Below, the hall was now fuller – not of people, but of movement. It was New Year’s Day, and the guests arrived, spruced up and with that tired smile that says: We have celebrated, but we remain civilized. The air smelled of wood, of warm coffee, of perfume, and beneath it all, very faintly, of that unclean remainder of the night that you never quite get out of the carpets.
The round table in the middle had, as Hans had seen upstairs, become an altar.
Next to it stood a man who attended to it.
He was, in a certain sense, the opposite of the doctor. The doctor was modern because he wore initials; this man was old because he bore a name – and indeed a name that sounded like a small composition, with an offensively chewing beginning and a gentle ending: Kautsonik.
He was bald, wore glasses and a dark jacket that fit so correctly that it almost looked like a uniform; on it were light lines tracing the seams, as if to make visible that order exists not only in the head but also in the fabric. At the collar a small piece of red shone, like a discreet signal that even in service a remnant of festivity is permitted.
He stood bent over the platter and arranged the pieces, took a slice, set it down, brushed away crumbs with a movement of the hand that was not simply practical but like a gesture of decades of practice: not too hasty, not too slow – the speed of serving.
Hans Castorp stepped closer.
The man straightened up.
His gaze was not appraising like that of the doctor; it was scrutinizing in another way: it was the gaze of a person who has seen all his life how people come and go, and who, from their gait, from their hands, from their way of holding a glass, recognizes whether they will stay or whether they will only pass through.
“Good morning, sir,” he said, and his voice had that hotel German that is at once warm and impersonal, like a blanket that one lays around everyone.
Hans Castorp looked at him.
“You are…” he began.
The man smiled, and the smile, unlike the doctor’s, was not enigmatic but open – yet open in an old-fashioned way that again seems enigmatic.
“Kautsonik,” he said. “Mr. Kautsonik. Formerly concierge. Today…” He made a small pause, as if he had to get used to it himself. “Guest Relations Manager.”
He pronounced the English words as if he did not quite like the taste of them; and Hans Castorp felt, with a quiet pleasure, this small dissatisfaction. For dissatisfaction with the new is a form of loyalty.
“Guest Relations Manager,” repeated Hans Castorp.
“Yes,” said Kautsonik. “They promoted me after I retired.”
“That is a contradiction,” said Hans Castorp.
“That is modernity,” replied Kautsonik, and in the brief answer lay a philosophy that manages without books.
