It is cheerless, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, how much getting up in such houses is already a decision. The floor is warm, the air is warm, the blanket is warm; and yet one must rise, as if life were a duty. Hans Castorp rose. He walked slowly, not because he was weak, but because slowness, in a house of measurements, can be a last form of self-determination.
He walked through corridors in which you do not hear the steps, because carpets today are no longer merely comfort, but morality: they muffle the noises of the individual so that the individual does not think himself so important. He passed doors behind which people lay or sat or breathed, and above each door there seemed to be, as a kind of substitute for holy pictures, a little sign with a word announcing the function of the room. Breathing. Sleep. Recovery. Mindfulness – one would like to laugh, if it were not meant so seriously.
At the end of the corridor there was a small station: a niche in which water was ready, lemon slices, mint leaves, these alibis of health. Hans Castorp took a glass, drank, and the water was cool and correct. He thought that correctness is a taste.
As he put the glass down, he heard a voice behind him.
“Good morning, Mr. Castorp.”
He no longer froze as much as yesterday; he had, as one gets used to everything indecent, become a little used to the fact that one could call him by his name. And yet something in him remained that contracted as soon as a human being – not some system, not some list – uttered this word that perhaps was not his word.
He turned around.
Dr. AuDHS stood there, dapper, inconspicuously expensive, with that smooth calm that says: I am not here privately. His gaze was alert, not curious; and precisely this absence of curiosity was cheerless, because it indicates that what he sees belongs in a drawer that is already prepared.
“Doctor,” said Hans Castorp, and the form of address was for him, as we know, a refuge: when the name wobbles, the office holds.
Dr. AuDHS smiled, gently and without warmth.
“You were in the Blue yesterday,” he said, as if he were speaking of a department.
“Yes,” said Hans Castorp.
“And you slept,” the doctor continued, and now a fine crack appeared in his tone: a hint of satisfaction, as if sleep were a successful result. “Good. Sleep up here is … precious.”
Hans Castorp nodded. He felt the little wooden stick in his pocket like a second, secret spine.
“I want to,” said Dr. AuDHS, “make a recommendation to you.”
The word recommendation is in such houses a polite compulsion. It sounds like freedom and means organization. Hans Castorp remained silent. Silence is, as we have seen, his way of agreeing without surrendering.
Dr. AuDHS indicated down the corridor with a small, unobtrusive gesture, as if not only a door but an idea lay there.
“We have,” he said, “a preventive medical examination that I would recommend to you – best right at the beginning of the year. An annual check. Not because something is wrong. But because …” He paused, as if searching for a word that is at once honest and brandable. “…because up here one does not wait until something happens.”
Hans Castorp smiled politely.
“Up here people do not like to wait at all,” he said.
“Exactly,” said the doctor. “Waiting is down below. Up here is …” He made a small pause in which his gaze showed something unpleasant for a fraction of a second: enthusiasm. “…peak form.”
He did not say the word in German, but in that English slant that gives our time the appearance of science, even when it is only advertising.
Hans Castorp felt a laugh sitting in his throat – not a funny one, rather a bitter one. Peak form. He thought of Kautsonik, who wanted to stand until he could no longer stand. He thought of Morgenstern, who wanted to learn teamwork. And he thought of himself, who had disappeared without going away. Peak form, he thought, is sometimes only the form one finds in order to stay.
“And who carries out this peak form?” he asked.
Dr. AuDHS raised his hand as if presenting a figure.
“Dr. med. Wendelin Porsche,” he said.
The name struck Hans Castorp’s consciousness like a small, ridiculous firework: Porsche. Speed. Performance. And now of all things a doctor. It was as if modernity had decided to caricature itself.
“Porsche,” repeated Hans Castorp.
Dr. AuDHS smiled thinly.
“Yes,” he said. “He is, if you will, the engine of our Health department.”
The word engine was a bit too fitting not to be meant.
“And why do you recommend this to me?” asked Hans Castorp.
Dr. AuDHS looked at him, and now there was in his gaze something that one could call care, if one is benevolent – and access, if one is strict.
“Because your body,” he said calmly, “was loud yesterday.”
Hans Castorp felt a small stab in his chest. Loud. The word hit him because it did not speak of the fireworks, but of him.
“I only twitched,” he said.
“Twitching is a statement,” replied Dr. AuDHS. “The mind can pretend to be uninvolved. The body cannot. It is honest.”
Hans Castorp remained silent. He thought: Honesty is dangerous.
“Besides,” the doctor continued, and here the crack in his professionalism appeared again, “medical consultations are billed according to the time required. So it is …” He searched, and one could see that he – the man of abbreviations – sometimes also wrestles with terms. “…time-economic if you know right at the beginning where you stand.”
Time-economic.
Hans Castorp thought: The Magic Mountain was a school of time. The Sonnenalp is a cash desk of time.
“Good,” he said.
He did not say it enthusiastically. He said it as one signs into a register: with a small inner withdrawal.
Dr. AuDHS nodded contentedly.
“I will have the appointment arranged for you,” he said. “And – Mr. Castorp –” He paused, as if he wanted to add something that is not in the brochure. “Do not take it as a diagnosis. Take it as …”
“Program,” said Hans Castorp.
Dr. AuDHS smiled again.
“You learn quickly,” he said.
Then he was gone – not hastily, more like someone who was never really there.
Hans Castorp remained standing. He drank the last sip of lemon water as if he had to cleanse himself before going into the chapel. Then he walked, not fast, not slow, in the direction of HEALTH.
