“Hand me the hat, please.” He took the newspaper out. “Honestly, what am I teaching you here!” He put the hat back in the display, taking out the dull-colored one he’d put there in its place. “I’m going to the dogs. I’m not myself. What I’ve been showing you is an embarrassment. A hat lined with newspaper. At one time that would have been unthinkable. A greeting was a greeting, a ritual so to speak. You’d think I was trying to deprive you of all the pleasure of wearing a hat. I find it hard to even imagine you greeting a lady with a hat lined with newspaper. It’s another matter that there are no ladies anymore either. They’ve all died off or flown away. Times aren’t good for ladies either, so to speak. And if you walk down the street, you can see what’s happened on the street also. You get elbowed, trodden on almost, and no one even apologizes. I rarely go out these days. Just to and from the shop. Not to mention what people wear on their heads. I try not to look. Have you noticed how ugly the world has gotten? So what that it exists? I’ve always been drawn to the beauty of the world, not just its existence. It’s too big for you, it’s too big. Not to mention that it’s rejecting your face.”
He opened a drawer under the counter, took out a thick notebook and almost tossed it over to me at the end of the counter.
“Please, write that you’d like a brown felt hat, in your size.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s the requests and complaints book. Though I’d not use my own name if I were you. Just sign it: A client. I tell everyone the same.” He picked the notebook up and turned the pages fretfully. “It’s almost full. What people haven’t written in here. See, there’s a poem. And a picture, though it’s dirty, very dirty, don’t look at that page. OK, here’s an empty page. Please. Please. You really must.”
“What am I supposed to write?”
“Whatever you like. If you don’t want a hat, you can write whatever you’d like to have. Clients write all sorts of things. Not just about hats. I never tell anyone what they should write. Either way I’ll never show it to the inspectors. For them I have another book. This one, see.” He took another notebook out of a different drawer. He flipped the pages and put it in front of me. “This one’s empty, as you see. Nothing but stamps and signatures to say it’s been checked. Whereas in that one, anyone can write anything they want. Because who are the clients supposed to write to? God? What if God doesn’t know our language? Because if He did, if He did …” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes, his nose, his forehead. “I’m so sorry. In the midst of all this I forgot that it’s thanks to you I have light.” He stuffed one notebook into one drawer, the other into the other. “I’m thinking about it … But no, no. It’s too big, it really is too big. I knew the moment you walked in that it wasn’t your size. I was even worried, because not only was it on display, but that would be the one you wanted, a brown felt hat, I could tell right away. At first glance, so to speak. The first glance usually tells us the most about someone. When that first glance of ours strikes against their face, and for a split second it becomes sort of dazzled, fully open, so to speak. So the moment you came in, my first glance told me everything about you. What could it possibly have said? Well, it told me your coming here was the kind of coincidence that sometimes turns malicious and changes into destiny. That’s right, that’s right, young man, destiny is no more than a particularly malicious coincidence there’s no longer any getting away from. You came in here despite the fact that I don’t have any brown felt hats in your size. You may not have known I didn’t have any, true. But you’re not aware of why you’re so set on brown felt. It’s not that you want something that isn’t there. Though young people have the right to want what isn’t there, even things that are impossible. Nor is it important that a brown felt hat wouldn’t be right for your young face. That’s not the point. The point is that you’re passing yourself by, so to speak. You’re walking past yourself and you don’t recognize that it’s you. I’d hoped you might go for the cream-colored one. But you scorned it. Against your own best interests. In discord with yourself. Then who are you? An electrician, you say. You work on a building site. You fixed the light in here, so that would confirm your story. Let it be so. I can see you have a young face, not fully hatched, so to speak. Let it be so. True, young faces are usually the hardest, in that a young face virtually by its nature is still unfinished. It’s in constant flux, it brightens and darkens in turn. You think you’ve managed to grasp something permanent in it, then all at once it evades you, vanishes, the face you see before you keeps changing. But I’m absolutely certain that in your face I was able to grasp something. Namely, that in you nothing quite fits, so to speak. That you’re the wrong size for yourself, in yourself even. And you’re the wrong size for the one brown felt hat in the shop — not the other way around. Being the wrong size is your calling, so to speak, the hallmark of your existence, as revealed in the oh-so-malicious coincidence that there’s only the one brown felt hat, and it happens to be on display, and I can’t take it down from the display. Plus, it’s too big for you. Everything in you is the wrong size that can possibly be the wrong size in a person. Which is to say, it’s too big. To put it simply, you feel strange within yourself, you bump up against yourself inside, so to speak, you don’t match up with yourself. The thing is, though, that you can’t line yourself with newspaper, young man. Although who knows, who knows, these days the impossible sometimes becomes possible. In a word, in yourself you feel like that hat on your head, but in reverse. As if something were carrying you along and giving you an ever-changing shape, sometimes even blowing you away in the wind. I don’t know why I’m saying all this to you. I’ve always been touched by younger clients. Especially since the state took over the shop and I’ve had a lot more time to think about things. Believe me, I can stare at a young face the way you stare at a painting. And even when no one young comes in for weeks on end, I can imagine such a face. The barely marked features that won’t firm up enough to reveal the still distant shadow of death. Because death is the most exact measure of youth, old age doesn’t need any measure. Youth is a state of weightlessness so to speak, the only one in your whole life. How can it be measured then, if not with death. There is no other measure, since a young person needn’t even be aware of the fact that they’re young. True, awareness always comes too late, regardless of age. That’s the nature of our fate as humans, that it’s always too late. Always when everything’s already over. Because it’s awareness that is our fate, not life. Whether our life was worth the living or whether it really might not have been — that’s only decided by fate. Life is what goes on disconnectedly, without purpose, day after day, most often at the whim of chance, that since we’re here we have to be here. Whereas people have made fate out to be a kind of validation of life. And it’s only the short time of youth that allows us to see what a happy eternity could look like. So many years, so many years among these hats, and youth still awes me — me, an old hat seller. Especially when a young person is buying a hat for the first time in their life. This is your first hat, right? I thought so. I knew it the moment you walked in. Pardon me for asking, but how long have you been an electrician?”
“Since right after I left school. I first started work during the electrification of the countryside.” I was getting ready to leave, my fingers were already on the door handle, but I was held back by his question.