it had frightened him.
Now the uniformity of light in the house and in the open delighted him for no reason. The column of cold air, one and the same outside and inside, made him akin to the passersby in the evening street, to the moods of the town, to life in the world. His fears went away. He no longer thought he would fall ill. The evening transparency of the all-pervading spring light seemed to him a pledge of distant and generous hopes. He believed that everything was for the better, that he would achieve everything in life, would find and reconcile everybody, would think everything through and express it. And he waited for the joy of seeing Lara as for the nearest proof.
Mad excitement and unbridled restlessness replaced his previously failing strength. This animation was a surer symptom of beginning illness than the recent weakness. Yuri Andreevich could not stay put. He was again drawn outside, and here is the reason why.
Before settling himself in here, he wanted to have his hair cut and his beard shaved. With that in mind, he looked into the windows of the former barbershops as he went through the city. Some of them were empty or occupied by other businesses. Others, which corresponded to their former purpose, were under lock and key. There was nowhere for him to have a shave and a haircut. Yuri Andreevich had no razor of his own. Scissors, if he could find Lara’s, might help him out of his difficulty. But, rummaging through everything in her dressing table with nervous haste, he did not find any scissors.
He remembered that there had once been a sewing shop on Malaya Spasskaya. He thought that, if the establishment had not ceased to exist and still went on working, and if he managed to get there before they closed, he could ask one of the seamstresses for scissors. And he went out again.
5
His memory had not deceived him. The shop was still in its former place; the work went on. The shop occupied a commercial space on the ground floor, with a window running the whole width of it and an entrance from the street. Through the window one could see inside to the opposite wall. The seamstresses worked in full view of the passersby.
The room was terribly crowded. In addition to the actual workers, some amateur seamstresses, aging ladies from Yuriatin society, had probably gotten places in order to obtain the work booklets spoken of in the decree on the wall of the house with figures.
Their movements could be distinguished at once from the efficiency of the real seamstresses. The shop worked only for the army, making padded trousers, quilted coats and jackets, and such clownish-looking overcoats as Yuri Andreevich had already seen in the partisan camp, tacked together from dog pelts of different colors. The clumsy fingers of the amateur seamstresses had a hard time doing the unaccustomed near-furrier’s work, as they put the edges turned back for hemming under the needles of the sewing machines.
Yuri Andreevich knocked on the window and made a sign with his hand to be let in. He was answered in signs that orders were not taken from private persons. Yuri Andreevich would not give up and, repeating the same gestures, insisted that he should be let in and listened to. By negative gestures he was given to understand that they had urgent business and he should leave off, not bother them, and go on his way. One of the seamstresses showed perplexity on her face and in a sign of vexation held her hand out palm up, asking with her eyes what, in fact, he wanted. With two fingers, index and middle, he showed the cutting movement of scissors. His gesture was not understood. They decided it was some sort of indecency, that he was teasing them and flirting with them. With his ragged look and strange behavior, he made the impression of a sick or crazy man. In the shop they giggled, exchanged laughs, and waved their hands, driving him away from the window. It finally occurred to him to look for the way through the courtyard, and, having found it and the door to the shop, he knocked at the back entrance.
6
The door was opened by an elderly, dark-faced seamstress in a dark dress, stern, perhaps the head of the establishment.
“Look, what a bother! A real punishment. Well, be quick, what do you want? I have no time.”
“I need scissors. Don’t be surprised. I want to ask to use them for a moment. I’ll cut my beard here in front of you and give them back with gratitude.”
Mistrustful astonishment showed in the seamstress’s eyes. It was undisguisedly clear that she doubted the mental faculties of her interlocutor.
“I come from far away. I’ve just arrived in town. I’m overgrown. I’d like to have my hair cut. But there isn’t a single barbershop. I think I could do it myself, but I don’t have any scissors. Lend them to me, please.”
“All right. I’ll give you a haircut. Only watch yourself. If you’ve got something else on your mind, some clever trick, changing your looks as a disguise, something political, don’t blame us. We won’t sacrifice our lives for you, we’ll complain in the proper place. It’s no time for things like that.”
“Good heavens, what fears you have!”
The seamstress let the doctor in, took him to a side room no wider than a closet, and a minute later he was sitting on a chair, as in a barbershop, all wrapped in a sheet that was tight on his neck and tucked in behind his collar.
The seamstress went to fetch her instruments and a little later came back with scissors, a comb, several clippers of different sizes, a strop and a razor.
“I’ve tried everything in my life,” she explained, seeing how amazed the doctor was that all this turned out to be in readiness. “I used to work as a barber. During the war, as a nurse, I learned how to shave and give haircuts. First we’ll chop the beard off with scissors, and then we’ll shave it clean.”
“And when it comes to the hair, cut it short, please.”
“I’ll try. Such an intellectual, and pretending to be a know-nothing! We don’t count in weeks now, but in tens of days. Today is the seventeenth, and on numbers with a seven barbers have the day off. As if you didn’t know.”
“I honestly didn’t. Why should I pretend? I told you. I come from far away. I’m not from here.”
“Sit still. Don’t jump. It’s easy to get cut. So you’re a newcomer? How did you get here?”
“On my own two feet.”
“Along the high road?”
“Partly, and the rest by the railway line. There’s no end of trains under the snow! All sorts, deluxe, special.”
