He pointed at the glasses.
“A glass of champagne? It is New Year. One must drink the date, otherwise it gets stuck in one’s throat.”
Hans Castorp took a glass. He felt the coolness in his fingers, and he thought of the ice bar, of the words in the ice that had melted; now the ice was invisible, but the coolness was still there.
“And stollen,” said Kautsonik, and he held out a piece, dusted white, as if it carried the snow of the mountain within it.
Hans Castorp did not take it immediately. He looked at the powdered sugar.
“It looks like snow,” he said.
“It is snow,” said Kautsonik calmly. “Only with marzipan.”
Hans Castorp smiled – and this time he did not know whether it was ironic or grateful.
“You’ve been doing this a long time?” he asked.
Kautsonik looked at him, and in this look lay an entire house.
“I have seen,” he said, “how up here people have come. And gone. And come back again. And not gone. And gone without going.”
Hans Castorp felt a stab at the last sentence. He did not know whether Kautsonik meant him or only the general truth; but with Mann, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, the general truth is rarely entirely general.
“How long?” asked Hans.
Kautsonik shrugged his shoulders.
“Decades,” he said. “In the past this here was simpler. Then it was called reception. Today it is called experience. In the past a guest was a guest. Today he is a…” He searched for the word and did not find it. “…case.”
Hans Castorp heard the word and involuntarily thought of files, of diagnoses, of AuDHS.
“And you?” he asked.
Kautsonik smiled, and the smile had something proud about it.
“I stayed,” he said. “That is my talent.”
Hans Castorp paused. The word talent stood between them like a mirror.
“You stay,” Hans said softly.
“Yes,” said Kautsonik. “And do you know what is beautiful about staying?”
Hans Castorp shook his head.
“You don’t have to reinvent yourself,” said Kautsonik. “You just have to stand.”
He said the word stand with an emphasis, as if it were a virtue.
“You stand a lot,” remarked Hans.
Kautsonik looked at his own legs, as if he had to make sure they were still there.
“I stand,” he said. “That is my form of existence. Anyone can sit. Those who can afford it can lie down. Standing is service.”
Hans Castorp drank a sip of champagne. The bubbles rose up in him, but today they no longer had the elegant impatience of the night; they were more sober, almost dutiful.
“And when you can no longer stand?” asked Hans Castorp, and he heard how unedifying it was to ask that.
Kautsonik laughed briefly. It was not a funny laugh, rather a vigorous one that wants to set things right.
“Then I die,” he said.
