The Collected Stories

by Leonard Michaels

  “Layered?”

  “Yes. Small scissors. No electric clippers.”

  “Oh no, no machines. Only small scissors and comb. Comb O.K.? Ha, ha.”

  Nachman felt gooseflesh along his arms, and then a general surge of pleasure, like a mass of troops racing across a field, overwhelming their enemy, anxiety, vanquishing it. The battle of such emotions, thought Nachman, is what a man feels when he is about to get married. In short, approximately every two months, Nachman married Felicity Trang for about forty-five minutes.

  Caressed by the rush and swirl of warm water, head cradled in Felicity’s hands, the delicate perfume of shampoo, and then the massage with Felicity’s strong fingers, and then the sweet seriousness of her voice:

  “You like to part your hair on the right?”

  Nachman opened the door and entered the barbershop. Four Vietnamese women barbers were at work. Felicity was free, sitting at the cash register near the door. She smiled at Nachman and stood right up. He followed her to a chair, sat down, and abandoned himself to the ritual, becoming oblivious to everyone in the barbershop except Felicity and himself; and time was abolished for Nachman. He imagined their marriage, mediated by his hair, as heavenly, an eternal condition, though he knew, when Felicity fashioned the ultimate shape of his hair with a comb and a blow dryer, the marriage was over. He also knew he wouldn’t look good. She was a terrible barber.

  To know the consequences of an action is one thing. To eschew the action is another. Who would smoke cigarettes if this wasn’t true, let alone have casual sex — thought Nachman somewhat irrelevantly — Nachman who, despite his susceptibility to women, was a strict observer of limits. He didn’t fool around. For forty-five minutes every two months — you couldn’t call it fooling around — Nachman was in no danger of compromising himself. Better to burn was Nachman’s motto. A haircut was inconsequential, erotic, not sexual. Thus tumbled the thoughts of a serious being. By pleasure deranged, maybe, but no longer depressed.

  In Nachman’s life, Felicity was an anomaly — a silliness — depending on how you thought about it, but should Nachman think about it? Nachman thought too much about everything; even in the throes of his abandonment he couldn’t entirely stop thinking, lest he die or cease to exist or relinquish his grip on the real. Not to think would be like an astronaut separated from his rocketship, adrift in space with nowhere to go and no means of propulsion. Nachman had seen that condition often in a person’s eyes.

  When Nachman explained how he wanted his hair to look, Felicity had nodded and nodded to show that she listened carefully, and then she went to work and tried to do what Nachman wanted. Meticulous, diligent, infinitely concerned to do right and good. But Felicity had no art in her soul, no feeling for the shape of Nachman’s hair in relation to his face. The haircut “styled” by Felicity would look as if it had been inflicted, and it would bring to mind images of poor laboring men.

  So?

  It looked honest enough, and the point cannot be made too strongly that Nachman loved the feeling of Felicity’s hands soaping his hair, then massaging the skull behind his ears, and, with a subtle circular movement, his occipital bump. She knew how to touch a man. As for doing the actual haircut, it would have been wise to call in a different barber, or anybody passing in the street, but even so, when Felicity stepped back and tilted her head as she studied the progress of her work, Nachman saw that she considered herself a first-class barber and his heart went out — no, it rushed — to her. He would never say a word that might suggest reservations or criticism.

  Near the end, Felicity would say, “You like O.K.?”

  Nachman would say, “Perfect.” He would sound drowsy.

  Later, he always tipped generously and smiled, saying, “Thank you,” and walked giddily home, supposing that his head might now look appropriate on a pedestal in his garden, with a grin on his lips, expressing blissful indifference to the fluttering doves and jays, lighting and asquat, shitting on his haircut. But where else, for twenty-two dollars (four for the shampoo, thirteen for the haircut, and a five-dollar tip), could Nachman get such relief from low spirits and uncomplicated satisfaction? He’d have paid more.

