There are evenings, esteemed reader, that – as they say – “are on the calendar”, starched, numbered, neatly entered, and there are evenings that, although they could of course also be dated, nevertheless resist order, because they lie on a boundary where time itself, this very bourgeois, very contractual principle, briefly loses its composure. Among these boundary evenings belongs carnival, belongs leap evening – and belongs, in our present, New Year’s Eve, this strange celebration for citizens and children, which masks itself with champagne and arms itself with fireworks so that the transition from the one to the other does not look like what it truly is: a quiet, imperceptible step.
Hans Castorp knew this without knowing it. He was not a man of concepts, but of sensations; and yet, ever since he had – in a way that we do not wish to describe further here, inasmuch as the narrative should not fall under suspicion of giving instructions – withdrawn from the war and saved himself over into a life that one may, if one is strict, call luxurious and, if one is mild, merely consistent, he had developed a special relationship to everything that lies between orders. For the deserter, even if he sleeps in hotels and is served by impeccable waiters, inwardly remains a man of the in‑between spaces: between name and alias, between guilt and self‑protection, between visibility and mask.
And now he was up again, in the highlands of comfort, where one does not endure the cold but curates it; where snow is not “weather” but décor; and where one sells the mortal a membership in the promise of longevity as if it were a fitness program. The house – it bore a name that sounded like sun and yet, unedifying enough, had a rescue device lying in the snow, an orange ring on which the name stood in black letters, as if the mountains themselves wanted to remind one that every pleasure in the high‑altitude climate needs a rescue service. This ring lay half in the white, half on the dark paving – a silliness, an advertisement, a symbol. Such is modernity.
Outside, in the courtyard of black, shiny stones, between stone wall and frosty shrubbery, stood round tables covered with white cloths, as if they were altars. And they were that too, only that the cult no longer applied to saints, but to sugars, fats, flavorings and the sweet promise that today one may “have everything” for once. In shallow wooden boxes lay small balls of chocolate, light and dark, in rows, as if a passion for order were at work here that does not permit even enjoyment to be disorderly. Next to them: sandwich cookies, ring‑shaped pastries, foam pieces in pastel colors that looked as if someone had portioned clouds; and in a glass were wooden sticks, ready to be stuck into marshmallows or into hot drinks that one designates with a word that sounds a little like childhood and a little like comfort: “cocoa”.
The children – for there were children, and that is important, because in such establishments children are the true bringers of truth: they do not test the splendor for etiquette, but for edibility – stood at the table edges and looked, with that greedy innocence that moves adults and at the same time unmasks them, at the white, pink and green foam cubes as if they were gemstones. Adults stood beside them and pretended that their attention was on the conversation, while their hands were already groping for napkins. Over all this lay a light, cold and kind: winter sun.
And then – as if someone had replaced nature with an architect’s whim – there stood those transparent domes, geodesic bubbles of plastic and framework, in which people sat as if in an exhibition. One saw them through the milky, ribbed skin, a little distorted, a little distant; and Hans Castorp, who had known the Berghof era, involuntarily thought of those lying halls that had once commanded the regime of air cures, only that now one no longer “lies” for the sake of healing, but sits for the sake of privilege: privacy as a wellness service. It was, if you will, the modern lying cure: not with blankets and thermometers, but with plexiglass domes and sheepskins.
In one such dome lay a white fur like freshly fallen snow. A small table stood on it, black and thin‑legged, and on it: glasses, a wine glass, water glasses, a lantern in which a flame flickered – a very small, very brave flame in the midst of all this well‑organized cold. And at the entrance sat – as if he were the guardian of this glassy in‑between realm – a small, brown, curly‑haired dog in a little coat, starched like a patient. One might, esteemed reader, at this point think of the poodle that once seduced the good doctor in another great German work; one might, if one is inclined to amuse oneself, recognize in this little animal the devil of the present: no longer black, no longer sulfurous, but teddy‑like, suitable for therapy, and yet guardian of a threshold.
