking, dripping damp outside, which seemed on the point of passing over into snow. It was strange that with all that humidity his cheeks still burned with a dry heat, as though he were sitting in an overheated room. He felt absurdly tired from the practice of putting on his rugs; actually, as he held up Ocean Steamships to read it, the book shook in his hands. So very fit he certainly was not—and totally anaemic, as Hofrat Behrens had said; this, no doubt, was why he was so susceptible to cold. But such unpleasing sensations
