The Combover (4 page)

When I left home it was around seven in the evening and had stopped raining, but there were still a few clouds floating about in the sky. I headed toward the bus stop with my rucksack on my back. There was no wind; but on my head I could still feel the unruly hand of the student who had roughed up my hair. I couldn't help thinking there must have been a connection between everything that had happened to me that Tuesday. "But what?" I asked myself. "What could there be in common, for example, between the Argentinian son of an Argentinian consul and the pulsating sound of an alarm clock, or between the one euro twenty cents I had left on the clammy hand of the newsvendor and the hair ruffle?" There was no doubt that such a gesture had been caused by a series of events—after all everything is determined by the relationship of cause and effect—but what had driven that wretch to behave as he did? What had I done to him? Nothing. Quite the contrary—I had advised him to read some important, interesting books in preparing the bibliography for his thesis. In short, I was helping him. I still remember his accent. The way he talked reminded me of Batistuta and Maradona, a sweet, slow, incredibly tedious sing-song accent. Listening to him made me think of the boundless expanses of the Pampas. Always there, stretching out his vowels.

The first bus to stop on the road was going to Macerata and, crazy though it might seem, I had decided to go to Lapland; but in order to get to Lapland, unless I really wanted to go out of my way, I had to go in the opposite direction, to Ancona station, then take a train for Milan, and from Milan northward as far as Finland, but by now the bus was standing in front of me, blue, with its doors wide open, and it was a shame not to get on, not least because it was the last bus of the day (the next one went past at six the following morning, in other words ten or eleven hours later, and I really didn't want to wander aimlessly around Recanati). And so, with no more ado, I got on. And while I was on the bus, half asleep, I thought about the Salesian monastery in Cingoli, where my father used to take me, along with my brother and my mother. I also remembered a friend of my father, Don Teodoro, a little priest with a combover who used to welcome everyone with open arms. As soon as we arrived he would take us to the sacristy, open a cupboard, and take out a tin of sweets; my brother and I would fill our pockets with them. I used to like seeing the heads of my father and Don Teodoro close together—I liked to think that a part of the priest was entering my father's body, and vice versa, like two people who fade into one, two combovers into one. After lunch we would all go for a stroll in the woods, climbing up along a footpath in the trees. It was fun going to Cingoli to see Father Teodoro. My mother prepared a picnic in a wicker basket—a thermos flask of coffee, some sandwiches, soft drinks—and we would head off to the mountains, always on a Sunday, until evening. My brother was better behaved then, and Don Teodoro and the other Salesians used to wear white collars around their necks and they'd sing, and when they played football they seemed to remain suspended in the air more than any other Christian, like the flying priests you see in certain pictures, like St. Joseph of Copertino. One day we arrived early in the morning; Don Teodoro had promised to take us that Sunday to a small church up in the mountains, where there was also a well in the middle of a meadow of clover. Inside the well, he said, you could sometimes hear the voice of a woman: a distant, mournful, wordless voice.

"Many have heard her," said Don Teodoro, who was the only one to believe the witnesses. He listened carefully to all of them, then collected their evidence in a notebook. He wrote down all that people told him about the well. "You know, Abele," he told my father, "the people of Cingoli are rather strange, they can hear that voice better than anyone else. They say, in fact, it's the voice of the mountain that comes out of the well."

The well had no winch to it. Someone had covered it with netting because one night, said Don Teodoro, a drunkard had heard the voice and got angry with it because the voice didn't answer his questions properly, and he started throwing empty bottles down the well, breaking them against the side and throwing them down. He had been found unconscious the following morning in the meadow with one of his hands cut to shreds.

The day we went to visit the small church up in the mountains, we walked into the woods. We took a narrow footpath among the trees, explored the surrounding area, the hawthorn bushes, the cypresses. From high above we could see the roofs of the town, its towers, its belfries, a few cranes taking their Sunday rest. Then at midday we had our picnic in the meadow, just by the well. My mother had spread out a tablecloth, and we ate sandwiches while Don Teodoro and my father talked about the chapel, comparing dates, describing one event after another, each event relating to a particular date. Around us was fine, lush vegetation which had grown up by itself, luxuriant, and ivy and other climbers had covered the whole of one side of the church. I was expecting the well to say something to us at any moment: even a quiet lament would have been enough. After what the priest had told us, I was quite convinced that if we kept silent, without making a murmur, some voice would come out. But nothing did, and now, as the bus took me toward Macerata, I found myself thinking about the well and Don Teodoro, and that meadow of clover which opened up like a bald patch in the woodland.

