“I see,” he said.
I didn’t have the courage to ask what he could see, because it seemed to me there wasn’t anything to see.
“Why did you leave that job?” he asked.
“The pay was bad,” I said. But there was something else in his question. It was like he knew I’d left because of the saxophone. To mislead him, I went on: “Rain or no, frost or no, you had to sit perched up on those poles —”
He didn’t let me finish.
“How long have you been at your present site?”
“I just got my first wages.”
“OK, now I understand everything.” There was a clear note of dejection in his voice. “At such a young age, at such a young age a brown felt hat …” He went up to the display, took down the hat and said as he handed it to me: “Try it on again.” Then he went behind the counter, sat down, rested his head on his hands and didn’t say another word.
The hat was much too big. It seemed to fall even further over my ears than before. When I shook my head it wobbled. When I went up to the mirror, it looked too big. When I stepped back, it was still too big. All the same, I stood in front of the mirror waiting for him to confirm it: “See, it’s too big. Too big. You must have finally realized it yourself.”
But since I heard no word from him, I took the hat off and put it right by him on the counter. At that moment he asked unexpectedly:
“Will you wear it, or shall I wrap it for you?”
No, I wasn’t pleased, as you might think. I’d realized I had no choice. And I said:
“Wrap it, please.”
14
Let me tell you, it was the longest journey of my life. The one to buy the hat, I mean. Counting both going there and coming back. I sometimes have the feeling it’s still going on. Since then I’ve traveled by plane, ship, express train, I even flew in a helicopter once, but it seems to me I never traveled that long. True, it was just a regular slow train. I don’t know if you know what it meant to travel in those kinds of trains back then. Not only did it pull in at every station, every little halt, even places where there wasn’t so much as a shelter to mark the fact that it was a stop. On top of that it would often be held up by the signals, or come to a standstill for no apparent reason at some random spot. Often it hadn’t even had time to get up to full speed and already it was stopping again.
How many miles was it? Probably not all that many. Besides, it all depends how you measure it. I measured it by the hat I’d gone to buy. I left at dawn, and the previous evening we’d been drinking till late, because I had to buy myself into the good graces of the guys at the new job, the people I was working with, and especially the master craftsmen and the overseers. I was tired and I was hoping I’d get some sleep in the train. But I kept thinking about the hat, wondering if I’d find the kind I wanted, and I didn’t sleep a wink. So I was counting on getting some shut-eye on the return journey.
The man in the shop advised me to go to the smaller station where the train originated, that way I’d be sure to have a seat. I managed to find a compartment all to myself. I curled up in the corner by the window, putting the hat on the shelf over my head. I began to feel drowsy right away. I don’t know if I actually fell asleep. I was overwhelmed by everything I’d heard from the man in the shop. I was puzzled most of all as to why, when he handed me the screw that I hadn’t even dropped, like I told you, he asked out of the blue:
“Do you play an instrument?”
“No,” I said.
“Then you won’t understand this. Me, when I was young I learned the cello a bit. Later I opened my own shop and my hats took up all my time. It was only after my wife passed away that I went back to playing. Today I couldn’t make it through the day if I didn’t have the hope of picking up my cello when I come home in the evening. It’s not exactly playing, I just mess around a bit. Ah, the cello,” he sighed. “It can resonate with the tenderest strings inside you. It’s as if what’s deepest, most mysterious, is concealed in the sounds. Every evening, so long as nothing gets in the way, of course. Though there’s nothing left to get in my way anymore, so to speak. It’s like I live only for those evenings. I come here, sit, supposedly selling hats, but every so often I take out my watch and count how many hours I still have to go till evening.” He actually took a big “turnip” pocket watch on a chain from the pocket of his vest. Remember, they used to call pocket watches turnip watches. “Still a long, long time to go,” he said in a disappointed voice. “At home, wintertime is worst of all. With every breath you puff out a cloud of steam. Because the coal rations they give you are pathetic. But I’m not complaining. I put on woolen gloves with the tips cut off, I wrap my legs in a blanket, put a woolen balaclava on, though you’re not supposed to wear anything on your head indoors. Over the balaclava I put a hat, and I play. I try not to miss a single evening. I couldn’t forgive myself. When words are no use, thoughts are no use, and the imagination won’t imagine anything anymore, all that’s left is music. All that’s left is music in this world, in this life.”
So I half-slept, in between my lack of sleep from the night of drinking and his question about whether I played an instrument. It was no kind of sleep, as you can imagine. The moment your eyes close, you wake up again.
After ten or fifteen minutes of this semi-sleep the train pulled into the main station where it officially started its journey. A crowd of people rushed to climb on board, and as I’m sure you know, in those days each compartment had doors on both sides of the car. At that point sleep was out of the question. Not just sleep. You couldn’t even think anymore. And now I had to watch out for my hat as well. Plus, you know how it is with a person’s thoughts in a train. They break off at the clatter of the wheels. And when the train goes over a switch, any thought you have is torn to shreds. The same happens at the stations, because either you look out the window, or someone asks what station it is. Not to mention people almost always talk in the train.
In the meantime more and more people joined the train, while very few got out. At each station it was like people were only getting on, not off. Getting on, that’s how you can say it today. Back then they jostled and elbowed their way on, all of them at the same time. Plus, they were lugging bundles, bags, suitcases, baskets, packages, sacks, the compartment almost burst its seams. The conductors had to use the door to push people in so the compartment would close. And it was like that at every station. You’d have thought the train wasn’t powerful enough to be carrying all those people and that was why it was barely inching along, stopping all the time, often in the middle of nowhere. And at the stations it stopped forever, so it was getting more and more delayed. At times it had to wait till a train coming from the other direction passed through and freed up the line. I’m telling you, I actually sort of felt sorry for the train for having to carry a burden that seemed beyond its strength.
When I was going in the other direction, on my way to buy the hat, and I was tormented by doubt as to whether I’d get the kind I wanted, a brown felt one — at that time I got mad even when the train stopped at regular stations. Now the hat lay above me on the shelf, and it made no difference to me whether we moved quicker or slower. I felt a little as if I wasn’t going anywhere and I had nowhere to get to. At moments I even forgot I was in a train. I stared out the window at everything passing by, the fields, woods, rivers, hills, valleys, buildings, wagons, horses, cows, people — it all merged into a monotonous grayness, and it was only the telegraph wires rising and falling running alongside the tracks that lent the grayness a rhythm, showing that this was a living world. I felt completely outside of myself. You say it isn’t possible to be outside yourself. But can’t a person slip out of themselves just for a short while? What for? Where would they be at such a time? I can’t say. But maybe you’re right. Especially because you can’t slip out of yourself when your hat is on the shelf over your head.