They went back into the lobby.
After the back office, the lobby had suddenly become a theater again. The light was too beautiful, the wood too warm, the air too perfumed. The guests moved in it like figures who do not notice that they are being played.
Kautsonik stepped behind the counter as if he had never been away. And immediately he was again the porter, the threshold man, the polite guardian.
A woman came up to him, spruced up, with a smile that smelled of entitlement.
“Excuse me,” she said, “we would like a different pillow. This one is…”
“Too soft?” said Kautsonik.
The woman blinked. She had not expected to be understood before she had explained herself.
“Yes,” she said.
Kautsonik nodded, as if that were the simplest thing in the world.
“Of course,” he said. “Soft is everywhere today. Sometimes you need hardness to sleep.”
He said it so dryly that it sounded like a joke. And yet it was true.
Hans Castorp stood a step back and watched. He saw how Kautsonik, with one reach into a drawer, pulled out a card, how he noted something, how he sent a message to someone – and how the woman, who had just been demanding, suddenly became grateful because she felt seen.
That, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, is the art of guest relations: You give the person the feeling that he is unique by entering him into a field.
A child ran past, almost stumbled, caught itself. The mother called out in fright. Kautsonik did not look, but he knew it. He knew everything that happened in this lobby because his body was tuned to it like a measuring device.
Hans Castorp felt a twinge of admiration. And again that Tonio-sting: warm and sad at the same time. For admiration is often the form in which longing disguises itself.
“You are good,” he said quietly.
Kautsonik did not answer immediately. He just smiled, as if Hans Castorp had said something funny.
“I am here,” he finally said. “That is all. Being here is my profession.”
Hans Castorp nodded. Being here. The Magic Mountain had been a novel of being-there. And Hans Castorp had stayed back then. He had stayed until time itself swallowed him.
He looked at the sentence on the wall.
Joy to him who comes. Joy to him who goes.
And he saw, as if seeing for the first time, that between the two sentences, quite imperceptibly, there was a small black eye: a camera, discreetly embedded in the wood paneling. The eye was so small that it did not want to disturb. And precisely for that reason it was so powerful.
Hans Castorp felt his back grow cold.
“You see everything,” he said.
Kautsonik followed his gaze. He nodded.
“No,” he said. “Not I. The technology. I see only faces. The technology sees time. And time is what people pay for here.”
Hans Castorp thought of Dr. Porsche: “Medical consultations are billed according to the time required.” Time required. Here everything was billed according to the time required. Even friendliness.
“And if I…,” Hans Castorp began.
Kautsonik looked at him.
“If sir wishes to leave,” he said calmly, “then you go.”
Hans Castorp blinked. The sentence was so simple that it almost hurt.
“So simple?” he asked.
Kautsonik smiled.
“No,” he said. “Not simple. But clear. People confuse difficult with unclear. Yet difficult is often very clear.”
Hans Castorp was silent. He thought of System Two. He thought of Morgenstern, who draws boundaries. He thought of the five resolutions he had not yet written. He thought of his white spots.
He thought: Perhaps leaving is also a resolution.
And while he thought this, he saw a man, slim, in a coat that did not smell of sports and not of wellness, but of the city, walk through the lobby. The man did not walk like a guest who is arriving, but like someone who is already there, even if he has just arrived. He carried a notebook under his arm.
Gustav von A., thought Hans Castorp, or someone like him.
The man did not stop. He walked on, as if the lobby were only a way station. And Hans Castorp felt how a small pull in him pointed south, without his knowing why.
Kautsonik followed his gaze.
“Ah,” he said.
Hans Castorp looked at him.
“Do you know him?” he asked.
Kautsonik shrugged his shoulders.
“I know everyone,” he said. “I do not know their inner self. But I know their arrival. And their departure.”
He said “departure” with an emphasis that Hans Castorp did not like.
“And yours?” asked Hans Castorp, and he himself heard that the question went too far.
Kautsonik did not smile.
“My departure,” he said, “will take place here.”
Hans Castorp swallowed.
Kautsonik, quite imperceptibly, straightened his trouser leg again. A small tug. A small sign of pain.
“Sir,” he said, and his voice became businesslike again, “do you need anything else? Another pillow? Another world?”
Hans Castorp smiled, and the smile was not happy.
“No,” he said. “Just…” He broke off.
“Just?” asked Kautsonik.
Hans Castorp looked at the lilies. He thought of Dr. AuDHS’ sentence: “Otherwise you will become forest.” Forest is beautiful, but cold.
“Just a bit of white,” he said.
Kautsonik nodded as if he understood.
“White,” he said. “There is enough of that here. Snow, paper, blankets. But beware: white is also the color of lists.”
Hans Castorp nodded slowly.
He left.
