Tales From Gavagan's Bar Read Online Free PDF Page B

mouth.
     
                  I don't care who it is, they can't talk to me like that. [Mrs. Vacarescu emitted an audible hiccup and drowned it in more Tokay.] So I told him to shut his goddam trap himself because I'm a lady. Then we had an argument that lasted all day, and Putzi slams the door and says he won't come back till he pleases. Not till he had his supper, though—hah! You can bet he gets his belly full first.
     
                  So I sat down with my sewing, and I said to myself, I'll fix him this time, and when it got real late, I went around to lock all the windows real good and bolt the door, only when I got out in front, here was this dachshund again. Only this time it had another dachshund with it and anyone can see the other dachshund is a bitch. My dachshund tried to bring the other one in with it, but the other one wouldn't come, so I took it in like before and gave it something to eat, and would you believe it? In the morning there was Putzi again and the dachshund was gone.
     
                  Then I began to think what must have happened. Like I told you, my man comes from Transylvania. You know, in that part of the old country they got people that turn themselves into wolves at night and run all around. Well, Putzi is one of them, that's why he wouldn't be married by no priest, only he don't turn into no wolf, he turns into a dachshund. And when Putzi is a man, he has lousy bad manners, but when he is a dog, ach, he has manners like an archduke!
     
                  It wasn't no use asking him how he done it, because he'd only get mad and start yelling at me. But how he turns from a dog into a man, I do know because of an accident. It is a week after the last time and I was drinking a little schnapps in the evening and I woke up early in the morning, just before sunlight, and here was Putzi the dog scratching at the door to get out. I let him out just as it got light—and right away here was Putzi, my man, red in the eyes and mad enough to chew the paper off the wall. And that other dachshund, the bitch, was just across the street.
     
                  So then I know that if sunlight hits him when he is Putzi the dog, he turns back into a man, but also I find out something not so good, that Putzi the dog is chasing around with this bitch. I will not have my man doing that, even if she is not human, but what can you do? I cannot make him stay in every night, he wouldn't do that. So I think maybe if we can get away from Budapest, the change don't work any more. I went to my father, he owns some Schlepp damp fern —what do you call them?—pugs, on the river, and a little piece of money, and I tell him we have to come to America.
     
                  But when we got here, things were the same, only worse. The trouble I have with that man! All he does is eat, eat, eat, and kick when the food doesn't come fast enough, and in the evening he goes out to the Deutscher Sangerbund and drinks beer and sings songs with a lot of Schwobs half the night. He doesn't turn into no dachshund no more, and I am wishing he did until one night somebody from the Sangerbund brings them all over here to Gavagan's after the Sdngerfest. Then it is just like he used to go to Kettler's Bierstube. The first thing I know it is after midnight and I am sitting waiting for my man to come home when something scratches at the door, and it is Putzi the dog, so good, so gentle.
     
                  So now I am going on my vacation and I don't want him to spoil it by being like Putzi the man. And always he comes here when the Sangerbund is not meeting and changes into a dog again and goes chasing bitches. But this time, no. I will take him with me in this bag, so the sun does not get at him.
     
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                  Mrs. Vacarescu poured the last drops from her bottle of Tokay. It tipped over as she set it back on the table and it rolled to the