Setting Free the Bears - Page 117

'All the more in demand!' I claimed. While Orestic stroked the braid.

'How much?' said Gallen, world-wise and tough as cork.

Orestic pondered over her braid. His own hair was as thick and shining-clean as damp black saw grass in a marsh. I wandered to the rows of speared heads in the window; each head, wigged and necklaced, had an upturned nose without any nostrils.

'Two hundred schillings,' said Orestic. 'And for that I trim her after - any kind of cut she wants.'

'Three-fifty,' I said. 'Your window sales start at seven hundred.'

'Well,' said Orestic, 'I have to do a bit of work to make a wig out of it, you know. She's got scarcely more than a hair-piece here.' And with that, he swished her braid away.

'Three hundred, then,' I said.

'Two-fifty,' said Nitsa, 'and I'll pierce her ears for free.'

'Pierce her ears?' I said.

'Mama pierces ears,' said Orestic. 'How many ears has it been now, Mama?'

Probably all saved in her chest of drawers, I thought.

'Oh, I lost count long ago,' old Nitsa claimed. Then she looked at Gallen. 'So, how's two-fifty, and your ears in with it?'

'Graff,' said Gallen, 'I always did want to - especially since I'm in the city.'

'For God's sake,' I whispered. 'Not here, please. You might lose them altogether.' I said to Orestic, 'Three hundred, without ears.'

'And you'll fix my hair up after?' said Gallen. 'All right?' She tossed her braid over her shoulder; it teased poor Orestic like a charming-snake.

'All right,' he said.

But the former Nitsa Papadatou spat on the floor. 'Weak!' she told her son. 'Just like your miserable father, you've got no spine.' She straightened up in the best barber chair and whumped her backbone with her hand; Nitsa had a spine, all right. She huffed out her frontispiece at us; her wondrous cleavage opened wider, closed tighter, opened wide and closed again.

'Mama, please,' Orestic said.

But when Orestic ushered my Gallen into the vacant, lesser barber chair, Nitsa was a welcome distraction. Because it pained me to see Orestic feverishly undoing Gallon's braid, then brushing - crackling her hair out full and over the back of the chair, nearly to the seat. Then he snatched it above her head and with sure, heavy strokes brushed it upward, stretching it - as if he were coaxing it to grow another inch or two before he claimed it. I was sitting directly behind Gallen, so I couldn't see her face in the mirror, thanks be; I didn't want to see her eyes when Orestic gathered up a great horsetail of hair and sheared it off at the roots - it seemed. I looked slantwise at

the mirror, down the full, reflected cleavage of Mama Nitsa.

Orestic swished the auburn tail around; then I had a sudden shiver, as if I'd just watched a beheading; Gallen held both hands to her scalp. Slick Orestic put her hair on a cushion in the windowseat, and came back, dancing round her - his razor tziking over her ears and up the back of her long, bare neck.

'Now! What to do with it!' he said. 'Leave you bangs, or none?'

'No bangs,' said Gallen. He cut a little, but left enough to brush back; he trimmed off her forehead, swept it over only the points to her ears, left it fairly full on the back of her head, but brought it up close on her neck. Near the roots, though, the auburn shone richer.

'No thinning,' he said. 'We'll leave it nice and thick.' And he seized up a handful, as if he were going to tear it out. 'Oh, it's thick as a pelt!' he cried excitedly. But Gallen just stared at her new forehead; she sneaked a look, now and then, round the side of her head to her startling ears.

It was the turning in the swivel chair that disconcerted me, I guess. I was just thinking how it wasn't so bad, really; how she was spared disgrace by very nice bones in her cheeks and jaw, and by her neck being so nice naked - when Orestic began swiveling her around in the chair, taking his finishing looks.

'See?' he said proudly to me. 'How even? All round.' And spun her a little faster, so flashes of her caught the mirror and flashed back at me double, on both sides of the chair, as if we were suddenly in a full barbershop - with a spinning row of dizzy customers, and madmen barbers, conducted by the old fortune-telling woman in the best barber chair. It was funny; I relaxed my eyes.

But then he shampooed her and - before I knew how long I'd watched the row of customers spin themselves bald - he stuck her head in a large chrome hair dryer; he tipped her head back in the chair, back toward me, and I watched the humming dome gleam.

'I only asked for a shave,' someone said. 'Would you call this a haircut?' And somehow, Nitsa's cleavage, spreading everywhere, was reflected on the back of Gallon's domish hair dryer.

'Would you like your ears pierced?' Nitsa asked me. 'But I know, the men usually like just one ear done.'

'Not in this country, Mama,' Orestic said.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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