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.