The relaxation room was, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, a strange mixture of living room and infirmary. It was warm, wood\u2011paneled, with large windows, behind which the snow lay like a silent threat. In the room stood couches \u2013 not simple couches, but couches on wheels, as if one had not been able to decide whether to give the guest freedom or patienthood. Blankets lay over them, brown, heavy, soft. And in the middle stood a large, box\u2011shaped body of wood that looked like a stove, like a cozy machine in which warmth is stored as a substance.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp lay down on a couch.<\/p>\n
He did it without shame. Shame, in a bathrobe, is in any case a weak authority.<\/p>\n
Morgenstern lay down on a couch next to him. Between them was a distance that was bourgeois, but not cold.<\/p>\n
For a while they just lay there. One heard the soft hum of the heating. One heard, somewhere, a rustling \u2013 perhaps someone pulling the blanket into place, perhaps a body defending itself in sleep.<\/p>\n
Then Morgenstern said, very softly, as if he were afraid of disturbing the room:<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday I said to my wife that she was exaggerating. And she cried. And I said she was sensitive. And I laughed, as if it were a joke.\u201d<\/p>\n
He fell silent.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now I think,\u201d he continued, \u201cthat the laughter\u2026 was the real problem. Not the sentence. But this\u2026\u201d He searched for the word. \u201c\u2026this standing\u2011above\u2011her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp thought of the narrator, of the authorial position; and he thought how unedifying it is that one can stand \u2018above\u2019 everywhere: above the scene, above the partner, above one\u2019s own mistake. And that the \u2018above\u2019 is a form of violence if one does not notice it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe standing\u2011above\u2011her,\u201d he said, \u201cis a fine position. You see everything. Only not the other person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morgenstern nodded, as if that was exactly what he had meant.<\/p>\n
\u201cRespect,\u201d he said again, and now it sounded less like a headline, more like a prayer. \u201cCompassion. Responsibility. Safety. Partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the five words like five steps that one has to climb, even though one knows that one can stumble.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp looked, through the window, at the snow.<\/p>\n
The snow was white. It covered everything. It made the world clean, like a fresh cloth. And yet one knew that underneath everything still remains: paths, stones, grass. It was only hidden.<\/p>\n
He thought: Perhaps what Morgenstern calls \u201cblue grass\u201d is nothing other than the attempt to color something under the snow so that one does not have to feel that it is still there.<\/p>\n
He reached, without thinking about it, into the pocket of his bathrobe.<\/p>\n
The little wooden stick was still there.<\/p>\n
He pulled it out and looked at it. Then he took, very slowly, the tip and wrote with it, not on paper \u2013 there was no paper \u2013 but on the fogged glass of the window: one line, then another, then a letter that did not quite become a letter.<\/p>\n
It blurred immediately.<\/p>\n
The condensation took up the trace and drew it back into itself, as if it had no patience for identities.<\/p>\n
Morgenstern saw it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are writing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am trying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Morgenstern was silent for a moment. Then he said:<\/p>\n
\u201cOne has to be prepared for it to blur.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is the danger. And the freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside, somewhere, a little snow fell from a branch. Inside, the steam still lay in their hair. And Hans Castorp, who lived between names and aliases, between guilt and self\u2011protection, between mask and hunger, thought \u2013 not as a concept, but as a feeling \u2013 that perhaps there are two ways to no longer be a donkey:<\/p>\n
One is to tell the truth.<\/p>\n
The other is to stop insisting on the blue when you cannot bear the green.<\/p>\n
He closed his eyes.<\/p>\n
And for the first time in a long while \u2013 perhaps since the first Walpurgis Night \u2013 he slept a little, not deeply, not long, but honestly.<\/p>\n