Read Online The Combover by Adrián N. Bravi - Free Book Online

scruples—so they had told me—who could easily have scalped me, or clubbed me to death and then eaten me, or cut me up and smoked me, as has been reported by certain explorers who have been to study the Mianmin or the Kukukuku of Papua New Guinea, savages who take their victims and sacrifice them without pity. They didn't kill to defend themselves or because the victim had been making eyes—or perhaps just glanced—at one of the village women: they killed because they were in the mountains and were hungry, they didn't think straight, they ate whatever they could find, such as the first unfortunate wretch they happened to find living as a hermit, like me. But supposing they weren't cannibals, they could have killed me just the same, just for the pleasure of it, or to rob me. In this last case, it goes without saying that I would have handed over everything with no questions asked: sleeping bag, k-way,
Ethics
, introduction to the
Ethics
, toilet bag, and everything else. "Help yourselves," I'd have said to those marauders, "take the lot but don't kill me, and if you want I'll leave straight away, I'll let you have the caves forever and I'll never come back to Cingoli, just tell me what you want . . ." If they were cannibals who had lost all reason, as cannibals do when they haven't eaten for days, they would have killed me all the same, even if I was kneeling before them, because cannibals, I thought, aren't interested in the pleas of their victims, in fact the whining excites them. If they were more understanding, as those who came from Umbria appear to have been, they would have let me go. And with this thought I felt rather more reassured.
    I took my shoes and socks off and stretched out on the ground, on top of my sleeping bag. I ate a couple of crackers, then washed them down with some water. I began to feel sleepy, even though it was still early and I wasn't used to sleeping on the ground. I got inside my sleeping bag and fell asleep as I smoothed my hair with my hands. But at some stage during the night I began dreaming about a strange, pale colorless body that you could see through, who rose up from my sleeping body and climbed to a point above the cave. It sat on the rock and from high above looked at the darkness inside my sleeping bag. And I was able, through that pale, colorless thing, to see myself naked, and meanwhile my skin gave off an evanescent gas and I began to flake away and dandruff fell around my head (I've no idea how I managed to see this—I haven't had dandruff since the time I did military service—and yet I saw it quite clearly, a halo of snow, like those around the saints in churches). I saw my pores silently distending and discharging a slimy liquid and I felt a nasty, early morning stench coming out of my mouth. Then I saw myself scratching a small pimple on my neck which was irritating the hairs of my beard. That pale body which I had seen gravitating above me looked very much like me, though it was of indeterminate age, whereas I am very well aware of mine. Ten, thirty, sixty—it was hard to say how old it was. Then it came down from where it had climbed, looked at me again as I slept, returned inside my sleeping bag, and slipped back into my body. At that point I felt a jolt, a great shudder, and woke up, my heart racing like mad. I opened my eyes and started thinking about the dream I'd had, about that pale colorless thing that had risen up from my body to look at me, and had slipped back inside me as if to say: "OK then, I'll stay inside Arduino a bit longer, let's see how he gets on up here in the mountains, I really want to find out what happens to him, someone whose life revolves around bibliographic data exchange formats . . . let's see what he does with those formats up here . . . then he'll learn how people once lived in the middle of woods and perhaps lived better, without getting too fucked up about their hair and those