by John Irving
'Hugel's got blood on his mind this morning,' I said to Herr Ruhr. Then I paid Hugel for a shave.
'Shave and a haircut!' cried the flustered little Furtwangler.
But I turned to Herr Ruhr and said, 'Would you call this a haircut?' And again I slicked my hand over my dome. 'I only asked for a shave.'
Herr Ruhr looked at his watch and said, 'I don't know where the time's gone to this morning. I'll just have to skip it, this morning, Hugel.'
But Hugel waved his razor and made an awkward attempt to block Herr Ruhr at the door. Herr Ruhr dodged quickly into the street, and I followed him out, leaving Hugel Furtwangler bespattered with shaving cream and waving his razor after us.
In somewhat the same condition, I thought, that poor Hugel will be in when he sees the stiff-bristled aardvark come lumbering across the Platz for a shampoo.
Then I snuck up on the motorcycle without that plotting Balkan waiter spying my new head, and quickly put my helmet on so that when he did notice me pumping the kick starter, he wouldn't realize I was much changed. But I only rode as far as Hutteldorf-Hacking with the helmet on, because it was very irritating - not fitting me any more, and bouncing all over my stinging head; Hugel had not rendered my dome absolutely cut-free.
I tied the helmet by its chin strap to the waist cord of my jacket, because I don't need a helmet any more. I have one of my very own.
Then I had a coffee, smelling the sun cooking the little grapes in the vineyards across the road, and trying to figure out exactly where it was from here that a certain fellow I know once had a hen-house; a laboratory, actually, wherein a much talked-about bird was invented. But I lost my bearings among so many buildings that look new, or at least rebuilt.
And it would be hard to spot the property I have in mind now, because the hen-house was burned down long ago.
It doesn't matter. There's an important issue at hand right now.
I'm on my way, Graff, and don't you worry. I'll be careful. I'll come into Waidhofen a sneaky new way; I'll leave the bike a bit out of town and walk in without my duckjacket, and without my old recognizable head. Thinking all the time, see.
And don't you worry either, Graff - about going to Italy. We'll go, all right. Maybe some of them will follow us!
We'll get to see your frotting beaches, Graff. We'll get to see the sea.
In fact, there's an interesting place I know of in Naples. They've a big aquarium where they keep all the wondrous fishes, in stale sea water under glass. I've seen pictures. The place is just off the harbor.
In fact, it would be an easy job. We wouldn't have to wriggle the fishes very far, or keep them out of water too long. Just across a street or two - and maybe there's a small park before the sea wall, if I remember rightly. And then we'd launch them free in the Bay of Naples.
In fact, Graff, it will be even easier than the Hietzinger Zoo.
Part Three
Setting Them Free
P.S.
OF COURSE, THERE'S more to the notebook than that. And, of course, the zoo watches and the autobiography don't appear together in the original; it was my idea to interleaf them. Because, I felt, it was almost impossible to endure either the verbosity of Siggy's souped-up history or the fanaticism of his frotting zoo watches - if you were to read them whole. At least, it was for me; I found myself skipping back and forth, though part of that may have been due to my discomfort at being forced to read in Auntie Tratt's bathtub, where I spent a week, or almost that long, soaking my bee stings.
But I still feel the two journals demand separation, if only for literary reasons. And certainly Siggy made some obscure connections between his awesome history and his scheme for busting the zoo; though, for my own part, I can't speak too well for the logic in that.
Again, if only for literary reasons. I couldn't see the sense in reproducing the other memorabilia in the notebook. All those frotting poems and proverbs. All his exclamation points, addresses and phone numbers, reminders of due dates for library books; and what constitutes his ill-kept bibliography.
I'm afraid that Doktor Ficht was at least right in griping about poor Siggy's failure to footnote. He obviously drew as heavily from Watzek-Trummer's library as he did from old eyewitness Ernst himself.
To mention a few of Siggy's jottings:
I'm quite pleased with Brook-Shepherd's Anschluss. B-S really knew what was the matter.
D. Martin goes to the heart of it in Ally Betrayed!
Poor L. Adamic is a hopeless propagandist in My Native Land.
All the info is in Stearman's The Soviet Union and the Occupation of Austria. But his footnotes are longer than the text.
