At that moment the door of the hall opened, and a breath of cold air fell in like a moral objection. Through the glass front one saw the white of the snow, the sun, which stood so clear and sharp as if it wanted to make everything that is soft inside hard outside.
“I’m going out,” said Morgenstern suddenly. “Into the outdoor pool. Do you want to…?”
Hans Castorp hesitated. Outside was the cold. Inside was the blue. Outside was the snow that covers everything – even the grass that supposedly used to be blue.
And Hans Castorp had, as we know, a special relationship to everything that lies between the orders.
“Yes,” he said.
They went.
One must not imagine this, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, as a heroic walk, but as what it was: two men in white bathrobes walking over a stone floor from which the warmth rose like a service. They went through an airlock, through a glass door, and suddenly there was air that was so cold that it contracted not only the skin but the thoughts.
Outside the world lay like a picture.
Snow on the tables, snow on the chairs, snow on the paths, snow on the trees; and the sun stood above it, large and dazzling, as if it were the logo of the house in cosmic form. In the distance lay mountains, blue‑gray, with clouds on them, and the valley below seemed so far away that it was hardly real.
Amid all this white lay water: a pool, steaming, warm, a piece of summer that had been placed into the winter. The surface, despite the steam, was clear. One saw the edges of stone. One saw ladders of metal. And Hans Castorp felt a thought rise in him that was at once banal and correct: that every lagoon, no matter how much it looks like nature, is always a construction.
They climbed in.
The warm water struck their legs, their bellies, their chests; and above the warmth stood the cold of the air, so that when one breathed one saw one’s own breath – as if one were an animal. The steam settled on the hair, on the eyebrows, and Morgenstern, with his fogged gaze, once again looked like a mask.
They sat down on one of the stone edges, half in the water, half outside. That was, thought Hans Castorp, the most pleasant position: always between the elements.
“You see,” said Morgenstern, and he pointed with a wet hand at the white. “Out there is no grass. And yet yesterday I claimed it was blue.”
Hans Castorp looked into the snowfields, into the spruces, and he thought: The grass is not blue. It is only hidden. And it is hidden in a way that has a comforting effect, because it says: Everything keeps growing, even when you don’t see it.
“Maybe,” he said, “you only saw it under the snow.”
Morgenstern laughed softly.
“No,” he said. “I… made it. With words.”
Hans Castorp nodded.
Making words. That is what words do. And sometimes, he thought, they make so well that the one who speaks himself believes what he has made. That is the real danger: not the lie, but the self‑conviction.
“It is bad,” said Morgenstern, and his voice sounded muffled in the steam, “when you realize that you are not only making jokes but realities.”
Hans Castorp looked at the surface of the water. It reflected the sky, blue, and he thought that in water you can reflect everything, even innocence. And that the water does not lie in doing so; it only shows.
“You have children,” said Hans Castorp, more as a statement than as a question.
Morgenstern nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “And do you know what the worst thing is? Children learn how to speak. And how to be silent. And how to twist. They learn it without you teaching it to them.”
Hans Castorp thought of the children at the sweets table, of their greedy innocence, of their reverence for the craft. He thought: Children are bringers of truth. And bringers of truth are dangerous.
They were silent for a while.
Then Morgenstern said, suddenly, with a kind of defiance:
“I didn’t make these resolutions because I want to be a good person. I made them because I am afraid.”
Hans Castorp looked at him.
“Afraid of what?” he asked.
Morgenstern looked at his hands, which lay in the water, pink from the warmth.
“Of my wife at some point…” He searched for the word and did not find it. Then he said: “…being gone. Not physically. But inwardly. That she no longer believes me. That she no longer feels safe. That she…” He broke off.
Hans Castorp thought of the sentence on the wall of the reception hall: Joy to him who comes. Joy to him who goes. He thought: There is a going that is no going. And there is a staying that is no staying.
“That is,” he said, “a reasonable fear.”
Morgenstern looked at him, astonished. “Reasonable?”
Hans Castorp smiled.
“Reasonable,” he said. “Because it tells you: You are not alone in the world. And that is, strictly speaking, the only morality.”
Morgenstern closed his eyes as if he wanted to store this sentence.
At that moment, at the edge of the steaming pool, between snow and blue, Hans Castorp felt a strange shift within himself. It was not that he had suddenly become a better person – such things do not happen in a thermal pool – but that, for a moment, he felt the nearness of another life: a life with a wife, with children, with a guilt that is not political but private; with resolutions that do not make history but breakfast.
It was a Tonio‑like feeling: longing for normality that at the same time moves and humbles you.
“You won’t do it perfectly,” said Hans Castorp.
Morgenstern opened his eyes. “I know.”
“But maybe,” Hans Castorp continued, “you will do it… honestly. And that is, if you will, already a kind of art.”
Morgenstern smiled crookedly.
“Art,” he said. “I thought art was something else. Something with… talent.”
Hans Castorp thought of Kautsonik: That is my talent. I stay.
“Talent,” he said, “is sometimes only the ability to keep trying something even though you know you will fail.”
Morgenstern looked at him, and one could tell how much he needed this sentence.
They climbed out of the water again, at some point.
The cold hit them like a reprimand. They walked, steaming, along the snow‑lined path, and Hans Castorp felt how his skin, which had just been soft, contracted; and he thought: That is how it is with morality. Warm inside, cold outside.
Morgenstern pointed to a small path that led through snow‑covered bushes. There stood low lamps that shone despite the day, as if one wanted to give the path a security that nature lacks.
“There is the hut,” said Morgenstern.
They went there.
The path led through snow that lay high at the edges like frozen waves. Spruces bent under the load. And at the end stood a small wooden house, simple, with a roof on which the snow lay thick; warmth seemed to come from the cracks, and the door looked like the door to a secret. A rope limited access, as if one also had to give excess a kind of order.
In front of the hut stood a figure, in a bathrobe, waiting. She looked like a patient who is being called in. Hans Castorp thought: The sauna too has its waiting room.
Morgenstern stopped.
“In there,” he said softly, “it is very hot.”
“That is the point,” said Hans Castorp.
Morgenstern nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Heat is… truth. You can’t lie well in it.”
Hans Castorp thought of his own past and felt how unedifying it is when a sentence is so right.
They did not go in.
Not because they were afraid of the heat, but because the presence of those waiting suddenly made them aware that this too is a stage. One does not like to confess when others are waiting for their cue.
Instead they went back into the house, into those rooms that are dedicated to resting.
