In the afternoon they went to the water.
The beach was not wild; it was organized. Rows of deckchairs, rows of sunshades, wooden walkways that turned the sand into corridors. With astonishing consistency, order had been brought into the element that is by nature disorderly.
Hans Castorp found it comforting and cheerless at the same time.
He sat down.
Gustav von A. sat down a little further to the right, so that he could see the people who came, went, lay, stood; so that he was at the same time part and observer.
And there she was again, the beautiful apparition.
Hans Castorp had already seen her the day before, and he could not, if he is honest, have said what exactly had moved him so much about her; for beauty does not move through content, but through form. It was a person – no longer young, but young enough not to be old –, with a kind of physicality that did not smell of sport, but of effortlessness. She walked along the water, barefoot, calm, as if she were not entering the world, but only touching it. She did not wear a striking costume; and precisely for that reason she seemed like a costume: as if she were the idea of human.
Gustav von A. saw her.
If you watched Gustav, you could see something drawing together in him: the gaze, the brow, the breathing. He was not lustful. He was not sentimental. He was – and this is the most dangerous kind – aesthetic.
Hans Castorp felt a slight aversion.
Not against the apparition. Against Gustav. Against himself. Against the principle.
“You are looking again…” he began.
Gustav raised a hand, not as a defense, but as a request for silence.
“Let me,” he said.
Hans Castorp fell silent.
He took his thermos flask out of the bag. He had it with him, like a small, ridiculous fetish: the hibiscus white tea, deep red. He drank.
The taste was tart and fresh, and he thought how absurd it is, in a city that is perhaps currently concealing a hygienic catastrophe, to drink a beverage that one has contrived for oneself as hygiene.
He took another sip.
Then he placed the bottle next to the deckchair.
He looked at the water.
Today the lagoon was not only green, it was – how shall one say – vividly green, as if it were lit from within. In the movement of the small waves one saw reflections that shone like scales. And one saw, closer to the shore, a strip that was darker – not black, not brown, but… with a reddish tinge.
Hans Castorp narrowed his eyes.
It was as if something had collected in a bay: a shimmer, a veil. Perhaps algae. Perhaps sand. Perhaps a play of light.
Or something else.
He felt the memory of the rosy water in the tap rise up in him. He felt how the word “water” suddenly gained weight.
“Do you see that?” he asked quietly.
Gustav did not answer.
He did not look at the water. He looked at the apparition.
Hans Castorp felt how, despite everything, he began to stay.
To stay, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, has never been a coincidence with Hans Castorp. It is his talent.
