VASSILY P. AKSYONOV
51
merely a chaotic and greedy exchange: a hunt for clothes, drinks,
various types ofJapanese baubles, and tobacco.
Here I am at the hairdresser's: over the entry prerevolutionary
naiads hold aloft a wreath; on the left side of the door is a memorial
plaque honoring the underground meetings of the Pompeii cell of
our beehive; on the right a memorial plaque honoring the visit of the
"great chronicler of the twilight era when public consciousness
began to fade." There remains some question as to whether he spent
a long time here and what he did during his visit, whether he ever
had his moustache curled or the hair on his temples trimmed.
However, it seems that during the twilight epoch there wasn't a
hairdressing salon on this site, but rather a sanitary house of ill
repute. Of course, perhaps this, too, was nonsense-just a city leg–
end told with a faint jeer. Uncouth boors usually spread only spiteful
and bawdy stories about the chroniclers and it's impossible now to
reconstruct the truth-archives have been destroyed and the histori–
cal record has been completely distorted through propaganda.
Anyway, I walk into the reception room and right away I see
my reflection in two dozen mirrors . Quite an imposing sight: the
arrival at the hairdresser's of a whole crowd of enormous, red–
headed machos. Two dozen armchairs and an equal number of hair–
dressers, too-pudgy, skinny, busty, tushy ones, in creased and
soiled smocks, and all of them in the same state of intoxication. A
full load of customers. One is cackling insanely, twitching in the
armchair with his arms and legs; another has bent his flabby body
over and is moving his hands idly back and forth above the floor as if
in search of underwater treasures; a third, having grabbed the chief
hairdresser by the buttocks, is swirling around on his armchair and
serenading her with the waltz song "He's shy-not bold." The rest
are shaving, more or less.
What's the first impulse of the redheaded giant who's just
entered? Why, he'd like to drive all this rubbish out of the broadway
barber's temple with a whip and at one fell swoop plop down on all
twenty-four chairs, because for some reason he is insanely pleased
with all two dozen of the women. A most shameful impulse, of
course.
Cut down to size, I notice: here, it turns out, even the waiting
line-five to seven other musclemen-has to hang around idling; in
what way am I better than them?
