The Water-Method Man

'Hungry people, yes ...' Here you would look worldly-sad as you reflectively extended a peanut to an elephant. 'Well, it's natural, isn't it?' you'd ask Polly Crenner. 'When we were hungry, we ate them. Now we feed them ...' I imagine, Merrill, that you would have made that sound profound.

And then?

Maybe there was urgent mail you were waiting for, and would Polly mind stopping by your apartment for a minute so that you could check? Doubtless she didn't mind.

Somewhere along here there would be talk of swimming while the nights were still warm - which would prompt that nice awkwardness of having to go to your place so you could put on your bathing suit, and having to go to her place so she could slip into hers. Oh, you were smooth, Merrill.

But you blew it! You just had to bring up that one about the tank in the Danube, didn't you? True or not, you had to mention the story.

'Die Blutige Donau,' you would say. 'The Bloody Danube. Have you read it?'

'It's a book?'

'Yes, by Goldschmied. But of course it hasn't been translated.'

Then you would drive her out past the Prater.

'What do you call this car?'

'A Zorn-Witwer, 'fifty-four. Quite rare.'

Crossing the old canal, you'd pour on the chilly mystique of Goldschmied's prolific river history. 'How many men at the bottom of the Danube? How many spears and shields and horses, how much iron and steel and debris of thousands of years of war? "Read the river!" writes Goldschmied. "That's your history. Read the river!"'

Who is Goldschmied? Polly would be wondering. Ah, pretty Polly, but who was the great Weber?

Then you'd say, 'I know a piece of the river, a piece of that history.' She would wait out your pregnant pause. 'Remember the Ninth Panzer Division?' you'd say, and then go on, not waiting for her answer. 'The Ninth Panzer sent two scout tanks into Floridsdorf on the night of New Year's Eve, 1939. The Nazis wanted to move a tank company into Czechoslovakia, and their armory was out along the Danube. The scout tanks were looking for trouble in Floridsdorf. There'd been some die-hard resistance out there, and the scouts wanted to divert any saboteurs' intentions on the big tank drive at the river. Well, the scout tanks got the diversion they were seeking. One of them was blown to bits in front of a factory which made dry milk. The other tank panicked. It got lost in the warehouse monotony of Floridsdorf and ended way up on the Old Danube - the old canal that's blocked off. Did you see? We just drove over it.'

'Yes, yes,' Polly Crenner would answer, history crushing down on her.

Then you'd stop the Zorn-Witwer at Gelhafts Keller, Merrill. You'd open Polly Crenner's door for her, and she'd bubble, 'Well, what happened?'

'To what?'

'The tank.'

'Oh, the tank ... Well, it was lost, see.'

'Yes ...'

'And it was New Year's Eve, remember. Very cold. And this wild bunch of resistance people, they were chasing it ...'

'How do you chase a tank?'

'With a lot of nerve,' you'd say. 'They kept close to the buildings and tried to disable it with grenades. Of course, the tank gunner was doing some damage; he was blowing half of the suburbs in two. But the people kept after the bastard and finally cornered the tank down on the bank of the old canal. Blocked off, right? The water pretty still and pretty shallow - therefore frozen pretty solid. They forced the thing out on the ice; it was the tank's only chance to get away ... Well, when the tank was right in the middle, they rolled some grenades out across the ice ... It sank, of course.'

'Wow,' Polly Crenner would say, both to the story and to the great beer-steined walls of Gelhafts Keller, through which you would be strolling her, Merrill, right out on to the dock.

'There,' you would tell her, pointing out into the Old Danube, where tiny boats with lanterns were paddling lovers and drunks about.

'What?' she would say.

'There! The tank - that's where it broke through the ice. That's where they sank her.'

'Where?' Polly Crenner would ask, and you would gently pull her pretty head close to yours and make her sight along your outstretched arm at some black point way out on the water.

And you'd whisper. 'There! Right out there she went down. And she's still there ...'

'No!'