Chapter 16 the devil makes dishonorable proposals

After a while, he lost consciousness.His watch was awakened at half past three by conversations behind the glass wall to the left.Dr. Krokowski was rounding the ward—he was not with the consultant this time—speaking Russian to the ill-mannered couple, asking the husband how he was, and checking his thermometer.However, he did not pass through the balcony as he went on, but rounded the area where Hans Castorp lived, then turned back into the corridor, opened the door and entered Joachim's room.It made Hans Castorp unhappy to see him go so far in such a circle that he did not take himself seriously, although Hans had no wish at all to have anything to do with Krokowski.Of course, he was a healthy man, he was not one of the sick—he remembered how it often happened here on the hills: people who enjoyed the blessing of health were often ignored and ignored, and this made young Castorp unavoidable. A little unhappy.

After staying with Joachim for two or three minutes, Dr. Krokowski went on along the row of balconies.Hans Castorp heard his cousin say that it was time to get up and prepare tea. "Okay," said Hans and stood up.But lying down for too long, he felt dizzy.He slept in a drowsy and uncomfortable way, so his face had a faint fever again, and his body felt cold. Maybe he didn't cover himself warmly enough when he slept. He washed his eyes and hands, adjusted his hair and clothes, and met Joachim in the corridor. "Did you hear about Mr. Albin?" Hans asked as they came downstairs. "Of course I have," said Joachim. "The man ought to be brought under control. He disturbs the peace of the lunch break with his chatter, and the ladies are terrified by him, and won't recover for weeks. He's an undisciplined man. But who wants to speak up against him?" ? Besides, many people took pleasure in his remarks."

Hans Castorp asked: "Do you think he can say and do it? In his own words, 'It's easy to do, one bullet kills'." "Well," replied Joachim, "it's not entirely impossible. It really happened here on the hills. Two months before I came here, a long-term student was found in the woods after a physical examination. hanged himself. People were still talking about it when I first came." Hans Castorp yawned.He was a little excited. "Well, I'm not very comfortable living with you," he said. "I'm uncomfortable. I'm afraid I can't stay any longer and I have to go. Do you blame me?"

"Are you going? What's the matter with you?" cried Joachim. "What nonsense. You've only been here a day, how can you draw any conclusions?" "Oh my god, is it still just day one? I feel like it's been a long time, been with you guys on the mountain." "Don't let your imagination run wild with time," said Joachim. "You really confused me this morning." "Don't worry, I've forgotten all this," said Hans Castorp precipitously. "Misgot a whole bunch of questions. Now I'm not at all clear-headed, and that's over. . . Now it's time for tea."

"Well, after tea, we'll walk over to that bench this morning and sit down." "Of course. But we'd better not run into Sethambrini again. I don't want to listen to elegant I will declare in advance." In the restaurant, the waiter brought all kinds of drinks that could be done here and now.Miss Robinson was drinking her crimson rose tea again, while her grandniece was scooping yoghurt.There is also milk, strong tea, coffee and chocolate, and even broth.The diners had rested for two hours after a sumptuous lunch, and now they were in a hurry to spread butter on a large raisin cake.

Hans Castorp chose strong tea, in which he dipped slices of dry bread, and also tasted some jam.He looked at the raisin cake carefully, but when it came to eating, he had no appetite at all.Once again he sat in the same place in the seven-table, simply furnished, ornately vaulted dining room—and this time for the fourth time.After a while, at seven o'clock, he would sit there for the fifth time, and this time it was time for dinner.In this short and boring time, they wandered all the way to the bench next to the cliff creek. At this time, the mountain road was full of patients, and the cousins ​​had to greet them frequently, and then they idly on the balcony. Lie in haste for an hour and a half.Hans Castorp was shivering with cold.

