The World According to Garp

"God, it's his mother," said another.

The woman with the muff stared at Jenny, who now stared at the woman's muff. One of the whores was a young girl with her hair piled very high and sprinkled with little gold and silver stars; she also had a green star tattoo on one cheek and a scar, which pulled her upper lip only slightly out of line--so that, for a moment, you didn't know what was wrong with her face, only that something was wrong. There was nothing at all wrong with her body, though; she was tall and lean and very hard to look at, though Jenny now found herself staring at her.

"Ask her how old she is," Jenny said to Garp.

"Ich bin eighteen," the girl said. "I know good English."

"That's how old my son is," Jenny said, nudging Garp. She did not understand that they had mistaken her for one of them; when Garp told her, later, she was furious--but only at herself. "It's my clothes!" she cried. "I don't know how to dress!" And from that moment on, Jenny Fields would never dress as anything but a nurse; she put her uniform back on and wore it everywhere--as if she were forever on duty, though she would never be a nurse again.

"May I see your muff?" Jenny asked the woman who had one; Jenny had assumed that they all spoke English, but only the young girl knew the language. Garp translated and the woman reluctantly removed her muff--a scent of perfume emerging from the warm nest where her long hands, sparkling with rings, had been clutched together.

The third whore had a pockmark on her forehead, like an impression made with a peach pit. Aside from this flaw, and a small fat mouth like the mouth of an overweight child, she was standardly ripe--in her twenties, Garp guessed; she probably had an enormous bosom, but under her black fur coat it was hard to be sure.

The woman with the muff, Garp thought, was beautiful. She had a long, potentially sad face. Her body, Garp imagined, was serene. Her mouth was very calm. Only her eyes and her bare hands in the cold night let Garp see that she was his mother's age, at least. Maybe she was older. "It was a gift," she said to Garp, about the muff. "It came with the coat." They were a silver-blond fur, very sleek.

"It is the real thing," said the young whore who spoke English; she obviously admired everything about the older prostitute.

"Of course, you can buy something, not quite so expensive, almost anywhere," the pockmarked woman told Garp. "Go to Stef's," she said, in a queer slang that Garp barely understood, and she pointed up the Karntnerstrasse. But Jenny didn't look and Garp only nodded and continued to gaze at the older woman's long bare fingers twinkling with rings.

"My hands are cold," she said softly to Garp, and Garp took the muff from Jenny and gave it back to the whore. Jenny seemed in a daze.

"Let's talk to her," Jenny told Garp. "I want to ask her about it."

"About what, Mom?" Garp said. "Jesus Christ."

"What we were talking about," Jenny said. "I want to ask her about lust."

The two older whores looked at the one who knew English, but her English was not fast enough to catch any of this.

"It's cold, Mom," Garp complained. "And it's late. Let's just go home."

"Tell her we want to go to some place warm, just to sit and talk," Jenny said. "She'll let us pay her for that, won't she?"

"I suppose so," Garp groaned. "Mom, she doesn't know anything about lust. They probably don't feel anything very much like that."

"I want to know about male lust," Jenny said. "About your lust. She must know something about that."

"For God's sake, Mom!" Garp said.

"Was macht's?" the lovely prostitute asked him. "What's the matter?" she asked. "What's going on here? Does she want to buy the muff?"

"No, no," Garp said. "She wants to buy you."

The older whore looked stunned; the whore with the pockmark laughed.

"No, no," Garp explained. "Just to talk. My mother just wants to ask you some questions."

"It's cold," the whore told him, suspiciously.

"Some place inside?" Garp suggested. "Anyplace you like."

"Ask her what she charges," Jenny said.

"Wie viel kostet?" mumbled Garp.

"It costs five hundred schillings," the whore said, "usually." Garp had to explain to Jenny that this was about twenty dollars. Jenny Fields would live for more than a year in Austria and never learn the numbers, in German, or the money system.

"Twenty dollars, just to talk?" Jenny said.