John Irving - The World According to Garp

“It is the real thing,” said the young whore who spoke English; she obviously admired everything about the older prostitute.

“Of course, you can buy something, not quite so expensive almost anywhere,” the pockmarked woman told Garp. “Go to Stef's,” she said, in a queer slang that Garp barely understood, and she pointed up the Kдrntnerstrasse. But Jenny didn't look and Garp only nodded and continued to gaze at the older woman's long bare fingers twinkling with rings.

“My hands are cold,” she said softly to Garp, and Garp took the muff from Jenny and gave it back to the whore. Jenny seemed in a daze.

“Let's talk to her,” Jenny told Garp. “I want to ask her about it.”

“About what , Mom?” Garp said. “Jesus Christ.”

“What we were talking about,” Jenny said. “I want to ask her about lust .”

The two older whores looked at the one who knew English but her English was not fast enough to catch any of this.

“It's cold, Mom,” Garp complained. “And it's late. Let's just go home.”

“Tell her we want to go to some place warm, just to sit and talk,” Jenny said. “She'll let us pay her for that , won't she?”

“I suppose so,” Garp groaned. “Mom, she doesn't know anything about lust. They probably don't feel anything very much like that.”

“I want to know about male lust,” Jenny said. “About your lust. She must know something about that .”

“For God's sake, Mom!” Garp said.

“ Was macht's? ” the lovely prostitute asked him. “What's the matter?” she asked. “What's going on here? Does she want to buy the muff?”

“No, no,” Garp said. “She wants to buy you .”

The older whore looked stunned; the whore with the pockmark laughed.

“No, no,” Garp explained. “Just to talk . My mother just wants to ask you some questions.”

“It's cold,” the whore told him, suspiciously.

“Some place inside?” Garp suggested. “Any place you like.”

“Ask her what she charges,” Jenny said.

“ Wie viel kostet? ” mumbled Garp.

“It costs five hundred schillings,” the whore said, “usually.” Garp had to explain to Jenny that this was about twenty dollars. Jenny Fields would live for more than a year in Austria and never learn the numbers, in German, or the money system.

“Twenty dollars, just to talk?” Jenny said.

“No, no, Mom,” Garp said, “that's for the usual .” Jenny thought. Was twenty dollars a lot for the usual? She didn't know.

“Tell her we'll give her ten,” Jenny said, but the whore looked doubtful—as if talk, for her, might be more difficult than the “usual.” Her indecision was influenced by more than price, however; she didn't trust Garp and Jenny. She asked the young whore who spoke English if they were British or American. Americans, she was told—this seemed to relieve her, slightly.

“The British are often perverse,” she told Garp, simply. “Americans are usually ordinary.”

“We just want to talk with you,” Garp insisted, but he could see that the prostitute firmly imagined some mother-and-son act of monstrous oddity.

“Two hundred and fifty schillings,” the lady with the mink muff finally agreed. “And you buy my coffee.”

So they went to the place all the whores went to get warm, a tiny bar with miniature tables; the phone rang all the time but only a few men lurked sullenly by the coat rack, looking the women over. There was some rule that the women could not be approached when they were in this bar; the bar was a kind of home base, a time-out zone.

“Ask her how old she is,” Jenny said to Garp; but when he asked her, the woman softly shut her eyes and shook her head. “Okay,” said Jenny, “ask her why she thinks men like her.” Garp rolled his eyes. “Well, you do like her?” Jenny asked him. Garp said he did. “Well, what is it about her that you want ?” Jenny asked him. “I don't mean just her sex parts, I mean is there something else that's satisfying? Something to imagine, something to think about, some kind of aura ?” Jenny asked.

“Why don't you pay me two hundred and fifty schillings and not ask her any questions, Mom,” Garp said tiredly.

“Don't be fresh,” Jenny said. “I want to know if it degrades her to feel wanted in that way—and then to be had in that way, I suppose—or whether she thinks it only degrades the men?” Garp struggled to translate this. The woman appeared to think very seriously about it; or else she didn't understand the question, or Garp's German.

“I don't know,” she finally said.

“I have other questions,” Jenny said.

For an hour, it continued. When the whore said she had to get back to work, Jenny seemed neither satisfied nor disappointed by the interview's lack of concrete results; she just seemed insatiably curious. Garp had never wanted anyone as much as he wanted the woman.

“Do you want her?” Jenny asked him, so suddenly that he couldn't lie. “I mean, after all this—and looking at her, and talking with her—do you really want to have sex with her, too?”

“Of course, Mom,” Garp said, miserably. Jenny looked no closer to understanding lust than she was before dinner. She looked puzzled and surprised at her son.

“All right,” she said. She handed him the 250 schillings that they owed the woman, and another 500 schillings. “You do what you want to do,” she told him, “or what you have to do, I guess. But please take me home first.”

The whore had watched the money change hands; she had an eye for recognizing the correct amount. “Look,” she said to Garp, and touched his hand with her fingers, as cold as her rings. “It's all right with me if your mother wants to buy me for you, but she can't come along with us. I will not have her watch us, absolutely not. I'm still a Catholic, believe it or not,” she said, “and if you want anything funny like that, you'll have to ask Tina.”

Garp wondered who Tina was; he gave a shudder at the thought that nothing must be too “funny” for her. “I'm going to take my mother home,” Garp told the beautiful woman. “And I won't be back to see you.” But she smiled at him and he thought his erection would burst through his pocket of loose schillings and worthless groschen. Just one of her perfect teeth—but it was a big front upper tooth—was all gold.

In the taxi (that Garp agreed to take home) Garp explained to his mother the Viennese system of prostitution. Jenny was not surprised to hear that prostitution was legal: she was surprised to learn that it was illegal in so many other places. “Why shouldn't it be legal?” she asked. “Why can't a woman use her body the way she wants to? If someone wants to pay for it, it's just one more crummy deal. Is twenty dollars a lot of money for it?”

“No, that's pretty good,” Garp said. “At least, it's a very low price for the good-looking ones.”

Jenny slapped him. “You know all about it!” she said. Then she said she was sorry—she had never struck him before, she just didn't understand this fucking lust, lust, lust! at all.

At the Schwindgasse apartment, Garp made a point of not going out: in fact, he was in his own bed and asleep before Jenny, who paced through her manuscript pages in her wild room. A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.

Garp dreamed of other prostitutes; he had visited two or three of them in Vienna—but he had never paid the first-district prices. The next evening, after an early supper at the Schwindgasse, Garp went to see the woman with the mink muff streaked with light.