In the morning – for of course there is always a morning, even after the most extravagant masquerade, and the morning is the real morality – Hans Castorp sat in the dining hall, which was no longer called dining hall, but bore some name that sounded like international comfort. In front of him a plate, white, large, and on it the colorful anatomy of the luxury breakfast: salmon, orange and silky; a piece of ham, pale and correct; a fried egg whose yolk shone like a little sun; red, pickled pieces that tasted of onion and looked like blood; dark slices of beet that were so deep a violet that they seemed almost black; along with a little heap of orange grains, caviar-like, as if someone had bought the sea its eggs; slices of cucumber, tomatoes, a bit of greens; and a piece of dark bread, heavy, honest, with a dab of butter that clung to it like an alibi.
He ate slowly. Not because he was full – but because slow eating is the last form of control when the night has taken it from you.
And while he ate, he thought: So this is the second Walpurgis Night. It is no longer on the Berghof, no longer in the dining hall with lookouts at the doors; it is in the wellness resort, on frosty paving, between popcorn and plexiglass, between photo booth and ice bar, between bubbles in the water and bubbles in the wine, between the date in the ice and the smoke in the sky.
He thought: You can desert from a war. You can desert from a life. But you do not desert from time. You can only – if you are lucky – get it, for one evening, to pretend that it is not there.
He pushed the piece of bread a little to the side, looked at the yolk, this little sun on white, and smiled.
The smile was polite. And a little unsatisfying.
