mustache 1

                           1.

  I. Mustache

 

The winter of the sanatorium  was relatively long, After the sunset ,the cold came earlier lingering on till the spring. The hermitage hided itself at the thick-forested hill side . More than anything else, most TB patients suffering from the irregular fluctation of their body temperature were sensitive to the weather  in fear of getting cold,which possibly caused the horrible endless cough. In spite of it, in the evening when it was snowy or thickly  cloudy, the corridor of the old structure built of wood somewhat in Japanese style began to liven up,with the electric light on, assuming  a picturesque look against the dark woods outside for the background.

 

StranGely enough Hagya happened to grow a mustache resembling that of Nietsche. The mustache grew by itself at first without his consciuosness, while he was lying unmoved in bed for a couple of weeks in fear of blood-spitting again. All part of his face was naturally covered with thick-hair as he did not shave himself.At that moment he had nothing to desire but to breath in with no difficulty. 

When he awoke up, the first thing to do or his daily life was to check 

alone how was the sound of his breathing, whether or not

the sound gets unclearer than yesterday. After he did it by himself ,

the next things done with care are as explained below:

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                               'below'

He begins to cough slightly,still in bed ,for the purpose of drawing up

little by little,to the throat little by little, the phlegm amassed through night

in the upper part of both chests and spits it all out into the phlegm bottle.

After making sure, with his eyes wide open,that there is no trace of blood

mixed in it, he goes out to the washroom, with the bottle in his hand,

continuously coughing.If  there is mixed a bit blood in phlegm, which may be a sign of lung hemorrhage, he lie again on the bed, with a thermometer put beneath the tongue , and concentrates his eyes in fear of expected coughing up blood. So it is in order not just to wash up that everyday in the morning he goes out to the washroom . More than that,

 it is also to inform  his sick colleagues of his being well, with no problem through the last night till the moment in the morning, 

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​By chance Hagya came to know that on trimming up his mustache he could forget the unbearable suffering and fear the breathing itself gave him. One day reading a Nietche, he felt attracted by a picture of Nietche with a mustache in a book of his titled 'Das Sprake Zaratustra.' Then in a moment he wished to grow a mustache like his. So  under a simple curiosity he left only the hairs on his upper lip when he shaved himself in the morning. his face in the morror with hairs on the upper lip  looked good to himslef. With this as a momentum, he began to grow a  mustache, He embellished it every morning before the morror enjoying to see it grow , with an psychological good result that while he trimmed he could forget 

the suffering of the fearful cough .

 

Adding to it, more importantly, the mustache let him look charismatic

and athoritative to the eyes of 2 persons in red grape-color-ed mantle

in the ward: one, Mr. Guago deaf-half mute. and  another,Tango dancer,

tall and slender. The two were hospitalized almost the same time

where Hagya stayed. A week or so  after the two patients passed

over their serious condition, they began to step out of the sick room,

one by one, first to the corridor and farther to the resting room

in the ward, as most of newcomers to this sanatoirum  did that way.

Then when they encountered Hagya , the two  newcomers payed

their respects, with their eyes fixed on his upper lip. Mr. Guago 

in aprticular was polite ,in the obedient manner,to Hagya with a mustache.

 

But  in a month or so Mr. Guago suddenly turned his attitude to Hagya 

from that of respect into the opposite , even making fun of him before 

pepoles in red-grape-colored mantle. Such a change of his attitude 

might be related with a reason: One day he and Hagya happened to be

in the bathroom together and while the two sat, naked, side by side

on the floor, he suggested  to Hagya that he should wash off the dirt on

his back. Rubbing the back of Hagya softly, Mr.Guaga got disappointed at his skinny body and.lost his mind of respect to him. Next he began to measure of  Hagya's wrist, ankle and neck by his hand one after another, furitively and smoothly. After that He was sure that Hagya was nothing and from then on, treated Hagya as if he were his Sancho. For example, Mr. Guaga liked to walk through the long corridor to the resting hall,where tens of the people, women amd men, in red grape-colored mantle was passing time gossiping. with one hand grasping  him by the coat collar around his back neck.  there he liked to pride himself, by comparing his splendid physique with Hagya's. 

 

On the other hand, Tango, we called the tango dancer so, 

kept his respect he paid t first to Hagya's mustache to the last day

of their farewell. He was hospitalized at first as an emergency case.

He stayed longer than any other new comer in his sickness, lying

in bed without moving. As soon as he got better enough to sit alone

on the chair in his sickroom ,he tried to walk out in the corridor.

When he could stand alone ,he began to come in the resting room

and dance tango alone with a pillow as a dance partner in his bosom .

