Hans Castorp looked at the sentence on the wall.
Joy to him who comes. Joy to him who goes.
He thought of Kautsonik’s small addition in the back office: And duty to him who stays.
“You are right,” said Hans Castorp suddenly. “The sentence leaves something out.”
Kautsonik raised his brows.
“Which sentence?”, he asked, as if he were a man who presupposes nothing.
Hans Castorp pointed upwards.
“That one,” he said.
Kautsonik looked. His gaze was tired, but clear.
“Oh that one,” he said. “Yes. It is beautiful. Beautiful is always suspicious.”
Hans Castorp smiled. It was a smile without joy.
“Joy to him who comes,” he said.
“Yes,” said Kautsonik.
“Joy to him who goes,” said Hans Castorp.
Kautsonik nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “But most people don’t want to go. Most people want to stay. And those who have to go…” He paused briefly and looked at the lilies. “They don’t go voluntarily.”
He said the sentence the way he had said it on New Year’s Day, as if it were a refrain you never get rid of. And Hans Castorp felt that this sentence, in the night, was even heavier.
“And you?”, asked Hans Castorp.
Kautsonik looked at him.
“I,” he said, “want to go. But I want to… here.”
Hans Castorp understood. He understood with a kind of physical clarity: The man who registers all departures wants to have his own departure registered, as if it were a proper procedure.
“Why here?”, he asked.
Kautsonik looked into the hall, as if he did not see wood and light, but decades.
“Because I was needed here,” he said. “That is my bourgeois warmth. Others have families. I have guests. That is cheerless, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, but it is true. And if you don’t have lilies, then you are glad if at least you are…” He again searched for a word. “…useful.”
Hans Castorp felt the Tonio-stab. Warm and sad at the same time.
“That is…”, he began.
Kautsonik raised his hand.
“No,” he said. “You don’t need to pity me. Pity is a bad currency. You know that.”
Hans Castorp nodded. He thought of the woman from Walpurgis Night, of her eyes, of her mocking smile.
“And,” said Kautsonik, and his voice grew quieter, “it is also not just pathos. It is… practical. I know every shadow here. I know every door. I know every step. I know the rhythm. If I am to die somewhere, then where I know the rhythm.”
Rhythm. Time. Magic Mountain. Hans Castorp felt how things contracted within him.
“You sell longevity here,” he said.
Kautsonik smiled crookedly.
“Yes,” he said. “And I sell farewell.”
Hans Castorp was silent.
Kautsonik stood there, under the sentence on the wall, under the chandelier, under the warm staging; and Hans Castorp suddenly saw how absurd it was, how comical and how abysmal: that in a house that has made a program out of the fear of death, the most faithful person is the one who chooses death as his final service.
Kautsonik lifted his hand from the counter, very slowly, as if it were an exercise. He straightened up, a little too straight.
“Sir,” he said, and the old politeness returned like a uniform button, “should sleep. Sleep is…” He paused briefly, as if he had paid attention in the house’s lectures. “…hygiene.”
Hans Castorp smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “I have heard that.”
Kautsonik nodded.
“Then,” he said, “go.”
Hans Castorp remained standing for a moment longer. He looked at the sentence on the wall. He looked at the lilies. He looked at Kautsonik, who stood as if standing were his last resistance against disappearing.
Then he turned around.
He went.
And as he walked, he thought – slowly, deliberately, system two – that perhaps what is a lily in him does not lie in the house, not in the program, not in the ring, not in the powder, not in the logbook.
Perhaps it lies in the going.
The next morning the logbook was still there.
The heading: The five resolutions.
Underneath: White.
Hans Castorp took the little wooden stick.
He did not write.
He put it down.
And for the first time he felt that not writing was not only escape, but decision.
For that too, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, is a resolution:
Not to have everything entered.
