The Combover

by Adri

  Which means? That that blockhead couldn't do anything other than ruffle my hair because he was already a hair-ruffler by nature, or does it mean that he did it because he had been driven by an external cause and he, poor sod, couldn't prevent himself because he was constrained to do it? I don't know, but in any event, Spinoza was on my side, and even if, according to his Order Geometrically Demonstrated, this wretched gesture had been necessary, this doesn't alter the fact that the student had a breathtaking impudence, like the rest of the class, who laughed brazenly as I stood there holding the book of printers' marks.

  I began to feel twitchy and wanted to forget about the whole business. I put the book away—I would read it with quiet concentration as soon as I had found the well. I got up, put my rucksack on my back, and carried on walking. I left the road after about a kilometer and turned onto a white, gravel track edged with thick grass. I felt a breath of wind between the leaves, the rustling of bushes, the fluttering of blackbirds, and the sense of time gradually disappearing as I climbed higher.

  "It wouldn't be so simple to live hidden in a place like this," I said to myself, "you'd have to be pretty fast in getting down to the town for food and drink, or the occasional newspaper, then vanishing and quickly hiding yourself in the woods, like wild boar."

  And as I walked and looked up absent-mindedly at the trees, I could hear a bicycle being pedaled with difficulty on the gravel, and animals scuttling off into the woods. I turned round and saw a man wearing a multi-colored tracksuit, conspicuous among the trees, with a striped helmet and sun glasses. He was moving forward, pedaling with his feet, pushing first with one leg and then the other. I stopped at the side of the track so that he wouldn't lose the rhythm of his pedaling. "Why so much effort?" I thought as he was about to reach me. "What's he doing pedaling uphill like that?" Then it occurred to me it would soon be evening and I needed to know where I was going, where I could sleep and get something to eat. So just as the cyclist was passing, I raised my hand.

  "Excuse me," I said, "I wonder whether you'd mind stopping a moment? I need some information."

  Without saying a word, the man took a deep breath and stopped beside me.

  "Yes?"

  "Do you know where this track goes?"

  "Up to the top."

  "Well, yes, I can see that, we're going up."

  "It goes to the clearing and then down the other side, but if you want, you can climb up to the caves."

  "The caves? What caves?"

  "The caves," said the cyclist, indicating a point on the other side of the trees.

  "And what's in the caves?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?"

  "That's right, nothing, just a few animals . . ."

  "Such as?"

  "They're all quite harmless, except the wild boar. But to get there you have to cut through the woods . . ."

  "And can you sleep there?"

  "Where, in the caves? You can sleep there as well, I suppose, if you're prepared to make do."

  "I've got a sleeping bag."

  "You're homeless?"

  "No, no, I have a home, but today I wanted to sleep in the mountains. I've come here especially to sleep up here."

  "I see. Well you can sleep up there if you want. Be careful, though, the evenings get cold in spring. Do you have a k-way?"

  "A what?" I asked, and meanwhile I was wondering whether that striped helmet, which matched the rest of his track suit, was really there to protect him if he fell, or to cover his baldness.

  "A k-way," the cyclist repeated.

  "Oh, yes, here it is," and I pulled my waterproof out of the rucksack to let him see.

  The cyclist felt it to see what it was made of, then got back on his saddle and pedaled off again over the gravel.

  "OK, thanks," I said as he moved away along the track.

  I scrambled up to the clearing with my rucksack on my back. There was a space in the middle of the grass with two tables surrounded by benches and a barbecue. The grass was tall and would probably have soon covered everything. I carried on climbing for about an hour, walking among the trees without being quite sure where I was going. I had the continual impression that some wild animal was behind me. Walking in a woodland without knowing the names of the trees is like finding yourself in a strange country where everyone's chattering out loud and you can't understand a word they say. Having just managed to avoid a gully (I would have broken my neck if I'd fallen inside), I reached a small cave slightly hidden in the mountain cliff (in fact, it looked more like a place where wild boar or foxes lived than a cave). "I can go and sleep there," I thought. "And what happens if I'm met by one of those animals that go mad when they see people and it starts attacking me?"