  Regardless of Felicity’s butchery, then, Nachman could live with the result. A stupid-looking haircut didn’t make him miserable, and he soon forgot about how he looked, anyway. He had plenty else to think about, such as math problems, lectures, and politics at the Institute of Higher Mathematics, where Nachman worked in a bare office at a gray steel table with pencil and paper. The problems he dealt with were so difficult that Nachman sometimes cried. Nearly unbearable frustration attended his mathematical struggles until he suffered the piercing joy of an illumination. Sometimes he’d find himself sitting up in bed in the middle of the night, sweating and feverish, and he’d thrust out of bed and stumble to the table where he kept pencil and paper for such unpredictable moments, and he’d scrawl the solution to a problem, and then fall back into bed and was instantly asleep. In the morning, he’d find his scrawled solution. He’d then remember having awakened and, as if he were taking dictation from a nightmare, recording the solution. The look of the haircut was not important to Nachman.

  Felicity, a small woman about forty years old, had a complexion slightly ruined by acne, and a figure slightly ruined by childbearing. Color photographs of her three children were pasted to the mirror. Nachman always asked about them. Felicity told him they spoke Vietnamese as well as English. Lowering her voice to a whisper, as if she feared the evil ear, she said her children were excellent students, the two boys and the girl were first in their respective classes. She also talked about her husband, who refused to let her invite friends to dinner, or attend night school to study English, or drive the family car. She walked to shopping. Walking to work took over an hour. Without a car, in Los Angeles, it was impossible for her to visit people. The few women she knew at the church, to which she walked once a week, lived too far away. Felicity said, “I hope someday I have more friends.”

  Nachman wondered if Felicity hoped he would be her friend. Probably not, but the idea embarrassed him. He felt a touch of anxiety. The haircut was friendship enough. Felicity lived in a different world. She went to church, unimaginable for Nachman. They could probably never have much to say to each other. A few questions, a few answers. Felicity once asked what kind of work Nachman did. He told her he was a professor of mathematics. She once asked if he was married. He told her he was not married. Today she asked if he lived alone. He told her he lived alone. This was the furthest they had gone conversationally, and Nachman didn’t expect or want them to achieve a higher level of generalization, or deeper level of intimacy.

  “No girlfriend?” said Felicity, as if the idea took her breath away.

  “No.”

  Did she have someone in mind for him? Nachman continued to wonder what her gasp could mean, but at the moment, Felicity’s small scissors, working about his ears, pleased him to the point of stupefaction, and he enjoyed the ripping sensation as she pulled the comb through lengths of wet hair caught between her middle and index finger before she snipped and snip-snipped, and in the shallow depths of a semi-sleep, he liked the way she then released his hair with studious and insensitive attention to its layers, mutilating it. Nachman felt no annoyance or despair, only the musical nature of the occasion. In the sound and pull of the comb drawn through his hair came the rich tones of a cello pulling against the flight and flash of scissoring violins, and spinning high and away in thought, Nachman wished he had a ton of hair so this fine delirium could last longer than forty-five minutes. Hair, he thought, is basic to erotic connections between a man and a woman, usually the woman’s hair, and, and, and — what follows? Nachman didn’t know, but he pursued the thought — no — the thought pursued Nachman as he felt a pressure against his elbow which rested on the arm of the barber chair. Felicity leaned over it, her pelvis inadvertently brushing against the bone.

  Felicity was no more than five feet four, if tha
t tall. Her arms weren’t long. She had to lean with her whole torso as she moved about the chair. Her pelvis brushed against Nachman’s elbows, on either side of the chair. Merely inevitable given Felicity’s build, thought Nachman, but thinking about it, he wondered if there wasn’t a suggestion in her pelvis as she said, “My husband never talks to me. He comes home late. Tired. Never talks.”

  Nachman’s heartbeat could be detected pulsing in the cloth that lay across his chest, and he felt himself hardening. He assumed Felicity meant that she had something in common with him: Nachman had no girl and Felicity had no man to talk to.

  “Never talks?” said Nachman.

  “Not touched me for many months.”

  Nachman’s pleasure, which had been diffuse, suddenly concentrated. It became a feeling of urgency, as if Nachman was about to do something. He felt a rush of energy, a strong intention, a strong disposition to act. Nachman to the first power was becoming Nachman to the second, an entirely different creature, a stranger to himself, the agent of a potentiality. His hand jerked spasmodically and seized Felicity’s upper thigh, just below her crotch.

