When Hans Castorp left the health area, the snow outside was still white, and the sun stood as if it had no doubt. But inside him something had shifted.
He carried the cans in his hand like a ridiculous treasure. The yellow can, the green can. Sun and grass, he thought. And he had to think involuntarily of Morgenstern: of blue grass, of distortion, of words that make realities. Here they made reality with powder.
On the way back he met – or believed he met – Gustav von A. once more. He was now no longer in the waiting area, but at the end of a corridor, as if he were waiting without waiting. Next to him a window, with snow lying behind it. Gustav von A. looked at Hans Castorp, looked at the cans, and his gaze showed something that was almost pity – or envy, one could not tell.
“You have had yourself improved,” he said softly.
Hans Castorp shrugged his shoulders.
“Recommendation,” he said.
Gustav von A. nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Recommendations are the gentlest form of command.”
Then he turned away, and Hans Castorp saw how Gustav von A. wrote a word in his notebook, very small, as if it were not allowed to be loud.
Hans Castorp could not read it.
But he thought, without knowing it: South.
