The Hotel New Hampshire

by John Irving

  'All so-called serious opera is blood and Schlagobers,' Frank has told me. I don't know enough about opera to know if that is true; all I know is that I think Lucia di Lammermoor should have been playing at the Vienna State Opera the night Father and I walked back to the Hotel New Hampshire from the Hotel Sacher.

  'It doesn't matter, really -- which opera it was,' Frank is always saying, but I like to think it was Lucia. I like to think that the famous mad scene was not yet under way when Father and I arrived at the Hotel New Hampshire. There was Susie the bear in the lobby -- without her bear's head on! -- and she was crying. Father walked right by Susie, without appearing to notice how upset she was -- and out of costume! -- but my father was used to unhappy bears.

  He walked right upstairs. He was going to tell Screaming Annie the bad news about the radicals, the bad news for the Hotel New Hampshire. 'She's probably with a customer, or out on the street,' I said to him, but Father said he would just wait for her outside her room.

  I sat down with Susie.

  'She's still with him,' Susie sobbed. If Franny was still with Ernst the pornographer, I knew, it meant she was more than talking to him. There was no reason to pretend to be a bear anymore. I held Susie's bear head in my hands, I put it on, I took it off. I could not sit there in the lobby, waiting for Franny, like a whore, to be finished with him -- to come down to the lobby again -- and I knew I was helpless to interfere. I would have been too late, as always. There was no one around as fast as Harold Swallow, this time; there was no Black Arm of the Law. Junior Jones would rescue Franny again, but he was too late to save her from Ernst -- and so was I. If I'd stayed in the lobby with Susie, I would have just cried with her, and I'd been crying entirely too much, I thought.

  'Did you "tell Old Billig?" I asked Susie. 'About the bombers?'

  'She was only worried about her fucking china bears,' Susie said, and went on crying.

  'I love Franny, too,' I told Susie, and gave her a hug.

  'Not like I do!' Susie said, stifling a cry. Yes, like you do, I thought.

  I started upstairs, but Susie misunderstood me.

  'They're somewhere on the third floor,' Susie said. 'Franny came down for a key, but I didn't see which room.' I looked at the reception desk; you could tell it was Susie the bear's night to watch after the reception desk, because the reception desk was a big mess.

  'I'm looking for Jolanta,' I said to Susie. 'Not Franny.'

  'Going to tell her, huh?' Susie asked.

  But Jolanta wasn't interested in being told.

  'I've got something to tell you,' I said outside her door.

  'Three hundred Schillings,' she said, so I slipped it under the door.

  'Okay, you can come in,' Jolanta said. She was alone; a customer had just left her, apparently, because she was sitting on her bidet, naked except for her bra.

  'You want to see the tits, too?' Jolanta asked me. 'The tits cost another hundred Schillings.'

  'I want to tell you something,' I said to her.

  'That costs another hundred, too,' she said, washing herself with the mindless lack of energy of a housewife washing dishes.

  I gave her another hundred Schillings and she took her bra off. 'Undress,' she commanded me.

  I did as I was told, while saying, 'It's the stupid radicals. They've ruined everything. They're going to blow up the Opera.'

  'So what?' Jolanta said, watching me undress. 'Your body is basically wrong,' she told me. 'You're basically a little guy with big muscles.'

  'I may need to borrow what's in your purse,' I suggested to her, ' -- just until the police take care of things.' But Jolanta ignored this.

  'You like it standing up, against the wall?' she asked me. 'Is that how you want it? If we use the bed -- if I have to lie down -- it's one hundred Schillings extra.' I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

  'Jolanta,' I said. 'They're really serious. Fehlgeburt is dead,' I said. 'And these crazy people have a bomb, a big bomb.'

  'Fehlgeburt was born dead,' Jolanta said, dropping to her knees and sucking me into her mouth. Later, she put a prophylactic on me. I tried to concentrate, but when she stood up against me and stuffed me inside her, slamming me against the wall, she immediately informed me that I wasn't tall enough to do it standing up. I paid her another hundred Schillings and we tried it on the bed.

  'Now you're not hard enough,' she complained, and I wondered if my failure to be hard enough would cost me another hundred Schillings.