When I reached Macerata, after a half-hour journey, there was distant thunder from the very direction of Cingoli and a constant rumbling of clouds, each huddled up against the other. I found a hotel, stretched out on the bed, and thought about many things, including things I'd like to have forgotten and not remembered at all. And so, to feel a little better, I went out and looked for a telephone. It was nine or ten in the evening, and finding a payphone at that hour wasn't an easy exercise, now that public telephones have almost disappeared.

"Hello," said Teresa when she answered at the other end.

"Hi, it's me. How are things up there?" I asked.

"OK, fine, and you?"

"Is it raining in Recanati?" I asked.

"No, it's stopped. What about Bari?"

"In Bari it's been raining a lot. But it's stopped here as well."

Then she told me she'd been out with her mother to buy something or other—whenever Teresa went off shopping she'd always list everything she bought, though I told her she could spare me the detail. This time I said: "Excellent."

"I've also bought you some spinach."

"OK fine, we can eat it when I get back, but I've got to go now."

"Oh," she continued, "my mother's taken one of your books from the shelf."

"Which one?"

"Spinoza's
Ethics
."

"And what's your mother going to do with that? She'd better not do what she's done with the others. She'll hold on to it, and then I have to ask for it back. I know how many she's got, and she doesn't even read them . . . If she wants to read books, she'd better go and buy them . . ."

I began to get irritated: Spinoza's
Ethics
was the one book I ought to have been taking with me to Lapland. ("Fuck the old bitch," I thought, "tomorrow I'll go and buy another copy.") I never liked it when she touched my books. That woman had always jinxed me—I'd never managed to reread any of the books she'd handled. Why hadn't she taken one of the many treatises on semiotics, those on the bottom shelf? Poor Spinoza, who'd seen all sorts in his life . . . and now she's going to start reading him as well.

"Goodbye then," said Teresa, rather piqued (she always went into a huff when there was any mention of her mother).

"OK, goodbye . . . oh, and you can tell that witch she can keep the
Ethics
; I'd rather buy a new copy than read a single line of a book that she's been reading . . . she burns the words she reads. While you're at it, tell her from me to piss off, and if you go and piss off yourself then so much the better, since you're both just the same."

I don't know what she said in reply. Once I'd put the phone down I felt much relieved. There was not much else I could say. If she couldn't understand, it was hardly her fault.

I wandered aimlessly around the streets of Macerata. Then I went into the main square, took a side street, and found a bar with tables outside. Inside were a few framed photos of Chet Baker, from the time, a waiter told me, when he had played there a few months before falling out of the window of a hotel. I had one beer because, even though I was much relieved, I still felt sad and listless. If I had felt better, I'd have taken another two or three beers, or even perhaps four. The bar was called "The Well" and on the door was a picture of a well like the one Don Teodoro had taken me to see at Cingoli. I thought perhaps another beer would be alright, bearing in mind the name of the place. And while I was there drinking, I happened to look across at two men who were in conversation at the door, by the picture. One of them was wearing glasses and had a thick head of hair, like my brother but not so dark; the other, who was going slightly bald, was drinking grappa and laughing. I scalped both of them and changed their hairdos round. Then I pointed to the sign and asked if they knew anything about the well at Cingoli.

"The one up in the mountains . . . they say that strange sounds come out of that well," I said, just to make a bit of conversation.

They replied that they knew nothing about it, "Though there are lots of wells in this area and the story about the voices is as old as the hills," added the one with the thick hair.

And then, since there was a lively group of people chattering away at a table next to them, they asked them, adding the comment they'd made to me, in other words that the story about voices was as old as the hills.

"But Cingoli's full of wells," said one of the lively group, which was what the man with the hair had said, "and each one has its own story."

I said I knew, or could imagine that was the case, even if the well I was talking about was different because it was famous for being "a talking well, with the voice of a moaning woman" (something different to the other wells).

"I've got a girlfriend who's always moaning," said one of the lively group.

"Yes, but she's not from Cingoli," remarked the first.

"I know, but we're talking about moaning."

"I reckon, at this point, that the well is better off closed and forgotten."

"That's right. You reckon it's easy, going and closing up a well."

Then one of them began saying that a community of man-eaters from Umbria had settled at Cingoli many years ago. "They weren't cannibals," he said, "though their ancestors had been, and now they roam the mountains of the Marche in a caravan."

