by Sándor Márai
They had never imagined a building with so many corridors. So many stairs, so many doors. They climbed two floors, the actor pushing past ever more iron doors that creaked or swung sharply back at them. The actor was quietly whistling. He was a long way ahead of them with the flashlight. He was whistling a sweet tune in a broken, recurring rhythm. Finally he stopped at a door with a frosted glass panel.
“This is the hairdresser’s room!” he announced as he switched on the light. “Sit down.”
A bench ran along the wall and one corner of the room was curtained off with a red-and-white striped cloth hanging from the ceiling. A full-length streaky mirror lay on a crude table by a stool. Say hello to the hairdresser! With one hand he drew the curtain aside. Hundreds of human hairpieces hung on long poles beside the wall: blond, brown, gray and curly, wavy and smooth, with all the unspeakable sadness of objects devoid of function. Something of a person remains in hair, even after it has been cut off. A blond female wig with two long plaits dangled in the corner, keeping an eye on the maiden who had relieved herself of it, vainly seeking the shoulder the plaits should be winding over. The black mane that flowed round the neck of the rebel hero was not flowing anywhere, the long fringe falling over the vanished brow in a state of terminal despair beyond all reason. On either side of a bald smoothly peeled scalp some scant white locks covered a pair of old man’s ears that must have heard much in their time but were craftily keeping their secrets to themselves. Every hairpiece retained something of the personality of the man or woman from whose head it had been plucked. Hundreds upon hundreds of invisible hanged figures dangled from their hairpieces. They suggested some ancient massacre of hair growers arranged by that most potent of hangmen, time.
“The hairdresser is possessed of supernatural powers,” said the actor. “He has something of a force of nature about him.”
He paused for breath. “Only he is much more skillful,” he added.
He sat down in front of the mirror and examined himself closely.
“There are wigs that more or less play themselves,” he said, pulling open a drawer. “This blond one here…how often he has done my work for me.”
With one violent gesture he tore off his own wig. The action was so sudden, the effect so dramatic they all involuntarily leaned forward on the bench where they had been sitting, huddled and enchanted. Tibor’s hands flew to his mouth. They knew the actor himself wore a wig. They knew he changed its color to chime with the passing seasons. There were times it was of a light, dreamlike blondness, sometimes red as fire, at other times pure black. But the movement with which he removed the wig racked them with a sympathetic pain, they could not have been more surprised had the actor with equal suddenness torn off his arm and begun to unscrew his head. The actor’s scalp appeared from beneath the wig like a brilliantly waxed snow-white dome that had bubbled into startling view. There was something so naked about the bald head, so physical, so undressed, exposed, and shameless it was as if the actor had ripped off all his clothes with a single movement, cast them on the ground, and stood before them without a stitch. He ran his hand over his bare head, leaned indifferently over to the mirror, and started to examine it with proper professional attention.
You have to be careful, he said, and drew the blond wig over his knuckles, gently stroking its locks with the other hand, careful you don’t get water on the hair. That’s vital. You’re still young so I am telling you this. Unfortunately no one told me until it was too late. There are people who duck under the waves, then try to scrub their hair with soap. It’s the most dreadful carelessness anyone can be guilty of. There are others who dip their heads in water after washing. The scalp develops dandruff, the hair dries out, grows pale, and breaks. Never let water come into contact with your hair. There are excellent special washes and dry shampoos…One moment! He leaned even closer to the mirror, eyes blinking as he studied his face.
There was a strange indifference, a lifelessness about his face as he sat bare-skulled before the mirror. Only his eyes were alive, every other feature dropped into a mask of death, as if, having ripped off his wig and revealed himself naked, the actor had wiped from his face every mark that time and life had posted there, all expression, every crow’s-foot of individuality: he was naked now, empty and dead, mere matter with which he could work as he wanted. Grasping his nose between two fingers he turned his head this way and that, like a foreign object. It was a stranger they saw sitting in front of them, mere raw material that its proprietor could shape as he liked. He rubbed his face with infinite care as if he were alone. He pulled his lids down, rolled his eyes, covered his ample jowls with his hands, and like a painter in the middle of a portrait leaned back in his chair and examined himself through half-closed lids.
“I have approximately thirty-four faces,” he mentioned as if in passing. “Thirty-four, or it may be thirty-six, it’s a long time since I counted them. I can do a Negro priest, darlings…I have a Cyrano. I have a Caesar that is without a wig, genuinely bald, it only needs two lines here by the mouth…Watch!”
He picked up a stick of charcoal and drew two lines by his cheekbones. His face looked markedly thinner. Every aspect of his face suddenly assumed a sharp angular look, somehow cruel, and his baldness took on a life of its own, like some symbol of fate, such a clear mark of a man’s secret suffering that no amount of successes, victories, or triumphs could compensate for it.
“My Caesar does not wear a laurel crown,” he said. “He thrusts his shame in your face. Let them note it and tremble. The fate of entire worlds is contained in this bald head.”
Slowly he settled the blond wig over it.
“And here we discover the problem of whether to be or not to be.”
He paraded before them, bowing from the waist.
