The Hotel New Hampshire Part 28

Lilly went and put her head in Franny's lap; she cried there - comfortably, I thought. Franny, of course, knew that I loved her - hopelessly, and too much - and so I didn't have to make a gesture or say anything to her.

'Well, I don't need a sixteen-year-old straightening me out,' said Susie the bear, but her bear's head was off; she held it in her big paws. Her ravaged complexion, her hurt eyes, her too-small mouth betrayed her. She put her bear's head back on; that was her only authority.

The student, Miss Miscarriage, serious and well intentioned, seemed at a loss for words. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I don't know.'

'Say it in German,' Frank encouraged her.

'Just spit it out any way you can,' Franny said.

'Well,' Fehlgeburt said. 'That pa.s.sage. That lovely pa.s.sage, that ending ending - to - to The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby - that's what I mean,' she said. - that's what I mean,' she said.

'Get to it, Fehlgeburt,' Franny said. 'Spit it out.'

'Well,' Fehlgeburt said. 'I don't know, but - somehow - it makes me want to go to the United States. I mean, it's against my politics - your country - I know that. But that ending ending, all of it - somehow - is just so beautiful beautiful. It makes me want to be be there. I mean, there's no there. I mean, there's no sense sense to it, but I would just like to be in the United States.' to it, but I would just like to be in the United States.'

'So you think you'd you'd like to be there?' Franny said. 'Well, I wish we'd never left.' like to be there?' Franny said. 'Well, I wish we'd never left.'

'Can we go back, Franny?' Lilly asked.

'We'll have to ask Father,' Frank said.

'Oh boy,' Franny said. And I could see her imagining that moment, waltzing a little reality into Father's dreams.

'Your country, if you'll forgive me,' said one of the other radicals-the one they called simply Arbeiter (Arbeiter means 'worker' in German), 'your country is really a means 'worker' in German), 'your country is really a criminal criminal place,' Arbeiter said. 'If you'll forgive me,' he added, 'your country is the ultimate triumph of corporate creativity, which means it is a country controlled by the place,' Arbeiter said. 'If you'll forgive me,' he added, 'your country is the ultimate triumph of corporate creativity, which means it is a country controlled by the group group-thinking of corporations. These corporations are without humanity because there is no one personally responsible for their use of power; a corporation is like a computer with profit as its source of energy - and profit as its necessary fuel. The United States is - you'll forgive me - quite the worst country in the world for a humanist to live in, I think.'

'f.u.c.k what you think,' Franny said. 'You raving a.s.shole,' she said. 'You sound sound like a computer.' like a computer.'

'You think like a transmission,' Frank told Arbeiter. 'Four forward gears - at predetermined speeds. One speed for reverse.'

Arbeiter stared. His English was a little plodding - his mind, it would occur to me, later, was about as versatile as a lawn mower.

'And about as poetic,' Susie the bear would say. No one liked Arbeiter - not even the impressionable Miss Miscarriage. Her weakness - among the radicals - was her fondness for literature, especially for the romance that is American literature. ('Your silly major major, dear,' Schw.a.n.ger always chided her.) But Fehlgeburt's fondness for literature was her strength - to us children. It was the romantic part of her that wasn't quite dead; at least, not yet. In time, G.o.d forgive me, I would help to kill it.

'Literature is for dreamers,' Old Billig would tell poor Fehlgeburt. Old Billig the radical, I mean. Old Billig the wh.o.r.e liked liked dreams; she told Frank once that dreams were dreams; she told Frank once that dreams were all all she liked - her dreams and her 'mementos.' she liked - her dreams and her 'mementos.'

'Study economics, dear,' Schw.a.n.ger told Fehlgeburt - that's what Miss Pregnant told Miss Miscarriage.

'Human usefulness,' Arbeiter lectured to us, 'is directly related to the proportion of the whole population involved in decisions.'

'In the power power,' Old Billig corrected him.

'In the powerful decisions,' Arbeiter said - the two men stabbing like hummingbirds at a single small blossom.

'Bullf.u.c.k,' Franny said. Arbeiter's and Old Billig's English was so bad, it was easy to say things like 'Take it in the ear' to them all the time - they didn't get it. And despite my vow to clean up my language, I was sorely tempted to say these things to them; I had to content myself, vicariously, by listening to Franny speak to them.

'The eventual race war, in America,' Arbeiter told us, 'will be misunderstood. It will actually be a war of cla.s.s stratification.'

'When you fart, Arbeiter,' Franny asked him, 'do the seals in the zoo stop swimming?'

