“I am an engineer, Herr Doctor,” said Hans Castorp with modest dignity.
“Ah, an engineer!” Dr. Krokowski’s smile retreated as it were, lost for the moment something of its genial warmth. “A splendid calling. And so you will not require any attention while you are here, either physical or psychical?”
“Oh, no, thank you ever so much,” said Hans Castorp, and almost drew back a step as he spoke.
At that Dr. Krokowski’s smile burst forth triumphant; he shook the young man’s hand afresh and cried briskly: “Well, sleep well, Herr Castorp, and rejoice in the fullness of your perfect health; sleep well, and auf Wiedersehen!” With which he dismissed the cousins and returned to his paper.
The lift had stopped running, so they climbed the stairs; in silence, somewhat taken aback by the encounter with Dr. Krokowski. Joachim went with his cousin to number thirty-four, where the lame porter had already deposited the luggage of the new arrival. They talked for another quarter-hour while Hans Castorp unpacked his night and toilet things, smoking a large, mild cigarette the while. A cigar would have been too much for him this evening—a fact which impressed him as odd indeed.
“He looks quite a personality,” he said, blowing out the smoke. “He is as pale as wax. But dear me, what hideous footgear he wears! Grey woollen socks, and then those sandals! Was he really offended at the end, do you think?”
“He is rather touchy,” admitted Joachim. “You ought not to have refused the treatment so brusquely, at least not the psychical. He doesn’t like to have people get out of it. He doesn’t take much stock in me because I don’t confide in him enough. But every now and then I tell him a dream I’ve had, so he can have something to analyse.”
“Then I certainly did offend him,” Hans Castorp said fretfully, for it annoyed him to give offence. His weariness rushed over him with renewed force at the thought.
“Good night,” he said; “I’m falling over.”
“At eight o’clock I’ll come fetch you to breakfast,” Joachim said, and went.
Hans Castorp made only a cursory toilet for the night. Hardly had he put out the bedside light when sleep overcame him; but he started up again, remembering that in that bed, the day before yesterday, someone had died. “That wasn’t the first time either,” he said to himself, as though the thought were reassuring. “It is a regular deathbed, a common deathbed.” And he fell asleep.
No sooner had he gone off, however, than he began to dream, and dreamed almost without stopping until next morning. Principally he saw his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, in a strange, dislocated attitude on a bobsled, riding down a steep course. He had a phosphorescent pallor like Dr. Krokowski, and in front of him sat the gentleman rider and steered. The gentleman rider was indistinct, like someone one has heard cough, but never seen.
“It’s all the same to us up here,” remarked the dislocated Joachim; and then it was he and not the gentleman rider who was coughing in that horribly pulpy manner. Hans Castorp wept bitterly to hear, and then perceived that he must run to the chemist’s to get some cold cream. But Frau Iltis, with a pointed snout, sat by the roadside with something in her hand, which must be her “steriletto,” but was obviously nothing else than a safety-razor. This made Hans Castorp go from tears to laughing; and thus he was tossed back and forth among varying emotions, until the dawn came through his half-open balcony door and wakened him.
Chapter II
Of the Christening Basin, and of Grandfather in His Twofold Guise
Hans Castorp retained only pale memories of his parental home. His father and mother he had barely known; they had both dropped away in the brief period between his fifth and seventh birthdays; first the mother, quite suddenly, on the eve of a confinement, of an arterial obstruction following neuritis—an embolus, Dr. Heidekind had called it—which caused instantaneous cardiac arrest. She had just been laughing, sitting up in bed, and it looked as though she had fallen back with laughter, but really it was because she had died. The father, Hermann Castorp, could not grasp his loss. He had been deeply attached to his wife, and not being of the strongest himself, never quite recovered from her death. His spirit was troubled; he shrank within himself; his benumbed brain made him blunder in his business, so that the firm of Castorp and Son suffered sensible financial losses; and the next spring, while inspecting warehouses on the windy landing-stage, he got inflammation of the lungs. The fever was too much for his shaken heart, and in five days, notwithstanding all Dr. Heidekind’s care, he died. Attended to his rest by a respectable concourse of citizens, he followed his wife to the Castorp family vault, a charming site in St. Katherine’s churchyard, with a view of the Botanical Gardens.
His father the Senator survived him a short time; then he too passed away, likewise of inflammation of the lungs. His death agony was sore, for unlike his son, Hans Lorenz Castorp had been a man of tough constitution, and firmly rooted in life. Before his death, for the space of a year and a half, the grandfather harboured the orphaned Hans Castorp in his home, a mansion standing in a narrow lot on the Esplanade, built in the early years of the last century, in the northern-classic style of architecture. It was painted a depressing weather-colour, and had pilasters on either side the entrance door, which was approached by a flight of five steps. Besides the parterre, which had windows going down to the floor and furnished with cast-iron grilles, there were two upper storeys.
In the parterre were chiefly reception-rooms, and a very light and cheerful dining-room, with walls decorated in stucco. Its three windows, draped with wine-coloured curtains, looked out on the back garden.