  I carried on climbing the mountain until, just before the top, I came across another cave (though it was so large and protected that it could have had a bear inside). I liked the look of it. There was another nicer one beyond it, and another still, five caves in a neat row, as if they had been made especially for someone who wanted to live in a cave and keep away from all potential hair-rufflers. I checked all five of them, one by one, shouted and even threw stones into them. There was nothing inside, as the cyclist had told me—neither men nor animals (or if there were, I hadn't persuaded them to come out). There was very little vegetation around them, almost none. In short, I could choose whichever cave I wished, the one that most fitted my needs. I could stretch out inside, pick a few berries, gather some herbs, go off hunting. The one in the middle was fine—it was the largest, as well as most sheltered. "Who knows," I thought, "perhaps I might even get used to it." I put down my rucksack and searched every corner with a torch. Then I gathered some leaves and branches to make a small mattress. I lay my sleeping bag on top.

  I was managing absolutely fine.

  7

  Fear of wild man-eaters

  I sat in front of the cave and looked down at the distant town. It was dusk, and the first evening lights were being switched on between the roofs. Lights were appearing further away from the town, in single farmhouses here and there or along the roads, and the first bats were coming out to clean the air, flitting madly over the bushes to hunt out midges. At that moment I ought to have been in Bari, or travelling back by train toward Recanati, reading a newspaper or a textbook on library technology. I hadn't the faintest idea what I could do up there in the mountains, apart from searching for food and keeping well hidden in the woods, for it is a well-known fact that if someone goes off to live in a wood, then everyone else goes searching for him and tries to get him to return to civilization. I had to be ready for all eventualities, I thought. But now I needed to start again from scratch. I had to learn to recognize plants, winds, animals, stars, as the Eastern anchorites had done, or those hermits who lived in mountain caves, some nearby, close to this cave of mine.

  But how could I apply my knowledge on bibliographic data exchange formats up here in the mountains? I had learned so many things in life, of a kind that is generally transmitted from generation to generation more or less from the Sumerian civilization onward. I knew how to play the accordion, I had once even repaired a transistor radio, I knew how to change a spare wheel or play chess, but I had forgotten how to climb trees or identify mushrooms or distinguish a raspberry from a bilberry or how to light a fire with two sticks, in other words all those things that were done before the Sumerians and which are no less important than cuneiform writing or the invention of telegraphy. And as I was thinking this, I took a mirror out of my rucksack and studied myself in it. I hadn't shaved for two days and a hard prickly carpet of bristles was beginning to grow across my chin. I wetted my hands with the water from the bottle and then tidied my hair as best as I could, smoothing it forward. The thinner my hair became, the more attention I had to give to it. But in the mountains I had to be careful of wind and rain or, even worse, the bottom branches of trees, especially in the woods, which mess your hair up in no time at all. I hadn't brought any gelatin with me to
stick down my hair—that was what my grandfather used to use (and every so often my mother would buy me a pack when she went to Nasello's supermarket . . . I'd then get a bowl of water, put a leaf of gelatin into it, pour it into a cup, and then I'd gradually spread it over my scalp and dry it with a hairdryer . . . it didn't smell much, indeed, hardly at all). The grease from my sebaceous glands was enough to keep it under control for the moment, but I felt uncomfortable with greasy hair, even though there was no one up there to see me.

  The dew was falling over the whole mountainside. I went into the cave and took a few steps into the darkness. There was moss on the rock, a soft green layer that made me want to stroke it. I needed to get a hammer, a saw, and some nails so that I could start building something: a shelf, a table, a chair. I didn't even have a candle to illuminate the cave and had to go to bed in the dark, unless I wanted to go off looking for some bark to kindle a fire. I was frightened of going out. And anyway, it was better if I started straight away to acclimatize myself, to recognize sounds, smells, and so forth.

