The dining hall \u2013 it bore a name that sounded like international comfort and yet, like so many names here, was only a label on something age\u2011old: eating \u2013 was on the ground floor, with large windows looking out onto meadows that were no longer wintry white, but almost shamelessly green. The golf courses, that geometric, bourgeois form of nature, shone as if freshly combed; behind them stood dark spruces, and further behind, as if the whole thing were only a stage, the mountain backdrop rose, blue and gray, with snow in its folds.<\/p>\n
The buffet was set up as always: correct, plentiful, with that moral ambivalence that a luxury breakfast always radiates. It is a celebration and a confession at the same time. You take as if you had earned it, and you look as if you had to justify yourself. Here lay the eggs, there the salmon, here the bread, there the fruit; and over everything lay a smell of coffee, butter, and the quiet, never quite fulfilled promise that this day would be \u201cgood\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp helped himself, as he had now learned to do, not to \u201ceverything\u201d but to \u201cthe right things\u201d: a little protein, a little fat, vegetables, perhaps a handful of berries. Like so many guests in this house, he had internalized the morality of eating; he no longer ate according to hunger, but according to concept. And it is disheartening, esteemed reader, that in this morality one recognizes at the same time a new form of fear: the fear of the body, which has groomed itself, as he had once said.<\/p>\n
He looked for a place at the edge \u2013 for he liked to sit at the edge, even when he was at the center \u2013 and just as he sat down, he heard a voice addressing him, not loud, but firm, with that mixture of friendliness and energy that people have who are used to mediating in conflicts.<\/p>\n
\u201cCastorp!\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked up and saw Philipp Morgenstern.<\/p>\n
Morgenstern came toward him, and behind him \u2013 and this was new \u2013 came two small figures clinging to his jacket, and beside him walked a woman whose face was at once tired and beautiful, as faces are that grow tired not from lack of sleep but from responsibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my wife,\u201d said Morgenstern, and in the way he said \u201cmy wife\u201d there was something that moved and pricked Hans Castorp, the man of the in\u2011between spaces, at the same time: possession and protection, self\u2011evidence and obligation, all in two words.<\/p>\n
The woman smiled politely. She had clear eyes, and in them lay that kind of alertness that is not mistrust but care. She held out her hand to Hans Castorp.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood morning,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood morning,\u201d said Hans Castorp, and felt how his politeness suddenly took on a different color. It is strange: you can shake a hundred hands in hotels, and they remain, like hotel linen, clean and meaningless; and then comes a hand that is not \u201cguest\u201d but \u201clife\u201d, and suddenly you are again a human being who can make mistakes.<\/p>\n
The two girls \u2013 they might have been six and nine, or seven and ten; children have a different reckoning of time in hotels, they are always \u201csmall\u201d and yet always \u201calready big\u201d \u2013 looked at him, first shyly, then curiously.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is Hans,\u201d said Morgenstern, and he said it as if Hans were a friend, not just a fellow guest. \u201cA friend of Papa.\u201d<\/p>\n
The older girl nodded, as if taking note of it, like a small protocol. The younger half hid behind her mother\u2019s leg and peeped out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe said we\u2019d go out after breakfast,\u201d Morgenstern said to Hans, as they sorted themselves around the table, as if suddenly, in the middle of the dining hall, a small private order were emerging. \u201cYou\u2019re coming too, aren\u2019t you? And the doctor\u2026\u201d \u2013 he made an indistinct movement with his hand, as if Dr. AuDHS did not need to be invited, only allowed \u2013 \u201c\u2026he\u2019s coming too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp nodded, and he did not quite know why he nodded, for he was not the man for family outings, not the man for children\u2019s voices, not the man for little jackets and water bottles. But he nodded, because in this nod there was something he had rarely practiced: participation.<\/p>\n
They sat down. The mother \u2013 Frau Morgenstern \u2013 took the napkin from the younger child, who had already crumpled it in its lap, smoothed it out, and in this small movement there lay a whole world of patience.<\/p>\n