  'Please don't let on to the radicals that you know about them,' I said to Jolanta. 'And it would probably be better for you if you got out of here for a while -- no one really knows what will become of the hotel. We're going back to America,' I added.

  'Okay, okay,' she said, shoving me off her. She sat up in bed, she crossed the floor and sat back down on the bidet. 'Auf Wiedersehen,' she said.

  'But I didn't come,' I said.

  'Whose fault is that?' she asked me, washing and washing herself, again and again.

  I suppose, if I had come, it would have cost me another hundred Schillings. I watched her broad back rocking over the bidet; she was rocking with slightly more intensity than she had moved with when she was under me. Since her back was to me, I took her purse off the bedside table and looked in it. It looked like Susie the bear had been taking care of it. There was a tube of some kind of ointment that had opened; the inside of Jolanta's purse was sticky with a sort of creme. There was the usual lipstick, the usual packages of prophylactics (I noticed I had forgotten to take mine off), the usual cigarettes, some pills, perfume, tissues, change, a fat wallet -- and little jars of assorted junk. There wasn't a knife, not to mention a gun. Her purse was an empty threat, her purse was a bluff; she was mock-sex, and now -- it seemed -- she was only mock-violence, too. Then I felt the jar that was quite a bit larger than the rest -- it was quite an uncomfortable size, really. I pulled it out of her purse and looked at it; Jolanta turned and screamed at me.

  'My baby!' she screamed. 'Put my baby down!'

  I almost dropped it -- this large jar. And in the murky fluid, swimming there, I saw the human fetus, the tiny tight-fisted embryo that had been Jolanta's only flower, nipped in the bud. In her mind -- the way an ostrich comforts its head in the sand -- was this embryo a kind of mock-weapon for Jolanta? Was it what she reached in her purse for, what she put her hands on when the going got rough? And what unlikely comfort was it to her?

  'Put my baby down!' she cried, advancing toward me, naked -- and dripping from her bidet. I put the bottled fetus gently on the pillow of her bed, and fled.

  I heard Screaming Annie announcing her false arrival when I opened and closed Jolanta's door. It appeared that Father was giving her the bad news. I sat on the second-floor landing, not wanting to see Susie the bear in the lobby, and not daring to seek out Franny on the floor above. Father came out of Screaming Annie's room; he wished me a good night, with a hand on my shoulder, and went down the stairs to go to bed.

  'Did I tell her?' I called after him.

  'It didn't seem to matter to her,' Father said. I went and knocked on Screaming Annie's door.

  'I already know,' she told me, when she saw who it was.

  But I hadn't been able to come with Jolanta; something else took possession of me outside Screaming Annie's door. 'Well, why didn't you say so?' Screaming Annie said, when I had still said nothing. She took me inside her room and shut the door. 'Like father, like son,' she said. She helped me undress; she was already undressed herself. No wonder she had to work so hard, I realized -- because she didn't know the system of charging for all the 'extras' that Jolanta charged for. Screaming Annie just did it all for a flat four hundred Schillings.

  'And if you don't come,' she told me, 'that's my fault. But you'll come,' she assured me.

  'Please,' I said to her, 'if it's all the same to you, I wish you wouldn't come. I mean, I wish you wouldn't pretend to. I would appreciate a quiet ending,' I begged her, but she was already beginning to mak
e curious sounds under me. And then I heard a sound that scared me. It resembled nothing I'd ever heard from Screaming Annie; it was not the song Susie the bear had coaxed out of Franny, either. For an awful second -- because there was so much pain in the sound -- I thought it was the song Ernst the pornographer was making Franny sing, and then I realized it was my sound, it was my own wretched singing voice. Screaming Annie started singing with me, and in the vibrating silence that followed our awesome duet I heard what was clearly Franny's voice yelling -- so close by she must have been standing on the second-floor landing -- 'Oh, Christ, would you hurry up and get it over with!' Franny screamed.

  'Why did you do it?' I whispered to Screaming Annie, who lay panting under me. 'Do what?' she said.

  'The fake orgasm,' I said. 'I asked you not to.'

  'That was no fake,' she whispered. But before I had a moment to even consider this news as a compliment, she added, 'I never fake an orgasm. They're all real,' Screaming Annie said. 'Why in hell do you think I'm such a wreck?' she asked me. And why, of course, did I think she was so convinced about not wanting her dark daughter in the 'business'?

