There are evenings, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, that – as they say – “are on the calendar”, spruced up, numbered, neatly entered, and there are evenings that, although of course they could also be dated, nevertheless resist order, because they lie on a boundary where time itself, this very bourgeois, very contractual principle, briefly loses its composure. Among these boundary evenings belongs carnival, belongs leap evening – and belongs, in our present, New Year’s Eve, this strange festival for citizens and children, which masks itself with champagne and arms itself with fireworks so that the transition from the one to the other does not look like what it truly is: a quiet, imperceptible step.
Hans Castorp knew this without knowing it. He was not a man of concepts, but of sensations; and yet, since he had – in a manner that we do not wish to describe further here, inasmuch as the narrative should not fall under suspicion of giving instructions – withdrawn from the war and saved himself over into a life that one may, if one is strict, call luxurious and, if one is mild, only consistent, he had developed a special relationship to everything that lies between the orders. For the deserter, even if he sleeps in hotels and is served by impeccable waiters, inwardly remains a man of the in‑between spaces: between name and alias, between guilt and self‑protection, between visibility and mask.
And now he was up again, in the highlands of comfort, where one does not endure the cold but curates it; where snow is not “weather” but décor; and where one sells the mortal a membership in the promise of longevity as if it were a fitness program. The house – it bore a name that sounded like sun and yet, unedifying enough, had a rescue device lying in the snow, an orange ring on which the name stood in black letters, as though the mountains themselves wanted to remind one that every pleasure in the high‑altitude climate needs a rescue service. This ring lay half in the white, half on the dark paving – a silliness, an advertisement, a symbol. Such is modernity.
Outside, in the courtyard of black, shiny stones, between stone wall and frosty shrubbery, stood round tables covered with white cloths, as if they were altars. And they were that too, only that the cult no longer applied to the saints, but to sugars, fats, flavorings and the sweet promise that today one may “have everything” for once. In shallow wooden boxes lay small balls of chocolate, light and dark, in rows, as if a passion for order were at work here that does not even permit pleasure to be disorderly. Next to them: sandwich cookies, ring‑shaped pastries, foam pieces in pastel colors that looked as if someone had portioned clouds; and in a glass were wooden sticks, ready to bore into marshmallows or into hot drinks that one designates with a word that sounds a little like childhood and a little like comfort: “cocoa”.
The children – for there were children, and that is important, because in such establishments children are the true bringers of truth: they do not test the splendor for etiquette, but for edibility – stood at the edges of the tables and looked, with that greedy innocence that moves adults and at the same time unmasks them, at the white, pink and green foam cubes as if they were gemstones. Adults stood beside them and pretended that their attention applied to the conversation, while their hands were already groping for napkins. Over all this lay a light, cold and kind: winter sun.
And then – as if someone had replaced nature with an architect’s whim – there stood these transparent domes, geodesic bubbles of plastic and framework, in which people sat as if in an exhibition. One saw them through the milky, ribbed skin, a little distorted, a little distant; and Hans Castorp, who had known the Berghof era, involuntarily thought of those reclining halls that had once commanded the regime of air cures, only that now one no longer “reclines” for the sake of healing, but sits for the sake of privilege: privacy as a wellness service. It was, if you will, the modern reclining cure: not with blankets and thermometers, but with plexiglass domes and sheepskins.
In such a dome lay a white fur like freshly fallen snow. A small table stood on it, black and thin‑legged, and on it: glasses, a wine glass, water glasses, a lantern in which a flame flickered – a very small, very brave flame in the midst of all this well‑organized cold. And at the entrance sat – as if he were the guardian of this glassy in‑between realm – a small brown dog with curls, in a little coat, spruced up like a patient. One could, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, at this point think of the poodle that once, in another great German work, seduced the good doctor; one could, if one is inclined to amuse oneself, recognize in this little animal the devil of the present: no longer black, no longer sulfurous, but teddy‑like, suitable for therapy, and yet guardian of a threshold.
