In the night – for of course, dear reader, dear sir or madam, in a contemporary novel the night must return, so that one feels that the day is not everything – Hans Castorp woke up. He did not know why. Perhaps the ring had measured something with a vibrating motion; perhaps his body, the honest one, simply had the need to make sure that it was still dark.
He got up, walked quietly through the suite, drank a glass of water. The water tasted of nothing, and precisely that was calming. He looked at the table on which the logbook lay, with the heading “The five resolutions” and the white beneath it. He took the little wooden stick, held it in his hand, and put it back down. Writing seemed to him, on this night, too loud.
He put on a bathrobe – the bathrobe as the uniform of truth – and went out.
The corridors were quiet. The carpets swallowed footsteps. One heard only, in the distance, the hum of the technology, that soothing hum that says: Everything is under control.
He went down the stairs.
The lobby was darker than during the day, but not dark. In houses like these, darkness is dimmed, not allowed. The light under the chandelier was still burning, warm and golden, as if it did not want to sleep. The lilies stood there like female guardians.
And behind the counter stood Kautsonik.
He stood.
He stood as if he had never stopped standing. He was no longer wearing a jacket. His shirt was open at the collar. His shoulders, without the formal armor, looked narrower. He was holding on to the counter with one hand, not obviously, but in such a way that Hans Castorp saw it. And in his face there was something that had not been there during the day: a gray tone, a touch of pain that was not dramatic, but simple.
Hans Castorp stopped.
“Kautsonik,” he said softly.
Kautsonik raised his gaze. He did not smile. But he nodded.
“Sir,” he said, and the politeness was like a reflex, “is awake.”
“Yes,” said Hans Castorp. “And you… are awake too.”
Kautsonik looked at the clock. Not at a watch on his wrist – he wore none. He wore no measurement. He looked at a clock on the wall, old-fashioned, analog, as if it had refused to become digital.
“I am always awake,” he said.
Hans Castorp stepped closer.
“Why are you standing?”, he asked, and he knew that the question was impolite.
Kautsonik shrugged his shoulders. The movement was small, but it cost him something.
“Because I can,” he said. “Still.”
Hans Castorp was silent. He saw how Kautsonik, very briefly, lifted his hand from the counter and then put it back down, as if the hand had been frightened by its own weakness.
“You could sit down,” said Hans Castorp.
Kautsonik shook his head.
“No,” he said. “If I sit down, I won’t get up again. That is…” He searched for the word. “…symbolism, yes. But it is also physiology. The body learns quickly. One should not give it bad lessons.”
Hans Castorp thought of Zieser: “First things first, second things never.” He thought: Kautsonik has his own resolutions.
“You are ill?”, he asked softly.
Kautsonik laughed briefly. It was a dry laugh that almost hurt.
“Ill,” he said. “Here? In a house that has made a program out of illness? No, sir. I am not ill. I am…” He paused. “…old. And being old is, as Dr. Porsche would say, not a condition but a task.”
Hans Castorp swallowed.
“And your task is… to stand,” he said.
Kautsonik nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “My task is to hold the threshold. Until it holds me.”
