The return journey is unedifying to tell, because travel in modern times tells so little. You sit, you ride, you are. The body is transported, and the mind tries to catch up. Hans Castorp saw landscapes that became flatter, saw fields that spread out like tables, saw cities that looked like data clusters. He saw people who slept, who watched, who stared at displays, and he thought that the highway of thoughts Dr. AuDHS had talked about is not down below, but everywhere.
On the train he took out the notebook.
He did not write much.
He wrote: Writing is slow.
And underneath: Slow is System 2.
He smiled.
It was not a cheerful smile.
It was an understanding one.
Then he slept, a little, briefly, not deeply, but without numbers.
That was, for him, progress.
When he arrived up top again – for yes, he arrived up top again; the circle pulls you back, like a magnet –, the air was cold.
Not Venetian and sticky, but mountain-clear, almost rude. It was as if the high-altitude air wanted to say: Here there are no excuses. Here you breathe or you do not breathe.
The Sonnenalp lay there like a familiar deception: wood, gold, red columns, that great ring of iron that hung in the hall like a black sun, and the writing on the wall, which is friendly and therefore unedifying:
Joy to him who comes. Joy to him who goes.
Hans Castorp stepped inside.
The chandelier was burning, although it was daytime.
Below stood the round table with the burlwood base. On it glasses. Perhaps stollen. Perhaps not. Order knows no season.
And there stood Mr. Kautsonik.
He stood, as always.
He stood as if standing were an office.
Hans Castorp walked up to him.
Kautsonik saw him, and in his gaze there was something that one could almost call joy, if Kautsonik were not Kautsonik.
“Joy to him who comes,” he said.
Hans Castorp nodded.
“I am back,” he said.
Kautsonik smiled, and this smile was a touch softer than usual.
“One returns,” he said. “That is also a form of loyalty.”
Hans Castorp felt the sentence cut into his chest, because loyalty, for a deserter, is always an ironic word.
“And you?” Hans asked.
Kautsonik shrugged his shoulders.
“I stand,” he said. “As you see.”
Hans Castorp looked, and he saw something he might previously have overlooked: that Kautsonik’s hands were trembling slightly, as if, after all the years of holding on, they had grown used to the fact that nothing can be held forever.
“You look…” Hans began.
Kautsonik raised his hand.
“Spare me that,” he said, and you could hear that he did not want to be pitied. “Guest Relations is not the place for diagnoses. For that we have the doctors upstairs.”
Hans Castorp nodded.
He did not take out the notebook. He did not take out the ring. He just stood there, and in this standing there was, for a moment, something like togetherness.
“You were down below,” Kautsonik said.
It was not a question.
Hans Castorp nodded.
“Yes,” he said.
Kautsonik looked at him, for a long time, as if he were examining not the guest, but the person.
“And?” he finally asked.
Hans Castorp hesitated.
How do you tell of death?
How do you tell of beauty?
How do you tell of your own movement?
He said, because it was the only thing that was not a lie:
“It was red,” he said.
Kautsonik nodded, as if he understood, although he could not understand.
“Red,” he repeated.
Then, quite suddenly, he grabbed the counter, as if the counter were a railing.
Hans Castorp took a step.
“Mr. Kautsonik?” he said.
Kautsonik smiled, and this smile was, for a moment, almost mocking.
“You see,” he said softly. “Now.”
“What?” Hans asked, and yet he knew.
Kautsonik raised his gaze to the writing on the wall.
Joy to him who comes. Joy to him who goes.
“It was all right with me,” he said.
Then he exhaled.
And remained standing.
Not like a guest who collapses.
Like a service that ends.
It happened quietly.
So quietly that the hall, for a moment, was even quieter than usual, as if even the electric candles had hesitated for a second to flicker.
People came.
Someone called for a doctor.
Someone called for a chair.
A chair was brought, but Kautsonik no longer wanted a chair.
Hans Castorp stood there and thought that Kautsonik had been a form all his life – and that now, in dying, he had not left this form.
That was, if one is strict, dignified.
And if one is honest, unedifying.
