The Combover (6 page)

The girl carried on looking at me, and I didn't really want to continue with the story, not least because there was nothing else to add. What more could I say? A disastrous ventilation system had ruined my wedding. And so? There's a photograph somewhere at home of me kissing my wife, with my forelock sticking up to one side. For a man like me, who has spent hours and hours in front of the mirror so as to avoid every kind of nasty surprise, when I see that photo or even just think of it, it's like a punch in the stomach. Posterity has no pity in such matters and a photographer ought to know that. My photographer was unprofessional, and I didn't have the courage to destroy the shot. "That's not true," said my wife, who had hidden the negative somewhere or other, "it's just an obsession of yours, you look fine even like that."

I continued tracing a piece of a branch I was holding through some pebbles, saying no more.

"And now . . . your wife?" asked the girl.

"At home, I expect. She'll be wondering where I've got to, but I don't suppose she'll be too worried if I'm away for a few days, on the contrary . . . And now, if you don't mind, I have to go down to the town to buy some things."

"Then you'll come back?"

"Yes . . . I'm not sure I much enjoy being in this cave, but I prefer being here than down there, among all those uncombed louts."

I stood up, emptied my rucksack, and put everything into my sleeping bag. Then I put my rucksack on my back.

"So then, see you again next time—and remember, don't tell anyone you found someone sleeping up here."

"If you need a hand, we can come down with you," said the boy.

"No, no, you carry on where you're going, I have things to do and it's better I go alone. I don't want people around me."

I reached the path through the wood and then headed down to the town. I had breakfast at the first bar I found. At that hour there were a dozen or so old men around a table watching four others playing
briscola
. I felt a moment's envy for those who had the time to sit in a bar watching others play cards. As I drank my cappuccino, I was approached by one of the old men who was watching the game.

"Let me see, let me see," he said, examining my head.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"You're cheating."

"In what way?"

"I'll tell you in what way . . . you've got no hair, you push it forward."

"So? That's my business."

"You're a cheat. You want me to believe you've got hair and you don't. That's not right."

"What's not right? I've got hair and can use it as I like."

"Not here at Cingoli . . . If you've got it, fine, otherwise off with it all."

I gulped down my cappuccino and left without replying.

"Decrepit old fool," I muttered to myself, "why can't he mind his own business? Would I start asking him why he's wearing that hat and those trousers and that stupid moustache? What do people want from me? Why can't they just leave me in peace? And then, at Cingoli, what about the Salesians? All the Salesians at Cingoli had combovers . . . I remember them, Don Teodoro, the others . . . no one ever complained . . . and now some old idiot comes and tells me off . . . a bald man is always one of God's elect, whether he's got long hair, short hair, shorn head, or combover. Nature has chosen him, nature has made the choice for him . . . for God's sake!"

But there was a tiny voice in my head, siding with the old man, saying: "You know, after all, the old man's right, you're trying to make people believe something that's not true. In other words, you're misleading them."

"Fuck off yourself," I said to the voice talking in my ear. "Nature has certainly been unkind to me in many ways (premature baldness, hemorrhoids, partial epilepsy, gingivitis, backache . . .), but it has compensated me with above-average intelligence and an elegance that is the envy of many ill-dressed people, and of a lot of self-assured shorn heads, perfectly integrated into society—you have to understand that shaving is simply a form of subjugation."

I went into the first clothes shop I could find along the street and bought a beret, the only beret they had. Red, checkered, for winter (even though it was June and boiling hot in the mountains). The beret ruined my hair, but I had no alternative so long as I was down there in the town. I never liked putting things on my head, but this was war and I had to defend myself, regardless of what I looked like. I got some money from the cash machine and bought everything I had written down on my list. I called home from a pay phone. Fortunately it was the answering machine that replied.

"Hi Teresa, don't wait for me, I'll come back later or perhaps never, I've got to sort myself out; yes, yes, myself, I don't know what this
myself
is, but I've got to sort things out all the same; so don't go looking for me, just leave me in peace for once. Bye."

I allowed myself a generous lunch of pecorino cheese and rocket salad, and with my heavily-laden rucksack on my back, I climbed up the mountain again. The two youngsters had left me a note on my sleeping bag.

It read: "Nice to have met you. We'll come and see you again. Have a good day."

I wasn't exactly jumping for joy. I hadn't come up to the mountains to make friends with two young striplings. "If they want to come and see me, and have nothing better to do, then fine, but if everyone minds their own business so much the better," I thought.

