Fingerprints Of
The Gods
Graham Hancock
This page introduces
chapter
45
and is absent of number
Page 419
" 'The House of Millions
of years', was dedicated to
Osiris,4 the
'Lord of Eternity', of whom it was said in the Pyramid
texts:
You
have gone but you will return, you have slept, but you will
awake,
you have died, but you will live . . .
Betake yourself to the waterway,
fare upstream . . . travel about
Abydos in this spirit-form of yours
which the gods commanded to belong to
you. 5
The Magic Mountain
Page 123
continues
" Anyhow, I must be
stirring, and pretty fast
too.
" But he lay
another moment, mus-ing and recalling, before he got
up.
" Then thank ye
kindly, and
/ Page 124 /
God be with ye, " the
tears came to his eyes as he smiled. And with that he would
have been off, but instead sat suddenly down again with his
hat and stick in his hand, being forced to the realization
that his knees would not support him. "Hullo," he thought,
"this won't do. I am supposed to be back in the dining room
punctually at eleven for the lecture. Taking walks up here
is very beautiful - but appears to have its difficult side .
Well, well, I can't stop here. I must have got stiff from
lying; I shall be better as Imove about." He tried again to
get on his legs and , by dint of great effort,
succeeded.
But the return home was
lamentable indeed, after the high spirits of his setting
forth. He had repeatedly to rest by the way feeling the
colour recede from his face, and the cold sweat break out on
his brow; the wild breathing of his heart took away his
breath. Thus painfully he fought his way down the winding
path and reached the bottom in the neighbourhood of the
Kurkhaus. But here it became clear that his own powers would
never take him over the stretch between him and the Berghof;
and accordingly, as there was no tram and he saw no
carriages for hire, he hailed a driver going towards the
Dorf with a load of empty boxes and asked permission to
climb into his wagon. Back to back with the man, his legs
hanging down out of the end, swaying and nodding with
fatigue and the jolting of the vehicle, regarded with
surprise and sympathy by the passers-by, he got as far as
the railway crossing where he dismounted and paid for his
ride, whether much money or little he did not heed, and
hurried headlong up the drive.
"Depechez-vouz,
monsieur," said to him the French concierge.
"La conference de M. Krokowski vient de
commencer."
Hans Castorp tossed hat and stick on the stand and sqeezed
himself with much precaution, tongue between his teeth,
through
The partly open glass door into the dining room, where the
society of the cure sat in rows on their chairs, and on the
right hand side of the room, behind a covered table adorned
with a water-bottle, Dr Krokowski, in a frock-coat, stood
and delivered his lecture.
Analysis
LUCKILY there was a vacant seat in the corner, near the
door. He slipped into it and assumed an air of having been
here from the beginning. The audience, hanging rapt on Dr
Krokowski's lips, paid him no heed
-
which was as
well, for he looked rather ghastly..."
Page 125
"...Frau Chauchat sat all
relaxed, with drooping shoulders and round back;
she even thrust her head forward until the vertebra at the
base of the neck showed prominently above the rounded
decolletage of her white blouse..."
Hans Castorp's thoughts, as he sat and looked at Frau
Chau-chat's flaccid back, began to blur; they ceased to be
thoughts at all and began to blur; they ceased to be
thoughts at all and began to be a reverie, into which Dr.
Krokowski's drawl-ing baritone, with the soft-sounding
r, came as from afar. But the stillness of the
room, the profound attention that rapt all the rest of the
audience, had the effect of rousing him too. He looked
about. Near him sat the thin haired pianist, with bent head
and folded arms, listening with his mouth open. Somewhat
farther on was Fraulein Engelhart, avid-eyed, with a dull
red spot on each cheek; Hans Castorp saw the same signal
flame on the faces of other ladies
-
on Frau Magnus's
the same who was wife to the brewer and lost flesh
persistently. Frau Stohr sat somewhat farther back, an
expression of ignorant credulity painted on her face, truly
painful to behold; while the
ivory-com-
Page
126 /
plexioned Levi, leaning
back in her chair with half-closed eyes, her hands lying
open in her lap, would have looked like a corpse had not her
breast risen and fallen with such profound and rhythmical
breaths as to remind Hans Castorp of a mechanical waxwork he
had once seen. Many of the guests had their hands curved
behind their ears; some even held the
Hand in the air half-way thither, as though arrested midway
in the gesture by the strength of their concentration.
Lawyer Paravant, a sunburnt man who looked to have had the
strength of a bull, even flicked his ear with his forefinger
to make it hear better, then turned it again to catch the
words that flowed from Dr. Krokowski's lips.
And what was Dr. Krokowski saying?
