The Hotel New Hampshire Part 30

While Fehlgeburt, encouraged by everyone's response to The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby, started reading Moby-d.i.c.k Moby-d.i.c.k to us. Because of what happened to Mother and Egg, hearing about the ocean was difficult for us, but we got over that; we concentrated on the whale, especially on the different harpooners (we each had our favorite), and we kept a sharp eye on Lilly, waiting for her to identify Father with Ahab - 'or maybe she'll decide Frank is the white whale,' Franny whispered. But it was to us. Because of what happened to Mother and Egg, hearing about the ocean was difficult for us, but we got over that; we concentrated on the whale, especially on the different harpooners (we each had our favorite), and we kept a sharp eye on Lilly, waiting for her to identify Father with Ahab - 'or maybe she'll decide Frank is the white whale,' Franny whispered. But it was Freud Freud Lilly identified for us. Lilly identified for us.

One night when the dressmaker's dummy stood at attention, and Fehlgeburt was droning, like the sea - like the tide - Lilly said, 'Can you hear him? Ssshhh!'

'What?' Frank said, like a ghost - like Egg would have said, we all knew.

'Cut it out, Lilly,' Franny whispered.

'No, listen,' Lilly said. And for a moment we thought we were below decks, in our seamen's bunks, listening to Ahab's artificial leg restlessly pacing above us. A wooden whack, a bonelike thud. It was just Freud's baseball bat; he was limping his blind way on the floor above us - he was visiting one of the wh.o.r.es.

'Which one does he see?' I asked.

'Old Billig,' said Susie the bear.

'The old for the old,' Franny said.

'It's sort of sweet, I think,' Lilly said.

'I mean it's Old Billig tonight tonight,' said Susie the bear. 'He must be tired.'

'He does it with all all of them?' Frank said. of them?' Frank said.

'Not Jolanta,' Susie said. 'She scares him.'

'She scares me me,' I said.

'And not Dark Inge, of course,' Susie said. 'Freud can't see her.'

It did not occur to me to visit the wh.o.r.es - one or all. Ronda Ray had not really been like them. With Ronda Ray, it was just s.e.x with a fee attached; in Vienna, s.e.x was a business. I could m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e to my imagination of Jolanta; that was exciting enough. And for love ... well, for love there was always my imagination of Franny. And in the late summer nights, there was also Fehlgeburt. Moby-d.i.c.k Moby-d.i.c.k being such a monster of a reading experience, Fehlgeburt had taken to staying later in the evenings. Frank and I would walk her home. She rented a room in an ill-kept building behind the Rathaus, near the university, and she did not like crossing the Karntnerstra.s.se or the Graben alone at night, because she would occasionally be mistaken for a wh.o.r.e. being such a monster of a reading experience, Fehlgeburt had taken to staying later in the evenings. Frank and I would walk her home. She rented a room in an ill-kept building behind the Rathaus, near the university, and she did not like crossing the Karntnerstra.s.se or the Graben alone at night, because she would occasionally be mistaken for a wh.o.r.e.

Anyone who mistook Fehlgeburt for a wh.o.r.e must have had a great imagination; she was so clearly a student. It was not that she wasn't pretty, it was that her prettiness clearly wasn't an issue - for her. What plain good looks she had - and she had them - she either suppressed or neglected. Her hair was straggly; on the rare occasions when it was clean, it was simply uncared for. She wore blue jeans and a turtleneck, or a T-s.h.i.+rt, and about her mouth and eyes was the kind of tiredness that suggests too much reading, too much writing, too much thinking - too many of those things larger than one's own body, and its care or pleasures. She seemed about the same age as Susie, but she was much too humorless to be a bear - and her loathing for the nighttime activities in the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re surely bordered on what Ernst would have called 'disgust.' When it was raining, Frank and I would walk her no farther than the streetcar stop on the Ringstra.s.se at the opera; when it was nice, we walked her through the Plaza of Heroes and up the Ring toward the university. We were just three kids fresh from thinking about whales, walking under the big buildings in a city too old for all of us. Most nights it was as if Frank weren't there.

'Lilly is only eleven,' Fehlgeburt would say. 'It's wonderful that she loves literature. It could be her salvation. That hotel is no place for her.'

'Wo ist die Gemutlichkeit?' Frank was singing.

'You're very good with Lilly,' I told Miss Miscarriage. 'Do you want a family of your own, someday?'

'Four hundred and sixty-four!' Frank sang.

'I wouldn't want children until after the revolution,' Fehlgeburt said, humorlessly.

'Do you think Fehlgeburt likes me?' I asked Frank, when we were walking home.