There's a lot of emotional writing in Stoyan Pribichevich's World Without End and G.E.R. Gedye's Fallen Bastions.
And other entries, without his pronouncements:
Kurt von Schuschnigg's Austrian Requiem, and Sheridon's Kurt von Schuschnigg.
The Schmidt Trial Protocols, esp. the testimonies of Skubl, Miklas and Raab; and The Nuremburg Testimonies, esp. of Goring and Seyss-Inquart.
The Official Minutes of the Meetings of the Allied Council and Executive Committee, 1945-55.
Plamenatz's The Truth About Mihailovich.
Vaso Trivanovich's The Treason of Mihailovich.
Colonel Zivan Knezevich's Why the Allies Abandoned the Yugoslav Army of General Mihailovich.
And countless references to:
What Ernst Watzek-Trummer said.
It was some days, however, before I could read any of this - confined to the bathtub as I was. Epsom salts, with the tub water changed hourly.
Of course, they brought me all of Siggy's honey-covered things. I was some time separating the pages of the notebook; I had to steam them open, over my bath water. And then I had to wait a few days before I could see clearly to read - until my bee swellings had come down enough to let me hold my eyes open. I ran a fever too, and vomited a bit - the poison in my system excessive as it was.
But if my bee dose was excessive, I wouldn't have wanted any part of the overdose that must have been poor Siggy's lot. And no one would tell me if it had been his head I heard go THANG! - and put him out before the bees filled him up - or if I'd only imagined his struggling under the flatbed, after he'd toppled the hives.
As the notebook says:
God knows. Or guesses.
But when I did get down to reading, I can assure you there were spots that gave me twinges more considerable than my bee wounds. There was this:
Today I met and bought a motorcycle with Hannes Graff. He's a nice person. At loose ends, though.
And despite his countless recovering baths, I can tell you that Hannes Graff was at loose ends still.
And there were more twinges from the notebook:
What Drazha Mihailovich said at his trial: 'I wanted much ... I started much ... but the gale of the world blew away me and my work.'
Well, Siggy, I'm not so sure. I don't think it was the gale of the world that got you. Like so many other unfitted parts of your history and your scheme, I'm not convinced by any logic to your comparisons - only hinted, or leapt to, and not clear.
It was no gale of the world that got you, Sig. You made your own breeze, and it blew you away.
Loose Ends
THE HONEYBEE, POLLINIFEROUS: Any of certain socially-minded, honey-producing bees (genus Apis and allied genera), especially the species Apis mellifera, native to Europe, raised for their honey and wax and pollinating services in much of the world.
The honeybee has several parts.
Most of which, in varying mashed and torn conditions, I discovered - as Siggy might have put it:
In my trouser cuffs
And socks.
In my underwear
And armpit hair.
Little bee bits,
Here and there.
A thorax part in the spiral binder of Siggy's notebook; a hairy pair of posterior legs on the bathroom floor - where, I guess, I was shucked out of my clothes and
dunked for the first time in soothing salts; antennae, eyes and heads, nasty abdomens and lovely wings, in countless folds and pockets of Siggy's honey-ruined duckjacket.
I found whole bees too. One of which I slowly drowned in the bathtub, but I think it was already dead.
For a few days, Hannes Graff soaked all his loose ends, and was not allowed visitors. Frau Tratt tended to me.
Ironic, I thought, that she who'd taken such great offence to Siggy's startling nakedness should be at ease with mine. Insulting, I thought. But Auntie Tratt excused herself on account of her age.
'Someone's got to tend to you,' she said. 'Could you afford a doctor? There's already some debt outstanding to me, you know. And I could be your grandmother, you know. It's just another little bare bottom to me.'
And I thought: There couldn't have been so very many little bare bottoms for you, at any time.
But she was daily there, with soups and sponges; my general puffiness going down under her eyes.
'They took a liking to your neck,' she said - the cruel old bitch - and she evaded my questions about what they were doing with Siggy. If they were treating the body or anything.
Of course, I didn't need to be told he was dead. There was just this endless bringing back of his parts to me. His duckjacket, his pipes, his notebook.
Formally, Frau Tratt would inquire, 'Where is he to be sent?'
This before I'd read enough of the notebook to have visions of his relatives.