The other radicals were rarely a part of our group discussions. One spent himself on the typewriters; the other, on the single automobile that the Symposium on East-West Relations owned among themselves: all six of them, they could just fit. The mechanic who labored over the decrepit car - the ever-ailing car, useless in any getaway, we imagined, and probably never to be called upon for a getaway, Father thought - was a sullen, smudge-faced young man in coveralls and a navy-blue streetcar conductor's cap. He belonged to the union and worked the main-line Mariahilfer Stra.s.se Stra.s.senbahn Stra.s.senbahn all night. He looked sleepy and angry every day, and he clanked with tools. Appropriately, he was called Schraubenschlussel - a all night. He looked sleepy and angry every day, and he clanked with tools. Appropriately, he was called Schraubenschlussel - a Schraubenschlussel Schraubenschlussel is a wrench. Frank liked to roll Schraubenschlussel's name off his tongue, to show off, but Franny and Lilly and I insisted on the translation. We called him Wrench. is a wrench. Frank liked to roll Schraubenschlussel's name off his tongue, to show off, but Franny and Lilly and I insisted on the translation. We called him Wrench.

'Hi, Wrench,' Franny would say to him, as he lay under the car, cursing. 'Hope you're keeping your mind clean, Wrench,' Franny would say. Wrench knew no English, and the only thing we knew about Wrench's private life was that he had once asked Susie the bear for a date.

'I mean, virtually n.o.body n.o.body asks me out,' Susie said. 'What an a.s.shole.' asks me out,' Susie said. 'What an a.s.shole.'

'What an a.s.shole,' Franny repeated.

'Well, he's never actually seen seen me, you know,' Susie said. me, you know,' Susie said.

'Does he know you're female female?' Frank asked.

'Jesus G.o.d, Frank,' Franny said.

'Well, I was just curious curious,' Frank said.

'That Wrench is a real weirdo, I can tell,' Franny said. 'Don't go out with him, Susie,' Franny advised the bear.

'Are you kidding?' Susie the bear said. 'Honey, I don't go out. With men men.'

This seemed to settle almost pa.s.sively at Franny's feet, but I could see Frank edging uncomfortably near to, and then away from, its presence.

'Susie is a lesbian, Franny,' I told Franny, when we were alone.

'She didn't exactly say that,' Franny said.

'I think she is,' I said.

'So?' Franny said. 'What's Frank? The grand banana? And Frank's okay.'

'Watch out for Susie, Franny,' I said.

'You think about me too much,' she repeated, and repeated. 'Leave me alone, will you?' Franny asked me. But that was the one thing I could never do.

'All s.e.xual acts actually involve maybe four or five different s.e.xes,' the sixth member of the Symposium on East-West Relations told us. This was such a garbling of Freud - the other other Freud - that we had to beg Frank for a second translation because we couldn't understand the first. Freud - that we had to beg Frank for a second translation because we couldn't understand the first.

'That's what he said,' Frank a.s.sured us. 'All s.e.xual acts actually involve a bunch of different different s.e.xes.' s.e.xes.'

'Four or five?' Franny asked.

'When we do it with a woman,' the man said, 'we are doing it with ourselves as we will become, and with ourselves in our childhoods. And, it goes without saying, with the self our lover will become, and with the self of her childhood.'

' "It goes without saying"?' Frank asked.

'So every time there's one f.u.c.k there's four or five people actually at it?' Franny asked. 'That sounds exhausting.'

'The energy spent on s.e.x is the only energy that doesn't require replacement by the society,' the rather dreamy sixth radical told us. Frank struggled to translate this. 'We replace our s.e.xual energy ourselves,' the man said, looking at Franny as if he'd just said the most profound thing in the world.

'No kidding,' I whispered to Franny, but she seemed a little more mesmerized than I thought she should have been. I was afraid she liked this radical.

His name was Ernst. Just Ernst. A normal name, but just a first name. He didn't argue. He crafted isolated, meaningless sentences, spoke them quietly, went back to the typewriter. When the radicals left the Gasthaus Freud in the late afternoon, they seemed to flounder for hours in the Kaffee Mowatt (across the street) - a dark and dim place with a billiard table and dart boards, and an ever-present solemn row of tea-with-rum drinkers playing chess or reading the newspapers. Ernst rarely joined his colleagues at the Kaffee Mowatt. He wrote and wrote.