'Wait till we start school,' Frank suggested. 'Find a nice young girl - your own age.'

And so, although I lived in a Viennese wh.o.r.ehouse, my s.e.xual world was probably like the s.e.xual world for most Americans who were fifteen in 1957; I beat off to images of a dangerously violent prost.i.tute, while I kept walking a young 'older' girl to her home - waiting for the day I might dare to kiss her, or even hold her hand.

I expected that the 'timid souls' - the guests who (Schw.a.n.ger had predicted) would be drawn to the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re - would remind me of myself. They didn't. They came occasionally in buses: odd groups on organized tours - and some of the tours were as odd as the groups. Librarians from Devon, Kent, and Cornwall; ornithologists from Ohio - they had been observing storks at Rust. They were so regular in their habits that they all went to bed before the wh.o.r.es started working; they slept right through the nightly rumpus and were often off on a tour in the morning before Screaming Annie wrapped up her last o.r.g.a.s.m, before the radical Old Billig walked in off the street - the new world s.h.i.+ning in his old mind's eye. The groups were the oblivious ones, and Frank could sometimes make extra money by marching them off on 'walking tours.' The groups were easy - even the j.a.panese Male Choral Society, who discovered the wh.o.r.es as a group (and used them as a group). What a loud, strange time that was - all that s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, all that singing! The j.a.panese had a great many cameras with them and took everyone's picture - all of our family pictures, too. In fact, Frank would always say it's a shame that the only only photographs we have of our time in Vienna come from that one visit of the j.a.panese Male Choral Society. There is one of Lilly with Fehlgeburt - and a book, of course. There's a touching one of the two Old Billigs; they look like what Lilly would call a 'sweet' old couple. There's Franny leaning on the stout shoulder of Susie the bear, Franny looking a little thin, but sa.s.sy and strong - 'strangely confident' is how Frank describes Franny in this period. There's a curious one of Father and Freud. They appear to be sharing the baseball bat - or they appear to have been squabbling over the bat; it is as if they'd been fighting over who was up next, and they'd interrupted their brawl only long enough for the picture to be taken. photographs we have of our time in Vienna come from that one visit of the j.a.panese Male Choral Society. There is one of Lilly with Fehlgeburt - and a book, of course. There's a touching one of the two Old Billigs; they look like what Lilly would call a 'sweet' old couple. There's Franny leaning on the stout shoulder of Susie the bear, Franny looking a little thin, but sa.s.sy and strong - 'strangely confident' is how Frank describes Franny in this period. There's a curious one of Father and Freud. They appear to be sharing the baseball bat - or they appear to have been squabbling over the bat; it is as if they'd been fighting over who was up next, and they'd interrupted their brawl only long enough for the picture to be taken.

I'm standing with Dark Inge. I remember the j.a.panese gentleman who asked Inge and me to stand beside each other; we had been sitting down, playing crazy eights, but the j.a.panese said the light wasn't right and so we had to stand. It's a slightly unnatural moment; Screaming Annie is still sitting down - at that part of the table where the light was generous - and overly powdered Babette is whispering something to Jolanta, who is standing a little back from the table with her arms folded across her impressive bosom. Jolanta could never learn the rules to crazy eights. In this picture, Jolanta looks like she's about to break up the game. I remember that the j.a.panese were afraid of her, too - perhaps because she was so much bigger than any of them.

And what distinguishes all these photographs - our only pictorial record of Vienna, 1957-64 - is that all these people familiar to us have to share the photographs with a j.a.panese or two, with a total stranger or two. Even the photograph of Ernst the p.o.r.nographer leaning against the car outside. Arbeiter is leaning against the fender with him - and those legs protruding from under the grille of the old Mercedes, those legs belong to the one called Wrench; Schraubenschlussel never got more than his legs in a picture. And surrounding the car are j.a.panese - strangers none of us would see again.

Might we have known, then - had we looked at that photograph closely - that this was no ordinary car? Who ever heard of a Mercedes, even an old one, that needed so much mechanical attention? Herr Wrench was always under the car, and crawling around in it. And why did the one car belonging to the Symposium on East-West Relations need so much care when it was so rarely driven anywhere? Looking at it, now, of course ... well, the photograph is obvious. It is hard to look at that photograph and not recognize that old Mercedes for what it was.

A bomb. A constantly wired and rewired, ever-ready bomb. The whole car was a bomb. And those unrecognizable j.a.panese that populate all of our only photographs ... well, now it's easy to see these strangers, those foreign gentlemen, as symbolic of the unknown angels of death which would accompany that car. To think that for years we children told each other jokes about how bad a mechanic Schraubenschlussel must be in order to be constantly fussing with that Mercedes! When all the while he was an expert expert! Mr. Wrench, the bomb expert; for almost seven years that bomb was ready - every day.