Later, when I could read, I pictured a weary Watzek-Trummer, tired of burial responsibilities. In one way or another, on hand for two generations of deaths in a family - endings direct and absolute, and endings only implied.
Siggy certainly had to go to Kaprun, but I couldn't imagine him there - for a few days beflowered, resting in the room with the Grand Prix racer, 1939.
'Well, anyway, you're lucky,' the old Tratt said. 'This kind of thing can be expensive, but Keff's building the box for him.'
'Keff?' I said. 'Why Keff?'
'I am sure I don't know,' said Frau Tratt. 'It's just a box, though - real simple. You don't get much for nothing, you know.'
Not from you, surely, I thought. But I said, 'Where's Gallon?'
'What do you care where she is?' said Auntie Tratt.
But I wouldn't give her the satisfaction. I sat hunched over on my bed of towels, drying off from my last bath of that day and trying to prepare myself for the old Tratt's rough hands going over me - tingling me, in spite of myself; with that good, nut-scented witch hazel.
The Tratt said again, 'What do you care where she is? Is Gallen a part of your plans now?'
But I told her, 'I just wondered where Gallen was keeping herself. She hasn't once come to see me.'
'Well,' the good Frau said. 'She won't be visiting until it's comfortable for you to wear some clothes again.' And when she said 'clothes,' she splashed that icy witch hazel on my back, and as I gasped half upright under her hand, she ground down her forearm on my neck and shoved my head down between my knees. She slopped some down my shoulders, and slicking her hands over me in her slaplike fashion, she got some witch hazel in one of my ears. Then her voice came at me, half underwater, prying, as if I were an eel to be coaxed out from under some rock - for the final stew. 'But you don't have any plans for the moment, Herr Graff?' she snooped.
'No plans,' I said quickly, and realized that this was the first hopeful thing to come into my head since the frotting bees. Remembering, of course, what Siggy had once said about plans. He had once had the way not to spoil it. No planning. Graff. No mapping it out. No dates to get anywhere, no dates to get back. And in a grating sort of way, I started laughing - really, it was so funny; that this should be his foremost, solemn ingredient for a good trip between us. How funny, really, his crazy and elaborate scheme for the zoo bust looked alongside that previous notion.
'Am I hurting you, Herr Graff?' said the Tratt, who must have felt my odd quivers even through her gross, insensitive calluses.
But I just laughed out loud at her. 'No plans, Frau Tratt!' I said. 'I don't have any. And I won't! No plans. Frot plans! Frot me!' I bellowed at her, 'if I so much as start to make any plans.'
'Well, goodness,' the rare old Tratt said. 'I only asked to make a little conversation.'
'You lie,' I told her, and she backed off - the sweet witch hazel drying on her hands so fast you could see it disappear, like the white under your thumbnail goes back to pink as soon as you unclench your fist.
Where Gallen Was
EVENTUALLY, BY MY bath-and bedside - after I'd healed sufficiently to wear at least a loincloth equivalent, and after I'd adequately insulted the Tratt, to make necessary someone else's waiting on me - Gallen cared for me, again.
I was permitted to show her my less-private bee welts, still a bit reddened, even after my tedious treatments. Because, I'm told, my poor antibodies had fled my bloodstream on the thirty-fifth or -sixth sting, leaving my general resistance rather low.
'How are you, Graff?' Gallen asked.
'My resistance is low,' I told her, and we discreetly discussed my poor antibodies.
She said, 'What are you going to do now?'
'I've not made any plans,' I said quickly, and she hung by my bed, hands folding and unfolding, in a mock-casual stance. She was growing too tall and forcing too much shape in her little-girlish clothes. Puffed shoulders and frilled cuffs on this outfit - a high-buttoned and forbidding blouse. The old Tratt's choice, I could be sure. A further, plotting defense of hers against me. May she rot.
'Sit down, Gallen,' I offered, and slid over for her.
'Your resistance is low,' she reminded, saucily; as if she were so old and frotting worldly - a favorite guise of hers - under the clothes.
'What have you been doing?' I asked.
'Thinking,' said Gallen, and pulled down her chin with her hand. As if she'd just started this minute, to convince me.
'What about?' I asked.
'About what you're going to do now,' she said.