Having sorted out the things I'd bought and furnished the cave as best I could, in the late afternoon I took my brand-new axe and started chopping some wood. I gathered up all the branches and pieces of bark from the surrounding area, chopped them well, and stacked them in the last cave. There was plenty of wood lying about in the undergrowth and around the tree trunks. That evening I made a small pile of twigs and bark in front of the cave and lit a fire using the matches. It wasn't cold, but it seemed like it; I held my hands out over the flame, I rubbed them together; then I took out Spinoza's
Ethics
, turned a few pages, and read a proposition at random. This then referred me to his demonstration, which in turn, referred me to other propositions or other related comments, so as to create in the end such a maze of references that, by starting off at whatever point in the text, I found myself reading the whole of it, or almost. After an hour, or two at most, I put the
Ethics
aside and fell asleep.

Two days later, when I had begun to get used to cave living, the two youngsters came to see me, the boy with down over his lip and the girl with the blue-rimmed glasses. With them was a woman who had a dog on a lead. The dog was called Edison. They all lived in the town and often came for walks in this area, they said. The woman was wearing dark glasses, and when she saw me she tried to get as close as she could. Otherwise, she said, everything she saw was blurred. She didn't worry about the fact that to look at me she had to come so close that I could almost feel her breath. She had no choice if she wanted to see things clearly. It was of no interest to me—we all have our problems—but it's always odd when you find yourself face to face with someone who sees little or nothing.

"My nephew told me you're living here now."

"I'm here for the moment, then I'll see. And I told him not to tell anyone . . . but he clearly didn't listen . . ."

"He told me you are also a bald mystic."

"A what?"

"A bald mystic."

"No, I'm not a bald mystic, not at all. Where did you get that idea?" I asked the boy, who was blushing all over.

"You told me you did your hair like that because it brought you luck, remember? And then I asked you whether I could touch it, to give me some luck as well."

"Of course, but what's that got to do with bald mystics? You've interpreted everything your own way. Alright, alright, forget it, but I'm no kind of mystic, and I certainly don't go round reading people's scalps, I'm sorry."

"But your hair does bring luck," said the woman.

"What are you talking about?"

"Look, you haven't come to these mountains, to these particular caves, just by chance; there's a certain . . . energy here."

"A certain energy! All I wanted to do was find the Salesians but instead I ended up here; and if there's energy, that's nothing to me . . . Your sight's not very good, but from here you can see the whole town. Can you see anything down there? Can you see how beautiful Cingoli is from here?" I asked the woman, who was already starting to get on my nerves.

"I can see just a little . . . I'm used to seeing everything out of focus."

She went up to Spinoza's
Ethics
, picked it up, and asked whether I read the Bible. I said yes, that at one time I had done the catechism, many years ago. I always used to read the Bible before going to sleep. Then she told me she'd had severe migraines for the last two years, they stopped her from sleeping and made her sick.

"Every day, this terrible pain," she said.

"I'm sorry," I said (a total mess, poor woman).

They opened up a bag they had brought with them and produced a whole lot of things: all kinds of biscuits, drinks, fruit and some nuts, enough to last a whole week.

"Thanks, but there's no need. Why are you bringing all this?"

"Water quenches a flaming fire, and alms atone for sins. He who does a kindness is remembered afterward; when he falls, he finds a support. Sirach," said the woman.

"That's very kind, thank you."

I stood up from the trunk where we were sitting and put away the things they had brought. Then we all ate an apple pie the woman with dark glasses had made. The children had nothing more to ask and kept to themselves, gazing out into the woods. The dog was still there, with its snout resting on the woman's shoe, neither barking nor wagging its tail. A nice dog, it lay there silently with its eyes half closed. I had no idea why it was called Edison and I didn't want to ask.

"What do you do here all day?" she asked again (you could see she was curious).

"Nothing, I stay in the cave; I sit hunched in a corner, silent, I don't bother anyone and no one bothers me, I feel I'm doing the right thing, and then—you know what—I like living hidden."

"You like being alone?"

"Yes, I do; I had a few strange dreams at first, I was scared something might come here at night; but then I got used to the noises and that was the end of it."

At last, just before leaving, she explained the reason for her visit. She wanted me to let her stroke my combover, since the boy was convinced that her migraines, and therefore her insomnia and her sickness, would vanish forever if she stroked my combover.

"So you've made this great trek up here to touch my hair? Strange. But go ahead—just so long as you don't mess it up."

Very carefully she rested the palm of her hand on my head and then let it slide down, and then, with an almost choreographic gesture, she touched her forehead. I thought it strange that she actually believed my combover could cure her migraines. But now she had achieved her goal. She seemed more relaxed; otherwise it was for fate to sort things out.

"Let's hope for the best," I said.