We never knew what they were waiting for - or what moment would have been ripe ripe for it, had we not forced their hand. We have only the j.a.panese pictures to go on, and they make a murky story. for it, had we not forced their hand. We have only the j.a.panese pictures to go on, and they make a murky story.

'What do you remember of Vienna, Frank?'' I asked him - I ask him all the time. Frank went into a room to be alone with himself, and when he came out he handed me a short list: 1. Franny with Susie the bear.

2. Going to buy your d.a.m.n barbells.

3. Walking Fehlgeburt home.

4. The presence of the King of Mice.

Frank handed me this list and said, 'Of course, there's more, but I don't want to get into it.'

I understand, and of course I remember going to buy my barbells, too. We all all went. Father, Freud, Susie, and we children. Freud went because he knew where the sports shop was. Susie went because Freud could help her remember where the shop was by shouting at her in the streetcar. 'Are we past that hospital-supply place on Mariahilfer?' Freud would cry. 'It's the second left, or the third, after that.' went. Father, Freud, Susie, and we children. Freud went because he knew where the sports shop was. Susie went because Freud could help her remember where the shop was by shouting at her in the streetcar. 'Are we past that hospital-supply place on Mariahilfer?' Freud would cry. 'It's the second left, or the third, after that.'

'Earl!' Susie would say, looking out the window. The Stra.s.senbahn Stra.s.senbahn conductor would caution Freud, saying, 'I hope it's safe - it's not tied: the bear. We don't usually let them on if they're not tied.' conductor would caution Freud, saying, 'I hope it's safe - it's not tied: the bear. We don't usually let them on if they're not tied.'

'Earl!' Susie said.

'It's a smart bear,' Frank told the conductor.

In the sports shop I bought 300 pounds of weights, one long barbell, and two dumbbell bars for the one-arm curls.

'Deliver them to the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re, Father said.

'They don't deliver,' Frank said.

'They don't deliver?' Franny said. 'Well, we can't carry carry them!' them!'

'Earl!' Susie said.

'Be nice, Susie!' Freud shouted. 'Don't be rude!'

'The bear would really appreciate it if these weights were delivered delivered,' Frank told the man in the sports shop. But it didn't work. We should have seen then that the power of a bear in getting things to work out for us was diminis.h.i.+ng. We distributed the weights as best we could. I put seventy-five on each of the short dumbbell bars and carried one in each hand. Father and Frank and Susie the bear struggled with the long bar, and another 150 pounds. Franny opened doors and cleared the sidewalk, and Lilly held on to Freud; she was his Seeing Eye bear for the trip home.

'Jesus G.o.d!' Father said, when they wouldn't let us on the Stra.s.senbahn Stra.s.senbahn.

'They let us on to get out out here!' Franny said. here!' Franny said.

'It's not the bear they mind,' Freud said. 'It's the long barbell.'

'It looks dangerous, the way you're carrying it,' Franny told Frank, Susie, and Father.

'If you'd kept working with the weights, like Iowa Bob,' I told Father, 'you could carry it by yourself. You wouldn't make it look so heavy heavy.'

Lilly had noticed that the Austrians permitted bears on streetcars, but not barbells; she also noticed that the Austrians were liberal in regard to skis. She suggested we buy a ski bag and put the long barbell in it; then the streetcar conductor would think the barbell was just some very heavy pair of skis.

Frank suggested someone go get Schraubenschlussel's car.

'It never runs,' Father said.

'It must be ready to run by now,' Franny said. 'That a.s.shole's been fixing it for years.'

