MANIACALIS MANIACALIS

A still from the 1986 film

Siekierezada, albo Zima Leśnych Ludzi (The Axiad, or The Winter of the Forest Folk) was a 1971 book by the Polish poet, Edward Stachura, about a sensitive and cultured man who is unable to live the life of the "normals" and becomes a vagrant (or rather, a refugee from the normal). The book, describing a brief period in his life when he worked as an itinerant lumberjack, quickly reached cult status and remains wildly popular (an unheard of 4.06/5 on Goodreads among the famously stingy Polish readers), largely because of the writing style and personality of the author. The book's style is that of poetic prose with occasional flashes of literary genius, such as this fragment about barber shops and the magical bird, maniacalis-maniacalis.

I felt all of the above, and so much more that I couldn't even put it into words because it was the morning of a new day, and I was walking on the cobblestones of Głogów in search of a barber to get a shave, as I had already grown a beard, even though I had just shaved the day before yesterday. What was good in the old days when I was younger was that I didn’t have to shave as often as I do now, which is every other day, and it wouldn’t hurt to shave every day. Back then, a man would shave once a week, the day he went to the bathhouse, either after the bath or before it, but I preferred after, so the skin wouldn’t hurt as much, and I’d have peace for the whole week from scraping my face. Then, as time went on, as the years went on, it became twice a week, and now, with the passage of time, it’s three times a week. Every other day. And, really, it wouldn’t hurt to do it every day. So in that regard, as they say, times were better back then.

But on the other hand, no harm comes without some good, right? Right! Right! It’s thanks to this frequent shaving that I got to know barbershops across the country quite well, and that strange tribe called barbers. I’ve heard plenty of true, half-true, and completely fantastical, thoroughly embellished stories, tales, vignettes, anecdotes, and so on, so much that I could spend the rest of my life sitting, as one barber said about himself, in front of a bare white wall telling stories. But as for me and for now, I’d rather keep walking than sit still. I’d rather move than stay. Here, there, to the left, straight ahead, and when my beard grows, I go to a barber in that particular town.

One barber, by the way, not so long ago, shaved me in the infamous town of Olkusz, and then convinced me to get a facial massage with a pre-war electric Darsanwal device that sparked when it touched the skin. It zapped and pricked my neck and cheeks with those sparks, and he told me about his adventures on all the fronts across Europe during World War II. If I were to believe him, it’s a miracle from God and a bubble of luck that he made it out alive and was standing next to me whole and healthy. He often mixed things up in this “Iliad” of his, confusing cities, city-states, countries, misplacing battle dates, mangling generals’ names, inventing new ones that never existed, taking me for a complete sucker and the last fool in the domains of geography and history. It’s true, though, as I recall, that I was quite run-down at the time and looked somewhat dazed. That’s probably why, that’s definitely why he had a field day with me. Oh, the audacity! But he had a great gift of gab, you have to admit. He was probably the biggest smooth-talker in the entire Kraków-Częstochowa Upland.

So I’ve heard, oh, how much I’ve heard of both amazing and unbelievable barber tales. Here, among other things, are the benefits of manhood, when the rapidly regrowing facial hair pushes you to frequent barbershops. From all those barbershop visits, I forgot, I let et slip from memory, the one thing that I used to have back in the days when I rarely visited the barber, once a week and sometimes even less often.

A very stupid thing.

Once, heading to a barbershop for a shave, I had this wild fear that I’d run into a barber who would slice my throat. A normal barber, who suddenly got this idea stuck in his head and couldn’t shake it off, it latched onto his brain, the barber fought, wrestled with this cursed thought, but couldn’t help it, it completely possessed him, it fell on his brain, on his head, this seed; he once walked down the street of his town, the day was gray, unremarkable, but over the city flew this enraged bird with the Latin name maniacalis–maniacalis and unpredictable flight paths, the one that has this mania of opening its beak wide from time to time, spitting out, vomiting a furious seed from its overfilled enraged crop, and that seed fell on the head of an innocent barber walking down the street, it fell on his brain, on that fertile soil, and on the barber’s head grew this enraged plant, from the same family as the bird, maniacalis–maniacalis, fauna and flora wildly flourishing, its shoots spread out radially, entwined, completely and tightly possessing the barber’s head, and one day, when that day comes, the day of blooming, a red, blood-colored flower will bloom on the barber’s head. Right after it blooms, immediately after, when the barber, no longer living his own life but the life of the plant, drags the blade of the razor perpendicularly across the client’s neck. First, a flower spurting from the client’s neck, and immediately after, on the barber’s head, a flower of the same color and shade. The first flower from my neck. Because it just happens to be me sitting in the chair. On the throne in blood. It’s me who just arrived in that very town and walked into that very barber, and today is the day: the day of blooming. The barber, with an imperial stroke, cuts the bud of my throat, and the red flower blooms, spurts upward. Blood floods the barber’s head, bowed down next to me.

I once thought carefully about that whole matter. Among the thousands of barbers scattered across our beautiful land, couldn’t at least one of them have had such an idee fixe—as the French say—take root and blossom in their mind? They could. And this thought filled my heart with fear. Then, that fear passed, fell away, left me. I simply forgot about it. Only now did I remember it, just as I’m looking for a barber to shave me. It came back to me at the most inconvenient time, one might say. But no. I stopped worrying about it, ceased, abandoned thinking about the myriad possibilities of my sudden and unexpected death. I rid myself of those speculations. It’s barren land. Fifth or sixth-class soil. It’s pure sand where nothing grows, or almost nothing. This kind of thinking is like the Błędowska Desert. This line of reasoning leads nowhere. To nothing good.