After the lecture, the music room remained filled for a while longer, the way a room stays filled when something has been said that has not yet settled in people’s minds. Some guests stood up and went to the windows, as if they had to get some air; others stayed seated and looked at their glasses, as if glasses had suddenly become moral. The grand piano stood there, unplayed, and there was something touching about the fact that, in all this optimization, it was still only an instrument, not a measuring device.
Hans Castorp also stood up. He felt how his legs, after sitting, lodged a tiny protest – and how at once, quite automatically, the sentence rose up in him: Sitting is the new smoking. That is the power of such formulas: they colonize feeling.
He walked toward the exit, not hastily, but with that slow politeness he had not lost even in the war. He walked, and as he did, his gaze fell – how could it be otherwise – on a figure he knew without really knowing.
Philipp Morgenstern was sitting at one of the tables, a bit to the side, and next to him sat his wife. He had his head slightly bowed, as if he were still listening, although the lecture had long since ended. His wife was holding a glass of water in her hand; she looked tired, but not unhappy. It was as if, up here, people had learned to wear tiredness like an accessory.
Morgenstern saw Hans, stood up – again that movement, which was now already moral – and came over to him.
“Herr Castorp,” he said, and his tone was friendly but cautious, as if he feared that with a wrong tone he might set off an entire dynamic. That was perhaps the most important change in him: he had begun to take tones seriously.
“Was…” – he searched for a word that did not sound too pathetic – “was interesting, wasn’t it?”
Hans Castorp smiled, that polite, slightly distant smile that was his own.
“Yes,” he said. “Interesting. And cheerless.”
Morgenstern laughed briefly, but not mockingly; rather relieved that even up here one was still allowed a bit of irony.
“I try,” he said quietly, and Hans noticed that he was not talking about nutrition, but about everything, “to do things… right.”
He cast a glance at his wife, and this glance was – one has to put it that way – respectful. No possession, no judgment, just a kind of silent understanding: I see you.
Hans Castorp thought of the five resolutions that Morgenstern had once recited to him in the water world, as if it were a catechism of the present: respect, compassion, responsibility, safety, partnership. And he thought of how easily such resolutions can tip into optimization, how easily care can turn into control.
“Right,” he said slowly, “is a dangerous word.”
Morgenstern nodded, as if he had expected that.
“I know,” he said. “But…” – he smiled crookedly – “if you really want something, you’ll find a way, otherwise an excuse.”
It was one of Zieser’s quotes, and in Morgenstern’s mouth it suddenly no longer sounded like a fitness sticker, but like a self‑appeal that hurts.
Hans Castorp looked at him, and for a moment he felt sympathy; sympathy with the effort to be a human being without becoming a donkey who claims that the grass is blue.
“Your name really is Morgenstern?” Hans asked, almost casually.
Morgenstern twisted his face, as if the question were embarrassing and important to him at the same time.
“I…” he said. “I decided that in the mornings I…” – he broke off because it sounded too childish – “that in the mornings I want to be different. Not the one from the night before. Not the donkey. Do you understand?”
Hans Castorp understood very well. For he himself was also a person who wanted to be someone different in the morning than in the evening, only that his being different was not moral but existential: alias instead of name, invisibility instead of capture.
“Yes,” he said. “I understand.”
Morgenstern looked at him gratefully, as if understanding were a scarce resource up here.
Then his wife came over to them, stood next to Morgenstern, and Morgenstern, quite unobtrusively, took a small step to the side so that she was not standing behind him but beside him. That was partnership as a micro‑gesture. And Hans Castorp, the man of feeling, registered it with a small inner pang: one can change, not through big speeches, but through small movements.
“Good night,” said Morgenstern.
“Good night,” said Hans Castorp.
He left.
