The old barber.

We lived in the same house in the corner of Komsomolskaya and Chkalov. On the second floor, right above the garden "Young Astronaut". There was a good sound insulation in the stalinks, but in the afternoon there was a quiet blinking of the upset Sadiq piano and a choral youth cosmonaut colorated messo-soprano.
When I hit three, I went into the same garden. I didn’t even have to get out of the parade. My grandmother and I were going down to the same floor, she was knocking on the door of the kitchen – and I was diving into the thick smell of cheese baking, a burnt snack and other masterpieces of kindergarten cooking.
The rotation in these high spheres required everything to be perfect in me, as Chekhov had planned, and for the first time in my life I was taken to the barber.
Here, in a small hairdresser in Chkalov and the Soviet Army, I met Stepan Izrajlevich.
In fact, it was he who met me.
There were three hairdressers in the room. Everyone was busy, and a few others were waiting for their turn.
I never had a haircut yet, I was absolutely sure that at least my scalp would be removed from me, so I revelled, and my grandmother tried to take me to the weak, writing absolutely unbelievable stories about my fearlessness in old times:
When you were small...
Stephan Izrailevich – a tall, thin old man – let the client go, approached me, took his head with both hands and began thoughtfully to turn it in different directions, somewhat bragging about himself. Then he grumbled satisfied and said:
I’ll make this young man a head!
I was surprised and let myself sit in a chair.
Someone who was waiting began to get upset that he came earlier.
Stéphane Izraylevitch rejected carelessly:
Oh, I beg you! Did you come to me personally? Or did I call you? Have you seen me run all over Moldova, or where did you come from there, and call you to my chair?
The scandal was served by another barber. Stepan Izraylevič did not take the turn. He chose the clients himself. He is not stripped. He made his head.
Go here, I’ll make your head. Go here, I tell you. Or do you want to walk with your head unworked?! to
I will not make your head. I don’t see you have a head. The Rain! The Rain! This is for you: just shave him.
Stephan Izraylevitch long clapped with his scissors in the air, praised the scissor, cut five microns - and spoke, speaking without stopping.
I spent my whole childhood with him.
He shaved me just like all the other hairdressers shaved almost all the Odessa boys: under the Canadian.
But he was not another barber, but Stepan Izrylevitch. He was a magician. He was priest. He made my head.
Or do you want to walk with your head untouched? He asked with horror when he accidentally met me on the street. And from his face it was evident that he could not even imagine such a terrible nightmare.
Every minute, with a funny whisper, he blowed a metal chest - as if he was playing a lip harmonic. Zvonko knocked his scissors, then knocked them on the table and grabbed the shave to shave his whiskey and neck.
Stepan Izraylevich had a daughter Sonetchko, about my peer, whom he loved without memory, all the bites. And how many times I was cut - I told about her without silence, cried, sprinkling with saliva from excitement, from the desire to speak to the bottom, without residues.
And how many cannabis she has: she even showed her to the doctor. She laughs astonishingly, shaking her head. And how she is a little whispering because she broke her tooth when she was riding in the yard on the big. How beautiful she sings. How wonderful her eyes are. What a beautiful nose she has. And what a wonderful hair she has (and I’m a little bit familiar with her hair, young man!) is
What a sunny character.
Stepan Izraylevič admired her not in vain. She was indeed a very unusual girl, judging by his stories. Good, fun, smart, honest, courageous. And most importantly, she had the talent to constantly catch up with the most incredible stories. In stories that instantly turned into anecdotes and were told over the years by all Odessa.
It was she, on the boastful question of the neighbor, how the sunny mother liked the long hollow neighbor's nails, shouted, ahead of her mother: "Even like! They might climb trees well!“”
It was she in the tram at the question of some aunt with a baby pot in her hands: "Girl, do you not go here?" She replied, "No, I will go to the house," and at the request, "Send the ticket to the conductor," she was surprised: "So he goes for free!“”
She asked the teacher, “What was the name of Pushkin’s babysitter?” She replied, “My dumb pigeon.”
Sonina's sharpness and adventures differed so quickly that I often even learned about them first in the form of an anecdote from friends, and then from the barber.
I never met Sonia, but I would definitely recognize her, meet her on the street - before that the master's stories were delicious and accurate.
Then my childhood ended, I grew up, I went to the army, we moved, I studied, I worked, I turned around, I lost many old acquaintances - and Stepan Izraylevich too.
Ten years later, I met again. He was an old man, in his eighty. He still worked. Only in another hairdresser - on Tiraspol Square, right above the "Golden calf".
Strangely enough, he remembered me very well.
I went back to the old man. He also solemnly and magically "made my head." Then we went down to the Golden Turtle and he allowed me to eat a cognac.
And while he cut me, and while we were drinking with him, he talked silently, sprinkling with saliva. Gold, a daughter born to Sunny.
Stephan Izraylevitch simply worshipped her. He called her gold and gold. He blissfully closed his eyes. He put himself on the beds. And sometimes he even began to shake up, as in a Jewish prayer.
Then we separated. To say goodbye, Stepan Izraylevich warned me not to forget to come again:
Do you think, or do you want to walk with your head untouched?! to
Most of all, Zlata, according to Stepan Izraylevich, loved Iriski. But it was at the height of the damned nineties, there was a ball of repentance in the shops, for some reason they disappeared too.
Absolutely by chance I saw the iris in Uzhgorod – and solemnly handed them to Stepan Izrajlevich, sitting with the already made head in the “Golden calf”.
For your gold. her favorite ones.
He reacted wildly. He grabbed a candy ball, pressed it to himself and suddenly cried. He really cried. The old tears.
The gold... the gold...
He ran away without even saying goodbye.
And in the evening he called me from the machine (he had my phone for a long time), and for a long time apologized, thanked and admirably told how Zlata was delighted with this unwise guest.
The next time I came to make my head, the hairdresser girls told me that Stepan Izraylevitch had died a couple of days ago.
I long called the manager. Finally, he dictated the old master’s home address, and I went there.
He lived on Mills, somewhere near the Parachute. I found in the half-broken courtyard only in the slum of a roasted yard.
It turned out that I was late for the meals: they were yesterday. The relatives of Stepan Izraylevich did not announce (I thought that something bad could have happened to Sonya and Zlata too, we need to find them soon).
Neighbors took a meal in the hairdresser’s room. They remembered. They overturned. They danced under the Mayak. overturned again. They wasted the old man’s wealthy treasure.
The palace man managed to hide at least a wallet filled with documents and letters from sin.
I gave him a bottle, picked up the wallet and brought it home: it will probably contain Sony’s address.
There are addresses for everyone.
Stephan Izraylevich’s father passed through the entire war, but was killed by the Nazis at the very beginning of 1946 in Western Ukraine during the cleansing of the Bandera pagan that spread through the shrines after our victory over their German masters.
The mother was shot in the occupied Odessa by the Romanians, five years before the death of her father: in October 1941. Together with her were killed two of her three children: Sophia (Sonnechka) and Golda (Zlata).
There are no other relatives of Stepan Izraylevich.
I watched for a long time the broken notes and excerpts. Then I poured the glass to the edge. I drank. He sat with his eyes closed, feeling the burned vodka penetrating his way.
And it was only now that I realized that the only man who could make a head was dead.
The last time he had a ridiculous whisper. I put the scissors on the table. He went home, taking a large piece of Odessa with him. He went to his sisters: the shameful hemp Sunetke and the touching shameful Golden Golden.
And we, all who have stayed here so far, will now walk with the unmade head for the rest of our lives.
Or do we want that?

Alexander Pashchenko