VASSILY P. AKSYONOV
55
"Excuse me, but it seems to me that's against all the rules,"
babbled the redheaded giant. Nevertheless, he stuffed his pockets
with boxes of powder, creams, and a rubber atomizer containing
Shipr cologne, and helped Svetka to take down from the wall an
ancient mirror with a special golden frame.
"Tomorrow, Senkina, you will be fired for laying the custom–
ers," said the chief hairdresser.
"Watch out or you'll be sacked yourself, Shmyrkina," Svetka
shouted back. "It's not a private operation we've got here, it's a
guild. You yourself fuck behind the partition and the customers
aren't satisfied."
A bushy crack opened up in the ceiling. A volcanic wind
whirled through the salon, lifting up a tornado of cut hair. Face to
face, the two women rapidly snarled at one another, something com–
pletely offensive and incomprehensible.
The redheaded giant began dragging the mirror to the beach.
Behind him Svetka was dragging spotted bedsheets.
"Oh, momma dear! What a customer I've hooked, oh-ah-oh,"
moaned Svetka.
The redheaded giant gripped her thighs in his hands, but
turned his head so as not to see her terrible face.
Waves of gray pebbles lay on the beach and in all their troughs
there was grunting and squealing. Sin was being committed every–
where, and ashes fell onto all this carnal bestiality
In our case the sin was aggravated by the stupid mirror.
It
stood
at the heads of the copulating pair, and every time the redheaded
giant raised his head he could see in it his strangely undisturbed
face.
Behind him, in the mirror, the crimson sea was becoming more
and more luminous, the volcano was burning brighter and brighter
over Pompeii. Then two chicks in hip-hugging jeans appeared in the
mirror. They stood with their horsey faces downcast, swaying back
and forth. One of them held her hand on her friend's pubis, while
the other squeezed her friend's breast.
"Here, Galka! Look how the pros work!" one of them said,
sort of hiccoughing in our direction. "But we are still trying to find
OUf
kaif."
Right then and there they tumbled down into some pit, where
