The barbershop (translated by Esteban Andrés Curci)

 

THE BARBERSHOP

Ricardo Curci

 

 

That day, the street on which my grandfather –actually, my great uncle- Antonio’s barbershop stood changed its everyday mood. By then there were still trees on the sidewalks and the noise coming from the cars was strong and rhythmic. I remember arriving that morning in my father’s car and discovering what things were like at that hour when I was normally at school. The air was still cool, and the sun was slowly letting itself show. I said goodbye to Dad and gave him back the briefcase I had been fooling with while in the backseat. He didn’t get off the car.

     -I’ll come for you at two o’clock- he said.

     The curtains on the shop door were made of small wooden pieces held on by  strings, and when they moved it sounded like little bells. I found my grandfather in front of the mirror, trying to clean the rust stains from the glass, which looked like a starry sky full of brown suns. Those stains on the glass grew larger and larger, with a terracotta hue, and they seemed to come from behind the mirror. There had never been moisture on the wall even though there was a vacant lot on the other side, but ever since the  day when it was installed , the dark stains came up.

     -We brought it with the guys from the moving company  -he told me-. The best glass, my dear Oscarcito, the most expensive.

     On the afternoon they carried it into the shop and put it on its bearings on the wall, the mirror cracked. A diagonal crevice ran all the way down without breaking up, but you could sense it with the touch of your fingers. Then the stains came, one after another, very slowly through the passing of the years. We examined the wall from the other side, messing ourselves with the wild grass and thorny bushes. We searched conscientiously. However, aside from the moss covering the surface, no cracks could be seen on the thirty-centimeter thick wall.

     With his clear blue duster open on his belly, he started preparing the washbasin on the corner, and while he was arranging the combs and other objects, some neighbours came in. We all knew that that day was a special occasion in his life, and that was why I had requested permission for skipping school.

     -Councilman Domìnguez called me this morning, he says he’s coming for sure– an old friend from the barrio said. I looked up at my grandpa, who was smoothing his hair with one hand, as he usually did when something was worrying  him.

     Half an hour later more people arrived. Women talked, some of them caressing me gently and then turning to look at the mirror to check their hairdos. I felt my cheeks turning red from having so many hands on me. I distracted myself toying with the trophies on the shelf. A large collection from the days when my grandfather had been president of the neighbourhood’s club. Dad used to tell me about those years, because he had been in the football team when he was a kid.

     I went out into the street and sat on the doorstep of that place that seemed to be suspended in time. A faded sign announced: “The Councilman- Barbershop” . More and more people entered and gathered in a reduced area of the shop, for the other portion was reserved for the visitor. But my grandfather never ceased to work. The noise of the scissors went on uninterrupted.

     Even though he was growing old, he was a strong man who didn’t look like sixty-eight.  Stout–faced and with an aquiline nose, his hair was thinning but still long and curly on the nape. With every passing year he turned  colder and  more categorical in his opinions, and people began to be afraid and avoid him. As if, instead of mellowing and approaching the shy reserve and

slowness  of old age, he grew starker.  the previous year he had lost the elections for councilmen to his lifelong opponent. My grandfather and Dominguez had been fighting since they were young, back in the days when they contended for the chairmanship of the club.

     -It was a war that lasted twenty years…- his friends told him-. And now it’s over, buddy.

 

     Now grandpa Antonio was concentrated searching for ideas amidst the hair he was cutting. Perhaps from the movement of the scissors he got statements that were intelligible only to him, like weapons.

     -Here you can look down on the world- he had whispered in my ear a few weeks before, while I sat in the adjacent armchair looking at him working-. Do you know that sometimes I can see my patrons’ souls?

     And looking towards the mirror I noticed, that day, that a stripe had appeared on both sides of the crack, darkening the reflection from the glass. It was two centimeters wide, maybe even more, I don’t know. The rust stains did not have a definite shape any more, and gave the place an archaic appearance.

     It was on the previous Monday that the rumor spread that Dominguez would come to offer him a permanent position  in the community Council.

     -Let him come, if he likes –he answered simply, but he was scheming something. I saw his eyes burst in a flash.

     That same Monday I stopped by the shop, and noticed that the crack on the glass was darker, with a brown halo that melted in the twilight. My grandpa was already drawing the curtains and suggested looking for cracks on the wall.

