Chapter 9 breakfast

"Good morning!" said Joachim. "This is your first night on the mountain. Are you satisfied?" He was getting ready to go outdoors in a tracksuit, sturdy boots, and a baggy coat with a flat bottle peeking out of a side pocket over his arm.He still doesn't wear a hat today. "Thank you," Hans Castorp answered him, "it's all right. I don't want to make any further comments. I've had a lot of bad dreams. Besides, the house has a bad soundproofing, which makes it uncomfortable." Yes. Well, who is that woman in black in the garden?" Joachim understood at once who he was referring to.

"Hey, this is the woman called 'Liangkouer'," he said. "That's what they call her on the hills, because that's all she ever heard from her. You know, she's from Mexico, she doesn't know a bit of German, she doesn't know a thing about French, she only knows a scrap of knowledge. She and The eldest son, who has been living here for three weeks, is hopelessly ill and is about to die. He is sick everywhere, so to speak, that the tubercle bacillus has invaded his whole body. Behrens said that the last illness was like Like typhoid fever, it is somehow a threat to everyone it comes in contact with. Two weeks ago, the second son came again, because he wanted to see his brother again. He is a very handsome boy, and there is another Very handsome—both of them are handsome men with bright eyes, which women are not tempted to see. The younger brother coughed a little when he was down the mountain, but there was nothing else, and he seemed to be alive. You see, once he got here He had a fever, thirty-nine five, and lay in bed; Behrens said it would be bad if he got up again. But Behrens said he came in time—well, mother When she wasn't sitting with them, she walked up and down the garden like this, uttering the words 'two' all the time, because she couldn't say anything else. There was no one here who knew Spanish. No Mexican speaks Spanish, so..." "That's why," said Hans Castorp, "wouldn't she have said the same thing to me if I knew her? That's a strange thing; I mean, it's funny, it's absurd." As he spoke, his eyes felt like yesterday, they seemed a little hot, their eyelids were heavy, as if they had been crying for a long time, and at the same time there was a kind of brilliance in them; When he coughed oddly, his eyes had blazed like this.In his opinion, it seemed that only at this moment did he have anything to do with yesterday's events, and only at this moment did he recall yesterday's plot, and he had almost forgotten all about it after waking up.He said he was ready, and as he spoke, sprinkled a few drops of perfume in his handkerchief, and also on his forehead and under his eyes. "Let's go to lunch with the 'two', if you want," he joked recklessly.Then Joachim looked at him tenderly, and smiled mysteriously, in a way that seemed dark and ironic.Exactly why he laughed like that, only he himself knew.

Hans Castorp checked whether there were any cigarettes around him, then took up his cane, coat and hat.He is very reluctant to wear a hat, because his way of life and living habits have been fixed, and he is always unwilling to easily form some new habits if he only lives for three weeks.So they stepped out of the room and down the steps.In the corridor, Joachim pointed to this door or that door and told him who lived inside, including German names and many foreigners' names, and also briefly introduced their personalities and illnesses. They met some people who were returning after breakfast.Hans Castorp politely took off his hat whenever Joachim said good morning to Humanity.He looked prim and tense like a young man being introduced to many strangers.He was clearly aware that his eyelids were heavy and his face was flushed, and he was very troubled; but it was not quite right to say that he blushed--he was strangely pale.

"I shouldn't forget!" he said suddenly, with some inexplicable excitement. "You'll have to introduce me to the woman in the garden at the right opportunity. I won't mind. She'll babble too. It's okay to keep saying "two couples" to me. I'm prepared, I understand what it means, and I know how to deal with it. But I don't want to get acquainted with this Russian couple, do you understand? I don't want to at all. They have no culture at all. If I really had to live next to them for three weeks, there was no other way, and I wouldn't want to know them. It's my right, I insist decline……"

"Very well," said Joachim. "Do they bother you? Yes, they're downright savage in a way, uncivilized in general, I've already told you. The man always wears a leather jacket to dinner, a tattered Well, I still don't understand why Behrens doesn't interfere. The woman wears a plumed hat, but it's not very clean... You can rest assured that they sit at the low-class Russian table, far away from us , and a good Russian table, just for high-class Russians. Even if you want to make friends with them, it is rare to find an opportunity. It is not easy to get acquainted here, because there are so many foreigners among the patients. I I have lived here for so many days, and I don’t know many people.”

