The Combover (8 page)

It was not yet four in the morning when I passed the church of the Salesians, or perhaps, yes, it was already past four. That's of no importance. I was soaked to the skin, and there was no one about, no cars, nothing. Just me walking through the cones of lamplight and the owls peering down at me, hidden in the eaves or on the branches of trees. I felt like a loser with that red checkered beret on my head. I had wanted to go to Lapland and hadn't managed it. I had wanted to get to the well where I had been with Don Teodoro (may he rest in peace) and to try and hear that voice he'd told me about, to visit the small church and the meadow, and I hadn't managed that either.

"It doesn't matter, I can do without," I said. "Perhaps, who knows, I can go another time."

I was walking aimlessly, going down one street, then another, and so forth. As I was passing a newspaper shop, I saw a headline in large letters through the window in the door which said:

HUNDREDS GO UP TO THE MOUNTAINS TO BE CURED BY HEALER

No, it can't be me, I thought. Impossible. And after all, that "hundreds" seemed an exaggeration, if the healer really was me. And yet I certainly didn't mind being called a healer, thinking about it, standing there alone in the street without a soul around. A healer can be a fraud, of course, but he can also be someone who does it with a certain ethic (as I had done from the very first day, in spite of everything). I found a place to shelter and waited for the newsagent to open. I wanted an explanation for that headline, to see what they had written, and so forth. After an hour or so I saw an
Apé
, one of those small, three-wheeler vehicles, arrive (vehicles you're always best to keep well clear of, which are either carrying old people wearing caps, who are a menace to the road, or youngsters without driving licenses who are just as dangerous). The three-wheeler stopped in front of the shop and an old man with a cap got out. He sheltered from the rain under a battered umbrella. He opened the shop door and I went and asked him for all the local newspapers he had. He told me he couldn't sell them now—they were already bundled up and the delivery van would soon be coming to take them away.

"Take them from the bundle and let me have them all the same," I said, accepting no excuses.

The old man grumbled a bit and then cut open the bundle with a pair of scissors and gave me three newspapers:
Corriere Adriatico
,
Il Messaggero
, and
Il Resto del Carlino
. The article about the healer appeared in only one of them: it described a man who wouldn't show his face, but witnesses had told the reporter it was enough to touch the combover on his head to obtain miraculous cures. The article went on to explain that the mysterious healer asked for nothing in return. There was no mention of my escape nor, fortunately, my name. I heaved a sigh of relief and went back to the old man. I asked whether he would also sell me his umbrella, just as it was. He began to laugh and refused—he said he needed it and then, looking at me, added by way of justification: "You've no need for an umbrella now . . . you're soaked through."

"Don't worry about me, I still have a long way to go and I've no time to wait around for the shops to open. Will you sell it or not? I'll pay for it."

In the end we agreed to three euros. He was happy with the deal and so was I. This time I retraced my steps, sheltering myself from the rain. I held the umbrella low and my beret right down over my eyebrows, so as not to be recognized by some sick and infirm person I might come across in the street or, worse still, by Giuseppina herself, demanding explanations. I went straight to the bus station and waited under a canopy for the next bus to come.

On the other side of the road was a yellow house with its shutters closed, and on the roof, all of a sudden, I saw a small man with a black cassock and white collar who was moving about as though slipping on the tiles.

"Arduino! Arduino!" the man called out as I looked at him.

"Don Teodoro! What are you doing up there?"

"Go, leave Cingoli, my son, for heaven's sake . . . Go back home."

"That's what I'm here for, Don Teodoro. I'm waiting for the bus," I replied. "I wanted to see the well—you remember the talking well?"

The priest still had his hair combed over from one side, neat and tidy, and as he spoke he looked in all directions, as if he were addressing a large number of people around him.

"Yes, I remember, but get out of here all the same. Forget about the well."

"I couldn't find it."

"It doesn't matter . . ."

I don't know why Don Teodoro said that. I didn't even have time to ask him because he suddenly rose into the air and disappeared in the darkness. I continued waiting for the bus under the canopy, without moving, without looking back at the roof of the house. I was frightened poor Don Teodoro might reappear.