What was his line of thought ? Hans Castorp summoned his
wits to discover, not immediately succeeding, however since
he had not heard the beginning and lost still more musing on
Frau Chauchat's flabby back. It was about a power, the power
which -
in short, it was
about the power of love. Yes of course; the subject was
already given out in the general title of the whole course,
and moreover, this was Dr Krokowski' special field; of what
else should he be talking ? It was a bit odd, to be sure,
listening to a lecture on such a theme, when previously Hans
Castorp's courses had dealt only with such matters as geared
transmission in ship-building. No, really, how did one go
about to discuss a subject of this delicate and private
nature, in broad daylight, before a mixed audience ? Dr
Krowski did it by adopting a mingled termi-nology, partly
poetic and partly erudite; ruthlessly scientific, yet with a
vibrating, singsong delivery, which impressed young Hans
Castorp as being unsuitable, but may have been the reason
why the ladies looked flushed and the gentleman flicked
their ears to make them hear better. In particular the
speaker employed the word love in a somewhat ambiguous
sense, so that you were never quite sure where you were with
it, or whether he had reference to its sacred or its
passionate and fleshly aspect
-
and this doubt
gave a slightly seasick feeling. Never in all his life had
Hans Castorp heard the word uttered so many times on end as
he was hearing it now. When he reflected, it seemed to him
he had never taken it to his own mouth, nor ever heard it
from a stranger's That might not be the case, but whether it
were or no, the slip-pery monosyllable, with its lingual and
labial, and the bleating vowel between
-
it came to sound
positively offensive; it sug-gested watered milk, or
anything else that was pale and insipid; the more so
considering the meat for b men Dr.
Krokowski
/ Page
127 /
was in fact serving up.
For it was plain that when one set about it like that, one
could go pretty far without shocking anybody. He was not
content to allude, with equisite tact, to certain mat-ters
which are known to everybody, but which most people are
content to pass over in silence. He demolished illusions, he
was ruthlessly enlightened, he relentlessly destroyed all
faith in the dignity of silver hairs and the innocence of
the sucking babe. And he wore, with his frock-coat, his
neglige collar, sandals, and grey woolen socks, and, thus
attired, made an impression pro-foundly otherworldly, though
at the same time not a little startling to young Hans
Castorp. He supported his statements with a wealth of
illustration and anecdote from the books and loose notes on
the table before him; several times he even quoted poetry.
And he discussed certain startling manifestations of the
power of love, certain extraordinary, painful, uncanny
variations, which the majestic phenomenon at times
displayed. It was, he said, the most unstable, the most
unreliable of man's instincts the most prone of its very
essence to error and fatal perversion. In the which there
was nothing that should cause surprise. For this mighty
force did not consist of a single impulse, it was of its
nature complex; it was built up out of components which,
how-ever legitimate they might be in composition, were,
taken each by itself, sheer perversity. But
-
continued Dr.
Krokowski - since we refuse, and rightly, to deduce the
perversity of the whole from the perversity of its parts, we
are driven to claim, for the component perversities, some
part at least, though perhaps not all, of the justification
which attaches to their united product. We were driven by
sheer force of logic to this conclusion; Dr Krokowski
implored his hearer, having arrived at it, to hold it fast.
Now there were psychical correctives, forces
working in the other direction, instincts tending to
conformability and regularity
-
he would almost
have liked to characterize them as bourgeois; and these
influences had the effect of merging the perverse
com-ponents into a valid and irreproachable whole: a
frequent and gratifying result, which, Dr. Krokowski almost
contemptuously added, was, as such, of no further concern to
the thinker and the physician. But on the other hand, there
were cases where this re-sult was not obtained, could not
and should not be obtained; and who, Dr. Krokowski asked,
would dare to say that these cases did not psychically
considered, form a higher, more exclusive type? For in these
cases the two opposing groups of instincts - the compulsive
force of love, and the sum of the impulses urging in the
other direction, among which he would particularly
men-
/ Page
128 /
tion shame and disgust
-
both exhibited an
extraordinary and ab-normal height and intensity when
measured by the ordinary bourgeois standards; and the
conflict between them which took place in abysses of the
soul prevented the erring instinct from attaining to that
safe, sheltered and civilized state which alone could
resolve its difficulties in the prescribed harmonies of the
love-life as experienced by the average human being. This
con-flict between the powers of love and chastity - for that
was what it really amounted to
-
what was its
issue ? It ended, apparently, in the triumph of chastity.
