The Hotel New Hampshire

by John Irving

  It was Freud who told my father that he'd seen the owner of the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea.

  'Ja, that was him, all right,' Freud said. 'That's how he comes, just a couple of times a summer. Once he danced with a girl who worked here -- the last dance; we never saw her again. A week later, some other guy came for her things.'

  'What's his name' Father asked.

  'Maybe he's Arbuthnot, you know?' Freud said. 'Someone said he's Dutch, but I never heard his name. He knows all about Europe, though -- I can tell you that!'

  My father was dying to ask about the Jews; he felt my mother nudge him in his ribs. They were sitting on one of the putting greens, after hours -- when the green turned blue in the moonlight and the red golfing flag flapped in the cup. The bear called State o' Maine had his muzzle off and was trying to scratch himself against the thin stem of the flag.

  'Come here, stupid!' Freud said to the bear, but the bear paid no attention to him.

  'Is your family still in Vienna?' my mother asked Freud.

  'My sister is my only family,' he said. 'And I don't hear nothing from her since a year ago March.'

  'A year ago March,' my father said, 'the Nazis took Austria.'

  'Ja, you're telling me?' Freud said.

  State o' Maine, frustrated by the lack of resistance the flagpole gave him -- for scratching -- slapped the flagpole out of the cup and sent it spinning across the putting green.

  'Jesus God,' said Freud. 'He's going to start digging holes in the golf course if we don't go somewhere.' My father put the silly flag, marked '18,' back into the cup. My mother had been given the night off from 'serving' and was still in her chambermaid's uniform; she ran ahead of the bear, calling him.

  The bear rarely ran. He shambled -- and never very far from the motorcycle. He rubbed up against the motorcycle so much that the red fender paint was shined as silvery as the chrome, and the conical point of the sidecar was dented in from his pushing against it. He had often burned himself on the pipes, going to rub against the machine too soon after it had been driven, so that there were ominous patches of charred bear hair stuck to the pipes -- as if the motorcycle itself had been (at one time) a furry animal. Correspondingly, State o' Maine had ragged patches in his black coat where his fur was missing, or singed flat and brown -- the dull colour of dried seaweed.

  What exactly the bear was trained to do was a mystery to everyone -- even something of a mystery to Freud.

  Their 'act' together, performed before the lawn parties in the late afternoon, was more of an effort for the motorcycle and Freud than it was an effort for the bear. Around and around Freud would drive, the bear in the sidecar, canopy snapped off -- the bear like a pilot in an open cockpit without controls. State o' Maine usually wore his muzzle in public: it was a red leather thing that reminded my father of the face masks occasionally worn in the game of lacrosse. The muzzle made the bear look smaller; it further scrunched up his already wrinkled face and elongated his nose so that, more than ever, he resembled an overweight dog.

  Around and around they would drive, and just before the bored guests returned to their conversation and abandoned this oddity, Freud would stop the motorcycle, dismount, with the engine running, and walk to the sidecar, where he would harass the bear in German. This was funny to the crowd, largely because someone speaking German was funny, but Freud would persist until the bear, slowly, would climb out of the sidecar and mount the motorcycle, sitting in the driver's seat, his heavy paws on the handlebars, his short hind legs not able to reach the footposts or the rear-brake controls. Freud would climb into the sidecar and order the bear to drive off.

  Nothing would happen. Freud would sit in the sidecar, protesting their lack of motion; the bear would grimly hold the handlebars, jounce in the saddle, paddle his legs back and forth, as if he were treading water.

  'State o' Maine!' someone would shout. The bear would nod, with a kind of embarrassed dignity, and stay where he was.

  Freud, now raging in a German everyone loved to hear, climbed out of the sidecar and approached the bear at the controls. He attempted to show the animal how to operate the motorcycle.

  'Clutch!' Freud would say: he'd hold the bear's big paw over the clutch handle. Throttle!' he would shout: he'd rev the motorcycle with the bear's other paw. Freud's 1937 Indian had the gearshift mounted alongside the gas tank, so that for a frightening moment the driver needed to take one hand from the handlebars to engage or change gears. 'Shift!' Freud cried, and slammed the cycle into gear.

