When they came back, they were standing under the chandelier again. The electric light made no shadows, and yet, thought Hans Castorp, everything has shadows. Even a list.
Morgenstern said goodbye to Hans, because he wanted to go with his family to the children’s area – that is a modern institution that is at once touching and unsatisfying: you delegate childhood to programs so that you yourself can be a program again. Frau Morgenstern nodded to Hans, friendly, brief; the children waved, and the older one said, “Bye, Hans,” as if she had decided to take him into her world, at least for a day.
Dr. AuDHS stayed standing with Hans for a moment.
“And?”, he asked.
Hans Castorp shrugged his shoulders. “I…” He searched for words, and the searching was already system two. “…today I… saw something.”
“Yes,” said Dr. AuDHS. “You saw that optimization does not end with diastole.”
Hans Castorp nodded.
“You are good in muscle,” said Dr. AuDHS. “You are good in plan. You are good in repetition. That is your strength.”
Hans Castorp thought: That is also my curse. But he did not say it.
Dr. AuDHS looked at him, long enough to show that he thought it anyway.
“If you want,” he said, “write it down.”
“What?”
“The resolutions,” said Dr. AuDHS. “Not because you need them like Morgenstern – you have no lilies that force you immediately. But because writing, as you now know, is resistance. Whoever writes, stays.”
Hans Castorp felt something grow warm inside him at this sentence, and he did not know whether it was pride or sadness. Perhaps both. Perhaps that is, he thought, Tonio: warm and sad at the same time.
“And the leech?”, asked Hans Castorp, because he still hadn’t let it go.
Dr. AuDHS smiled crookedly. “The leech,” he said, “is rarely an evil person. He is often just a person with a big hunger and a small system two. But you still don’t have to feed him. Your task is not to satisfy every hunger. Your task is not to let your lilies starve.”
Hans Castorp nodded again. And then, because he suddenly understood something, he asked quietly, “And if you have no lilies?”
Dr. AuDHS looked at him, and in his gaze there was a crack, precisely that crack that Dr. Porsche had when he wavered between warm and professional. It was a crack of humanity.
“Then,” he said, very calmly, “you have to find out what is lily in you. Otherwise at some point you yourself will become leech. Or you will become forest.”
Forest. Hans Castorp did not quite understand, but he felt that it was true: forest is beautiful, but cold. Forest is alone.
Dr. AuDHS patted him, in a very un-doctorly way, on the shoulder and left.
Hans Castorp remained standing, under the chandelier, in the lobby, in the middle of the building, and felt strangely light and strangely heavy at the same time.
