I knew the hairdresser. Marat met her last March. He just happened to be walking by when he had some automatic reaction to the light sparkling on windows displaying pretty women’s seemingly severed heads. He decided to stop in. It was the end of a cold workday, and she was the only one there. She was just about to set off into the night—what’s the point of sitting around in a salon when real, juicy life is getting under way on the other side of the black windows? She had already shed her shiny apron with its numerous pockets stuffed with scissors, combs, and electric trimmers. And then Marat stepped inside. She immediately noticed the dark circles under his eyes, which alluded to all his sleepless nights and his tobacco-roasted lungs; she noticed his stubble, which, oddly enough, made him look younger and meaner than he really was. She noticed his bandaged right hand, which made her realize that this here was a guy that wouldn’t back down if challenged, no matter what. Her eyes slid down his black hoodie, down his Nike gym bag, down his black jeans dotted with cigarette burns, all the way to his light sneakers. He looked like a movie hitman. The cops always find the distinctive footprints left by those sneakers, that’s what gives them away. She put her apron back on and nodded at a chair, signaling Marat to take a seat. She walked over, examined him at length in the mirror, and ran her hand through his prickly, black hair. She readied the scissors carefully; there were sparks flying off Marat and she was afraid of getting burned.
Marat told us that her whole look was too pink and too bloody. Pink hair, bloody makeup, pink shirt, bloody nails, pink, fluffy slippers, and blood-colored underwear. When she touched him, he felt how impatient her hands were, how adept she was at touching men, feeling their heat and restraining the quivering tension of their bodies. Or not, Marat added. He spun the chair around and pulled her against him, but that pink apron of hers, weighed down by all kinds of hairdresser stuff, kept getting in the way. Marat tried pulling it off, but it clung to her body, determined to protect her from the caresses of strangers. Then she untied the strings and tossed it on the floor, and the ringing metal of scissors and combs flew under the chair. Now she stood before him and he looked at her bare stomach, which her tiny shirt did nothing to conceal, and then he jerked her down onto his lap, stripping off all her clothes, not daring to stop, not for an instant, propelled by some unaccountable urgency. She didn’t even close the door of the salon; somebody peeked in while Marat was ripping off all her red straps and pink stockings, holding her against him to feel her skin grow warm from his touch and cold from the brisk March draft whipping in from the street. When she cried out and froze, he turned her face toward the light, trying to understand what had happened, why she wasn’t moving, until he too froze and could do nothing but keep squeezing her and examining her hair and eyebrows up close, stunned at the brightness and color of this girl, imagining how many meticulous minutes of drawing before her mirror and draping herself in brilliant folds they entailed, and then marveling at how easily she had shed them all again. He was also surprised by how quickly and smoothly she quieted down. Her gaze was intent and detached, instantly disconcerting; he stood up, carried her across the room, tossed her onto the leather couch decisively, though not very tenderly, and walked out the door. He hadn’t said a single word to her the whole time.
He came by the next evening. She was by herself, like before. Marat closed the door, standing there and waiting in silence. She knew where this was going; she turned off the lights. Outside the window, the street was infused with strands of light and shadow; they blended together and streaked apart, blurring and eroding the neighborhood’s buildings away. She rushed to tell him odd and unexpected things, saying that she’d been waiting for him and that she knew he’d come, telling him about herself, reminiscing about her ex-boyfriends, quietly explaining what she liked and what she didn’t, what she loved and what she feared until the wee hours of the morning, showing no signs of fatigue, not asking him a single question, doing everything he wanted, submitting to everything—they kept going until he let up and fell asleep.
For some reason, Marat liked her; he talked about feeling her heart speed up when they kissed and then turn slow and quiet again.
“Sometimes when we’re together she acts like I’m not even there, even though she’s lying next to me. Or on top of me. She looks right through me, at something only her eyes can see. Maybe she’s just listening to my breathing or maybe she’s just inhaling my smell. Couldn’t tell ya,” he said.
He seemed to like that too. At home, he wouldn’t even bother hiding the fact that he was going to the salon. When he started going there more regularly he’d say that he needed to go to a salon to get a good shave, that a real man should always be clean-shaven. The trouble was, he’d sometimes shave before he left… He was crashing and burning, and all his relationships were falling apart—with Alina, his parents, and his brother too. He’d even started fighting with his hairdresser girl more often. One time he admitted that he was afraid to let her cut his hair.
“She’s gonna chop my head off one of these days,” he said ominously. That’s pretty much how it all played out. Remember that story about the scissors? He made the whole thing up in my kitchen, with his hand pressed to the gaping wound. He was complaining that she had gone completely insane, that she wanted to kill him, that she was demanding the impossible from him, and that she was fucking him like there was no tomorrow. He tried talking to her, just to explain something to her.
“Do you realize that?” he yelled. “I just wanted to talk to her!”
But that caused even more drama; she just didn’t want to hear it, crying and accusing him of God knows what. He got all riled up, screamed at her, demolished the chair, smashed the mirror, threw bottles of cologne on the floor, and bent some hair dryers in half. Well, that’s when she drove the scissors into his side, right up to the handles.
“Just don’t tell anyone, all right? Nobody can find out about this.”
I didn’t. Later on, he told everyone himself.
I asked him what was keeping him here. He had lots of relatives on his dad’s side, and they were always offering him jobs back home, in the Caucasus.
“Well, how can I just up and leave? How can I quit on them?” He was referring to all his women, all his relatives, and all his friends and rivals. “There’s just no way.” But I knew that wasn’t the real reason. I knew Alina was the one keeping him here—she flatly refused to leave with him. She said she’d die here—with his parents and in his house, an inconsolable widow—before she’d leave this city. Marat could act on any ridiculous fancy that popped into his head. He lived with whoever he wanted, he slept with whoever he wanted, he fought with whoever he wanted, he lost friends and made enemies, refused to make the right connections, and failed to uphold his obligations to anyone—by the end of his life he was at odds with everyone, even me. I hadn’t spoken to him all winter. He owed Kostyk a lot of money. As far as I could gather, he wasn’t planning on giving it back—plus Kostyk wouldn’t have accepted it anyway. It seemed as though he was preparing for something important, some big decision, or some great event. He could cut himself loose of everything and still get by. Everything but Alina. I knew that for a fact. It made no difference how many women he had or how deep his pink hairdresser chewed into his skin, I knew that he would never leave without Alina. And I knew why. Nobody besides me knew. A long time ago, Marat told me all about them, for some reason—how they met on the street somewhere or other, how he stopped her, how he didn’t want to let her go because he already knew that this was the girl he wanted to live with. How she kept avoiding him, always hiding something. How he first went home with her and how all that turned out. How she finally agreed to move in with him—but before she did, she told him all about her mom, because she didn’t want to keep anything from him. She said that her mom had to spend time in the hospital every once in a while—“Yeah, it’s a drag. It’s nothing too bad, but there’s nothing too great about it, either. Sometimes she just doesn’t recognize anyone. But that’s nothing too serious, don’t ya think? I don’t always recognize everyone, either.” So she always had to be somewhere nearby, somewhere not too far away, because of her mom and stuff. Marat had no problem with that, and he knew better than most guys do that his girl wouldn’t be going anywhere… but that meant he wasn’t going anywhere either. Because it’s one thing to sleep in another apartment with another woman, but you just can’t quit on someone who can’t be left behind. That’s just not an option. Not under any circumstances. At least that’s how I understood their relationship.