     -The mirror won’t bear this moisture much longer- he repeated. For the nth time we checked the wall from the side of the vacant lot, hitting its surface till parts of the old paint fell. But we found it to be as firm as ever, the immune impermeability that protected the wall from a premature death. However, the crack on the mirror was there, and when we re-entered the shop we discovered larvae emerging out of the mirror’s edges. Black worms  crawled towards the ceiling. Grandpa stepped onto a chair and threw poison at them. Slowly they ceased to move.

     -And the worms?- I asked him the next morning.

     -I think they’re all dead, dear.

 

      The clock above the door indicated half-past twelve. Many of the neighbours went home for lunch or to Santos’ bar. The metallic curtains went down, and the siesta’s quiet interlude began. The pattern on the mosaic floor was clearer as people started to leave. Then Dominguez appeared at the door. They greeted each other with a tacit and mutual agreement to avoid formality. The rest of us remained silent, but soon an exclamation of dismay was heard when the neighbours were invited to retire.

     -Please, ladies, please, we can’t have so many people here- my grandfather said while he gently pushed  women and old men towards the sidewalk, and then he locked the door.

     I took advantage of those instants of chaos to hide myself in the bathroom. Leaned against the tiles, I peeked on them through the slightly opened door. Grandpa looked around in search of me and, concluding I had already left, he invited Dominguez to sit down. Then he began applying shaving cream on his face.

     -Look, Antonio, we know what all those people were here for. They have known us for a long time.

     Grandpa kept on covering one half of his face with that cream that was as white as the shirts he always wore.

     -I don’t think it’s strange that a man asks me to give him a shave. But I find it weird that he suddenly offers me the position I should’ve had from the beginning.

     Then I heard Dominguez saying something different from what was expected. I heard him talk about threats, and followers that had threatened him of death.

     -I got entangled with  heavy weights,  you know. They are following me. I don’t even know whom to trust. That’s why I came to you. “Antonio will protect you”, they said.

     My grandfather went on with the shave. Up to that moment they had looked at each other in the mirror as they talked, but as the stains were making it difficult to see, Domìnguez turned his head around. The razor blade slipped by accident, and a little bit of blood sprung out without him noticing. He was talking like a desperate man, begging for protection. Antonio cleaned the blade in front of the mirror, a tiny drop of blood splashing on the glass, close to the crack. Silent, my grandfather  listened  to his request, but he made no gesture except moving his lips as if insulting him in a very low voice. Then he spoke.

     -Do you remember my boys, whom you ordered to be killed?

     Then I remembered what I had been told about the three boys that worked for the barrio committee. They were found dead in the vacant lot some months before the first election in which both of them had contended. They were carrying campaign posters that should have been glued to the walls during the night. It was said that a teacher discovered them, at seven in the morning while on her way to the school. The woman had seen a streak of blonde hair showing out through the weeds and called the police.

     The three corpses had several bullet holes in their heads and chests. They had been hidden in the bushes, amidst the wild weeds and dead cats’ bodies, leaned against the barbershop wall. We never knew who had done it, and it could not be proved that they were victims of the opponent party, either. The three of them had been shot against the wall and the blood impregnated it and remained there, in spite of rain and sunshine wearing out the surface.

     Antonio cleaned the remnants of cream on his face with a towel, and sprayed him with some lavender scent. Dominguez knew then that he would never get his help. He tried to stand up but saw the blade in my grandpa’s right hand, while his other hand held him in his seat till he had him  facing the mirror again. Looking at each other through the gloomy glass, one could see as the other opened his throat with the clean cut of a sharp razor. Blood flowed out in a torrent for a few seconds, and Dominguez’s body turned white. I dared not even to breathe, I was paralyzed beyond my will.

     Grandfather drew the metal curtains immediately afterwards. He had no idea I was still inside. He was trembling, and calmed down after sitting for a while. He lighted a cigarette, with his sight fixed on the presently dark, terracotta stained mirror. Some worms had began to come out through the opening and crawling out of its edges. A quarter of an hour later there were so many of them that the covered the wall and  spread over the floor. Soon they were crawling onto Dominguez’s body. When his every inch had been covered, they started devouring him.

 

 

The author was born in 1968 in Morón, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has published two books of short stories: “The Casas” (2004) from which this text was extracted, and “The middle beings”(2007). He is doctor in medicine.

  

Ilustración: Arte rupestre