by John Irving
Then Siggy snapped at me, out of the fire, 'No nonsense now. Just a total shave, please.' And I dropped Gallen's hair.
She must have noticed my faraway-traveling eyes, because she said, 'Graff? It's not that you don't want to go to Vienna, is it? I mean, if you'd rather go somewhere you've never been before - if you don't want to see any old stuff you remember, or might, you know - I wouldn't care, Graff. Really, if Vienna's a bad place for you now. I just thought it would be easier for money - in the long run.'
In the long run? I thought
'You know,' said Gallen. 'It would just probably give us enough to get someplace to stay, indoors. Just a room, maybe, at first.'
At first? I thought, Oh, frot me if she doesn't have some overall plan.
'Wouldn't you just like a room with a great big bed in it?' she asked, and blushed.
But this girl's schemes were sounding dangerous to me - this vague, long-term stuff never works. This was too much planning in front of ourselves - for sure.
I said, 'Well, let's just go to Vienna and get one or both of us a job, at first. Then maybe we can do whatever we want. Maybe we'll want to go to Italy then,' I said hopefully.
'Well,' she said, 'I thought you'd like the room with the bed.'
'Well, let's just see what happens,' I said. 'What's the matter? Don't you like our sleeping bag?'
'Well, of course I like it,' said Gallen. 'But you can't sleep outside forever, you know.'
Maybe you can't, I thought. And who said anything about forever?
'Well, just thinking practically,' she said, sounding too much like her frotting Auntie, 'it will be cold in a few months, and you can't sleep outside and drive a motorcycle in the snow.'
Well, the truth of that was startling. A few months? I'll have to get the bike down south before it snows, I thought. And suddenly time was involved in any plans you made or didn't. For example, tomorrow was Monday 12 June 1967. A real date. And one week ago tomorrow, Siggy was leaving Waidhofen in the rain - past the fallen horse and milkwagon, headed for the Hietzinger Zoo. And today was Sunday, Siggy was in Kaprun with old Watzek-Trummer; they were respectively prone and sitting, above the dinner guests in the Gasthof Enns.
'Well, we'll leave for Vienna, early tomorrow,' I said. And I thought: Maybe it will rain like a week ago.
'Do you know the suburbs?' said Gallen. 'Where we might find some classy friseur.'
'I know one suburb,' I said. 'It's called Hietzing.'
'Is it hard to get to?' she said.
'You go right through it on your way downtown,' I said.
'Well, that's easy then,' said Gallen.
'That's where the zoo is,' I told her, and she was very quiet.
'Fate shapes the course!' Siggy popped from the fire.
Frot that myth, I thought. I'm doing this all by myself.
'Oh, Graff,' said Gallen, making light. 'Come on, now. We don't have to see the zoo.'
'Well, you shouldn't go to Vienna,' I said, 'without seeing how spring has struck the zoo.'
And although the first-shift watch was the only chance the animals had to sleep, I saw them all wake up and cock their various ears to this talk.
But you animals misunderstand me, I thought. There's no point in getting your hopes up. I'm just coming to look. But they were all awake and staring through their bars, accusing me. I shouted aloud, 'Go to sleep!'
'What?' said Gallen. 'Graff? Do you want to think or something? I'll go up in the woods, if you want to be alone - if you don't want to talk to me or anything.'
But I thought: You're giving up your hair for me, for Christ's sake don't do anything more. So I tackled her when she tried to stand and leave me. I burrowed in her lap, and she lifted her soccer shirt to tuck my head under it, face-down on her warm, ribby tum. She hugged me; she had little, alive pulses everywhere.
I thought: Hannes Graff, gather up your loose ends, please. This living girl is vulnerable to being let down by just about everything.
More Plans
JUST OUT OF Hutteldorf-Hacking, in the outskirts of Hietzing, we found a first-class friseur, name of Orestic Szirtes - a Greco-Hungarian, or a Hungarian-Greek. His father, he told us, was Zoltan Szirtes; his mother was the former beauty Nitsa Papadatou, who sat and watched us from her throne in the best barber chair.
'My father's gone,' Orestic said, and not just out for lunch, I gathered - by the way the former Nitsa Papadatou shook her glossy black mane and rattled the bright gems on her long black robe; lowly V-necked, her jeweled robe exposed her fierce cleavage and the rump-sized swell of her mighty, unfallen breasts. A former beauty, for sure.
