The bench stood in the rack, and the bar lay above it like a line you have to grab so that it doesn’t hover above you like a judgment. Zieser showed him how to lie down, how to “screw” the shoulder blades into the bench, how to set the feet, as if the floor were not floor but contract.
“Keep it simple,” he said again when Hans Castorp thought too much. “You lie down. You grip. You press. You control.”
Hans Castorp gripped the bar.
It was cold. Not unpleasant, but definite. Metal is honest.
“Just the bar,” said Zieser. “We first learn the movement. No heroics. Heroics injure.”
Hans Castorp nodded.
Zieser stood behind the head end, his hands close but without touching – a presence that is at once safety and control.
“Down,” he said. “To the sternum. Up. Eight repetitions.”
“Eight,” repeated Hans Castorp.
“The king set,” said Zieser.
Hans Castorp inhaled, lowered the bar, felt how the weight – this small, ridiculous weight – suddenly was no longer ridiculous, because it lay in his hands and not in some abstract recommendation.
He pressed. He felt the chest, the shoulders, the triceps; he felt how the body organizes itself when it has to.
On the sixth repetition he felt a slight trembling, and it did not frighten him, it only surprised him: he had not expected honesty to come so quickly.
“Two more,” said Zieser. “Right here, right now.”
Hans Castorp did the seventh. Then the eighth.
He put the bar back, and the metallic sound with which it locked in was like a period in a sentence.
“Good,” said Zieser. “Record it.”
Hans Castorp sat up, reached for the logbook. Zieser handed him a pen. It was an ordinary pen, not elegant, not stylish, no tablet stylus, but something that scratches on paper.
Hans Castorp held it for a moment, and in this holding there was something strangely touching: a man who lives under a false name now writes numbers in a book as if numbers were the truest names.
He wrote after the weight level pre‑noted by Zieser and the target repetition number 8: 8.
“A set only counts once it’s recorded,” said Zieser.
Hans Castorp nodded. It was Magic Mountain logic. The curve.
“Stretch,” said Zieser.
He led Hans to the rack, arm on the post, chest at shoulder height.
“Five.”
Hans Castorp held.
“Four.”
The pulling was unpleasant, but it was clean.
“Three.”
“Two.”
“One.”
“Other side,” said Zieser.
Hans Castorp did it.
Then back to the bench.
“Now set two,” said Zieser. “More repetitions, less load. We stay with the bar, but you do ten.”
Hans Castorp lay down again, Zieser reduced the plates to the new weight level.
“Ten,” he repeated.
He pressed. At eight he felt the trembling grow stronger, and his mind wanted to say: That’s enough. But the body, that honest one, kept going.
Ten.
He racked it. He wrote: 10.
“Set three,” said Zieser. “Twelve.”
Hans Castorp looked at him.
“Twelve,” he said, and it sounded as if he were speaking of a judgment.
“There are no miracles,” said Zieser calmly. “There is only training.”
Hans Castorp did twelve. The last two were slow. He felt time stretch, how every second became a small eternity, and he thought: That’s how it is with life. You think it is easy, and then it just becomes longer.
He wrote: 12.
Zieser nodded, as if Hans Castorp had not just pressed but passed an exam.
“Shoulder press,” he said.
