The Combover (3 page)

The mechanical gesture of pushing my hair forward, which I continued doing despite there being nothing left to push forward, was now pointless. "And now," I wondered, "how long do I have to wait before it grows back?" All I could do was to get a hat from a stall by the station. Over the stall were the words:
Give your head a new profile
. I chose a brown cloth cap with red stripes. It didn't look too bad on me, though I was never much for hats, unlike Ettore Mattei and his son.

When I arrived home Teresa looked at me in amazement, and then she hugged me.

"What a surprise! You look wonderful like that, you know," she said, rubbing her hand over the bare surface of my scalp. "You look like a lollipop . . . it's much better than that tuft you had on top, all pushed forward."

I stayed at home the following week, pretending I had a bad headache, or perhaps I really did. When at last I went out, I had to deal with people's accusing looks. The whole thing caused me great upset and embarrassment, but in the end I came to terms with it.

But there was another day even more woeful than the Bari barber's head-shave debacle. My combover had grown back vigorously. And what I remember of that day is the pulsating sound of the alarm clock, the cappuccino and jam croissant at the corner bar, the one euro twenty cents I left in the clammy hand of the newsvendor, the morning greetings. But most of all I remember, before leaving the apartment where I was staying in Bari, that I went to the bathroom to wash my hair with a blueberry shampoo, I dried it, then held out the hairdryer and flattened it down as far as possible, so that it spread evenly over the surface of my scalp. Lastly, for safety, I sprayed it with hair lacquer, since you never know. I left the bathroom only when the fringe had dried firmly on my forehead.

The lecture began at nine o'clock on that Tuesday morning, as it did every Tuesday for as long as I'd been working in Bari. It was a city I liked because everyone rushed about, as if they had so much to get done. And as I climbed the steps to the second floor, I was stopped by a tall, skinny boy whose face was covered in acne. He asked me what books he had to bring in to do my exam as an external candidate.

"Bring along the two recommended books as well," I told him, "
The Library
by Solimine and read also the
History of Italian Publishing
."

"How many pages are there in all?"

"I don't know, just read what I tell you and don't worry about counting the pages."

The department always had that stuffy smell that made me think of railway waiting rooms. One long corridor, teachers, assistants, researchers, doctoral graduates, students waiting at doorways for exams or to talk to their tutors. I shared my office with two researchers, one who had spent the past four years working on a critical edition of the sonnets of Ugo Foscolo and had just split up from her husband; the other an expert on Giacomo Leopardi and with a slight hump on her back. She had a wild passion for Schubert
Lieder
. They called her
Mezzosoprano
. I didn't have much to do with either of them but, all in all, both women were fairly pleasant. They were always talking about projects and funding, and that morning they were speculating about whether a post would become vacant, but as soon as I put my bag down on the desk, they quickly changed the subject. I asked them whether they weren't hot with all the windows shut. They said they weren't, that they preferred it that way with everything closed. I left, set off down the corridor, and was stopped straight away by another student, a boy with sideburns and long hair. He was from Argentina, the son of an Argentinian consul. He always wore a jacket, even in summer, and when he spoke he rolled his S's, so as to double them.

"I am completing the bibliography," he said, "but I do not have much material in Italy for the argument I am working on."

"First read the books I've suggested. You'll find all the material you need there. And come and see me next Monday at five: we can talk about it then."

"OK," he said, "that's fine."