The two men who had been talking to each other left me with the lively group who, at a certain point, once they had stopped talking about cannibals, wanted to know why I wore my hair that way.

"Because I like it like that," I said. "There's no other reason."

The first who had spoken, after exchanging a knowing glance with a friend, then asked if he could put a drop of beer on my hair. "Just a little," he said. He wanted to see whether my hair would swell up with the beer.

"Out of the question," I said. "you reckon I'm going to let you pour beer on my head!"

They kept on just the same, insisting all the time. One of them would begin to smile and a split-second later the same smile would appear on the lips of another.

"Come on, let's see, there's no harm—it's just to find out if your hair swells up or stays down flat."

"No, another time. I've already had quite enough today," and I explained how the Argentinian student had ruffled my hair while I was giving a lecture and how everyone had started laughing.

"Can you believe it, such rude people, but ours is a perfectly decent request, see?"

"We're not a load of rascals," added the other.

"I know, it's just that I don't feel like it right now, it's taken me time to get it neat and tidy, and beer's disgusting, it makes me want to puke."

"That's true."

"And how long does it take to do your hair?"

"Well, that depends, I'm pretty fast now . . . a question of minutes, it's just that sometimes, when it's wet . . . you understand?"

I was sorry I couldn't agree to their request, but at that moment it seemed too much to ask; and so I pretended to go off to the men's room and managed to make a quick English-style getaway without giving into their pleas (I don't like having to say no to people).

After my escape I returned to the hotel and stretched out on the bed; I felt all in pieces, as if bits of my body had somehow worked loose.

I got up next morning with all my springs still broken and a headache. After a splash of cold water on my face and careful arrangement of my hair, I took my things and loaded them onto my back. To get my revenge on that old bitch my mother-in-law and her habit of borrowing my books and not returning them except after numerous requests, I went to a bookshop and bought Spinoza's
Ethics
, and since I was there, I also bought an introductory commentary. I took the steps down beside the civic tower and headed toward the railway station.

But half way there I changed my mind. "And if I go and see Don Teodoro, up at Cingoli?" I wondered. "Perhaps I'll still find him there at the Salesians—or I could go and see the well," which I hadn't seen since I was a child.

While I was there in the street deciding what to do, a bus for Cingoli arrived—another blue bus, like the one that goes back and forth between Recanati and Macerata. I stuck out my hand and jumped on while it was still moving.

It was my first trip to Cingoli by myself and, frankly, I didn't know where I was going. The well, the chapel, and the meadow were certainly there, along with my old memories, but I wasn't interested in any of that. Not even Cingoli, the so-called balcony of the Marche, was of particular importance to me. I had been insulted and wanted to go to Lapland or wherever I happened to end up. I wanted to leave forever and never come back. I had already made the first step. I had left Cosino to meow alone in an empty house, where he was wandering around like a phantom, from one room to another. I had gone without him even knowing it. I had left Teresa alone with her mother (who could now justify every nasty insinuation against me with a thousand arguments and plunder my things as she pleased). I had left my cubbyhole, my books (to the mercy of my mother-in-law), my notes on bibliographic data exchange formats, and now I was on the back seat of a bus full of students, next to a young girl with made-up eyes, two piercings on her lower lip, and headphones over her ears. Yes, I was losing myself in the crowd (what's wrong with that?). It happens to everyone. I pulled out my copy of the
Ethics
and read the first axiom of the second part:

The essence of man does not involve necessary existence, that is, it may happen, in the order of nature, that this or that man does or does not exist.

And I wanted to lose myself and get away from people (Argentinians, Italians, whomever); this was why I was going to Cingoli and travelling beside that girl with holes in her lip, who was silently nodding her head in time to the music.

"Excuse me," I asked her, touching her arm, "can you tell me how much further it is to Cingoli?"

"You what?" she said, taking her earphones from her ears.

"I was just asking if you can tell me how much further it is to Cingoli."

"No," she said and put her earphones back on her ears.

After about forty minutes, the bus dropped me at a bus stop by the church of the Salesians. The sun was high and there was thick cloud over the mountain tops. Every so often an old woman would appear with a wicker shopping basket or dragging a shopping trolley behind her with a celery or a lettuce sticking out. All the old folk were wandering about in the street in a great hurry.