  'I'm sorry,' I whispered.

  'I hope they do blow up the Opera,' Screaming Annie said. 'I hope they get the Hotel Sacher, too,' she added. 'I hope they wipe out all the Karntnerstrasse,' she added. 'And the Ringstrasse, and everyone on it. All the men,' whispered Screaming Annie.

  Franny was waiting for me on the second-floor landing. She didn't look any worse than I did. I sat down beside her and we asked each other if we were 'all right.' Neither one of us provided very convincing answers. I asked Franny what she found out from Ernst, and she shivered. I put my arm around her and we leaned against the banister of the staircase together. I asked her again.

  'I found out about everything, I think,' she whispered. 'What do you want to know?'

  'Everything,' I said, and Franny shut her eyes and put her head on my shoulder and turned her face against my neck.

  'Do you still love me?' she asked.

  'Yes, of course I do,' I whispered.

  'And you want to know everything?' she asked. I held my breath, and she said, 'The cow position? You want to know about that?' I just held her; I couldn't say anything. 'And the elephant position?' she asked me. I could feel her shaking; she was trying very hard not to cry. 'I can tell you a few things about the elephant position,' Franny said. 'The main thing about it is, it hurts,' she said, and she started to cry.

  'He hurt you?' I asked her softly.

  'The elephant position hurt me,' she said. We sat quietly for a while, until she stopped shaking. 'Do you want me to go on?' she asked me.

  'Not about that,' I said.

  'Do you still love me?' Franny asked.

  'Yes, I can't help it,' I said.

  'Poor you,' said Franny.

  'Poor you, too,' I told her.

  There is at least one terrible thing about lovers -- real lovers, I mean: people who are in love with each other. Even when they're supposed to be miserable, and comforting each other, even then they will relish their every physical contact in a sexual way; even when they're supposed to be in a kind of mourning, they can get aroused. Franny and I simply couldn't have gone on holding each other on the stairs; it was impossible to touch each other, at all, and not want to touch everything.

  I suppose I should be grateful to Jolanta for breaking us up. Jolanta was on her way out to the street, looking for someone else to abuse. She saw Franny and me sitting on the stairs and aimed her knee so that it struck me in the spine. 'Oh, excuse me!' she said. And to Franny, Jolanta added, 'Don't get involved with him. He can't come.'

  Franny and I, without a word, more or less followed Jolanta down to the lobby -- only Jolanta went through the lobby and out onto the Krugerstrasse, while Franny and I went to have a look at Susie the bear. Susie was sleeping on the couch that had the ashtray spilled on it; there was an almost serene look on her face -- Susie wasn't nearly as ugly as she thought she was. Franny had told me that Susie's little joke about being the original not-bad-if-you-put-a-bag-over-her-head girl was not so funny; the two men who had raped her had put a bag over her head -- 'So we don't have to look at you,' they told her. This kind of cruelty might make a bear out of anyone.

  'Rape really puzzles me,' I would later confess to Susie the bear, 'because it seems to me to be the most brutalizing experience that can be survived; we can't, for example, survive our own murder. And I suppose it's the most brutalizing experience I can imagine because I can't imagine doing it to someone, I can't imagine wanting to. Therefore, it is such a foreign feeling: I think that's what seems so brutalizing about it.'

  'I can imagine doing it to someone,' Susie said. 'I can imagine doing it to the fuckers who did it to me,' she said.

  'But that's because it would be simply revenge. And it wouldn't work, doing it to a fucking man,' Susie said. 'Because a man probably would enjoy it. There are men who think we actually enjoy getting raped,' Susie said. 'They can only think that,' she said, 'because they think they would like it.'

  But in the ash-gray lobby of the second Hotel New Hampshire, Franny and I simply tried to put Susie the bear back together again, and get her to go to her own room to sleep. We got her on her feet, and found her head; we brushed the old cigarette butts (that she'd been lying in) off her shaggy back.

  'Come on, come get out of your old suit, Susie,' Franny coaxed her.

  'How could you -- with Ernst?' Susie mumbled to Franny. 'And how could you -- with whores?' she asked me. 'I don't understand either of you,' Susie concluded. 'I'm too old for this.'

