In the morning Hans Castorp got up early.
Not because he was rested, but because rituals, once you have accepted them, pull you out of bed like duty.
He placed a small scale on the table.
It was new, it shone, it was precise. It reminded him of the BIA scale that had divided him into components. Now it was to weigh powder: portions of hope.
He took the yellow tin.
He opened it.
The smell was warm: turmeric, ginger, pepper – it smelled of kitchen and pharmacy at the same time, of comfort and severity. He poured powder onto the scale, slowly, grain by grain, until the display stopped.
3.2 grams.
He stared at the number as if it were an exam.
Then he mixed the powder with a little water in a small glass. It became a thick, yellow liquid that did not look nice, but serious.
He took the wooden stick.
He stirred.
The wooden stick, which yesterday had still been an invitation to smudge, now became a stirring rod of hygiene. Hans Castorp felt a little comedy – and a little sadness. Everything gets used, he thought. Even the symbols.
He raised the glass to his mouth.
He gargled, as Dr. Porsche had said.
It was as if he were gargling not only liquid, but the word “normal high”.
He swallowed.
Slowly. In individual swallows.
Before each swallow he gargled again.
It was disagreeably intimate, and at the same time disagreeably mechanical. A ritual that pretends to be sacred and yet consists of percentages.
Then bitter drops.
He poured a little lemon juice into a shot glass, dripped in, mixed, drank.
Bitterness is the modern form of penance.
Then the tea.
He took from the refrigerator a pot that he had prepared the evening before, according to Dr. Porsche’s instructions. The liquid was deep red. He poured it through a sieve, and in the sieve remained blossoms and leaves, soaked, exhausted, as if they had sacrificed their color.
He looked at the red. He thought of blood. He thought of bloodletting. He thought how thin the line is between wellness and sacrifice.
Then he took the green tin.
He weighed out: 2.8 grams.
He stirred the grass green into the deep red, and the color changed, became darker, as if one were mixing hope into danger.
He took the tablets.
He placed them, like small wafers, on the palm of his hand: D3/K2, acetylsalicylic acid, resveratrol, magnesium, multi-vitamins-minerals-trace elements, Q10 – and the metformin, which lay like a foreign body among all the supplements, because it smelled of seriousness, not of lifestyle.
He swallowed them with the tea.
And while he swallowed, he thought, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, of a sentence that was not spoken, but was contained in everything:
One can desert from a war. One can desert from a life. But one does not desert from the body.
One can only – if one is lucky – get it to pretend that it is a project.
Hans Castorp set the glass down.
He looked at the wooden stick, which was now yellowish from the powder.
He thought: I have used my pen to stir.
And he felt how in this small, ridiculous fact the whole modern age was reflected: One no longer writes names. One stirs programs.
He went to the window.
Outside lay the snow.
It was white, correct, innocent.
And Hans Castorp, who lived between name and alias, between mask and truth, between hunger and hygiene, thought:
“Normal high” – that is perhaps not only a blood pressure word. It is a life word.
He smiled.
The smile was polite.
And a little disagreeable.
