The Happy Barber of Belgrano

I needed a haircut. It was a big, old barbershop with three large metal chairs facing the mirror along one wall, a long burgundy naugahide banquette along the other, and what looked like a cappuccino bar in the centre. A tall teen with luxuriant brown curls had just climbed into the chair and the rotund, old barber was about to get started.

I stopped at the chain barring the entrance. “Esta abierto?” I asked. Are you open? The barber grinned – four widely spaced yellow teeth showing on his lower jaw. “En cuanto termino con esta muchacho”, he said, removing the chain and indicating the banquette.

His strong, steady hands never stopped snapping the scissors as I watched the boy’s gorgeous curls tumble to the red and beige tiled floor. He was very familiar with the boy, teasing and cajoling, occasionally poking him as he turned a tousled teen into a handsome young man. He was steady, accurate; clearly a lifer.

“Es mi nieto” he proclaimed proudly as the young man stood and shook off the stray hairs with a grin. This is my grandson. So much for figuring out how this was going to cost me, I thought, as the boy loped out the door with a wave.

I climbed up onto the comfortably padded chair and tried to explain what I wanted. “No muy corto”, I stumbled. “La mitad,” I indicated half of its current length.

He picked up the electric clipper. “De Allemania” he bragged, German engineering. “Numero tres” I almost shouted, please use a ‘number three’. I was thinking of a Tango song we’d listened to in class this morning about a man whose lover had robbed of everything: “me pelaro con la cero” – shaved me with a zero, left me with nothing.

For the next 45 minutes, 79 year old Teodoro Iglesias (“Julio’s my cousin”) entertained himself by telling me about his happiness – cutting hair for 50 years in this neighbourhood, and seeing more of the world through his customers’ eyes than he ever would have on his own. He would pause after every third clip, and move out in front of me, gesticulating wildly with the 8” scissors only inches from my face. “Me entiende?” he would ask. Do you understand? And I’d grin and nod, even if I didn’t.

After a while, I began to suspect he wasn’t all there. He’d lose track of where he was, and spent an inordinate amount of time on my left side, closer to the window where the light was better. Occasionally he’s lean over, his mouth inches from my ear and raise his voice to a pain-inducing shout.

Then the straight razor came out.

He stared intently at me. With a toothless grin he unsheathed the blade from its ancient ivory sheath and held it an inch from my nose. “Unhunh?”, he asked. The two interlocking figures of Zwilling J.A. Henckels. “Bueno”, I said, trying to grin. My eyes closed in a wince as he paused, holding my ear. I heard rather than felt the scraping of the blade across my skin. After a few strokes, he held the blade up in front of me again. “Unhunh?”, he asked again. I wasn’t sure what he wanted approval for – little specs of black hair? No blood? “Bueno”, I said.

He stood staring at me, his smile draining away. Clearly I was missing something. I grinned widely, trying to get my eyes to participate. He chortled and returned to his scraping.

“Learning is a wonderful thing”, he said in Spanish, almost to himself. “I was trained by the Jesuits in Santiago de Compostela. You have to keep learning every day”. He clearly approved of my attempt to learn his language and didn’t mind that I wasn’t following everything he was saying. “Keep learning”, he repeated.

I left the shop, and strode down Avenida Federico Lacroze, happy with my latest accomplishment. A haircut! I wondered when the happy (and perhaps a little mad) barber would have his next paying customer.

I didn’t even mind the fact that I felt more of a breeze on one side of my head than on the other.

-30-