Everything Begins In Childhood

Chapter 18. With a Forelock

Our class was discussing the terrible news. Renat Khabiyev had injured his hand. Three fingers had been blown off. The two remaining ones had been disfigured.

Yesterday, after classes, Renat and a few high school students had made their way to the training ground. There was no need to explain that they had gone there to collect cartridge cases. Renat was lucky – he had found an unexploded military cartridge. It was a very valuable find because you could remove the capsule from a cartridge, and a capsule was… Well, you know what I mean. When he returned to the yard, he got down to business. Of course, he couldn’t do it at home.

“He was separating the capsule from the cartridge,” Zhenya Zhiltsov was telling his agitated listeners, “when it exploded… right in his hand!”

Tall Zhenya always hung out near the fifth graders, and he always knew all the news.

The boys were silent. Obviously, almost every one of them tried to imagine what horrible pain Renat had felt. Expressions of suffering appeared on many faces. Timur Timirshayev stared at his palm and pressed three fingers to it, wincing.

“At least it’s his left hand,” Sergey Bulgakov broke the silence.

He belonged to the same group as Zhiltsov. They were not known for outstanding academic achievement. They were useful when it came to either beating someone up or “giving a warning.” As for Renat, he wasn’t a mischief-maker, and he had gotten into that group accidentally. Renat belonged to a poor Uzbek family with many children. They didn’t live in one of the new buildings but rather in a clay house in the settlement. He sat quietly at the last desk in class. He wasn’t among those who always raised their hands, eager to demonstrate their superior knowledge at the blackboard.

Yekaterina Ivanovna entered the classroom. We rushed to our seats.

After laying her briefcase on her desk, she paced the room for a long time. She was silent and didn’t look at us. She didn’t have the usual smile on her round, good-natured face. She had such a sad expression that all of us grew even more ill at ease.

“Well, first graders of Class B,” she said as she stopped walking. “Have you at last excelled? Who was with Renat at the training ground yesterday?”

Naturally, the class was silent. Even if someone had been at the training ground, was he foolish enough to inform her about it? And if anyone knew with whom Renat had gone to the training ground, they would never betray their friends. That was for sure.

Yekaterina Ivanovna directed her stern looks at Zhiltsov, Bulgakov and Gaag. They were silent like everyone else.

“How can they allow such naughty children to join the ranks of Young Octobrists?” Yekaterina Ivanovna reproached us.

It was true that we had been wearing the pins for two weeks, the little stars of the Octobrists, and we were very proud of it. But was it against the Octobrists’ rules to play war games and stock cartridges for combat operations? Of course, Renat’s misfortune scared everybody, but at the same time, he was considered a war hero, injured in combat.

No, Yekaterina Ivanovna’s reproaches didn’t arouse our remorse. The class was silent…

After scolding us a bit more, Yekaterina Ivanovna at last told us something worthwhile.

“Tomorrow after classes, we’ll go to the hospital to visit Renat. Who can come?”

So many hands were raised that they formed a dense forest. The class began to buzz, completely forgetting its recent inability to speak.

As always, a few of us walked home together. Khobeyev’s name was on everyone’s lips, and, yes, we felt sorry for him. But we cast glances in the direction of the training ground without a sense of fear. The training ground became even more desirable.

Here we were near building #14, in other words, near the former construction site. Oh, how we missed that construction site! We felt as if something had been taken from us, a thing that had been the principal delight of our lives. How many adventures we had had there! As for the new building… Well, what about it? It looked like a big freshly painted poster – meticulously cleaned glass sparkled in white window frames, the freshly painted dark red entrance door shined. The stairways smelled nicely of whitewash. Joyful new tenants stomped up the steps carrying their baggage.

If there was anything that attracted us to the new building, it was the chance to make new friends. Also, a new barbershop had opened at the end of the building.

And we stopped in there today. Kolya remembered that the director of studies had reprimanded him, “Your hair is too long. You look sloppy.” Edem and I decided to keep him company.

The spacious, well-lit barber shop, which occupied one of the corners of the building, was furnished modestly: just two barber chairs and three seats for waiting customers. The fan, with its rubber blades, was buzzing, and soft music could be heard on the radio. Both barber chairs were occupied by customers. We sat down on the seats and became spectators to this most interesting show. The actors, that is the barbers, wore white gowns, like doctors. The older one, who undoubtedly played the leading role, manipulated first clippers, then scissors, skillfully. His hands flashed up and down, to the left and to the right. He spun around the barber chair like a figure skater in a rink. His fat belly didn’t allow him to get close enough to the barber chair, so he stretched out his arms in a comical way as he worked. Maybe that was why it seemed that he cut hair by touch, without looking at his customer’s head. “What if he cuts off the customer’s ear?” I thought. He could cut it off and not even notice. Then he could cut off the other ear. Then he could let the customer go, and the customer would stand up without noticing anything. After all, everything would still be symmetrical. He wouldn’t even realize that he was deaf. I thought that was what would happen if one’s ears were cut off. And he would just nod, “Thank you, it’s a very nice haircut. Nothing is sticking out.” And he would leave.

