The word was spoken, and they saw how Morgenstern flinched inwardly, because the image is so drastic that it eludes the decent person.
“The leeches on me,” said Morgenstern quickly, “I have addressed those. I… I am working. I have…” He faltered, and one could tell that he was embarrassed to talk about his own resolutions as if they were a program. “I have rules. For my marriage. For my children. I…”
Dr. AuDHS raised his hand.
“I know,” he said. “I have heard them. And it is good. It is…” He smiled briefly. “…human. And hard. But I did not mean those leeches.”
Morgenstern looked at him.
“I mean the leeches,” said Dr. AuDHS, “that latch onto your good nature. The people who milk your yes like a cow that is not allowed to kick. The people who turn your respect into a discount. The people who, when you set boundaries, suddenly act as if you were the aggressor.”
Hans Castorp involuntarily thought of his own story: how he had disappeared, how he had set boundaries by withdrawing. Also a boundary, but a cowardly one. He felt a small, moral pain.
“And what do I do?” asked Morgenstern, more quietly.
Dr. AuDHS stopped again. This time it was not a seminar, but something like friendship.
“You focus,” he said.
“On what?” asked Morgenstern.
“On your lilies,” said Dr. AuDHS.
Morgenstern blinked.
“My what?”
“Your wife,” said Dr. AuDHS. “Your children. Your people. The things that bloom when you protect them. And you remove, without great drama, without big discourse, without a lion’s court, the leeches.”
“How?” asked Morgenstern, and in the how one could hear the same helplessness that Hans Castorp knew so well.
Dr. AuDHS smiled, and this smile had the crack: it was not only professional, it was also a little tired.
“Keep it simple,” he said, and one could hear how he was quoting Zieser without being Zieser.
Hans Castorp had to smile. It was funny to see these quotes wandering like coins between the characters: everyone uses them as if they were their own money.
“You say no,” Dr. AuDHS continued. “You don’t explain it ten times. You don’t justify yourself. You don’t argue. You say no – and leave. That is system two.”
Morgenstern swallowed.
“That is hard,” he said.
“Building muscle is simple, but hard,” said Dr. AuDHS.
Morgenstern laughed, this time genuinely. A brief moment of lightness in the seriousness.
“You see,” said Dr. AuDHS, “how well Zieser works as a philosophy.”
Hans Castorp walked beside them, listening, and something was working inside him. Not as a clear insight, but as a shift.
He thought: I have learned to say no to the body when it wants to stop. I have learned to do the extra rep even though it burns. I have learned to plan my food even though I am hungry. I have learned to lie down on a mat even though it stings. But have I learned to say no to people?
He thought of Tonio, of the creator who stands between worlds. He thought of Gustav von A., who appeared somewhere in this house like a literary shadow and said sentences that sounded like notes: Recommendations are the gentlest form of command. Up here everything was recommendation. And every recommendation was, if one is honest, a command with a friendly voice.
“And you, Mr. Castorp?” asked Dr. AuDHS suddenly, and Hans Castorp was startled because he thought he had remained invisible.
“Me?” asked Hans.
“Yes,” said Dr. AuDHS. “You listen, as always. You nod, as always. You think, as always. But what do you do with what you hear?”
Hans Castorp felt himself grow warm, not from the weather, but from the question.
“I…” he began.
Morgenstern looked at him, serious, almost tender. It was the tenderness of those who know that sometimes one does not know who one is.
Hans Castorp searched for a sentence, and he found – as so often – not a sentence, but an image.
“I see,” he said finally, and it was, in its simplicity, a strange sentence, because it fit so well: Hans Castorp, the observer, the feeler, the one who looks.
Dr. AuDHS nodded.
“The gaze,” he said. “Yes. The gaze is your talent. But the gaze is also an excuse when it replaces action.”
Hans Castorp was silent. That hit home.
