by John Irving
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 travelled 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 inappropriate.
'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 Gemutlichkeit?' 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-seater 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 bearlike fashion. It swung itself off the couch and amble
d 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 colour was as grey as a sidewalk -- the nondescript and neglected colour 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. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?'
'No, no,' said Freud, 'not German. Susie don't like German. She speaks your language,' Freud said in Frank's general direction.
Frank, oafishly, bent down to the bear, tugging its fur again. 'Do you shake hands, Susie?' Frank asked, bending down, but the bear turned to face him; the bear stood up.
'She's not being rude, is she?' Freud cried. 'Susie, be nice! Don't be rude.' Standing up, the bear wasn't as tall as any of us -- except she was taller than Lilly, and she was taller than Freud. The bear's snout came to Frank's chin. They stood face to face, for a moment, the bear shifting its weight on its hind legs, shuffling like a boxer.
'I'm Frank,' Frank said nervously to the bear, holding out his hand; then, with both hands, he tried to grasp the bear's right paw and shake it.
'Keep your hands to yourself, kid,' the bear said to Frank, cuffing Frank's arms apart with a swift, short blow. Frank, reeling backwards, stumbled on the reception bell -- which made a quick ping.'
'How'd you do that?' Franny asked Freud. 'How'd you make it talk?'
'Nobody makes me talk, honey,' Susie the bear said, nuzzling Franny's hip.
Lilly screamed again. 'The bear talks, the bear talks!' she cried.
'She's a smart bear!' Freud shouted. 'Didn't I tell you?'
'The bear talks!' Lilly screamed, hysterically.
'At least I don't scream,' Susie the bear said. Then she dropped all semblance of bearlike mannerisms; she walked upright, and sullenly, back to the couch -- where Lilly's first scream had disturbed her. She sat down and crossed her legs and put her feet on the chair. It was Time magazine that she was reading, a rather out-of-date issue.
'Susie's from Michigan,' Freud said, as if this explained everything. 'But she went to college in New York. She's very smart.'
'I went to Sarah Lawrence,' the bear said, 'but I dropped out. What an elitist crock of shit,' she said -- of Sarah Lawrence -- the world of Time magazine passing impatiently through her paws.
'She's a girl!' Father said. 'It's a girl in a bear suit!'
'A woman,' Susie said. 'Watch it.' It was only 1957; Susie was a bear ahead of her time.
'A woman in a bear suit,' Frank said, with Lilly sliding against me and clutching my leg.
'There are no smart bears,' Freud said, ominously. 'Except this kind.'
Upstairs, the typewriters were quarreling over our stunned silence. We regarded Susie the bear -- a smart bear, indeed; and a Seeing Eye bear, too. Knowing she was not a real bear suddenly made her appear larger; she took on new power before us. She was more than Freud's eyes, we thought; she might be his heart and mind, too.
Father viewed the lobby, while his old, blind mentor leaned on him for support. And what was Father seeing this time? I wondered. What castle, what palace, what deluxe-class possibility looming larger and larger -- as he passed over the sagging couch where the she-bear sat, passed over the imitation Impressionists: the pink, bovine nudes fallen in flowers of light (on the clashing floral wallpaper)? And the easy chair with its stuffing exploding (like the bombs to be imagined under all the debris in the outer districts); and the one reading lamp too dim to dream by.
'Too bad about the candy store,' Father said to Freud.
'Too bad?' Freud cried. 'Nein, nein, nicht too bad! It's good. The place is gone, and they had no insurance. We can buy them up -- cheap! Give ourselves a lobby people will notice -- from the street!' Freud cried, though of course there was nothing his own eyes would notice, or could. 'A very fortunate fire,' Freud said, 'a fire perfectly timed for your arrival,' Freud said, squee
zing my father's arm. 'A brilliant fire!' Freud said.
'A smart bear's sort of fire,' said Susie the bear, cynically tearing her way through the old issue of Time.
'Did you set it?' Franny asked Susie the bear.
'You bet your sweet ass, honey,' Susie said.
Oh, there once was a woman who had also been raped, but when I told her Franny's story, and how it seemed to me that Franny had handled it -- by not handling it, perhaps, or by denying the worst of it -- this woman told me that Franny and I were wrong.
'Wrong?' I said.
'You bet your ass,' this woman said. 'Franny was raped, not beaten up. And those bastards did get the "her in her" -- as your bullshit black friend calls it. What's he know? A rape expert because he's got a sister? Your sister robbed herself of the only weapon she had against those punks -- their semen. And nobody stopped her from washing herself, nobody made her deal with it -- so she's going to be dealing with it all her life. In fact, she sacrificed her own integrity by not fighting her attackers in the first place -- and you,' this woman said to me, 'you conveniently diffused the rape of your sister and robbed the rape of its integrity by running off to find the hero instead of staying on the scene and dealing with it yourself.'
'A rape has integrity?' Frank asked.
'I went to get help,' I said. 'They just would have beaten the shit out of me and raped her, anyway.'
'I've got to talk to your sister, honey,' this woman said. 'She's into her own amateurish psychology and it won't work, believe me: I know rape.'
'Whoa!' Iowa Bob said, once. 'All psychology is amateurish. Fuck Freud, and all that!'
'That Freud, anyway,' my father had added. And I would think, later: Maybe our Freud, too.
Anyway, this rape-expert woman said that Franny's apparent reaction to her own rape was bullshit; and knowing that Franny still wrote letters to Chipper Dove made me wonder. The rape-expert woman said that rape simply wasn't like that, that it didn't have that effect -- at all. She knew, she said. It had happened to her. And in college she'd joined a kind of club of women who'd all been raped, and they had agreed among themselves exactly what it was like, and what were the exactly correct responses to have to it. Even before she started talking to Franny, I could see how desperately important this woman's private unhappiness was to her, and how -- in her mind -- the only credible reaction to the event of rape was hers. That someone else might have responded differently to a similar abuse only meant to her that the abuse couldn't possibly have been the same.
