Zlatka

My head was hanging over the hair-washing basin, like a weighty pistil. With her soft, sensually slow circular movements Zlatka made her way through the wet mass all the way to the roots. Pleasure spread down my neck; I closed my eyes. Naturally, the tips of her fingers were seductively certain of their experience.

Later, she sat me in front of a large mirror. In it I caught sight of well-thought-through clips of scissors snipping at the split ends of my hair, and two creases incised into the corners of Zlatka’s mouth as she said: ‘I’ll get that mane of yours in order.’

I lived near the train station in a neighbourhood built many decades ago for the families of railroad workers and machinists. Like tombstones over grave mounds, hardened chimneys rose from parallel rows of elongated one-storey buildings. Decaying, hideous buildings made of concrete, separated by narrow tracks of municipal ground and an occasional wild chestnut, shivered before sudden passes of express trains from Budapest and Venice.