And who knows why, because in the opinion of the rec room he didn’t look good in that particular one, a view that was expressed in a swelling wave of whistles and shouts and stamping. He looks like a scarecrow! Like a beggar! He looks like …! All this slowly turned into a resounding, No! No! No! But the man wasn’t put off, you even got the feeling he was taunting the room by taking his time choosing a hat. And that he’d buy this one to spite the room, though he didn’t like himself in it that much. He smiled at his own reflection in the mirror, he made different kinds of smiles, from having his lips barely parted to a big grin with a row of perfect white teeth like you only ever see in the movies. I mean, everyone knows what people’s teeth are mostly like. Most people should never smile, never speak even. He pushed the hat back from his forehead, then pulled it forward, assuming a mysterious expression. He tipped the hat to the left, then to the right, like he wanted to look like someone he’d seen in a movie. Or he went right close up to the mirror, almost touching it with the brim of the hat, and looked at himself eye to eye, hat to hat. Or he suddenly stepped back and studied himself full length, from the hat all the way down to his feet. He put a hand in his pants pocket, one then the other in turn, or both at once, assuming a relaxed posture. Or he straightened his necktie, smoothed his jacket, and stood stiff as a ramrod. One time he seemed visibly disheartened when he looked at his reflection, another time like he’d be prepared to come to terms with this hat and with himself, but he lacked the willpower. At that point he would turn helplessly to Mary where she sat absorbed in her magazine:
“What do you think, Mary? Take a look. Do you like me in this one? It’s not at all bad.” But Mary, even if she raised her eyes, she would just lower them again without a word. And the man would regretfully shake his head. “No, not this one after all.”
At these moments all of us in the rec room shared his sense of regret. You could tell from the creaking of the floorboards and benches, because everyone straightened themselves at the same time. No one whistled or swore or laughed. But it wasn’t ordinary regret. He ought to strangle that bitch, you could hear someone whisper in a bitter voice. I’m sorry, those were everyday expressions at the school, other words couldn’t have conveyed one feeling or another. Just as no words could comprehend why Mary was so uninterested in it all. Was it so hard to say yes, no, especially since it was only a hat?
At times Mary lifted her eyes from her magazine, other times not. And even when she did, it was with an increasing sense of boredom. And she made the room increasingly irate. We were all convinced it was her fault that he couldn’t pick out a hat. Though if you thought about it, what had she done, she was was just sitting quietly reading a magazine. But it was enough for the man to turn to her and say, Take a look, Mary, what do you think, Mary, what about this one, Mary? It was like the room caught a fever. They were starting to express not just their rage, but rage mixed with helplessness, pain, despair even. Against Mary, that’s right. But for what? You tell me. It was the man who was trying on hats and not liking himself in any of them, how was Mary to blame?
He could have realized that in all that trying on of hats he wouldn’t like any of them. And he didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t trying on hats anymore so much as battling with them. But what can a person battle a hat about? About himself, you say? Still, the hat’s always going to come out the winner. It made no difference whether he took it off his head right away or no, if he kept it on longer, even if he posed in it in front of the mirror. It came out the same. He could have tried on hats through the entire film, he could have tried on hats till kingdom come, it would have made no difference. Trying things on that way only ever ends along with the end of everything.
True, those hats just kept coming and coming. It wasn’t just any old shop. Wherever you looked there were hats. The clerk even kept bringing more and more from the back, always with a new rush of hope that this one or that one would be to sir’s liking. So there were plenty of hats to go before the clerk would lose hope too.
Though maybe the man would have lost hope first. The more so because there were already signs of discouragement on his face, in his gestures, as he gazed at himself in each new hat in the mirror. He would put the hat on and take it off as if casually. He stopped saying thank you or apologizing. He took each new hat from the clerk and gave him back the one he’d just taken off. He seemed to be doing nothing but moving the hats from the clerk’s hands to his head then back from his head into the clerk’s hands, barely even glancing in the mirror. He ought to have stopped trying them on, but he was evidently incapable even of that. Or maybe he’d started to feel sorry for the clerk, who had been fetching all those hats in vain. That’s why he kept trying more and more on.
All at once, with one of the hats that wasn’t particularly either good or bad, when we were already certain he’d take it off and say, not this one, he hesitated. His hands fell to his sides, he went up to the mirror and stood motionless facing his reflection. His face was still too but it conveyed distress, should I take it off, leave it on, take it off, leave it on, take it off, leave it on. The rec room froze. There was a silence so profound it was like everyone’s hearts had stopped beating. As he stood there you could feel the fever rising and rising. Till at one moment it crossed the bounds of expectation and it made no difference whether he took it off or not, since he’d reached the point where it was no longer right either to take the hat off or leave it on. The only path open to him was to take out a gun and shoot himself through the hat. True, the clerk was already waiting with a new hat, inclining in a half-bow, the same smile on his face, which would suggest that he refused to envisage such a turn of events. But all of us in the rec room demanded exactly that, that he take out a pistol and shoot himself through the hat. Then his final words would be spoken as if to spite Mary:
“Mary, pay the man for the hat.”
He may well have been about to put a gun to the hat when suddenly Mary twittered in an animated voice:
“Listen Johnny, it says here that this season brown felt hats are in for men. Try a brown felt one!”
“I already did.”
“But it says here!”
You might have thought that a shot would ring out at this moment. I thought the same when I tried to imagine how the film might have ended. It would only have been right. You can’t keep trying things on endlessly, even hats. Have you seen that film? Too bad. You could have told me whether he buys a hat or shoots a gun. I never got to see what happened, there was a power outage and the movie stopped. There often used to be outages. Especially in the evenings. And it rarely happened that the power got turned back on again soon. At the earliest after an hour or two. Most of the time, though, when the electricity went off in the evening it didn’t come back till morning.
Oftentimes we’d return from work, barely able to walk, and on top of everything they’d have made us sing on the way, then when we got back there’d be no light. We’d have been breaking rocks for road-building, in the dust and swelter, everyone would be sweaty and thirsty, our hair sticking to our heads, and here there was no light. You couldn’t wash, eat, undress. On top of which, by morning your uniform had to be cleaned, your boots polished, because the next day we had class, and in class you had to look like a student. We didn’t have a change of uniform or boots. They’d only give us new ones when the old uniform or boots couldn’t be darned or mended anymore. And evening was the only time you had to wash something, sew it, patch it. And here the lights were out.