short, Fatima knew a flower’s fragrance, color, and purpose better than a bee.
Well, Fatima’s may have been shuttered, reflected the Count, but weren’t the flower shops of Paris shuttered under the “reign” of Robespierre, and didn’t that city now abound in blossoms? Just so, the time for flowers in the Metropol would surely come again.
At the very end of the hall, one finally came to Yaroslav’s barbershop. A land of optimism, precision, and political neutrality, it was the Switzerland of the hotel. If the Count had vowed to master his circumstances through practicalities, then here was a glimpse of the means: a religiously kept appointment for a weekly trim.
When the Count entered the shop, Yaroslav was attending to a silver-haired customer in a light gray suit while a heavyset fellow in a rumpled jacket bided his time on the bench by the wall. Greeting the Count with a smile, the barber directed him to the empty chair at his side.
As the Count climbed into the chair, he offered a friendly nod to the heavyset fellow, then leaned back and let his eyes settle on that marvel of Yaroslav’s shop: his cabinet. Were one to ask Larousse to define the word cabinet, the acclaimed lexicographer might reply: A piece of furniture often adorned with decorative detail in which items may be stowed away from sight. A serviceable definition, no doubt—one that would encompass everything from a kitchen cupboard in the countryside to a Chippendale in Buckingham Palace. But Yaroslav’s cabinet would not fit so neatly into such a description, for having been made solely of nickel and glass it had been designed not to hide its contents, but to reveal them to the naked eye.
And rightfully so. For this cabinet could be proud of all it contained: French soaps wrapped in waxed papers; British lathers in ivory drums; Italian tonics in whimsically shaped vials. And hidden in the back? That little black bottle that Yaroslav referred to with a wink as the Fountain of Youth.
In the mirror’s reflection, the Count now let his gaze shift to where Yaroslav was working his magic on the silver-haired gentleman with two sets of scissors simultaneously. In Yaroslav’s hands, the scissors initially recalled the entrechat of the danseur in a ballet, his legs switching back and forth in midair. But as the barber progressed, his hands moved with increasing speed until they leapt and kicked like a Cossack doing the hopak! Upon the execution of the final snip, it would have been perfectly appropriate for a curtain to drop only to be raised again a moment later so that the audience could applaud as the barber took a bow.
Yaroslav swung the white cape off his customer and snapped it in the air; he clicked his heels when accepting payment for a job well done; and as the gentleman exited the shop (looking younger and more distinguished than when he’d arrived), the barber approached the Count with a fresh cape.
“Your Excellency. How are you?”
“Splendid, Yaroslav. At my utmost.”
“And what is on the docket for today?”
“Just a trim, my friend. Just a trim.”
As the scissors began their delicate snipping, it seemed to the Count that the heavyset customer on the bench had undergone something of a transformation. Although the Count had given his friendly nod just moments before, in the interim the fellow’s face seemed to have taken on a rosier hue. The Count was sure of it, in fact, because the color was spreading to his ears.
The Count tried to make eye contact again, intending to offer another friendly nod, but the fellow had fixed his gaze on Yaroslav’s back.
“I was next,” he said.
Yaroslav, who like most artists tended to lose himself in his craft, continued clipping away with efficiency and grace. So, the fellow was forced to repeat himself, if a little more emphatically.
“I was next.”
Drawn from his artistic spell by the sharper intonation, Yaroslav offered a courteous reply:
“I will be with you in just a moment, sir.”
“That is what you said when I arrived.”
This was said with such unmistakable hostility that Yaroslav paused in his clipping and turned to meet his customer’s glare with a startled expression.
Though the Count had been raised never to interrupt a conversation, he felt that the barber should not be put in the position of having to explain the situation on his behalf. So, he interceded:
“Yaroslav meant no offense, my good man. It just so happens that I have a standing appointment at twelve o’clock on Tuesdays.”