He dressed carefully before dinner, and sat down between Miss Robinson and the governess to eat: julienne soup with gravy, roast meat, roast meat and side dishes, two large round cakes with various food, There are macaroons, butter, chocolate, jams and macaroons, but also good cheese and pumpernickel.He ordered a bottle of Kurmubach as before, but when he drank half of it out of a goblet, he wished he had fallen headfirst on the bed.His head was buzzing, his eyelids were heavy as lead, his heart was beating like a bongo drum, and at the same time he was troubled by imagining a scene out of thin air: the beautiful Marusa bent over with her little The hand of the ruby ​​ring covered his face and laughed mockingly at him, though he tried his best not to let others take advantage of the teasing.From a distance he heard Mrs. Steele talking loudly.To his ears, she was talking so much nonsense that he wondered vaguely whether he hadn't listened to the truth, or whether Mrs. Steele's words had become nonsense as soon as they had entered his head.She claims to be able to make twenty-eight kinds of fish sauces, which she can vouch for, although her husband warns her not to say such things. "Don't say that!" he had said. "No one will believe you. If anyone did, they'd laugh at you!" Yet she said it today, and publicly claimed that she could make twenty-eight kinds of fish sauces.Poor Hans Castorp found these microphones so sensational that he froze.He scratched his forehead with his hand, completely forgetting that the English county name of Cheshire was painted on a patch in his mouth.The cheese pumpernickel was not yet chewed and swallowed.He left with the piece of bread in his mouth.

Diners go out through the glass door on the left, that damned glass door that slams so often, and it leads into the vestibule.Nearly all the guests took this route, for the fact that the drawing-room and the adjoining entertainment rooms undoubtedly formed a meeting place during the hours after dinner.Most patients are in groups of two or three, chatting around.On two open green folding tables, cards are being played, dominoes on one and bridge on the other; the players are young men, Herr Albin and Hermine Klein Felt was among them.The first recreation room also has optical trinkets: a stereoscopic looking glass box through which some of the photographs on display can be seen, such as a dead-faced, bloodless Venetian gondolier .There is also a telescopic kaleidoscope, as long as you put your eyes close to the lens and turn the hand wheel gently, it can display colorful star-shaped patterns and arabesque patterns, which are dazzling and unpredictable.Finally, there is a rotating cylinder with a roll of film film on it. Looking through the side window, you can see a miller beating a chimney sweep, a teacher punishing children, and a person bouncing around. Rope skipping, a peasant couple is dancing the "Reinteler" dance, which is a round dance in three-eighth or three-quarter time. .Hans Castorp put his cold hands on his knees and looked at each of them for a long time.He also lingered for a while at the bridge table, where Mr. Albin, who was very ill, was playing cards.The corners of his mouth drooped, and his every move seemed cynical.Dr. Krokowski was sitting in a corner, talking animatedly and cordially with a group of women who formed a semicircle around him, among whom were Mrs. Stahl, Mrs. Iltis, and Leifer. Miss. Those at the "best" Russian table had retreated into an adjoining recreation room, where a small circle had also formed.A curtain separated the recreation room from the card room.Besides Madame Chauchat there was a lazy, drawn-out gentleman with a golden-brown beard, with a sunken chest and prominent eyes.Then there was a swarthy girl with a funny face and a certain charm, with gold rings in her ears, and shaggy hair.Another in their circle was Dr. Blumenkel, and two young men with drooping shoulders.Madame Chaucat, in a blue dress with lace and white collar, was sitting on the sofa behind the round table at the back of the small room, right in the center of the group, her face turned towards the card-room.Hans Castorp looked at this unmannered woman with some distaste, and thought: "She reminds me of something, but what, I can't say."

At this time, a tall, bald man in his thirties sat down in front of a small brown piano and played "A Midsummer Night's Dream" three times in succession, which was written by the famous German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809- 1847) works.The wedding march.Some women asked him to play it again, and he gazed affectionately and silently at each woman in turn, and played the voiceless melody for the fourth time. "Engineer, may I inquire about your state of health?" asked Setambrini.With his hands in his trouser pockets, he wandered among the group of tourists, and now he was walking in the direction of Hans Castorp.He was always wearing the coarse velvet jacket and light-colored checkered striped trousers. He was smiling when he spoke, his mouth was curved into a graceful outline, and there was a mocking expression at the corner of his mouth, and the black mustache on his mouth was still curled up.Seeing this look, Hans Castorp's mind brightened again.He stared blankly at the Italian, the corners of his mouth were slack, and his eyes were bloodshot.

