The Hotel New Hampshire (54 page)

There was a puzzled silence in the lobby of the Hotel New Hampshire. If we children were exempt, if Father was to be spared, and Susie the bear wasn’t to be trusted, did Ernst mean he would use one of the
whores
for a driver?
They
couldn’t be trusted—for sure. They were only concerned with themselves. While Ernst the pornographer had been preaching his dialectic to us, the whores had been slipping past us in the lobby—the whores were checking out of the Hotel New Hampshire. A wordless team—friends in any crisis, thick as the thieves they were—they were helping Old Billig move her china bears. They were bearing their salves, their toothbrushes, their pills, perfumes, and prophylactics
away
.

“They were the rats abandoning the sinking ship,” as Frank would say, later. They were not touched with Fehlgeburt’s romanticism; they were never anything larger than whores. They left us without saying good-bye.

“So who’s the driver, you super shit?” Susie the bear asked Ernst. “Who the hell’s
left
?”

Ernst smiled; it was a smile full of disgust, and he was smiling at Freud. Although Freud could not see this, Freud suddenly figured it out. “It’s
me
!” he cried, as if he’d won a prize; he was so excited, the baseball bat tapped double time. “
I’m
the driver!” Freud cried.

“Yes, you are,” said Ernst, awfully pleased.

“Brilliant!” Freud cried. “The perfect job for a blind man!” he shouted, the baseball bat like a baton, conducting, leading the orchestra—Freud’s Vienna State Opera Band!

“And you love Win Berry, don’t you, Freud?” Schwanger asked the old man, gently.

“Of course I do!” Freud cried. “Like my own son!” Freud yelled, wrapping his arms around my father, the baseball bat snug between his knees.

“So if you drive the car properly,” Ernst said to Freud, “no harm will come to Win Berry.”

“If you fuck it up,” Arbeiter said, “we’ll kill them all.”

“One at a time,” Schraubenschlüssel added.

“How can a blind man drive the car, you
morons
?” screamed Susie the bear.

“Explain how it works, Schraubenschlüssel,” Ernst said, calmly. And now it was Wrench’s big moment, the moment he’d been living for—to
describe
every loving detail of his heart’s desire. Arbeiter looked a little jealous. Schwanger and Ernst listened with the most benign expressions, like teachers proud of their prize pupil. My father, of course, didn’t understand the language well enough to get all of it.

“I call it a sympathy bomb,” Wrench began.

“Oh, that’s brilliant!” Freud cried out; then he giggled. “A
sympathy
bomb! Jesus God!”

“Shut up,” Arbeiter said.

“There are actually
two
bombs,” Schraubenschlüssel said. “The first bomb is the car. The whole car,” he said, smiling slyly. “The car simply has to be detonated within a certain range of the Opera—quite close to the Opera, actually. If the car explodes within this range, the bomb in the Opera will explode, too—you might say ‘in sympathy’ with the first explosion. Which is why I call it a sympathy bomb,” Wrench added, moronically. Even Father could have followed this part. “First the car blows, and if it blows close enough to the Opera, then the
big
bomb—the one in the Opera—then
it
blows. The bomb in the car is what I call a
contact
bomb. The contact is the front license plate. When the front license plate is depressed, the whole car blows sky-high. Several people in its vicinity will be blown sky-high, too,” Schraubenschlüssel added.

“That’s unavoidable,” Arbeiter said.

“The bomb in the Opera,” said Schraubenschlüssel, lovingly, “is much more complicated than a contact bomb. The bomb in the Opera is a chemical bomb, but a very delicate kind of electrical impulse is required to
start
it. The fuse to the bomb in the Opera—in a quite remarkably sensitive way—
responds
to a very particular explosion within its range. It’s almost as if the bomb in the Opera has
ears
,” Wrench said, laughing at himself. It was the first time we had heard Wrench laugh; it was a disgusting laugh. Lilly started to gag, as if she was going to be sick.

“
You
won’t be hurt, dear,” Schwanger soothed her.

“All I have to do is drive the car, with Freud in it, right down the Ringstrasse to the Opera,” Schraubenschlüssel said. “Of course, I have to be careful not to run into anything, I have to find a safe place to pull off to the side of the street—and then I get out,” Schraubenschlüssel said. “When I’m out, Freud gets behind the wheel. Nobody will ask us to move on before we’re ready; nobody in Vienna questions a streetcar conductor.”