  Hardly breaking the rhythm of her work, she twisted her hip to the side, and Nachman’s hand fell away. She’d experienced this before, apparently, and knew how to deal with it. There was nothing to say. She didn’t even interrupt her work. Nachman sat in the chair, rigid, vibrant, pulsing, burning with the unconsummated violence that had taken his hand, and burning with shame. In the mirror he and Felicity were all that he could see. The other chairs and customers and women didn’t exist.

  Felicity said, “I could meet a friend sometimes, maybe.”

  “Yes.”

  “A man who would be gentle.”

  Her voice was so gentle that Nachman hardly felt the reproach. He almost imagined that she was hinting, encouraging him to entertain a romantic supposition.

  Soon the haircut was finished, and Felcity stood beside the chair as she had at the beginning, intently looking at Nachman’s head in the mirror.

  “O.K.? Not too short?” she said cheerily.

  Nachman said, “Perfect.”

  He followed her to the cash register, his hand in his pants pocket feeling for bills. He felt a stick of gum, too, and pulled it out, nervously unwrapping it, and started chewing the stick of gum as he counted two tens and a five. She had appealed for a friend, and Nachman groped her. Money might make things worse, but he dropped the bills on the counter beside the cash register, and as Felicity started to give him his change, he said, “No, keep it,” and he looked at her with the face of a man chewing gum — somewhat cool, somewhat moronic — but Nachman didn’t know how to look at her, or what to do or say. His eyes were silent beggars.

  Felicity said, “Oh, ha, ha. I like gum, too.”

  She understood what he felt. Nachman realized she was trying to connect; trying to make him feel all right. Instantly Nachman searched his pockets for another stick of gum. He found none. Felicity’s smile saddened and became an ironical little pout, and she opened her eyes wide and shook her head No, No, as if sympathizing with a child, and then said, “Ha, ha, ha,” a high and utterly artificial laugh, but with such goodwill that Nachman laughed, too, and they laughed together as Nachman said goodbye, leaving the barbershop with a sense that he’d been forgiven.

  Of Mystery There is No End

  TRAFFIC MIGHT MOVE AT ANY MOMENT. He might still get to the dentist on time, but Nachman was pessimistic and assumed he would miss his appointment. He imagined himself apologizing to Gudrun, the dentist’s assistant, a pale Norwegian woman in her forties with white-blond hair. Nachman could almost hear his ingratiating tone. He was begging Gudrun to forgive him, swearing it would never happen again, when he felt himself being watched. He looked to his left. From the car next to his, a young woman stared at him. She looked away immediately and pretended to chat on a cell phone, as though indifferent to Nachman, who now stared at her. He saw heavy makeup and chemical-red hair. She was smoking a cigarette and tapping the steering wheel with her thumb, keeping time to music on her car radio. Nachman imagined reaching into her car, snatching away her cell phone and cigarette, turning off her radio, and ordering her to sit still. She would soon be reduced to quivering lunacy. Drivers in Los Angeles shoot each other for no reason, let alone rude staring.

  Of course, Nachman would never shoot anybody. He pitied the woman who encumbered her head with a cell phone, cigarette, music, and unnatural colors. Compared to her, Nachman was a sublime being. He could sit for hours in silence, alone in his office, with only pencil and paper. Thinking. In fact, there was pencil and paper in the glove compartment. Nachman’s car could be his office. He would do math problems. Millions were stalled and rotting in their cars in Los Angeles, but Nachman had internal resources.

  He leaned toward the glove compartment, and just as he touched the release button, his eye was drawn by a flash of black hair. He looked. Adele Novgorad, the wife of Nachman’s best and oldest friend, Norbert Novgorad, was standing on the sidewalk. Nachman wanted to cry out her name, but hesitated. He was sure it was Adele, though she was turned away from him. Few people in Los Angeles had such wonderfully black hair or skin so white. She was talking to a man who had an unusually large and intimidating mustache, and they stood close together — too close — facing each other in front of a motel, about ten yards from Nachman’s car. Horns blared behind Nachman. He heard the horns, but they meant nothing. Adele and the man had begun kissing.