Gallen said, 'Do you buy hair?'
'Why should we buy it?' old Nitsa said. 'There's no need - it's all over our floor.'
But it wasn't, really. It was a spiffy place - a light, tasteful perfume hit you when you walked in the door. But the air turned more to musk the nearer you got to Nitsa. And the only hair on the floor was under Nitsa's chair, as if no one were allowed to sweep under her while she was enthroned.
'The girl means for wigs, Mama,' Orestic said. 'Of course, yes, we buy hair.' And he touched Gallen's braid, sort of flicked it to see how it behaved when provoked. 'Oh, lovely, yes,' Orestic said.
'I think so,' I said.
'Young hair is best,' he said.
'Well, she is young,' I said.
'But it's red,' said Nitsa, shocked.
'All the more in demand!' I claimed. While Orestic stroked the braid.
'How much?' said Gallen, world-wise and tough as cork.
Orestic pondered over her braid. His own hair was as thick and shining-clean as damp black saw grass in a marsh. I wandered to the rows of speared heads in the window; each head, wigged and necklaced, had an upturned nose without any nostrils.
'Two hundred schillings,' said Orestic. 'And for that I trim her after - any kind of cut she wants.'
'Three-fifty,' I said. 'Your window sales start at seven hundred.'
'Well,' said Orestic, 'I have to do a bit of work to make a wig out of it, you know. She's got scarcely more than a hair-piece here.' And with that, he swished her braid away.
'Three hundred, then,' I said.
'Two-fifty,' said Nitsa, 'and I'll pierce her ears for free.'
'Pierce her ears?' I said.
'Mama pierces ears,' said Orestic. 'How many ears has it been now, Mama?'
Probably all saved in her chest of drawers, I thought.
'Oh, I lost count long ago,' old Nitsa claimed. Then she looked at Gallen. 'So, how's two-fifty, and your ears in with it?'
'Graff,' said Gallen, 'I always did want to - especially since I'm in the city.'
'For God's sake,' I whispered. 'Not here, please. You might lose them altogether.' I said to Orestic, 'Three hundred, without ears.'
'And you'll fix my hair up after?' said Gallen. 'All right?' She tossed her braid over her shoulder; it teased poor Orestic like a charming-snake.
'All right,' he said.
But the former Nitsa Papadatou spat on the floor. 'Weak!' she told her son. 'Just like your miserable father, you've got no spine.' She straightened up in the best barber chair and whumped her backbone with her hand; Nitsa had a spine, all right. She huffed out her frontispiece at us; her wondrous cleavage opened wider, closed tighter, opened wide and closed again.
'Mama, please,' Orestic said.
But when Orestic ushered my Gallen into the vacant, lesser barber chair, Nitsa was a welcome distraction. Because it pained me to see Orestic feverishly undoing Gallon's braid, then brushing - crackling her hair out full and over the back of the chair, nearly to the seat. Then he snatched it above her head and with sure, heavy strokes brushed it upward, stretching it - as if he were coaxing it to grow another inch or two before he claimed it. I was sitting directly behind Gallen, so I couldn't see her face in the mirror, thanks be; I didn't want to see her eyes when Orestic gathered up a great horsetail of hair and sheared it off at the roots - it seemed. I looked slantwise at
the mirror, down the full, reflected cleavage of Mama Nitsa.
Orestic swished the auburn tail around; then I had a sudden shiver, as if I'd just watched a beheading; Gallen held both hands to her scalp. Slick Orestic put her hair on a cushion in the windowseat, and came back, dancing round her - his razor tziking over her ears and up the back of her long, bare neck.
'Now! What to do with it!' he said. 'Leave you bangs, or none?'
'No bangs,' said Gallen. He cut a little, but left enough to brush back; he trimmed off her forehead, swept it over only the points to her ears, left it fairly full on the back of her head, but brought it up close on her neck. Near the roots, though, the auburn shone richer.
'No thinning,' he said. 'We'll leave it nice and thick.' And he seized up a handful, as if he were going to tear it out. 'Oh, it's thick as a pelt!' he cried excitedly. But Gallen just stared at her new forehead; she sneaked a look, now and then, round the side of her head to her startling ears.
