In the breakfast room sat Gustav von A.
He did not sit by the window, because he was not the kind of man who needed a view; he sat at a table positioned so that he could see who came in. Control is also a form of aesthetics, and Gustav, like all creators who have made a name for themselves, had a special relationship with control: it is what you need to turn inner chaos into form.
He looked up when Hans came, and smiled.
The smile was, as so often with him, not warm, but correct – and precisely for that reason it had something touching about it. For correctness is often only the form in which people hide their tenderness when they are ashamed.
“You are early,” said Gustav.
Hans Castorp sat down.
“I…” he began, and realized how unedifying it was, in a city that lives from beauty, to talk about sleep.
Gustav looked at the ring on Hans’s hand.
“The little spy,” he said softly.
Hans Castorp looked at his hand as if he had forgotten that it was there.
“It said,” said Hans, and one could hear how ridiculous it is to say that, “that my REM…”
Gustav raised his hand.
“Spare me that,” he said, and it did not sound harsh, but tired. “Venice is not the place for metrics. Venice is the place for…” He paused briefly, searched for a word, and one could see how he, the man of words, suddenly became at a loss. “…for mistakes.”
Hans Castorp was silent.
The waiter set down coffee, set down something sweet, set down water. The water in the glass looked clear. Too clear. As if it had to prove itself.
“Have you heard it?” Hans finally asked.
Gustav raised an eyebrow.
“What exactly?” he asked, as if he already knew and only wanted to make Hans say it. That is a form of pedagogy that writers often possess: they let others speak the truth so as not to be guilty themselves.
“The recommendation,” said Hans.
Gustav smiled.
“Ah,” he said. “The recommendation.”
He spoke the word like an old acquaintance.
“They recommend leaving the city,” said Hans.
Gustav stirred his coffee as if that were the most harmless news in the world.
“They recommend many things,” he said.
“And the red…,” said Hans, and felt himself slipping into a tone he knew from Dr. AuDHS: the tone in which one arranges things in order not to feel. “The red water. They say…”
Gustav looked at him.
“Water is everything today,” he said. “You can give it any color. You can make it green so that it is idyllic. You can make it blue so that it fits on displays. You can make it red so that it seems dramatic.”
“So you think it is theater?” asked Hans.
Gustav shrugged his shoulders.
“Everything is theater,” he said. “Only the sets change.”
Hans Castorp heard it, and he felt – and that was the Tonio-sting that was working ever deeper in him – how there was a longing in this sentence: the longing that, if everything is theater anyway, one might at least play the role well. Tonio Kröger, had he been sitting beside them, might have smiled and thought: The artist despises the bourgeoisie, and he envies it. And the bourgeois envies the artist, and he despises him. They are twins.
“I want to leave,” said Hans suddenly.
It was a short sentence. A stab.
Gustav paused.
“Of course you want to leave,” he said softly. “You are a man who has learned to leave.”
Hans Castorp felt the word “deserter” flash through his mind, and he hated it, because it is not only an accusation, but also the truth.
“And you?” he asked.
Gustav looked into his coffee.
“I will stay,” he said.
Hans Castorp gave a short laugh, but it was not a laugh, more a sound.
“Why?” he asked. “What for?”
Gustav raised his gaze.
And now, esteemed reader, dear reader, one saw something that one rarely sees in him: not a mask, not correctness, not ironic distance, but a small crack through which something dark looked out.
“Because I must,” he said.
“Must?” Hans repeated the word as if it were a diagnosis.
Gustav nodded.
“You have heard it,” he said. “Tonio. The creator. If I do not create, I am…” He left the sentence unfinished, as if he could not utter the word without making it come true.
“A human being,” said Hans softly.
Gustav smiled, and this smile was bitter.
“A human being,” he repeated. “Yes. And that is exactly the problem.”
Hans Castorp was silent.
For he understood – not as a concept, but as a feeling – that Gustav von A. was not running away from an illness, but from ordinary mortality. And that by staying, he imagined he could bribe death with beauty.
“They recommend that you leave,” said Hans.
Gustav leaned back.
“Recommendations,” he said, “are the gentlest form of command. But commands are valid only if one obeys them.”
“And if one does not obey?” asked Hans.
Gustav looked toward the window, as if he saw not water out there, but a figure.
“Then,” he said softly, “one receives one’s punishment.”
Hans Castorp felt a chill, although it was warm.
He thought of the tiger.
He thought of the donkey.
He thought of the lion who says: If you believe it is blue, then let it be blue – and yet means something quite different.
And he thought, without knowing it, that in this moment he was hearing the lion.
Not outside. Inside.
Within himself.