  'No, I am too old for this, Susie,' said Father gently, to the bear. We hadn't noticed him, standing in the lobby, behind the reception desk; we thought he had gone to bed. He wasn't alone, either. The gentle mother-like radical, our dear Schlagobers, our dear Schwanger, was with him. She had her gun out and she motioned us all back to the couch.

  'Be a dear,' Schwanger said to me. 'Get Lilly and Frank. Wake them up nicely,' she added. 'Don't be rough, or too abrupt.'

  Frank was lying in bed with the dressmaker's dummy stretched out beside him. He was wide-awake; I didn't have to wake him. 'I knew we shouldn't have waited,' Frank said. 'We should have blown the whistle right away.'

  Lilly was also wide-awake. Lilly was writing.

  'Here comes a new experience to write about, Lilly,' I joked with her, holding her hand as we walked back to the lobby.

  'I hope it's just a little experience,' Lilly said.

  They were all waiting for us in the lobby. Schraubenschlussel was wearing his streetcar conductor's uniform; he looked very 'official.' Arbeiter had come dressed for work; he was so well dressed, in fact, that he wouldn't have looked out of place at the Opera. He was wearing a tuxedo -- all black. And the quarterback was there, the signal caller was there to lead them -- Ernst the lady-killer, Ernst the pornographer, Ernst the star was there. Only Old Billig -- Old Billig the radical -- was missing. He blew the way the wind blew, as Arbeiter had observed: Old Billig was smart enough to have excluded himself from this end of the movement. He would still be around for the next show; for Ernst and Arbeiter, for Schraubenschlussel and Schwanger, this was surely the gala (and maybe the final) performance.

  'Lilly dear,' Schwanger said. 'Go fetch Freud for us. Freud should be here, too.'

  And Lilly, once again cast in the role of Freud's Seeing Eye bear, brought the old blind believer to us -- his Louisville Slugger tap-tap-tapping in front of him, his scarlet silk robe with the black dragon on the back was all he wore ('Chinatown, New York City, 1939!' he had told us).

  'What dream is this?' the old man said. 'Whatever happened to democracy?'

  Lilly seated Freud on the couch next to Father; Freud promptly whacked Father's shin with the baseball bat.

  'Oh, sorry!' Freud cried. 'Whose anatomy is that?'

  'Win Berry,' my father said softly; it was eerie, but that was the only time we children heard him speak his own name.

&nbs
p; 'Win Berry!' Freud cried. 'Well, nothing too bad can happen with Win Berry around!' No one looked so sure.

  'Explain yourselves!' Freud shouted to the darkness he saw. 'You're all here,' the old man said. 'I can smell you, I can hear every breath.'

  'It's really quite simple to explain,' Ernst said quietly.

  'Basic,' said Arbeiter. 'Truly basic.'

  'We need a driver,' Ernst said softly, 'someone to drive the car.'

  'It runs like a dream,' Schraubenschlussel said, worshipfully. 'It purrs like a kitten.'

  'Drive it yourself, Wrench,' I said.

  'Be quiet, dear,' Schwanger said to me; I just looked at her gun to confirm that it was pointed at me.

  'Be quiet, weight lifter,' Wrench said; he had a short, heavy-looking tool protruding from the front pants pocket of his streetcar conductor's uniform, and he rested his hand on the tool as if the tool were the butt of a pistol.

  'Fehlgeburt was full of doubt,' Ernst said.

  'Fehlgeburt is dead,' Lilly said -- our family realist, the family writer.

  'Fehlgeburt had a fatal case of romanticism,' Ernst said. 'She always questioned the means.'

  'The ends do justify the means, you know,' Arbeiter interjected. 'That's basic, truly basic.'

  'You're a moron, Arbeiter,' Franny said.

  'And you're as self-righteous as any capitalist!' Freud told Arbeiter.

  'But mainly a moron, Arbeiter,' said Susie the bear. 'A truly basic moron.'

  'The bear would make a good driver,' Schraubenschlussel said.

  'Stick it in your ear, Wrench,' said Susie the bear.

  'The bear is too hostile to be trusted,' Ernst said, so logically.

  'You bet your sweet ass,' said Susie the bear.