If Screaming Annie was the last wh.o.r.e to go home, Ernst was the last radical to leave. If Screaming Annie often met Old Billig when the old radical was arriving for his morning's work, she often met Ernst when Ernst was finally calling it quits. He had an eerie other-worldliness about him; when he talked with Schw.a.n.ger, their two voices would get so quiet that they would almost always end up whispering.

'What's Ernst write?' Franny asked Susie the bear.

'He's a p.o.r.nographer,' Susie said. 'He's asked me out, too. And he's he's seen me.' That quieted us all for a moment. seen me.' That quieted us all for a moment.

'What sort of p.o.r.nography?' Franny asked, cautiously.

'How many sorts are there, honey?' Susie the bear asked. 'The worst,' Susie said. 'Kinky acts. Violence. Degradation.'

'Degradation?' Lilly said.

'Not for you, honey,' Susie said.

'Tell me,' Frank said.

'Too kinky to tell,' Susie said to Frank. 'You know German better than I do, Frank - you you try it.' try it.'

Unfortunately, Frank tried it; Frank translated Ernst's p.o.r.nography for us. I would ask Frank, later, if he thought p.o.r.nography was the start of the real real trouble - if we had been able to ignore it, somehow, would things have gone downhill just the same? But Frank's new religion - his trouble - if we had been able to ignore it, somehow, would things have gone downhill just the same? But Frank's new religion - his anti anti-religion - had already taken over all his answers (to all the questions).

'Downhill?' Frank would say. 'Well, that is the eventual direction, of course - I mean, regardless. If it hadn't been the p.o.r.nography, it would have been something else. The point is we are bound bound to roll downhill. What do you know that rolls to roll downhill. What do you know that rolls up up? What starts the downward progress is immaterial,' Frank would say, with his irritating offhandedness.

'Look at it like this,' Frank would lecture me. 'Why does it seem to take more than half a lifetime to get to be a lousy teen-ager? Why does childhood take forever - when you're a child? Why does it seem to occupy a solid three-quarters of the whole trip? And when it's over, when the kids grow up, when you suddenly have to face facts ... well,' Frank said to me, just recently, 'you know the story. When we were in the first Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re, it seemed we'd go on being thirteen and fourteen and fifteen forever. For f.u.c.king forever forever, as Franny would say. But once we left the first Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re,' Frank said, 'the rest of our lives moved past us twice as fast. That's just how it is,' Frank claimed, smugly. 'For half your life, you're fifteen. Then one day your twenties begin, and they're over the next day. And your thirties blow by you like a weekend spent with pleasant company. And before you know it, you're thinking about being fifteen again.

'Downhill?' Frank would say. 'It's a long up uphill - to that fourteen-year-old, fifteen-year-old, sixteen-year-old time of your life. And from then on,' Frank would say, 'of course it's all downhill. And anyone knows downhill is faster than uphill. It's up up - until fourteen, fifteen, sixteen - then it's - until fourteen, fifteen, sixteen - then it's down down. Down like water,' Frank said, 'down like sand,' he would say.

Frank was seventeen when he translated the p.o.r.nography for us; Franny was sixteen, I was fifteen. Lilly, who was eleven, wasn't old enough to hear. But Lilly insisted that if she was old enough to listen to Fehlgeburt reading The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby, she was old enough to hear Frank translating Ernst. (With typical hypocrisy, Screaming Annie wouldn't allow her daughter, Dark Inge, to hear a word of it.) 'Ernst' was his Gasthaus Freud name, of course. In the p.o.r.nography, he went by a lot of different names. I do not like to describe the p.o.r.nography. Susie the bear told us that Ernst taught a course at the university called 'The History of Eroticism Through Literature,' but Ernst's p.o.r.nography was not erotic. Fehlgeburt had taken Ernst's erotic literature course, and even she admitted that Ernst's own work bore no resemblance to the truly erotic, which is never p.o.r.nographic.

Ernst's p.o.r.nography gave us headaches and dry throats. Frank used to say that even his eyes got dry when he read it; Lilly stopped listening after the first time; and I felt cold, sitting in Frank's room, the dead dressmaker's dummy like a curiously nonjudgmental schoolmistress overhearing Frank's recitation - I got cold from the floor up. I felt something cold pa.s.sing up my pants legs, through the old drafty floor, through the foundation of the building, from the soil beneath all light - where I imagined were the bones from ancient Vindobona, and instruments of torture popular among invading Turks, whips and cudgels and tongue-depressors and dirks, the vogue chambers of horror of the Holy Roman Empire. Because Ernst's p.o.r.nography was not about s.e.x: it was about pain without hope, it was about death without a single memory. It made Susie the bear storm out to take a bath, it made Lilly cry (of course), it made me sick to my stomach (twice), it made Frank hurl one of the books at the dressmaker's dummy (as if the dummy had written it) - it was the one called The Children on the s.h.i.+p to Singapore The Children on the s.h.i.+p to Singapore; they never got to Singapore, not even one precious child.

