A hosteller 5

2. Mustache

      

              2.

On the other hand, Tango who kept his mind of respect  to Moon's mustache

until the very day of their farewell was taken to hospital as an emergency case.

First he stayed lying in bed longer than any other new comer. When he got

better enough to sit alone on the chair in his sickroom ,he tried to walk out

in the corridor. Soon after he could stand alone ,he began to walk farther

to the resting room and dance tango alone holding a pillow as a dance partner

in his arms. After a while he  liked to enter in person to Moon's sickroom

with beverages or something nutritious for Moon in his hand for the purpose of

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

 

He got closer to Moon and also more interested in him, He even dangled

after him in the corridor, repeating, as he recited, a pharase of Nietzsche

as follows:

 "........

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, the former happy at his satisfactory recovery,

the latter with his left chest still in illness. With two friends away, 

Moon felt solitary, He had to suffer from aloneness, in no hope of

getting back to 'down there' doing nothing particular but to hang

around the lake in the sanatorium

After the two friends left him, books and music replaced them.

He put literary books he liked near his pillow in bed,one of which was 

'Magic Mountain' by Thomas Mann, It was really fortunate for him

to put it by him. Reading it, he would like to compare himself

with Hanscastrop, the main protagonist of the novel, and Tango 

with an important character named Setembrini ,tall and slender,

bright-spirited and talkative. And especially CC( Carmen of Cordova),

whose real name he forgot, was compared with Chauchat in the story

who led Hans into temptation. CC was a tuberculous lady who had

stayed there for about three months before the two came. 

When he saw the name of Chauchat in the book. the character 

reminded him of CC. It was because the poisonous effect she made

on Hanscastrop. As in the story the protagonist could not muster up

enough strength to resist getting intoxicated by something magic in

Chauchat, so Moon couldn't resist getting fascinated by her.

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

"When Castorp finds the patient who keeps irritating him

by slamming doors in 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.

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": 

In case of CC,during her three-month stay, she kept two men by her side,

both of whom were at the same time enchanted with her. Needless to say,

one of the two was Moon. She liked to invite both of them together

to her room. She would take a seat with no mask on her mouth by Moon,

whose status was still positive. He often called at her room,

but whenever he opened the door, he found the other there in her room.

playing guitar for her.who loved a Beatles," I wanna hold your hand'

Moon came to have a blind jealousy of her and his rival whom,

he imagined, she loved more than himself. Then one day in the evening,

she hesitantly said to Moon,

' Hi, Moon, I have to say goodbye to you. I am to leave tomorrow."

And to his surprise, she whispered to him an unexpected suggestion:

"How about making a train trip together with me

toward the east coast?

There my mother lives by the seaside on the north."

"Really, are you sure?" 

"Sure"

"The down train is available that day?"

"Probably no down train available in that day. you have to return

down the next day".

On the very day of her departure, he by stealth accompanied her

to her destination and was welcomed by an old lady alone waiting

for her daughter. The next day he returned to the sanatorium by train. 

The result was inevitably that his illness in the convalescent stage took

a turn for the worse. Nobody knew but one, a nurse the reason why

Moon getting better little by little suddenly returned much worse.