"Ah, it's you!" he said. "So you are the gentleman we met on our morning walk by the bench on the hill...by the creek. Of course, I recognized you right away. Can you believe it?" ’” he went on, though he realized that it would be inappropriate to say so, “at first glance I thought you were an organ player . One sentence, because he saw a cold, searching expression in Setambrini's eyes. "Anyway, what a fool I am! I don't understand at all that I should..." "Don't worry about it, what does it matter!" Setambrini took a look at the young man and said. "Today is your first day in this paradise. How did you spend your day?"

"Thank you, life is going well," answered Hans Castorp. "To use your favorite word, mainly 'horizontal'." Setambrini smiled slightly. "I might use that word occasionally," he said. "Hey, do you think this kind of life is still interesting?" "Entertaining or boring, call it what you want," answered Hans Castorp. "You know, it's hard to come to conclusions sometimes about things like this. I'm not at all dull--life on your hills is pretty lively after all. There's so much new stuff, and so much to hear, so much to see . . . But on the other hand, I feel like I've been here not just for a day, but for a long time. To put it bluntly, I feel like I've grown older and wiser since I've been here, and that's how I feel." Smarter, too?" Sethambrini said, raising his eyebrows. "Excuse me, how old are you?" Hey, Hans Castorp can't answer!At that time, he couldn't think of how old he was, even if he thought hard.In order to buy time, he repeated the question asked by the other party, and then said: "I... how old am I? Of course I'm twenty-four. I'm almost twenty-four. Excuse me, I'm tired!" he said. "In my case, the word fatigue is far from enough to describe the problem. Have you ever experienced that feeling when you know you are dreaming and you want to wake up but can't wake up? I feel this way now I must be running a fever, otherwise there is no explanation at all. Can you believe that my feet are cold now, down to the knees? If so, then the knees are no longer feet—forgive me, I What a mess! But as long as you've had... the pneumothorax hissing early in the morning, and Mr. Albin's talk later, and the 'lying position' and all that stuff, then after all No wonder. Come to think of it, I don't trust my senses any more. It's worse than a hot face and cold feet. Tell me the truth: Mrs. Stahl says she can make twenty-eight Fish sauce, do you think it's possible? I don't mean if she could actually do it - it certainly can't - but did she even say that at the dinner table The words, or the words, I've come up with out of thin air. That's all I want to know." Sethambrini looked at him as if not listening.His eyes were fixed on him again, just like this morning when he said "yes, yes, yes" and "see, see, see" three times in a row, with a deliberate tone in his teasing tone, with a shrill tone. Sometimes use voiceless. "You said twenty-four?" he asked. "No, twenty-eight!" said Hans Castorp. "Twenty-eight fish sauces! This is not an ordinary sauce, but a special fish sauce, which makes people's hair stand on end." "Engineer!" Setambrini angrily taught the lesson said in a tone of voice. "Cheer up and stop talking nonsense! I don't understand anything about what you're talking about, and I don't want to. Didn't you say you were twenty-four? Allow me to ask another question or a Advice for reference only. Since you see no advantage in living here, and since your body and mind - if I'm not mistaken - are not adapted to the environment here, I think you should give up here to retire Make a plan! In a word, I think you'd better pack your backpack tonight, and get on the express train tomorrow according to the timetable!" "You mean I should get out of here?" asked Hans Castorp. "I set off right after I got here? No! How can I make a judgment after I've only been here for a day?" He inadvertently glanced at the neighboring room as he spoke, and saw Mrs. Chauchat head-on.He saw her slender eyes and high cheekbones. "What does she remind me of, and who does she remind me of?" he thought to himself.But despite his efforts, his weary mind could not find an answer. "Of course, it won't be easy for me to get used to your conditions here," he went on, "but I'll have to wait and see. If it's just because the first two or three days are a little confused or a little hot, I'm going to lose my nerve right away." I'd be ashamed if I went away, and I'd feel like a coward. Besides, it's against reason, didn't you say that..." He spoke suddenly, his shoulders twitching excitedly.He appeared to be asking the Italians to formally withdraw his proposal. "I respect reason," replied Sethambrini, "and I respect courage. What you say sounds reasonable. It is not easy to