The Hotel New Hampshire (36 page)

What went wrong, we were told, went wrong quickly; but surely there would have been time to blurt out some advice—in some language. And time for Mother to kiss Egg, and squeeze him; time for Egg to ask, “What?”

And though we had moved to the city of Freud, I must say that dreams are vastly overrated: my dream of Mother’s death was inexact, and I would never dream it again. Her death—by some considerable stretch of the imagination—might have been initiated by the man in the white dinner jacket, but no pretty white sloop sailed her away. She shot from the sky to the bottom of the sea with her son beside her screaming, Sorrow hugged to his chest.

It was Sorrow, of course, that the rescue planes saw. Searching for the sunken wreckage, trying to spot the fast debris upon the surface of the gray morning water, someone saw a dog swimming. Closer examination convinced the rescue crew that the dog was just another victim; there were no survivors, and how could the rescue crew have known that
this
dog was already dead? This knowledge of what led the rescue crew to the bodies came as no surprise to my surviving family. We had learned this fact of Sorrow, previously, from Frank: Sorrow floats.

It was Franny who said, later, that we must all watch out for whatever form Sorrow would take
next
; we must learn to recognize the different poses.

Frank was silent, pondering the responsibilities of resurrection—always a source of mystery to him, and now a source of pain.

Father had to identify the bodies; he left us in Freud’s care and traveled by train. Later, he wouldn’t speak often of Mother or Egg; he was not a backward-looking man, and his need to care for us no doubt prevented him from such indulgent and dangerous reflection. No doubt it would have crossed his mind that
this
was what Freud wanted Mother to forgive my father for.

Lilly would weep, knowing all along that Fritz’s Act would have been smaller and easier to live with—all around.

And
I
? With Egg and Mother gone—and Sorrow in an unknown pose, or in disguise—I knew we had arrived in a foreign country.

8

Sorrow Floats

Ronda Ray, whose breathing first seduced me over an intercom—whose warm, strong, heavy hands I can still feel (occasionally) in my sleep—would never leave the first Hotel New Hampshire. She would remain faithful to Fritz’s Act, and serve them well—perhaps discovering, as she grew older, that waiting on midgets and making their beds were altogether preferable to the services she’d rendered to more fully grown adults. One day Fritz would write us that Ronda Ray had died—“in her sleep.” After losing Mother and Egg, no death would ever strike me as “appropriate,” though Franny said that Ronda’s was.

It was more appropriate, at least, than the unfortunate passing of Max Urick, who succumbed to life in the Hotel New Hampshire in a bathtub on the third floor. Perhaps Max never got over his irritation at having to give up the smaller bathroom equipment, and his cherished hideaway on the fourth floor, because I imagine him plagued by the sense, if not by the actual sound, of the midgets living over his head. I always thought it was probably the same bathtub where Egg attempted to conceal Sorrow that finally did in Max—having come close to doing the job on Bitty Tuck. Fritz never explained which tub it was, just that it was on the third floor; Max had appeared to suffer a stroke while bathing—he subsequently drowned. That an old sailor who’d come back from the deep so many times should end it all in a bathtub was a source of anguish to poor Mrs. Urick, who found Max’s leaving so
in
appropriate.

“Four hundred and sixty-four,” Franny would go on saying, whenever we mentioned Max.

Mrs. Urick is still the cook for Fritz’s Act today—perhaps a testament to the food, and to the life, of plainness but goodness. One Christmas Lilly would send her a pretty handwritten scroll with these words from an anonymous poet, translated from the Anglo-Saxon: “They who live humbly have angels from heaven to carry them courage and strength and belief.”

Amen.

Fritz of Fritz’s Act surely had similar angels looking after him. He would retire in Dairy, making the Hotel New Hampshire his year-round home (when he no longer hit the road, and the winter circus circuit, with the younger midgets). Lilly would get sad whenever she thought of him, because if it had been Fritz’s size that first impressed her, it was the vision of staying in Fritz’s Hotel New Hampshire (instead of going to Vienna) that Lilly imagined whenever she thought of Fritz—and Lilly would therefore imagine how all our lives might have been different if we had not lost Mother and Egg. No “angels from heaven” had been on hand to save them.

But, of course, we had no such vision of the world when we first saw Vienna. “
Freud’s
Vienna,” as Frank would say—and we knew which Freud he meant.

All over Vienna (in 1957) were the gaps between the buildings, were the buildings collapsed and airy, the buildings left as the bombs had left them. In some rubbled lots, often the perimeters of playgrounds abandoned by children, one had the feeling of unexploded bombs buried in the raked and orderly debris. Between the airport and the outer districts, we passed a Russian tank that had been firmly arranged—in concrete—as a kind of memorial. The tank’s top hatch was sprouting flowers, its long barrel was draped with flags, its red star faded and speckled by birds. It was permanently parked in front of what looked like a post office, but our cab flew by too fast for us to be sure.

Sorrow floats, but we arrived in Vienna before our bad news arrived, and we were inclined toward a cautious optimism. The war damage was more contained as we approached the inner districts; on occasion, even the sun shone through the elaborate buildings—and a row of stone cupids leaned off a roof over us, their bellies pockmarked by machine-gun fire. More people appeared in the streets, though the outer districts resembled one of those old sepia photographs taken at a time of day before everyone was up—or after everyone had been killed.

“It’s spooky,” Lilly ventured; out of fright, she had finally stopped crying.

“It’s
old
,” Franny said.

“
Wo ist die Gemütlichkeit
?” Frank sang, cheerfully—looking around for some.

“I think your mother will like it here,” Father said, optimistically.

“Egg won’t like it,” Franny said.

“Egg won’t be able to
hear
it,” Frank said.

“Mother will hate it, too,” Lilly said.

“Four hundred and sixty-four,” Franny said.

Our driver said something unintelligible. Even Father could tell it wasn’t German. Frank struggled to talk with the man and discovered he was Hungarian—from the recent revolution. We searched the rearview mirror, and our driver’s dull eyes, for signs of lasting wounds—imagining them, if not seeing them. Then a park burst beside us, on our right, and a building as lovely as a palace (it
was
a palace), and out a courtyard gate came a cheerful fat woman in a nurse’s uniform (clearly a nanny) pushing in front of her a double-seated baby carriage (someone had had twins!), and Frank read an idiot statistic from a mindless travel brochure.

“A city of fewer than one and a half million people,” Frank read to us, “Vienna still has more than three hundred coffeehouses!” We stared out of our cab at the streets, expecting them to be stained with coffee. Franny rolled down her window and sniffed; there was the diesel rankness of Europe, but no coffee. It would not take us long to learn what coffeehouses were for: for sitting a long time, for homework, for talking to whores, for darts, for billiards, for drinking more than coffee, for making plans—for our escape—and of course for insomnia, and for dreams. But then we were dazzled by the fountain at the Schwarzenbergplatz, we crossed the Ringstrasse, jolly with streetcars, and our driver began chanting to himself, “Krugerstrasse, Krugerstrasse,” as if by this repetition the little street would leap out at us (it did), and then: “Gasthaus Freud, Gasthaus Freud.”

The Gasthaus Freud did
not
leap out at us. Our driver slowly drove right by it, and Frank ran into the Kaffe Mowatt to ask directions; it was then pointed out to us—the building we had missed. Gone was the candy store (although the signs for the former Konditorei—BONBONS, and so forth—were leaning against the window, inside). Father assumed this meant that Freud—in preparation for our arrival—had begun the expansion plans, had bought out the candy store. But, upon closer inspection, we realized that a fire had destroyed the Konditorei and must have at least threatened the inhabitants of the adjacent Gasthaus Freud. We entered the small, dark hotel, passing the new sign by the gutted candy store; the sign, Frank translated, said: DON’T STEP ON THE SUGAR.

“Don’t step on the
sugar
, Frank?” Franny said.

“That’s what it says,” Frank said, and indeed, entering cautiously into the lobby of the Gasthaus Freud, we felt a certain stickiness on the floor (no doubt from those feet that had already trafficked on the sugar—the hideous glaze from the candy melted in the fire). And now the ghastly smell of burnt chocolate overwhelmed us. Lilly, staggering with her little bags, stumbled into the lobby first, and screamed.

We were expecting Freud, but we had forgotten Freud’s bear. Lilly had not expected to see it in the lobby—loose. And none of us expected to see it on the couch by the reception desk, its short legs crossed while it rested its heels on a chair; it appeared to be reading a magazine (an apparently “smart bear” as Freud had claimed), but Lilly’s scream startled the pages right out of its paws and it gathered itself together in a bear-like fashion. It swung itself off the couch and ambled sideways toward the reception desk, not really looking at us, and we saw how small it was—squat, but short; no longer or taller than a Labrador retriever (we all were thinking), but considerably denser, thick-waisted, big-assed, stout-armed. It rose up on its hind legs and gave the bell on the reception desk a terrible clout, bashing the bell so violently that the little
ping
! was muffled by the thump of the animal’s paw.

“Jesus God!” said Father.

“Is that
you
?” cried a voice. “Is that Win Berry?”

The bear, impatient that Freud had still not emerged, picked up the bell on the reception desk and whistled it across the lobby; the bell struck a door with great force—with the sound of a hammer banging an organ pipe.

“I hear you!” Freud cried. “Jesus God! Is that
you
?” And he came out of the room with open arms—a figure as strange to us children as any bear. It was the first time we children realized that Father had
learned
his “Jesus God!” from Freud, and perhaps the contrast this information made with Freud’s body was what surprised us; Freud’s body bore no resemblance to my father’s athletic shape and movements. If Fritz had allowed his midgets to vote, Freud might have been admitted to their circus—he was only slightly larger than they were. His body seemed stricken with something like an abridged history of his former power; he was now simply solid and compact. The black hair we’d been told about was white and long with the fly-around quality of corn silk. He had a cane like a club, like a baseball bat—which we realized, later,
was
a baseball bat. The strange patch of hair that grew on his cheek was still the size of an average coin, but its color was as gray as a sidewalk—the nondescript and neglected color of a city street. But the main thing (about how Freud had aged) was that he was blind.

“Is that
you
?” Freud called across the lobby, facing not Father but the ancient iron post that began the banister of the staircase.

“Over here,” my father said, softly. Freud opened his arms and groped toward my father’s voice.

“Win Berry!” Freud cried, and the bear swiftly rushed to him, caught the old man’s elbow with its rough paw, and propelled him in my father’s direction. When Freud slowed his pace, fearful of chairs out of place, or feet to trip over, the bear butted him with its head from behind. Not just a smart bear, we children thought: here was a Seeing Eye bear. Freud now had a bear to see for him. Unquestionably, this was the kind of bear who could change your life.

We watched the blind gnome hugging my father; we watched their awkward dance in the dingy lobby of the Gasthaus Freud. As their voices softened; we could hear the typewriters going at it from the third floor—the radicals making their music, the leftists writing up their versions of the world. Even the typewriters sounded sure of themselves—at odds with all those other, flawed versions of the world, but sure they were right, absolutely believing it, every word tap-tap-tapping into place, like fingers drumming impatiently on tabletops, fingers marking time between speeches.

But wasn’t this better than arriving at night? Admittedly, the lobby would have looked better cared for under the mellow glow of inadequate lighting and the forgiveness of darkness. But wasn’t it better (for us children) to hear the typewriters, and see the bear-better than to hear (or imagine) the lunging of beds, the traffic of the prostitutes going up and down the stairs, the guilty greetings and good-byes (going on all night) in the lobby?

The bear nosed between us children. Lilly was wary of it (it was bigger than she was), I felt shy, Frank tried to be friendly—in German—but the bear had eyes only for Franny. The bear pressed its broad head against Franny’s waist; the bear jabbed its snout in my sister’s crotch. Franny. jumped, and laughed, and Freud said, “Susie! Are you being nice? Are you being rude?” Susie the bear turned to him and made a short run at him, on all fours; the bear butted the old man in the stomach—knocking him to the floor. My father seemed inclined to intervene, but Freud—leaning on the baseball bat—got back to his feet. It was hard to tell if he was chuckling. “Oh, Susie!” he said, in the wrong direction. “Susie’s just showing off. She don’t like criticism,” Freud said. “And she’s not so fond of men as she is of the
girls
. Where
are
the girls?” the old man said, his hands held out in two directions, and Franny and Lilly went to him—Susie the bear following Franny, nudging her affectionately from behind. Frank, suddenly obsessed with making friends with the bear, tugged the animal’s coarse fur, stammering, “Uh, you must be Susie the bear. We’ve all heard a lot about you. I’m Frank.
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