Which totally puzzled me about Keff and his intentions.
But I read on and momentarily rid my mind of a certain planless dark. I put off further the empty telegram form for Ernst Watzek-Trummer. These startling lines were my distraction:
Letting off a thoroughly good sneeze is a natural, spontaneous, frank action of which some people really are a little afraid in the same way that they are afraid of being spontaneous and letting themselves go in their sex life.
It has been contended that there must be a direct connection between a person's ability to have a thoroughly good sneeze and the ability to have a satisfying orgasm.
Which was so fascinating to me that I made a point of not falling asleep until Gallen came back to see if I needed more witch hazel.
'Like your book?' she mumbled.
'It's lowered my resistance even more,' I said, feeling nice and playful. And just waiting for her to come near me with that nut-scented washcloth. But she handed it to me to do for myself, and sat herself down on the edge of my bed, at the foot. She crossed her nice legs, kicking up - for just a second - her long apron-like skirt.
So I saw her burns - two perfect fist-sized burns on the insides of her legs between each ankle and calf, just where mine had been from the bike.
'How'd you get those?' I said, sitting up fierce and letting her know I frotting well knew what they had to come from.
'Keff fixed the motorcycle,' Gallen said. 'He's teaching me to drive.' And when I stared at her, she said, 'I can do it very well, except for the starting. I don't have enough kick, Keff says.' But I gaped at her, so she went on. 'I just stalled it, Graff, and when I tried to start it again, I pulled it over on me. While I was kicking, you know.'
'Gallen,' I said. 'Just what's going on, please?'
'Well, that's how I was burned,' she said. 'Really! When the pipes touched me, you see.'
'What is frotting Keff teaching you to drive for?' I shouted.
'So somebody knows,' said Gallen. 'So one of us can, when you take me with you, when you go - if you want to, Graff.'
And she didn't jump up and go this time, when I sat forward to touch her.
'Only if you want to take me with you, Graff,' she said. But when I leaned so far forward that I could tuck her head down in the crook of my neck, Keff's sex book slipped off my lap to the floor. Where both of us stared at it and broke our kind of trance over each other.
When she was still looking down at The ABZ, I reared up in bed and gave out with a tremendous sneeze - harumphing so, it snapped her eyes back up to my face.
Well, she blushed so much I knew she'd read the book before giving it to me. Anyone would have remembered the sneezing part. And when she flashed out of my room, I only hoped I hadn't scared her away from her plan.
Well, it wasn't really a scheme sort of plan - or hardly more of a plan than Siggy and I had started off with. Rationalizing, and welcoming it, I thought it was at least so much better and less defined a plan than the one I'd just read about. And would, I hoped, lead my mind out of poor Siggy's zoo notions.
Anyway, it was a pleasure to let Gallen run through my head that way. It was pleasure enough to keep me another night from composing Watzek-Trummer's telegram.
I even slept, and dreamt the coward's dream of impossible isolation. The landscape unidentified, and no wildlife other than our own - Gallen and I, in daylight lasting only as long as we'd care to have it, in weather of our whim; on forest floors, not damp and lake shores free of biting insects. Unbelievably uninterrupted, we danced through the poses I remembered from the faint, indistinct sketches in The ABZ of Love.
While Siggy, in Keff's box, couldn't intrude on us with his awesome details. And all beasts threatening my perfect peace were snug in the Hietzinger Zoo.
What Ernst Watzek-Trummer Received by Mail
IN KEFF'S SEALED and simple box, Siggy left Waidhofen for Kaprun on the Saturday evening train, 10 June 1967. My telegram preceded the body by hours enough for Ernst Watzek-Trummer to be warned to meet the train on Sunday noon.
I wrote several drafts of the telegram. I began:
Herr Watzek-Trummer/ I am informed that you were the guardian of Siegfried Javotnik/ a friend/ who was killed on a motorcycle/ and who arrives in Kaprun on this Sunday noon/ Hannes Graff/ who will write you at a later date/
And rewrote, to this:
Dear Herr Watzek-Trummer/ Arriving Sunday noon is your charge/ Siegfried Javotnik/ who was killed on a motorcycle/ He was my friend/ I will get in touch with you/ Yours/ Hannes Graff/
And this:
My Dear Watzek-Trummer/ I am grieved to say that your charge and my friend/ Siegfried Javotnik/ was killed in a freak motorcycle accident in Waidhofen/ He will arrive in Kaprun on Sunday noon/ I will see you myself soon/ Hannes Graff/