Now I had to make the trip back, taking the first bus down into the valley: Cingoli to Macerata, then Macerata to Recanati.

I was looking forward to returning home to my old notes on bibliographic data exchange formats. And as my bus zigzagged its way up the hill to Recanati and I looked up at the city from below, still half-asleep, exactly as I had left it on my way to Lapland, I seemed to be seeing it for the first time (or almost the first time). Its houses propped one against the other, neatly rendered, covering the whole ridge, its walls worn by the wind and the rain, its tree-lined walk. When I got off the bus I started walking with my umbrella up, along the roadside. It was about eight or nine in the morning. The passing vehicles splashed water everywhere. Then I took an alleyway, holding my battered umbrella. The water flowed fast along the edges of the pavement, forming small, irregular waves, and then dropped into the drains and disappeared.

All of a sudden, as I was trying to avoid the puddles, someone I didn't know appeared from a courtyard, came up beside me, and stuck himself under my umbrella without saying a word. He was all wrapped up, with a rainproof jacket and hood and wearing a tight-fitting tracksuit and trainers. I carried on walking, moving the umbrella across to make space for him. He was obviously some idiot who had decided to go out for a run. I acceded to his tacit request for aid with a cordial: "Please, no problem." I was able to do so, why should I refuse him a little shelter? But he could have taken his own umbrella, I thought, seeing that it had been raining quite some time. But these are temporary inconveniences. A point would come where each would go their separate way. Except that after a while the stranger turned to me and said: "Forgive my curiosity, but aren't you Gherarducci?"

"Yes," I said.

"Arduino Gherarducci, the son of the
avvocato
?"

"Yes, that's me," I said, though I wasn't altogether pleased at being recognized in the pitiful state in which I found myself.

"Hi, I wasn't sure. You've let your beard grow?"

"Yes, a bit . . . I mean, in actual fact, I just haven't bothered shaving for a while."

"I'm Costantino, you remember?"

"Ah, yes, of course I remember," I said (I'd never expected to come across Costantino Toldini in the rain).

"I haven't seen you about for some time."

"Yes, that's true," I said, just to keep him happy.

"It's good to see you, Arduino! Do you remember when you told your brother that I had a head like a seal, and that my entire family looked like some large species of mammal, with so many shaved heads?"

"I can't imagine saying anything of the kind, and if I had, I don't remember. Perhaps I meant to say that shaved heads aren't very elegant, that's all, or that when someone cuts his hair really, really short, no one notices the baldness and it leaves room for the suspicion that he might still have all his hair."

"But they were good times, weren't they Arduino? You started combing your hair forward, remember? We used to poke fun at you, of course, but we meant no harm, did we?"

"Of course not. I remember. But I've cut it all off now, see?" and I took off my red beret to let him see what was left.

"Wow! That's really great, Arduí," said Costantino, surprised to see me shorn like him. "What a surprise!"

"Circumstances sometimes change."

"I, on the other hand, am letting mine grow, just to see what it looks like," said Costantino, and when he pulled back his hood, I saw to my surprise that his hair appeared to have been pushed to one side, suggesting indeed that he himself had combed it to one side, as my father had done.

"Great," I said, "I reckon it suits you. Remember, in any event, a good combover is always better than a head-shave, that's what I still think . . . And you know what, Costantino, you wait, it'll soon be coming back in fashion, and lots of those hairless barbarians you see around will have second thoughts and they'll start doing like you."

The conversation dropped. We carried on walking in silence. Costantino stayed under my umbrella for another hundred meters, pushing me every so often with his shoulder to keep out of the rain, which I was glad to let him do. We eventually said goodbye with an amicable handshake under the porticoes of the town hall.

"So, Arduino, now that I'm growing my hair, don't let me be the only one, make sure you grow yours again."

"OK, alright," I said.

Costantino ran off in the rain, and I stood there under the porticoes thinking about how times are changing faster than ever.