Morgenstern ordered coffee, asked for cocoa for the children \u2013 cocoa, that word that Hans Castorp had not heard since Walpurgis Night without thinking of winter sun and marshmallows \u2013 and then, scarcely had the cups been set down, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out.<\/p>\n
It was no device, no ring, no cuff; it was a piece of paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have it with me,\u201d he said, and he said it with a mixture of pride and shame, as one speaks of something one takes seriously but fears others will find ridiculous.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp looked at the paper. It was folded, a little worn, and on it, in neat handwriting, stood five words, one under the other, each with a period, as if it were a sentence in itself.<\/p>\n
Frau Morgenstern saw it and did not sigh, did not smile mockingly; she only nodded, very slightly. That was, esteemed reader, perhaps the most astonishing thing: that such a list in a marriage is not automatically comical, but \u2013 if it is meant seriously \u2013 a form of humility.<\/p>\n
\u201cRespect,\u201d Hans Castorp read softly.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompassion,\u201d said Morgenstern.<\/p>\n
\u201cResponsibility,\u201d said Frau Morgenstern, almost as an addition, as if to show: I have heard it, and I will remind you of it without humiliating you.<\/p>\n
\u201cSafety,\u201d said Morgenstern, and in doing so he looked at his two children, as if this word were not abstract but physical.<\/p>\n
\u201cPartnership,\u201d he said at last, and it sounded as if this long word had to be pronounced particularly gently so that it would not break in the air.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp was silent. Not out of incomprehension, but out of a feeling he could not name: a kind of Tonio\u2011like melancholy. For Tonio \u2013 if we may call him into this scene, esteemed reader, although he is not here \u2013 would have been silent in just the same way: with admiration and with pain. Admiration for the bourgeois form that dresses itself up as morality; pain that one does not quite belong oneself, even when one is sitting at the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have the leeches inside me,\u201d said Morgenstern, and now his voice grew quieter, almost private, although they were sitting in the dining hall, between jars of jam and croissants. \u201cSo\u2026 the things I\u2019ve done, those\u2026\u201d He searched for a word that did not sound too harsh. \u201c\u2026jabs. The irony. Wanting to be right. I have\u2026\u201d He tapped the paper. \u201c\u2026addressed that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frau Morgenstern briefly laid her hand on his forearm. One second. No pathos. A gesture of partnership that does not say \u201cteam\u201d but is a team.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut outside,\u201d Morgenstern continued, \u201coutside there are still some.\u201d He raised his eyes, looked at Hans Castorp, and in this look lay the plea to be understood without dramatizing it. \u201cPeople who\u2026\u201d He made a movement as if something were hanging on him. \u201c\u2026who use my good nature. Always. And I notice it \u2013 and then I argue. And then I become\u2026\u201d He laughed briefly, bitterly. \u201c\u2026a tiger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp thought of the fable, of the donkey, the tiger, the lion. He thought of how Dr. AuDHS had said: It is illogical to argue with a donkey, and even more illogical to trouble the lion with it. He also thought of how modern this fable is: a little didactic play about the energy economy of the mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now,\u201d said Morgenstern, \u201cI don\u2019t want to be a tiger anymore. And I don\u2019t want to be a donkey anymore. I want\u2026\u201d He looked at the list as if it were a handrail. \u201c\u2026I just want\u2026\u201d He laughed again, this time almost shyly. \u201c\u2026to be normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Normal. This word, esteemed reader, has always been a dangerous word in the Magic Mountain context. For \u201cnormal\u201d there is either the valley \u2013 and the valley is war \u2013 or it is an illusion one affords oneself as long as one is up above. Here, on the Sonnenalp, \u201cnormal\u201d is again a marketing term: the normal value, the normal range, the \u201cnormally high\u201d. And yet Morgenstern meant something else: the normality of the good, the normality of respect, the normality of a marriage that does not bleed all the time.<\/p>\n
Hans Castorp nodded, and again he did not quite know why he nodded. Perhaps because he wanted it too, without wanting it.<\/p>\n
Then Dr. AuDHS arrived.<\/p>\n