Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

by John Irving

  "Her husband," said the dream man, "would die of a respiratory infection. But the woman did not know it when she dreamed this dream."

  My grandmother looked up from her lap and slapped the dream man's beard-gray face. Robo stiffened in my father's lap; my mother caught her mother's hand. The singer shoved back his chair and jumped to his feet, frightened, or ready to fight someone, but the dream man simply bowed to Grandmother and left the gloomy tearoom. It was as if he'd made a contract with Johanna that was vital but gave neither of them any joy. My father wrote something in the giant pad.

  "Well, wasn't that some story?" said Herr Theobald. "Ha ha." He rumpled Robo's hair -- something Robo always hated.

  "Herr Theobald," my mother said, still holding Johanna's hand, "my father died of a respiratory infection?

  "Oh, dear," said Herr Theobald. "I'm sorry, meine Frau," he told Grandmother, but old Johanna would not speak to him.

  We took Grandmother out to eat in a Class A restaurant, but she hardly touched her food. "That person was a gypsy," she told us, "a satanic being, and a Hungarian."

  "Please, Mother," my mother said. "He couldn't have known about Father."

  "He knew more than you know," Grandmother snapped.

  "The schnitzel is excellent," Father said, writing in the pad. "The Gumpoldskirchner is just right with it."

  "The Kalbsnieren are fine," I said.

  "The eggs are okay," said Robo.

  Grandmother said nothing until we returned to the Pension Grillparzer, where we noticed that the door to the W.C. was hung a foot or more off the floor, so that it resembled the bottom half of an American toilet-stall door or a saloon door in the Western movies. "I'm certainly glad I used the W.C. at the restaurant," Grandmother said. "How revolting! I shall try to pass the night without exposing myself where every passerby can peer at my ankles!"

  In our family room Father said, "Didn't Johanna live in a castle? Once upon a time, I thought she and Grandpa rented some castle."

  "Yes, it was before I was born," Mother said. "They rented Schloss Katzelsdorf. I saw the photographs."

  "Well, that's why the Hungarian's dream upset her," Father said.

  "Someone is riding a bike in the hall," Robo said. "I saw a wheel go by -- under our door."

  "Robo, go to sleep," Mother said.

  "It went 'squeak squeak,'" Robo said.

  "Goodnight, boys," said Father.

  "If you can talk, we can talk," I said.

  "Then talk to each other," Father said. "I'm talking to your mother."

  "I want to go to sleep," Mother said. "I wish no one would talk."

  We tried. Perhaps we slept. Then Robo whispered to me that he had to use the W.C.

  "You know where it is," I said.

  Robo went out the door, leaving it slightly open; I heard him walk down the corridor, brushing his hand along the wall. He was back very quickly.

  "There's someone in the W.C," he said.

  "Wait for them to finish," I said.

  "The light wasn't on," Robo said, "but I could still see under the door. Someone is in there, in the dark."

  "I prefer the dark myself," I said.

  But Robo insisted on telling me exactly what he'd seen. He said that under the door was a pair of hands.

  "Hands?" I said.

  "Yes, where the feet should have been," Robo said; he claimed that there was a hand on either side of the toilet -- instead of a foot.

  "Get out of here, Robo!" I said.

  "Please come see," he begged. I went down the hall with him but there was no one in the W.C. "They've gone," he said.

  "Walked off on their hands, no doubt," I said. "Go pee. I'll wait for you."

  He went into the W.C. and peed sadly in the dark. When we were almost back to our room together, a small dark man with the same kind of skin and clothes as the dream man who had angered Grandmother passed us in the hall. He winked at us, and smiled; I had to notice that he was walking on his hands.

  "You see?" Robo whispered to me. We went into our room and shut the door.

  "What is it?" Mother asked.

  "A man walking on his hands," I said.

  "A man peeing on his hands," Robo said.

  "Class C," Father murmured in his sleep; Father often dreamed that he was making notes in the giant pad.

  "We'll talk about it in the morning," Mother said. "He was probably just an acrobat who was showing off for you, because you're a kid," I told Robo.