It was the turning in the swivel chair that disconcerted me, I guess. I was just thinking how it wasn't so bad, really; how she was spared disgrace by very nice bones in her cheeks and jaw, and by her neck being so nice naked - when Orestic began swiveling her around in the chair, taking his finishing looks.
'See?' he said proudly to me. 'How even? All round.' And spun her a little faster, so flashes of her caught the mirror and flashed back at me double, on both sides of the chair, as if we were suddenly in a full barbershop - with a spinning row of dizzy customers, and madmen barbers, conducted by the old fortune-telling woman in the best barber chair. It was funny; I relaxed my eyes.
But then he shampooed her and - before I knew how long I'd watched the row of customers spin themselves bald - he stuck her head in a large chrome hair dryer; he tipped her head back in the chair, back toward me, and I watched the humming dome gleam.
'I only asked for a shave,' someone said. 'Would you call this a haircut?' And somehow, Nitsa's cleavage, spreading everywhere, was reflected on the back of Gallon's domish hair dryer.
'Would you like your ears pierced?' Nitsa asked me. 'But I know, the men usually like just one ear done.'
'Not in this country, Mama,' Orestic said.
And little Hugel Furtwangler, with a barbers'-union flag, leered over the wigged heads in the window. He said, 'He's a lunatic! He wanted me to do it!'
Oh, I'm off, I thought - just because this hair dryer is steaming up this room, unhealthily.
Nitsa Szirtes plucked her robe a bit away from her stuck-together breasts and blew a thin-lipped jet of breath down her cleavage.
Then I asked Orestic, 'Have you been here long - in this country? Or just since the war.'
'Since and before,' said old Nitsa. 'His father, Zoltan, took us back and forth to Hungary - a wretched place, if I ever.'
'My father's gone,' Orestic reminded me.
'He was a cruddy, hairy man,' said Nitsa.
'Mama, please,' Orestic said.
'I should never have left Greece,' said the former girl-Papadatou.
'Oh yes, we've been here a while.' Orestic told me, and lifted Gallen's dried and shrunken head out of the shiny dome. He made her keep her head thrown back while he brushed, furiously. An odd angle, I had, looking over the back of Gallen's tilted chair; I could see no more of her face than the sharp bridge of her nose. Except what I caught misreflected in the hair dryer - her enlarged ear.
Which blushed when it heard me ask Orestic, 'Then were you here when that man broke into the zoo?'
'Ha! He was eaten!' said Nitsa.
'Yes, he was,' I said.
'But we weren't here, Mama,' said Orestic.
'We weren't?' she said.
'We were in Hungary,' Orestic said.
'But you've heard about it, obviously,' I said.
'We were in Hungary,' he said, 'when all those things were going on here.'
'What other sort of things?' I said.
'How do I know?' he said. 'We were in Hungary.'
'Then we must have been wretched,' said Mama Nitsa, 'with that cruddy, hairy man.'
'Hair's done,' Orestic said. Gallen nervously touched the top of her head.
'Well, two-fifty we owe you,' said Mama Nitsa.
'Three hundred,' I said.
'Three hundred,' said Orestic. 'Be fair, Mama.'
'Weak!' She snorted. As weak as the cruddy, hairy man, no doubt. Poor blasphemed Zoltan Szirtes must have rolled in his grave to hear her - if he had a grave or was in it yet; or if those in their graves can roll.
'Anything's possible!' Siggy called, out of the hair dryer's gleaming dome - or out of Keff's box, alongside the Grand Prix racer, 1939.
I checked my watch. Time was a part of my life again. It was nearly lunchtime. Monday 12 June 1967. Which would put us perfectly on schedule, if we left straight away; parked the motorcycle off the Platz, down Maxing Strasse; went to the Balkan waiter's cafe; went into the zoo that afternoon.
We'd be sure to find the same conditions that were written down, one week ago this Monday.
'I like your hair, Gallen,' I said. She was sort of sheepish, but trying to be proud. Her new hair was tufted close to her head, like a bobcat's.
And trying to be casual - not thinking about her choice of words - she asked me brightly, 'What's the plan now?' Which forced my cluttered mind to admit, if only to myself, that I did have one.
How the Animals' Radar Marked My Re-entry
I DROVE FAR enough down Maxing Strasse to park opposite Maxing Park.
'Is this the zoo?' said Gallen.
'No,' I said. 'It's up a block or two, off the Platz.'
'Then why are we parking so far away?' she said.