  Whereupon the bear on the motorcycle would proceed across the lawn, the throttle held at a steady low growl, neither accelerating nor slowing down but moving resolutely toward the smug and beautifully attired guests -- the men, even fresh from their sporting events, wore hats; even the male swimmers at the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea wore bathing suits with tops, although the thirties saw trunks, on men, prevailing more and more. Not in Maine. The shoulders of the jackets, men's and women's, were padded; the men wore white flannels, wide and baggy; the sportswomen wore saddle shoes with bobby socks; the 'dressed' women wore natural waistlines, their sleeves frequently puffed. All of them made quite a colourful stir as the bear bore down on them, pursued by Freud.

  'Nein! Nein! You dumb bear!'

  And State o' Maine, his expression under the muzzle a mystery to the guests, drove forward, turning only slightly, hulking over the handlebars.

  'You stupid animal!' Freud cried.

  The bear drove away -- always through a party tent without striking a support pole or snagging the white linen tablecloths that covered the tables of food and the bar. He was pursued by waiters over the rich expanse of lawn. The tennis players cheered from the courts, but as the bear drew nearer to them, they abandoned their game.

  The bear either knew or didn't know what he was doing, but he never hit a hedge, and he never went too fast; he never drove down to the docks and attempted to board a yacht or a lobster boat. And Freud always caught up with him, when it seemed that the guests had seen enough. Freud mounted the cycle behind the bear; hugging himself to the broad back, he guided the beast and the '37 Indian back to the lawn party.

  'So, a few kinks to work out!' he'd call to the crowd. 'A few flies in the ointment, but nichts to worry! In no time he will get it right!'

  That was the act. It never changed. That was all Freud had taught State o' Maine; he claimed it was all that the bear could learn.

  'He's not so smart a bear,' Freud told Father. 'I got him when he was too old. I thought he'd be fine. He was tamed as a cub. But the logging camps taught him nothing. Those people have no manners, anyway. They're just animals, too. They kept the bear as a pet, they fed him enough so he wouldn't get nasty, but they just let him hang around and be lazy. Like them. I think this bear's got a drinking problem because of them loggers. He don't drink now -- I don't let him -- but he acts like he wants to, you know?'

  Father didn't know. He thought Freud was wonderful and the 1937 Indian was the most beautiful machine he had ever met. On days off, my father would take my mother driving on the coast roads, the two of them hugged together and cool in the salt air, but they were never alone: the motorcycle could not be driven away from the Arbuthnot without State o' Maine in the sidecar. The bear went berserk if the motorcycle tried to drive away without him; it was the only event that could make the old bear run. A bear can run surprisingly fast.

  'Go ahead, you try to get away,' Freud told Father. 'But better push it down the driveway, all the way out to the road, before you start the engine. And the first time you try it, don't take poor Mary with you. Wear lots of heavy clothes, because if he catches you, he'll paw you all over. He won't be mad -- just excited. Go on, try it. But if you look back, after a few miles, and he's still coming, you better stop and bring him back. He'll have a heart attack, or he'll get lost -- he's so stupid.

  'He don't know how to hunt, or anything. He's helpless if you don't feed him. He's a pet, he's not a real animal no more. And he's only about twice as sm
art as a German shepherd. And that's not smart enough for the world, you know.'

  'The world?' Lilly would always ask, her eyes popping.

  But the world for my father, in the summer of '39, was new and affectionate with my mother's shy touches, the roar of the '37 Indian and the strong smell of State o' Maine, the cold Maine nights and the wisdom of Freud.

  His limp, of course, was from a motorcycle accident; the leg had been set improperly. 'Discrimination,' Freud claimed.

  Freud was small, strong, alert as an animal, a peculiar colour (like a green olive cooked slowly until it almost browned). He had glossy black hair, a strange patch of which grew on his cheek, just under one eye: it was a silky-soft spot of hair, bigger than most moles, at least the size of an average coin, more distinctive than any birthmark, and as naturally a part of Freud's face as a limpet attached to a Maine rock.

  'It's because my brain is so enormous,' Freud told Mother and Father. 'My brain don't leave room on my head for hair, so the hair gets jealous and grows a little where it shouldn't.'