  "How did he know I was a kid when he was in the W.C.?" Robo asked me.

  "Go to sleep," Mother whispered.

  Then we heard Grandmother scream down the hall.

  Mother put on her pretty green dressing gown; Father put on his bathrobe and glasses. I pulled on a pair of pants, over my pajamas. Robo was in the hall first. We saw the light coming from under the W.C. door. Grandmother was screaming rhythmically in there.

  "Here we are!" I called to her.

  "Mother, what is it?" my mother asked.

  We gathered in the broad slot of light. We could see Grandmother's mauve slippers and her porcelain-white ankles under the door. She stopped screaming. "I heard whispers when I was in my bed," she said.

  "It was Robo and me," I told her.

  "Then, when everyone seemed to have gone, I came into the W.C," Johanna said. "I left the light off. I was very quiet," she told us. "Then I saw and heard the wheel."

  "The wheel?" Father asked.

  "A wheel went by the door a few times," Grandmother said. "It rolled by and came back and rolled by again."

  Father made his fingers roll like wheels alongside his head; he made a face at Mother. "Somebody needs a new set of wheels," he whispered, but Mother looked crossly at him.

  "I turned on the light," Grandmother said, "and the wheel went away."

  "I told you there was a bike in the hall," said Robo.

  "Shut up, Robo," Father said.

  "No, it was not a bicycle," Grandmother said. "There was only one wheel."

  Father was making his hands go crazy beside his head. "She's got a wheel or two missing," he hissed at my mother, but she cuffed him and knocked his glasses askew on his face.

  "Then someone came and looked under the door," Grandmother said, "and that is when I screamed."

  "Someone?" said Father.

  "I saw his hands, a man's hands -- there was hair on his knuckles," Grandmother said. "His hands were on the rug right outside the door. He must have been looking up at me."

  "No, Grandmother," I said. "I think he was just standing out here on his hands."

  "Don't be fresh," my mother said.

  "But we saw a man walking on his hands," Robo said.

  "You did not," Father said.

  "We did!' I said.

  "We're going to wake everyone up," Mother cautioned us.

  The toilet flushed and Grandmother shuffled out the door with only a little of her former dignity intact. She was wearing a gown over a gown over a gown; her neck was very long and her face was creamed white. Grandmother looked like a troubled goose. "He was evil and vile," she said to us. "He knew terrible magic."

  "The man who looked at you?" Mother asked.

  "That man who told my dream," Grandmother said. Now a tear made its way through her furrows of face cream. "That was my dream," she said, "and he told everyone. It is unspeakable that he even knew it," she hissed to us. "My dream -- of Charlemagne's horses and soldiers -- I am the only one who should know it. I had that dream before you were born," she told Mother. "And that vile, evil magic man told my dream as if it were news.

  "I never even told your father all there was to that dream. I was never sure that it was a dream. And now there are men on their hands, and their knuckles are hairy, and there are magic wheels. I want the boys to sleep with me."

  So that was how Robo and I came to share the large family room, far away from the W.C, with Grandmother, who lay on my mother's and father's pillows with her creamed face shining like the face of a wet gh
ost. Robo lay awake watching her. I do not think Johanna slept very well; I imagine she was dreaming her dream of death again -- reliving the last winter of Charlemagne's cold soldiers with their strange metal clothes covered with frost and their armor frozen shut.

  When it was obvious that I had to go to the W.C, Robo's round, bright eyes followed me to the door.

  There was someone in the W.C. There was no light shining from under the door, but there was a unicycle parked against the wall outside. Its rider sat in the dark W.C; the toilet was flushing over and over again -- like a child, the unicyclist was not giving the tank time to refill.

