The Water-Method Man

'All Americans don't "jew cum",' the girl said. Merrill and I cheered. The interviewer knew he wasn't getting anywhere with her, so he tried to get snotty.

'Itz too bat,' he said, 'dis is the last race uf dis season, dough it mus be an honor to be the erst American to vin vun.'

'We'll "vin" lots more,' the girl told him, chewing with little savage snaps.

'Nex year, maybe,' the interviewer said. 'Vill you ski nex year?'

'I'll see,' the girl said. Then the video tape was cut and jumped out of sequence, causing Merrill and me to boo loudly. When the picture was clear again the interviewer was trying to keep up with the girl, who was striding away from him, carrying her skis lightly on her shoulder. The camera was hand-held and unsteady, the sound track crunched with snow.

'Did it take anyting avay from you fictory,' he was asking her, 'to vin because Heidi Schatzl fell town?'

The girl turned to him, almost clipping his head with her skis. She didn't say a word, and he added a little nervously: '... or to vin because Marguerite Delacroix mist a gate?'

'I'd have won anyway,' the girl said. 'I was just better than they were today,' and she started off again. He had to duck under the backswing of her long skis and jog to catch up to her, his legs getting tangled in the microphone cord.

'Zu "Biggie" Kunft,' the interviewer mumbled after her, stumbling along. 'Die Amerikanerin aus Fermont, USA,' he said. He caught up with her, and this time remembered to crouch low under her skis when she turned to him. 'Wit the conditions today,' he said, 'wit the snow zo iczy and fast, do you tink your veight helpt you?' He waited smugly for her reply.

'What about my weight?' she asked him; she was embarrassed.

'Does it help you?'

'It doesn't hurt me,' she said defensively, and Merrill and I felt angry. 'You got great weight!' Merrill shouted. 'Every pound of it!' I said.

'Vy do they call you "Biggie"?' the interviewer asked her. She was upset, you could tell, but she moved right up close to him, heaving out her breasts and cracking her broad mouth into a smile. She looked down on him; she seemed to be trying to push him backward with her tits.

'"Vy" do you "tink" so?' she asked.

The bastard interviewer looked away from her and beckoned the camera closer, beaming into the lens and rolling out his sly German, 'Mit mir hier ist die junge Amerikanerin, Zu "Biggie" Kunft ...' he was announcing as she turned away from him suddenly and caught him beautifully in the back of his head with her swingi

ng skis. He dropped out of frame and the camera attempted to trot after her, putting her in and out of focus and finally losing her in the crowd. But her voice, offstage, came back to us, angry and hurt: 'Please leave me the fuck alone,' she said, 'Please ...' The announcer didn't bother to translate this.

Then did Overturf and I proudly praise the virtues of this skier, Sue 'Biggie' Kunft, fending off the strongly nationalist arguments of several Austrians drinking with us in the Tauernhof.

'A rare girl, Merrill.'

'An athletic lay, Boggle.'

'No, Merrill. She's clearly a virgin.'

'Or a man, Boggle.'

'Oh, never, Merrill. Her glands are quite unmistakable.'

'I'll drink to that,' said Merrill, who was under great pressure from the limitations of his diabetic diet; not a well-disciplined person, he frequently substituted booze for food. 'Did I eat my dinner tonight, Boggle?'

'No,' I told him. 'You missed dinner because you were in a trance.'

'Good,' he said, and ordered another slivowitz.

With TV-skiing over, the local Tauernhof clientele returned to their usual peasant savagery. The regular Hungarian group from Eisenstadt performed: an accordion, a tortured zither and a violin to make the mighty cringe.

With the great privacy afforded us by speaking English in a German-speaking tavern, Merrill and I discussed international sports; Hieronymus Bosch; the function of the American embassy in Vienna; the neutrality of Austria; Tito's remarkable success; the shocking rise of the bourgeoisie; the boredom of televised golf; the source of Herr Halling's halitosis; why the waitress wore a bra, were her armpits shaved or shaggy, and who would ask her; the advisability of chasing slivowitz with beer; the price of Semperit radial tires in Boston, of bourbon in Europe in general, of hashish in Vienna in particular; possible causes of the scar on the face of the man who sat by the door; what a worthless instrument a zither was; whether the Czechs were more creative than the Hungarians; what a stupid, backward language Old Low Norse was; the inadequacies of the two-party system in the United States; the challenge of inventing a new religion; the small differences between clerical fascism and Nazism; the incurability of cancer; the inevitableness of war; the general and overall stupidity of man; the pain in the ass of diabetes. And the best way to introduce yourself to girls. One way, Merrill claimed, was the 'boob loop.' 'You hold the ski pole thus,' said Merrill, holding it upside down, his fingers meshed in the basket weave, the point against the heel of his hand. He raised the end with the wrist-thong and waved it like a wand; the wrist-thong made a loop. 'That's where the boob goes,' Merrill said. He was watching the waitress clear the table next to ours.

'No, Merrill.'

'A mere demonstration?'

'I think not here, Merrill.'