Sandor Marai - The Rebels

And there were many others, many thousands of people they knew by sight, by their faces or voices, recalling them all in whatever place the soul develops its photographs, nor could they free themselves of them, the faces of those beggars, priests, and fading women with whom they lived among these pieces of stage scenery, where all who found themselves in the area and remained here through ties of family or work made up a single community whose members knew everything and nothing about each other. But in the moment of their dying perhaps there would flash before them the face of the crippled toy-shop owner in the square by the church who had once explained a new sort of conjuring trick involving a magic cupboard. And indeed there was a professional conjurer in town too who performed every autumn in the culture hall and tuned pianos in his spare time. They were inhabitants of an island from which it was impossible to escape entirely, for when they died the family would bring their remains back and bury them in their native island soil. Ábel threw his cigarette away.

Avanti, pronounced the actor in a flat voice. He was standing at the stage door, his gold tooth glittering in the moonlight. He was smirking.

HE POINTED HIS BATTERY-POWERED FLASHLIGHTat the top of the stairs, then ran it inquiringly up the wall where, behind a barred window, hung a notice saying: 9:30. Rigoletto. Rehearsal without script. The actor led them on tiptoe and having reached the mezzanine threw wide the iron door.

The long corridor was so narrow that feeling their way forward they could touch its facing walls. They proceeded like this in uncertain crocodile fashion, swaying a little, the actor in front almost floating on light feet as he flashed their single source of light first ahead, then behind him. The inside of this theater, as of any other, seemed all stairs and doors. A sweet, musty smell permeated everything, something not quite perfume, damp, or mastic, but a blend of canvas, paint, ninety-proof alcohol, human body odors, dust, dirt, stuffiness, and more than anything that unique theater stench that is a distillation of grand speeches and tirades, stuck together with words, colored lights, and movement, an intensely physical, bombastic stench that clings to actors’ clothes and skin and hair, one you can smell even when they’re not on stage. For the first time Ábel understood the actor’s peculiar need of different, much harsher, broader forms of scent. It was the smell of the stage the actor was trying to mask, for no one likes to smell of work, that was why kitchen maids used patchouli, cobblers crude pomade, greengrocers musk, and why the actor used chypre.

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.