There are, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, substances that are innocent and yet have a sinful effect, because when we come close to them they not only refresh or warm us, but change us in a way we do not control: music belongs to them, alcohol, certain smells; and water belongs to them, this seemingly elementary, unsuspect medium that always behaves as if it were only there to serve – to wash, to carry, to extinguish –, while in truth, if one takes it seriously, it is a very ambiguous character. It not only quenches thirst, it also extinguishes time. It takes on forms without keeping one; it reflects without guaranteeing truth; it can, warm or cold, occupy the body so completely that the mind, that bourgeois administrator of reasons, for a moment resigns its service.
In a house that has dedicated itself to longevity, water is therefore not merely water, but pedagogy. It is tempered, chlorinated, filtered, illuminated; it is “enriched” with minerals and provided with words that, as people say today, “communicate” the effect. And the guests are led, with that polite relentlessness that hotels and clinics have in common, into these water worlds, as if to say to them: Here, in the blue, everything will be all right again.
Hans Castorp, after he had gone down the stairs from the reception hall – that stage of coming and going which in truth, as we know, is nothing other than a well-lit chessboard square for identities – and then up another one again, for a while did not know where he was actually going. He went because he could go; and he went because walking in such houses is already part of the program. Movement, that is the new virtue, even if, as in this case, it merely consists in keeping the bathrobe properly closed and placing the slippers so that they do not shuffle like those of a patient.
Yes: bathrobe.
