They went out through the lobby, under the chandelier, whose electric light, seamless and without white, fell onto the wooden floors. Kautsonik stood, as he often did, somewhere between reception and the world, and when he saw the children, he smiled with that tenacious friendliness of the old hotel man who does not find children “sweet” but “real”.
“Have a nice day,” he said, and it sounded as if he were blessing them.
Outside, air hit them that no longer wanted to bite. The snow lay only in remnants, in hollowed shadows, like an old quarrel that refuses to disappear completely. The meadows were green, and this green, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, is in the mountains always a bit triumphant: it looks as if life had won, and at the same time one knows that it has only won for a while.
They walked along a path that ran at the edge of the resort, past well-tended lawns, the geometric waters of the ponds, the golf course that had been laid into the landscape like a bourgeois philosophy: order, surfaces, rules, and yet the illusion of nature.
From up here – and it was not high in the alpinistic sense, but high in terms of perspective – one could see the house in its full extent: an elongated, terraced structure of wood, glass, and comfort that had settled into the meadows like a large, friendly animal. Paths wound around it, small bridges, streams; and further down ran a road, a gray line on which cars drove that looked like toys, but of course were not.
Hans Castorp thought of Dr. AuDHS’ story of the thought highway, of the glowing letter-vehicles, of the terrarium on the roof. He saw the road and thought: Down there it roars. And up here people act as if they could muffle it.
The children ran ahead, jumped over puddles, doing interval training without knowing it. Frau Morgenstern called after them, not strict, but watchful. Morgenstern walked beside her and Hans Castorp, and Dr. AuDHS walked a little behind them, as if he wanted to observe which parts of the body and which parts of the mind would betray themselves first.
“How are you doing with the ring?”, asked Dr. AuDHS suddenly to Hans Castorp.
Hans Castorp flinched, as if he had been caught thinking. “It…”, he said, and the “it” was remarkable, because it turned the ring into a being. “It is…” He searched for a word that did not sound childish. “…very attentive.”
“That is the problem,” said Dr. AuDHS. “Attention is a predator instinct. When a device is attentive, it turns you into prey.”
Frau Morgenstern laughed briefly. “You talk about devices as if they were animals.”
“Everything is animal,” said Dr. AuDHS. “Only humans pretend to be machines.”
Morgenstern cleared his throat. “Doctor…” He raised the paper a little, as if it were a flag. “And these resolutions…”
“Yes,” said Dr. AuDHS. “Your little private constitution.”
“They work,” said Morgenstern. “Well… inside me. But outside…” He made that movement again, as if something were hanging on him. “…there they pull. There they suck. And I notice it – and I argue.”
“And then you come to the lion,” said Dr. AuDHS.
Morgenstern nodded. “Yes. I go… into escalation.”
“Because you believe,” said Dr. AuDHS, “that justice is a question of instance.”
Frau Morgenstern looked at him, and one could see that she already knew these sentences, in another form, in a private setting, without lions. She said nothing. Her silence was, if you will, partnership: she let him have his conversation, but she kept it in reality.
“The fable,” said Hans Castorp, “was indeed…” He faltered because he did not know how to talk about a fable without making a fool of himself. “…it was apt.”
“Apt,” said Dr. AuDHS, “because it is not about grass, but about time. The lion does not punish the tiger because he is wrong, but because he wastes his time. And time is the only thing that even the king cannot reorder.”
The children came running back because they had seen something: a beetle, a snail, a piece of wood – the reasons of childhood are small but absolute.
“Papa!”, cried the younger child, and in this call, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, there lay more power than in any lion instance: the power of attachment.
Morgenstern bent down, looked, marveled – or at least pretended to marvel. That is also a form of respect.
And at exactly this moment his phone vibrated.