“We know you know how to drive, Freud,” Ernst said to the old man. “You used to be a mechanic, right?”

“Right,” said Freud; he was fascinated.

“I stand right next to Freud, speaking to him through the driver’s side window,” said Wrench. “I wait until I see Arbeiter come out of the Opera and cross the Kärntnerstrasse—to the other side.”

“To the
safe
side!” Arbeiter added.

“And then I just tell Freud to count to ten and floor it!” Schraubenschlüssel said. “I’ll already have aimed the car in the right direction. Freud will simply floor it—he’ll get up to as fast a speed as he can. He’ll run smack into something—almost right away, no matter which way he turns. He’s
blind
!” Wrench cried, enthusiastically. “He has to hit something. And when he does, there goes the Opera. The sympathy bomb will respond.”

“The
sympathy
bomb,” my father said, ironically. Even Father understood the sympathy part.

“It’s in a perfect place,” Arbeiter said. “It’s been there a long time, so we know no one knows where it is. It’s very big but it’s impossible to find,” he added.

“It’s under the stage,” Arbeiter said.

“It’s
built into
the stage,” Schraubenschlüssel said.

“It’s right where they come out to take their fucking final bows!” Arbeiter said.

“Of course, it won’t kill everyone,” Ernst said, simply. “Everyone onstage will die, and probably most of the orchestra, and most of the audience in the first few rows of seats. And to those sitting safely back from the stage it will be truly
operatic
,” Ernst said. “It will provide a very definite spectacle,” said Ernst.

“
Schlagobers
and blood,” Arbeiter teased Schwanger, but she just smiled—with her gun.

Lilly threw up. When Schwanger bent over to soothe her, I
might
have had an opportunity to grab the gun. But I wasn’t thinking well enough. Arbeiter took the gun from Schwanger, as if—to my shame—he was thinking more clearly than I was. Lilly kept throwing up, and Franny tried to soothe her too, but Ernst went right on talking.

“When Arbeiter and Schraubenschlüssel come back here, and report on our success, then we’ll know we won’t have to harm this wonderful American family,” Ernst said.

“The American family,” Arbeiter said, “is an institution that Americans dote on to the sentimental extreme that they dote on sports heroes and movie stars; they lavish as much attention on
the family
as they lavish on unhealthy food. Americans are simply
crazy
about the idea of the family.”

“And after we blow up the Opera,” Ernst said, “after we destroy an institution that the Viennese worship to the
disgusting
extreme that they worship their coffeehouses—that they worship the
past
—well ... after we blow up the Opera, we’ll have possession of an American family. We’ll have an American family as hostage. And a
tragic
American family, too. The mother and the youngest child already the victims of an accident. Americans love accidents. They think disasters are
neat
. And here we have a father struggling to raise his four surviving children, and we’ll have them all
captured
.”

Father didn’t follow this very well, and Franny asked Ernst, “What are your
demands
? If we’re hostages, what are the demands?”

“No demands, dear,” Schwanger said.

“We demand nothing,” said Ernst, patiently—ever patiently. “We’ll already have what we want. When we blow up the Opera and we have you as our
prisoners
, we’ll already have what we want.”

“An audience,” Schwanger said, almost in a whisper.

“Quite a wide audience,” Ernst said. “An international audience. Not just a European audience, not just the
Schlagobers
and blood audience, but an
American
audience, too. The whole world will listen to what we have to say.”

“About
what
?” Freud asked. He was whispering, too.

“About everything,” Ernst said, so logically. “We’ll have an audience for everything we’ve got to say—about everything.”

“About the new world,” Frank murmured.

“Yes!” Arbeiter said.

“Most terrorists fail,” Ernst reasoned, “because they take the hostages and
threaten
violence. But we’re beginning with the violence. It is already established that we are capable of it.
Then
we take the hostages. That way everybody listens.”

Everyone looked at Ernst, which—of course—Ernst loved. He was a pornographer willing to murder and maim—not for a
cause
, which would be stupid enough, but for an
audience
.

