The Hotel New Hampshire

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.’”

“Fuck off!” Arbeiter cried at her. “Get going. Walk up there, fast! We’ll give you ten minutes. Then Freud and Schraubenschlüssel are on their way.”

Schwanger stood there as if she were trying to decide whether to write another pregnancy or another abortion book.

“Get going, you cunt!” Arbeiter yelled at her. “Remember to cross the Kärntnerstrasse. And look for