Cutting it Short

             My barber wasn’t her bubbly self today, perhaps because it was the sleepy stretch of morning and I usually saw her in a rush to end the workday, hers and mine and Bettinka’s. Other customers during those later non-appointments would enter and greet the room before slumping into a chrome and patted chair. Usually they were alone—the after-school trickle of children done an hour or two before.

            She asked me in her language if I wanted it short and smiled at my reminder that there’s really no other choice. Normally she’d take that as a cue to talk about the good life, hers and mine and Bettinka’s, lazing through our days but being dutiful, too. She’d been raising sheep recently, an inheritance she hadn’t bid for in what seemed to be a failed venture of one of her sons, several villages away. “There’s no money in a dozen sheep,” she likely heard him say before she took the herd off his hands, into her little grove next to the barber shop. “It’s true,” she joked, “especially since I have to hire someone to shear ’em!”

            “Can’t you bring your talents outside?”

            “I can’t catch ’em.”

            “But your son could—or even I could be on hand to hold them.”

            “You’re kind. And you cooperate by sitting nicely in this adjustable chair. I’m too old to handle a moving target.”

            “You’re not old.”

            “You’re kind.”

            And so on. She’d sigh and ask about my metaphorical sheep, recalling each of my children by name and what they’d last been up to. Sometimes, when my dog was leashed outside and barked a bit of impatience, she’d repeat her standing offer that he should come inside and share space in that corner with the water dish—“that’s what it’s there for”—and I’d decline, for Bronko was too big a puppy to behave in a barber shop. Plus, I’d say, he’s got to get used to the turns of a day.

            “A dog’s life,” she’d muse, and hum before the next thing on our minds. I had asked her if she’d seen Postřižiny, of course knowing everyone in her generation had. She reminded me remotely of an older Maryška, the small town brewer’s wife who mischievously cut her own enviable hair just to show she could—to put it to the aggravating shareholders that her charm was her power and not their asset, and in her husband’s struggle to turn a profit she would not become their Godiva.

            “You know the English translation of the title?”

            “Nothing. Hrabal cannot be translated.”

            “That’s probably true. Especially if a film adaptation is intent on making money, who cares about the original way of referring to the book.”

            “I wouldn’t say ‘who cares’ in such a broad brush—”

            “Then, ‘who considers’ why an artist has particular designs on his title… I saw this rather insipid movie some years ago starring Pierce Brosnan, Dante’s Peak. And if that title stood—the paradise of a mountain that hopes not to blow its top—we’d all appreciate the irony when indeed the volcano wakes up. But the translators decided to entitle it ‘Hell Unleashed’, right out of the gate, depriving any thought about Dante’s ultimate destination.”

            “I didn’t see that film. But Postřižiny was one of my favorites. The way she’d guzzle beer and skin a rabbit all at once, and allow her brother-in-law Pepin to be himself, obnoxious but well-meaning, a child she had hoped to have by now. I mean, when Pepin takes her up to the chimney top to breathe in the freedom of their unremarkable lives— ”

            “No smoke is billowing out—”

            “No smoke—in fact the opposite: they could stay up there like storks and make a typical nest, but they eventually come down—just before she does the haircut, as I recall.”

            “And that’s why I asked: Postřižiny means what it does—a haircut, right?”

            “‘Střih’ does that. And I’m a kadeřnice, making it all nice.”

            “And you do. And the film is translated ‘Cutting it Short’, which doesn’t sound so nice.”

            “That’s Hrabal for you, cannot be translated.”

            And so on. I’d walk back, often with Bronko, thinking about the philology of my neighborhood, and how I barely had a clue. Nice new haircut, though, and a smile to send me to the weeks and maybe months before a ‘need’ for any update.

            If my brother died—or not, still hanging on—I’d tell her. And if her husband—if she ever had one—had returned, she might tell me, too. But likely not. We don’t need to say that much in the context of a barber shop; even if we even did, we wouldn’t be whisked away.

            In that ilk, today, I sat back rather silently, barely looking up to the mirror where she rarely looked herself. I’d seen a movie lately, but nothing worth translating. Kids were on my mind, as perhaps on hers, and there they remained, deep within our discrete dentrites, skipping rope or scheming a fair portion of this world. The sheep in need of shearing would resonate to internships only half-thought through, and we as guardians would have to take on the other half and—well, this haircut shouldn’t force us there.

            A lady entered the shop and my barber perked right up—“ahoj, I’m glad to see you and I’m on the final touches of Mister here, and wouldn’t you be so kind as to take a seat.”

            “Of course, no hurry—I hadn’t thought to make an appointment. But you know, the spring fleamarket is coming up—I have a hand in organizing that, you know, and so I should freshen up, even though the weather will keep me in a headscarf, after all—”

            “Oh, we’ll keep you beautiful, rain or shine, and headscarves can be friends to your kadeřnice, as I try to cut to many an occasion.”

            “But of course you need to concentrate on Mister—”

            “Of course I am, and he knows also I prepare everyone for ‘rain or shine’—”

            I nodded that I did. It was good to hear her speak again, ebullient and earnest, if not this time about her sheep or how our kids were doing and why we loved the basic everything.

            “But where’s Bettinka?” I barely heard the other lady say.

            “Poor little one she died, thirteen years old.”

            “O pity, you knew her for so long—”

            “Eight years; the pound wasn’t sure about her age when I picked her up but guessed she was five—”

            “And will you go back to get another?”

            “I’ve already ordered one from Brno. Just like Bettinka. And—wouldn’t you know—the breeder is actually a Slovak.”

            “No, isn’t that so—”

            “It is. And so I’ll have another—can’t call her Bettinka of course—from my grandmother’s land.”

            “O, isn’t that nice.”

            “She won’t be Bettinka.”

            “No, of course, no one can—”

            My haircut was done after select brushes to my neck, eyebrows, over-ears. I had nodded at times to the news rushing in; my barber had focused and spoken as always she’d done. I stood up and shrugged to bide a few seconds and jam my left hand into a pocket that harbored a hundred-crown note, already factoring an ample tip, in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said as I held out the bill, and she bubbled something that made us feel good, if not understood.

            To translate further, she clasped my triceps and smiled that our non-conversation was really well spent. And there’d be no apologies, in light of the lady to follow, for cutting short the middle of this day.