Dr. AuDHS did not appear like someone who is fetched, but like someone who had already been there anyway and had only briefly been invisible. He stepped out from the background of the hall, from one of those zones in which staff disappear only to reappear later, and he did so with that calm speed that betrays neither haste nor sluggishness – a speed that says: I am busy, but I will take my time for you, because that belongs to my image.
He wore, as always, his little badge with the letters that sounded more like a function than a person, and he smiled at Hans Castorp as if he already knew him so well that formalities were superfluous. In this smile, as Hans Castorp knew it, there was a slight mockery, not malicious but knowing: the mockery of one who sees through the mechanics of things and yet plays along.
“Mr. Castorp,” said Dr. AuDHS.
Hans Castorp felt a small reflex twitch inside him. The name was still a risk. And yet he did, as one does in such establishments, as if everything were in order.
“Doctor,” he said, and clung to the form of address as to a handrail.
Dr. AuDHS nodded, as if he savored the old-fashionedness.
“I have been told,” began Hans Castorp, “I should…” He searched for the word, because he did not like it. “…engage in hypertrophy.”
Dr. AuDHS looked at him, and his gaze was the gaze of a person who is amused and serious at the same time.
“Engage in,” he repeated. “As if it were a factory.”
“It sounds,” said Hans Castorp, “like enlargement.”
“It is enlargement,” said Dr. AuDHS. “But not in the sense of vanity. In the sense of hygiene.”
Hans Castorp raised his eyebrows.
“Hygiene?”
“Yes,” said Dr. AuDHS, and now his voice took on that tone that Hans Castorp had already heard in the library: the tone of the essayist who turns an observation into a moral. “Hygiene for the muscle share – to delay age-related atrophy.”
He said it as if it were the most natural sentence in the world. And perhaps, thought Hans Castorp, it was that in this world.
“Muscle share,” repeated Hans Castorp slowly. He thought of Dr. Porsche’s bioimpedance measurement, of percentages, of the body as a diagram. He thought: Today, the human being is a composition, and every composition must be maintained like an account.
“You see,” continued Dr. AuDHS, “Dr. Porsche has given you numbers. And numbers are good because they are reassuring. But numbers are also unsatisfactory because they give birth to tasks. And you, Mr. Castorp, are not the type who loves tasks unless they are…” He made a small pause. “…mystical.”
Hans Castorp remained silent. The word mystical struck him because it was at once mocking and accurate. At the Berghof he had learned that the body is a mystery. And up here the mystery was broken down into tables.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked.
With a slight movement of his hand, Dr. AuDHS pointed in a direction that Hans Castorp at first did not understand, because the hall, like every hall, has no direction, only circuits. Then he said:
“We have GYMcubes in the building.”
Hans Castorp looked at him.
“Cubes,” he repeated.
“Cubes,” said Dr. AuDHS. “Free-standing cabins. You go in, and you are alone with the rack, the barbell, the plates – and with yourself.”
“That sounds,” said Hans Castorp, “like a modern confession.”
Dr. AuDHS smiled.
“Everything is confession today,” he said. “Only that one no longer confesses in order to receive forgiveness, but in order to deliver data.”
Hans Castorp thought of his cuff, of his evening values, of the noting down; he thought: Yes, one delivers.
“So I could… train there?”
“You could,” said Dr. AuDHS. “And if you were the type who teaches himself something, I would simply have given you an access code and you would have disappeared – as you so like to disappear.”
Hans Castorp felt himself grow warm. He wanted to object. He could not.
“But,” continued Dr. AuDHS, and now there was something in his voice that sounded almost like pride, “I have already spoken with my partner.”
“Partner?” asked Hans Castorp.
“Prof. Frank Zieser,” said Dr. AuDHS. “He also happens to be at the Sonnenalp. And he is pleased to take over your training personally.”
Hans Castorp had never heard the name before. But he immediately sensed that it was a name that carried weight in this milieu – not because of the syllables, but because of the way Dr. AuDHS pronounced it: as if it were a certificate.
“Professor?” asked Hans Castorp.
“In this world one becomes a professor quickly,” said Dr. AuDHS dryly. “One only has to find something that others do not want to do, and then explain it in such a way that suddenly everyone has to do it.”
Hans Castorp thought of optimization.
“Who is he?” he asked.
Dr. AuDHS slightly shrugged his shoulders, as if the biography were at once unimportant and decisive.
“An art figure,” he said. “That is the nice thing: he is so real that he already seems invented again. He was…” Out of irony or caution, Dr. AuDHS searched for an inconspicuous word. “…successful.”
“In what?”
“In the art of the body,” said Dr. AuDHS. “And in the art of selling this art. He brought machines to Europe when people here still thought strength came from peeling potatoes. He marketed hypertrophy as back training. His slogan was: A strong back knows no pain!”
Hans Castorp smiled involuntarily. The sentence was so bourgeois, so correct, so comfortable in its hardness that it seemed at once comical and seductive.
“And now,” continued Dr. AuDHS, “he has founded GYMcube with me. Personal training. Human and AI. Minimalism with protocol. And he is – that is the decisive thing – not a motivator.”
“What is he then?”
“A file,” said Dr. AuDHS. “A man who translates your bewilderment into repetitions.”
Hans Castorp felt how the word repetitions seemed strangely familiar to him. Repetition was time. Repetition was cure.
“When?” he asked, and he heard how quickly one can submit when one is only given a date.
Dr. AuDHS cast a glance at an invisible watch.
“Now,” he said. “Right here, right now – as he would say.”
Hans Castorp raised his head.
“He says that?”
Dr. AuDHS smiled, and in this smile, as so often, lay the joy of someone who owns quotations and places them in situations as if they were instruments.
“He says many things,” he said. “And many are… unsatisfyingly true. Come.”
