The Hotel New Hampshire

“They’re going to blow it up,” I whispered to my sister. “The Opera—they’re going to blow it up.” She let me hold her. “I love you terribly much,” I told her.

“I love you, too, damn it,” Franny said.

Although the weather was feeling like fall, it was possible for us to stand there, guarding the Opera, until the light came up and the real people came out to go to work. There was no place we could go, anyway—and absolutely nothing, we knew, that we should do.

“Keep passing the open windows,” we whispered to each other.

When we finally went back to the Hotel New Hampshire, the Opera was still standing there—safe. Safe for a while, anyway, I thought.

“Safer than we are,” I told Franny. “Safer than love.”

“Let me tell you, kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.”

10 A Night at the Opera: Schlagobers and Blood

“Children, children,” Father said to us, “we must be very careful. I think this is the turning point, kids,” our father said, as if we were still eight, nine, ten, and so forth, and he was telling us about meeting Mother at the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea—that night they first saw Freud, with State o’Maine.

“There’s always a turning point,” Frank said, philosophically.

“Okay, supposing there is,” Franny said, impatiently, “but what is this particular turning point?”

“Yeah,” said Susie the bear, looking Franny over very carefully; Susie was the only one who’d noticed that Franny and I were out all night. Franny had told her we’d gone to a party near the university with some people Susie didn’t know. And what could be safer than having your brother, and a weight lifter, for an escort? Susie didn’t like parties, anyway; if she went as a bear, there was no one she could talk to, and if she didn’t go as a bear, no one seemed interested in talking to her. She looked sulky and cross. “There’s a lot of shit to deal with in a hurry, as I see it,” said Susie the bear.

“Exactly,” Father said. “That’s the typical turning-point situation.”

“We can’t blow this one,” Freud said. “I don’t think I got many more hotels left in me.” Which might be a good thing, I thought, trying to keep my eyes off Franny. We were all in Frank’s room, the conference room—as if the dressmaker’s dummy were a soothing presence, were a silent ghost of Mother or Egg or Iowa Bob; somehow the dummy was supposed to radiate signals and we were supposed to catch the signals (according to Frank).

“How much can we get for the novel, Frank?” Father asked.

“It’s Lilly’s book,” Franny said. “It’s not our book.”

“In a way, it is,” Lilly said.

“Precisely,” Frank said, “and the way I understand publishing, it’s out of her hands now. Now is where we either get taken or we make a killing.”

“It’s just about growing up,” Lilly said. “I’m sort of surprised they’re interested.”

“They’re only five thousand dollars interested, Lilly,” Franny said.

“We need fifteen or twenty thousand to leave,” Father said. “If we’re going to have a chance to do anything with it, back home,” he added.

“Don’t forget: we’ll get something for this place,” Freud said, defensively.

“Not after we blow the whistle on the fucking bombers,” said Susie the bear.

“There will be such a scandal,” Frank said, “we won’t get a buyer.”

“I told you: we’ll get the police on our ass if we blow the whistle at all,” Freud said. “You don’t know our police, their Gestapo tactics. They’ll find something we’re doing wrong with the whores, too.”

“Well, there’s a lot that is wrong,” Franny said. We couldn’t look at each other; when Franny talked, I looked out the window. I saw Old Billig the radical crossing the street. I saw Screaming Annie dragging herself home.

“There’s no way we can’t blow the whistle,” Father said. “If they actually think they can blow up the Opera, there’s no talking to them.”

“There never was any talking to them,” Franny said. “We just listened.”

“They’ve always been crazy,” I said to Father.

“Don’t you know that, Daddy?” Lilly asked him.

Father hung his head. He was forty-four, a distinguished gray appearing on the thick brown hair around his ears; he had never worn sideburns, and he had his hair cut in a uniform, mid-ear, mid-forehead, just-covering-the- back-of-his-neck way; he never thinned it. He wore bangs, like a little boy, and his hair fit his head so dramatically well that from a distance we were sometimes fooled into thinking that Father was wearing a helmet.

“I’m sorry, kids,” Father said, shaking his head. “I know this isn’t very pleasant, but I feel we’re at the turning point.” He shook his head some more; he looked really lost to us, and it was only later that I would remember him on Frank’s bed, in that dressmaker’s dummy of a room, as looking really quite handsome and in charge of things. Father was always good at creating the illusion that he was in charge of things: Earl, for example. He hadn’t lifted the weights, like Iowa Bob, or like me, but Father had kept his athletic figure, and certainly he had kept his boyishness—“too fucking much boyishness,” as Franny would say. It occurred to me that he must be lonely; in seven years, he hadn’t had a date! And if he used the whores, he was discreet about it—and in that Hotel New Hampshire, who could be that discreet?

“He can’t be seeing any of them,” Franny had said. “I’d simply know it, if he was.”

“Men are sneaky,” Susie the bear had said. “Even nice guys.”

“So he’s not doing it; that’s settled,” Franny had said. Susie the bear had shrugged, and Franny had hit her.

But in Frank’s room, it was Father who brought up the whores.

“We should tell them what we’re going to do about the crazy radicals,” Father said, “before we tell the police.”

“Why?” Susie the bear asked him. “One of them might blow the whistle on us.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked Susie.

“We should tell them so they can make other plans,” Father said.

“They’ll have to change hotels,” Freud said. “The damn police will close us down. In this country, you’re guilty by association!” Freud cried. “Just ask any Jew!” Just ask the other Freud, I thought.

“But suppose we were heroes,” Father said, and we all looked at him. Yes, that would be nice, I was thinking.

“Like in Lilly’s book?” Frank asked Father.

“Suppose the police thought that we were heroes for uncovering the bomb plot?” Father asked.

“The police don’t think that way,” Freud said.

“But suppose, as Americans,” Father said, “we told the American Consulate, or the Embassy, and someone over there passed on the information to the Austrian authorities—as if this whole thing had been a really top-secret, first-class kind of intrigue.”

“This is why I love you, Win Berry!” Freud said, tapping time to some interior tune with his baseball bat. “You really are a dreamer,” Freud told my father. “This is no first-class intrigue! This is a second-class hotel,” Freud said. “Even I can see that,” he said, “and in case you haven’t noticed, I’m blind. And those aren’t any first-class terrorists; either,” Freud said. “They can’t keep a perfectly good car running!” he shouted. “I, for one, don’t believe they know how to blow up the Opera! I actually think we’re perfectly safe. If they had a bomb, they’d probably fall downstairs with it!”