They went back nevertheless.
Not heroically, not with a great decision, but with that mixture of persistence and chance that Hans Castorp knows from his life: You go because you go. You go because the feet go. You go because otherwise you stay standing.
Gustav walked slowly.
Hans Castorp walked beside him, kept distance and closeness at the same time, as one does when one does not want to humiliate and not to lose.
In the hotel it was cooler.
The lobby smelled of flowers and polish; a scent that pretends there are no bodies. And precisely for that reason Hans Castorp noticed the second smell: again that disinfectant quality, now stronger, in the corners, in the corridors.
Gustav sat down in one of the upholstered groups.
A waiter came, asked if he could bring him something.
Gustav said:
“Water.”
The waiter brought a bottle.
Hans Castorp looked at the label: “naturale”.
Gustav drank.
He drank too fast, and Hans Castorp thought of dehydration, of circulation, of all that which one knows and yet does not want to know.
“We should…” began Hans Castorp.
Gustav looked at him.
“Do you want to fetch the lion now?” he asked, and suddenly there was, in his voice, an echo of the fable: the tiger who runs to the authority because he is right.
Hans Castorp blushed.
“I don’t want to argue,” he said.
Gustav smiled barely noticeably.
“And yet you do,” he said.
Hans Castorp was silent.
Gustav stood up.
“I’m going up to the room,” he said.
Hans Castorp nodded.
He accompanied him as far as the stairs.
Gustav went up, step by step, as if every step were a sentence.
Hans Castorp remained standing below.
He watched him go.
And he thought, with a clarity that clenched his stomach: This is the moment when one should leave. Now. Not later.
He did not do it.
He stayed.
