The Combover Read Online Free PDF Page A

studying the first edition of
Sermones y exemplos en lengua guaraní
by
cacique
Nicolás Yupaguay do such a thing? Someone who's studying
Sermones y exemplos en lengua guaraní
, I thought, just can't allow himself to commit certain prankish acts, if for no other reason than out of respect for the subject he has chosen. In short, I was there and couldn't move. The room was empty. The voices of the students had faded along the corridor and there was no one outside the door, apart from a few lecturers or librarians who, I supposed, knew nothing about what had happened to me. And yet something told me the news had already spread with the speed of light around the university corridors and that everyone now knew that a Latin American moron had denuded my head.
    "I would never ruffle the head of another person, even if he were my bitterest enemy," I thought.
    I should have stepped down from my desk that day, gone to where he was sitting, and given him a right hook straight in his mouth, and then another and then another. Instead I did nothing—I just stood there like an idiot, as I have already described—and carried on talking about animals in sixteenth century printers' marks, when in fact I had the chance to get back at them on the exam, by using whatever pretext to fail the whole lot of ignoramuses.
    It would have chilled my dear father's heart to see my hair ruffled like that. "Now you understand," he would have said, "and don't get too upset about it . . . just imagine that student has come into the world to do that very act and nothing else . . . you'll get over it. People are like that, they're bad inside."

4
A day of rain and wet hair
    When I got back to my office, my colleagues were still chattering—I've no idea what they were saying, since every time I opened the door they quickly changed the subject. I began collecting my things, and I also asked if they had another bag for some books.
    "Why are you taking everything away?" the Leopardi scholar asked.
    "I need them to do some work at home," I said.
    "Ah," interrupted the other, "and you're off right now?"
    "Yes, I have to be back home by this evening."
    "But what about the faculty meeting tomorrow?" asked the Leopardi scholar.
    They looked at each other every time they asked a question. I was more and more convinced that, while I had been hesitating at my desk at the end of the lesson, the story about the ruffled hair had spread everywhere and was now public knowledge. I realized I still had to sort my hair out (perhaps that was why the two Italianists were looking at each other). I took my toilet bag, excused myself, and hurried to the men's room. It was one of those places with a shared mirror and a washbasin with soap (as if you only had a right to privacy when you were using the toilet). I pulled out my comb and smoothed down my hair, then gave it a quick spray with the lacquer and flattened it forward with the palm of my hand. But something was bothering me. Usually, once I've done my hair, I can find the right compromise between the combover and my face. But that morning I couldn't seem to do it and kept fiddling about with that fringed curtain of hair. And as I was standing there in front of the mirror with that wayward forelock, one of the janitors came in. A shabby type with a few grey hairs swept back. I could never work out what sort of problem he had, but something about him wasn't right. He asked how I was. I told him I was well and that everything was fine.
    "Lucky you," he said and stood there looking at me.
    Perhaps he was expecting me to say something else. Then he shut himself up in a cubicle. When he came out, knowing that the janitors are always the first to know about everything, I asked him: "Is it usual to make fun of lecturers in this faculty?"
    "I don't know, it sometimes happens," he said. "They once drew a picture of Professor Barbuti on the blackboard, the one who teaches bibliography, but nothing