'No plans,' I repeated. 'But I've got to do something with Siggy.'
'Keff built a nice box,' said Gallen.
'How thoughtful,' I said. 'How does he seem to you?'
'Oh, Keff feels very bad,' said Gallen.
'I meant, how's Siggy?' I said. 'I couldn't care less about Keff.'
'Keff's very sorry, really,' she said. 'He keeps asking about you.'
'How's Siggy?' I asked. 'How's he look?'
'Well, I haven't seen him,' she said. But the way her shoulders shook when she said 'seen,' I believed she'd taken a peek.
'All puffy?' I said, a bit nastily. 'Like two of me?' And I pinched up a fair-sized welt on my bare witch-hazeled stomach.
'Keff wouldn't let anyone see him,' said Gallen.
'Frotting Keff!' I said. 'What's he taken an interest for? Does he enjoy it that much?'
'He's been very nice, Graff,' she said.
'And seeing a bit of you too,' I said. 'No doubt.'
So she told me about the aftermath. How the armored beekeeper had finally been the one to extricate poor Siggy from under the flatbed. They'd all taken him for the doctor to poke - and see if he'd deflate - and then the mayor had pronounced over the body. Afterwards Keff had asked for him, and said he'd build the box.
'Where's he going to be sent?' said Gallen. 'Keff says to ask you that.'
'To Kaprun,' I said, 'if Keff can tear himself away from the body.'
'It wasn't Keff's fault, Graff,' she said. And added how she thought that Siggy must have been crazy. So I told her about the mad notebook, and the ultimate, unreasonable scheme; and all the conclusions leapt to, concerning O. Schrutt and the Famous Asiatic Black Bear. I said I agreed with her, that poor Siggy had perhaps gone off his rail somewhere. Then I sat up in bed and pulled her down to sit beside me.
Since we were closer and I'd got her talking about it, I asked her what the doctor said he'd died of. 'Cause of death,' I said stiffly. 'Precisely what?'
; 'A heart attack,' said Gallen, 'which could have been the shock.'
'Or too many bees,' I said, thinking that too much bee gunk went inside him and sent a sort of thrombus to clog his heart. Then I got dizzy, sitting upright; I began to itch all over.
'Witch hazel, Graff?' said Gallen.
But feeling the need for at least an immediate sort of plan I said - as quickly and officiously as possible, 'Tell Keff there's to be no fanfare, and no flowers or anything. And the coffin should be sealed. Just the name, no engraving. And put him on the train, to Kaprun - to a man named Ernst Watzek-Trummer. Who'll pay for it, I'm sure. Then you bring me a telegram form. I'll send off something to precede the body.'
'Keff wonders if you want anything to read,' said Gallen. As if I hadn't read enough.
She spread the witch-hazeled washcloth over my eyes, which made it easier for me to answer her back - not being able to see her bent over me. 'Just some sex book or other,' I said. 'I'm sure Keff knows where to find that sort of thing, if he's not too busy - fiddling so much with Siggy and you.'
When I took the washcloth off my face, and caught an unscented breath, Gallen had left me alone in the room. With my doubts of her. And with my horror thoughts of Keff's possible necrophilia.
What Keff Was Doing
KEFF BOUGHT A book and sent it to me with Gallen, though it was an honorable, scholarly sort of sex book - the wholesome teamwork of a pair of Danes - called The ABZ of Love.
'It's got drawings in it,' said Gallen, not looking at me. Probably afraid I'd turn into one of the sketches before her eyes.
'Read it cover to cover already, have you?' I asked.
'I have not,' she said distinctly, and left me with Keff's odd gift.
Actually, it's a very sane, clean book, concerned with potting the old taboos, and encouraging us to have good, healthy fun. But I just randomly flipped it open, and was given a misleading picture of the book at first reading - because of this queer anecdote.
During the last century a lady woke up one night, feeling she was being pushed. Somebody went in and out and hands touched her every now and again. As she was not expecting anybody and had fallen asleep alone, she was so terrified she fainted. Much later she came to her senses and by the light of the dawning day saw that her butler (who, incidentally, was a genuine sleepwalker) had laid dinner for fourteen people on her bed. But of course this sort of thing is rather unusual, especially nowadays when so few people have servants.