The Magic Mountain: Part 6, Chapter 5: An Attack Repulsed Summary & Analysis

Time passes, and eventually it’s October. Management assigns Hans a new seat in the dining hall after Joachim’s departure, and he’s now sitting at Settembrini’s old table, opposite the empty chair reserved for Behrens. His new tablemates include an amateur photographer from Mexico, an old woman from Transylvania, and a Czech man whom people call “Herr Wenzel,” since nobody can pronounce his name. The brewer Herr Magnus and his wife also sit at Hans’s new table. Hans is friendliest with A. K. Ferge (the “martyr” from St. Petersburg) and Ferdinand Wehsal, a merchant from Mannheim who would constantly stare at Clavdia. 

Hans finds Wehsal rather pathetic. He poses inane questions to his dining companions, asking them, for instance, whether it’s worth it to tell someone you love them even if they don’t know you exist. Wehsal thinks so: while doing so might be embarrassing, it also creates a moment of intimacy between the object of one’s affection and oneself, however fleeting.

For the next few days, there’s a guest at the table: Hans’s uncle James Tienappel. It feels strange to Hans to have someone from his old life here in his new “upper world.” But Hans has suspected that “a raid from the flatlands” would have to happen at some point, so when James Tienappel announced his plans to stop by while in Switzerland on a business trip, Hans calmly accepted the news and passed it along to Behrens.

After James arrives, he passes along Hans’s other relatives’ regards. He also updates Hans about Joachim, noting that he has joined his regiment and feels great about it. James seems on edge, but it’s unclear why. He tells Hans that he only plans to stay a week at most. And, judging by Hans’s healthy appearance, he assumes that Hans will leave with him. When Hans says he’s not ready to leave yet, James can’t believe it—life is short, and Hans has already been here for over a year. He promises to talk to Behrens about Hans’s condition, and Hans encourages him to do so. 

On James’s first night at the Berghof, Hans gets James situated in Joachim’s  old room, where he’ll be staying, and then they head to the Berghof’s restaurant for dinner. They don’t talk about home or anything serious. James repeatedly mentions the cold weather. He has trouble breathing through his nose because of the altitude. When Hans casually mentions, in great and gross detail, the gangraena pulmonum from which  one resident suffers, James unexpectedly erupts with laughter. After dinner, Hans introduces James to Dr. Krokowski, who greets him with happy enthusiasm. James, meanwhile, can sense without being told that he’s “operating on foreign soil” at the Berghof, which has its own social norms and conventions.

The next day, James meets Behrens in the dining hall. Behrens enthusiastically tells James that it’s great he’s here—not just for Hans’s sake, but for his own, too: apparently, he’s quite anemic! Behrens then suggests that James try to live as a resident while he’s here. Not long after this, James takes his first rest cure, and he enjoys it immensely. When he tries to make jokes about the odd activities he observes around him, Hans responds with the same calm smile that every resident wears on their face, and it makes James feel uneasy.

Later, James meets the head nurse when she drops by his room to tell him that he’ll have to wait his turn to meet with Behrens since he’s not sick and therefore not a top priority. The nurse’s aggressive behavior unsettles him—and so does Hans’s apparent acceptance of it. Meanwhile, James is constantly cold, despite Hans’s insistence that the residents are “never cold,” a phrase he repeats like a mantra.

On James’s sixth day at the Berghof, he finally has his meeting with Behrens. He goes into it wanting to have a serious discussion about Hans, but he seems subdued and defeated when he returns to his room and doesn’t mention anything he and the doctor talked about. At supper Monday night, Behrens sits at Hans’s table and, in response to a question Hans has asked him about human decomposition, explains in gory detail how one’s guts explode. James, disgusted, leaves the next morning without saying goodbye to Hans. Later, Hans receives telegram from his uncle explaining that he received word that he had an urgent business matter to attend to, but this is clearly a lie. He closes the telegram, “Best wishes for a continued pleasant stay,” and Hans can’t tell whether James is mocking him.