  'Maybe it was bear hair,' Frank said once, seriously, and Franny screamed and hugged me around the neck so hard that I bit my tongue.

  'Frank is so weird!' she cried. 'Show us your bear hair, Frank.' Poor Frank was approaching puberty at the time; he was ahead of his time, and he was very embarrassed about it. But not even Franny could distract us from the mesmerizing spell of Freud and his bear; we children were as caught up with them as my father and mother must have been that summer of 1939.

  Some nights, Father told us, he would walk my mother to her dorm and kiss her good night. If Freud was asleep, Father would unchain State o' Maine from the motorcycle and slip his muzzle off so the bear could eat. Then my father would take him fishing. There was a tarp staked low over the motorcycle, like an open tent, which protected State o' Maine from the rain, and Father would leave his fishing gear wrapped in the flap of that tarp for these occasions.

  The two of them would go to the Bay Point dock; it was beyond the row of hotel piers, and choppy with lobster boats and fishermen's dinghies. Father and State o' Maine would sit on the end of the dock while Father cast what he called spooners, for pollack. He would feed the pollack live to State o' Maine. There was only one evening when there was an altercation between them. Father usually caught three or four pollack; that was enough -- for both Father and State o' Maine -- and then they'd go home. But one evening the pollack weren't running, and after an hour without a nibble Father got up off the dock to take the bear back to his muzzle and chain.

  'Come on,' he said. 'No fish in the ocean tonight.'

  State o' Maine wouldn't leave.

  'Come on!' Father said. But State o' Maine wouldn't let Father leave the dock, either.

  'Earl!' the bear growled. Father sat down and kept fishing. 'Earl!' State o' Maine complained. Father cast and cast, he changed spooners, he tried everything. If he could have dug for clam worms down on the mud flats, he could have bottom-fished for flounder, but State o' Maine became unfriendly whenever Father attempted to leave the dock. Father contemplated jumping in and swimming ashore; he could sneak back to the dorm for Freud, then, and they could come recapture State o' Maine with food from the hotel. But after a while Father got into the spirit of the evening and said, 'All right, all right, so you want fish? We'll catch a fish, goddamn it!'

  A little before dawn a lobsterman came down to the dock to put out to sea. He was going to pull his traps and he had some new traps with him to drop, and -- unfortunately -- he had bait with him, too. State o' Maine smelled the bait.

  'Better give it to him,' Father said.

  'Earl!' said State o' Maine, and the lobsterman gave the bear all his baitfish.

  'We'll repay you,' Father said. 'First thing.'

  'I know what I'd like to do, "first thing," ' the lobsterman said. 'I'd like to put that bear in my traps and use him for bait. I'd like to see him et up by lobsters!'

  'Earl!' said State o' Maine.

  'Better not tease him,' Father told the lobsterman, who agreed.

  'Ja, he's not so smart, that bear,' Freud told Father. 'I should have warned you. He can be funny about food. They fed him too much at the logging camps; he ate all the time -- lots of junk. And sometimes, now, he just decides he's not eating enough -- or he wants a drink, or something. You got to remember: don't ever sit down to eat yourself if you haven't fed him first. He don't like that.'

  So State o' Maine was always well fed before he performed at the lawn parties -- for the white linen tablecloths were everywhere burdened with hors d'oeuvres, fancy raw fish, and grilled meats, and if State o' Maine had been hungry, there might have been trouble. But Freud stuffed State o' Maine before the act, and the bloated bear drove the motorcycle calmly. He was placid, even bored, at the handlebars, as if the greatest physical need soon to seize him would be an awesome belch, or the need to move his great bear's bowels.

  'It's a dumb act and I'm losing money,' Freud said. This place is too fancy. There's only snobs who come here. I should be someplace with a little cruder crowd, someplace where there's bingo games -- not just dancing. I should be places that are more democratic -- places where they bet on dog fights, you know?'

  My father didn't know, but he must have marvelled at such places -- rougher than the Weirs at Laconia, or even Hampton Beach. Places where there were more drunks, and more careless money for an act with a performing bear. The Arbuthnot was simply too refined a crowd for a man like Freud and a bear like State o' Maine. It was too refined, even, to appreciate that motorcycle: the 1937 Indian.

