The little man in the brown hat, he dropped by my place this Christmas like he always does. If I had a family, I just don't remember it. But the little man in the brown hat, him, I remember him so far back that it sometimes seems I remember him from even before I was born. Strange, isn't it sometimes.¦
I can always depend on the little man in the brown hat to show up at my door on Christmas Eve. I always get this little nibbling feeling that the little man in the brown hat has missed Mass, or slipped out unnoticed as ever, just to come, knock almost noiselessly on my door, and give me a present.
Unnoticed, I say, because as I walk down my street - I rarely go beyond my own street - I see many people who look like him. They are all little, it's not just me that's big - smaller than their cars, their houses, the dogs - no, not the dogs - which I am too, but which still makes an odd sort of sense to me. It's so convenient… So many brown hats on the street, it all gets a bit confusing. At least I don't have a brown hat.
But I know that none of the people are the little man in the brown hat. He only comes on Christmas Eve. It's as if he doesn't exist the other 364 days on my calendar, or he lives somewhere really far away from my street. Sometimes I imagine that he comes into existence just for me, or comes to my street just for me, on Christmas Eve, the little man in the brown hat, and I can just sit there for hours with a smile on my face, staring emptily at the wall. There is a certain beauty, a sense of finalty in small peels of paint.
His eyes and the fine lines around his mouth, they betray the little man in the brown hat with their murmurs and whispers that the little man in the brown hat doesn't know of or can't control. Like a single set of footprints in a piercingly desolate winter landscape, the intruding peacefulness of all that whiteness, or the memory trees have for the leaves they lost in autumn.
There was a knock on the door this Christmas Eve at midnight, so gentle it could easily have been mistaken for any of the odd creaks my house makes as it settles for the night. But I knew that it was the little man in the brown hat because it was Christmas Eve, and, besides, nobody else ever knocked on my door besides the little man in the brown hat. Why should they? Should there be a knock at my door in mid-summer, I think I would probably take a look at my calendar to see what month it is. Kind of silly, but then we all do that. In one way or another.
I don't think that the little man in the brown hat has a name, like I do. I never asked him, but it seems unlikely. I have never really talked to him - I'm not used to that - but I remember once, I tried to invite him inside, one Christmas Eve. Why, I don't know. I have only one easy chair. I wanted to make him my friend, but the little man in the brown hat, he is so wise. He showed me that it is a worthless thing to have friends.
I heard the knock on the door - I had been expecting it - and I went to open it. Stopping by the door, reaching out for the door-knob, turning it evenly, it was my ceremony, a reverence for my almost religious rite.
The little man in the brown hat wished me a merry Christmas, he was looking down at his feet, he handed me a box in gift-wrap, very colorful, he looked up at me briefly, a faint smile his face was not used to, he put his hands in his pockets, their natural resting place, and the little man in the brown hat was gone. I hope I said thank you at some point. I just got caught up in the sequence of events.
The box was bright green. It just didn't seem to belong here. My drab gray sofa was visibly insulted by the gift-wrap, so I sat down on it and put the box in front of me on the tiled floor to open it. The box was meticulously wrapped by the little man in the brown hat - it had to be him. The little man in the brown hat didn't ask the sales clerk to wrap it for him. It wasn't the sort of thing the little man in the brown hat did. He bought the present and some colorful paper, and took it home, and spent an afternoon wrapping it, and the little man in the brown hat put it on the coffee table until Christmas Eve. The little man keeps his brown hat on at home, I'm sure. Does he sleep?
The little man in the brown hat always makes Christmas what it should be, with his presents: a time of rejoicing. I couldn't keep my eyes off the marvel in the box's belly: an “auto-stop cassette player with recording function” (it read), and several cassettes of someone's called Ludwig and someone else called Herbert. Foreigners, probably. The little man in the brown hat gave me my ability to understand manna.
I eventually folded up the gift-wrap as carefully as I could with my numb fingers, and stowed it away with all the other gift wraps from so many Christmas Eves. My home was my home again; my home, without the bright green gift-wrap.
The cassette player accepted a cassette tape in it, which slotted in very neatly, just the way I seem to fit in under my covers every night in bed, the perfect match. I think no-one else would be able to use my bed. If I ever have guests, I think I will try that. I think the little man in the brown hat sleeps, it's just me that can't see that. I mean, I sleep, so he probably does too. It make sense.
It turned out that the button with the little black triangle operated the tape, and after a very brief eternity, the rest of my life was painted in my mind, in colors that were so beautiful it was as if I had had no use for my ears before. The sound was a caressing embrace, I could touch and be touched, I had mother, father, my priest, and an explanation of everything past, my now. I knew then that my tomorrows would be beautiful, tempered to perfection. What had been immaterial was swept away in a torrent of warm tears of solitude and acceptance. I was purged of need, I lay open, hoping to embrace everything that had ceased to matter to me, or never had, and I was left with everything which was nothing.
I lost the sense of myself in the fragile intertwining of various sounds, I understood that all colors have meanings, meanings to be put above any I may have had, I understood that experience was immaterial to existence, and immortality was not an option anymore, but a welcome obligation, one to be accepted on my knees, letting jewels, warm jewels escape my down-turned eyes, off my cheeks and into my open hands, an offering to nobody but nobody -
“Evan!”
It was dawn.
“Evan!”
No, it wasn't. It was past dawn. Daylight. I guess I had been up all night with my music, and I was still at it. Some little boy outside was calling to someone. In my building, probably. It was annoying, and it abused me, like deliberately tearing a great big rift of profanity in very delicate and expensive cloth. There was silence, merciful, and I resumed my vigil, clothed my nudity in my music, and I found -
“Evaaaaaaan!”
that it was not possible to just listen to the music, but that I had to -
“Evaaaaaan! Come down!”
sway with the mournful waves of sympathy I felt, as if I were giving back to the music what it had expended on me, I was sacrificing my own existence for the simplicity it offered, and I did it happily -
“EVAAAAAAAAAAAN! EvanEvanEvanyoubuggercomedownrightnowandseewhatIgotforChristmasyouwillNotbelieve -“
It was a mountain bike, what the kid got for Christmas. He couldn't have been more than 6 years old. I wonder what his name was, because I guess I should know the name of someone I killed. I broke his neck, and he's lying dead in the snow now. At least, I think people die when their necks get broken. But any way it goes, he is quiet now.
I don't think the neighbors will understand, or the police. Not really anybody will. No, except, I think, the little man in the brown hat would have understood. The little man in the brown hat, he is so wise. He taught me what love is.
The little man in the brown hat, he doesn't need a name.
Youssef M. Assad
19th February 1996