After a while he  liked to enter in person to Hagya's sickroom

holding beberages or something nutritious for him ifor the purpose of

getting friendly with him whose mustache was attractive to him..

 His first impression was his playfulness,.

??????

e got more and more interested in what literary and marvelous 

Hagya told him. He even dangle after him ,mimicking his way of

citing a pharase of Nietsche as follows:

O man, take care!
What does the deep midnight declare?
"I was asleep—
From a deep dream I woke and swear:—
The world is deep,
Deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe—
Joy—deeper yet than agony:
Woe implores: Go!
But all joy wants eternity—
Wants deep, wants deep eternity."

 

The two, Mr. Guaga and Tango left the sanatorium in a Autumn day,

one after another, one happy at his satisfactory recovery, the other

with his left chest still in illness. There was nobody any more

for Hagya to share killing time and dialogue with. Hagya felt solitary.

As you know, for Hagya to struggle against TB meant that he should

spend days and nights unlimitedly given to him ,doing nothing particular 

but to hang around  in his room in no hope of getting back to 'down there'.

 Anyway for Hagya books and music replaced the two men. There was

no other way for him but reading literary books and listening music. 

After thet left, he put books near his pillow in bed. Most of them

were the literary ones interesting to him in his high school days

through  2 years of his universty period as a student studying politics .

Then his most favorites in the sanatorium were  a few as below:

Magic Mountain' byThomas Mann,

'Das sprake Zaratustra' by Nietsche,

'Rip Van Winkle' by Washington Irving ,

 'Magic Mountain' unfamiliar to Hagya strongly captivated him. 

On reading it, he would ofteh compare himself with Hanscastrop,

the protagonist of the novel, and Tango Park with a character in it named Setembrini ,tall and slender,bright-spirited and talkative, and especially a lyoung lady in her twenties called CC(Carmen of Cordova) as her nickname with another signifcant character named Clavdia Chauchat who led Hanscastrop into temptation.

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****< CC had left the sanatiorium a couple of months before the two, Mr. Guaga and Tango Park came in as emergency cases one by one.>*

 

Hagya did not open the novel without reading the phrase  below:

"When Castorp finds the patient who keeps irritating him by slamming doors n the dining hall, he is surprised at her attractiveness and, above all,

by her slanted eyes, protruding cheek bones, and the delicate,

girlish hand that pats her hair:

 

 

CC( Carmen of Cordova), who had left the sanatorium a couple of months before the two ,Mr Guaga and Tango Park came in as emergency cases, Hagya thought, was fascinating and free-spirited enough for most men to be disturbed looking at her. During her 6-month stay

she had 2 men as her lovers at the same time, one of whom was Hagya .

she liked to invite the both together to her room ,with no mask on her mouth sitting near Hagya, in disregard of the rumor that he was a rare case difficult to get better not only by medication but also a surgical operation. sometimes Hagya called at her room, but whenever he opened the door, he found the other, a guitar player there in her room. He was thought to play melodies for her. who loved pop music, in particula, one of beatles', " I wanna hold your hand'.

 Hagya was driven to have more and more a blind jealousy of her and

his rival, whom ,he imagined, she loved more than himself .

Then one day in the evening in summer, she knocked at the door

of his room and abruptly came in saying, 'Now I have to say goodbye

to you. I am to leave here tomorrow." And to his surprise,

she whispered to him an unexpected and unbelievable suggestion:

"How about making a train trip together with me toward the east coast?

There is my mother's house by the seaside on the north."

"Really, are you sure?" 

"Sure"

"A down train is available that day?"

"Probably it will be not available. you had better to return the next day".

On that day of her departure he accompanied her there by seaside and was welcomed by an old lady alone waiting for her daughter. The result was inevitably that his illness in the convalescent stage turned as serious as before.

 He love the poisonous effect Chauchat in the novel made  on Hans. It was at one point  such that  Hanscastrop could not muster up enough strengh to resist getting intoxicated by something magic and poisonous element in her -a clear symbol of the decay she spreaded.

'Clavdia is like a scintillating and pungent car nivorous plant .

enticing her prey by dulling its sences rather than by striking out'

 As you know,The Magic Mountain is a work of sick-lit par excellence:

a novel that convincingly portrays illness as a state of mind as well as of body .Hans Castorp, a naive young engineer, travels to the International Sanatorium Berghof high up in the Swiss Alps to visit his ailing cousin, Joachim Ziemssen. What was intended as a stay of a few weeks stretches into months, and then years, as Hans himself is diagnosed tubercular and dutifully takes his place there. Hans positively revels in his status as one of the "horizontal":