Morgenstern smiled crookedly.
“Yes,” he said. “It is dangerous. Because in doing so you are no longer right.”
Hans Castorp thought: I am also no longer right. I only have life left. And he felt how close these two things lie together.
“Fourth,” said Morgenstern, and his voice became firmer, almost hard, as if here he had the core. “Security.”
He spoke the word as if it were a house one would like to live in.
“I want to create emotional and physical security for my wife and our children,” he said. “No escalations. No threats. No pressure. No manipulative dynamics. Especially not in conflicts. Not in intimacy. Not in money. Not…” He paused, as if there were something he did not want to say. Then he said it after all: “…not in substance.”
Hans Castorp looked at the water. The water carried him, the water made it easy to say things that would be harder in dry air.
“Security,” he said, “is the great promise of these houses. And sometimes it is…” He searched for the word, because he knew that every word is a risk. “…a form of control.”
Morgenstern looked at him, surprised.
“Yes,” he said softly. “But control is not always bad. Sometimes it is… necessary.”
“Yes,” said Hans Castorp. “Sometimes it is what prevents you from becoming the donkey again.”
Morgenstern nodded. The word “donkey” had, in the warmth of the water, suddenly something tragic.
“Fifth,” said Morgenstern, and his voice became softer, as if now came something he loves. “Partnership.”
He smiled, this time without bitterness.
“I want to understand our marriage as teamwork,” he said. “To recognize my wife as an equal partner. As the mother of our children. To share everyday life. Not to devalue. Not against each other. Cooperation. Appreciation.”
Hans Castorp heard the word “teamwork” and felt, with a quiet, Tonio-like pain, how modern and how foreign it was to him. For Hans Castorp had, despite all the people around him, despite all encounters, basically always been alone. He was, if one may call it that, a loner of the bourgeois kind: not rebellious, not romantic, but simply someone who has settled in the in‑between spaces.
“Team,” he said slowly. “That is a beautiful word. And a strict one. It means that you are not allowed to disappear.”
Morgenstern looked at him. “You speak as if you knew something about it.”
Hans Castorp smiled. It was a polite smile. And a little unedifying.
“I know,” he said, “how to disappear without going away.”
Morgenstern was silent. One heard the soft splashing of the water, the humming of the machinery, the distant laughter of a child somewhere in the hall. Above them, high up, one could see a patch of pale sky through the skylight.
“Why are you telling me this?” asked Hans Castorp after a while.
Morgenstern looked at his phone, as if he had to make sure that the words were still there.
“Because yesterday I…” He swallowed. “Because yesterday I stood in that photo booth, with a wig on my head and a donkey face in front of my face – and because in doing so, in this ridiculous state, I suddenly realized that I have been masking myself for a long time. And that it is not funny. Not for my wife.”
Hans Castorp thought of the woman from the night, of the sentence: And yet today everything is a mask.
“And why me?” he asked.
Morgenstern looked at him, and in his gaze there was something that Hans Castorp did not like to see: the trust of a stranger.
“Because you looked at me,” said Morgenstern. “Did not laugh. Not so…” He made a small gesture, as if he meant the whole audience. “…effect‑reverent. But… as if you had understood that it hurts.”
Hans Castorp was silent.
He understood. And he did not know whether he wanted to understand.
