The Hotel New Hampshire (32 page)

“What trivia!” said Frank, when we had explained the story to him. “Honestly, what trivia!”

“All history is trivia,” Father said, showing again the Iowa Bob side of himself.

But Frank was usually the source of trivia—at least concerning Vienna, he hated to be outdone. His room was full of drawings of soldiers in their regimentals: Hussars in skin-tight pink pants and fitted jackets of a sunny-lake blue, and the officers of the Tyrolean Rifle in dawn-green. In 1900, at the Paris World’s Fair, Austria won the Most Beautiful Uniform Prize (for Artillery); it was no wonder that the
fin de siècle
in Vienna appealed to Frank. It was only alarming that the
fin de siècle
was the
only
period Frank really learned—and taught to us. All the rest of it was not as interesting, to him.

“Vienna won’t be like
Mayerling
, for Christ’s sake,” Franny whispered to me, while I was lifting weights. “Not
now
.”

“Who was the master of the song—as an art form?” I asked her. “But his beard was plucked raw because he was so nervous he never let the hairs alone.”

“Hugo Wolf, you asshole,” she said. “Don’t you see? Vienna isn’t
like
that anymore.”

HI!

Freud wrote to us.

YOU ASKED FOR A FLOOR PLAN? WELL I HOPE I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN. THE JOURNAL FOR THE SYMPOSIUM ON EAST-WEST RELATIONS OCCUPIES THE SECOND FLOOR—THEIR DAYTIME OFFICES—AND I LET THE PROSTITUTES USE THE THIRD FLOOR, BECAUSE THEY’RE ABOVE THE OFFICES, YOU SEE, WHICH ARE NEVER USED AT NIGHT. SO NOBODY COMPLAINS (USUALLY). HA HA! THE FIRST FLOOR IS OUR FLOOR, I MEAN THE BEAR AND ME—AND YOU, ALL OF YOU, WHEN YOU COME. SO THERE’S THE FOURTH AND FIFTH FOR THE GUESTS, WHEN WE GET THE GUESTS. WHY YOU ASK? YOU HAVE A PLAN? THE PROSTITUTES SAY WE NEED AN ELEVATOR, BUT THEY MAKE LOTS OF TRIPS. HA HA! WHAT YOU MEAN, HOW OLD AM I? ABOUT ONE HUNDRED! BUT VIENNESE ANSWER IS BETTER: WE SAY, “I KEEP PASSING THE OPEN WINDOWS.” THIS IS AN OLD JOKE. THERE WAS A STREET CLOWN CALLED KING OF THE MICE: HE TRAINED RODENTS, HE DID HOROSCOPES, HE COULD IMPERSONATE NAPOLEON, HE COULD MAKE DOGS FART ON COMMAND. ONE NIGHT HE JUMPED OUT HIS WINDOW WITH ALL HIS PETS IN A BOX. WRITTEN ON THE BOX WAS THIS: “LIFE IS SERIOUS BUT ART IS FUN!” I HEAR HIS FUNERAL WAS A PARTY. A STREET ARTIST HAD KILLED HIMSELF. NOBODY HAD SUPPORTED HIM BUT NOW EVERYBODY MISSED HIM. NOW WHO WOULD MAKE THE DOGS MAKE MUSIC AND THE MICE PANT? THE BEAR KNOWS THIS, TOO: IT IS HARD WORK AND GREAT ART TO MAKE LIFE NOT SO SERIOUS. PROSTITUTES KNOW THIS TOO.

“Prostitutes?” Mother said.

“What?” said Egg.

“Whores?” said Franny.

“There are whores in the hotel?” Lilly asked. So what
else
is new? I thought, but Max Urick looked more than usually overcome with sullenness at the thought of staying behind; Ronda Ray shrugged.

“Sweet Girls!” said Frank.

“Well, Jesus God,” Father said. “If they’re there, we’ll just get them out.”

Wo bleibt die alte Zeit

und die Gemütlichkeit?

Frank went around singing.

Where is the old time?

Where is the Gemütlichkeit?

It was the song Bratfisch sang at the Fiacre Ball; Bratfisch had been Crown Prince Rudolf’s personal horse-cab driver—a dangerous-looking rake with a whip.

Wo bleibt die alte Zeit?

Pfirt di Gott, mein schönes Wien!

Frank went on singing. Bratfisch had sung this after Rudolf murdered his mistress and then blew out his own brains.

Where is the old time?

Fare thee well, my beautiful Vienna!

HI!

Freud wrote.

DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE PROSTITUTES. THEY’RE LEGAL HERE. IT’S JUST BUSINESS. THAT EAST-WEST RELATIONS BUNCH IS THE BUNCH TO WATCH. THEIR TYPEWRITERS BOTHER THE BEAR. THEY COMPLAIN A LOT AND THEY TIE UP THE PHONES. DAMN POLITICS, DAMN INTELLECTUALS, DAMN INTRIGUE.

