Free The Combover by Adrián N. Bravi Page B

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