It wasn't my intention to give him short shrift, though I always felt a certain aversion toward students who stop you at awkward times, wherever you happen to be, to ask you things. The classic fifteen minute delay had now come to an end and I couldn't leave the rest of the class waiting. When I entered the classroom, forty or so students were already sitting in their places. At that time I was giving a series of lectures on the history of printers' marks; on that particular Tuesday I wanted to talk about the role of animals in printers' marks during the 1500s: the cat with the mouse in its mouth, for example, used by the printer Giovan Battista Sessa, Manuzio's dolphin, Costantini's two crowned serpents entwined around a staff, or Giolito di Ferrari's phoenix. I wanted to show them the various marks and, if there was enough time, to explain the symbolic meaning of the images. Here too, the classroom windows were shut and no one had any intention of opening them. Wind and sweat were two things I could not abide. As I was describing a mark used by Valerio Dorico—a Pegasus striking a rock with its hoof making a spring gush forth—I remember noticing the Argentinian student, whose thesis I was supervising and who came to all my lectures, getting up without saying a word and coming toward my desk. I followed him with my eyes, to understand what he was doing there at the front. I thought he wanted to ask me a question or to help me turn a page of the great catalogue of printers' marks I was leafing through in front of the class. But no. While I was holding this great book, he pushed back my combover with a gesture that was deliberate but not aggressive—indeed it was almost elegant—exposing my baldness to the whole class. For a few seconds the students sat there looking at me, astonished, without understanding the insult. Then, predictably, they all began to laugh. They began nudging each other nervously, some bent down beneath their desks giggling where I couldn't see them, others burst into shameless fits of laughter. The Argentinian student then went back to his place through the front rows of desks. He wasn't laughing. He peered silently at me and that was all—the mad, incomprehensible gaze of someone who had fulfilled some necessary act. At first I didn't even try to straighten my hair. I stood there with the large book in my hand, my hair ruffled, my forelock sticking up, just as he had left it. When the laughing subsided, I put the book on the desk and tried to rearrange my combover by smoothing it forward, with no mirror, as best as I could, flattening it down over my scalp, hoping that the lacquer would still hold. This also produced a few brief laughs. I was sweating heavily, but no one thought to open the window. Finally I cleared my throat, and without further comment I carried on with my lecture.

"As I was saying," I continued, feigning indifference, "we can find this Dorico printer's mark on various frontispieces . . ."

By now, only a few continued to snigger. I'm sure that someone had even made an attempt at drawing me, and that my caricature was being passed around under the desks. Then I talked about a dragon that spouts a jet of fire, an immense flame of breath against a dove in flight, but I forgot to say which publisher or printer the mark belonged to, or perhaps I did and don't remember. All that happened from that moment on, even though I have an excellent memory and remember every tiny detail of the whole event, remains confused and hazy, as if my memories had been replaced by clouds that dispersed and reformed according to the wind. I remember getting dates mixed up, that I finished the lesson half an hour early, that the South American spent the whole time staring at me without once losing his composure, that something was getting passed around from desk to desk, that others were still sniggering.

I think there is a right moment for all things—for singing, for dancing, for saying goodbye. That Tuesday morning was the right moment for humiliating a man who was standing in front of a class which was bored by his lecture, and so one brave student took the initiative to break the monotony. He had understood better than anyone else that this was the appropriate moment; otherwise he wouldn't have stood up and ruffled the doormat on my forehead. He had taken the opportunity when it arose and had humiliated me. Out of some need for attention, perhaps?

I was the last to leave the room. Generally I was the first to open the door. I would close my notebook and make a hasty exit. That was how the lecture ended. But that day I felt unsettled and wanted to wait, in the hope that someone would come up and say something. I didn't want apologies—these things happen, I know that—but I was looking for some word of support and appreciation. I have always, basically, been a strong advocate of live-and-let-live. If someone wants to do their hair like Costantino Toldini, that's fine by me, they're free to do so, but no one has the right to ruffle me up or tell me how to do mine (that's why I could have turned the Bari barber, that conceited cretin, into mincemeat that day I went for a haircut in Via Napoli). In short, the Argentinian went out with the rest of the class, not even saying goodbye. I certainly didn't expect him to shake hands, but I expected some word of consolation at least: "I was just joking—I hope you didn't take it the wrong way."