“Intrigue?” Mother said.

“A language problem,” Father said. “Freud doesn’t know the language.”

“Name one anti-Semite for whom an actual square, a whole
Platz
, in the city of Vienna has been named,” Frank demanded. “Name just one.”

“Jesus God, Frank,” Father said.

“No,” Frank said.

“Dr. Karl Lueger,” Mother said, with such a dullness in her voice that Franny and I felt a chill.

“Very good,” said Frank, impressed.

“Who thought all Vienna was an elaborate job of concealing sexual reality?” Mother asked.

“Freud?” said Frank.

“Not
our
Freud,” said Franny.

But
our
Freud wrote to us:

ALL VIENNA IS AN ELABORATE JOB OF CONCEALING SEXUAL REALITY. THIS IS WHY PROSTITUTION IS LEGAL. THIS IS WHY WE BELIEVE IN BEARS. OVER AND OUT!

I was with Ronda Ray one morning, thinking wearily of Arthur Schnitzler fucking Jeanette Heger 464 times in something like eleven months, and Ronda asked me, “What does he mean, it’s ‘legal’—prostitution is
legal
—what’s he mean?”

“It’s not against the law,” I said. “In Vienna, apparently, prostitution is not against the law.”

There was a long silence from Ronda; she moved, awkwardly, out from under me.

“Is it legal
here
?” she asked me; I could see she was serious—she looked frightened.

“
Everything’s
legal in the Hotel New Hampshire!” I said; it was an Iowa Bob thing to say.

“No,
here
!” she said, angrily. “In America. Is it legal?”

“No,” I said. “Not in New Hampshire.”

“
No
?” she cried. “It’s against the
law
? It
is
?” she screamed.

“Well, but it happens, anyway,” I said.

“
Why
?” Ronda yelled. “Why is it against the law?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You better go,” she said. “And you’re going to Vienna and leaving me
here
?” she added, pushing me out the door. “You better go,” she said.

“Who worked for two years on a fresco and called it
Schweinsdreck
?” Frank asked me at breakfast.
Schweinsdreck
means “pig shit.”

“Jesus, Frank, it’s breakfast,” I said.

“Gustav Klimt,” Frank said, smugly.

And there went the winter of 1957: still lifting the weights, but going easy on the bananas; still visiting Ronda Ray, but dreaming of the imperial city; learning irregular verbs and the mesmerizing trivia of history; trying to imagine the circus called Fritz’s Act and the hotel called Gasthaus Freud. Our mother seemed tired, but she was loyal; she and my father appeared to rely on more frequent visits to old 3E, where the differences between them perhaps appeared easier to solve. The Uricks were wary; a cautious streak had developed in them, because they no doubt felt abandoned—“to a dwarf,” Max said, but not around Lilly. And one morning in early spring, with the ground in Elliot Park still half-frozen but turning spongy, Ronda Ray refused to take my money—but she accepted me.

“It’s not legal,” she whispered, bitterly. “I’m. no criminal.”

It was later that I discovered she was playing for higher stakes.

“Vienna,” she whispered. “What will you do there without me?” she asked. I had a million ideas, and almost as many pictures, but I promised Ronda I would ask Father to consider bringing her along.

“She’s a real worker,” I told Father. Mother frowned. Franny started choking on something. Frank mumbled about the weather in Vienna—“Lots of rain.” Egg, naturally, asked what we were talking about.

“No,” Father said. “Not Ronda. We can’t afford it.” Everyone looked relieved—even me, I confess.

I broke the news to Ronda when she was oiling the top of the bar.

“Well, there was no harm in asking, right?” she said.

“No harm,” I said. But the next morning, when I stopped and breathed a little outside her door, it seemed that there had been some harm.

“Just keep running, John-O,” she said. “Running is legal. Running is free.”

I then had an awkward and vague conversation with Junior Jones about lust; it was comforting that he didn’t seem to understand it any better than I did. It was a frustration to us both that Franny had so many other opinions on the subject.

“Women,” said Junior Jones. “They’re very different from you and me.” I nodded, of course. Franny seemed to have forgiven Junior for his lust with Ronda Ray, but a part of her remained aloof to him; she appeared, at least outwardly, indifferent to leaving Junior for Vienna. Perhaps she was torn between not wanting to miss Junior Jones too much and remaining hopeful but calm about the possible adventure that Vienna could be for her.

She was detached when asked about it, and I found myself, that spring, more often stuck with Frank; Frank was in high gear. His moustache resembled, nervously, the facial excesses of the departed Crown Prince Rudolf, although Franny and I liked to call Frank the King of Mice.

