She whispered on, behind her hand, for his ear alone; the flush that mantled on her downy old cheek bespoke a rising temperature, and the suggestiveness of her talk pierced Hans Castorp to the very marrow. It did him good to hear someone else confirm his view that Madame Chauchat was an enchanting creature. He was a young man of not very independent judgments, and glad to be encouraged in certain feelings he had, upon which both reason and conscience united to frown.
But Fräulein Engelhart, however much she would have liked to, could tell him practically nothing about Frau Chauchat. She knew no more than the whole sanatorium knew, and his conversations with her bore little practical fruit. She did not even know the lady to speak to, nor could she boast a single common acquaintance. Her only title to importance was that she lived in Königsberg, not very far from the Russian border; also that she knew a few scraps of Russian. These were but meagre distinctions; yet Hans Castorp was prepared to see in them something resembling an extensive personal connection with Frau Chauchat.
“I see that she wears no ring, no wedding-ring,” he said. “Why is that? She is a married woman, I think you told me?”
The schoolmistress was quite perturbed; she seemed to feel driven into a corner and sought for words to talk herself out again, so very responsible did she feel for Frau Chauchat.
“You must not attach importance to that,” she finally said. “I’m positive she is married. There is no doubt of it. Of course I know some foreigners do use the Madame when they are getting a little on in years, for the sake of the greater respect people pay a married woman. But it is not the case here. Everyone knows she really has a husband, somewhere in Russia. Her maiden name was not French but Russian, something in anow
or ukov
—I did know it, but I have forgotten. I will ask if you like; there must be several people here who know it. No, she wears no ring, I have noticed it myself. Dear me, perhaps she finds it makes her hand look too broad. Or she thinks it is too bourgeois and domestic to wear a plain gold wedding-ring. She might as well carry a key basket. No, she is built on broader lines than that—Russian women all have something free and large about them. And then, a wedding-ring seems so prosaic, it is almost repellent! It is a symbol of possession; it is always saying ‘Hands off’; it turns every woman into a nun. I should not be at all surprised if that is what Frau Chauchat thinks. A charming woman like her, in the bloom of youth—why should she, every time she gives a man her hand to kiss, tell him straightway that she is bound in wedlock?”
“Good Lord,” thought Hans Castorp, “how she does run on!” He looked into her face, quite alarmed. But she countered his gaze with her embarrassed, half-frightened one. They were both silent awhile and sought to recover themselves. Hans Castorp ate his luncheon and supported his chin.
At length he said: “And her husband? He doesn’t trouble himself about her? Does he never visit her up here? Do you know what he does?”
“Official. Russian government official, in some distant province, Daghestan, you know, out beyond the Caucasus, he was ordered there. No, as I tell you, no one has ever seen him up here. And this time she has been here going on three months.”
“She was here before, then?”
“This is the third time. And between times she goes to other places—other sanatoriums. But it is she who sometimes visits him; not often, once in the year for a little while. One may say they live separated, and she visits him now and again.”
“Well, of course, she is ill—”
“Yes, of course—but not so ill. Not so ill as to have to live all her life in sanatoriums and apart from her husband. There must be other reasons for that. Everyone up here thinks there must be other reasons. Perhaps she does not like to live out there in Daghestan, the other side of the Caucasus; it would not be strange—such a wild, remote place! But there must be something about the man too, if she can’t bear to be with him. He has a French name, but after all he is a Russian official, and that is a very rough type, I do assure you. I once saw one of them, with an iron-grey beard and a red face—they are all frightfully corrupt too, and drink quantities of vodka, you know. They will eat a little something, for the look of the thing, a mushroom mariné, some caviar, and then drink out of all measure and call it a light lunch.”
“You are putting everything off on him,” Hans Castorp said. “But we can’t know if the responsibility is not hers, of their not living together. One ought to be just. When I look at her and see the unmannerly way she behaves about the door—I assure you