  But my father realized that Freud felt no ambition drawing him away. Freud had an easy summer at the Arbuthnot; the bear simply hadn't turned out to be the gold mine Freud had hoped for. What Freud wanted was a different bear.

  'With a bear this dumb,' he told my mother and father, 'there's no point in trying to better my take. And you got other problems when you hustle them cheap resorts.'

  My mother took my father's hand and gave it firm, warning pressure -- perhaps because she saw him imagining those 'other problems,' those 'cheap resorts.' But my father was thinking of his tuition at Harvard; he liked the 1937 Indian and the bear called State o' Maine. He hadn't seen Freud put the slightest effort into training the bear, and Win Berry was a boy who believed in himself; Coach Bob's son was a young man who imagined he could do anything he could imagine.

  He had earlier planned that, after the summer at the Arbuthnot, he would go to Cambridge, take a room, and find a job -- perhaps in Boston. He would get to know the area around Harvard and get employed in the vicinity, so that as soon as there was money for tuition, he could enroll. This way, he imagined, he might even be able to keep a part-time job and go to Harvard. My mother, of course, had liked this plan because Boston to Dairy, and back again, was an easy trip on the Boston & Maine -- the trains ran regularly then. She was already imagining the visits from my father -- long weekends -- and perhaps the occasional, though proper, visits she might make to Cambridge or Boston to see him.

  'What do you know about bears, anyway?' she asked. 'Or motorcycles?'

  She didn't like, either, his idea that -- if Freud was unwilling to part with his Indian or his bear -- Father would travel the logging camps with Freud. Win Berry was a strong boy, but not vulgar. And Mother imagined the camps to be vulgar places, from which Father would not emerge the same -- or would not emerge at all.

  She needn't have worried. That summer and how it would end were obviously planned more hugely and inevitably than any trivial arrangements my father and mother could imagine ahead of them. That summer of '39 was as inevitable as the war in Europe, as it would soon be called, and all of them -- Freud, Mary Bates, and Winslow Berry -- were as lightly tossed along by the summer as the gulls knocked about in the rough currents at the mouth of the Kennebec.

  One night in late August, when Mother had served at the evening meal and had only just had time to change into her saddle shoes and the long skirt she pl
ayed croquet in, Father was called from his room to assist with an injured man. Father ran past the lawn for croquet where Mother was waiting for him. She held a mallet over her shoulder. The Christmas-like light bulbs strung in the trees lit the lawn for croquet in such a ghostly way that -- to my father -- my mother 'looked like an angel holding a club.'

  'I'll be right with you,' Father said to her. 'Someone's been hurt.'

  She came with him, and some other running men, and they ran down to the hotel piers. Alongside the dock was a throbbing big ship aglow with lights. A band with too much brass was playing on board, and the strong fuel smell and motor exhaust in the salt air mixed with the smell of crushed fruit. It appeared that some enormous bowl of alcoholic fruit punch was being served to the ship's guests, and they were spilling it over themselves or washing the deck down with it. At the end of the dock a man lay on his side, bleeding from a wound in his cheek: he had stumbled coming up the ladder and had torn his face on a mooring cleat.

  He was a large man, his face florid in the blue wash of the light from the moon, and he sat up as soon as anybody touched him. 'Scheiss!' he said.

  My father and mother recognized the German word for 'shit' from Freud's many performances. With the assistance of several strong young men the German was brought to his feet. He had bled, magnificently, over his white dinner jacket, which seemed large enough to clothe two men; his blue-black cummerbund resembled a curtain, and his matching bow tie stuck up straight at his throat, like a twisted, propeller. He was rather jowly and he smelled strongly of the fruit punch served on board ship. He bellowed to someone. From on board came a chorus of German, and a tall, tanned woman in an evening dress with yellow lace, or ruching, came up the dock's ladder like a panther wearing silk. The bleeding man seized her and leaned on her so heavily that the woman, despite her own obvious strength and agility, was pushed into my father, who helped her maintain her balance. She was much younger than the man, my mother noted, and also German -- speaking in an easy, clucking manner to him, while he continued to bleat and gesture, nastily, to those members of the German chorus left on board. Up the dock, and up the gravel driveway, the big couple wove.