The Water-Method Man

'Jesus Christ, Tulpen!'

'There's no need to feel trapped, Trumper. That's not what babies are for.'

She's in there for an hour and I'm forced to pee in the kitchen sink. Thinking. It's just two days until I'm operated on - maybe they should sterilize the whole works while they're at it.

*

But when she came out of the bathroom, she looked less tough and more vulnerable, and almost instantly he found himself wanting very much to be what she wanted him to be. He was thrown off guard by her question though. She asked it shyly and sweetly. 'If you do have much to do with the baby,' she said, 'if you want it, that is, would you like a boy or a girl?'

Damn him, he hated himself for remembering the crude joke Ralph had once told him. There's a girl, see, and she's just been knocked up, and she says to her boyfriend, 'You wanna girl or boy, George?' George thinks for a minute and then says, 'A stillborn.'

'Trumper?' Tulpen asked again. 'A boy or a girl? Do you care which?'

'A girl,' he said. She was excited, playful, drying her hair in a big towel, flouncing around the bed now.

'Why a girl?' she asked. She wanted to keep the ball rolling; she liked this talk.

'I don't know,' he mumbled. He could lie, but elaborating on the lie was hard. She held his hands, sat down on the bed in front of him and let the towel fall off her hair.

'Come on,' she said. 'Because you've already had a boy? Is that it? Or do you really like girls better?'

'I don't know,' he said irritably.

She dropped his hands. 'You don't care, you mean,' she said. 'You don't really care, do you?'

That left him with no place to go. 'I don't want any baby, Tulpen,' he said.

She frisked through her hair with the towel, which made it hard to see her face. 'Well, I do want one, Trumper,' she said. She let the towel drop and looked straight at him, as hard as anyone, except Biggie, had ever looked at him. 'So I'm going to have one, Trumper, whether you're interested or not. And it won't cost any more than it ever has,' she said bitterly. 'All you have to do is make love to me.'

Right then, he wanted very much to make love to her; in fact, he knew he'd better make love to her, quick. But what mush his mind was! His brain was well trained at evasion. He was thinking of Sprog ...

That old horse-basher, the uprooter of trees, thumping through the royal quarters, bowling over the guard of the royal bedchamber. Then into the lavish bed. No doubt a veiled and perfumed Gunnel lay there waiting for her Lord Akthelt. Enter the five-foot toad. Did he hop on her?

Whatever he did, he didn't do it fast enough. The text reports that Gunnel was 'nearly humbled by him'. Nearly.

Apparently Akthelt heard Gunnel screaming all the way down in the servants' quarters as he lay deep in the lush grip of Fluvia. It never occurred to him that his lady was being attacked by Sprog; he just recognized his lady's scream. He pulled out of Fluvia, flapped on his codpiece and hot-hoofed it up to the royal quarters. There he and seven castle guards netted the thrashing Sprog and pried him loose from the fainting Lady Gunnel with the aid of several fireplace tools.

According to custom, castrations always took place at night, and the very next evening poor Sprog's balls were lopped off with a battle-ax. Akthelt did not attend the event; neither did Old Thak.

Akthelt mourned for his friend. It was several days before he even asked Gunnel if Sprog had actually ... well, got her, if she knew what he meant. She did; Sprog had not. Somehow that made Akthelt feel even worse, which made Gunnel rather angry. In fact, Akthelt and Old Thak had to persuade her from publicly demanding that Fluvia be thrown to the wild boars.

The wild boars were in the moat, for some reason Trumper had never been able to translate; it didn't make any sense. Moats were supposed to be full of water, but perhaps this one had a leak they couldn't fix, so they had wild boars charging around in there instead. It was just another example of what a ragged old ode Akthelt and Gunnel was. Old Low Norse was not known for its tight little epics.

For example, the matter of the legend of Sprog isn't even brought up until pages and pages after Sprog and Fluvia are exiled to the coast of Schwud. The legend says that one day a weary, ravaged traveler passes through the kingdom of Thak and begs for a night's rest at the castle. Akthelt asks the stranger what adventures he's had - Akthelt loves a good story - and the stranger tells this ghastly tale.

He was riding on the fine white sand of the beaches of Schwud with his handsome young brother when the two of them came upon a dusky lewd wench whom they took to be some wild fisherwoman, abandoned by her tribe and hungry for a man. Therefore the stranger's young brother fell upon her there on the beach, as she clearly indicated she wanted him to, and proceeded to satisfy himself. But this only partially slaked the thirst of the wench, so the stranger himself was about to mount the wild woman when he saw his brother swiftly seized by a round, blond, beastlike man 'whose chest could inhale the sea'. As the stranger watched with horror, his brother was bent, broken, snapped, crunched, folded and otherwise mangled by this terrible blond god 'with a center of gravity like a ball'.

The beach ball was Sprog, of course, and the woman on the sand who had laughed, moaned and implored the stranger to take her quick was Fluvia.

One way to look at it was that it was nice to know they were still together after all this time, still a team. But the stranger didn't look at it that way. He ran to where he and his brother had tethered their horses.

Both animals were dead, their chests staved in. They looked as if they'd been hit by a huge battering ram, and beside them lay a log which no man could have lifted. So the stranger had to keep running, because Sprog ran after him. Luckily the stranger had once been a messenger by profession, so he could run very fast a

nd for a long time. He ran with great long easy strides, but whenever he looked back, there would be Sprog, who was so short that he ran like a woodchuck, thumping along on his little stunted legs. But he kept up.

The stranger ran a few miles, looked back, and there was Sprog. He had no style but he had a set of lungs like a whale.

The stranger ran all through the night, stumbling over rocks, falling, getting up, straggling along unable to see. But whenever he stopped, he could hear, not far behind and coming closer, the sound of Sprog thumping along like a five-foot elephant and breathing like a winded bear.