At night, esteemed reader, what has been heard continues to work. It does not work as a clear idea, but as visual material, as smell, as rhythm. And when sleep – as with Hans Castorp – has in any case become a problem, then the night becomes a stage on which the thoughts that were well-groomed during the day suddenly wear masks.
Hans Castorp went to his room, drew the curtains, looked once more at the ring – a reflex – and then put the handset away. He did, as he had learned since the fakir mat, to capture things in rituals so that they would not overwhelm him. He lay down on the mat, this prickly surface of obedience that is both torture and comfort; he felt the points in his back as if they were saying to him: Here you are. Here is your body.
He took the neck roll as well, which Herr Kautsonik – with that discreet dignity that he has even in parcels – had had brought to his room. He lay, breathed, and noticed how the stress, this “normally high” inside, is expressed not in thoughts but in tissue: in shoulder, jaw, belly.
Then he began – as Dr. AuDHS had advised him – to tell himself a story.
And here, esteemed reader, we must bring the narrative under suspicion that it deals with stories. For sleep is perhaps the only time in which the human being is not yet optimized, but instead fabulates. And to fabricate stories, as you know, is dangerous. It is the freedom of the mind.