Next to the domes stood a cart, black and gold, with a glass container in which popcorn lay – popcorn! – this thin‑walled, explosively unfolded grain that crackles so innocently and yet, basically, is nothing other than the playful brother of terror. For here too – and this is the irony that Hans Castorp could not name but felt – the principle of explosion reigned: in the grain, in the cork, in the sky.
The cart had a roof, and underneath people in dark clothing were working; they scooped the white, puffed grain and handed it out as if one were distributing snow to eat. Hans Castorp smelled it; and the smell was warm. Warm in this cold, warm like memory.
He walked, hands in his pockets, collar turned up – not because he was cold, but because the collar is a gesture of defense that has become as self‑evident to modern man as the hat was to the old. He walked toward the water.
For there was, a little further on, a pool – blue, still, unreal blue under the sky, which in turn was so blue as if someone had turned up the saturation – and on this water floated spheres, large, shimmering bubbles that shone in rainbow colors and broke the light into pastels. They lay there like oversized soap bubbles, like planets, like balloons, like alveoli – and perhaps this last association was the truest, inasmuch as the highlands, the spa, the world of shortness of breath and promise of breath has always been a world of bubbles: bubbles in the lungs, bubbles in champagne, bubbles in the bathing world.
The spheres cast shadows on the water, long, dark shadows, as if they had weight. And Hans Castorp thought that everything that shines has shadows; a thought that is banal and therefore correct.
At the edge stood people in coats and caps, looking at these bubbles, and he could not say whether they were amused or reverent. For modernity has invented a new form of reverence: reverence for the effect.
Behind him, further up on the terrace, the ice bar had been set up. They had made a counter out of ice, smooth and transparent, and into this ice words had been cut which – because they stood in ice – suddenly seemed like something final, unalterable, although in the next sun, in the next air, in the next hour they would have to become water: “New Year’s Eve 2025–2026”. Beneath it a laughing sun symbol, friendly, round, brand‑like.
It was, esteemed reader, as if they had cast the calendar itself into a material that displays transience. Our age loves symbolism so much that it supplies it at once; one only has to read it off, as one reads off everything today.
On the ice stood glasses: slender, tall ones, and next to them lay champagne bottles in coolers, and a woman in a dark coat was handling them as if they were instruments. Men in the background also wore dark coats and stood with their heads together in that way men put their heads together when they are either doing business or consoling one another. Hans Castorp took a glass – not greedily, rather testingly – and felt the cold of the glass draw into his fingers. He drank; and the bubbles rose to his head like a light, elegant impatience.
He smiled. He smiled because he knew that he was smiling; and that is always a sign of distance.
For he was not really there. He was there with a name that was not his name. He was there with a past he was not allowed to speak. He was there as a luxury guest and as a fugitive. And precisely for that reason this night – this between‑years night, this modern carnivalesque night – had something seductive for him: it was a masquerade that came to meet him.
Inside, in the warm light, they had set up a photo booth – a small theater of self‑presentation that is no longer called “photography” but, unedifying enough, “Fotobox”. A backdrop of shimmering foil hung there, blue and iridescent like frozen water; and in front of it people in evening dress crowded together, but with props that made the whole thing ridiculous and thereby permissible.
There Hans Castorp saw how a woman – slender, with bare neck, in a dress that sparkled at the shoulder – wore glasses whose lenses were heart‑shaped; and he thought how much our age strives to turn feeling into a sign so that it becomes presentable. Next to her a man in a tuxedo, but with a wild, light wig, as if to say: I am starched and unbound at the same time. In front of them children, starched like dolls, but with crowns and pixel glasses that gave them a feigned coolness while their mouths were open with laughter. In the next picture then: the same tuxedo, but above it a donkey’s head, a mask with big ears and a yellow grin, and the hand of the masked one raised as if greeting the audience. It was funny. It was touching. And it was – if one is strict – an image of the world: the human being in his ceremonial clothing who makes himself into an animal in order, for a moment, not to have to be human.