"Then which of the two of them is sick?" asked Hans Castorp. "Male or female?" "I think it's a man. Well, it's just that the man is sick," said Joachim absently, as they passed the coat racks in front of the restaurant.Then I entered a bright, low-vaulted hall, full of voices, clattering of dishes, and waitresses walking to and fro with steaming jugs. There were seven tables in the dining room, most of them lined up, and only two placed sideways.These are large tables, each of which can seat ten people, although not all of them are filled at the moment.A few steps diagonally into the hall, Hans Castorp was seated at his own table; he was sitting at the end of the central table in front, exactly between two horizontal tables.Hans Castorp leaned back in his chair, and Joachim formally introduced his fellow diners one by one.He bowed stiffly and smiling, but hardly ever glanced at their faces, let alone imprinted their names in his mind.He remembered only one person and her name—Mrs. Steele; she had a flushed face and greasy ash-blond hair.Once you see her, you are completely convinced that she is an ill-bred person, looking ignorant and stupid.So Hans sat down and looked at the people eating breakfast in a serious manner here.

For breakfast, there are several dishes of jam and honey, several bowls of milk rice and oatmeal, several pots of scrambled eggs and cold meat.Butter was supplied as much as possible, and someone opened the glass cover for storing Swiss cheese and cut the wet cheese; there was also a basin of fresh dried fruit in the center of the table.At this moment a waitress in black and white came up to Hans Castorp and asked him if he would like something to drink—cocoa, coffee or tea.She is as short as a girl, with a long face that looks quite old.He found out that she was a dwarf, and he couldn't help being startled.He glanced at his cousin, but Joachim shrugged his shoulders calmly and raised his eyebrows, as if to say: "Well, what's next?" And Hans came back to reality .The waiter was a woman and a dwarf, so he answered her very politely that he wanted a cup of tea, and at the same time he ate rice with milk and cinnamon and sugar.He glanced at the rest of the food, which made his mouth water, and at the seven diners at the seven tables, Joachim's accomplices and fellow fates, who were chatting while eating breakfast, physically and mentally. It's sick on the inside.

The restaurant is stylishly furnished, aptly reflecting the unique style of the building's austerity and affordability.The dining room, which is not very deep in relation to its length, is surrounded by a verandah containing the sideboards, which curves out to the inner room where the tables are placed.The lower half of the pillars were inlaid with a wood carved like sandalwood, and the upper half was painted white, like the ceiling and the upper part of the walls.They are decorated with strips of colorful patterns, in a monotonous and bright style, which can still be seen on the beams of the vault.There were also several chandeliers hanging in the dining room, all electric and of lustrous brass.They are structured with three superimposed clasps fastened together by delicate braiding, the bottom ring being a ball of frosted glass resembling a moon.There are four glass doors in the dining room, two of which are opened on the wider wall on the opposite side, leading to the front balcony; the third is opened on the left front, leading to the front hall; Castorp stepped into the entrance of the dining room through the corridor, but Joachim had accompanied him down another staircase the night before.To Hans' right was a plain-looking woman in black, with hairy skin and a dull blush on her cheeks.She looked like a seamstress or a home seamstress.Perhaps it was because she ate nothing but coffee and butter for breakfast, and he had always thought that seamstresses worked exclusively with coffee and butter.On his left sat an English lady, also of an elderly age, very ugly, with ten shriveled and stiff fingers.She was reading a home letter with round handwriting and drinking a cup of blood-red tea.Next to her sat Joachim, and beyond that was Frau Stohl in a Scottish cardigan.