  Tucked away inside there, in that secluded space, I was rediscovering all my childhood fears—in the evening, my mother would take me to bed and switch off the light and my brother would go calmly to sleep while I lay there with my eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. I would hear the sound of traffic on the road, or the voices of passersby. Then I'd get up and ask my father to come and sit with me and he'd give me a pat on the cheek and would lie down beside me, fully dressed, without messing up his hair (I too was very careful not to mess his hair up). I rested my head on his arm until he took it away, saying, with another pat on my cheek: "Go to sleep now, there's nothing to worry about, I'll be in the kitchen."

  "Alright, Dad," I'd say.

  But my fear of the dark would return, and would become terror when I saw the slit of light disappear from beneath the door and heard my parents' bedroom door close. Only when I could feel myself at one with the furnishings in my room—all these objects submerged in the darkness along with the beds and the clothes draped over a chair—would sleep descend upon me, closing my eyelids.

  And that evening, in the cave, at that moment when things become a blur, I thought of the bedroom in which I grew up and where I began to harbor fears, of the noises on the street or in the downstairs corridor, noises that were now replaced by the creaking of branches, by the whispering of leaves or the screech of some night bird. But what most came back to mind, and racked my thoughts as I peered around me, was the story (I don't know how reliable) which they had told me at the bar—the story of the man-eating tribe from Umbria who had settled in the mountains of Cingoli many years before. I must admit I was frightened of falling into the hands of those savages, or men, whom I had good reason to consider far more dangerous than a bear or a pack of hungry wolves. Primitive men with no scruples—so they had told me—who could easily have scalped me, or clubbed me to death and then eaten me, or cut me up and smoked me, as has been reported by certain explorers who have been to study the Mianmin or the Kukukuku of Papua New Guinea, savages who take their victims and sacrifice them without pity. They didn't kill to defend themselves or because the victim had been making eyes—or perhaps just glanced—at one of the village women: they killed because they were in the mountains and were hungry, they didn't think straight, they ate whatever they could find, such as the first unfortunate wretch they happened to find living as a hermit, like me. But supposing they weren't cannibals, they could have killed me just the same, just for the pleasure of it, or to rob me. In this last case, it goes without saying that I would have handed over everything with no questions asked: sleeping bag, k-way, Ethics, introduction to the Ethics, toilet bag, and everything else. "Help yourselves," I'd have said to those marauders, "take the lot but don't kill me, and if you want I'll leave straight away, I'll let you have the caves forever and I'll never come back to Cingoli, just tell me what you want . . ." If they were cannibals who had lost all reason, as cannibals do when they haven't eaten for days, they would have killed me all the same, even if I was kneeling before them, because cannibals, I thought, aren't interested in the pleas of their victims, in fact the whining excites them. If they were more understanding, as those who came from Umbria appear to have been, they would have let me go. And with this thought I felt rather more reassured.

  I took my shoes and socks off and stretched out on the ground, on top of my sleeping bag. I ate a couple of crackers, then washed them down with some water. I began to feel sleepy, even though it was still early and I wasn't used to sleeping on the ground. I got inside my sleeping bag and fell asleep as I smoothed my hair with my hands. But at some stage during the night I began dreaming about a strange, pale colorless body that you could see through, who rose up from my sleeping body and climbed to a point above the cave. It sat on the rock and from high above looked at the darkness inside my sleeping bag. And I was able, through that pale, colorless thing, to see myself naked, and meanwhile my skin gave off an evanescent gas and I began to flake away and dandruff fell around my head (I've no idea how I managed to see this—I haven't had dandruff since the time I did military service—and yet I saw it quite clearly, a halo of snow, like those around the saints in churches). I saw my pores silently distending and discharging a slimy liquid and I felt a nasty, early morning stench coming out of my mouth. Then I saw myself scratching a small pimple on my neck which was irritating the hairs of my beard. That pale body which I had seen gravitating above me looked very much like me, though it was of indeterminate age, whereas I am very well aware of mine. Ten, thirty, sixty—it was hard to say how old it was. Then it came down from where it had climbed, looked at me again as I slept, returned inside my sleeping bag, and slipped back into my body. At that point I felt a jolt, a great shudder, and woke up, my heart racing like mad. I opened my eyes and started thinking about the dream I'd had, about that pale colorless thing that had risen up from my body to look at me, and had slipped back inside me as if to say: "OK then, I'll stay inside Arduino a bit longer, let's see how he gets on up here in the mountains, I really want to find out what happens to him, someone whose life revolves around bibliographic data exchange formats . . . let's see what he does with those formats up here . . . then he'll learn how people once lived in the middle of woods and perhaps lived better, without getting too fucked up about their hair and those formats . . ."

