They walked on, and the path led past a fence. Behind the fence stood cows, large, sluggish, with that calm gaze that only animals have who ask themselves no questions. One cow raised its head, looked at the three of them, chewed as if it were chewing the world. And Hans Castorp thought involuntarily: The lion would be jealous of this calm.
“You see,” said Dr. AuDHS, and he pointed at the cow as if it were an example from a lecture. “System one. Stimulus – reaction. Chew – live.”
Morgenstern smiled.
“And we?” he asked.
“We,” said Dr. AuDHS, “have the misfortune of possessing system two. We can think about chewing. We can optimize chewing. We can ask ourselves whether we chew enough. And then we chew worse.”
Hans Castorp laughed softly, because it was so absurd and therefore so true.
Morgenstern stopped briefly, looked at the grass that stood around their shoes, and said, almost as if to himself:
“It is green.”
“It is green,” confirmed Dr. AuDHS.
Hans Castorp felt the ring on his finger as if it were a third conversation partner, and he thought of the sentence from the music room: Outside, the present stood in green; inside, it stood in words.
“And nevertheless,” said Morgenstern, and now he was serious again, “there are people who say it is blue. And they believe it. And they want me to believe it too.”
Dr. AuDHS looked at him.
“Then,” he said, “the question is not: What color is the grass?”
Morgenstern raised his eyebrows.
“But rather?” he asked.
Dr. AuDHS said, very calmly:
“But rather: Why are you in a meadow where people argue about the color of the grass?”
It was a sentence, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, that is so simple that it seems brutal. For it shifts the responsibility. It says: Go away. And walking away, that too Hans Castorp had learned, is sometimes harder than fighting, because fighting at least gives the feeling of being present.
They walked on for a while, until the facility came closer again and the big house appeared, in its self-confident, bourgeois solidity, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to build a village for health.
At the edge of a path stood a small sign. Written on it, in friendly script, was something about steps. Steps, movement, activity. And Hans Castorp thought: Even the walk here is not simply a walk. It is a module.
He looked at his ring.
The circle was – of course – blue.
He smiled.
The smile was polite.
And a little unsatisfying.
For the grass was green.
And his life, he thought, is perhaps both: green and blue. Reality and display. System one and system two. Donkey and tiger.
And somewhere in between, very quietly, a lion that is tired.