  I went closer to the gap under the W.C. door, but the occupant was not standing on his or her hands. I saw what were clearly feet, in almost the expected position, but the feet did not touch the floor; their soles tilted up to me -- dark, bruise-colored pads. They were huge feet attached to short, furry shins. They were a bear's feet, only there were no claws. A bear's claws are not retractable, like a cat's; if a bear had claws, you would see them. Here, then, was an impostor in a bear suit, or a declawed bear. A domestic bear, perhaps. At least -- by its presence in the W.C. -- a housebroken bear. For by its smell I could tell it was no man in a bear suit; it was all bear. It was real bear.

  I backed into the door of Grandmother's former room, behind which my father lurked, waiting for further disturbances. He snapped open the door and I fell inside, frightening us both. Mother sat up in bed and pulled the feather quilt over her head. "Got him!" Father cried, dropping down on me. The floor trembled; the bear's unicycle slipped against the wall and fell into the door of the W.C, out of which the bear suddenly shambled, stumbling over its unicycle and lunging for its balance. Worriedly, it stared across the hall, through the open door, at Father sitting on my chest. It picked up the unicycle in its front paws. "Grauf?" said the bear. Father slammed the door.

  Down the hall we heard a woman call, "Where are you, Duna?"

  "Harfl" the bear said.

  Father and I heard the woman come closer. She said, "Oh, Duna, practicing again? Always practicing! But it's better in the daytime." The bear said nothing. Father opened the door.

  "Don't let anyone else in," Mother said, still under the featherbed.

  In the hall a pretty, aging woman stood beside the bear, who now balanced in place on its unicycle, one huge paw on the woman's shoulder. She wore a vivid red turban and a long wrap-around dress that resembled a curtain. Perched on her high bosom was a necklace strung with bear claws; her earrings touched the shoulder of her curtain-dress and her other, bare shoulder where my father and I stared at her fetching mole. "Good evening," she said to Father. "I'm sorry if we've disturbed you. Duna is forbidden to practice at night -- but he loves his work."

  The bear muttered, pedaling away from the woman. The bear had very good balance but he was careless; he brushed against the walls of the hall and touched the photographs of the speed-skating teams with his paws. The woman, bowing away from Father, went after the bear calling, "Duna, Duna," and straightening the photographs as she followed him down the hall.

  "Duna is the Hungarian word for the Danube," Father told me. "That bear is named after our beloved Donau." Sometimes it seemed to surprise my family that the Hungarians could love a river, too.

  "Is the bear a real bear?" Mother asked -- still under the featherbed -- but I left Father to explain it all to her. I knew that in the morning Herr Theobald would have much to explain, and I would hear everything reviewed at that time.

  I went across the hall to the W.C. My task there was hurried by the bear's lingering odor, and by my suspicion of bear hair on everything; it was only my suspicion, though, for the bear had left everything quite tidy -- or at least neat for a bear.

  "I saw the bear," I whispered to Robo, back in our room, but Robo had crept into Grandmother's bed and had fallen asleep beside her. Old Johanna was awake, however.

  "I saw fewer and fewer soldiers," she said. "The last time they came there were only nine of them. Everyone looked so hungry; they must have eaten the extra horses. It was so cold. Of course I wanted to help them! But we weren't alive at the same time; how could I help them if I wasn't even born? Of course I knew they would die! But it took such a long time.

  "The last time they came, the fountain was frozen. They used their swords and their long pikes to break the ice into chunks. They built a fire and melted the ice in a pot. They took bones from their saddlebags -- bones of all kinds -- and threw them in the soup. It must have been a very thin broth because the bones had long ago been gnawed clean. I don't know what bones they were. Rabbits, I suppose, and maybe a deer or a wild boar. Maybe the extra horses. I do not choose to think," said Grandmother, "that they were the bones of the missing soldiers."

  "Go to sleep, Grandmother," I said.

  "Don't worry about the bear," she said.

  In the breakfast room of the Pension Grillparzer we confronted Herr Theobald with the menagerie of his other guests who had disrupted our evening. I knew that (as never before) my father was planning to reveal himself as a Tourist Bureau spy.

  "Men walking about on their hands," said Father.

  "Men looking under the door of the W.C," said Grandmother.

  "That man," I said, and pointed to the small, sulking fellow at the corner table, seated for breakfast with his cohorts -- the dream man and the Hungarian singer.

