All things change except barbers,
the ways of barbers, and the surroundings of barbers. These never change. What
one experiences in a barber's shop the first time he enters one is what he
always experiences in barbers' shops afterward till the end of his days. I got
shaved this morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I
approached it from Main--a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but it was
of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I followed in
on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one presided over by
the best barber. It always happens so. I sat down, hoping that I might fall
heir to the chair belonging to the better of the remaining two barbers, for he
had already begun combing his man's hair, while his comrade was not yet quite
done rubbing up and oiling his customer's locks. I watched the probabilities
with strong interest. When I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1 my interest
grew to solicitude. When No. 1 stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket
for a new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to anxiety.
When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were pulling the towels
away and brushing the powder from their customers' cheeks, and it was about an
even thing which one would say "Next!" first, my very breath stood
still with the suspense. But when at the culminating moment No. 1 stopped to
pass a comb a couple of times through his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he
had lost the race by a single instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the
shop, to keep from falling into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that
enviable firmness that enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting
barber and tell him he will wait for his fellow-barber's chair.
I stayed out fifteen minutes, and
then went back, hoping for better luck. Of course all the chairs were occupied
now, and four men sat waiting, silent, unsociable, distraught, and looking
bored, as men always do who are waiting their turn in a barber's shop. I sat
down in one of the iron-armed compartments of an old sofa, and put in the time
far a while reading the framed advertisements of all sorts of quack nostrums
for dyeing and coloring the hair. Then I read the greasy names on the private
bayrum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the private
shaving-cups in the pigeonholes; studied the stained and damaged cheap prints
on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous recumbent sultanas,
and the tiresome and everlasting young girl putting her grandfather's
spectacles on; execrated in my heart the cheerful canary and the distracting
parrot that few barbers' shops are without. Finally, I searched out the least
dilapidated of last year's illustrated papers that littered the foul
center-table, and conned their unjustifiable misrepresentations of old
forgotten events.
At last my turn came. A voice said
"Next!" and I surrendered to--No. 2, of course. It always happens so.
I said meekly that I was in a hurry, and it affected him as strongly as if he
had never heard it. He shoved up my head, and put a napkin under it. He plowed
his fingers into my collar and fixed a towel there. He explored my hair with
his claws and suggested that it needed trimming. I said I did not want it
trimmed. He explored again and said it was pretty long for the present
style--better have a little taken off; it needed it behind especially. I said I
had had it cut only a week before. He yearned over it reflectively a moment,
and then asked with a disparaging manner, who cut it? I came back at him
promptly with a "You did!" I had him there. Then he fell to stirring
up his lather and regarding himself in the glass, stopping now and then to get
close and examine his chin critically or inspect a pimple. Then he lathered one
side of my face thoroughly, and was about to lather the other, when a dog-fight
attracted his attention, and he ran to the window and stayed and saw it out,
losing two shillings on the result in bets with the other barbers, a thing
which gave me great satisfaction. He finished lathering, and then began to rub
in the suds with his hand.
He now began to sharpen his razor on
an old suspender, and was delayed a good deal on account of a controversy about
a cheap masquerade ball he had figured at the night before, in red cambric and
bogus ermine, as some kind of a king. He was so gratified with being chaffed
about some damsel whom he had smitten with his charms that he used every means
to continue the controversy by pretending to be annoyed at the chaffings of his
fellows. This matter begot more surveyings of himself in the glass, and he put
down his razor and brushed his hair with elaborate care, plastering an inverted
arch of it down on his forehead, accomplishing an accurate "Part"
behind, and brushing the two wings forward over his ears with nice exactness.
In the mean time the lather was drying on my face, and apparently eating into
my vitals.
Now he began to shave, digging his
fingers into my countenance to stretch the skin and bundling and tumbling my
head this way and that as convenience in shaving demanded. As long as he was on
the tough sides of my face I did not suffer; but when he began to rake, and
rip, and tug at my chin, the tears came. He now made a handle of my nose, to
assist him shaving the corners of my upper lip, and it was by this bit of
circumstantial evidence that I discovered that a part of his duties in the shop
was to clean the kerosene-lamps. I had often wondered in an indolent way
whether the barbers did that, or whether it was the boss.
About this time I was amusing myself
trying to guess where he would be most likely to cut me this time, but he got
ahead of me, and sliced me on the end of the chin before I had got my mind made
up. He immediately sharpened his razor--he might have done it before. I do not
like a close shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to
get him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my
chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice without
making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one little
roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the forbidden ground,
and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up smarting and answered to
the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum, and slapped it all over my face
nastily; slapped it over as if a human being ever yet washed his face in that
way. Then he dried it by slapping with the dry part of the towel, as if a human
being ever dried his face in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like
a Christian. Next he poked bay ruin into the cut place with his towel, then
choked the wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and
would have gone on soaking and powdering it forevermore, no doubt, if I had not
rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me up, and
began to plow my hair thoughtfully with his hands. Then he suggested a shampoo,
and said my hair needed it badly, very badly. I observed that I shampooed it
myself very thoroughly in the bath yesterday. I "had him" again. He
next recommended some of "Smith's Hair Glorifier," and offered to
sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the new perfume, "Jones's Delight
of the Toilet," and proposed to sell me some of that. I declined again. He
tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of his own invention, and when I declined
offered to trade knives with me.
He returned to business after the
miscarriage of this last enterprise, sprinkled me all over, legs and all,
greased my hair in defiance of my protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a
good deal of it out by the roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it
behind, and plastering the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead,
and then, while combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung
out an account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his
till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too late
for the train. Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly about my
face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily sang out
"Next!"
This barber fell down and died of
apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting over a day for my revenge--I am going to
attend his funeral.
-THE END-
Samuel Clemens] Mark Twain's short story: About Barbers
Samuel Clemens] Mark Twain's short story: About Barbers
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar