Yuri came to Australia in 1971 from the Ukraine or the Soviet Union as it was known then. He said he spent 5 years studying English back in Kiev, as well as French and German. The only problem is they were all taught by a 70 year old woman who couldn’t speak anything except Russian. That was the great thing about the Soviet system. Everyone had equal opportunities, even mono lingual language teachers.
So Yuri came to Australia with only one sentence of English. “Cultural development will suffocate under Capitalism and can only flourish in the Soviet system”. It wasn’t going to get him a job on Australian TV, so he moved to St.Kilda which was essentially a Soviet exile suburb at the time. The only thing he knew how to do was cut hair, so he opened a small barber shop and charged $2.50 for a cut. He didn’t get to decide that himself, the Victorian barbers association did. Yuri thought that was a very Communist way of doing things but was happy to go along with it as he got to keep the money.
Yuri had really only seen barber’s shops in the old American movies that made it through the Soviet censorship system. So he decided to model his shop on something from a James Dean film. Red leather reclining seats, Formica tops and pictures of Marilyn Munroe and Rita Haywood adorn the wall. And like a James Dean crew top, he figured that if you find a look that works, why change it.
He charges $20 a cut now and $17 for a shave. I haven’t let another man shave me since 1992 when I walked into a Turkish barbers shop in Marmaris to ask for directions. I found myself pinned to a chair while the owner held a switch blade to my throat and murmured something that sounded like “damned Greeks”. But Sweeney Todd is being advertised everywhere here and for some perverse reason that give me the idea that I should let Yuri loose on my chops.
Getting somebody else to shave you is fantastically decadent in these days of Mach Plus and Sensor Excel shaving equipment. But that wasn’t how it seemed to me as Yuri swung me back in his high chair. He moved towards my exposed throat with a blade that looked like it had accounted for several Germans in the long winter of 1943.
It put me to thinking how often we place our faith in the hands of complete strangers. Take taxi drivers for example. I once got a taxi from Melbourne Airport to the City at 5am. During our 140kph ride along the freeway, the driver mentioned that he’d been working for 23 hours straight. This was just before he swerved across three lanes and at least provided some context for our flirtation with the central reservation. Cars are dangerous enough things but we happily let complete strangers drive us around. We do the same with bus drivers. I remember a trip around the mountain passes of Croatia where the Driver liked to dangle two wheels over the edge of the cliff as we rounded corners and stopped at a particularly treacherous spot to gleefully point out that this was where the previous week’s bus had gone over the edge.
But Yuri seemed like a perfectly nice chap, so I decided to lie back and let him at it. He insisted on talking the whole way through the process which perturbed me greatly. I thought that if I answered, my lips would move and risk being amputated by a passing blade. So it seemed better to save my counsel and I simply grunted in a high pitched voice for yes and in a low pitched voice for no.
Like most barbers, Yuri talked mostly about the weather. Melbourne had just experienced two 40c plus days and the City talked about nothing else all week. Shops sold out of fans, cinemas were booked out by desperate citizens in search of air-conditioning and blinds were drawn across the city by a population who shunned the sun. Yuri reckoned there was nothing new under the sun, which seemed strangely apt under the circumstances. It only happens a couple of times a year, so you just have to grin and bear it. He said it was a small price to pay for a decent summer. “A couple of 40 degree days and you get to walk around in shorts and t-shirts for six months of the year.”
Thursday night was the time everybody dreaded. The temperature was not meant to drop below 30c all night and people spent all day huddled under air-conditioning units in offices and shops and planned how to deal with it.
The beach was an obvious choice. Port Phillip Bay compares unfavourably to other Australian waterways, but despite the pun most Melbournians seemed to believe in any port in a storm. The esplanade in St Kilda was like a Mediterranean seaside village as multiple generations of families took a leisurely stroll under the moonlight. Every now and again they’d perch on a wall where granny would dream of similar nights on the Italian Riviera. The parents would sneak a bottle or two of VB while the kids weren’t looking and the kids themselves would revel in the novelty of swimming in the dark. There were so many people in the sea at 11pm that the sharks got the hump and headed for Antarctica for some peace and quiet.
On Friday afternoon, the “cool change” came through Melbourne. This is a weather phenomenon that Mr Brennan never mentioned when I did Leaving Certificate geography. Basically in the space of 15 minutes, the hot northerly wind changes to a southerly that comes hammering across the Bass Straits like a super hero sent to save the wilting citizens of the City. The temperature drops quicker than a stock market in a sub-prime credit squeeze. Melbournians are very much in touch with the weather. They can tell you the outside temperature and wind direction in the way Irish people would know whether it was raining or not. Yet none of them can explain the scientific basis of the “cool change”.
They just know that it is one of the most beautiful things in nature. And like all beauty it should just be enjoyed and never questioned.
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