But all it did to Franny was make her frown. It made her think about Ernst; it made her seek him out and ask him - for starters - why he did it.

'Decadence enhances the revolutionary position,' Ernst told her, slowly - Frank fumbling to translate him exactly. 'Everything that is decadent speeds up the process, the inevitable revolution. At this phase it is necessary to generate disgust. Political disgust, economic disgust, disgust at our inhuman inst.i.tutions, and moral disgust - disgust at ourselves, as we've allowed ourselves to become.'

'Speaking for himself,' I whispered to Franny, but she was just frowning; she was concentrating too hard on him.

'The p.o.r.nographer is, of course, most most disgusting,' Ernst droned on. 'But, you see, if I were a communist, who would I want for the government in power? The most liberal? No. I would desire the most repressive, the most capitalistic, the most disgusting,' Ernst droned on. 'But, you see, if I were a communist, who would I want for the government in power? The most liberal? No. I would desire the most repressive, the most capitalistic, the most anti anti-communist government possible - for then I would thrive. Where would the Left be without the help of the Right? The more stupid and right-wing everything is, the better for the Left.'

'Are you a communist?' Lilly asked Ernst. In Dairy, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Lilly knew, this was not such a hot thing to be.

'That was just a necessary phase,' Ernst said, speaking of communism and himself - and to us children - as if we all all were past history, as if something vast were in motion and we were either being dragged after it or being blown away in its exhaust. 'I am a p.o.r.nographer,' Ernst said, 'because I am serving the revolution. were past history, as if something vast were in motion and we were either being dragged after it or being blown away in its exhaust. 'I am a p.o.r.nographer,' Ernst said, 'because I am serving the revolution. Personally Personally,' he added, with a limp wave of his hand, 'well ... personally personally, I am an aesthete: I reflect upon the erotic. If Schw.a.n.ger mourns for her coffeehouses - if she is sad about her Schlagobers Schlagobers, which the revolution must also consume - I mourn for the erotic, for it must be lost, too. Sometime after the revolution,' Ernst sighed, 'the erotic might reappear, but it will never be the same. In the new world, it will never mean as much.'

'The new world?' Lilly repeated, and Ernst shut his eyes as if this were the refrain in his favorite piece of music, as if with his mind's eye he could already see it, 'the new world,' a totally different planet - brand-new beings dwelling there.

I thought he had rather delicate hands for a revolutionary; his long, slender fingers probably were a help to him, at the typewriter - at his piano, where Ernst played the music for his opera of gigantic change. His cheap and slightly s.h.i.+ny navy-blue suit was usually clean but wrinkled, his white s.h.i.+rts were well washed but never pressed; he wore no tie; when his hair grew too long, he cut it too short. He had an almost athletic face, scrubbed, youthful, determined - a boyish kind of handsomeness. Susie the bear, and Fehlgeburt, told us that Ernst had a reputation as a lady-killer among his students at the university. When he lectured on erotic literature, Miss Miscarriage remarked, Ernst was quite pa.s.sionate, he was even playful; he was not the limp, low-key sort of lazy-weary, sluggish (or at least lethargic) talker he was when his subject was the revolution.

He was quite tall; though not solid, he was not frail, either. When I saw him hunch his shoulders, and turn the collar of his suit jacket up - about to go home from the Gasthaus Freud, after a no-doubt saddening and disgusting day's work - I was struck how in profile he reminded me of Chipper Dove.

Dove's hands never looked like a quarterback's hands, either - too delicate, again. And I could remember seeing Chipper Dove shrug his shoulder pads forward and trot back to the huddle, thinking about the next signal - the next order, the next command - his hands like songbirds lighting on his hip pads. Of course I knew then who Ernst was: the quarter back of the radicals, the signal caller, the dark planner, the one the others gathered around. And I knew then, too, what it was that Franny saw in Ernst. It was more than a physical resemblance to Chipper Dove, it was that c.o.c.ksure quality, the touch of evil, that hint of destruction, that icy leaders.h.i.+p - that was what could sneak its way into my sister's heart, that was what captured the her in her her in her, that was what took Franny's strength away.

'We all want to go back home,' I told Father. 'To the United States. We want America. We don't like it here.'

