Fish On Friday

Joe Pallavicino is my barber and I am his customer. On Sunday mornings he loves to come to Solemn Mass and beholds me standing at the high altar, clad in the gorgeous vestments of a celebrant. I shine amid a blaze of lights. I am bowed at by respectful attendants in their flowing maniples and braided gowns. I am showered with incense by graceful altarboys. I raise my hands majestically and speak aloud the beautiful phrases of the Latin prayers. I burst into song and am answered from the distance by a triumphant organ and a full-throated choir. I walk to and fro in an aura of mystery, surrounded by golds and marbles, linens and flowers. I gesticulate to the accompaniment of chimes. One thousand pairs of eyes approve and interpret my every movement. I raise this multitude to its feet when I go to read the Gospel. I drop it on its knees with the pæeans of the Sanctus. I send it into a hush at the sacred moments of the Consecration. I am the protagonist in the greatest drama that happens under the stars. I am Joe Pallavicino’s hero of heroes. He has never met anyone in the world so wonderful as me.

On Monday morning it is quite different. I walk into Pallavicino’s barbershop with all my glory gone from me. I am the most nondescript-looking person imaginable. I am dressed in somber black. I wear an unkempt hat, unpolished shoes, and shiny trousers. I shed my coat and collar and sit down like any other mortal and am meekly wrapped in a barber’s sheet. I possess, strange to say, a very ordinary head of hair, which Joe Pallavicino can actually take hold of and clip with a scissors and rake with a comb.

But Joe Pallavicino refuses to forget me as he saw me on Sunday. My image in its moment of grandeur has been burned into his memory. And it will not vanish on Monday when I sit down to be sheared, and am ignominiously exposed in my shirtsleeves and suspenders. He still treats me with the greatest reverence, tempered with a deliberate nonchalance that is calculated to cover up any embarrassment I might suffer from being touched and handled. He is most particularly anxious to protect me from the worldly chatter of customers in neighboring chairs. Whenever any coarse voice is heard in which he detects the possibilities of a profanity or an indelicacy, he clicks loudly with his scissors, grunts with his diaphragm, and shuffles with his feet.

Soapy Face in the next chair has a coarse voice, and Joe Pallavicino is afraid of it. Soapy Face has come in after I have been draped and disguised as an ordinary customer, and is unaware of the distinguished personage in whose presence he is being shaved. Joe Pallavicino makes a SNIP, SNIP, SNIP with his fingers in an effort to attract Soapy Face’s attention. Soapy Face pays no attention, but launches into a monologue about prizefights, midnight cabarets, and nigger pool. SNIP, SNIP, SNIP goes Joe Pallavicino again, determined to catch Soapy Face’s eye and give him an admonition. This ruse is fatal. Soapy Face finally turns his head, stiffens his half-lathered jaw and mutters with great annoyance, “What the Hell is the matter with you?”

Joe Pallavicino wilts. He is disgraced. His face blazes with anger as if at a sacrilege, and then melts into an expression of supreme supplication. The whole performance is, of course, clearly visible to me in the mirror. Joe Pallavicino indicates me to Soapy Face with frantic pointings of his finger. “A priest! A priest!” he whispers with exaggerated and inaudible lip-movements. And then as a final gesture of despair, drops his instruments, and makes on his forehead and breast a violent Sign of the Cross.

Soapy Face replies with a gesture of bewilderment, sulks a little, stretches his legs, closes his eyes, and subsides in the fumes from a hot towel.

I became Joe Pallavicino’s hero by being his priest. But I became his intimate friend by becoming his disciple. If you want a man to like you a lot, ask him questions. Make him an authority. Let him tell you something you never knew before. Giving information is the most rapturous of all social pleasures.

There are plenty of things Joe Pallavicino knows that I do not know. So each time I appear in his shop, I ask him questions about matters in which he is expert and I am not. I ask him about barber-chairs, for instance, those mysterious contrivances which can twist a customer into any shape, and deliver him to the operator, perched at any angle. I ask him about the tastes and temperaments of his patrons. He takes the greatest delight in instructing me, in supplementing my conjectures, and in correcting my ignorances.

But the charm of his conversation is enhanced by the occurrence in it, every now and then, of certain little curio-locutions, the formula of which I have never been able to discover. I have attempted several times for my own amusement to reproduce slips-of-the-tongue like Joe Pallavicino, but none which I have devised are as good as the “originals.” Here are some examples:

“Joe, do you ever use any of that hair tonic on your own hair?”

“No, Father, I don’t. I don’t use anything on my own hair except cold water. Except once in a while I might use some hair tonic. Once in a while I might. But not very often. If I go to a party I might. Or if I go to a show I might. Or if I go to a dance I might. Or, for instance, if I go to a wedding I might.”

I think the delayed use of “for instance” is rather delightful.

“Are your parents living, Joe?”

“Yes, Father. My parents are both living, thank God. They’re both living. They live with me. I support them. You see, they’re old, so I take care of them. And I try to be as nice to them as I can. I think a fellow ought to be nice to his parents, don’t you, Father? So I try to be nice to my parents. I think when a fellow grows up, if he isn’t nice to his parents, he’s no good. I think he’s a piker, in other words.”

“In other words” is precious, is it not?

“Do any ladies come into this shop, Joe?”

“Very few, Father. Very few. Once in a while a lady comes in to get her hair cut, but not very often. This is a man’s barbershop. As a matter of fact I don’t like to work on ladies. I don’t like to cut their hair. I don’t think it ought to be cut. I think a lady ought to let her hair grow long. I think it’s more beautiful that way, much more beautiful. Of course, it’s none of my business, as I said before, but that’s the way I look at it.”

“As I said before” is altogether too charming.

Across the street from Joe’s barber shop is a row of fruit stalls. These fruit vendors are his steady clients.

“Joe,” I said, “do those fruit merchants earn a good living? Do they make much money?”

“No, Father. They don’t make much money. They have to work pretty hard, you know. And they really don’t make very much money. They have to sell a lot of fruit to make any profit. And they don’t make very much. If they sell a whole crate of oranges they only make about a half a dollar. And it takes them a long time to sell a whole crate of oranges. And besides they always find some bad oranges in the crate that they can’t sell. Sometimes in a crate of oranges they find as many as five or six bad ones. And sometimes,” he put down his instruments and continued with emphasis, “and sometimes as many as seven or eight!”

I thought he was going to say: “And sometimes as many as twentyor thirty!” Didn’t you?