The morning, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, is a merciless institution. It is, if you will, the administration of the night; it comes, counts up, tidies up, takes inventory of the feelings and, with that sober cruelty that only the day possesses, asks the question that every masquerade fears: And now?
In houses that have dedicated themselves to health, longevity and generally to the better life, this morning is of course not merely a time of day, but a ritual. It is a program. It is a gentle but relentless guiding back of the bodies into their serviceable tracks: fluid intake, breathing, steps, curves, measured values – and a smile to go with it, which one issues to the world at reception as one hands out brochures.
At the end of New Year’s Eve, in the warmly muted interior of that glass dome that let one see the world as if through memory, Hans Castorp had said he was hungry; and by that he had not meant hunger for sugar, not for stollen, not for salmon, not for that “colorful anatomy” of breakfast that later lay on his plate and that in such houses is arranged in such a way that it is at once nourishment and proof of belonging. He was hungry for something that cannot be satisfied – and yet, even for that, in such houses there is a department.
It is called: Library.
