ME: Oli, have you ever noticed how small pigeon heads are? Do you think they have any brains?

OLI: Naw, they got wings. Why should they need a brain?

ME: You mean it’s better to have wings than brains?

OLI: I think it would be best to have wings on your brain.
…

Winter continues in the neighborhood.

In the evenings the stars twinkle their sea-green eyes.

Frost cuts the air with a sparkling knife.

Darkness beautifully pure and black.

Frosty crystals in the colors of the rainbow and the streets are laid out like a sparkling tapestry which black tires tear to pieces.

The only thing missing is the princess in a snow-white gown dancing lightly down the street, elfin palaces rising and bean stocks stretching out livingroom windows towards an understanding of mysteries.

The northern lights waves transparent green curves which some say are the scarves of departed housewives, though others say they are angels on electric sleds.

Winter.

During the day the light blue sky spreads as far as eye can see, almost like the giant windows in the barbershop.

It stretches over everything.

A curtain of clouds is a drawn back and the earth lies like a wrinkled carpet on the ground.
…

There’s not much business in most of the city’s barbershops. Things are very slow this time of year. People have barely recovered from their Christmas haircuts. Barber chairs stand empty and alone and spin idly in circles.

The barbers yawn and the mirrors soak up the time that flows in sad loneliness out of the ceiling lights. Electric razors hang by their tails and women’s magazines grow old on the tables.

Anton Sigfinnsson the neighborhood barber is bored to death; bored by the idleness. Sometimes he feels like he’s sitting in his barber chair in the wasteland; the yellow-brown carpet like desert sands under his feet. It’s only the wind which visits when the front door opens.

Time refuses to pass in the empty barber chairs and Anton can’t very well pace the floor clipping the thin air with his scissors.

No, he might just as well go out and stand on his hands or head abroad with his shadow trailing behind. To make a long story short: Anton the barber doesn’t feel like just doing nothing any more.
…

 

It isn’t long before one of those cold blue winter days that the cellar doors under the barbershop open and Anton the barber walks up the cement steps.

Darkness crawls over the city but his face is a little snow-white circle, because he’s wearing a dark gray parka and rain pants over his barber’s smock and terelyne trousers.

No, Anton the barber is certainly not empty-handed.

His arms are full of used lumber, and a saw dangles from his thumb.

And that’s not all.

He goes back into the barbershop and comes out with a roll of tar paper and enough chicken wire to roll all the way downtown and back.

He pulls a clawhammer out of his coat pocket and yellow work gloves hop onto his hands.
…

In the frost-laden afternoon stillness, hammerblows begin to echo so strongly that people in surrounding houses hear not only hammering like when they’re hung over, but think that someone must be knocking at the door.

What’s all this racket?

People imagine dwarves out of the folktales, invisible carpenters surveying the land, or even that boxing has been legalized again when they discover that it’s only Anton the barber building something in front of the barbershop window, all alone in the winter cold.

Yellow work gloves rise and fall.

He isn’t planning on expanding the barbershop, is he?

And all that tar paper.

And all that chicken wire.

People see how Anton floats about his construction in a trance with his hands like wings as curiosity spreads from house to house in the form of old gossips.
…

When people asked:

What in the world is it supposed to be?

A smile crawled across the barber’s lips.

Anton was silent.

He just smiled and said nothing.

He kept on building. He built and built. For six whole days he built it. No, no one knew what he was building until six days had passed and there stood a noble pigeon coop fully created on the wrinkled carpet of the earth.

Anton proudly examines his creation through the barbershop window. A smile crawls across his lips and the mirrors soak in the illumined barbershop.

With his pigeon coop Anton the barber has defeated idleness, defeated the death which lay over the barbershop, and broken away from the mirrored loneliness.
…

In six days god created the world when he became bored with the idleness in the universe.

In six days Anton Sigfinnsson created a pigeon coop because of the lack of business in the city’s barbershops.

I, Johann Petursson, who sit here at Tryggvi’s ancient desk in my striped pajamas with two black and blue rings around my eyes – which have actually turned yellow now – with my kneecaps wrapped in white bandages, write this in a lined notebook; I can’t help but think that the blue skies above are really giant barbershop windows and God himself a barber inside who one day a long time ago walked around heaven in his barber smock bores to death with nothing to do.
I only wonder why the world is not shaped like a pigeon coop and why mankind does not have wings.

 

ME: Oli, have you ever noticed how small pigeon heads are? Do you think they have any brains?
OLI: Naw, they got wings. Why should they need a brain?
ME: You mean it’s better to have wings than brains?
OLI: I think it would be best to have wings on your brain.
…

The vague hammer blows now have purpose as the reality of the eighth wonder of the world spreads across the neighborhood.

Yes, all day long hundreds of hammers are in the air and blows echo off the houses.

No, Anton the barber doesn’t need to clip the thin air with his scissors now. He has lots to do. Everyone wants a haircut. Some several times a day.

The barbershop hasn’t been this successful since the golden age of the bouffant.

You walk into the barbershop and hop into one of the red barber chairs. Anton circles you a couple of time, smiles and laughs. He flutters the pages of some bird magazines as he starts clipping, and sets your mind on pigeons.

He’s so eager in his barber’s smock with his scissors in hand that before you know it, you’re flying the friendly skies with the pigeons. Yes, your mind soars over the rainspouts, past chimneys as you classify the pigeons with your eyes.

There are carrier pigeons who carried letters between lovers in the Middle Ages and went on countless journeys for the Pope carrying sealed papers in Latin; carrier pigeons whom the post office has sent into retirement.

There are snowy-white doves with furry feet. They say you’ll be rich if you touch their feet lightly with your fingertips.

There are the Rock doves, which are the most common pigeons. Anton says that in pigeon society, they’re like the coat-check girls and girls who work in bread stores.
There are Charlottes with brown spots, Helmets with a tuft on their necks, Saxon Priests with coal-black wings and round collars, Tumblers and Fantails.

Then there are the Mondains, the best of the best, the snob-hill pigeons which Anton the barber says are worth their weight in gold. Anton goes on confusingly with all his knowledge and was later to create a price list based on his categories.

Most boys in the neighborhood went for haircuts twice so they could examine the pigeon coop and hear about the pigeons. Anton the barber’s cash box was so filled with money that he had no choice but buy a large cash register which opened with a ding. He replaced all his scissors at once and even changed his mirrors.

When Anton the barber cuts your hair, he gives you constructions on coop construction. He even sells tar paper and chicken wire on the side for a reasonable price. He also trades pigeons and buys and sells for cash.

No, Anton the barber shouldn’t very well run around the neighborhood in his sky-blue smock with an apple crate and chicken feed hunting pigeons.

A grown man!

He would be locked up in the yellow mental asylum and a new barber would come and take over the shop.
…

 

ME: Oli, have you ever noticed how small pigeon heads are? Do you think they have any brains?
OLI: Naw, they got wings. Why should they need a brain?
ME: You mean it’s better to have wings than brains?
OLI: I think it would be best to have wings on your brain.

English translation: Ramon Baker