The Water-Method Man

'Where are we going?' Bogus asked them. 'My passport's in my room. For Christ's sake, I don't have to be treated like this! I wasn't attacking that fellow - he's my fucking friend! And he's got diabetes. Take me to where he is ...' But they just stuffed him into a green Polizei Volkswagen, cracking his shins on the seat-belt fixture and bending him over double to fit him the way they wanted him in the back seat. They handcuffed him to a neat little metal loop fastened on the floor in back, so that he was forced to ride with his head between his knees. 'You must be crazy,' he told them. 'You don't care what I say.' He turned his head; through the peepsight between his calf and his bent knee he could spot the policeman riding with him in the back. 'You're an anus,' Trumper told him. 'And so's the other one.' He swung his head so that he bumped the back of the driver's seat and drew out a short oath from the driver.

The back-seat policeman said, 'You take it easy, OK?'

'You gaping anal pore!' Trumper told him, but the policeman only leaned forward, almost politely inquisitive, as if he hadn't quite heard. 'Your mind has syphilis,' Trumper said, and the policeman shrugged.

The front-seat policeman asked, 'Doesn't he speak any German? I know he was speaking some German: I heard him, I think. Tell him to speak German.'

Bogus felt a chill jerk his spine upward and make his hands rattle the handcuffs. I could have sworn I was speaking German!

In German Trumper shouted, 'You asshole!' Too late to move his head, he saw the black hard-rubber truncheon flick in the policeman's hand.

Then he heard the radio. A voice said: 'A drunk ...' And he heard his own voice murmur, 'Ich bin nicht betrunken ...' Then he regretted saying anything, seeing the truncheon lash out and hearing the thwock! against his ribs, not really feeing it until his next breath.

'A drunk,' the radio reported. He tried not to breathe again.

'Breathe, please ...' said the radio-announcing voice. He breathed, and went cold all over.

'He went cold all over,' said a recorded whore.

'You mother,' Trumper mumbled. 'You recorded whore ...' And the truncheon fell across his ribs, his wrists, his kidneys and his mind.

It took him a long time to swim out to the exact place in the Danube where he could see the underwater tank. Treading water and keeping a landsight on the light at the Gelhafts Keller's dock, he saw the tank's barrel swing up to where he thought he could almost touch it, or where it was perfectly aimed to blast him. Then the tank's top hatch opened, or seemed to, or at least fluttered in the water. Who is down the tank's hatch? Wouldn't somebody be interested to know they were there? But then he thought, I am in a Volkswagen, and if there's a hole in the roof, I am safe with Couth.

Then the bidets flushed and rinsed his mind.

Just how long his mind was lost he didn't know, or how fully he'd recovered it by the time he was aware of some more writing in the typewriter before him. He read it, wondering who had written it, poring over it like a letter he'd received, or even like someone else's letter to someone else. Then he saw the dark, crouching figure in the bottom corner of his French windows, and startled himself by suddenly sitting upright and moaning, while simultaneously in the mirroring window, a terrifying gnomelike replica of himself reared up and bleared like a microscopic specimen.

When he opened the door to the hall, he was met by a sea of faces - whores

with their customers, Frau Taschy and a cop.

'What's the matter?' several of them said.

'What?'

'What's the trouble here?' the cop asked.

'What were you screaming about?' Frau Taschy asked.

'Drunk,' a whore whispered.

Like a recording, Trumper said, 'Ich bin nicht betrunken.'

'You were screaming, though,' Frau Taschy said. The cop stepped closer, peering behind Bogus into the room.

But the cop said only, 'Been writing, eh?' Trumper looked for the cop's truncheon. 'What are you looking at?' the cop asked him. He had no truncheon.

Bogus stepped softly back into his room and closed his door. He stuck his finger in his eye; it hurt. He felt his neck where the whore had bitten him; he felt no pain. His wrists and ribs where he'd been whacked by the truncheon weren't tender.

Listening to the murmur in the hall outside, he packed. They are willing the door off its hinges. But they weren't; they were only standing there when he came out. He felt that if he didn't take charge, they would take charge of him. So he said with great dignity, 'I'm leaving. It's impossible to work here with all your noise.' To Frau Taschy he held out what he figured to be more than enough money, but she made up some wild tale about his having been there for a couple of months. He felt confused; with the cop right there, he thought he'd better pay her what she asked for. His passport was peeking out of the pocket of his spy suit, and when the cop asked to see it, he nodded to the pocket, making the cop reach in gingerly for it.

Then Bogus made one last check, just to be sure. 'Merrill Overturf?' he said. 'He's a diabetic?' But no one seemed to respond; in fact, some of the crowd looked away from him, pretending not to hear, as if their embarrassment for him was so great that they feared that at any second he would take off his clothes.

Outside, the cop followed him for a block or two - waiting, no doubt, to see if he would leap in front of a car or dive through a store window. But Bogus set a brisk pace, walking as if he had in mind some place to go, and the cop fell back and disappeared. Trumper was alone, then, circling the Graben on safe little side streets; it took him a while to locate the Kaffeehaus Leopold Hawelka, and he hesitated before going in, as if he knew everyone who would be there, even as if his search for Merrill had never really progressed beyond his first inquiries here.

Inside, he saw the nervous waiter and smiled at him. He saw the young girl who'd known Merrill in some way at some other time. He saw the heavy girl with the neon-green eyeshadow, the Head Den Mother, who was briefing a table of disciples. What he wasn't quite prepared for was the great-bearded prophet who sat almost hidden behind the door - like the toughies who check IDs in America, or the wise-ass ticket-takers at dirty movies. When the prophet spoke, he bellowed, and Bogus wheeled around suddenly to see who was shouting.

'Merrill Overturf!' the prophet boomed. 'Well, did you find him?' Whether it was the volume of the voice or the fact that it rendered Trumper motionless, frozen in an awkward pivot stance, almost all the Hawelka customers seemed to think the question was directed to them; they froze too, suspended over their coffees, mired in their rummed teas, beers and brandies; fastened, unchewing, to whatever they'd been gnawing.