One day I was stretched out on a patch of grass and dry leaves. I was looking up at the branches swaying in the breeze, listening to the birds flitting from one place to another, and for a moment all my worries disappeared: my wife (and those awful tunes she used to listen to), my mother-in-law (the books she used to take and never returned), Cosino, the Toldinis. Even my colleagues had vanished, as well as my neighbors, the owner of the take-away shop, even my combover, my hair, the mirror, the creams, everything had gone silent and I was there, stretched out on the grass. Then from a glimmer which I now saw through closed eyes, the Argentinian appeared to me, with all his hair and sideburns, wearing his usual jacket. He came closer and closer to me, or to that eye inside my head that was watching him. He was walking softly, casually, along a long corridor. Then he stopped and began telling me things. He was talking as though stammering, in a language I couldn't understand, and then I thought he might be talking Guaraní, seeing that it was a tongue he knew. And yet, though I didn't understand all the words, I could grasp some of what he was saying. In effect, he was telling me that his thesis on the
Sermones y exemplos en lengua guaraní
by
cacique
Nicolás Yupaguay was pretty well ready for presentation, that he'd read all the books I had suggested and been working hard over the past few days to finish it. Then all of a sudden he changed languages—which I could understand perfectly since it was Italian—and said: "I'm sorry, what I did was stupid, but I just want to say it wasn't me but someone who ordered me, who told me, from within: 'Stand up now,' it said, 'Go to the desk and ruffle the professor's hair, come on, now, move' . . . that's what happened," said the Argentinian inside my head, and I saw him straightening his jacket, as he always did, with a shrug of his shoulders.

The Argentinian was still in the middle of his explanation when I felt myself being shaken by a little man of indefinable age with sun-parched skin and short grizzled hair.

"Excuse me, but what are you doing lying there in the middle of a pile of leaves? It's enough to give anyone a fright," said the man.

I got up and had a good look at him. He had a shriveled face and ugly, round, protruding ears.

"We're very sorry, really, we thought something had happened," said the woman with the migraines; she was standing behind the man, peering at me through her bottle-glass lenses.

"Of course, of course," I said, getting up from the ground, "I'm fine, I was just dozing on the grass, that's all."

"You gave us a fright," she continued.

"I'm sorry."

"I just wanted to say that meeting you has been a miracle—I've had no headaches for four days, not even a tiny one," she said. "And today I've come with my husband, who suffers day and night with his slipped disc . . . he's had a terrible job getting up here . . . I wonder whether you'd kindly let him touch your combover . . . he's suffering a lot and the doctors don't want to operate yet . . . he's sometimes bent double in pain, I can assure you."

"But I'm no kind of healer, and anyway I've got to wash my hair . . . I don't feel very good when my hair's like this."

"Please let him try, it doesn't matter if your hair's dirty, that's no problem—let him touch it like I did, then we'll leave you in peace."

"Alright, alright, if that's what he wants, just get on with it; but I've no time for these superstitions of yours."

As her husband approached me, she attempted to explain that it was better for him to rest his whole palm and then let it slide slowly toward the forehead. "And then with the same hand you must touch the place where it hurts, understand?" she told her husband.

The man did as his wife had instructed. Having rested his hand on my head, he put it behind his neck and began to massage his spine. The woman enjoyed the sight of her husband doing this. Perhaps she was praying as well, I don't know, but she was saying something. I watched him and thought how odd people were up there in the mountains. "Perhaps it might even do him good," I said to myself. Despite his sticking-out ears, he didn't look like someone who was superstitious, and yet, once he had finished massaging himself, he began to feel better.

"Look, look, Giuseppina," he said to the woman with the migraines who was staring at him in disbelief. "I can already walk better, it's incredible."

They had brought me several pots of honey, others of jam, and some homemade biscuits. I left them inside the cave, then took the shampoo, towel, and a bucket.

"And now," I said, "if you don't mind, I've got to go."

"I'm astounded," continued the man. "I don't know how to thank you, it's miraculous."

"You can thank me by going back home. I'll say goodbye, I have things to do."

I headed off toward the stream that flowed down the mountainside and into the woods, then washed my hair and combed it well. I wondered aimlessly through the woods, losing myself in the undergrowth. When I got back, a couple of hours later, there were five people in the cave, once again in the company of Giuseppina, who was sitting there waiting for me.

"But what's going on? This is a cave, not a hospital? Enough, I don't do miracles! It's becoming a joke!"

"These are my friends," said Giuseppina. "If you'd allow them to touch you . . . it will also do them good."

"I understand, but I've just washed my hair, I can't. Go away, leave me alone."

"My friends came to join me while I was on my way back—word has spread down there in the town."

