The World According to Garp

circus; not a very good kind, either, he imagined, but a circus with no other place to stay. No other place would have them.

In the world of ratings, the whole thing would be a kind of C experience. This kind of imagining got Garp started, slowly, in what he thought was a real direction; he was right about that, but it was too new to write it down—or even to write about it. Anyway, the more he wrote to Helen the less he wrote in other, important ways: and he couldn't discuss this with his mother: imagination was not her greatest strength. Of course, he'd have felt foolish discussing any of this with Charlotte.

Garp often met Charlotte at the Naschmarkt on Saturdays. They shopped and sometimes they ate lunch together in a Serbian place not far from the Stadtpark. On these occasions Charlotte paid for herself. At one such lunch Garp confessed to her that the first-district rate was hard for him to pay regularly without admitting to his mother where this steady flow of money was going. Charlotte was angry at him for bringing up business when she wasn't working. She would have been angrier if he'd admitted that he was seeing less of her, professionally, because the sixth-district prices of someone whom he met at the corner of Karl Schweighofergasse and Mariahilfer were much easier to conceal from Jenny.

Charlotte had a low opinion of her colleagues who operated out of the first district. She'd once told Garp she was planning to retire at the first sign that her first-district appeal was slipping. She would never do business in the outer districts. She had a lot of money saved, she told him, and she was going to move to Munich (where nobody knew she was a whore) and marry a young doctor who could take care of her, in every way, until she died: it was unnecessary for her to explain to Garp that she had always appealed to younger men, but Garp thoroughly resented her assumption that doctors were—in the long run—desirable. It may be this early exposure to the desirability of doctors that caused Garp, in his literary career, often to people his novels and stories with such unlikely characters from the medical profession. If so, it didn't occur to him until later. There is no doctor in “The Pension Grillparzer.” In this beginning there is very little about death, either, although that is the subject the story would come to. In the beginning Garp had only a dream of death, but it was a whale of a dream and he gave it to the oldest person alive in his story: a grandmother. Garp guessed this meant that she would be the first to die.

The Pension Grillparzer

My father worked for the Austrian Tourist Bureau. It was my mother's idea that our family travel with him when he went on the road as a Tourist Bureau spy. My mother and brother and I would accompany him on his secretive missions to uncover the discourtesy, the dust, the badly cooked food, the shortcuts taken by Austrian restaurants and hotels and pensions. We were instructed to create difficulties whenever we could, never to order exactly what was on the menu, to imitate a foreigner's odd requests—the hours we would like to have our baths, the need for aspirin and directions to the zoo. We were instructed to be civilized but troublesome; and when the visit was over, we reported to my father in the car.

My mother would say, “The hairdresser is always closed in the morning. But they make suitable recommendations outside. I guess it's all right, provided they don't claim to have a hairdresser actually in the hotel.”

“Well, they do claim it,” my father would say. He'd note this in a giant pad.

I was always the driver. I said, “The car is parked off the street, but someone put fourteen kilometers on the gauge between the time we handed it over to the doorman and picked it up at the hotel garage.”

“That is a matter to report directly to the management,” my father said, jotting it down.

“The toilet leaked,” I said.

“I couldn't open the door to the W.C.,” said my brother, Robo. “Robo,” Mother said, “you always have trouble with doors.”

“Was that supposed to be Class C ?” I asked.

“I'm afraid not,” Father said, “it is still listed as Class B.” We drove for a short while in silence; our most serious judgment concerned changing a hotel's or a pension's rating. We did not suggest reclassification frivolously.

“I think this calls for a letter to the management,” Mother suggested. “Not too nice a letter, but not a really rough one. Just state the facts.”

“Yes, I rather liked him,” Father said. He always made a point of getting to meet the managers.

“Don't forget the business of them driving our car,” I said. “That's really unforgivable.”

“And the eggs were bad,” said Robo; he was not yet ten and his judgments were not considered seriously.

We became a far harsher team of evaluators when my grandfather died and we inherited Grandmother—my mother's mother, who thereafter accompanied us on our travels. A regal dame, Johanna was accustomed to Class A travel, and my father's duties more frequently called for investigations of Class B and Class C lodgings. They were the places, the B and C hotels (and the pensions), that most interested the tourists. At restaurants we did a little better. People who couldn't afford the classy places to sleep were still interested in the best places to eat.

“I shall not have dubious food tested on me,” Johanna told us. “This strange employment may give you all glee about having free vacations, but I can see there is a terrible price paid: the anxiety of not knowing what sort of quarters you'll have for the night. Americans may find it charming that we still have rooms without private baths and toilets, but I am an old woman and I'm not charmed by walking down a public corridor in search of cleanliness and my relievement. Anxiety is only half of it. Actual diseases are possible—and not only from food. If the bed is questionable, I promise I shan't put my head down. And the children are young and impressionable; you should think of the clientele in some of these lodgings and seriously ask yourselves about the influences.” My mother and father nodded; they said nothing. “Slow down!” Grandmother said sharply to me. “You're just a young boy who likes to show off.” I slowed down. “Vienna,” Grandmother sighed. “In Vienna I always stayed at the Ambassador.”

“Johanna, the Ambassador is not under investigation,” Father said.

“I should think not,” Johanna said. “I suppose we're not even headed toward a Class A place?”

“Well, it's a B trip,” my father admitted. “For the most part.”

“I trust,” Grandmother said, “that you mean there is one A place en route?”

“No,” Father admitted. “There is one C place.”

“It's okay,” Robo said. “There are fights in Class C.”

“I should imagine so,” Johanna said.

“It's a Class C pension, very small,” Father said, as if the size of the place forgave it.

“And they're applying for a B,” said Mother.

“But there have been some complaints,” I added.

“I'm sure there have,” Johanna said.

“And animals,” I added. My mother gave me a look.

“Animals?” said Johanna.

“Animals,” I admitted.

“A suspicion of animals,” my mother corrected me. “Yes, be fair,” Father said.

“Oh, wonderful!” Grandmother said. “A suspicion of animals. Their hair on the rugs? Their terrible waste in the corners? Did you know that my asthma reacts, severely, to any room in which there has recently been a cat?”

“The complaint was not about cats,” I said. My mother elbowed me sharply. “Dogs?” Johanna said. “Rabid dogs! Biting you on the way to the bathroom.”

“No,” I said. “Not dogs.”

“Bears!” Robo cried.

But my mother said, “We don't know for sure about the bear, Robo.”

“This isn't serious,” Johanna said.

“Of course it's not serious!” Father said. “How could there be bears in a pension?”

“There was a letter saying so,” I said. “Of course, the Tourist Bureau assumed it was a crank complaint. But then there was another sighting—and a second letter claiming there had been a bear.”

My father used the rear-view mirror to scowl at me, but I thought that if we were all supposed to be in on the investigation, it would be wise to have Grandmother on her toes.

“It's probably not a real bear,” Robo said, with obvious disappointment.

“A man in a bear suit!” Johanna cried. “What unheard-of perversion is that? A