“You’re absolutely crazy,” Franny said to Ernst.

“You disappoint me,” Ernst said to her.

“What’s that?” Father cried to him. “What did you say to her?”

“He said I disappointed him, Pop,” Franny said.

“She
disappoints
you!” Father cried. “My daughter disappoints
you
!” Father shouted at Ernst.

“Calm down,” Ernst said to Father, calmly.

“You fuck my daughter and then tell her she
disappoints
you!” Father said.

Father grabbed the baseball bat from Freud. He did this very quickly. He picked up that Louisville Slugger as if it had lived a lifetime in his hands, and he swung it levelly, getting his shoulders and hips into the swing, and following through with the swing—it was a perfect line drive sort of swing, a level low liner that would still have been rising when it cleared the infield. And Ernst the pornographer, who ducked too slowly, put his head in the position of a perfect letter-high fast ball to my father’s fine swing of the bat.
Crack
! Harder than any ground ball Franny or I could have handled. My father caught Ernst the pornographer with the Louisville Slugger flat on the forehead and smack between the eyes. The first thing to strike the floor was the back of Ernst’s head, his heels plopping down one at a time; it seemed like a full second after the head had hit the floor that Ernst’s body settled down. A purple swelling the size of a baseball rose up between Ernst’s eyes, and a little blood ran out of one of his ears, as if something vital but small—like his brain, like his heart—had exploded inside him. His eyes were open wide, and we knew that Ernst the pornographer could now see everything that Freud could see. He had gone out the open window with one swift crack of the bat.

“Is he dead?” Freud cried. I think if Freud hadn’t cried out, Arbeiter would have pulled the trigger and killed my father; Freud’s cry seemed to change Arbeiter’s slow-moving mind. He stuck the barrel of the gun in my little sister Lilly’s ear; Lilly trembled—she had nothing more to throw up.

“Please don’t,” Franny whispered to Arbeiter. Father held the baseball bat tightly, but he held it still. Arbeiter had the big weapon now, and my father had to wait for the right pitch.

“Everyone stay calm,” Arbeiter said. Schraubenschlüssel could not take his eyes off the purple baseball on Ernst’s forehead, but Schwanger kept smiling—at everyone.

“Calm, calm,” she crooned. “Let’s stay calm.”

“What are you going to do
now
?” Father asked Arbeiter, calmly. He asked him in English; Frank had to translate.

For the next few minutes, Frank would be kept busy as a translator because Father wanted to know
everything
that was going on. He was a hero; he was on the dock at the old Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea, except
he
was the man in the white dinner jacket—he was in charge.

“Give the bat back to Freud,” Arbeiter told my father.

“Freud needs his bat back,” Schwanger said to my father, stupidly.

“Give the bat up, Pop,” said Frank.

Father gave the Louisville Slugger back to Freud and sat down beside him; he put his arm around Freud and said to him, “You don’t
have
to drive that car.”

“Schraubenschlüssel,” Schwanger said. “You’re going to do it just the way we planned. Take Freud with you and get going,” she said.

“But I’m not at the Opera!” Arbeiter said, in a panic. “I’m not there yet—to see if it’s intermission, or to make sure it’s
not
. Schraubenschlüssel has to see me walk out of the Opera so he knows it’s okay, so he knows it’s the right time.”

The radicals stared at their dead leader as if he would tell them what to do; they needed him.

“
You
go to the Opera,” Arbeiter told Schwanger. “
I’m
better with the gun,” he said. “I’ll stay here, and
you
go to the Opera,” Arbeiter advised her. “When you’re sure it’s not intermission, walk out of the Opera and let Schraubenschlüssel see
you
.”

“But I’m not dressed for the Opera,” Schwanger said. “
You’re
dressed for it,” she told Arbeiter.

“You don’t have to be dressed for it to ask someone if it’s intermission!” Arbeiter yelled at her. “You look good enough to get in the door, and you can see for yourself if it’s intermission. You’re just an old lady—nobody hassles an old lady for how she’s dressed, for Christ’s sake.”

“Stay calm,” Schraubenschlüssel advised, mechanically.

“Well,” our gentle Schwanger said, “I’m not exactly an ‘old lady.’ ”