Father hopped the streetcar and went home to ask for the car. And shouldn't we have known by the radicals' quick refusal that a bomb bomb was parked outside our new hotel? But we thought it was all merely an aspect of the rudeness of the radicals; we carried all that weight home. I finally had to leave the others, and the long barbell, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. They wouldn't let a barbell in the museum, either - nor would they let in a bear. 'Brueghel wouldn't have minded,' Frank said. But they had to kill time on the street corner. Susie danced a little; Freud tapped his baseball bat; Lilly and Franny sang an American song - they pa.s.sed the time by making a little money. Street clowns, Viennese specialties, 'the presence of the King of Mice,' as Frank would say - Frank pa.s.sed the hat. It was the hat from the bus driver's uniform Father had bought Frank - the seedy-funeral-parlor cap that Frank wore when he played doorman at the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re. Frank wore it all the time in Vienna - our imposter King of Mice, Frank. We all thought often of the sad performer with his unwanted rodents who one day stopped pa.s.sing the open windows, who made the leap, taking his poor mice with him. LIFE IS SERIOUS BUT ART IS FUN! He made his statement; the open windows he had kept pa.s.sing for so long - they finally drew him. was parked outside our new hotel? But we thought it was all merely an aspect of the rudeness of the radicals; we carried all that weight home. I finally had to leave the others, and the long barbell, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. They wouldn't let a barbell in the museum, either - nor would they let in a bear. 'Brueghel wouldn't have minded,' Frank said. But they had to kill time on the street corner. Susie danced a little; Freud tapped his baseball bat; Lilly and Franny sang an American song - they pa.s.sed the time by making a little money. Street clowns, Viennese specialties, 'the presence of the King of Mice,' as Frank would say - Frank pa.s.sed the hat. It was the hat from the bus driver's uniform Father had bought Frank - the seedy-funeral-parlor cap that Frank wore when he played doorman at the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re. Frank wore it all the time in Vienna - our imposter King of Mice, Frank. We all thought often of the sad performer with his unwanted rodents who one day stopped pa.s.sing the open windows, who made the leap, taking his poor mice with him. LIFE IS SERIOUS BUT ART IS FUN! He made his statement; the open windows he had kept pa.s.sing for so long - they finally drew him.

I jogged home with the 150 pounds.

'Hi, Wrench,' I said to the radical under the car.

I ran back to the Kunsthistorisches Museum and trotted home with seventy-five more pounds. Father, Frank, Susie the bear, Franny, Lilly, and Freud brought home the remaining seventy-five. So then I had weights, then I could evoke the first Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re - and Iowa Bob - and some of the foreignness of Vienna disappeared.

We had to go to school, of course. It was an American school near the zoo in Hietzing, near the palace at Schonbrunn. For a while Susie would accompany us on the streetcar each morning, and meet us when school was over. It was a great way to meet the other kids - to be delivered and brought home by a bear. But Father or Freud had to come with Susie because bears were not allowed on the streetcars alone, and the school was near enough to the zoo so that people in the suburbs were more nervous about seeing a bear than were the people in the city.

It would only occur to me, later, that we all did Frank a great disservice by not acknowledging his s.e.xual discretion. For seven years in Vienna, we never knew who his boyfriends were; he told us that they were boys at the American School - and being the oldest of us, and in the most advanced German course, Frank was often at school the longest, and alone. His proximity to the excess of s.e.x in the second Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re must have inclined Frank to discretion in much the same manner that I was convinced of whispering by my intercom initiation with Ronda Ray. And Franny had her bear for the moment - and her rape to get over, Susie kept telling me.

'She's over it,' I said.

'You're not,' Susie said. 'You've still got Chipper Dove on your mind. And so does she.' not,' Susie said. 'You've still got Chipper Dove on your mind. And so does she.'

'Then it's Chipper Dove Franny's not done with,' I said. 'The rape's over.'

'We'll see,' said Susie. 'I'm a smart bear.'

And the timid souls kept coming, not in overwhelming numbers; overwhelming numbers of timid souls would probably have been a contradiction - although we could have used the numbers. Even so, we had a better guest list than we had in the first Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re.

The tour groups were easier than the individuals. There's something about an individual timid soul that is much more timid than a group of them. The timid souls who traveled alone, or the timid couples with the occasional timid children - these seemed to be the most easily upset by the day-and-night activity between which they were anxious guests. But in our first three or four years in the second Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re, only one guest complained - that was how truly timid these these timid souls were. timid souls were.

The complainer was an American. She was a woman traveling with her husband and her daughter, who was about Lilly's age. They were from New Hamps.h.i.+re, but not from the Dairy part of the state. Frank was working the reception desk when they checked in - late afternoon, after school. Right away, Frank noticed, the woman started braying about missing some of the 'clean, plain old honest-to-goodness decency decency' that she apparently a.s.sociated with New Hamps.h.i.+re.

'It's the old plainness-but-goodness bulls.h.i.+t,' Franny would say, recalling Mrs. Urick.

'We've been robbed all over Europe,' the New Hamps.h.i.+re woman's husband told Frank.

Ernst was in the lobby, explaining to Franny and me some of the weirder positions of 'Tantric union.' This was pretty hard to follow in German, but although Franny and I would never catch up to Frank's German - and Lilly was, conversationally, almost as good as Frank within a year - Franny and I learned a lot at the American School. Of course, they didn't teach coitus there. That was Ernst's line, and although Ernst gave me the creeps, I couldn't stand to see him talking to Franny alone, so whenever I saw him talking to her, I tried to listen in. Susie the bear liked to listen in, too - with a paw touching my sister somewhere, a nice big paw that Ernst could see. But the day the Americans from New Hamps.h.i.+re checked in, Susie the bear was in the W.C.

'And hair hair in the bathrooms,' the woman said to Frank. 'You wouldn't believe some of the filth we've been exposed to.' in the bathrooms,' the woman said to Frank. 'You wouldn't believe some of the filth we've been exposed to.'

'We've thrown the guidebooks away,' her husband said to Frank. 'There's no trusting them.'

'We're trusting our instincts now,' the woman said, looking over the new lobby of the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re. 'We're looking for some American American touches.' touches.'

'I can't wait to get home,' the daughter said, in a mousy little voice.

'I've got a nice pair of rooms on the third floor,' Frank said; 'adjoining rooms,' Frank added. But he was worrying if that wasn't too close to the wh.o.r.es underneath - only a floor away. 'Then again,' Frank said, 'the view from the fourth is better.'

'The heck with the view,' the woman said. 'We'll take the adjoining rooms on three. And no hair hair,' she added, menacingly, just as Susie the bear shuffled into the lobby - saw the little girl guest, and gave a show-off toss of her head and a low, bearish huff and snort.

'Look, a bear bear,' the little girl said, holding her father's leg. Frank hit the bell a sharp ping ping! 'Luggage carrier!' Frank hollered.

I had to tear myself away from Ernst's description of the Tantric positions.

'The vyanta vyanta group has two main positions,' he was saying, blandly. 'The woman leans forward till she touches the ground with her hands, while the man takes her from behind, standing - that's the group has two main positions,' he was saying, blandly. 'The woman leans forward till she touches the ground with her hands, while the man takes her from behind, standing - that's the dhenuka-vyanta-asana dhenuka-vyanta-asana, or cow position,' Ernst said, with his liquid stare at Franny.

'Cow position?' Franny said.

'Earl!' Susie said, disapprovingly, putting her head in Franny's lap - playing the bear for the new guests.

I started upstairs with the luggage. The little girl couldn't take her eyes off the bear.

'I have a sister about your age,' I told her. Lilly was out taking Freud for a walk - Freud no doubt lecturing to her about all the sights he couldn't see.

That was how Freud gave us tours. The baseball bat on one side, one of us children, or Susie, on the other. We steered him through the city, shouting out the names of the street corners when we arrived. Freud was getting deaf, too.

'Are we on Blutga.s.se?' Freud would cry out. 'Are we on Blood Lane?' he would ask.

And Lilly or Frank or Franny or I would holler, 'Ja! Blutga.s.se!'

'Take a right,' Freud would direct us. 'When we get to Domga.s.se, children,' he'd say, 'we must find Number Five. This is the entrance to the Figaro House, where Mozart wrote The Marriage of Figaro The Marriage of Figaro. What year, Frank?' Freud would cry.

'Seventeen eighty-five!' Frank would shout back.

'And more important than Mozart,' Freud would say, 'is the first coffeehouse in Vienna. Are we still on Blutga.s.se, children?'

'Ja! Blood Lane,' we would say.

'Look for Number Six Six,' Freud would cry. 'The first coffeehouse in Vienna! Even Schw.a.n.ger doesn't know this. She loves her Schlagobers Schlagobers, but she's like all these political people,' Freud said. 'She's got no sense of history history.'

It was true that we learned no history from Schw.a.n.ger. We learned to love coffee, chased with little gla.s.ses of water; we learned to like the soft dirt of newspapers on our fingers. Franny and I would fight over the one copy of the International Herald Tribune International Herald Tribune. In our seven years in Vienna, there was always news of Junior Jones in there.

'Penn State thirty-five, Navy six!' Franny would read, and we'd all cheer.

And later, it would be the Cleveland Browns 28, the New York Giants 14. The Baltimore Colts 21, the poor Browns 17. Although Junior rarely imparted any more news than this to Franny - in his occasional letters - it was somehow special, hearing about him so indirectly, through the football scores, several days late, in the Herald Tribune Herald Tribune.

'At Judenga.s.se, turn right!' Freud would instruct. And we would follow Jews' Lane to the church of St. Ruprecht.

'The eleventh century,' Frank would murmur. The older the better for Frank.

And down to the Danube Ca.n.a.l; at the foot of the slope, on Franz Josefs-Kai, was the monument Freud led us to rather often: the marble plaque memorializing those murdered by the Gestapo, whose headquarters had been on that spot.

'Right here!' Freud screamed, stamping and whacking with the baseball bat. 'Describe the plaque to me!' he cried. 'I've never seen it.'

Of course: because it was in one of the camps that he went blind. They had performed some failed experiment on his eyes in the camp.