“And I tell you, Polonius…”
He stared before him in his Hamlet frenzy. He pulled one lock of blond hair over his brow, pouted and took a few trance-like steps. Now he was someone whose part he did not know: a man who had once passed him in the street of whom all he could retain was his supercilious smile.
“He has been me in various parts,” he said meditatively. He sat back down in front of the mirror and removed the wig so he was bald again. He dragged half a dozen wigs out of the drawer, threw them on the table, trying first one then the other. He stuck a little goatee under his chin and sideburns on his cheekbones, and coughing and puffing with gout raised his foot, put on a faint voice, and ordered hot wine. He toyed with faces and patches of hair as if taking them from a mold. He brought the well-known features of the long dead to life without even seeming to try employing a few vocal modulations, all immediately identifiable. Then he pushed all the props to the side.
“Perhaps, one day,” he said, “I will discover a mask that I can use for a long time, for the rest of my life. It’s not so easy. Shreds, patches, hair, and paint are of little help. This stuff here,” he tapped his face with two fingers, “is pliable material, but you have to know how to use it. Naturally, it shrivels and hardens. Flesh has a life of its own, my friends, as has the soul. You have to command it, tame it. This body of mine,” he cast his eyes over his entire length and gestured dismissively, “is all used up and I’m bored with it. I want to appear in public in another town next time, in different outward form. Like a ruddy-cheeked youth, perhaps. But I can’t. Maybe I will go away and become an old man, the wrinkles that much more firmly set, more intractable. I am aging.”
Frustrated, he slapped at his double chin.
“Here’s one I really like,” he said, drawing forth a scrap of hair. “And this. And this,” he threw the wigs up in the air. “Believe me, if I were to put on this scarlet head of Titus no one would know me.”
And he put on the Titus head. The shimmering copper locks flopped over his brow right down to the bridge of his nose. With a few delicate touches he applied rouge to his lips until they looked young and full, emphasized his eyes with a matchstick, and suddenly the lifeless pupils were f
ull of light. His face was radiant, red, alive with sin, full of shameless arrogance. His voice too had changed. He spoke in the resounding tone of command.
“I have thirty-four faces,” he shouted and blew out his cheeks. “Or is it thirty-six? Who can recognize me? I shall disappear, like the invisible man, I shall slip between people’s fingers. My realm is the world of immortals because I slip between death’s fingers too. He won’t know my face. Even if I am alone he won’t find the real me at home.”
He hesitated, looked around, and dropped his voice.
“Everyone has many faces. Sometimes I no longer know which is the last one, the one under which there is nothing but bone.”
He peeled off the Titus head and wiped the paint from his face with a napkin. Once more he fell to examining the raw material and relapsed into depression.
“Can this fat, toothless pig be me? Nonsense. The devil take it and consign it to hell.”
He removed his dentures and shoved them aside next to his hair as though they had nothing to do with him, then he wiped them clean with a cloth and carefully put them back in his mouth.
Ernõ stood and crept up behind him. The actor looked for a cigarette, threw a towel around his neck, and, cigarette in mouth, examined himself suspiciously. With an unexpected movement he twisted the towel tightly around his neck.
“In Paris,” he said, “this is how the waiters sit and dine after they have finished their shifts. They twist their napkins into a rope and wrap them round their necks like scarves.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Ábel.
They soon forgot everything else. There was a reason the actor was with them tonight. He was preparing something that was bigger and more amusing than the idiotic postgraduation larks that usually ended in drunken fistfights at the brothel. They could rely on the actor. They were enchanted by his transformations. Lajos watched him with fascination as he fussed with wigs, face paints, patches, and boxes of rice powder. Ábel was wondering whether the actor had a hidden face that he himself might not have seen, one that he would put on just for tonight. He remembered that half minute or so when the actor had remained alone in his room by the window. A cold shiver ran down his spine, but he knew that he could not leave the room now, not for any price. He would see this last night through with the gang and the actor and would not move until the actor discarded his final mask. The way he sat in front of the mirror now, with the napkin around his neck, unshaven, bald, a cigarette in his mouth, his legs crossed, his hands carelessly on his hips, he looked entirely foreign, like someone who spoke a strange language, practiced a mysterious trade. You couldn’t tell where he came from, what skills he possessed, or what he was doing here at all. He sat back, he drew on his cigarette, he dangled his feet. He was a complete stranger. So unfamiliar was he that they felt shy and fell silent. This was entirely the actor’s territory. All those hairpieces by the wall, all those destinies and personalities hanging in the shadows, all were part of his domain. At one gesture of his, whole armies might come to life, figures with terrifying faces might emerge. The actor gave a haughty, confident, self-satisfied smile. The cigarette butt shifted from one corner of his mouth to the other.
Ernõ alone harbored reservations.
“What are you up to?” he asked in a flat voice.
The actor threw the cigarette butt away. “Now to business,” he said and sprang to his feet.
HE SAT ÁBEL DOWN AT THE MIRROR, LEANED back, crossed his arms, one finger to his lips, and examined him carefully. He went over to the window, leaned against the sill, and thought about it a little more. He indicated with a gesture, as a painter might, that Ábel should turn his profile towards him. Then, finally having solved the problem, he leapt over to the table, tore off a tuft of black hemp and held it next to Ábel’s face, shook his head, gave a whistle, and with two fingers turned the boy’s head this way and that in a deeply contemplative mood, sighing aah every so often.
