Standing astride my spread-out thighs, he wet my face with a porous sponge that still smelled faintly of the sea; with a slow, circular motion of two fingers he applied the shaving cream and with the soft shaving brush whipped it into a thick lather over my stubble; of course our bodies were very close; with his free hand he had to hold or support my head and put his palm on my temple or forehead now and again; I had to guess his wishes from his movements, follow them, help them along; his knee would occasionally touch mine, but he had to focus all his attention on my face, while I kept an eye on his every move; he held his breath a little and so did I, both of us trying not to breathe into each other's face, a mutual restraint that only intensified the scene unfolding between us, which was about to reach its climax when, having done with the preparations, he pulled the bone-handled razor from its case, ran the blade a few times over the strop, stepped between my legs this time, placed his index finger on my temples, pulling the skin nice and tight, ready for the blade, and then, for one moment, looked into my eyes.
With a single decisive stroke he drew the razor down the left side of my face, I could hear the fine crackle of my whiskers as they parted from the skin, chuckling inwardly at my own nervousness, because no matter how readily we may present our face to the razor and try to be very relaxed about it, fear for life makes the facial muscles tense and knotted, so we want to see that the razor hasn't gotten stuck somewhere and then slipped and cut the skin, our eyes almost pop from their sockets with curiosity, and at the same time we must continue to exude trust, since otherwise we might hinder the work and thus increase the danger, ourselves becoming the cause of a little accident as unpleasant for us as for the man with the razor, because if the skin is injured, suddenly raw hatred spills out from under the disguise of the intimate physical proximity and mutual attentiveness; he'd hate us for our annoyingly unpredictable skin, which makes a mockery of his skill and experience by having whiskers in swirling clumps, or simply hiding little lumps, not to mention peak-headed pimples, that get in the way of the razor; and we'd hate him for his clumsiness and, most of all, for having put ourselves thoughtlessly into his hands; and the mutual hatred only increases when, looking in the mirror and seeing blood trickling down, we both have to pretend it's nothing, and he begins to whistle in embarrassment and with a wild gesture wrapped in the guise of helpful routine picks up the styptic pencil and, causing more, stinging pain, even takes revenge on us; but so far nothing untoward happened; from the way he smeared the lather on his stretched-out finger and from there flung it into a little bowl, I could tell he was experienced; he turned my head and after stepping even closer, so that my nose almost brushed against his shirtfront, starched to an armorlike stiffness, and I could feel his slightly bent knee very close to my groin, he just as decisively shaved the right side of my face; but despite the barber's skill and experience, his almost surgeonlike precision, the skin remains tense and taut, we feel it quivering on our face, and the most sensitive areas are yet to come, the complex chin region, the neck, the throat, to say nothing of the fact that while he is jumping about brandishing the razor, the thought does occur to us: What if he should accidentally cut off our nose or ear, such horrors have been known to happen! but looking at him like this, from below, with upturned eyes, for all the attractive charm of his youth and strength I found his face somehow much too soft, and this exaggerated softness could be seen only from this angle; on his skin, under which you could sense a layer of white fat, the reddish fuzz had hardly begun to sprout; he'll never have to shave, I noted with satisfaction, he'll remain hairless like a eunuch, which you could also see in his large nostrils and capriciously curving mouth — he was biting his lower lip as he delicately worked away on my chin — in a few years' time he'll probably grow a second chin, I thought, his big frame will run to fat, he'll pant and wheeze under the burden of his huge mass, and as my throat anticipated the ticklishly sensuous pleasure of the razor's touch, when he'd stretch the skin away from my Adam's apple and run the blade, smoothly and dangerously, over it, I lifted my hand so he couldn't see, and waiting until he got there, not before, and even then making it appear as though I did it from fear, without moving a muscle in the rest of my body, I placed my hand on his firm thigh.
The smooth muscles under my hand were hard, incredibly powerful, my palm was at a loss on them, seemed weak and insignificant, as if I were touching him in vain, for not only did this reveal nothing of his inner nature, it didn't even let me touch the surface, as if this surface, which of course I could feel, were only a cover on the real surface, a protective armor hard to the point of insensibility; this is what I could have thought if I had thought of anything, for it was clear that just as I could not register any reaction in his eyes and mouth or other features of his face bending over me, now I could not do so in his flesh either, no embarrassment, no consent, no rejection; his skin, face, and muscles remained as neutral as all his movements had been; I was the one who wanted to make this cruel neutrality my own, I reacted to him, not he to me; he didn't feel me, seemed not to understand me or, more precisely, didn't think there was anything to feel or understand.
It always seems pointless to make sweeping statements, but still, I have to say that never in my life, not before or after this incident, have I made a more senseless gesture.
By making it, though, I felt I had reached the peak or the bottom of my strange inclinations.
I couldn't just pull back my hand, anyway the gesture couldn't be undone; at the same time I felt nothing, even though I left my hand there; still working on my neck, he was untouched, as if my move had been only a figment of my imagination, which of course couldn't possibly reach him.
I wouldn't have minded if he had slit my throat at that moment.
If with a barely audible crack the razor had cut through the delicate cartilage.
And I couldn't close my eyes, waiting still for a telltale sign.
To shake into the bowl the lather accumulated on his finger he had to turn aside, which was the only reason he moved his thigh away from my hand.
The orphaned hand, a strange stump still part of my body, was empty, left hanging in the air.
He dipped the sponge in the water and, supporting my head with his arm, washed off my face.
In the meantime I could finally close my eyes.
"This is a cursed place, sir!" I heard him say in my darkness.
By the time I opened my eyes he was again leaning aside to throw the sponge back into the bowl, and there was no telltale sign.
"Some eau de cologne?" he asked, without turning around.
His perfect poise, seeming neither offended nor reproachful, cheered me, for it was as though together we had relegated my failed overture to the world's great junk heap of futile experiments.
"Yes, why not."
At the same time it also occurred to me that his strange statement may have been a secret allusion to those frightful nocturnal noises, the cries and shrieks that woke me from my first sound sleep, with which, for all I knew, he may have had something to do.
In which case my gesture was not an insult and may not have been completely in vain.
Holding the back of my head with one hand, pressing his little finger to my neck and sinking the others into my hair, he used his other hand to splash alcohol on my face.
He fanned my face with a cloth to make the alcohol evaporate more quickly — at such moments we always feel especially refreshed — and for the first time in a long while we looked into each other's eyes.