Saturday, February 9, 2008

sanitorium

Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.

"...She was terribly frightened, because she realized she was going to die. She was just a young girl, so it is excusable, after all. But even grown men carry on like that sometimes, which is, of course, inexcusably weak-willed of them. Behrens knows how to deal with them, he can strike just the right tone for such cases."

"What sort of tone?" Hans Castorp asked with a scowl.

"'Don't make such a fuss!' he says," Joachim replied. "At least that's what he said to one fellow recently--we heard about it from the head nurse who was present to help restrain the dying man. He was one of those types who makes a dreadful scene right at the end and absolutely refuses to die. And so Behrens simply dressed him down: 'Would you please not make such a fuss,' he said, and the patient quieted down at once and died quite peaceably."

3 comments:

michelle said...

the guy i was trying to remember before is emilio perez pinero

http://www.expomurcia.info/calasparraencartel/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=6

ryan culligan said...

wow

Anonymous said...

a great book indeed