“Take a look now, sir. And now. Tip it forward a little over the forehead. Tip it back a little. A little to the side, a little this way, a little that way. Perfect, just perfect. It goes ideally with your face, sir. With your forehead, your eyes, eyebrows, and so on. Perfect.”
In retrospect I’m sure it must have been a comedy. But at the time it didn’t make me laugh in the slightest. Every hat that Johnny took off and handed back to the clerk was a personal loss for me. Evidently laughter doesn’t depend on what you see and hear. Laughter is people’s ability to protect themselves from the world, from themselves. To deprive them of that ability is to make them defenseless. And that’s how I was. I simply didn’t know how to laugh. It even seemed strange to me that anyone could ever laugh at anything. Most of us who’d found ourselves in that school were the same. Though not all of us, it goes without saying. Some of them were able to laugh even when they were in lockup.
So at the film, some boys were laughing their heads off. But it wasn’t just laughing. Behind the laughter you could sense a growing rage, a resentment. With every hat the man tried on, amid the laughter there were oaths, insults directed at him, at the clerk, and above all at Mary, for losing herself in her magazine and not helping the man. She was just sitting there like me or you. If she’d at least have raised her eyes, said he looked good or didn’t, that that one was worse, the other one was better. Then she could have gone back to her reading.
The rec room was packed, you can imagine what was going on. The moment the guy didn’t like himself in one of the hats there were shouts, whistles, stamping of feet. It was getting louder and louder, more and more bitter, especially because it made no impression on him at all. He even hesitated a tad longer before saying no to this one after all, for some reason or other. The clerk continued to bend in a half-bow, with the same smile on his face, agreeing with the man.
“You’re absolutely right, sir. It really is a little too dark. Really is a little too light. The shade isn’t quite right. The style isn’t quite right. The brim’s a little too wide. With your face, this hat isn’t quite right. Never mind. Let’s see what else there is.”
By this point the room was in uproar. To be honest I was even starting to be a bit afraid. Meanwhile the clerk was going off and bringing a new hat, with the same hope that for sure the man would like this one.
The whole countertop was piled high with the hats he’d tried on, since the clerk set all the hats there in a heap so the man wouldn’t have to wait too long. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I’d never have been able to imagine so many hats in one place. And all for the head of some guy named Johnny. If he’d at least have been someone. But he was no one in particular. He was just like you or me. I mean I’m sorry, I’m not trying to insult you, but the clerk wouldn’t have known who you are if you’d gone in and said you wanted to buy a hat. All the more if it had been me. Though you he might have recognized. Hat shop clerks are smart people. I knew a guy like that.
In any case, in all that crowded rec room no one knew who Johnny was. We hadn’t an inkling. Unless the clerk knew. Or it came out at the end of the film. After he tried on the umpteenth hat it occurred to me that a hat isn’t such an ordinary thing, though it’s just a covering for your head. The film went on and on, and this guy was choosing and choosing, it couldn’t have been an ordinary thing.
One time they brought this fellow to the school who pulled a rabbit out of a hat. At some point the rabbit ran away and started scurrying all around the rec room, we all chased after it. That time too the room was filled to bursting, we had a heck of a job catching it. It was white as can be, an angora, it was trembling all over it was so afraid, even though it knew how to vanish then appear again, one moment it was in the hat, the next it was gone. Or maybe it was the hat that had this power, such a notion came to me even then.
In the end, the rec room kind of began to take over the job of Mary, who was indifferent to the whole business, and when the man tried on a new hat everyone would jump to their feet and try to persuade him to buy that one, the one he was trying on right now. Then, when he finally decided against that one and asked to see another, they’d yell at the clerk and tell him not to bring the guy any more hats, let him buy that one. That one or none at all.
But the clerk wanted the man to buy at least something, and bowing the whole time, with the same smile he’d bring him another hat. At that moment, as if in retaliation for the disappointment he’d caused the room, the choicest obscenities were heaped on both of them. I’d be embarrassed to repeat them. It was like they were throwing stones at both of them. You such-and-such, buy the thing or …! And a lot worse. You this and that, stop bringing him hats! He should buy the one he’s got on right now! Kick his ass out of the store! You know what he can do with that mirror! Son of a …! It was like they got themselves all riled up with cursing, because when the man asked to see another hat, their shouts would get even wilder.
The rec room was low, like you’d expect in a hut. The whole place was shaking, walls, windows, ceiling, it felt like it was about to fall apart. The screen hung down from the ceiling and covered about three fourths of the wall, while the projector stood against the opposite wall behind us. The older boys, along with some of the teachers, were sitting on benches along the side walls, while the rest of us were on the floor. The stream of light from the projector passed right over our heads. For some kids the shouting and whistling and curses weren’t enough, they had to also jump up from the floor into the beam of light, waving their arms as if they were trying to knock the hat off the man’s head as he was trying it on, and knock the next one out of the clerk’s hands when he brought it.
I don’t know if you can imagine all this. It was a storm, a tempest, not laughter. The teachers were shouting, Calm down! calm down! It made no impression. Actually, they may already have been afraid. Especially because the older boys sitting among them on the benches had also gotten to their feet, they were standing in the beam of light right by the screen blocking the clerk’s way back to the man.
“Where do you think you’re going?!”
But the clerk would pass right through them like he was walking through mist, give the man the new hat and take back the one that once again he’d decided against. In the end they turned on Mary. You so-and-so, put the magazine down! Tell him to buy the one he’s trying on! Stop crossing your legs! Move it! Kick him on the backside, on the shin, in the balls! I won’t repeat any more of it. At one point it looked like they were going to invade the screen, trash the shop, beat up the clerk and the man, and maybe rip Mary’s furs off, tear off her dress and take her by force. Especially because there were people who’d been sent to the school for doing exactly that.
The teachers were still trying to calm everyone down. We’ll stop the film! You’re criminals, not children, the lot of you! You’ll all get written up tomorrow! You’ll pay for this! That just set everyone going even more. It was only thanks to the clerk that it didn’t end badly. He was the only one who kept his cool and with the same bow, the same smile kept handing the man one hat after another. But the man, whichever one he put on, he would look in the mirror without a trace of goodwill towards himself. Sometimes it was like he was overcome by doubt about one hat or another. Sometimes he’d study himself more closely in the mirror, as if he himself no longer believed it was him standing at the mirror in a hat. And a several moments it looked like he was finally about to say resignedly, maybe this one.