'Oh, it's a pleasant walk,' I told her. And while she was fussing with her new hair in the side-view mirror, and pressing against her head to try to make her ears lie flat, I unloaded our pack and sleeping bag and tied everything all together in a gross lump, with our helmets strapped on top. Then I crept off in Maxing Park's deep hedges and stashed the whole mess out of sight.
'Why are you unpacking?' Gallen asked.
'Well, we don't want to be robbed,' I said.
'But we won't be gone long, will we? Graff?'
'Everyone's out to rob you, these days,' I said, and I didn't let her see me tuck the notebook under my shirt and jacket.
It's just common sense. If there's an available instruction manual for a job you're doing, you should certainly bring it with you.
'Oh, it's lovely here,' said Gallen.
We passed the Tiroler Garten, and I said, 'There's a mile of moss and ferns in there, and you can take off your shoes.'
'But that's just like the country,' she said, disappointed. She was much more impressed by the overhead maze of tram wires, when we got to the Platz. 'Is that the cafe you mean?' she said.
Of course, it was, but we were on the zoo side of the Platz, and from there I couldn't distinguish the Balkan waiter among the other white coats round the cafe.
We were about to cross over when I heard a Big Cat behind us, starting an uproar in the zoo.
'What's that?' said Gallen.
'A lion,' I said. 'Or a tiger, a leopard, a puma or cougar - a jaguar, cheetah or panther.'
'God,' said Gallen. 'Why don't you just say cat? A large cat.'
But I was suddenly too impatient to bother with the frotting Balkan waiter. Knowing what a sly one he was, I also thought he might make me tip my hand. So I said, 'There's a better place inside the zoo. It's a Biergarten, and much better than this cafe.'
Then maybe I turned her around too fast, and set off at too quick a clip, because Gallen said 'Graff? Are you all right now, really? Do you think you should come back here?'
I just dragged her on; I couldn't look at her. I think I would have seen her with all her guards down, and I was sure there'd be a better time to break my plan to her.
'Well, yes,' I said. 'The Hietzinger Zoo.'
Still gated by stone. Admission still granted by the man with the
gambler's green eyeshade. Over whose stall the giraffe's head loomed.
'Oh, Graff!' said Gallen. 'Oh, look at him! He's beautiful!'
'Well, look at his chin,' I said. 'It's all scraped up from the fence.'
'Oh, look how he moves!' said Gallen, not even noticing that the poor giraffe's chin was damaged on account of his captivity. 'Oh, what's in here?' she said, and darted off for the walrus's pool.
What really is here? I thought. She was much too gay; I couldn't watch her tottering so happy on the edge of that belching giant's slimy tub.
'Does he talk?' said Gallen, and flashed her new, sharp face back to me. 'Do you talk?' she asked the walrus. 'Grrumph!' she said. And the walrus, an old hand at doing favors for fish, rolled his great bulging head and belched for her.
'BROP!' said the walrus.
'He talked!'Gallen cried.
And said more than I have to say, I thought.
I felt the notebook go clammy against my stomach; when I moved, it scraped me. The pages of zoo watches pressed against me. It was as if I'd eaten a whole magazine; and the paper, in shreds, was wadded in my belly.
'Oh!' said Gallen - a general statement, while looking around for what came next.
Hannes Graff, I thought, please do get rid of your stomach disorder. This zoo is a place to enjoy. Nothing more.
Not ten feet away from me was an iron litter basket. I rapped my belly with my knuckles. I took a light step, my first. Then something happened with the giraffe.
He began to canter; he loped along, his great neck arching his head over the top of the storm fence like a live antenna, a kind of radar.
My God, he's recognized me, I thought.
'What's happening?' said Gallen.
The giraffe clattered excitedly. The walrus raised his head up above the rim of the pool; for just a second, he held his mass erect and goggled at me. I heard nearby skitters from pens and cages throughout the zoo. My presence, and my step toward the litter basket, was passed along the animals' grapevine. From half a zoo away, I heard the bar-slamming, roaring Asiatic Black Bear.
'What's happening?' Gallen said again.
'Something must have startled one of them,' I answered, defeated.
'BROP!' said the walrus, rising again.
BROP yourself, I thought.
'BROP!' he repeated, his throbbing neck straining to keep himself up - and in sight of me. While the great cantering giraffe zoomed his neck in on me.