When I went into the church, the priest was giving the parting benediction. Mass was being said by a Salesian who was quite bald with no lock of hair to comb over. Setting foot in that church again was, for me, like going back in time. The windows of the side naves, the roof beams, the pillars . . . and in the middle I could see my father dipping his fingers into the holy water—while he was crossing himself, he would bow his head as if to offer the whole of his combover before the altar. I felt deeply moved that after so many years I would once more be meeting Don Teodoro, that little priest whose body I had seen fading into that of my father who had faded into his (there has always been a sort of solidarity between people with combovers).

Once the mass was over and the priest had packed away his lectern, he hurried off toward the sacristy. I followed him down the side nave. I looked about as I entered the sacristy. I immediately recognized the cupboard and the door that Don Teodoro would open to get out the tin of sweets and fill my and my brother's pockets. Then I asked the priest if he could tell me where I'd find Don Teodoro. He looked me up and down and then, without replying, took off his cassock and told the altar boy to go and get something ready for him. Only then did he look me in the eye.

"Don Teodoro died eight years ago," he said.

"Oh God, I didn't know," I said. "I'm sorry. He was a friend of my father, we often came to see him."

"So I gather, but he's dead."

"Yes, of course. There's nothing we can do about that."

"There certainly isn't."

I asked no more about how or where he died—the priest was in a hurry and he showed no interest in me, so I put my rucksack on my back again and left.

Walking past a window, I could see my reflection in the glass. I knew there were people in the church and realized they had turned to look at me as I was trying to tidy my hair, but certain things couldn't be delayed.

That day I walked quite a distance to find the path that led to the well. I was losing hope. I tried to reconstruct in my mind the route I had taken with my family in my father's Fiat 850
coupé
, but Cingoli is a strange town—you take one road, walk quite happily along it, and then, an hour later, find yourself back exactly where you started, or you end up on a road that's taking you to another town, like Apiro for example, or Mummuiola. If I had decided to leave straightaway for Lapland, without further ado, I'd already have been well on my way, certainly outside Italy at least (and there again, since Lapland is a region, you can get to it however you like, even from Russia, because there's no single road that takes you there . . . but in my case I would have gone first to Finland, to Helsinki, and then to Oulu, so that I could start Laplandizing myself, and then on up to Lake Inari, and then I'd have stopped there for a while . . . another ideal place would have been Patagonia, but Patagonia is in Argentina and I didn't want anything to do with the Argentinians . . . and there again, there are winds in Patagonia, and if you haven't got your hair well stuck down on your head, it will get blown off and you won't see it again). And yet, in spite of my plans, I had ended up in Cingoli looking for Don Teodoro's famous well, and also for Don Teodoro himself (may he rest in peace), the chapel, the meadow, and the mountains of Cingoli, even though, in all these years, it had never occurred to me to return. It was only a childhood memory, nothing else, one of those memories that suddenly re-emerge when you're telling someone you had once been to Cingoli, or when you see a well and say: "Oh, that well at Cingoli . . ." In short, one of those memories you could perfectly do without. And yet yesterday on the bus, as I was going to Macerata, I suddenly thought about those two combed-over heads, of my father and Don Teodoro, which had faded into each other and then separated, and behind them was the chapel and, further away, the well in the middle of the meadow, and they were all a series of necessary things (as it says in the
Ethics
, which I was carrying in my rucksack: all ideas, confused or unconfused, and all things are in God and nothing can be conceived without God); in others words, they were necessary things which had been left in abeyance, here at Cingoli, and I could not leave them here and go off without tying up the threads of the past.

While I was thinking and reflecting, I sat down on a bench on the road that went to San Severino Marche (perhaps I had to go this way—I remember that the path wasn't in the direction of the lake at Cingoli, otherwise known as Castreccioni, which lies to the east, but was on a road similar to this). I pulled out the
Ethics
and read proposition thirty-six of the second part (which talks about confused ideas that are nevertheless necessary) and then the demonstration that refers to proposition fifteen of the first part, with its demonstration which, in turn, refers to proposition fourteen, once again in the first part, and to definition three and so forth. In short, I began to think, like Spinoza, that all things are necessary, like the Argentinian's hair-ruffle: "Was even this necessary, damn it?" I asked myself. "Did he really have to get up from his seat and ruffle my hair in front of everyone?" In the
Ethics
, definition seven says:

That thing is called free, which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. On the other hand, that thing is necessary, or rather constrained, which is determined by something external to itself to a fixed and definite method of existence or action.

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.