“Here he comes! He can make dogs fart on command! Who is it?” I would cry.

‘”Life Is Serious But Art Is Fun!”’ Franny would shout. “Here is the hero of the street clowns! Keep him away from the open windows!”

“King of the Mice!” I yelled.

“Drop dead, both of you,” Frank said.

“How’s it coming with the dog, Frank?” I asked; this would win him over, every time.

“Well,” Frank said, some vision of Sorrow crossing his mind and making his moustache quiver, “I think Egg will be pleased—although Sorrow may seem a little tame, to the rest of us.”

“I doubt it,” I said. Looking at Frank, I could imagine the Crown Prince, moodily en route to Mayerling—and the murder of his mistress, and the killing of himself—but it was easier to think of Freud’s street artist leaping out a window with his box of pets: the King of Mice dashed to the ground and a city that ignored him, once, now mourning him. Somehow, Frank looked the part.

“Who will make the dogs make music and the mice pant?” I asked Frank over breakfast.

 “Go lift a few weights,” he said. “And drop them on your head.”

So Frank journeyed back to the bio lab; if the King of Mice could make dogs fart on command, Frank could make Sorrow live in more than one pose—so perhaps he
was
a kind of Crown Prince, like Rudolf, Emperor of Austria to Be, King of Bohemia, King of Transylvania, Margrave of Moravia, Duke of Auschwitz (to mention only a few of Rudolf’s titles).

“Where is the King of Mice?” Franny would ask.

“With Sorrow,” I would say. “Teaching Sorrow to fart on command.”

And passing each other in the halls of the Hotel New Hampshire, I would say to Lilly, or Franny would say to Frank, “Keep passing the open windows.”

“
Schweinsdreck
,” Frank would say.

“Show off,” Franny would say back to him.

“Pig shit to you, Frank,” I’d say.

“
What
?” Egg would shout.

And one morning Lilly asked Father, “Will we leave before the circus called Fritz’s Act moves in, or will we get to see them?”

“I hope to
miss
seeing them,” Franny said.

“Won’t we overlap, at least a day?” Frank asked. “I mean for the passing of the keys, or something?”

“
What
keys?” Max Urick asked.

“What
locks
?” said Ronda Ray, whose door was shut to me.

“Perhaps we’ll coincide for about ten or fifteen minutes,” Father said.

“I want to see them,” Lilly said, seriously. And I looked at Mother, who looked tired—but nice: she was a soft, rumpled woman, whom Father clearly loved to touch. He was always burrowing his face in her neck, and cupping her breasts, and hugging her from behind—which she only pretended to resent (in front of us children). When he was around Mother, Father was remindful of those dogs whose heads are always thrust in your lap, whose snouts take comfort in armpits and crotches—I don’t mean, at all, that Father was crude with her, but he was always making contact: hugging and hanging on tight.

Of course, Egg did this with Mother, too, and Lilly—to a degree—though Lilly was more dignified, and holding back of herself, since her smallness had become such an item. It was as if she didn’t want to appear any smaller than she was by acting too young.

“The average Austrian is three to four inches shorter than the average American, Lilly,” Frank informed her, but Lilly appeared not to care—she shrugged; it was Mother’s move, independent and pretty. In their different ways both Franny and Lilly had inherited the motion.

Sometime that spring I saw Franny use it: just a single deft shrug, with a hint of some involuntary ache behind it when Junior Jones told us that he would be accepting the football scholarship from Penn State in the fall.

“I’ll write you,” Franny told him.

“Sure, and
I’ll
write
you
,” he told her.

“I’ll write you more,” said Franny. Junior Jones tried to shrug, but it didn’t come off.

“Shit,” he told me, when we were throwing rocks at a tree in Elliot Park. “What does Franny want to
do
, anyway? What does she think is going to happen to her over there?”

“Over there” was what we all called it. Except Frank: he now spoke of Vienna the German way. “
Wien
,” he said.

“
Veen
,” Lilly said, shuddering. “It sounds like something a lizard would say.” And we all stared at her, waiting for Egg to say his “What?”

Then the grass came out in Elliot Park, and one warm night, when I was sure Egg was asleep, I opened the window and looked at the moon and the stars and listened to the crickets and the frogs, and Egg said, “Keep passing the open windows.”

“You awake?” I said.

“I can’t sleep,” Egg said. “I can’t see where I’m going,” he said. “I don’t know what it’ll be like.”

He sounded ready to cry, so I said, “Come on, Egg. It will be
great
. You’ve never lived in a
city
,” I said.

“I know,” he said, sniffling a little.

“Well, there’s more to do than there is to do here,” I promised him.