The Combover by Adrián N. Bravi Page B

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