Lilly held my hand. We were in Frank's room, again - Frank nervously boxing with the dressmaker's dummy, Franny on Frank's bed, looking out the window. She could see the Kaffee Mowatt, across the Krugerstra.s.se. It was early morning, and someone was sweeping the cigarette b.u.t.ts out the door of the coffeehouse, across the sidewalk, and into the gutter. The radicals were not the nighttime company of the Kaffee Mowatt; at night the wh.o.r.es used the place to get off the street - to take a break, to play some billiards, to drink a beer or a gla.s.s of wine, or get picked up - and Father allowed Frank and Franny and me to go there to throw some darts.

'We miss home,' Lilly said, trying not to cry. It was still summer, and Mother and Egg had departed too recently to permit our dwelling for long on phrases that concerned missing missing anyone or anything. anyone or anything.

'It's not going to work here, Dad,' Frank said. 'It looks like an impossible situation.'

'And now's the time to leave,' I said, 'before we start school, before we all have our various commitments.'

'But I already have a commitment,' Father said, softly. 'To Freud.'

Did an old blind man equal us us? we wanted to shout at him, but Father didn't allow us to linger on the subject of his commitment to Freud.

'What do you you think, Franny?' he asked her, but Franny continued to stare out the window at the early morning street. Here came Old Billig, the radical - there went Screaming Annie, the wh.o.r.e. Both of them looked tired, but both of them were very Viennese in their attention to form: they both managed a hearty greeting we could hear through the open summer window in Frank's room. think, Franny?' he asked her, but Franny continued to stare out the window at the early morning street. Here came Old Billig, the radical - there went Screaming Annie, the wh.o.r.e. Both of them looked tired, but both of them were very Viennese in their attention to form: they both managed a hearty greeting we could hear through the open summer window in Frank's room.

'Look,' Frank said to Father. 'For sure we're in the First District, but Freud neglected to tell us that we live on just about the worst street in the whole district.'

'A kind of one-way street,' I added.

'No parking, either,' said Lilly. There was no parking because the Krugerstra.s.se seemed to be used for delivery trucks making back-door deliveries to the fancy places on the Karntnerstra.s.se.

Also, the district post office was on our street - a sad, grimy building that hardly attracted potential customers to our hotel.

'Also the prost.i.tutes,' Lilly whispered.

'Second-cla.s.s,' said Frank. 'No hope for advancement. We're only a block off the Karntnerstra.s.se but we'll never be be the Karntnerstra.s.se,' Frank said. the Karntnerstra.s.se,' Frank said.

'Even with a new lobby,' I told Father, 'even if it's an attractive attractive lobby, there's no one to see it. And you're still putting people between wh.o.r.es and revolution.' lobby, there's no one to see it. And you're still putting people between wh.o.r.es and revolution.'

'Between sin and danger, Daddy,' Lilly said.

'Of course it doesn't matter, in the long run, I suppose,' Frank said; I could have kicked him. 'I mean, it's downhill either way - it doesn't matter exactly when when we leave, it's just evident that we we leave, it's just evident that we will will leave. This is a downhill hotel. We can leave when it's sinking, or after it's sunk.' leave. This is a downhill hotel. We can leave when it's sinking, or after it's sunk.'

'But we want to leave now now, Frank,' I said.

'Yes, we all all do,' Lilly said. do,' Lilly said.

'Franny?' Father asked, but Franny looked out the window. There was a mail truck trying to get around a delivery truck on the narrow street. Franny watched the mail come and go, waiting for letters from Junior Jones - and, I suppose, from Chipper Dove. She wrote them both, a lot, but only Junior Jones wrote her back.

Frank, continuing with his philosophical indifference, said, 'I mean, we can leave when the wh.o.r.es all fail their medical checkups, we can leave when Dark Inge is finally old enough, we can leave when Schraubenschlussel's car blows up, we can leave when we're sued by the first guest, or the last - '

'But we can't can't leave,' Father interrupted him, 'until we make it leave,' Father interrupted him, 'until we make it work work.' Even Franny looked at him. 'I mean,' Father said, 'when it's a successful successful hotel, then we can hotel, then we can afford afford to leave. We can't just leave when we have a failure on our hands,' he said, reasonably, 'because we wouldn't have anything to leave to leave. We can't just leave when we have a failure on our hands,' he said, reasonably, 'because we wouldn't have anything to leave with with.'

'You mean money?' I said. Father nodded.

'You've already sunk the money in here here?' Franny asked him.