Love was suppressed, held in dark-ness and chains, by fear,
conventionality, aversion, or a tremu-lous yearning to be
pure. Her confused and tumultuous claims were never allowed
to rise to consciousness or to come to proof in anything
like their entire strength or multiformity. But this triumph
of chastity was only an apparent, a pyrrhic victory; for the
claims of love could not be crippled or enforced by any such
means. The love thus suppressed was not; it lived, it
laboured after fulfillment in the darkest and secretest
depths of the being. It would break through the ban of
chastity, it would emerge
-
if in a form so
altered as to be unrecognizable. But what then was this
form, this mask, in which suppressed, uncharted love would
reappear ? Dr, Krokowski asked the question, and looked
along the listening rows as though in all seriousness
expecting an answer. But he had to say it himself, who had
said so much else already no one knew save him, but it was
plain that he did. Indeed, with his ardent eyes, his black
beard setting off the waxen pallor of his face, his monkish
sandals and grey woolen socks, he seemed to symbolize in his
own person that conflict between passion and chastity which
was his theme. At least so thought Hans Castorp, as with the
others he waited in the greatest suspense to hear in what
form love driven below the surface would reappear. The
ladies barely breathed. Lawyer Paravant rattled his ear
anew, that the critical moment might find it open and
receptive. And Dr.Krokowski answered his own question, and
said "In the form of illness. Symptoms of disease are
nothing but a disguised mani-festation of the power of love;
and all disease is only love
trans-formed" So now
they knew -
though very
probably not all of them were capable of an opinion on what
they heard. A sigh passed through the assemblage, and Lawyer
Paravant weightily nodded approbation as Krokowski proceeded
to develop his theme. Hans Castorp for his part sat with
bowed head, trying to reflect on
/ Page
129 /
what had been said and
test his own understanding of it . But he was unpractised in
such exercises, and rendered still further in-capable of
mental exertion by the unhappy effect of the walk he had
taken. His thoughts were soon drawn off again by the sight
of Frau Chauchat's back, and the arm appertaining, which was
lift-ing and bending itself, close before Hans Castorp's
eyes, so that the hand could hold the braids of hair.
It made him uncomfartable to have
the hand so close beneath his eye, to be forced to look at
it whether he wished or no, to study it in all its human
blemishes and imperfections, as though under a magnifying
glass. No, there was nothing aristocratic about this stubby
schoolgirl hand, with the badly cut nails. He was even not
qyite sure that the ends of the fingers were perfectly
clean; and the skin round the nails was distinctly bitten.
Hans Castorp made a face; but his eyes remained
fixed
On Madame Chauchat's back, as he vaguely recalled what Dr.
Krokowski had been saying, about counteracting influences of
a bourgeois kind, which set themselves up against the power
of love. - The arm, in its gentle upward curve, was better
than the hand; it was scarcely clothed, for the material of
the sleeve was thinner than that of the blouse, being the
lightest gauze, which had the effect of lending the arm a
sort of shadowed radiance, making it prettier than it might
other-wise have been. It was at once both full and slender -
in all prob-ability cool to the touch. No, so far as the arm
went, the idea about counteracting bourgeois influences did
not apply. Hans Castorp
mused, his gaze still bent on Frau Chauchat's arm. The way
women dressed! They showed their necks and bosoms, they
transfigured their arms by veiling them in "illusion"; they
did so, the world over, to arouse our desire.
O God.how beautiful life was ! And it was just such accepted
commonplaces as this that made it beautiful - for it was a
commonplace that women dressed themselves alluringly, it was
so well known and recognized a fact that we never consciouly
realized it, but merely enjoyed it with-out a thought. And
yet he had an inward conviction that we ought to think about
it, ought to realize what a blessed, what a
well-nigh miraculous arrangement it was. For of
course it all had a certain end and aim; it was by a
definite design that women were per-mitted to array
themselves with irresistable allure: it was of course for
the sake of posterity, for the perpetuation of the species.
Of course. But suppose a women was inwardly diseased, unfit
for mother-hood - what then? What was the sense of her
wearing gauze sleeves and attracting male attention to her
physical parts if these
/ Page 130 /
were actually unsound ?
Obviously there was no sense; it ought to be considered
immoral, and forbidden as such. For a man to take an
interest in a woman inwardly diseased had no more sense than
- well, than the interest Hans Castorp had once taken in
Pribislav Hippe. The comparison was a stupid one; it roused
memories better forgotten; he had not meant to make it, it
came into his head unbidden. But at this point his musings
broke off, largely because Dr. Krokowski had raised his
voice and so drawn atten-tion once more upon himself. He was
standing there behind his table, with his arms outstretched
and his head on one side - almost, despite the frock-coat,
he looked like Christ on the cross.
