Hans Castorp pulled his hand out of his pocket and, without meaning to, held the little wooden stick between two fingers. In his hand it looked like a toy, like a piece of evidence, like something you would give a child so that it is occupied.
The doctor looked at it.
“Ah,” he said softly. “So you do have something.”
Hans Castorp said nothing.
“Is that your pen?” asked the doctor.
Hans Castorp felt a heat in his ears.
“It was given to me,” he said finally.
“And what do you write with?” asked the doctor. “With what do you write yourself?”
Hans Castorp looked at him, and in that moment it seemed to him as if in the letters on the little sign – AuDHS – a second question were hidden that is not spoken: Who are you?
“With everything,” said Hans Castorp, and it sounded as if he were repeating a sentence that another voice had given him. “If one is prepared for it to smudge.”
The doctor nodded slowly, as if Hans Castorp had said something correct, although it was only an image.
