In the evening, a figure appeared who could be called Tonio.
She was not called Tonio, or she was called Tonio, and it did not matter; for Tonio, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, is less a name than a position: the position between worlds, between languages, between longing and mockery. Tonio is the person who would like to be bourgeois and cannot, because he sees too much; and who is artistic without wanting to be, because he cannot help but see.
Hans Castorp sat again in the salon, because Gustav von A. wanted to be in the salon, as one wants to be in a temple when one cannot pray. The piano was opened. A person – young, but not childlike, slender, but not thin – sat down at it. The hands were beautiful, that is something one can hardly describe without becoming ridiculous; and yet hands are often the most honest thing about a person, because they cannot lie as well as the face.
The person at the piano played.
Not loudly.
Not virtuosic in the sense of demonstration.
She played in such a way that one noticed: Here one does not play in order to please; here one plays because otherwise it would be unbearable.
Hans Castorp listened.
He listened, and in doing so he felt something that he had only rarely felt in the Sonnenalp: that his inner self did not break down into values, but into mood. Music is, if you will, the opposite of bestforming; it is not measurable, and yet it is effect.
After the piece the person stood up.
She did not bow.
She only nodded, as if to say: Yes, I know that it was there.
And then she walked past Hans Castorp.
Hans Castorp looked at her.
The person looked at him.
And said, in a German that smelled a little of the North, a little of the South:
“You are… not from here.”
Hans Castorp smiled.
“You can see it?” he asked.
“You can hear it,” said the person. “And one sees… something else.”
“What?” asked Hans Castorp.
The person hesitated.
Then she said, softly, as if it were a confession:
“You look as if you were afraid that beauty might do something to you.”
Hans Castorp felt a small stab.
He thought of Dr. AuDHS, of his gaze.
“Perhaps it does,” he said.
The person nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “It does.”
And then, as if she wanted to save herself from sentimentality, she added, ironically, almost mockingly:
“But one keeps coming back because of it.”
“Why?” asked Hans Castorp.
The person shrugged her shoulders.
“Because we are bourgeois,” she said. “We love order. And beauty is the order that does not have to explain itself.”
Hans Castorp looked at her.
“Do you practice music… professionally?” he asked, and it was, for him, an unusual word in his mouth, because in his old life he had loved categories that are simpler.
The person smiled.
“I am… employed,” she said. “That is an art too.”
Hans Castorp laughed briefly.
“And you?” asked the person. “What are you?”
Hans Castorp thought of the Sonnenalp, of the ring, of the blood pressure, of the diastole, of the expression “normally high”, of the yellow and green powders, of the words “Guest Relations”, of Morgenstern’s resolutions, of Gustav von A. and his notebook, of the word “South”.
He could have said: I am a deserter.
He could have said: I am a guest.
He could have said: I am a project.
Instead he said, and this was perhaps the first time that he said a sentence that did not consist of measurement:
“I am… on the way.”
The person nodded.
“That is dangerous,” she said.
“Beautiful and unedifying,” murmured Hans Castorp.
The person laughed softly.
“Exactly,” she said.
And left.
Hans Castorp remained seated.
He looked at his hands.
He thought, very slowly: That was Tonio.
And he felt, without understanding it, that in this city he would not only travel, but learn.