It seemed that at the end of his
lecture Dr. Krokowski was making propaganda for
psycho-analysis; with open arms he summoned all and sundry
to Come unto me," he was saying, though not in those words,
"come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden." And he
left no doubt of his conviction that all those present
were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke of secret
suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power of
the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the
uncon-scious mind and explained how the abnormality was
metamor-phosed into the conscious emotion; he urged them to
have confi-dence; he promised relief. Then he let fall his
arms, raised his head, gathered up his notes and went out by
the corridor door, with his head in the air, and the bundle
of papers held schoolmaster fashion, in his left hand
against his shoulder.
His audience rose,
pushed back its chairs, and slowly began to move towards the
same door, as though converging upon him from all sides,
without volition, hesitatingly, yet with one accord, like
the throng after the Pied Piper. Hans Castorp stood in the
stream without moving, his hand on the back of his chair I
am only a guest up here, he thought. Thank God I am healthy,
that business has nothing to do with me; I shan't even be
here for the next lecture. He watched Frau Chauchat going
out, gliding along with her head thrust forward. Did she
have herself psycho-ana-lysed, he wondered. And his heart
began to thump. He did not notice Joachim,
coming toward him among the chairs, and started
when his cousin spoke.
"You got here at the
last minute," Joachim said. "Did you go very far? How was
it?"
"Oh, very nice," Hans
Castorp answered. "Yes, Iwent rather a long way. But Imust
confess, it did me less good than I thought it would. I wont
repeat it for the present."
Joachim did
not ask how he liked the lecture; neither did
Hans
/ Page
131 /
Castorp express an
opinion. By common consent they let the sub-ject rest, both
then and thereafter.
Doubts
and Consideration
1st line after
heading "TUESDAY
was the last day of our hero' week up hereand accord-
ingly he found his weekly bill in his room on his return
from the
morning walk..."
"...The
items, set down in a calligraphic hand, came
9th L/D
to one hundred
and
eighty francs
almost
exactly:..."
ZZZaaaZZZ
Page 161
The
Thermometer
1st L
/ D after
heading "HANS
CASTORP'S week here ran from
Tuesday
to
Tuesday,
for on
a
Tuesday
he had arrived. Two or three days before, he had
gone
down to the office and paid his second weekly bill, a modest
ac-
4th L/D count
of a round one
hundred and
sixty
francs, modest and cheap
even
without taking into consideration the nature of some
of
the advantages of a stay up here
-
advantages
priceless in them-
selves,
though for that very reason they could not be included
in
the
bill -
and even without
counting extras like the fortnightly
concert
and Dr. Krokowski's lectures, which might conceivably
have
10th L /
D
been included. The sum of
one
hundred and
sixty
francs..."
18th
L /
U
"eight
hundred even. That isn't
ten
thousand francs a year. Cer-..."
16th L /
U "...Mental
arithmetic very fair," Joachim said. I never knew you
were such
a shot at doing sums in your head. And how broad-
minded of you to calculate it by the year like that ! You've
learned
something since you've been up here..."
AAAzzzAAA
Page 162
1st
line "...As
the result of some simple figuring, he con-
cluded
that his cousin - or, speaking generally, a patient at
the
3rd Berghof
- would need
twelve
thousand francs a year to cover the
sum total of his expenses. Thus he amused himself by
establishing
the fact that he, Hans Castorp, could amply afford to live
up here
6th
if he chose, being a man of
eighteen
or nineteen
thousand
francs
yearly
income..."
zzzAAAzzz
Mounting Misgivings.
Page 140
"One thing there was
which pleased him: when he lay listening to tha beating of
his heart - his corporeal organ - so plainly
audi-
/ Page
141 /
ble in the ordered
silence of the rest period, throbbing loud and peremptorily,
as it had done almost ever since he came, the sound no
longer annoyed him. For now he need not feel that it so beat
of its own accord, without sense or reason or any reference
to his non-corporeal part. He could say, without stretching
the truth, that such a connexion now existed, or was easily
induced: he was aware that he felt an emotion to correspond
with the action of his heart. He needed only to think of
Madame Chauchat - and he did think of her - and lo, he felt
within himself the emotion proper to the heart-beats..."
Page 120
L/D excluding
heading 41 "...won
for him the nickname of "the
Kirghiz
" among his school-"
Page 121
L/D
14 "...or to the "
Kirghiz
" eyes, whose grey-blue glance could some-
Page 123
1 "...And Pribislav looked at him,
with his
"Kirghiz
"eyes above the
prominent cheek
bones
Page
146
L/D excluding
heading 17 "...there
were the eyes themselves: the narrow
"Kirghiz"
eyes..."
L/D 38
"...look at him with those narrow
Kirghiz
eyes - this was
to be immured..."
|