The Lemon Table

Julian Barnes
The Lemon Table

Born in Leicester, England, in 1946, Julian Barnes is the author of a previous book of stories,
Cross Channel
, two collections of essays, a translation of Alphonse Daudet’s
In the Land of Pain
, and nine novels. In France, he is the only writer to have won both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Fémina, and in 2004 he became a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; in England his honors include the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He has also received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He lives in London.

www.julianbarnes.com

ALSO BY JULIAN BARNES

FICTION

METROLAND

BEFORE SHE MET ME

FLAUBERT’S PARROT

STARING AT THE SUN

A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10½ CHAPTERS

TALKING IT OVER

THE PORCUPINE

CROSS CHANNEL

ENGLAND, ENGLAND

LOVE, ETC.

NONFICTION

LETTERS FROM LONDON, 1990-1995

SOMETHING TO DECLARE

THE PENDANT IN THE KITCHEN

TRANSLATION

IN THE LAND OF PAIN
by Alphonse Daudet

to Pat

Contents

A SHORT HISTORY OF HAIRDRESSING

THE STORY OF MATS ISRAELSON

THE THINGS YOU KNOW

HYGIENE

THE REVIVAL

VIGILANCE

BARK

KNOWING FRENCH

APPETITE

THE FRUIT CAGE

THE SILENCE

A Short History of Hairdressing

1

T
hat first time, after they moved, his mother had come with him. Presumably to examine the barber. As if the phrase “short back and sides, with a little bit off the top” might mean something different in this new suburb. He’d doubted it. Everything else seemed the same: the torture chair, the surgical smells, the strop and the folded razor—folded not in safety but in threat. Most of all, the torturer-in-chief was the same, a loony with big hands who pushed your head down till your windpipe nearly snapped, who prodded your ear with a bamboo finger. “General inspection, madam?” he said greasily when he’d finished. His mother had shaken off the effects of her magazine and stood up. “Very nice,” she said vaguely, leaning over him, smelling of stuff. “I’ll send him by himself next time.” Outside, she had rubbed his cheek, looked at him with idle eyes, and murmured, “You poor shorn lamb.”

Now he was on his own. As he walked past the estate agent’s, the sports shop and the half-timbered bank, he practised saying, “Short back and sides with a little bit off the top.” He said it urgently, without the comma; you had to get the words just right, like a prayer. There was one and threepence in his pocket; he stuffed his handkerchief in tighter to keep the coins safe. He didn’t like not being allowed to be afraid. It was simpler at the dentist’s: your mother always came with you, the dentist always hurt you, but afterwards he gave you a boiled sweet for being a good boy, and then back in the waiting room you pretended in front of the other patients that you were made of stern stuff. Your parents were proud of you. “Been in the wars, old chap?” his father would ask. Pain let you into the world of grown-up phrases. The dentist would say, “Tell your father you’re fit for overseas. He’ll understand.” So he’d go home and Dad would say, “Been in the wars, old chap?” and he’d answer, “Mr. Gordon says I’m fit for overseas.”

He felt almost important going in, with the adult spring of the door against his hand. But the barber merely nodded, pointed with his comb to the line of high-backed chairs, and resumed his standing crouch over a white-haired geezer. Gregory sat down. His chair creaked. Already he wanted to pee. There was a bin of magazines next to him, which he didn’t dare explore. He gazed at the hamster nests of hair on the floor.

When his turn came, the barber slipped a thick rubber cushion onto the seat. The gesture looked insulting: he’d been in long trousers now for ten and a half months. But that was typical: you were never sure of the rules, never sure if they tortured everyone the same way, or if it was just you. Like now: the barber was trying to strangle him with the sheet, pulling it tight round his neck, then shoving a cloth down inside his collar. “And what can we do for you today, young man?” The tone implied that such an ignominious and deceitful woodlouse as he obviously was might have strayed into the premises for any number of different reasons.

After a pause, Gregory said, “I’d like a haircut, please.”

“Well, I’d say you’d come to the right place, wouldn’t you?” The barber tapped him on the crown with his comb; not painfully, but not lightly either.

“Short-back-and-sides-with-a-little-bit-off-the-top-please.”

“Now we’re motoring,” said the barber.

They would only do boys at certain times of the week. There was a notice saying No Boys on Saturday Mornings. Saturday afternoons they were closed anyway, so it might just as well read No Boys on Saturdays. Boys had to go when men didn’t want to. At least, not men with jobs. He went at times when the other customers were pensioners. There were three barbers, all of middle age, in white coats, dividing their time between the young and the old. They greased up to these throat-clearing old geezers, made mysterious conversation with them, put on a show of being keen on their trade. The old geezers wore coats and scarves even in summer, and gave tips as they left. Gregory would watch the transaction out of the corner of his eye. One man giving another man money, a secret half-handshake with both pretending the exchange wasn’t being made.

Boys didn’t tip. Perhaps that was why barbers hated boys. They paid less and they didn’t tip. They also didn’t keep still. Or at least, their mothers told them to keep still, they kept still, but this didn’t stop the barber bashing their heads with a palm as solid as the flat of a hatchet and muttering, “Keep
still
.” There were stories of boys who’d had the tops of their ears sliced off because they hadn’t kept still. Razors were called cut-throats. All barbers were loonies.

“Wolf cub, are we?” It took Gregory a while to realize that he was being addressed. Then he didn’t know whether to keep his head down or look up in the mirror at the barber. Eventually he kept his head down and said, “No.”

“Boy scout already?”

“No.”

“Crusader?”

Gregory didn’t know what that meant. He started to lift his head, but the barber rapped his crown with the comb. “Keep
still
, I said.” Gregory was so scared of the loony that he was unable to answer, which the barber took as a negative. “Very fine organization, the Crusaders. You give it a thought.”

Gregory thought of being chopped up by curved Saracen swords, of being staked out in the desert and eaten alive by ants and vultures. Meanwhile, he submitted to the cold smoothness of the scissors—always cold even when they weren’t. Eyes tight shut, he endured the tickly torment of hair falling on his face. He sat there, still not looking, convinced that the barber should have stopped cutting ages ago, except that he was such a loony he would probably carry on cutting and cutting until Gregory was bald. Still to come was the stropping of the razor, which meant that your throat was going to be cut; the dry, scrapy feel of the blade next to your ears and on the back of your neck; the fly-whisk shoved into your eyes and nose to get the hair out.

Those were the bits that made you wince every time. But there was also something creepier about the place. He suspected it was rude. Things you didn’t know about, or weren’t meant to know about, usually turned out to be rude. Like the barber’s pole. That was obviously rude. The previous place just had an old bit of painted wood with colours twirling round it. The one here worked by electricity, and moved in whirly circles all the time. That was ruder, he thought. Then there was the binful of magazines. He was sure some of them were rude. Everything was rude if you wanted it to be. This was the great truth about life which he’d only just discovered. Not that he minded. Gregory liked rude things.

Without moving his head, he looked in the next-door mirror at a pensioner two seats away. He’d been yakking on in the sort of loud voice old geezers always had. Now the barber was bent over him with a small pair of round-headed scissors, cutting hairs out of his eyebrows. Then he did the same with his nostrils; then his ears. Snipping great twigs out of his lugholes. Absolutely disgusting. Finally, the barber started brushing powder into the back of the geezer’s neck. What was that for?