In the evening they went to the lagoon.
It was not planned.
Or it was planned, but not spoken. Gustav von A. rarely voiced plans; he wrote them. And sometimes he did not even write them; he simply acted as if they were already written.
They walked through the city, out of the narrow alleys, out of the crowd, out of the noise, and suddenly there lay before them again this expanse, this water that is not sea and not lake, but an in-between state: the lagoon.
The sun was low.
The light was warm.
Not warm like hotel warmth, but warm like a thought that suddenly becomes soft.
The water was green, but it had spots where it shimmered reddish, because the sun colored it that way; and Hans Castorp involuntarily thought of the hibiscus red he had drunk in the morning. Red and green, he thought. Warning and life. Blood and algae. Celebration and illness. All at once.
They sat down on a low wall.
Gustav von A. opened his notebook.
Of course.
Hans Castorp watched him write.
He did not write much.
He wrote as he always wrote: few words, but placed so that they have the effect of a judgment.
Hans Castorp wanted to ask: What are you writing?
He did not ask.
He looked out.
And then he saw, far over there, on the edge of a jetty, the beautiful apparition.
Or someone who resembled her.
Or the idea of her.
It was too far to see details. And perhaps that was good, because details always want to take possession of beauty. He saw only a figure, upright, calm, a little set apart from the rest, like a point in the picture that the eye cannot leave. The figure stood as if it knew it was being seen; and it perhaps did not look back at all, but at the water, just as Hans Castorp looked at the water, only for a different reason.
Hans Castorp felt how his ring, this little priest, indicated a number.
The heart rate was a little higher.
Not dramatic.
Just a hint.
And Hans Castorp thought, very slowly, very clearly: This is the most ridiculous thing.
And at the same time he thought: This is the truest thing.
For the body, esteemed reader, dear reader, is the best storyteller. It does not tell in metaphors. It tells in spikes.
Gustav von A. wrote.
Hans Castorp looked at the notebook.
He did not see what was written there.
But he knew what was written there.
It said there, he thought, probably that word again:
South.
Or perhaps another:
Stay.
For Hans Castorp suddenly remembered the dream he had had in the Sonnenalp, the sentence that had then appeared to him like a sickly-sweet warning:
Venice is less a place than a state: water, beauty, decay, and a faint, sickly-sweet feeling that you are staying too long.
He felt this feeling.
It was faint.
It was sickly-sweet.
It was, like so much, unedifying.