Hans Castorp stood for a moment behind these people and regarded them with that mild, slightly melancholy irony that is peculiar to the spectator. Then, without quite knowing why, he stepped closer. Not because he wanted to be photographed; he did not want to be captured, least of all in a world in which every capturing is at the same time a spreading. But he felt drawn to the idea of the mask.
“Do you want to?” someone asked – a girl, perhaps; a voice, young, quick. And a hand held out one of the glasses to him, another a golden plastic wreath. Hans Castorp did not take the wreath. Instead he took a simple black mask that lay at the edge, inconspicuous between hearts and donkeys – a piece of fabric that covered half the face and thereby suddenly seemed very serious. He held it briefly in his hand. Fabric. Rubber. A smell of new material, of manufacture.
“You are old‑fashioned,” said a voice beside him.
He turned around.
She stood there, a little apart, and wore nothing conspicuous, no wig, no ears; but her eyes had that expression that is at once tired and mocking, and her mouth – narrow, drawn up a little – betrayed a readiness for malice that Hans Castorp had always perceived as grace.
“Old‑fashioned?” he repeated.
“Oui,” she said, and the Oui was not French in the textbook sense, but French as a gesture, as a quiet removal from the German order. “You still want to believe that a mask must be fabric. Whereas today everything is a mask.”
He did not know whether he knew her. He only knew that he knew her. For one knows, esteemed reader, not only persons; one knows gestures, one knows rhythms, one knows that way of setting a sentence as if it were half a taunt, half a kiss.
She looked at the hand in his, at the black mask.
“You are very… correct,” she said, and the word “correct” had in her mouth something like a small, secret laugh. “Un peu bourgeois.”
Hans Castorp felt himself grow warm, not from the champagne, but from that old, unedifyingly young feeling that someone is touching him at a place that is not visible.
“Order,” he said slowly, “is perhaps only a fear that has starched itself.”
“Ah,” she said. “Now you are becoming philosophical. Watch out – that is dangerous.”
“Dangerous,” he repeated, and did not mean the thought.
They went outside because there was too much laughter inside. Outside, in the cold, the laughter was muffled, and instead one heard the crunching of shoes on the frosty paving, the soft clinking of glasses, the distant hum of the unit that was producing warmth somewhere, as if warmth were a service.
At one of the tables with the sweets she stopped and took a wooden stick from the glass – a simple, light stick, as everyone basically knows it, and yet in her hand it was suddenly an object with meaning because she held it. She stuck it into a marshmallow, this pastel‑colored foam, and held it up as if presenting a small piece of sky.
“Do you want?” she asked.
Hans Castorp shook his head. He was not hungry for sugar. He was hungry for something else.
She looked at him.
“Do you have a pen?” he asked. And he heard himself with a sense of astonishment, as if it were not he speaking, but someone who had once been him.
She laughed softly.
“A pen?” she said. “What do you need a pen for, mon cher? You have pens everywhere. In your devices. In your watches. In your… apps.”
He did not answer. He only pointed, almost childishly, to a small station that had been set up next to the photo‑box theater: There sat a man – or a figure, one could not quite say – all in black, and his head was behind a clear, angular pane, as if he were wearing a glass helmet. In front of him lay a white sheet, and with a brush or pen he drew brown lines on it, hesitant, artful, as if he were not writing letters but destinies. A child stood beside him and held something up, perhaps a picture, perhaps a frame – and watched with that reverence that children sometimes bring to craftsmanship.
“He writes names,” said Hans Castorp.
“Names?” She raised her eyebrows. “You mean: identities.”
He felt a small stab. Yes. Identities.
“I would like,” he said, “him to write my name for me.”
“Which one?” she asked.
Hans Castorp was silent. And in this silence lay everything: the war, the withdrawal, the rescue, the shame, the luxury, the lie, the weariness.
She looked at him, for a long time.
Then she handed him the wooden stick – not the marshmallow, only the stick, empty, light, ridiculous.
“Voilà,” she said. “Take it. Write with it.”
“You can’t write with that.”