“You ask what I’m up to,” he chattered, vaguely distracted. “I’m coming to grips with things, preparing a little party. We do what we can!”
He picked out a grayish wig with a side parting and ran a brush through it.
“You have aged, my child. You have distinctly aged recently. Suffering adds years.”
He carefully brushed the wig into a center parting.
“I thought it might be appropriate as a kind of valedictory gesture,” he said. “We could, of course, go and visit the girls too. Or make our way over to the Petõfi café.”
He wound a little cotton wool round the end of a match and looked for some glasses.
“Now face the mirror. I’m beginning to see what you will look like in thirty years’ time. Remember me then.”
With a sudden movement he clapped the wig onto Ábel’s head the way a hypnotist might put to sleep some volunteer from the audience using no more than a simple hand gesture. Ábel was immediately transformed. An old man stared back at him and the rest of the gang from the mirror. Aged brows clouded over startled eyes. The actor began to attend to the eye region with his stick of charcoal.
“What I’ve imagined is a little celebration…a celebration of us all that you won’t forget. We did once talk of appearing on stage together in full costume, and everyone would say whatever came into his head. A kind of show for art lovers only…with everyone taking responsibility for himself. We’ll give them a proper show all right.”
So saying he stuck a small graying goatee on Ábel’s chin, tore it off again, and tried muttonchop whiskers instead.
“The moment is here. You can have the run of the entire costume cupboard. We have the stage complete with scenery. The auditorium is empty. We are performing only for ourselves. I have ensured that we will be left in peace till the morning.”
He gave a smile of mild amusement. He settled on the muttonchops and stuck two gray streaks of hair next to the ears. The sweet smell of mastic filled the room.
“Well, one could do worse,” he said examining his work on Ábel with satisfaction. “The lips are narrow…let’s add a little disappointment. And some doubt. And here…do excuse me, darling, I’m almost done…a little pride, a little canniness.”
Each time his hand moved Ábel changed a little more, becoming ever less recognizable. They stood behind him and watched.
“It’s not magic, it’s not witchcraft,” the actor declared as with a few very rapid strokes of the brush and the charcoal he emphasized one or two features and blurred some sharp lines.
“We haven’t sold our souls to the devil…”
He ran a brush right through the eyebrows.
“It’s just manual skill and expertise. Wind the clock forward thirty years and…here we are!”
He stuck the towel under his arm and the comb by his ear and made a great bow, like Figaro in the opera.
“My compliments to you, gentlemen. Next please.”
Ábel stood up uncertainly. The little circle behind him backed away. The actor was already considering Ernõ.
“Cold heart, green bile,” he chanted. “Sting of conspirator, serpent’s tongue, you can already see the vague trace of a hump on his back. You will always be freckled.”
He pressed Ernõ into the chair in front of the mirror. Ábel stood in a corner, his arms folded. He felt a great calm. He was wearing a mask and that was reassuring. A man could live behind a mask and think what he liked. Tibor watched him with a superior smile. They laughed and surrounded him, the one-armed one sniffing curiously at Ábel, taking a tour of him. The mask looked solid and reliable. Tibor stared at him with round eyes. Ábel laughed and he could see from his friends’ faces that his laugh had changed too: they were looking at him with serious expressions, with genuine admiration.
“Let us hurry nature on a bit,” said the actor, who was giving his full attention to Ernõ now. “Let us correct her. That’s all it is. I merely bring out what is mature in you,” he said, fitting a red wig on Ernõ’s head. “If he looks like an adult, wel
l, let him be an adult,” and so saying he covered the freckled band above Ernõ’s upper lip with a deep-red mustache.
“Let him bear the consequences of his adulthood. The brush in a master’s hand is led by instinct, but he has his three advisers: Learning, Observation, and Experience. You are a hunchback, I tell you.” With both hands he seized Ernõ’s temples, bent his head back, and stared deep into his eyes.
“The head of a monster. I shall now strip you of your skin and replace it with a new one, the shed skin of a snake.” He pressed down Ernõ’s eyelids with his thumbs and gave the rest of the gang a wink in the mirror.
AS ONE AFTER ANOTHER THE ACTORS RETIRED TO the “dressing room,” they examined each other suspiciously, but not one stood in front of the mirror. It is extraordinary how quickly people get used to their new appearances. It was a shame the costumes didn’t quite fit them: some were too big and their hands and feet were lost in the folds of their garments. But within a few moments they had grown taller and fatter. Ernõ stood at the table, leaning on his stick. His sharp hump rose under his ample old-fashioned cloak; his red hair fell in straggly locks across his brow from beneath his tall top hat; his old-fashioned frock coat and silk knee breeches hung awkwardly on his thin frame. Next to his nose a thick, hairy wart sprouted. His heavily ringed tiny eyes danced nervously, blending confusion, resentment, and obstinacy, and his mouth was twisted into a bitter grimace of suffering.