refute you with good reasons. I have indeed seen some People are very used to the examples of the environment and soil here. This is the case with Miss Kneffer last year. Her full name is Ottilie Kneffer. She is a lady of a famous family and her father is a high-ranking government official. She lived here for a year Half, very satisfied with the life on the mountain, so when she fully recovered—and occasionally a few people on the mountain recovered—she was reluctant to leave anyway. She sincerely begged the consultant doctor to let her live, she could not and She didn't want to go home; this was her home, and she was happy here. But new patients came in and demanded her room, so she begged in vain, and the hospital forced her to leave as a healthy person. So Ottilie developed a high fever, and she let her temperature curve rise sharply. But someone caught her trick, and at the same time took away her 'dumb nurse' and replaced it with an ordinary thermometer. You don't know the 'dumb nurse' What is the name of the nurse? This is a thermometer without a scale. The doctor measures it according to a certain scale and can automatically record the temperature curve. Sir, Ottilie's temperature is only thirty-six degrees nine, and she does not have a fever So she went to take a bath in the lake. It was early May, and there was still frost at night. The lake was not cold enough to freeze, and the water temperature was just a few degrees above zero. She soaked in the water for a while, hoping got sick of one kind or another, but what was the result? She was not sick and had always been healthy. She left with pain and despair, and she couldn't listen to the comforting words her parents said to her.'After going down the mountain, I What should I do?' she yelled several times. 'This is my home!' I don't know what will happen in the future... But engineer, you don't seem to be listening to me? If I'm not mistaken, you hold on Standing on two legs looks like a lot of effort! Lieutenant, your cousin is here!" At this moment he turned to Joachim, who had just approached. "Take him to bed! He has reason and courage in one, but he is a little weak tonight." "No, really, I understand everything you say!" Hans Castor Pu said categorically. "The so-called 'dumb nurse' is nothing more than a column of mercury without scale. You see, I have fully understood!" At this point, he boarded the elevator with Joachim and several other patients.Today's gathering was over, and people dispersed to the lounges and loggias for evening reclining therapy.Hans Castorp went into Joachim's room.The coconut-skin matting floor of the hallway heaved and fell under his feet as he passed, but he felt no discomfort.He sat down in Joachim's large patterned armchair, which he also had in his own room.He started smoking a Maria Mancini cigar.It smelled like glue, like coal, like everything else, and had lost all its scent.Even so, he continued to inhale, while watching Joachim perform his recumbent therapy: first put on the short indoor coat, then put on the old overcoat, then took the night lamp and the Russian primer, walked to the on the balcony.After he lit the lamp, he lay down on the couch, held a thermometer in his mouth, and began to wrap the two large camel-hair blankets draped over the chair around himself with great flexibility and skill.Hans Castorp could not help feeling admiration from the bottom of his heart when he saw Joachim so deftly.Joachim covered the blankets one by one, first from the left side up to his shoulders, then covered his feet underneath, and then covered them from the right side, and finally formed a very symmetrical and clean "small package", only the head, Shoulders and arms are exposed. "You're really good at this!" said Hans Castorp. "Practice makes perfect," Joachim replied, clenching the thermometer between his teeth. "You should learn this too. Tomorrow I'll be sure to get you some blankets to use when you go down the mountain. We are essential on the mountain, especially if you don't have a sleeping bag." "I don't want to sleep on the balcony at night," said Hans Castorp. "I won't do that, I can tell you straight away. It's a strange thing to do. There's a limit to everything. I'll have to draw a line with you in some places, because I'm a guest on the hill. I'm going to be here Sit down and smoke a cigar as usual. It tastes awful, but I know it has a good texture, and I'll be content for today. It's almost nine o'clock, but it's not nine o'clock. If it's already It's half past nine, then it may be too late to go to bed comfortably." Then he felt cold to the marrow of his bones, one after another.Hans Castorp jumped up and ran in the direction of the temperature and temperature gauge on the wall, as if to catch the criminal.Calculated according to the