Packing is, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, one of the most disagreeable activities, because it forces us to arrange our needs. One has to decide what is essential, and in doing so one must inevitably realize that very little is essential – and that we still take a great deal with us, because without things we feel naked.
Hans Castorp stood in his suite – Summit Suite, or whatever it was called –, and the balcony with glass balustrade lay outside like a stage. The QR code with which one could share the view was still there. The sky was clear. The mountains stood as if they had no understanding of travel.
The two tins were on the table.
The yellow one. The green one.
Sun and grass.
He looked at them, and he felt how ridiculous it is to pack powder like a sacrament, and how serious it is at the same time, because in this ridiculousness lies his new life.
He took the yellow tin, unscrewed it. The smell of turmeric rose to meet him, warm and strange, as if India were in the Alpine hotel.
He took the green tin, unscrewed it. A fine, grassy scent, matcha, something bitter, something young.
He closed both again.
He placed them next to each other.
He thought: If I take them with me, I take the mountain with me. If I leave them behind, I leave the mountain behind.
He looked at the ring.
The ring shone.
It was the third object that inevitably went along, because it was not even luggage, but body.
Ring.
Powder.
Notebook.
Three things.
Three modern relics.
He took the notebook, put it in his pocket.
He took the tins.
He imagined himself sitting on a train tomorrow morning and trying to weigh out three grams. He had to laugh. It was a quiet laugh.
Then he became serious.
He opened the drawer in which the fakir mat lay, this black, spiky surface that had helped him in recent nights to lie still, so still that the machine took him for sleeping.
He looked at it.
He imagined spreading it out in Venice, on a bed, while outside water splashes.
He closed the drawer.
No, he thought.
Not take everything.
Instead, almost unconsciously, he took the little wooden stick from the pocket of his bathrobe, the old, ridiculous leitmotif, this thing that had once been a marshmallow stick and then a writing instrument and then an ID.
He held it in his hand.
“You can’t write with this,” he had said.
“Yes, you can,” someone had replied. “If you are prepared for it to smudge.”
He put it away.
Yes, he thought.
The smudging thing has to come along.
Because when he goes south, he is not only going into a different landscape, but into a different kind of truth – and truth smudges.
He packed.
He did not pack much.
A few shirts. A few trousers. Some workout gear – and he had to shake his head at himself, because training had by now become part of his identity like the hat used to be. A small container for powder that he had got from the kitchen, a jar with a screw lid into which he filled portions, as if he were the pharmacist of his own health.
That is, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, the modern thing: One no longer travels with toothbrush and shirt; one travels with programs.
He closed the suitcase.
The sound was dry.
It sounded like a verdict.
