The JOKE Read Free Page A

different as ever. (I must say that it was our differences that endeared Kostka to me and made me enjoy our arguments; I used them as a touchstone of who I was and what I thought.) To leave me in no doubt about himself, he replied, "What you've just said sounds good. But tell me: How can a skeptic like you be so sure he knows how to tell a stage set from a wall? Haven't you ever doubted that the illusions you ridicule are really nothing but illusions? What if you're wrong? What if they were genuine values and you were a demolisher of values?" And then: "A value debased and an illusion unmasked have the same pitiful form; they resemble each other and there is nothing easier than to mistake one for the other."
    I walked with Kostka back through town to the hospital, playing with the keys in my pocket and feeling good to be with an old friend willing to argue me over to his truth anytime, anyplace, even here and now on our way across the bumpy ground of a new housing complex. Of course Kostka knew we had all the following evening to look forward to, so he allowed himself to turn from philosophizing to more mundane affairs, wanting to make sure I would wait for him until he came back at seven the next day (he didn't have another set of keys) and asking me whether there was really nothing else I needed. I put my hand up to my face and said, "Just a trip to the barber's," because it felt disagreeably stubbly. "Leave it to me," said Kostka. "I'll see that you get a special shave."
    I accepted Kostka's patronage and let him take me to a small barbershop with three large revolving chairs towering before three mirrors. Two of the chairs were occupied by men with heads bent back and faces covered with soap. Two women in white smocks were leaning over them. Kostka went up to one and whispered something in her ear; the woman wiped her razor on a cloth and called to the back of the shop; out came a girl in a white coat who took over the abandoned man, while the woman Kostka had talked to nodded to me and motioned me to the remaining chair. Kostka and I shook hands, and as he left I took my place in the chair, leaning back against the headrest, and since for many years now I had not liked to look at my own face, I avoided the mirror directly opposite me and raised my eyes, letting them wander over the blotchy white ceiling.
    I kept my eyes on the ceiling even after I felt the barber's fingers tucking the white cloth into my shirt collar. Then she stepped back, and all I could hear was the sound of the razor sliding up and down the leather strap. I settled into a kind of immobility of agreeable indifference. I felt her wet, slippery fingers smearing soap over my skin, and I mused on how strange and ridiculous it was to be caressed so tenderly by an unknown woman who meant nothing to me and to whom I meant nothing. The barber started to spread the soap with a brush, and it was as if I were no longer sitting there, as if I had sunk into the blotchy white expanse on which my eyes were fixed. Then I imagined (since the mind, even when at rest, never stops playing its games) that I was a defenseless victim entirely at the mercy of the woman who had sharpened the razor. And because my body had dissolved in space and all I could feel was the touch of her fingers on my face, I imagined that the gentle hands holding (turning, stroking) my head did so as if it were unattached to my body, as if it existed independently and the sharp razor waiting on the nearby table were there merely to consummate that beautiful independence.
    Then the touching stopped, and when I heard the barber step back and actually pick up the razor, I said to myself (since the mind had not stopped playing its games) that I had to see what she looked like, this keeper (uplifter) of my head, my tender assassin. I looked down from the ceiling into the mirror. I was astounded: the game I was playing had suddenly, uncannily taken a turn towards reality; the woman leaning over me in the