  Horns screamed, and at last they pierced Nachman’s trance. He looked away from Adele to the road, but for Nachman, still shocked by what he had seen, the avenue, the traffic, the buildings were all meaningless. He clutched the steering wheel. Fairfax Avenue was clear for a thousand yards straight ahead, but he didn’t step on the gas pedal. He looked back at Adele. She had stopped kissing the man, though she still clung to him; the man had now heard the horns and was looking over her shoulder at Nachman’s car. When the man’s eyes met his, Nachman stepped on the gas pedal and released the clutch. In the rearview mirror, he saw Adele separate from the man. He was pointing at Nachman’s car. Adele looked. Having seen too much, Nachman had been seen.

  Driving south down Fairfax Avenue, Nachman felt something like the thrill of departure, as when a boat leaves the shore, but the thrill was unpleasant. He seemed to be departing from himself, or everything familiar to himself. Through the blur of feeling, a voice spoke to him: “You must tell Norbert what you saw on Fairfax Avenue.” It was Nachman’s own voice, commanding and severe.

  He could drive to the community college where Norbert was a professor. And then what? Interrupt his lecture or a department meeting to tell him that he had seen Adele kissing someone? How ridiculous. Besides, if he told Norbert,Adele would hate him. She, too, was his friend. She had invited Nachman to dinner many times, and she always gave him a tight hug and a kiss when he arrived and again when he left, pressing her warm lips against his cheek. She cooked special dishes for Nachman. To please her, he cried out with pleasure at the first bite, and when she looked gratified, he took more delight in her expression than in the food. With her cooking and hugs and kisses, Adele made Nachman feel very important to her. He liked Adele enormously. The way she walked with her toes pointed out like Charlie Chaplin was adorable. He also got a kick out of her smile, which was usually accompanied by a frown, as if happiness were a pleasant form of melancholy. Nachman wanted sometimes to lean across the dinner table and kiss the lines in her brow. He suddenly heard himself speak again, in a cruel voice, as if he were a stranger to himself and had no regard for his feelings about Adele: “You must tell Norbert what you saw on Fairfax Avenue.”

  Nachman hammered the dashboard with his fist and shouted an obscenity. In the twenty-first century in Los Angeles, a great city of cars where no conceivable depravity wasn’t already boring to high school kids, Nachman, a grown man, found himself agonized by an ancient moral dilemma.

  Was it his duty to tell Norbert or to protect Adele?
Would it make any difference if he told Norbert? Yes, it would make a difference. Nachman would seem like a messenger worse than the message. The friendship would be ruined. Nachman forced himself to ask: did he want to hurt his friend Norbert? There was no reason to tell him unless he wanted to hurt him. People who told unbearable news to friends, as if it were their duty, then felt very good about themselves while their friends felt miserable — Nachman was not like those people. Besides, to feel good about oneself was important only to narcissists, not Nachman. Nachman loved his friend Norbert and would sooner cut off his own arm than hurt him just to feel good about himself. In the righteous fervor of his thinking, Nachman forgot his dental appointment.

  He drove to the ocean and turned toward Malibu. He barely noticed that he was driving well beyond his house. After a while, he saw a place to stop. He parked close to the beach and left his car. In his shoes, he trudged along the sand. The ocean was a sheet of glinting metallic brilliance. Gulls were dark blades soaring in the white glare of the afternoon sun. For the gulls, light was no different from air. For Nachman the difference between one thing and another was the most serious consideration in life. The gulls brought this home to him with terrible poignancy. He remembered his first lesson in mathematics, when he learned about differences.

  After his parents divorced, when Nachman was five, his mother’s aunt Natasha Lurie had moved in with Nachman and his mother. She was a small elderly woman from Saint Petersburg, Russia, and had been a well-known mathematician in her youth. She decided to teach Nachman mathematics, and began the lesson by asking him, in a soft tired voice, to write the word “mathematics.” Nachman wrote it phonetically, with an a in the middle. Natasha, who reminded him of clothes hanging on a line, susceptible to the least touch of the wind, took Nachman’s pencil out of his fingers. Pinching the pencil between her own skinny white fingers, she dragged the eraser back and forth on the paper, back and forth, until the a was obliterated. Then she drew a round and perfect e, pushing the pencil point into the fiber of the paper and pulling the shape of the letter, like a small worm, slowly into view. More than four decades later, trudging on the beach in Malibu, Nachman saw again the red rims of Aunt Natasha’s ancient eyes. She looked at Nachman to see if he understood. The lesson had little to do with spelling or mathematics. She taught him there is a right way. It applied to everything.