August arrived, and with its entry slipped past the anniversary of our hero’s arrival in these parts. So much the better when it was gone—young Hans Castorp had scarcely looked forward to it with pleasure. And that was the rule. The anniversary was not popular. The old inhabitants passed it by without thought; and—though in general they seized on every pretext for jollification, and took occasion to celebrate their own private anniversaries in addition to these that accented the recurrent rhythm of the year; making merry with popping of corks in the restaurant, over birthdays, general examinations, imminent departures whether “wild” or sanctioned, and the like—they accorded to the anniversary of arrival no other attention than that of a profound silence. They let it slip past, perhaps they actually managed to forget it, and they might be confident that no one else would remember. They set store by a proper articulation of the time, they gave heed to the calendar, observed the turning-points of the year, its recurrent limits. But to measure one’s own private time, that time which for the individual in these parts was so closely bound up with space—that was held to be an occupation only fit for new arrivals and short-termers.
Choler. And Worse
1179