Lebster temperature, the room temperature is nine degrees.He touched the radiator and found that it was cold and closed.He murmured something incoherent to the effect that even in August it really didn't make any sense not to have a heater; the question wasn't what month it was on the calendar, but how warm or cold it was.It was so cold now that he shivered like a dog.However, his face was hot.He sat down, got up again, muttered to get Joachim's quilt, and when he got it, he sat down on the chair and wrapped the quilt around his lower body.Thus he sat, alternately hot and cold; the smell of cigar smoke was repulsive, and he was very distressed.He felt miserable, and he seemed to have never experienced such a bad life. "What a pain!" he murmured.But at this time, a kind of absurd and strange joy and expectation suddenly rushed into his heart. After he experienced this feeling, he still sat there blankly, waiting for this feeling to sprout in his heart again.But this feeling did not come again, and all he felt was distress.He stood up at last, threw Joachim's quilt over the bed, cocked his mouth and muttered something like "Good night", "Don't catch cold", "Call me for breakfast", etc. Then he staggered down the corridor and walked back to his room. He hummed as he undressed, but not because he was in a good mood.He mechanically and carelessly completed the small movements of evening grooming and various routine procedures that civilized people should do, poured pink mouthwash from the small travel bottle, rinsed his mouth carefully, and then used the high-quality soft violet soap Wash your hands and put on a long muslin shirt with H. C．It is the abbreviation of the first two letters of Hans Castorp.two letters.Then he lay down and put out the light, and his hot, bewildered head fell on the pillow on which the American woman had slept when she died. He had thought that he would be able to fall into a deep sleep as soon as he fell down, but it turned out that he was wrong.His eyelids, which were not wide enough to open, did not want to close at all; when he tried to close them, they quivered restlessly and opened.He thought to himself: he hasn't had his usual sleep time yet, not to mention sleeping too long during the day.There was a sound of slapping the carpet outside, but that was unlikely, and in fact there was no such thing.Facts showed that it was his heart beating, and the beating sound could be heard far away from him, as if someone outside was beating the carpet with a beating tool made of wicker. It was not yet completely dark in the room, but the lights from the house outside and from the room of the married couple at the dining table of Joachim and the "lower Russian" came in through the open balcony door.As Hans Castorp lay on his back and blinked, certain impressions from the day—his observations—suddenly resurfaced in his mind, and he was filled with fear and subtle emotion. I feel like forgetting about it immediately.This is the expression on Joachim's face when he talks to him about Marusha and her physical features: All of a sudden white, showing a little freckles.What was going on, Hans Castorp knew it well, and he saw it clearly; It doubled in speed and intensity, almost drowning out the serenade from the high ground below.The hotel down the mountain was having a concert again at this time.A well-tempered, banal opera came in the dim twilight, and Hans Castorp whistled in whispers (one could even whistle) Only cold feet beat time. This is certainly a good way to not fall asleep right away.Hans Castorp was not at all sleepy at the moment.Ever since he clearly and profoundly understood the reason for Joachim's sudden discoloration, he felt that the whole world had changed, and the absurd joy and expectation just now were once again triggered deep in his heart.Besides, he was expecting something, without asking himself what it was.When he heard that the neighbors on the left and right had returned to the room after the evening reclining therapy and replaced the outdoor "lying" posture with the indoor "lying" posture, he expressed such confidence: The savage Russian couple should be peaceful tonight. "I can sleep soundly," he thought.They should be at peace tonight, that's what I wish for!They did not keep quiet, however, and Hans Castorp did not have much confidence in it.To be honest, even if they were silent, Hans Castorp himself would not have understood much.Even so, he was still stunned by what he heard, and there was a faintly audible cry from his heart. "Unheard of!" he whispered to himself. "Damn it! Who would believe it's possible?" While Hans's lips were whispering, the stale opera tune kept coming from down the hill. At last he fell asleep in a daze.But as soon as I fell asleep, the dream turned upside down, and the dream