  "He does it for a living," Herr Theobald told us, and as if to demonstrate that this was so, the man who stood on his hands began to stand on his hands.

  "Make him stop that," Father said. "We know he can do it."

  "But did you know that he can't do it any other way?" the dream man asked suddenly. "Did you know that his legs were useless? He has no shinbones. It is wonderful that he can walk on his hands! Otherwise, he wouldn't walk at all." The man, although it was clearly hard to do while standing on his hands, nodded his head.

  "Please sit down," Mother said.

  "It is perfectly all right to be crippled," Grandmother said, boldly. "But you are evil," she told the dream man. "You know things you have no right to know. He knew my dream," she told Herr Theobald, as if she were reporting a theft from her room.

  "He is a little evil, I know," Theobald admitted. "But not usually! And he behaves better and better. He can't help what he knows."

  "I was just trying to straighten you out," the dream man told Grandmother. "I thought it would do you good. Your husband has been dead quite a while, after all, and it's about time you stopped making so much of that dream. You're not the only person who's had such a dream."

  "Stop it," Grandmother said.

  "Well, you ought to know," said the dream man.

  "No, be quiet, please," Herr Theobald told him.

  "I am from the Tourist Bureau," Father announced, probably because he couldn't think of anything else to say.

  "Oh my God!" Herr Theobald said.

  "It's not Theobald's fault," said the singer. "It's our fault. He's nice to put up with us, though it costs him his reputation."

  "They married my sister," Theobald told us. "They are family, you see. What can I do?"

  "'They' married your sister?" Mother said.

  "Well, she married me first," said the dream man.

  "And then she heard me sing!" the singer said.

  "She's never been married to the other one," Theobald said, and everyone looked apologetically toward the man who could only walk on his hands.

  Theobald said, "They were once a circus act, but politics got them in trouble."

  "We were the best in Hungary," said the singer. "You ever hear of the Circus Szolnok?"

  "No, I'm afraid not," Father said, seriously.

  "We played in Miskolc, in Szeged, in Debrecen," said the dream man.

  "Twice in Szeged," the singer said.

  "We would have made it to Budapest if it hadn't been for the Russians," said the man who walked on his hands.

  "Yes, it was the Russians who removed his shinbones!" said
the dream man.

  "Tell the truth," the singer said. "He was born without shinbones. But it's true that we couldn't get along with the Russians."

  "They tried to jail the bear," said the dream man.

  "Tell the truth," Theobald said.

  "We rescued his sister from them," said the man who walked on his hands.

  "So of course I must put them up," said Herr Theobald, "and they work as hard as they can. But who's interested in their act in this country? It's a Hungarian thing. There's no tradition of bears on unicycles here," Theobald told us. "And the damn dreams mean nothing to us Viennese."

  "Tell the truth," said the dream man. "It is because I have told the wrong dreams. We worked a nightclub on the Karntnerstrasse, but then we got banned."

  "You should never have told that dream," the singer said gravely.

  "Well, it was your wife's responsibility, too!" the dream man said.

  "She was your wife, then," the singer said.

  "Please stop it," Theobald begged.

  "We get to do the balls for children's diseases," the dream man said. "And some of the state hospitals -- especially at Christmas."

  "If you would only do more with the bear," Herr Theobald advised them.

  "Speak to your sister about that," said the singer. "It's her bear -- she's trained him, she's let him get lazy and sloppy and full of bad habits."

  "He is the only one of you who never makes fun of me," said the man who could only walk on his hands.

  "I would like to leave all this," Grandmother said. "This is, for me, an awful experience."

  "Please, dear lady," Herr Theobald said, "we only wanted to show you that we meant no offense. These are hard times. I need the B rating to attract more tourists, and I can't -- in my heart -- throw out the Circus Szolnok."

  "In his heart, my ass!" said the dream man. "He's afraid of his sister. He wouldn't dream of throwing us out."

  "If he dreamed it, you would know it!" cried the man on his hands.