In the evening, esteemed reader, dear reader, the air in the room was so calm that the calm itself seemed like an order. Hans Castorp did, almost automatically, the things he now called “rituals”, because in such establishments everything you repeat is called rituals so that it doesn’t sound like compulsion.
He stepped onto the scale, saw a number that neither frightened nor reassured him, because it was only a number and yet gave him the feeling of passing judgment on him. He drank water. He put the handheld device on the table and looked at it as if it were an animal that must not be provoked.
Then he fetched the blood pressure cuff.
He sat down on the bed, wrapped the band around his arm, pressed the button. The machine hummed, tightened, released – and in this small mechanical tightening and releasing lay an entire modern pedagogy: pressure, relief, pressure, relief.
Hans Castorp looked at the readings.
Systole: unremarkable.
Diastole: 82.
“High normal,” he thought.
It was as if someone were speaking the expression in his head, quite matter-of-factly, quite kindly. Hans Castorp noted the value in his little book – yes, he had now set up a book for it; one quickly becomes a note-taker when one lives in a program – and put the pen away.
Then he sat there and did not know what he was supposed to do now. For in the old world, after the measurement came the end. One had taken the temperature, one had drawn the curve, one had straightened the blanket, and the night came as it wished.
In the new world, however, the measurement is often only the beginning.
Hans Castorp exhaled and told himself: Not today.
He remembered AuDHS’s sentence: The devices at rest.
He did not put the handheld device away – one does not put such a thing away, it is always lying somewhere – but he turned it over so that the display faced downward, as if one could stop light through shame.
Then there was a knock.
Hans Castorp flinched, because knocking at night always has something official about it, even in a hotel that calls itself wellness.
“Yes?” he called.
The door opened, and Mr. Kautsonik stood there.
He wore, as always, that correct jacket that made him seem like a figure of order. In his hand he held a package, flat, elongated, wrapped in paper, and under his arm a roll, the way one carries a blanket.
“Sir,” he said, and his voice was quiet, as if respecting the night, “a gift.”
Hans Castorp stared at him.
“A gift?” he repeated.
Kautsonik nodded.
“From the doctor,” he said. “From Dr. AuDHS.”
Hans Castorp felt the word “fakir” step into his head before he had even seen the package.
“This is…?” he began.
Kautsonik raised his eyebrows, and in his gaze lay that dry cheerfulness he possesses when the establishment becomes particularly modern.
“Pointy,” he said. “Very… pointy.”
Hans Castorp took the package. It was lighter than he had thought. Light is often dangerous in such cases.
Kautsonik handed him the roll.
“And this to go with it,” he said. “For the neck.”
Hans Castorp held both as if he had just adopted an animal.
“Thank you,” he said.
Kautsonik nodded.
“The doctor said,” he said, and you could hear that he was quoting a sentence he himself did not quite understand but respected, “it is psychosomatic.”
Hans Castorp smiled. Kautsonik said “psychosomatic” like a foreign word that has suddenly become a service in a hotel.
“Yes,” said Hans Castorp. “Psychosomatic.”
Kautsonik took a step back, but remained standing in the doorway for a moment, as if, as Guest Relations Manager, he wanted to assess the guest’s emotional state.
“Sleep well,” he said.
It was, esteemed reader, dear reader, one of those sentences you hear a thousand times and which, if you cannot sleep, nonetheless feel like a small spite. Hans Castorp nodded politely.
“I will… try,” he said.
Kautsonik smiled briefly.
“Try,” he said. “That is a program word here.”
Then he left.
Hans Castorp stood with the package in his hand and thought: They even deliver the spikes to me.
He sat down and unpacked it.
What emerged was a mat made of a material that smelled of plastic and new goods, and on this mat stood small, even spikes, like a miniature mountain range. Next to it the neck roll, also with such spikes, only rounder, as if it were a friendlier form of unfriendliness.
Hans Castorp looked at the mat and felt a touch of comedy. A person who lives in a hotel that sells longevity now lies down on plastic spikes in order to sleep. That is so modern that it already seems archaic again.
He laid the mat on the carpet, hesitated, and then slowly sat down on it, first with his hands, then with his back, as if he were stepping into cold water.
The spikes pressed. Not cutting, not bloody, but unmistakable. The body, that honest one, reported: There is something.
Hans Castorp felt his breathing become shallower and then, after a few moments, deeper. It was as if the body were forced to concentrate on something concrete instead of the highway below.
“Psychosomatic,” he thought.
He placed the neck roll under his neck.
The pressure was at first unpleasant, then strangely… ordering. Not pleasant in the feel-good sense, but pleasant like a tightened belt that says: You are here. You are in the body. Not in the past.
Hans Castorp closed his eyes.
He waited.
And while he waited, he noticed that this time the waiting did not immediately switch on the highway. There were still vehicles, yes. But they drove farther away. Or he heard them less.
At some point he got up – not because he had had enough, but because the body, even when you calm it, has its limits – and lay down in bed.
The ring was on his finger. The handheld device lay upside down. The night was there like a room you do not want to enter because you know yourself too well in it.
Hans Castorp exhaled.
And then he remembered the chameleon.
He began to tell himself the story.
Not aloud. Not like a reader. But the way you speak inwardly when you are alone and yet do not want to be alone.
The sentences at first still came out angular. They came from will. Then, after a few moments, they became softer. And the narrator, esteemed reader, dear reader, will now, if you permit, become a little quieter – not because he is tired, but because tiredness can be contagious.
