“Is it gone yet?” he asked.
The sensation abated.
“It’s gone,” I said.
“Your skin is good,” growled the Master with a certain satisfaction.
He returned with an assortment of the most unlikely instruments and proceeded to palpate my cheeks.
“And still Mirosa married him,” he said suddenly. “I expected anything and everything, except that. After all that Levant had done for her. Do you remember that moment when they were both weeping over the dying Pina? You could have bet anything that they would be together forever. And now, imagine, she is being wed to that literary fellow.”
I have a rule: to pick up and sustain any conversation that comes along. When you don’t know what it’s all about, this can even be interesting.
“Not for long,” I said with assurance. “Literary types are very inconstant, I can assure you, being one myself.”
For a moment his hands paused on my temples.
“That didn’t enter my head,” he admitted. “Still, it’s wedlock, even though only a civil one…. I must remember to call my wife. She was very upset.”
“I can sympathize with her,” I said. “But it did always seem to me that Levant was in love with that… Pina.”
“In love?” exclaimed the Master, coming around from my other side. “Of course he loved her! Madly! As only a lonely, rejected-by-all man can love.”
“And so it was quite natural that after the death of Pina, he sought consolation with her best friend.”
“Her bosom friend, yes,” said the Master approvingly, while tickling me behind the ear. “Mirosa adored Pina! It’s a very accurate term — bosom friend! One senses a literary man in you at once! And Pina, too, adored Mirosa.”
“But, you notice,” I picked up, “that. right from the beginning Pina suspected that Mirosa was infatuated with Levant.”
“Well, of course! They are extremely sensitive about such things. This was clear to everyone — my wife noticed it at once. I recollect that she would nudge me with her elbow each time Pina alighted on Mirosa’s tousled head, and so coyly and expectantly looked at Levant.”
This time I kept my peace.
“In general, I am profoundly convinced,” he continued, “that birds feel no less sensitively than people.”
Aha, thought I, and said, “I don’t know about birds in general, but Pina was a lot more sensitive than let’s say even you or I.”
Something bummed briefly over my head, and there was a soft clink of metal.
“You speak like my wife, word for word,” observed the Master, “so you most probably must like Dan. I was overcome when he was able to construct a bunkin for that Japanese noblewoman… can’t think of her name. After all, not one person believed Dan. The Japanese king, himself…”
“I beg your pardon,” I said. “A bunkin?”
“Yes, of course, you are not a specialist…. You remember that moment when the Japanese noblewoman comes out of prison. Her hair, in a high roller of blond hair, is ornamented with precious combs…”
“Aah,” I guessed. “It’s a coiffure.”
“Yes, it even became fashionable for a time last year. Although a true bunkin could be made by a very few… even as a real chignon, by the way. And, of course, no one could believe that Dan, with his burned hands and half-blind .. Do you remember how he was blinded?”
“It was overpowering,” I said.
“Oh yes, Dan was a true Master. To make a bunkin without electro-preparation, without biodevelopment… You know, I just had a thought,” he continued, and there was a note of excitement in his voice. “It just struck me that Mirosa, after she parts with that literary guy, should marry Dan and not Levant. She will be wheeling him out on the veranda in his chair, and they will be listening to the singing nightingales in the moonlight — the two of them together.”
“And crying quietly out of sheer happiness,” I said.
“Yes,” the voice of the Master broke, “that would be only right. Otherwise I just don’t know, I just don’t understand, what all our struggles are for. No… we must insist. I’ll go to the union this very day….”
I kept quiet, again. The Master was breathing uneasily by my ear.
“Let them go and shave at the automates,” he said suddenly in a vengeful tone, “let them look like plucked geese. We let them have a taste once before of what it’s like; now we’ll see how they appreciate it.”
“I am afraid it won’t be simple,” I said cautiously, not — having the vaguest idea of what this was about.
“We Masters are used to the complicated. It’s not all that simple — when a fat and sweaty stuffed shirt comes to you, and you have to make a human being out of him, or at the very best, something which under normal circumstances does not differ too much from a human being… is that simple? Remember what Dan said: ‘Woman gives birth to a human being once in nine months, but we Masters have to do it every day.’ Aren’t those magnificent words?”
“Dan was talking about barbers?” I said, just in case.
“Dan was talking about Masters. ‘The beauty of the world rests on our shoulders,’ he would say. And again, do you remember: ‘In order to make a man out of an ape, Darwin had to be an excellent Master.’”
I decided to capitulate and confess.
“This I don’t remember.”
“How long have you been watching ‘Rose of the Salon’?”
“Well, I have arrived just recently.”
“Aah, then you have missed a lot. My wife and I have been watching the program for seven years, every Tuesday. We missed only one show; I had an attack and lost consciousness. But in the whole town there is only one man who hasn’t missed even one show — Master Mille at the Central Salon.”
He moved off a few paces, turned various colored lights on and off, and resumed his work.
“The seventh year,” he repeated. “And now — can you imagine — the year before last they kill off Mirosa and throw Levant into a Japanese prison for life, while Dan is burned at the stake. Can you visualize that?”
“It’s impossible,” I said. “Dan? At the stake? Although it’s true that they burned Bruno at the stake, too.”
“It’s possible,” he said with impatience. “In any case, it became clear to us that they want to fold up the program fast. But we didn’t put up with that. We declared a strike and struggled for three weeks. Mille and I picketed the barber automates. And let me tell you that quite a lot of the townspeople sympathized with us.”
“I should think so,” I said. “And what happened? Did you win?
“As you see. They grasped very well what was involved, and now the TV center knows with whom they are dealing. We didn’t give one step, and if need be, we won’t. Anyway we can rest on Tuesdays now just like in the old days — for real.”
“And the other days?”
“The other days we wait for Tuesday and try to guess what is awaiting us and what you literary fellows will do for us. We guess and make bets — although we Masters don’t have much leisure.”
“You have a large clientele?”
“No, that’s not it. I mean homework. It’s not difficult to become a Master, it’s difficult to remain one. There is a mass of literature, lots of new methods, new applications, and you have to keep up with it all and constantly experiment, investigate and keep track of allied fields — bionics, plastic medicine, organic medicine. And with time, you accumulate experience, and you get the urge to share your knowledge. So Mille and I are writing our second book, and practically every month, we have to update the manuscript. Everything becomes obsolete right before your eyes. I am now completing a treatise on a little-known characteristic of the naturally straight nonplastic hair; and do you know I have practically no chance of being the first? In our country alone, I know of three Masters who are occupied with the same subject. It’s only to be expected — the naturally straight nonplastic hair is a real problem. It’s considered to be absolutely nonaestheticizable…. However, this may not be of interest to you? You are a writer?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, you know, during the strike, I had a chance to run through a novel. That would not be yours, by any chance?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “What was it about?”
“Well, I couldn’t say exactly…. Son quarrels with father. He has a friend, an unpleasant fellow with a strange name. He occupies himself by cutting up frogs.”
“Can’t remember,” I lied — poor Ivan Sergeyevitch.
“I can’t remember either. It was some sort of nonsense. I have a son, but he never quarrels with me, and he never tortures animals — except perhaps when he was a child”