April in Paris Read Online Free

go.
    The suspicious Joffo came after me. “You’re in the neighborhood only now and then, and you get your hair cut here?”
    I tried to guess the connection as I opened the door. “Why not? He’s an excellent barber.” I smiled and stepped outside.
    Joffo held on to the door so the bell wouldn’t ring twice.
    “Good evening, monsieur,” I said over my shoulder. I felt his eyes on me as I walked away. The key was turning in the lock. I started on my way back through the narrow street.
    “How much for the pendulum clock?” I asked the junk dealer.
    He named half the price from the last time.
    I stepped out onto the boulevard.

4

    Iwas hot. My jacket was slung over my shoulder, and I had my hat pushed back on my head. For the past hour, I’d been looking for a salon de coiffure. Children were climbing noisily over garbage cans in rue Jacob. I came to a stop. There was no sign over the entrance and only a little light inside. As I looked more closely, however, I could see two bottom-heavy chairs, some bottles on a shelf, and in front of the shelf a man of average height with a pair of scissors in his hand. On the right, customers sat waiting. I walked on. After a few steps, I turned back. I entered the shop and looked around; no sign of the cat girl.
    “You won’t have long to wait, monsieur.” The boss was hardly older than I was. He was wearing a close-fitting jacket that buttoned up the side. “There’s just this gentleman ahead of you.”
    24 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R
    Two customers were on their feet, paying, and blocking my view of a third. The two left the shop.
    I saw the leather belt, the black cap on a knee, the silver death’s head. An SS major. His boot heels clicked together when he stood up. The barber gestured to his chair, inviting the officer to sit down. Just as I was about to slip out, he looked at me. I dropped onto a seat next to an old man with a newspaper.
    “Would monsieur like a nice short haircut?” the barber asked, throwing a towel across the major’s shoulders as soon as he settled into the chair.
    The officer looked at himself in the mirror without interest.
    He understood nothing and pointed to the side where he wanted the part. The barber sprayed water on the back of his neck.
    My eyes fell on the holster. The metal plate was shiny, as though it were a toy pistol. Passersby outside stopped to watch as the barber drew his comb through the SS officer’s hair.
    The scissors clicked. The barber’s fingers moved rapidly up and down the back of the officer’s head. Smooth, supple hands, browned by the sun. I crossed my arms.
    During the interrogation, the boy’s fingers had stuck out from his hands like spokes from a broken wheel, motionless, stiff—as though they no longer belonged to him. He didn’t cry out while they were dislocating his fingers; it was only later that he wept. I forced myself to think about other hands. The hands of the man fishing on the Pont Royal: one laid flat on the parapet, the other clutching the rod with great tenderness. Only the fingertips had pulled at the line, furtively, as if the fisherman himself were not supposed to notice this manipulation. The SS officer had big A P R I L I N PA R I S . 25
    freckled hands. They lay calmly in his lap. Clip-clip, over the nape of his neck and the back of his head.
    The door opened. A mother was dragging her son to get a haircut. She saw the officer and stopped short.
    “Oh, oh,” she said. “In that case, I’ll look in later.” Then she disappeared, pulling her baffled son behind her.
    Against the barber’s will, the major turned his head and observed the children playing noisily outside the door. “Yours?” he wanted to know.
    “No, monsieur.” The barber carefully turned the officer’s head back to the proper position.
    “Whose are they?” the major asked in awkward French.
    “They’re my brothers,” said a woman’s voice.
    Holding a broom in one hand, she stepped through a beaded