Instead, nothing; he slunk off without a word, like a turncoat—and yet he'd been to ask about his thesis, we had arranged for him to come and see me on Monday to finish off his bibliography. And as I was standing there at my desk, stalling for time, since I was worried about going out, I began to wonder what he would say when he came to my office next Monday at five. Would he pretend nothing had happened? Would he come and talk about the thesis and nothing else? Or would he invent some story to justify his impertinence? The ambushes my brother used to carry out were certainly no less serious, but they always took place at home and even my brother would never have done anything to offend our father in public. But how could a student who had to prepare a thesis on the first edition of
Sermones y exemplos en lengua guaraní
by
cacique
Nicolás Yupaguay, printed in 1727, commit such an act of disrespect against one of his lecturers? And, there again, he knew the Guaraní language, since his family had lived in Paraguay, and he, being good at languages, had learned Guaraní extremely quickly and wanted to do a thesis on one of the texts that he called
incunables jesuíticos
or
incunables guaraníticos
, texts that were used to spread Christianity among the indigenous populations. And one of these was
Sermones y exemplos en lengua guaraní
by
cacique
Nicolás Yupaguay, an extremely rare publication (only four copies are known to exist, according to the despicable Argentinian, and one of these is to be found in the library of the Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires). This was why, when the lecture was over, I just couldn't make sense of it. I can understand how a boy who enrolls for Media Studies and who's involved in advertising and the languages of television can, in certain given conditions, suddenly ruffle up a teacher's hair, as a joke or a game, or even simply as a sociological or psychological experiment; but how can a person studying the first edition of
Sermones y exemplos en lengua guaraní
by
cacique
Nicolás Yupaguay do such a thing? Someone who's studying
Sermones y exemplos en lengua guaraní
, I thought, just can't allow himself to commit certain prankish acts, if for no other reason than out of respect for the subject he has chosen. In short, I was there and couldn't move. The room was empty. The voices of the students had faded along the corridor and there was no one outside the door, apart from a few lecturers or librarians who, I supposed, knew nothing about what had happened to me. And yet something told me the news had already spread with the speed of light around the university corridors and that everyone now knew that a Latin American moron had denuded my head.

"I would never ruffle the head of another person, even if he were my bitterest enemy," I thought.

I should have stepped down from my desk that day, gone to where he was sitting, and given him a right hook straight in his mouth, and then another and then another. Instead I did nothing—I just stood there like an idiot, as I have already described—and carried on talking about animals in sixteenth century printers' marks, when in fact I had the chance to get back at them on the exam, by using whatever pretext to fail the whole lot of ignoramuses.

It would have chilled my dear father's heart to see my hair ruffled like that. "Now you understand," he would have said, "and don't get too upset about it . . . just imagine that student has come into the world to do that very act and nothing else . . . you'll get over it. People are like that, they're bad inside."

When I got back to my office, my colleagues were still chattering—I've no idea what they were saying, since every time I opened the door they quickly changed the subject. I began collecting my things, and I also asked if they had another bag for some books.

"Why are you taking everything away?" the Leopardi scholar asked.

"I need them to do some work at home," I said.

"Ah," interrupted the other, "and you're off right now?"

"Yes, I have to be back home by this evening."

"But what about the faculty meeting tomorrow?" asked the Leopardi scholar.

They looked at each other every time they asked a question. I was more and more convinced that, while I had been hesitating at my desk at the end of the lesson, the story about the ruffled hair had spread everywhere and was now public knowledge. I realized I still had to sort my hair out (perhaps that was why the two Italianists were looking at each other). I took my toilet bag, excused myself, and hurried to the men's room. It was one of those places with a shared mirror and a washbasin with soap (as if you only had a right to privacy when you were using the toilet). I pulled out my comb and smoothed down my hair, then gave it a quick spray with the lacquer and flattened it forward with the palm of my hand. But something was bothering me. Usually, once I've done my hair, I can find the right compromise between the combover and my face. But that morning I couldn't seem to do it and kept fiddling about with that fringed curtain of hair. And as I was standing there in front of the mirror with that wayward forelock, one of the janitors came in. A shabby type with a few grey hairs swept back. I could never work out what sort of problem he had, but something about him wasn't right. He asked how I was. I told him I was well and that everything was fine.

"Lucky you," he said and stood there looking at me.

Perhaps he was expecting me to say something else. Then he shut himself up in a cubicle. When he came out, knowing that the janitors are always the first to know about everything, I asked him: "Is it usual to make fun of lecturers in this faculty?"

"I don't know, it sometimes happens," he said. "They once drew a picture of Professor Barbuti on the blackboard, the one who teaches bibliography, but nothing serious."

"Was he Argentinian?"

"Who?"

