Hans Castorp’s thoughts, as he sat and looked at Frau Chauchat’s flaccid back, began to blur; they ceased to be thoughts at all and began to be a reverie, into which Dr. Krokowski’s drawling baritone, with the soft-sounding r, came as from afar. But the stillness of the room, the profound attention that rapt all the rest of the audience, had the effect of rousing him too. He looked about. Near him sat the thin-haired pianist, with bent head and folded arms, listening with his mouth open. Somewhat farther on was Fräulein Engelhart, avid-eyed, with a dull red spot on each cheek; Hans Castorp saw the same signal flame on the faces of other ladies—on Frau Salomon’s, and Frau Magnus’s, the same who was wife to the brewer and lost flesh persistently. Frau Stöhr sat somewhat farther back, an expression of ignorant credulity painted on her face, truly painful to behold; while the ivory-complexioned Levi, leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes, her hands lying open in her lap, would have looked like a corpse had not her breast risen and fallen with such profound and rhythmical breaths as to remind Hans Castorp of a mechanical waxwork he had once seen. Many of the guests had their hands curved behind their ears; some even held the hand in the air halfway thither, as though arrested midway in the gesture by the strength of their concentration. Lawyer Paravant, a sunburnt man who looked to have had the strength of a bull, even flicked his ear with his forefinger to make it hear better, then turned it again to catch the words that flowed from Dr. Krokowski’s lips.
And what was Dr. Krokowski saying? What was his line of thought? Hans Castorp summoned his wits to discover, not immediately succeeding, however, since he had not heard the beginning and lost still more while musing on Frau Chauchat’s flabby back. It was about a power, the power which—in short, it was about the power of love. Yes, of course; the subject was already given out in the general title of the whole course, and, moreover, this was Dr. Krokowski’s special field; of what else should he be talking? It was a bit odd, to be sure, listening to a lecture on such a theme, when previously Hans Castorp’s courses had dealt only with such matters as geared transmission in shipbuilding. No, really, how did one go about to discuss a subject of this delicate and private nature, in broad daylight, before a mixed audience? Dr. Krokowski did it by adopting a mingled terminology, partly poetic and partly erudite; ruthlessly scientific, yet with a vibrating, singsong delivery, which impressed young Hans Castorp as being unsuitable, but may have been the reason why the ladies looked flushed and the gentlemen flicked their ears to make them hear better. In particular the speaker employed the word “love” in a somewhat ambiguous sense, so that you were never quite sure where you were with it, or whether he had reference to its sacred or its passionate and fleshly aspect—and this doubt gave one a slightly seasick feeling. Never in all his life had Hans Castorp heard the word uttered so many times on end as he was hearing it now. When he reflected, it seemed to him he had never taken it in his own mouth, nor ever heard it from a stranger’s. That might not be the case, but whether it were or no, the word did not seem to him to repay such frequent repetition. The slippery monosyllable, with its lingual and labial, and the bleating vowel between—it came to sound positively offensive; it suggested watered milk, or anything else that was pale and insipid; the more so considering the meat for strong men Dr. Krokowski was in fact serving up. For it was plain that when one set about it like that, one could go pretty far without shocking anybody. He was not content to allude, with exquisite tact, to certain matters which are known to everybody, but which most people are content to pass over in silence. He demolished illusions, he was ruthlessly enlightened, he relentlessly destroyed all faith in the dignity of silver hairs and the innocence of the sucking babe. And he wore, with the frock-coat, his negligee collar, sandals, and grey woollen socks, and, thus attired, made
