I paid.

'And might I trouble you further, Herr Faber?' said Siggy.

'Oh?' Faber moaned.

'Might you give me my wages up to today?' said Siggy.

'Oh, Herr Javotnik!' Faber said.

'Oh, Herr Faber,' said Siggy. 'Could you manage it?'

'You're a cruel schemer after an old man's money,' Faber said.

'Now, I've made some rare deals for you,' said Siggy.

'You're a dirty young cheating scheming bastard,' Herr Faber said.

'Do you see, Graff?' said Siggy. 'Oh, Herr Faber,' he said, 'I believe there's a veritable beast at home in your gentle heart.'

'Frotters!' Herr Faber shouted. 'Thieving frotters everywhere I turn!'

'If you could manage my wages,' said Siggy. 'If you could just do that, I'd be off with Graff here. We've got some fine tuning to do.'

'Ah!' Faber cried. 'That motorcycle doesn't need a bath!'

Fine Tuning

SO WE SAT in the evening at the Volksgarten Cafe and looked over the rock garden to the trees, and looked down in the pools of red and green water, reflecting the green and red lights strung over the terrace. The girls were all out; through the trees their voices came suddenly and thrillingly to us; like birds, girls in the city are always preceded by the noises they make - their heels on the walk, and their cock-sure voices confiding to each other.

'Well, Graff,' said Siggy, 'it's a blossom of a night.'

'It is,' I agreed - the first heavy night of the spring, with a damp, hard-to-remember heat in the air, and the girls with their arms bare again.

'We'll make it a zounds! of a trip,' said Siggy. 'I've thought about this for a long time, Graff, and I've got the way not to spoil it. No planning, Graff - that's the first thing. No mapping it out, no dates to get anywhere, no dates to get back. Just think of things! Think of mountains, say, or think of beaches. Think of rich widows and farm girls! Then just point to where you feel they'll be, and pick the roads the same way too - pick them for the curves and hills. That's the second thing - to pick roads that the beast will love.

'How do you like the motorcycle, Graff?' he asked.

'I love it,' I said, although he'd driven me on it no more than a few blocks, from Faber's round the Schmerlingplatz and over to the Volksgarten. It was a fine, loud, throbbing thing under you - sprang off from the stops like a great wary cat; even when it idled, the loathsome pedestrians never took their eyes off it.

'You'll love it more,' said Siggy. 'Up in mountains. We'll go to Italy! We'll travel light - that's third, traveling light. I'll take my big rucksack, all our stuff in one pack and sleeping bags rolled on top. Nothing else. Just some fishing rods. We'll fish through the mountains to Italy!

'Frot Doktor Ficht!' he cried.

'Frot him,' I said.

'May his teeth all fall out!'

'In the opera.'

'Frot him good!' said Siggy. And then he said, 'Graff? You're not sorry you flunked, are you? I mean, it doesn't matter so much.'

'It couldn't matter,' I said, and it really didn't - with the night air smelling like a young girl's hair. The tendrils of the heavy trees stooped and swooshed over the rock garden, and hushed the sounds of waterlap in the pools.

'Early in the morning,' said Siggy, 'we'll load up and slip away. You can just hear us! We'll be rumbling past the university before old Ficht has swabbed his gums! We'll be out of Vienna before he's uncorked his gunky jar.

'We'll go by the palace. We'll wake up everyone! They'll think it's a runaway Strassenbahn - or a hippopotamus!'

'A farting hippopotamus,' I said.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net