After a few days – one must not think that the insights of modernity come only after months and years; they come quickly, because the devices are fast – the signet ring that Dr. Wendelin Porsche had laid close to Hans’s heart, or more precisely: on his hand, began to make itself felt.
It was, outwardly considered, an innocent object. A slender ring of dark metal, smooth, without stone, without ornament; it was almost so discreet that it could have disguised itself as jewelry. But discretion, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, is in our time a form of power: what is discreet appears harmless, and precisely for that reason it penetrates more deeply.
Hans Castorp wore it on his finger, as one wears a trifle that one soon forgets. He did not forget it. He could not forget it, because when he forgot, he was suddenly reminded of it again – not by pain, not by pressure, but by light. A brief chime on the hand device, a small buzzing, a friendly notice: New evaluation available.
So friendly, so busy, so unsatisfying.
The ring measured, as Dr. Porsche had explained in that warm-fatherly and at the same time brittle tone that turns every care into an assignment, heart rate, movement, temperature – and from this, as people said today, one made “sleep”. Sleep, as if it were a product that can be mixed from three ingredients.
Hans Castorp, who valued concepts only insofar as they helped to explain sensations, had at that time received this explanation with that polite compliance that was his own. He had nodded. He had signed without signing: by wearing the ring.
Now, however, after a few nights in which he had, like a conscientious pupil, adhered to Dr. Porsche’s new order – hypertrophy, nutrition, stress reduction, sleep and activity, mental as well as physical – the device determined what a person, if he were honest, would know anyway:
That sleep does not obey.
