Stubbornness is a terrible flaw. Stubborn people have it tough in life, and find it harder to die than others do. But stubbornness alone won’t kill you. There has to be a cause. Dad said there used to be a barber in Lwów who insisted he’d die in March. He’d told everybody as he cut their hair how his stomach hurt, he had a burning sensation in there, he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t even really drink. He was growing horribly thin but since he was stubborn, even though his poor health sapped his strength, he insisted on still cutting hair, though only until March, because in March he had to die. He’d be clipping hair, then suddenly tell a customer this was his last haircut because here it was, February, and he was going to die in March. Dad got a trim at his shop once too, in February, but there were two other guys sitting there waiting. And the barber said to my dad he was sure this was maybe the fifth time in his life cutting my father’s hair – he knew because he had a good memory for faces, and even more so for hair – but that dad shouldn’t come to him anymore, because he had to die in March. He started chatting to him about his stomach, the heartburn and about how his own father had had the same thing, and told him when he was a boy that he’d die in March, and then he did. It was a beautiful March, warm as May, a shame to die, but there was nothing for it… They’d set the date in advance – he had a good connection to the world beyond and had a dutiful nature, so since he’d made his appointment with God for March, there was no getting out of it. He kept his word. He died in March, but before he did, he bought his son – who would later become a barber and many years later also insisted he’d die in March – a beautiful bicycle. A red one. As the barber was cutting my dad’s hair he tried to sell him that bike, but dad didn’t want it, because there was nothing worse than buying something from people who knew their own date of death in advance.

(…)

In May dad went to Lwów to sort some things out. In actual fact it was to do with the barber. He absolutely had to see if the man’s stubbornness had taken its toll. He dropped in at the shop. A different barber was cutting the customers’ hair. So dad asked what had happened to the first guy. The barber said the previous owner had died in March. Was it his stomach? asked my father. Not at all, the barber replied – to dad’s total surprise. After all, he’d been talking about his stomach, saying that was why he’d be passing away in March! That was when dad learned all the awful details. At the start of March, in the restaurant across from the barber shop, three gentlemen sat down to an elegant lunch. They had soup, a main course, dessert, and then waited for coffee. As they were waiting, one of them took out a revolver and shot first one, then the other of his lunchmates in the middle of their foreheads. They dropped dead on the spot. The murderer arose from the table and, to the waiters’ horror, went straight up to them, but instead of killing them too, he asked for the check. They gave it to him quickly. He paid. As he left the restaurant, instead of fleeing the police, he walked into the barber shop. The former owner had no customers, so he sat the man right down in the chair. The customer ordered a shave. The weakened barber felt poorly – after all his stomach was still troubling him – and his hand wasn’t what it used to be. He nicked the customer. Then the man stood up and put a third bullet from the revolver in the barber’s forehead. The barber dropped dead like the other two in the restaurant. The shooter sat back down in the chair and calmly waited for the police. Moved by the story, my father brought it back with him from Lwów. But, despite the crime that took place in the restaurant across from the barber shop, I still had the urge to take my parents and siblings out for a fancy meal sometime. So maybe that barber never got to savour an infusion of elderflower… If he had, he surely wouldn’t have been so stubborn, because it was stubbornness that brought unhappiness down on his head. And actually in March.

Excerpt translated by Sean Gasper Bye