“I don’t belong to the syndicate,” David said. “I leave it to you two.”
“Perhaps we should experiment on Monsieur,” Monsieur Jean said. “In case anything goes wrong.
But Monsieur Jean began cutting Catherine’s hair very care fully and skillfully and David watched her dark serious face above the smock that came close around her neck. She looked into the hand mirror and watched the comb and scissors lifting
and snipping. The man was working like a sculptor, absorbed and serious. “I thought about it all last night and this morning,” the coiffeur said. “If you don’t believe that, Monsieur, I under- stand. But this is as important to me as your metier is to you.
He stepped back to look at the shape he was making. Then he snipped more rapidly and finally turned the chair so the big mirror was reflected in the small one Catherine held.
“Do you want it cut that way above the ears?” she asked the coiffeur.
“As you like. I can make it more degage if you wish. But it will be beautiful as is if we are going to make it truly fair.”
“I want it fair,” Catherine said.
He smiled. “Madame and I have spoken of it. But I said it must be Monsieur’s decision.”
“Monsieur gave his decision,” Catherine said.
“How fair did Monsieur say he wished it to be?”
“As fair as you can make it,” she said.
“Don’t say that,” Monsieur Jean said. “You must tell me.”
“As fair as my pearls,” Catherine said. “You’ve seen them plenty of times.”
David had come over and was watching Monsieur Jean stir a large glassful of the shampoo with a wooden spoon. “I have the shampoos made up with castile soap,” the coiffeur said. “It’s warm. Please come over here to the basin. Sit forward,” he said to Catherine, “and put this cloth across your forehead.”
“But it isn’t even really a boy’s haircut,” Catherine said. “I wanted it the way we planned. Everything’s going wrong.
“It couldn’t be more a boy’s haircut. You must believe me.
He was lathering her head now with the foamy thick shampoo with the acrid odor.
When her head had been shampooed and rinsed again and again it looked to David as though it had no color and the water
tunnelled through it showing only a wet paleness. The coiffeur put a towel over it and rubbed it softly. He was very sure about
it.
“Don’t be desperate, Madame,” he said. “Why would I do anything against your beauty?”
“I am desperate and there isn’t any beauty.”
He dried her head gently and then kept the towel over her head and brought a hand blower and began to play it through her hair as he combed it forward.
“Now watch,” he said.
As the air drove through her hair it was turning from damp drab to a silvery northern shining fairness. As the wind of the blower moved through it they watched it change.
“You shouldn’t have despaired,” Monsieur Jean said, not saying Madame and then remembering. “Madame wanted it fair?”
“It’s better than the pearls,” she said. “You’re a great man and I was terrible.”
Then he rubbed his hands together with something from a jar. “I’ll just touch it with this,” he said. He smiled at Catherine very happily and passed his hands lightly over her head.
Catherine stood up and looked at herself very seriously in the mirror. Her face had never been so dark and her hair was like the bark of a young white birch tree.
“I like it so much,” she said. “Too much.”
She looked in the mirror as though she had never seen the girl she was looking at.
“Now we must do Monsieur,” the coiffeur said. “Does Monsieur wish the cut? It’s very conservative but it’s also sportif.”
“The cut,” David said. “I don’t think I’ve had a haircut in a month.”
“Please make it the same as mine,” Catherine said.
“But shorter,” David said.
8o
“No. Please just the same.
When it was cut David stood up and ran his hand over his head. It felt cool and comfortable.
“Aren’t you going to let him lighten it?”