was even more chaotic than the first night.He is often awakened by these nightmares, or he is struggling to pursue the clueless artistic conception in the dream.In his dream, he seemed to see Behrens, the consultant, with his legs bent and his arms hanging straight in front of his body, wandering along the garden path.His strides, long and seemingly frustrating, are in time with the distant march.When the consultant stopped in front of Hans Castorp, Hans saw him wearing a pair of glasses with thick round lenses, talking nonsense. "Certainly not a soldier," said Behrens, without asking permission, rolling down Hans Castorp's eyelids with the middle and forefinger of his gigantic hand. "I saw at a glance that you are a respectable man of letters. But you are not without talents. When you get your spirits up, talents are not small! Don't begrudge your time, just stay with us here on the mountain for a short year. , have a good year at work! Hey, hey, gentlemen! Go for a walk!" he cried, sticking two enormous fingers into his mouth, and whistling strangely loudly. Come.As soon as the whistle sounded, the female teacher and Miss Robinson flew from the air from different directions. Their bodies were smaller than they actually were. Sitting on the left and right of Hans Castorp.So the consultant hopped away, and put a napkin behind his spectacles to wipe his eyes, and it was not known whether he was wiping away sweat or tears. Then the dreamer found himself in the school garden, where he had spent much of his spare time over the years.Mrs. Chaucat was there at the time, and he was about to ask her to borrow a pencil.She gave him a half-length red pencil in a silver-white sleeve, and at the same time warned him in a husky and melodious voice: she must return it to her after class.When she looked at him through the small blue-gray eyes on the high cheekbones, he jerked himself out of his dream, for now he finally understood—and wanted to hold on to this—what Madame Chauchat reminded him of. What is it and who is it, and this memory is so vivid.He was eager to engrave this experience in his heart so that he would never forget it tomorrow.He felt the sandman and the nightmare haunting him again.In the dream, Dr. Krokowski was staring at him and wanted to do a psychoanalysis for him. He had to run away immediately, because Hans Castorp was terribly afraid of such psychoanalysis.He staggered away, trying to escape from the doctor, passed the glass partition, crossed the balcony, jumped into the garden at the risk of his life; As he grabbed his trousers, he woke up in a cold sweat.He was shocked, but fell asleep again.But the content of his dream was different again: Setambrini was standing before him smiling, and Hans was trying to push him away from where he stood with his shoulder.The man smiled slyly, with a cold and mocking look, and a very beautiful mustache on his mouth.It was this smile that embarrassed Hans Castorp. "You're a nuisance!" he heard himself say clearly. "Go away! You're only a hurdy-gurdy player, and you're here to make trouble!" But Sethambrini just stood where he was, and Hans Castorp still stood, thinking Thinking about what to do.To his surprise, he had the opportunity to delve deeper into the nature of time, and it turned out that it was nothing more than a "dumb nurse," that is, a mercury thermometer without scale that some people use to cheat.When he woke up, he decided to tell his cousin Joachim about this discovery tomorrow. The night passed amid thrilling dreams and novel discoveries.Hermine Kleefeldt, Herr Albin, and Captain Mikloschig played incoherent characters in his dream.In a fit of rage, this Miklosich drove Mrs. Stell away, while he himself was impaled with a spear by the Paravant prosecutor.In some of these dreams Hans Castorp even had two dreams of exactly the same nature during the night, the second time at dawn.He was sitting in a dining room with seven tables. With a few loud bangs, the glass door in the living room opened, and Mrs. Chauchat came in, wearing a white sweater with one hand in her pocket. , resting the back of his head with his other hand.But instead of sitting at the Russian table this time, the uneducated slut sat quietly beside Hans Castorp, silently offering her hand for Hans to kiss.But what she stretched out was not the back of her hand, but the palm of her hand.And Hans Castorp kissed her hand: it was not very delicate, but a broad hand with short fingers, and the skin around the nails was rather rough.At this time, an almost rough and sweet warm current flowed through his whole body again.He had tasted it before, when he tried to throw off the shackles of earthly honor and set his mind on the infinite benefits of humiliation.Now in the dream, he experienced it again, much more intensely.