Actually, I go home for Christmas more to read the books Trummer has than to flatter myself into thinking I'm bringing him any favors.
Watzek-Trummer is a retired postman now, and very venerable in the town. He keeps three rooms in the Gasthof Enns; he's even something of a tourist attraction, when he permits it.
One of Trummer's rooms is all books; one room stores the Grand Prix racer, 1939; one room has a bed, and a kitchen table - even though Ernst eats all his meals in the Gasthof now. The kitchen table is for sitting at, leaning on and talking over - a habit he says he can't break, even though he's alone now.
Whenever I'm home, I sleep in the room with the 1939 Grand Prix racer. And I enjoy my Christmases very much.
Believe me, Ernst Watzek-Trummer can tell you a thing or two.
The Twenty-second and Very Last Zoo Watch: Tuesday, 6 June 1967, @ 7.30 a.m.
I'VE STOPPED FOR a coffee in Hutteldorf-Hacking, not more than a mile west of Hietzing. There's some countryside here, though it's mostly small vineyards; you've got to go a mile more if you want to see cows.
At the minimum, then, the oryx has a two-mile trip before his first lay.
Hutteldorf-Hacking is taken aback with me. I got a winner of a haircut back in Hietzing.
Following that sneaky waiter's directions, I went round the Platz off Maxing Strasse and was Hugel Furtwangler's first customer.
'Shave or haircut?' said little Hugel Furtwangler. You could tell he wanted to give me both, or at least the haircut - since shaves are cheaper.
'Just a shave,' I said. 'But a total shave.'
And pretentiously nodding as if he understood me, he packed some hot towels around my cheeks. But I said, 'Get the eyebrows too, won't you?' And that stopped him from looking so know-it-all.
'Eyebrows?' Hugel said. 'You want your eyebrows shaved?'
'A total shave, please, Hugel,' I said. 'And no nonsense now.'
'Oh well,' he said. 'I worked at the hospital once. We'd get them sometimes after fights, and you'd have to shave their eyebrows then.'
'Everything,' I said. 'Just shave my whole head, please.'
And that threw him off again, although he tried to pretend he wasn't baffled.
'You mean you want a haircut,' he said.
'Just a whole shave,' I insisted. 'I don't want my hair cut, I want it shaved off altogether - smooth as the end of my nose.' And he gawked at my nose as if it would help him to understand me.
'If I'm going to shave your head,' he said, 'I have to cut the hair first. I have to cut it down close in order to shave it.'
But I wasn't going to have him talking to me as if I were a child or a madman to be humored along. I said, 'Hugel, you do whatever you think is necessary to get the job done. Only, no gashes in my head, please. I'm a bleeder, you know - there's been a touch of hemophilia in our family for years, so no cuts, please, or I'll be bled like a steer in your chair.'
And Hugel Furtwangler gave a phony laugh - humoring me again, thinking he was in control.
'You're
a real laugher, aren't you, Hugel?' I said. And he kept right on.
'Such a sense of humor you have,' he said. 'And so early in the morning!'
'Sometimes,' I told him, 'I laugh so loud that I bleed through my ears.' But he still kept up his giggle, and I could see he was set in his ways of belittling me. So I changed the subject.
'Lived in the zoo long, Hugel?' I asked. And he harumphed over that.
'Did you ever see a zoo bust, Hugel?' I asked. And he snuck down behind my head in the mirror, pretending he was trimming the base of my neck.
'There was one, you know,' I said.