“The usual — it went out and it doesn’t work anymore. I checked the bulb and the fuses. They’re fine. There’s nothing more I know how to do.”
“Is it just in your shop?”
“As if out of spite, they have power in all the neighboring stores. Upstairs too, on all the floors. Throughout the whole building. The only problem is in here.”
“Do you have any tools? A screwdriver and pliers at least? I could take a look. Maybe something can be done.”
“You?” he said in surprise.
“I’m an electrician.”
“An electrician?” He was even more amazed. “Who’d have thought? Who’d have thought? I reckoned I could tell every client’s line of work. Your line of work is your character, and everyone’s character is written on their face. In their movements, their walk, their posture, their way of being. I was convinced … See what happens to a man when he works in a state-owned shop. These days it’s getting harder and harder to know people.”
“Do you have pliers at least?” I reminded him. “If need be, ordinary pincers might do.”
“Sorry, no.” He shrugged helplessly, as if he were confessing to some misdemeanor. “Wait a minute though, there’s a tool shop a couple of doors down.”
He scurried out. And before I’d had time to take a good look around — though truth to tell there wasn’t a whole lot to look at, except maybe for the mirror, which reached from the floor to over halfway up the wall — he was back with an armful of various tools. Screwdrivers, flat-blade and crosshead, pincers small and large, pliers; wire-cutters, a small hammer, a wrench, a roll of insulating tape, even rubber gauntlets.
“Why did you bring all this?” I said with a laugh. “It won’t be needed. First I have to take a look.”
“Just in case,” he said, visibly excited. “In the store they said that electricity is serious business.”
“Luckily I know that already,” I said.
He put it all on the counter, removing the hats he’d been offering me, and he rubbed his hands with satisfaction.
“Who’d have thought. How can anyone not believe in serendipity. And serendipity is precisely destiny. Even in a state-owned shop. I mean, if I’d had a brown felt hat in your size, I’d still be without light.”
“That remains to be seen,” I said, trying to calm him down a little. But he ignored me.
“You’d have tried the hat on and bought it, and I’d still be sitting here by candlelight.”
“This switch is working,” I said, screwing in the clips that attached it to the wall. “But it would be good to replace it. It’s from before the war. The box has perished. I’ll check the lamp now. I just need to push the counter into the middle of the room, I won’t be able to reach it from a chair.”
“Of course, of course. Do whatever you need.”
I climbed onto the counter, took off the lampshade and unscrewed the bulb. The bulb was still good, but the socket was on its last legs, plus it was dangling by a single wire, the other one had broken off deep inside the line. I wrapped the socket in insulating tape to prevent it from falling apart completely, and cut away part of the line. I also had to cut a piece of it by the ceiling rose, because the insulation round the wiring came away in my hand. It was a fiddly job, it took me a long time. Meanwhile, the other guy seemed unable to settle down. He dropped onto a chair, but he couldn’t sit still for longer than a moment, he stood up again right away. He tipped his head back and watched what I was doing. He was suddenly overcome by doubt:
“Maybe I was getting ahead of myself?”
“No, we’ll figure something out,” I said, “so long as the wiring in the walls is still good. But it all needs to be replaced. And I wouldn’t put it off.”
He sat down again, jumped back up, went into the storeroom and came back. The he started rearranging all the caps and berets and hats on the shelves.
“I’m looking for someplace to hide this hat, since you’re not interested in it. Though I could already picture you in it, so to speak. On the street, in the park, walking along with the lady of your heart. You saying hello to people, smiling. Everyone looking back at you, wondering where you got a hat like that. The color of desert sand in the glare of the sun. And you got it from my shop from before the war. Could anyone ever describe the color of a hat in a deeper way? Desert sand. And a perfect fit. It’s like it was custom made for you. It’d stay on, I guarantee it. Because a hat ought to stick to your head like a soul to its body. It shouldn’t be too tight, because then it leaves a mark on your forehead when you take it off. And it shouldn’t be too loose, because that’s even worse, the hat goes one way and the head another. The hat ought to be obedient to the head, when you turn it left or right the hat should turn left or right with it. You tip your head up toward the sun, it shouldn’t slide forward; you lean down, it shouldn’t fall off. And in general you shouldn’t even feel you have something on your head. That’s what it means to have a hat that fits. Hats I know like the back of my hand, so to speak. My whole life has been spent with hats. Trust an old hatter. Who are you going to trust, what you see is all that’s left of hats, and before long it may all be gone. Then no one will ever be able to tell you anymore what hats once were. And that’s a big thing to know. In other kinds of headgear a person shrinks, disappears, loses their uniqueness. Of a Sunday, when I’d go into town, so to speak, wherever I looked there were hats from my shop. It goes without saying I carried all the accessories that go with hats: scarves, neckties, bow ties, gloves, even umbrellas. And the clients would always follow my advice. Naturally I gave it subtly, tactfully, so he’d be convinced it was his own taste guiding him. It’s common knowledge that not every person has the best taste. And taste is an important thing. Taste, so to speak, is more than just taste. Your taste determines how you think, feel, imagine, act.”
I decided I had to find something for him to do after all, because my hands were starting to shake. Even standing on the countertop I could barely reach the ceiling rose — it was a pre-war building with a high ceiling, and with my hands stretched up the whole time the job wasn’t going as well as I’d have liked. Plus there was his endless chatter down below. He’d evidently gotten carried away with the hope of having light, and perhaps out of gratitude to me he hardly even paused for breath.
“After all, isn’t life a question of taste, so to speak?”
I thought he was talking to me and I said:
“Pass me that flat-blade screwdriver, please.”
He handed it to me mechanically, and went right on.
“Some people like it, they’re glad to be alive, others live because they have to. I’d never have come to know people if I hadn’t had them as clients. Truth is, every one of us has the soul of a client. In that respect all souls are alike. It makes no difference who buys something and who doesn’t. Or whether you carry what he’s looking for or not. Excess or want, they both equally reveal the client in a person. Unfortunately, they don’t do much else.”
I asked him to go wash the lampshade, it looked like no one had cleaned it since before the war, it was blocking the light. He took it, but he didn’t leave right away. He spun the lampshade in his hands like a hat. I had to remind him that it wasn’t a hat, that he’d break it. It was only then he went into the back room. When he came back, I complimented him on doing a good job:
“It looks good as new.” I started talking about lampshades, saying that these days you never got shades like the one in his shop, and telling him what kinds people put up now. But he took advantage of a moment when I had to hold a screw in my mouth, and he picked up where he’d left off: