They went outside.
Venice was already full of people in the morning, and it is dispiriting, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, how much crowds of people in beautiful cities always look a little like ants: They carry cameras instead of grains, they carry gelato instead of eggs, they carry selfie sticks instead of sticks, and yet they believe they are individuals. Hans Castorp walked beside Gustav, and he felt how in this crowd he was at once invisible and in danger: Invisible because he was one of many; in danger because every gaze that truly sees him could hit his alias.
Gustav wore – and that was the comic part – a hat.
Not a practical one, but a hat as a gesture, as a harking back to a time when one did not appear in public without form. He also had, as Hans noticed, a little color in his face: not crude, not grotesque, but so that it looked like health. A touch. A correction. A mask.
“You are spruced up,” said Hans, without knowing why he said it.
Gustav smiled.
“One must,” he said. “In this city otherwise one stands out. And standing out is dangerous.”
Hans Castorp thought: Says the man who rejuvenates himself in order not to stand out. It is always the opposite.
They passed a canal, and Hans stopped.
The water was not red. Not really.
It was greenish, as it always is, with that dirty beauty that Venice possesses: beautiful because it shines; dirty because one knows what is in it. But at the edge, where the sun kissed the stone, there stretched a thin film, a streak that looked as if someone had poured something into it: a reddish shimmer, like wine that loses itself in the water.
Hans bent forward.
He smelled that chemical thing again.
“This is it,” he said.
Gustav glanced over only briefly, as if he did not want to occupy himself too long with warning signs.
“That is all,” he said.
“What?” asked Hans.
Gustav made a small, elegant hand movement.
“A hint,” he said. “A sign. A dramaturgical element. The city is a novel, and every novel needs a motif.”
Hans Castorp looked at him.
“You are joking,” he said.
Gustav smiled.
“No,” he said. “I describe. Jokes would be more harmless.”
Hans Castorp was silent.
They walked on, and Hans noticed how in the side alleys men were standing, spraying the ground with hoses. The water they sprayed was clear, but on the stone a reddish shimmer remained, as if dirt had been given color so that it appears as cleaning.
Cleansing as staging.
That was, thought Hans, perhaps the most modern principle of all.
In a small shop that sold masks – white, black, golden, with feathers, with glitter, with those ridiculous, exaggerated eyebrows that masks are so fond of –, Gustav stopped. He looked at a mask that looked old, as if it really were from another time, and Hans saw how Gustav, the man of sentences, suddenly fell silent.
“You look tired,” said Hans.
Gustav turned his head.
“Of course,” he said. “Tiredness is what you feel when you notice that the mask is getting heavy.”
Hans Castorp felt how the ring on his finger was warm, as if it too were a mask.
“Let’s go to the Lido,” Gustav said suddenly.
Hans hesitated.
“Why?” he asked.
Gustav looked at him, and in his gaze lay – and that was the dangerous beauty – a moment of childlike plea.
“Because there,” he said, “everything is simpler. Water, sand, horizon. No alleys. No smells. No rumors. Just…” He again searched for a word. “…just that.”
“Only,” thought Hans. There is no “only”. But he went.