"The one who did the drawing."

"No, I don't think so. Why, should he have been?"

"I was just asking—that's often the sort of thing Argentinians do."

"Who?"

"They're rude people, you see."

He looked at himself in the mirror. Then, after a while, he asked: "Have you been going round with that for long?"

"With what?"

"With that," he said, pointing to my head.

"With this? Well, yes, since I began losing my hair."

"And if instead of pushing it forward like that . . . if you pulled it all back like I do, wouldn't it be easier? I reckon you'd also look better."

"And I happen to think it's smarter like this, the way I do it."

"My brother used to have it like you, but he did it from one side to the other . . . and once I went to see him at a match, he was a great attacker, my brother . . . they kicked a corner and he jumped up behind a defender and with a perfect header he took the goalie completely by surprise, and as he was celebrating the goal, he forgot about his hair and ran to the supporters' stand with his side-lock all to one side, hanging down as long as a peacock feather, and the fans started laughing and also cheering the goal; and then he heard someone from the stands shouting: ‘Cover up that fucking bald patch!' and my brother remembered his hair and redid it as best as he could as he was returning the ball to the center line."

"Your brother must have been good," I said.

"Listen to me, you need to be honest and admit your imperfections."

"I am completely honest. Covering baldness—if you really think baldness is an imperfection—is a way of displaying it, even of flaunting it. You ought to try a nice combover, you'd look much smarter."

"No, what for?"

"It's something you get used to."

"I know, but it's for old men."

"Who said?"

"No one does it like that anymore."

"But who says? No one gets upset if they see a woman with fake blond hair and black reappearing at the roots, or with silicon lips, but they get upset about a combover . . . I don't want my head shorn, I don't want to be a slave to fashion, I brush it carefully down like this . . . all I ask is for a little compassion from nature without having to hide anything."

And as I was explaining, I thought: "But why do I have to give reasons? Each can do as they like."

I took my toilet bag and left the men's room, leaving that egregious idiot, who also stank of sweat—not heavily, but he stank all the same. Then I returned to my office and finished collecting my things.

"So you're really off then?" asked the Leopardi scholar once again.

"Yes, I have to go."

"Is something wrong?"

"That's my business."

That same morning I took the first train north, for Ancona. Every passerby had become a potential hair ruffler. You are marked by certain experiences and don't know how to break free of them. But I was sure of one thing. After that joke I could no longer go back, I couldn't carry on as if nothing had happened. Impossible. I had to do something, to give some meaning to what had happened. I couldn't imagine the idea of taking the train back down to Bari the following Monday, shutting myself up in my office for tutorials, and then carrying on with lectures and so forth. That gesture had exposed me, had made a fool of me, it had also been an insult to my past, to my father, to my grandfather. It was a gesture that reminded me of my brother, of the Toldinis and so many bald and shorn heads who snigger without understanding, in the same way as that impertinent South American.

I returned to Recanati, deep in thought. Exhausted, without any desire to carry on. Five hours on the train, a half-hour delay, an hour on the bus, and then a ten-minute walk—there just had to be wind that day—lugging a suitcase and a bag full of books behind me. It was raining, a heavy persistent rain. I had neither hat nor umbrella. Around my lips I could feel the sweetish taste of hair lacquer dribbling down my cheeks. It disappeared under the neck of my shirt and continued down without stopping. My hair was disheveled, and some of it was clinging to the back of my head and around my neck. When I found a place to shelter, I stopped, pulled it back up, and smoothed it over my scalp.

Everything was going wrong. I felt so far away from the time when I was Arduino, or
Arduí
as my father used to call me, when he entered the study and came up from behind as I was sitting at my desk, bent over a Latin composition and he, not noticing what I was doing, would stroke my head and pull back my hair before he left. "Be careful about your back, Arduí," he would say before he closed the door, and I would glance up from my exercise book, just long enough to smile, before carrying on with my composition, but from deep inside I answered, "Yes, Dad, I will." And those times now came back to mind. Even they have betrayed me (even my father, who had been my best friend)—they have all vanished to some place far away, without me, leaving me alone to face forty insolent students who laughed at me and packed me off home in the pouring rain, with my bags in my hand, to a depressed wife who spends her time cowering under the bed sheets or cleaning the house or moving the furniture from one room to another, which for her was all just the same.