Then I hurried on home, umbrella in hand. The rain was slanting down and filling all the puddles. When I reached the house, I left the umbrella outside and climbed the stairs with my rucksack still on my back. The keys were fortunately still in my pocket. As I opened the door, Cosino came straight to meet me with his drowsy walk. This time he didn't brush up against me since my trousers were drenched. Teresa wasn't there, nor was her car, which she always kept spotlessly clean, inside and out, in the car park. I checked the bookshelves: all the books my mother-in-law had borrowed were still missing, including Spinoza's
Ethics
.

Once back inside the house, I had the feeling that spaces (the entrance hall, kitchen, the bedrooms, even the cubbyhole where I used to study bibliographic data exchange formats) were smaller than I remembered them. I went into the bathroom and had a hot shower. I enjoyed feeling the rush of water against my back. I needed it. This was the first time since my debacle with Kociss the Barber that I had seen myself in the mirror without any hair. It was hard to get used to—I looked maladjusted. At that moment I saw myself back in Bari, in the barber's chair, and heard Kociss saying: "Come on, summer's almost here . . . You don't want to look like those old folk who wander about with their last remnants of hair?"

I gave myself a good shave and also used some scissors to tidy up the last bits of hair that remained after I had cut off my combover. I studied myself at length in the mirror, just to understand, even though there wasn't much to understand.

"Who knows what point the Argentinian has reached with his thesis on the publication of
Sermones y exemplos en lengua guaraní
by
cacique
Nicolás Yupaguay," I asked myself as I reflected upon what I would do in the days to come, whether or not I would go back to university. "Any thesis about that
cacique
will write itself in any event."

I moved away from the mirror and went to sit on the sofa in my dressing gown. Nothing had changed. Everything was as I had left it, except that on the wall in the corridor, instead of the photograph of our honeymoon in Tunisia, there were some pictures of the Virgin and saints. Cosino was stretched out across my legs, and as I stroked him and he purred, as he always did when I smoothed out his fur, I began to wonder how he had managed during my absence.

"If you spoke my language or I spoke yours, then I reckon the two of us would still completely fail to understand each other," I said to Cosino. "And perhaps it's better like that."

We sat in the armchair in silence, waiting for Teresa, who ought to have been returning any moment. At last, about an hour later, when the front door opened, Cosino jumped down from my lap and went to greet her. But then I saw the person coming in wasn't Teresa but my mother-in-law with shopping bags.

"And what are you doing here?" I asked. As I spoke, I pulled the hood of my dressing gown over my head, ashamed at being seen so naked.

"I'll have you remember," she replied abruptly, "that this is my daughter's house."

A pair of sunglasses hung from her neck—she liked wearing them, Teresa had told me, because they made her feel like a modern woman. She had also dyed her hair brown, with a hint of orange (whereas previously it had been black with a few streaks of grey). With her sunglasses and her new hair, I thought, she would now feel more modern than ever before.

"And why have you bothered to return?" she asked after we had been studying each other for some time (I noticed a thin layer of sweat on her forehead and the hairs over her upper lip, visible even from a distance). "Not that it's any business of mine, but Teresa has been looking for you. She called down to Bari several times, and to the university as well."

I didn't know what to say, and there again I wasn't sure what right she had to ask me such things.

"I've been in the mountains," I said. "I've been healing sick people, if you really want to know."

"Of course. I can just imagine how you healed them."

Without another word, she pushed the shopping bags inside with her feet, closed the front door, and then began sorting out the shopping. She took a yogurt, for example, or a pot of jam, put them into the fridge, and then closed it with a bang. At that moment I found myself thinking of the bears and the reindeers of Lapland, the swans, the owls, the snowy landscape, the Northern Lights. And as I was thinking about these things, I took off my dressing gown hood and went to pull my hair down over my head as I had done for years but realized (alas) there was nothing now left to pull down. "Never mind," I thought, "it will grow back, perhaps even healthier than before." My mother-in-law noticed what I was doing but said nothing. She just looked at me. Perhaps she was surprised I no longer had my combover. I then asked where Teresa was, whether she was coming back today. She told me Teresa had gone to Cingoli with her cousin, who's not very well, and that she'd be back that night.