Mouroir

The Hat Which Didn’t Make It to Heaven

In the big city there’s a small street. In the small street there’s an old house. In the old house there are five storeys and a staircase. Three of the storeys are old and two are dated later — that is to say, the one new floor was a stable originally and the other once upon a time a loft. With time they were transformed. Each storey has several rooms large and small. On the fifth floor in a tiny room there’s an old man with a flourishing moustache all frayed like a bootlace from too much soup and snuff. The old man flexes his knees as they are becoming very stiff, and worries his moustache from side to side. Then he dons his trousers the way one would mount a horse. Before the mirror on the wall he combs his teeth before plopping them into his mouth. Thereupon he knots his cravat and puts on his waistcoat and inserts two fingers in the waistcoat pocket. In the waistcoat pocket, on a chain, he has a flattish round metal box in which he saves all his remaining time. The little docket has a glass lid so that he may check whether that time is still alive. If he doesn’t consume it all, he believes, he won’t be able to die. That’s why it must be kept alive, because dead time can poison you time and time again. Only then does the old man place the bowler on his pate and exits to stamp down a creakiness in the staircase. The old man goes down the stairwell from the fifth étage to the fourth creak-creak-creak ten times creak, and from the fourth to the third creak-creak-creak another ten. Before the door on the third landing he stops. First he removes the bowler from his bald head and places it on the floor by the door. Then he takes his handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers and wipes his hands and replaces the handkerchief and clasps the one hand with the other. He stoops forward slightly, bends his knees a little, props his hands on his thighs in the trouser legs and puts an eye to the keyhole of the door on the third landing. Through the keyhole the old man looks into a room filled with blue light. On the floor of the room there’s a carpet. On the carpet a sideboard and a bed. On the sideboard are placed three glass bowls. The first is filled with feathers, the second with nails, the third is full of dust. On the bed lies a woman. The woman is dead. There is lipstick on her lips and also a few flies searching for the sweet breath. The woman’s dress is bunched up to just above the hips. Heap hop hip her. Her legs are thick and grey with purple stains. Between the legs, high, there’s a wee beard. The old man looks through the keyhole. The old man hems and haws and shifts his dull eye away from the keyhole so that he may put his mouth there. When the old man whispers his whiskers tremble like the shiny laces of a shoe full of corns. Huffapuff, the old man whispers; huffapuff huffapuff. Madam Mafarsikos, it’s me again. It is I, Madam Mafarsikos. Huffapuff, Madam. What shall I do? Look, I have a name and a conscience and a soul and a mind and a spirit and a ba and a ka all birds of very different feathers. What shall I do with the parts? Huffapuff, Madam Mafarsikos. And what about the pitter-patter and footfalls and raindrops and the ear socket on the chain from my heart in the waistcoat pocket? So whispers the old man and then he takes away his mouth from the keyhole to replace it with an eye to look and see if there be any perceptible reaction. But the old man is very old and most stiff and quite slow and awkward since a long time already. However thin he may pleat the lips around the words and even though he uses a how’s-that hand to back up his eye against the light by the keyhole — he is always just too late to observe any results. When his knees start to ache he dries his hands on the handkerchief again, replaces the bowler hat on his naked pate, and treads creak-creak-creak further along the pilgrimage of his ruminations. Every day he comes to wait and watch by the keyhole. Sometimes he also wipes the white keenness of his mouth on the handkerchief. He says huffapuff, Madam Mafarsikos. What must I do and what can I not retain? Anubis, Madam Mafarsikos. Anubis and Isis and Hathor and Min and Set and Amon-Re and Osiris and Khepri dung beetle. Aron and Horus, madam. Geb and Nut and Shu and Thoth and Ptah? Tueris and Ma-at and my loyal Bess. Oh, cemeteries of the hyenas. O devourer of shadows and plunderer of intestines and breaker of bones. Huffapuff, Madam Mafarsikos — huffapuff fuffanuff hemacough! Is the creaking ultimately in the stairs or in my shoe? But I am without blame. . The third day he saw that the little beard was growing. The sixth day he saw that the little beard had grown long. On the ninth day he realized that eye and tongue would not suffice, for how would he hear the answer? His whole strategy needed to be reconceived from scratch. By the fourteenth day he attempts to whisper through his yellow ear. Oboepoof, Dama Falukamorf. On the seventeenth day the beard is curlicuing over the carpet. The twenty-first day the bowls on the sideboard are swapped around. Comes the twenty-ninth day and the old man knows he is too slow. Searching for answers and observing cause delays: contact is impediment; growth is interception. By the thirty-fifth day the beard reaches the door, a small squadron of dark blood serpentining in the blue. Day thirty-six, the old man’s knees are most reluctant and sore. On the thirty-seventh day he opens the door with extreme circumspection. He swallows the keyhole. He wipes the handkerchief on his hands. Down he goes on creaking knees and takes the wee beard in his fingers. Tough stuff, Madam Komafarsi. Lovingly with care he grips the beard and pushes aside his shoelace-shined soup-shined snuff-shined mouth-bemoaning moustache with a shivering sleeve. And the old man starts to climb climb climb climb. He feels the tick-tocket throbbing in the tin in his pocket.

But he forgets the bowler hat on the landing.