Rostov shaves off his beard

Rostov’s decision to have himself clean-shaven begins not as a planned change of appearance but as the aftermath of a humiliating interruption at the barbershop. When a waiting customer cuts one wing of his moustache and threatens him, Rostov is forced to reconsider not only who had the right to the chair but how confidently he could judge the people around him. His request for a clean shave turns an attack into a moment of self-scrutiny: the mirror, long associated in his mind with vanity and self-deception, becomes an instrument for recognizing who he has become.

The Appointment and the Dispute

At the barbershop, Rostov asks what is on the day’s docket and is told that he is there for a trim. Yaroslav Yaroslavl begins clipping, while a heavyset customer waits on the bench. The customer’s face grows rosier, the color spreading to his ears, as he watches Yaroslav’s back. He says that he was next. Yaroslav, absorbed in his craft, continues working, and the customer has to repeat the claim more emphatically.

Rostov recognizes the man’s objection as a challenge to the order of the appointment. The customer reminds him that he had also said he was next when Rostov arrived. Yaroslav pauses, startled by the hostility, but Rostov intervenes before the barber can be made to explain the situation on his behalf. He says that Yaroslav meant no offense and explains that he has a standing appointment at twelve o’clock on Tuesdays. What Rostov offers as an explanation, however, does not settle the dispute: the customer repeats the phrase about the standing appointment and turns his glare on him.

The confrontation makes the appointment’s social meaning suddenly visible. Rostov has treated his regular place in the schedule as an established convenience; to the waiting man, it is an unjust claim to priority. The dispute is not resolved by explaining the custom, because the customer’s point is that he arrived first and has been waiting in good faith.

The Assault and Rostov’s Reassessment

The customer rises so abruptly that he knocks the bench against the wall. He is no more than five foot six, but his fists protrude from his jacket cuffs, red like his ears. When he advances, Yaroslav backs against the counter. The man takes a pair of scissors from the barber, turns with surprising deftness, grabs Rostov by the collar, and cuts the right wing of his moustache with a single snip. He pulls Rostov forward until they are nearly nose to nose and warns, “You’ll have your appointment soon enough.” Then he shoves Rostov back into the chair, drops the scissors on the floor, and strolls out.

Yaroslav is aghast. He says that he has never seen the man and does not even know whether he lives in the hotel, but assures Rostov that the customer will not be welcome again. Rostov initially shares the indignation and is inclined to approve a punishment fitting the offense. Yet he checks that response with a question of knowledge: what does he actually know about his assailant?

The answer is very little. On first seeing the man’s rumpled jacket, Rostov had instantly classified him as a hardworking sort who had happened upon the shop and decided to treat himself to a haircut. Now he imagines another possible history: the man might be one of the new residents on the second floor, someone who came of age in an ironworks, joined a union in 1912, led a strike in 1916, commanded a Red battalion in 1918, and eventually found himself in charge of an entire industry. This is not presented as the customer’s confirmed biography. It is Rostov’s recognition that the appearance on which he based his first judgment cannot tell him who the man is or what place he occupies in the transformed society around him.

Ceding the Chair

Rostov tells Yaroslav that the customer was perfectly right: he had been waiting in good faith, while Yaroslav had merely wished to honor Rostov’s appointment. It was Rostov’s responsibility to give up the chair and suggest that the barber attend to the other man first. The admission distinguishes explanation from entitlement. A regular appointment may explain why Yaroslav started with Rostov, but it does not erase the waiting customer’s prior claim.

The response also marks a change in what Rostov considers appropriate conduct. He had been raised never to interrupt a conversation, but he had set that rule aside to keep Yaroslav from having to defend him. After the assault, he could have made the injury the entire issue and endorsed the barber’s promise of exclusion. Instead, he separates the customer’s manner from the fairness of his complaint. The violence remains an offense; it does not make the customer wrong about who should have been served first.

The Mirror and the Clean Shave

Turning to the mirror, Rostov surveys himself, perhaps for the first time in years. Until this point he has distrusted mirrors as instruments of self-deceit rather than self-discovery. He recalls how a young beauty might turn thirty degrees to see herself to her best advantage, as if the world would see her only from that angle. He also thinks of a grande dame whose unfashionable hat appears current because her mirror is framed in the style of the same bygone era. In both examples, the reflection confirms an image by narrowing what can be seen.

Rostov has taken pride in his well-tailored jacket, but greater pride in the belief that a gentleman is announced by his bearing, remarks, and manners, not by the cut of his coat. The encounter unsettles the confidence of that self-description: in the chair he has occupied, he has relied on a standing privilege without considering the man already waiting. His thought that the world does spin expands the scene beyond the barbershop. The earth turns on its axis and around the sun; the galaxy turns as well, a wheel within a greater wheel. Against these cycles, the celestial chime differs from the tiny hammer of a clock. Perhaps, when it sounds, a mirror can show someone not the person he imagines himself to be but the person he has become.

Rostov resumes his place in the chair and asks Yaroslav for “A clean shave,” repeating the request as “A clean shave, my friend.” The decisive action in the scene is therefore both physical and interpretive: after the right wing of his moustache has been cut off by force, he chooses to proceed with a clean shave. The account ends with that request, placing the change of appearance alongside his acceptance of the customer’s rightful place and his newly unsettled examination of himself.