"OK, alright, if that's how you want it," I said to those times that had gone forever, "do as you want."

When the rain stopped, I carried on walking home. I was confused, upset; I felt a tingling sensation in my head, as if a whole army of dwarves kept ruffling my hair while I was trying to protect myself, covering myself as best I could, with no hope. Then there was a gust of wind. The water streamed along the gutters, carrying leaves, cigarette ends, and everything else with it.

The house in which we lived was as big as my wife's dreams—though jobless, she still had great ambitions: a room with sofas for watching the television, another with a treadmill and a Pilates machine (which so far as I know she has never used, or if she has, they've had no effect). It had a pointed roof with wooden beams, a bathroom with a bathtub, doors with brass handles, and a view of the sea. I had my own room, a sort of cubbyhole with a desk. For what I had to do, it was more than sufficient. On certain days, when I was there studying bibliographic data exchange formats and heard her moving around in the other room, I stopped and listened in silence and thought perhaps she couldn't wait for me to pack my bags and go back to my mother, to return to the jungle of unmarried men and find another woman, someone less bothered about treadmills and more interested in understanding bibliographic data exchange formats. At other times I didn't think like that and told myself everything was fine: "We balance each other out," I used to say.

When I got home and opened the front door, I called out: "Teresa! Teresa, are you there?"

But she wasn't, nor was her mother, who always came to keep her company when I was away. There was just Cosino, the cat. When he saw me, he came straight up and rubbed against me, looking to be stroked. I took him in my arm and he began to purr, as he usually did before I stroked him. Then I opened the window, looked down, and saw Teresa's car parked below. So I thought she'd be back soon, seeing that she rarely went anywhere without the car, but above all I thought that if she wasn't at home, she almost certainly wasn't depressed, otherwise I'd have found her in bed or cleaning or moving furniture. And as she wasn't there I was saved from having to give any explanations, since I hated having to give explanations, and I thought it was the right moment to get away, even though it was raining. Leave everything and go forever. Go anywhere, but get away. After all, what did I have to lose? It made no sense continuing to live there or going to Bari to teach and study bibliographic data exchange formats.

"Who cares . . . so then it's better going off to live in Lapland, for example," I thought. "Ride on reindeers, carve wood, drown in Lake Inari, watch the Northern Lights . . . Come on! Come on!" I kept saying, "There's got to be somewhere better than this."

I sat down on the sofa and Cosino came and sat straight on my lap. I was sorry to leave him alone with Teresa. He'd done no harm, poor thing. He sat there curled up on my legs without the slightest understanding of humiliation, or pride, or these two things put together. He was there because the world was there, and he revolved around on it without asking too many question. He demanded nothing except for a stroke, and while my soul was on fire and I felt I had turned into the exact opposite of what I had dreamed of becoming when my father was still alive, Cosino lay there stretched out, ignorant of all and everything. It made me feel angry.

"Why do they have everything and we nothing?" I wondered.

Then the telephone began to ring. A long persistent sound. I gazed at it in front of me, an infernal object, all black with white buttons, which swelled up every time it rang, like the cheeks of a trumpeter. Such an intrusion! Cosino had jumped down in resignation and gone off, in his aloof and self-satisfied way, to hide beneath the bed. I followed him. I wondered why there was no distinction for him between being under and on top of the bed.

"Has a cat ever gone off his head because of some Latin America bastard?"

Little smoky-grey Cosino played with his paws. When the telephone stopped ringing, we both came out into the open. I went into the bathroom to put my hair right, then I sorted out my books and pulled my clothes out from my suitcase. I took a rucksack and put together a few things that might be useful for the journey to Lapland or wherever my legs happened to take me. I took Cosino in my arms. He looked at me with those half-open, deep, greenish-yellowish eyes, as if he knew something, even though there was nothing to know. Evening was approaching and I absolutely had to leave.

"See you again, sooner or later," I said to Cosino.

He was rubbing his fur once again against my legs. Then I closed the door behind me.