In the salon – they did not call it a salon here, but something between “Breakfast Lounge” and “Sala delle Colazioni”, a name that was meant to radiate worldliness and non-commitment at the same time – the light was soft and cool. The large windows let the lagoon in, but only as a picture, as through a glass that translates reality into comfort.
It smelled of coffee, of citrus, of polished wood – and, very faintly, beneath it all, of something else: of disinfection.
This smell, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, is a very modern smell. It is not like smoke, not like blood, not like sweat; it is clean, friendly, rational. And yet, if one once takes it seriously, it is a smell of fear.
Hans Castorp sat down at his table.
He was – that must be said – not alone. Gustav von A. was already sitting there, a little off to the side, so that one could see him without his being part of the general bustle. He had that gift that some people possess: to be invisible and yet, when one looks, to form the center.
Hans Castorp went over to him.
“Good morning,” he said.
Gustav von A. raised his gaze.
“Morning,” he said. It did not sound like a greeting, but like a statement.
Hans Castorp sat down.
He looked at Gustav. And he saw, with a mixture of aversion and fascination, that Gustav had once again “made himself up”. Not groomed like a hotel guest; but masked like someone who knows he is being observed. There was a hint of color on his cheeks, a hint of darkness in his brows, a shine on his lips that was not just moisture. It was very little. It was just enough.
And just enough is, as one knows, the most dangerous amount.
“You have…” Hans Castorp began.
Gustav von A. did not interrupt him, but he let his gaze rest a fraction longer on Hans’s face, as if to say: Let us spare ourselves the judgment.
Hans Castorp fell silent.
A waiter brought water. It was in a carafe in which a slice of lemon floated, as if one had to prove to the water that it was healthy. Next to it stood – quite unobtrusively – a small bottle, sealed, made of glass.
Hans Castorp looked at it.
“Only bottled,” said the waiter, and he said it in a tone as if he were speaking about wine.
Hans Castorp looked at him.
“Pardon?” he asked.
The waiter smiled – friendly, empty.
“Recommendation,” he said.
Recommendation.
This word, which in the highlands had the form of care, suddenly took on a different sound here: not wellness, but warning.
Hans Castorp looked toward the entrance. There hung a sign, small, neat, in three languages; it was so inconspicuous that it looked like decor.
It is recommended not to drink tap water.
Si raccomanda di non bere acqua del rubinetto.
It is recommended not to drink tap water.
Recommended.
Not forbidden.
Prohibition is crude. Recommendation is polite – and thus evades responsibility.
Hans Castorp felt something rise up in him, a restless mixture of system two and system one: the slow, deliberate thinking and the quick, impulsive mistrust.
He looked at Gustav.
Gustav von A. had not read the sign. Or, more precisely: he might have read it, but it was not interesting enough for him to take note of it.
“How is it?” Hans Castorp asked cautiously.
“How is what?” said Gustav.
Hans Castorp indicated the sign with a small glance.
Gustav von A. followed the glance without turning his head, read it as if he were reading a weather report.
“Ah,” he said.
This “Ah” was an entire worldview: the world as stage, danger as background, truth as something one takes note of without believing it.
“It smells like… clinic in here,” said Hans Castorp.
Gustav von A. pulled his mouth.
“You say that as if it were something new,” he said.
Hans Castorp smiled briefly.
“For me it is not new,” he said. “But for Venice it is… dispiriting.”
Gustav nodded.
“Venice,” he said, “is always dispiriting. You just have to notice it in the right order.”
A waiter brought fruit.
It lay there, groomed, shiny, cut: melon, pineapple, berries. It looked like a color theory of health.
Hans Castorp thought, involuntarily, of another sign, in another novel: Avoid raw fruit. And he thought how much literature sometimes strives not to become true – and how stubbornly it still does.
“Eat,” said Gustav.
“I…” Hans Castorp hesitated.
“You are usually so…” Gustav made a small, indeterminate hand movement that was at once praise and mockery. “…hygienic.”
Hans Castorp felt the word “hygiene” suddenly become too big for him. Hygiene was, as Dr. Porsche had said, the new morality; but morality in the South has a different temperature.
“It is recommended…” he began.
Gustav von A. did not laugh. He just looked at Hans.
“Recommended,” he repeated. “You believe very much in recommendations.”
Hans Castorp blushed a little, and he was annoyed by it, because blushing is childish.
“You don’t?” he asked.
Gustav von A. lowered his gaze to his notebook, which lay next to the plate as if it were a knife.
“I believe in sentences,” he said.
Hans Castorp felt this answer hit him in the gut; for in it he sensed that old, bourgeois wound that Tonio Kröger once described with such melancholy: the longing for order and the shame of having it.
“Sentences,” Hans Castorp repeated.
“Yes,” said Gustav, and now there was something in his voice that was almost soft. “If I don’t write a sentence, I die.”
Hans Castorp raised his eyebrows.
“That bad?”
Gustav von A. looked at him.
“That simple,” he said.
Hans Castorp fell silent.
He finally took a piece of melon. He did it slowly, as if it were a decision. He chewed. The taste was sweet, watery, foreign. He thought: One can die from a melon. And at the same time he thought: One can die from a sentence. Both are absurd. And both are true.