  Dawn began to appear behind the mountains, and Venus shone out like a taillight in the sky. I ate a few more crackers, then went for a pee among the trees. It must have been five or six in the morning. It was cold. I had an urge to go down to Cingoli and call my friend Sandro, to tell him I was in the mountains and had slept in a cave just like the one he and I had once visited in the Sibillini mountains, and that I'd also dreamt about a strange thing who watched me as I was sleeping, but then I had second thoughts. I trusted Sandro entirely, but it was better not to tell anyone where I was—no one must know, not even Cosino, who had most certainly spent that night wandering the house and, having failed to find me, had gone to sleep.

  8

  A girl with blue-rimmed glasses and a boy with down over his lip

  I was sitting outside the cave, on a branch I had dragged from the woods. I had never heard the early morning chorus of birds singing in the shrubs, nor that irritating whirr of insects buzzing around. "I'll have to get used to it," I said to myself. The last bats (those strange flying things, the only ones to have fur instead of feathers) were returning replete toward their hideouts, flitting here and there as though they were mad. I sat there gazing down on Cingoli, which looked like a model village with a few lights still on, set on its mountain crest. The churches, the towers, the pitched roofs, and then the squares and courtyards, and the tight-knit tangle of streets. I surveyed the town like a bird in flight, with my eyes half-closed.

  I didn't know what to do at that hour of the morning. I took out my comb and smoothed my hair forward several times, from the nape of my neck toward my forehead, over the whole rotun
dity of my cranium, following its curve, and then down to the eyebrows. I enjoyed smoothing my hair like that, I found it relaxing. That was why, after the great Bari ruffle, I had stood there paralyzed, stunned. No one had ever dared to do a thing like that, not even my brother, who was an expert when it came to ruffling. What else could I have done that day, in front of the class, other than remaining completely still? I was expecting him, the Argentinian, or someone else in his entourage, to put my hair back straight, as it had been before. But no one had the courage to stand up and approach me or to pull that braggart down a peg or two; instead they burst out laughing like idiots, their mouths half gaping, smug, heaving like chimneys. In effect, they had left me on stage alone ("Laugh, laugh, laugh as much as you want now," I muttered to myself), with my hair disheveled in front of everyone and my forelock sticking back. That little act was enough for this exotic, half-Paraguayan Argentine to strengthen his leadership over those imbeciles—to put it quite simply, he didn't waste any time on idle chatter and knew how to get the best out of life, as leaders do, without mucking about. I could let the whole incident drop, let it pass, and think no more of it. After all, I kept telling myself, it was an impulsive, irrational act. But I couldn't just let it go, and I kept thinking about that idiot. And as I was puzzling over that bastard and all the bastards who, like him, would have no hesitation in ruffling up a decent person like me, someone who tried never to look anyone in the eye (so as to avoid having anything to do with the first hysteric who clouts you on the head with absolute nonchalance), I spat at the tip of a branch that was leaning against the cave. I got up and went for a piss against the same tree trunk I had pissed against the day before (how incredibly easy it is to become used to certain things). I went back to the cave and made a note of what I had to buy if I ever decided to go down to the town: a wood saw, a hammer, large and medium nails for making a bench, an axe, a bucket, a notebook, a new pencil, plenty of chocolate, shampoo, soap, a can of white paint and brush to give the cave a bit of a spruce up (but then I crossed these two items out), blueberry jam, dried fruit, a knife—no, two . . . a large one for hunting and a small one for domestic use—a bottle of grappa, a pair of scissors, which are always useful, candles and a lighter (underlined twice), a rope for dragging things, I didn't know what, but there is always something to drag around in a wood . . .