The second actor was young and not as agile. He must have been a novice. He wasn’t in a hurry and, after clicking his scissors a few times, he’d take a few steps back to examine his customer’s head.

The master was the first to finish his work. His chair was vacant. He looked at us and motioned to us invitingly, pointing to his barber chair. We looked at each other. It was scary for some reason. We grabbed hold of our chairs. We felt as if we had not been invited to sit in a barber chair but rather to climb onto an operating table. And the doctor, or rather the barber, froze while he waited for us to respond to his invitation, “Well, who’ll be the first to make up his mind?”

The first one was me, even though I didn’t want to at all. I was sitting in the middle between Kolya and Edem, and they, unexpectedly and treacherously, pushed me off the chair. I thought they were my friends. I had no choice but to go and sit in the barber chair. And while the barber was wrapping a white sheet around my shoulders, I imagined in dismay how the blood would run down it. A scared yet quite likeable little boy with a tidy hairdo, not at all shaggy, looked out at me from the mirror. His eyes were pleading: “Please, don’t do it! It’s a mistake. You have the wrong boy.”

“Which hairstyle do you prefer, young man?” the barber asked with condescending politeness. “I think you’ll go for the one with a forelock.”

I nodded without saying a word. The choice was limited to With a Forelock, Skin Fade and Youth. I wasn’t old enough for the youth style. I didn’t like the skin fade because I would look like a prematurely bald child with a fur cap on my head. With a forelock was the only option left.

The scissors began to snip, the clippers began to buzz, and I became tenser and tenser, cringing as I felt the barber’s fat belly rubbing against my arms. I wanted him to finish quickly. It was too much. I could see the famous forelock on my forehead. It looked like we were done. The barber glanced at the mirror and turned my head from side to side. Now he would set me free, but no, he grabbed the clippers again and began to expose the back of my head. V-v-zh-zh, v-vzh-zh, the clippers rumbled like a car going uphill. It seemed to me that I was about to go deaf, yet the Professor of Barber Affairs continued torturing me. He pushed the clippers hard into the back of my head as if trying to drill into it. Perhaps he had already done so, and now he was scraping it the way you scrape asphalt with a shovel.

I was covered in sweat. My cheeks and ears were on fire. I could see my friends behind me in the mirror. They were shaking with soundless laughter, grabbing the cushions of their chairs with their hands.

Suddenly, everything was quiet. I took a deep breath. I was relieved. That was it. And right away, I lurched forward, as I got a shock, an unbearable burning sensation – the master generously wiped the bare scratched-up back of my head with eau-de-cologne.

I stood up, dumbfounded, and shook my head. I saw a billiard ball rocking first to the right and then to the left in the mirror. The forelock and a small wisp of hair that looked like a little island in the ocean were glued to the top of my head. But my ears were intact, all the more noticeable since they were still on fire.

“Do you like it?” the potbellied master asked with a kind smile. I nodded. If I’d said I didn’t, he might have dragged me back into the chair. I wanted it to stop so I could sit in peace and enjoy the show. It was my friends’ turn now.

After some slight jostling, and without any exchange of words, – Kolya nudged Edem, Edem nudged Kolya – it was Kolya who landed in the master’s chair. Edem rushed to the chair of the novice, which had just become available.

“Skin fade, please,” Kolya requested. He wasn’t amused any longer. He remembered my suffering.

“A skin fade wouldn’t be right for you,” the master answered. “You had a forelock before.”

Kolya was at a loss and, as always in such cases, he twisted his lips to the side and began to mumble something incomprehensible.

“What? A forelock?” Mr. Potbelly responded eagerly. “That’s good!” The scissors immediately began to click. Kolya didn’t even have time to shout “Ow!”

Now it was my turn to have fun. Now I was the one bursting with laughter as the destructive clipper grabbed hold of the back of Kolya’s head. It munched on his light hair like a hungry dog opening a wide path for itself. Aha! Now it was scraping like a shovel. I gazed with malicious pleasure at the back of Kolya’s head and at the mirror in which his tomato-red face was reflected. Now and then, I would cast a glance at Edem, for whom matters were no better – a forelock was already looming on his forehead.

Then three boys were walking home. As they walked, they scratched the shaven backs of their heads. They walked without talking, thinking about the same thing – how tomorrow in the yard and at school, boys would delight in thinking up nicknames for them, repeating the word “forelock” all the time and giving them flicks to their foreheads, which were known as “initiation.” Who knew what else awaited them?

One thing they knew for sure – they would never again go to the new barbershop.