Hans Castorp felt a small chill run down his back, although the water was warm. It was not shame, not fear – it was that unpleasant moment when you realize that another person, quite ordinary, in his quite ordinary life, is handling the same mechanisms that you yourself have perfected for reasons of survival: the blurring, the twisting, the mask.
“And now?” asked Hans Castorp.
Morgenstern pulled something out of the pocket of his bathrobe.
It was a telephone. A handset, as people carry it today, as if it were an organ; the glass of its surface gleamed, and in this glass the blue of the water was reflected. Morgenstern wiped his thumb over it, and Hans Castorp felt, with a slight aversion, how effortlessly morality appears on a screen today.
“I have five resolutions,” said Morgenstern, and it sounded as if he were speaking of five pills that one has to take daily.
“Five,” repeated Hans Castorp.
“Yes,” said Morgenstern. “You have to… name it. Otherwise it gets blurred.”
Hans Castorp heard the word “blur” and involuntarily thought of the little wooden stick in his pocket. It was as if the motifs had conspired.
“First,” said Morgenstern, and his voice took on that solemn objectivity that modern people have when they try to be serious without seeming pathetic. “Respect.”
He lifted his gaze from the screen and looked at Hans Castorp, as if he wanted to check whether the word had an effect.
“I want to treat my wife with respect in every situation,” he said, “in words, tone of voice and behavior. Also in front of others. Especially in front of others. No derogatory comments, no mockery, no public jabs. Criticism…” He swallowed. “…only in private. Calm. Factual.”
Hans Castorp nodded slowly. He thought of the night, of the French “un peu bourgeois”, of the malice that was at the same time a kiss. He thought how seductive mockery can be – and how easily, when it is no longer tender, it becomes a kind of violence.
“The tone of voice,” he said softly, “is often the knife. The word is only the sheath.”
Morgenstern looked at him, and in his gaze there was gratitude – or perhaps only relief that someone recognizes the knife.
“Second,” he continued. “Compassion.”
He spoke the word as if he had to teach it to himself.
“When my wife is emotionally burdened,” he said, “I react first with compassion and care. Not with evaluation. Not with justification. Feelings…” He exhaled. “…not relativize. Not psychologize. Not see as weakness.”
Hans Castorp thought of the word “humanity”, of Settembrini, whom he had never seen again; and he thought how unedifying it is that today one formulates humanity in sentences that sound like instruction manuals. And yet, he thought, it is perhaps better to have an instruction manual than none at all. For when left to himself, man often operates the wrong devices.
“Compassion,” said Hans Castorp, “is sometimes only the ability to postpone one’s own judgment for a moment.”
Morgenstern nodded. He looked back at the telephone, as if he were afraid that the words would disappear.
“Third,” he said. “Responsibility.”
Hans Castorp felt something tighten inside him.
Responsibility: a word that in his body still sounded like a shot.
Morgenstern said, striving to be calm:
“I take responsibility for my share of conflicts. For the dynamics. Not shifting everything onto my wife, not onto circumstances. I want to see my own behavior. My patterns. My impact. When I was wrong…” He faltered and then, as if he had lifted a stone, brought out the word: “…apologize. And change.”
Hans Castorp remained silent a moment too long.
Morgenstern looked at him. “Is that… does that sound silly to you?”
Hans Castorp slowly shook his head.
“It sounds,” he said, “dangerous.”
