There was the good, the upright Joachim, firm as a rock—yet whose eyes in these past months had come to hold such a tragic shadow, and who had never used to shrug his shoulders, as he did so often now. Joachim, with the “Blue Peter” in his pocket, as Frau Stöhr called the receptacle. When Hans Castorp thought of her hard, crabbed face it made him shiver. Yes, there was Joachim—who kept constantly at Hofrat Behrens to let him get away and go down to the longed-for service in the “plain”—the “flat-land,” as the healthy, normal world was called up here, with a faint yet perceptible nuance of contempt. Joachim served the cure single-mindedly, to the end that he might arrive sooner at his goal and save some of the time which “those up here” so wantonly flung away; served it unquestioningly for the sake of speedy recovery—but also, Hans Castorp detected, for the sake of the cure itself, which, after all, was a service, like another; and was not duty duty, wherever performed? Joachim invariably went upstairs after only a quarter-hour in the drawing-rooms; and this military precision of his was a prop to the civilian laxity of his cousin, who would otherwise be likely to loiter unprofitably below, with his eye on the company in the small salon. But Hans Castorp was convinced there was another and private reason why Joachim withdrew so early; he had known it since the time he saw his cousin’s face take on the mottled pallor, and his mouth assume the pathetic twist. He perfectly understood. For Marusja was almost always there in the evening—laughter-loving Marusja, with the little ruby on her charming hand, the handkerchief with the orange scent, and the swelling bosom, tainted within—Hans Castorp comprehended that it was her presence which drove Joachim away, precisely because it so strongly, so fearfully drew him toward her. Was Joachim too “immured”—and even worse off than himself, in that he had five times a day to sit at the same table with Marusja and her orange-scented handkerchief? However that might be, it was clear that Joachim was preoccupied with his own troubles; the thought of him could afford his cousin no mental support. That he took refuge in daily flight was a credit to him; but that he had to flee was anything but reassuring to Hans Castorp, who even began to feel that Joachim’s good example of faithful service of the cure and the initiation which he owed to his cousin’s experience might have also their bad side.
Hans Castorp had not been up here three weeks. But it seemed longer; and the daily routine which Joachim so piously observed had begun to take on, in his eyes, a character of sanctity. When, from the point of view of “those up here,” he considered life as lived down in the flat-land, it seemed somehow queer and unnatural. He had grown skilled in the handling of his rugs and the art of making a proper bundle, a sort of mummy, of himself, when lying on his balcony on cold days. He was almost as skilful as Joachim—and yet, down below, there was no soul who knew aught of such an art or the practice of it! How strange, he thought; yet at the same moment wondered at himself for finding it strange—and there surged up again that uneasy sensation of groping for support.
He thought of Hofrat Behrens and his professional advice, bestowed “sine pecunia,” that he should, while he was up here, order his life like the other patients, even to the taking of his temperature. He thought of Settembrini, and of how he had laughed at that same advice, and quoted something out of The Magic Flute. Did thinking of either of these two afford him any moral support? Hofrat Behrens was a white-haired man, old enough to be Hans Castorp’s father. He was the head of the establishment, the highest authority. And it was of fatherly authority that the young man now felt an uneasy need. But no, it would not do: he could not think with childlike confidingness of the Hofrat. The physician had buried his wife up here, and been brought so low by grief as almost to lose his mind; then he had stopped on, to be near her grave and because he himself was somewhat infected. Was he sound again? Was he single-mindedly bent on making his patients whole, so they could go back to service in the world below? His cheeks had a purple hue, he looked fevered. That might be only the effect of the air up here; Hans Castorp, without fever, so far as he could judge without a thermometer, felt the same dry heat in his face, day in, day out. Of course, when one heard the Hofrat talk, one might easily conclude he had fever. There was something not quite right about it; it all sounded very jovial and lively, but on the whole forced, particularly when one thought of the purple cheeks and the watery eyes, which seemed to be still weeping for his wife. Hans Castorp recalled what Settembrini had said about the Hofrat’s vices and chronic depression—that might have been malicious; it might have been sheer windiness. But he did not find it sustained or fortified him to think of Hofrat Behrens.
Then
