Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Went for a haircut on Saturday. Came home and read some short stories by Vladimir Nabokov, including "Razor", a rather frightening one set in the immediate years after the Bolshevik revolution. The main character is Ivanov, a former Tsarist officer who was tortured by the communists, escaped and now works as a barber in Berlin. Thinking back on my own linguistic experience in the barber's chair a few hours earlier, I was struck by this passage:

"Ivanov was very good at his work, although he was somewhat handicapped by his poor knowledge of German. However, he soon figured out how to deal with the problem: tack a 'nicht' onto the first sentence, an interrogative 'was?' onto the next, then 'nicht' again, continuing to alternate in the same way."

Along with brilliant flashes of wit and wisdom, the story hums with the music of Nabokov's prose. Ivanov is standing at the barbershop doorway on a summer morning enjoying a cigarette:

"People flashed past, accompanied by their blue shadows, which broke over the edge of the sidewalk and glided fearlessly underneath the glittering wheels of cars that left ribbonlike imprints on the heat-softened asphalt, resembling the ornate latticework of snakes."

The fun/horror begins when the customer who presents himself for shaving is none other than the smooth monster who tortured Ivanov. "Razor" can be found in "Cloud, Castle, Lake", a short collection of Nabokov's short stories, which has been published to celebrate 70 years of Penguin Books. The commemorative site makes simple but effective use of Flash, by the way.