“Yes, you can,” she said. “You can write with anything if you are prepared for it to smudge.”
And that was, esteemed reader, a truth so simple that it was dangerous.
They went back to the ice bar because the hour was approaching. People began to count, to laugh, to shout; someone handed out small paper tubes that spit confetti; and Hans Castorp thought how very this modern world has mechanized the moment: the transition must be announced, it must be counted down, it must be documented, because otherwise one does not trust it.
The glasses clinked. The ice shone. The words in the ice – “New Year’s Eve 2025–2026” – stood there like a verdict, and yet small drops were already running down the edges, as if the calendar were weeping.
Then it happened.
The sky, which had just been black, was suddenly torn apart by light, by white and red lines, by sparkling stars that spread and faded, and smoke drifted like a gray curtain over the scene. It was beautiful. It was loud. It was – if one is honest – unedifying. For fireworks are the game with war, and war is fireworks without the game.
Hans Castorp flinched, quite involuntarily, quite physiologically; the body recognizes certain noises before the mind interprets them. He felt his heart skip a beat and then make up two, as if to prove that it was still there; he felt the cold in his lungs, although he was not freezing; he felt how the bubbles in the champagne now seemed less light, less elegant to him – as if they were suddenly related to the bubbles in the sky.
She laid her hand on his sleeve, just for a moment.
“C’est fini,” she said softly. “It is over. Here it is only… fête.”
Only celebration. Only.
He looked at her, and in her face there was an expression that was at once mocking and tender, as if she knew that there is no “only”.
They went, without consulting one another, to the dome, to the glass bubble in which the white fur lay and the little flame flickered. The dog was still sitting at the entrance, like a guardian, and looked at them, serious and patient. They stepped inside, and the world outside – the sky with smoke, the people with glasses, the spheres on the water – was muffled and distorted by the skin of the dome, as if one saw everything through a memory.
Inside it was quieter. On the table stood glasses, one half empty, one completely empty, and the lantern cast shadows on the fur, soft as breath. Hans Castorp sat down, and she sat down opposite him, but not really opposite; she sat so that the distance was no longer bourgeois.
“You are getting old,” she said.
“I remain,” he answered.
“You always remain,” she said. “That is your talent. You remain while everything else… goes.”
He thought of the words in the ice, of the drops, of the melting; he thought of the bubbles on the water, of their shimmering, thin glow; he thought of the orange lifebuoy in the snow on which the sun‑word stood, as if even in the sun one had to be rescued.
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
He smiled. He wanted to say: No. He wanted to say: Yes. Instead he said:
“I am hungry.”
And that was, esteemed reader, not a lie.
⸻
In the morning – for of course there is always a morning, even after the most extravagant masquerade, and the morning is the true moral – Hans Castorp sat in the dining room, which was no longer called dining room but bore some name that sounded like international comfort. In front of him a plate, white, large, and on it the colorful anatomy of the luxury breakfast: salmon, orange and silky; a piece of ham, pale and correct; a fried egg whose yolk shone like a little sun; red pickled pieces that tasted of onion and looked like blood; dark beet slices that were so deep a violet that they almost seemed black; along with a little heap of orange grains, caviar‑like, as if the sea had been deprived of its eggs; cucumber slices, tomatoes, a little green; and a piece of dark bread, heavy, honest, with a dab of butter that clung to it like an alibi.
He ate slowly. Not because he was full – but because slow eating is the last form of control when the night has taken it from you.
And as he ate, he thought: So this is the second Walpurgis Night. It is no longer at the Berghof, no longer in the dining room with lookouts at the doors; it is in the wellness resort, on frosty paving, between popcorn and plexiglass, between photo box and ice bar, between bubbles in the water and bubbles in the wine, between the date in the ice and the smoke in the sky.
He thought: One can desert from a war. One can desert from a life. But one does not desert from time. One can only – if one is lucky – get it, for one evening, to pretend that it is not there.
He pushed the piece of bread a little to the side, looked at the yolk, this little sun on white, and smiled.
The smile was polite. And a little unedifying.
