“The dog killed the cat?” Helen asked.
“He bit him in half,” Garp said.
“In a city in Germany?” Helen said.
“No, Austria,” Garp said. “It was Vienna. I never lived in Germany.”
“But how could the dog have been in the war?” Helen asked. “He'd have been twenty years old by the time you got there.”
“The dog wasn't in the war,” Garp said. “He was just a dog. His owner had been in the war—the man who owned the cafй. That's why he knew how to train the dog. He trained him to kill anybody who walked in the cafй when it was dark outside. When it was light outside, anybody could walk in; when it was dark, even the master couldn't get in.”
“That's nice!” Helen said. “Suppose there was a fire? There seems to me to be a number of drawbacks to that method.”
“It's a war method, apparently,” Garp said.
“Well,” Helen said, “it makes a better story than the dog's being in the war.”
“You think so, really?” Garp asked her. It seemed to her that he was alert for the first time during their conversation. “That's interesting,” he said, “because I just this minute made it up.”
“About the owner's being in the war?” Helen asked.
“Well, more than that,” Garp admitted.
“What part of the story did you make up?” Helen asked him.
“All of it,” he said.
They were in bed together and Helen lay quietly there, knowing that this was one of his trickier moments.
“Well, almost all of it,” he added.
Garp never tired of playing this game, though Helen certainly tired of it. He would wait for her to ask: Which of it? Which of it is true, which of it is made up? Then he would say to her that it didn't matter; she should just tell him what she didn't believe. Then he would change that part. Every part she believed was true; every part she didn't believe needed work. If she believed the whole thing, then the whole thing was true. He was very ruthless as a storyteller, Helen knew. If the truth suited the story, he would reveal it without embarrassment; but if any truth was unsuccessful in a story, he would think nothing of changing it.
“When you're through playing around,” she said, “I'd just be curious to know what really happened.”
“Well, really,” said Garp, “the dog was a beagle.”
“A beagle!”
“Well, actually, a schnauzer. He was tied up in the alley all day, but not to an army truck.”
“To a Volkswagen?” Helen guessed.
“To a garbage sled,” Garp said. “The sled was used to pull the garbage cans out to the sidewalk in the winter, but the schnauzer, of course, was too small and weak to pull it—at any time of the year.”
“And the cafй owner?” Helen asked. “He was not in the war?”
“She,” Garp said. “She was a widow.”
“Her husband had been killed in the war?” Helen guessed.
“She was a young widow,” Garp said. “Her husband had been killed” crossing the street. She was very attached to the dog, which her husband had given her for their first anniversary. But her new landlady would not allow dogs in her apartment, so the widow set the dog loose in the cafй each night.
“It was a spooky, empty space and the dog was nervous in there; in fact, he crapped all night long. People would stop and peer in the window and laugh at all the messes the dog made. This laughter made the dog more nervous, so he crapped more. In the morning the widow came early—to air out the place and clean up the messes—and she spanked the dog with a newspaper and dragged him cowering out into the alley, where he was tied up to the garbage sled all day.”
“And there was no cat?” Helen asked.
“Oh, there were lots of cats,” Garp said. “They came into the alley because of the garbage cans for the cafй. The dog would never touch the garbage, because he was afraid of the widow, and the dog was terrified of cats; whenever there was a cat in the alley, raiding the garbage cans, the dog crawled under the garbage sled and hid there until the cat was gone.”
“My God,” said Helen. “So there was no teasing, either?”
“There is always teasing,” Garp said, solemnly. “There was a little girl who would come to the end of the alley and call the dog out to the sidewalk, except that the dog's chain wouldn't reach the sidewalk and the dog would yap! and yap! and yap! at the little girl, who stood on the sidewalk and called, “Come on, come on,” until someone rolled down a window and yelled at her to leave the poor mutt alone.”
“You were there?” Helen said.
“We were there,” Garp said. “Every day my mother wrote in a room, the only window of which faced that alley. That dog's yapping drove her nuts.”
“So Jenny moved the garbage sled,” Helen said, “and the dog ate the little girl, whose parents complained to the police, who had the dog put to sleep. And you, of course, were a great comfort to the grieving widow, who was perhaps in her early forties.”
“Her late thirties,” Garp said. “But that's not how it happened.”
“What happened?” Helen asked.
“One night, in the cafй,” Garp said, “the dog had a stroke. A number of people claimed to have been responsible for scaring the dog so badly that they caused his stroke. There was a kind of competition in regard to this in the neighborhood. They were always doing things like creeping up to the cafй and hurling themselves against the windows and doors, shrieking like huge cats—creating a frenzy of bowel movements by the frightened dog.”
“The stroke killed the dog, I hope,” Helen said.
“Not quite,” Garp said. “The stroke paralyzed the dog's hindquarters, so that he could only move his front end and wag his head. The widow, however, clung to the life of this wretched dog as she clung to the memory of her late husband, and she had a carpenter, with whom she was sleeping, build a little cart for the dog's rear end. The cart had wheels on it, so the dog just walked on his front legs and towed his dead hindquarters around on the little cart.”
“My God,” Helen said.
“You wouldn't believe the noise of those little wheels,” Garp said.
“Probably not,” said Helen.
“Mother claimed she couldn't hear it,” Garp said, “but the rolling sound was so pathetic, it was worse than the dog's yapping at the stupid little girl. And the dog couldn't turn a corner very well, without skidding. He'd hop along and then turn, and his rear wheels would slide out beside him, faster than he could keep hopping, and he'd go into a roll. When he was on his side, he couldn't get up again. It seemed I was the only one to see him in this predicament—at least, I was always the one who went into the alley and tipped him upright again. As soon as he was back on his wheels, he'd try to bite me,” Garp said, “but he was easy to outrun.”
“So one day,” Helen said, “you untied the schnauzer, and he ran into the street without looking. No, excuse me: he rolled into the street without looking. And everyone's troubles were over. The widow and the carpenter were married.”
“Not so,” said Garp.
“I want the truth,” Helen said, sleepily. “What happened to the damn schnauzer?”
“I don't know,” Garp said. “Mother and I came back to this country, and you know the rest.”
Helen, giving in to sleep, knew that only her silence might get Garp to reveal himself. She knew that this story might be as made up as the other versions, or that the other versions might be largely true—even that this one might be largely true. Any combination was possible with Garp.