"But you're mad. Your migraines have gone but it's sent you off your head . . . What do you think I am, some sort of puppet? How can you imagine anything so crazy? Your friends can go to a doctor if they want a cure, or let them touch someone else."

"Just think, you can help them without doing a thing, all you have to do is let them touch your head. You see him?" she said, pointing to a boy who was beginning to lose his hair and with a skew eye that was pointing up to the top of a tree, "He has kidney stones; the woman across there has acute pancreatitis with pains in her abdomen, whereas that man has a lymphoma . . ." and one by one she listed the ailments of the people who had climbed the mountain to be cured by me, and I looked at that mass of sick people who had closed in until I was more or less surrounded (I felt a certain disgust at the sight of them, all suffering and exhausted after the climb).

"I'm sorry for them," I said to Giuseppina. I could feel all eyes on me, but I didn't dare to look at them, so powerful was their effect.

At that point the boy who suffered with kidney stones came up and shoved me so hard that I almost fell over. I could see such hatred in the one eye that pointed toward me; the other gazed up, minding its own business. Then, instead of running off into the wood, I made the mistake of taking refuge in the cave.

"You can't let us go off like this," shouted the boy once again, following me into the cave. The others came in behind him. This time I had no escape. I had fallen into my own trap. I could see I was in trouble if I didn't do as they asked. Now I had no choice. I sat down in a corner and lowered my head.

"Do what you want," I said. "Just get on with it and leave me alone."

I closed my eyes, then heard Giuseppina's voice explaining what each of them had to do, and finally lots of hands touching me ("I hope they all drop dead," I thought). I opened my eyes only when they had gone. They left lots of gifts: more pots of honey, more jams, a tray of lasagna, sausages, et cetera. I tidied my hair in front of the mirror. I felt unclean again, more than before, with all those hands, one after the other. I couldn't bear having my hair like that, so I took the shampoo, towel, and bucket, and went back to the stream to wash it again. The water flowed fast between my feet, and I could see myself in the reflection, stooping down to fill the bucket. The fish swimming downstream passed within the reflection without noticing. Back in the cave, I combed my hair once more in front of the mirror and arranged it properly. Then I took a stroll in the woods and gathered a few twigs—a good armful that would last me the next day. I stacked the wood in the cave I had chosen as a storeroom, and when I returned to the middle cave, I found a middle-aged woman with long hair across her face and her makeup smudged with tears.

"What's going on? Who are you?" I asked. "Someone else with this obsession about my combover?"

She made no answer and cried so that her lips quivered like a child, giving out an occasional sob. It wasn't a cry of pain—that kind you recognize immediately.

"Look," I continued unabashed (I can't bear people whimpering), "if you're one of those women who've always got to feel good, then don't come talking to me . . . eat a lobster
au gratin
or go for a foot massage . . . I hate people who always want to feel good, and I also hate people who cry like that, so just tell me what you're here for . . . otherwise you can go back where you came . . . I've had quite enough today."

The woman dried her tears and tidied her hair as best she could: "I've come because my husband left me a month ago and today I found out his new girlfriend is four months pregnant. You understand my situation?"

"I understand and I'm very sorry. What can I say? That's life, you take it as it comes, there's no point getting screwed up about these things."

"Two years of marriage . . . We had decided to wait before having a child and now, instead, just like that . . ."

"I understand, but what's all this got to do with me?"

"A dear friend said you might be able to help, at least to help me get over what has happened; all I can do is cry," she said, then blew her nose like a trumpet into her handkerchief.

"I don't know how I can help you. If you want to touch my combover, just go ahead. I've just washed my hair a second time, so rinse your hands first."

So she took the bottle of water and cleaned them as I had told her. Once she had dried them, I lowered my head without saying a word and she stroked me. She put her hand straight onto her heart and then massaged all of her left breast, her lips, and finally her eyes. She remained like that, massaging herself, for quite some time. Then she thanked me.

"Are you feeling better?" I asked, seeing that she had stopped crying.

"Birth death, birth death, birth death . . . no one can get off this carousel," she said, "not even my husband and his lover; so let's hope they have a fine baby, no? What do you think?"

"Of course. Let's hope so."

"And then, you know what, those two are good for each other. I'm ten years older than him, and at a certain age you begin to see the difference."

"So you're more relaxed now?"

"Yes, of course," said the woman, tidying one side of her hair again.

I pulled out the tray of lasagna which the other sick people had left me and sat down and ate a part of it while I looked down over the roofs of the town. Then I drank some wine—three or four glasses, just enough to sort myself out.

"So I'll say goodbye," she said, waving her hand, as she set off from the cave.

"OK, goodbye," I replied without getting up from the tree trunk where I was sitting.