It didn’t vibrate loudly, it didn’t ring – modern devices are discreet, but discreet does not mean harmless; it only means that the attack is quiet. Morgenstern reached into his pocket, pulled it out, looked at the display, and you could see something change in his face.
A small line around the mouth. A brief hardening of the forehead. The gaze that turns inward.
“Who is it?”, asked Mrs. Morgenstern calmly.
Morgenstern hesitated for a second. And this hesitation, dear female reader, dear male reader, was already system two. Because system one would have lied or exploded. System two hesitates because it calculates.
“Mr. Bender,” said Morgenstern.
The name meant nothing to Hans Castorp. But he saw how Mrs. Morgenstern’s eyes narrowed for a moment, not angrily, but watchfully. In this narrowing lay the whole story that Hans did not know.
“The leech,” said Dr. AuDHS dryly, as if he were reading from a protocol.
Morgenstern flinched, half amused, half caught. “Yes,” he said quietly. “So… yes.”
The phone vibrated again. A message. Another one.
Morgenstern looked at it. His thumb already wanted to start typing, as if by itself. System one.
Dr. AuDHS watched him. You could practically see him drawing a curve in his head: pulse, stress, pattern.
“What does he want?”, asked Dr. AuDHS.
Morgenstern read. “He writes…” He swallowed. “…that I have to help him immediately. It’s urgent. And that I…” He twisted his mouth. “…that I promised him.”
“Did you?”, asked Dr. AuDHS.
“No,” said Morgenstern, almost angrily. “Of course not. I… I once said: If you need something, get in touch. Like that. A sentence like that. And now…”
“Ah,” said Dr. AuDHS. “A sentence that claims blue grass.”
Hans Castorp thought of the chapter “The blue grass,” of the passage in which Morgenstern had still been a donkey, a monkey in a dinner jacket and donkey mask, and of the five resolutions that were written down back then like a remedy. The recurrence was not accidental. In this house nothing that repeated itself was accidental.
Mrs. Morgenstern took the younger child by the hand. She said nothing. But her hand was a reminder: Here are the lilies.
Morgenstern inhaled. You could see how he almost wanted to count his breath, as if it were an exercise.
“Respect,” he murmured. And then, a little louder, as if he were speaking not only to himself but to his system one: “Respect.”
He did not put the phone away. He held it. He held it the way you hold a snake: carefully, but firmly.
“What is respect now?”, asked Hans Castorp, and he himself did not know why he asked; perhaps because he wanted to learn what cannot be measured.
Morgenstern looked at him. There was a brief, almost comical seriousness in his gaze. “Respect is,” he said, “that I don’t pretend it doesn’t matter that he’s writing. But also…” He looked at his wife. “…that I don’t pretend it’s more important than…” He broke off, because the word “family” would have been too heavy here.
Dr. AuDHS nodded. “Compassion?”
“Compassion,” said Morgenstern, and it sounded as if he had to prove it to himself. “Compassion means: I see that he is panicking. But I… I don’t have to solve his panic.”
Mrs. Morgenstern raised her eyebrows, very slightly. That was agreement.
“Responsibility?”, asked Dr. AuDHS.
Morgenstern laughed briefly, without humor. “Responsibility means: I taught him that this works. I… fed him.”
“Safety?”, asked Dr. AuDHS.
Morgenstern swallowed. “Safety means: I’m not doing this now. Not here. Not in front of the children.”
“Partnership?”, said Dr. AuDHS.
Morgenstern looked at his wife. And in this look there was suddenly something that Hans Castorp, the man of the in-between spaces, recognized as one of the rare, beautiful things: a silent plea for help that is not weakness, but trust.
Mrs. Morgenstern nodded once. “I’m here,” she said. It was not a big word. But it was everything.
Morgenstern typed.
He did not type much. No novel, no justification, no discussion about green or blue grass. He wrote, briefly, politely, the way you draw a boundary.
Then he put the phone away.
It kept vibrating, but in his pocket it vibrated like an insect that you don’t feed.
“And now?”, asked Hans Castorp.
Morgenstern exhaled. He looked at his children, who were once again looking at a beetle as if the world were not complicated. “Now,” he said, “I move on.”
Dr. AuDHS smiled, and the smile was not mocking, but appreciative. “You have just,” he said, “switched on system two. That is exhausting. But, as Zieser says: building muscle is simple, but hard. And relationship is…” He paused briefly, as if searching for the right word. “…even harder.”
Hans Castorp felt a stab. Not because he wanted to contradict, but because he knew that he had no practice in it.
