by John Irving
So I stayed strictly nonsexual with Dark Inge; in fact, it wouldn't have occurred to me to even think of her sexually if her mother hadn't brought it up. I stayed strictly to my imagination: of Franny, of Jolanta. And of course my shy, stumbling courtship of Fehlgeburt, the reader. The girls at the American School all knew I lived in 'that hotel on the Krugerstrasse'; I was not in the same class of Americans that they were in. People say that in America most Americans are not at all class-conscious, but I know about the Americans who live abroad, and they are wildly conscious about what kind of Americans they are.
Franny had her bear, and, I suppose, she had her imagination as much as I had mine. She had Junior Jones and his football scores; she must have had to work hard to imagine him past the ends of the games. And she had her correspondence with Chipper Dove, she had her rather one-sided imagination concerning him.
Susie had a theory about Franny's letters to Chipper Dove. 'She's afraid of him,' Susie said. 'She's actually terrified of ever seeing him again. It's fear that makes her do it -- write to him all the time. Because if she can address him, in a normal voice -- if she can pretend that she's having a normal relationship with him -- well ... then he's no rapist, then he never did actually do it to her, and she doesn't want to deal with the fact that he did. Because,' Susie said, 'she's afraid that Dove or someone like him will rape her again.'
I thought about that. Susie the bear might not have been the smart bear Freud had in mind, but she was a smart bear on her own terms.
What Lilly once said about her has stayed with me. 'You can make fun of Susie because she's afraid to simply be a human being and have to deal -- as she would say -- with other human beings. But how many human beings feel that way and don't have the imagination to do anything about it? It may be stupid to go through life as a bear,' Lilly would say, 'but you'll have to admit it takes imagination.'
And we were all familiar with living with imagination, of course. Father thrived there; imagination was his own hotel. Freud could see only there. Franny, composed in the present, was also looking ahead -- and I was always, for the most part, looking at Franny (for signals, for some vital signs, for directions). Of us all, Frank was perhaps the most successfully imaginative; he made up his own world and kept to himself there. And Lilly, in Vienna, had a mission -- which was to keep her safe, for a while. Lilly had decided to grow. It had to be with her imagination that she would do this, because we noted few physical changes.
What Lilly did in Vienna was write. Fehlgeburt's reading had gotten to her. Lilly wanted to be a writer, of all things, and we were embarrassed enough for her that we never accused her of it -- although we knew she was doing it, all the time. And she was embarrassed enough by it so that she never admitted it, either. But each of us knew that Lilly was writing something. For nearly seven years, she wrote and wrote. We knew the sound of her typewriter; it was different from the radicals'. Lilly wrote very slowly.
'What are you doing, Lilly?' someone would ask her, knocking on her ever-locked door.
'Trying to grow,' Lilly would say.
And that was our euphemism for it, too. If Franny managed to say she was beaten up, when she'd been raped -- if Franny could get away with that, I thought -- then Lilly ought to be allowed to say she was 'trying to grow' when she was (we all knew) 'trying to write.'
And so when I told Lilly that the New Hampshire family included a little girl just her age, Lilly said, 'So what? I've got some growing to do. Maybe I'll introduce myself, after supper.'
One of the curses of timid people -- in bad hotels -- is that they're often too timid to leave. They're so timid they don't even dare to complain. And with their timidity comes a certain politeness; if they check out because a Schraubenschlussel has frightened them on the stairs, because a Jolanta has bitten someone in the face in the lobby, because a Screaming Annie has inched them closer to death with her howls -- even if they find bear hair in the bidet, they still apologize.
Not the woman from New Hampshire, however. She was more feisty than your average timid guest. She lasted through the early evening pickups of the whores (the family must have been dining out). The family lasted past midnight without a complaint; not even an inquiring phone call to the front desk. Frank was studying with the dressmaker's dummy. Lilly was trying to grow. Franny was at the desk in the lobby, and Susie the bear was cruising there -- her presence made the whores' customers their usual peaceful selves. I was restless. (I was restless for seven years, but this night I was especially restless.) I had been playing darts at the Kaffee Mowatt with Dark Inge and Old Billig. It was another slow night for Old Billig. Screaming Annie found a customer crossing the Karntnerstrasse and turning down Krugerstrasse a little past midnight. I was waiting my turn at the darts when Screaming Annie and her furtive male companion peeked into the Mowatt; Screaming Annie saw Dark Inge with me and Old Billig.
'It's after midnight,' she said to her daughter. 'You go get some rest. It's a school day tomorrow.'
So we all walked back to the Hotel New Hampshire more or less together. Screaming Annie and her customer a little ahead of us. Inge and I on either side of Old Billig, who was talking about the Loire Valley in France. 'It's where I'd like to retire,' she said, 'or go for my next holiday.' Dark Inge and I knew that Old Billig always spent her holidays -- every holiday -- with her sister's family in Baden. She took a bus or a train from a stop opposite the Opera; Baden would always be much more accessible to Old Billig than France.
When we walked into the hotel, Franny said that all the guests were in. The New Hampshire family had gone to bed about an hour ago. A youthful Swedish couple had gone to bed even earlier. Some old man from Burgenland hadn't left his room all night, and some British bicycle enthusiasts had come in drunk, double-checked their bicycles in the basement, attempted to be sportive with Susie the bear (until she growled), and were now, no doubt, passed out in their rooms. I went to my room to lift weights -- passing Lilly's door at the magical instant her light went out; she had stopped growing for the night. I did some forearm curls with the long barbell, but I didn't have much interest in it; it was too late. I was just lifting because I was bored. I heard the dressmaker's dummy slam off the wall between my room and Frank's; something Frank was studying had made him cross, and he was taking it out on the dummy -- or he was just bored, too. I knocked on the wall.
'Keep passing the open windows,' Frank said.
'Wo ist die Gemutlichkeit?' I sang, half-heartedly.
I heard Franny and Susie the bear slipping past my door.
'Four hundred and sixty-four, Franny!' I whispered.
I heard the solid thock of Freud's baseball bat, falling out of a bed above me. Babette's bed, I could tell. Father, as usual, was sleeping soundly -- dreaming well, no doubt; dreaming on and on. A man's voice blurted out something on the landing of the second floor, and I heard Jolanta respond. She responded by throwing him down the stairs.
'Sorrow,' I heard Frank murmur.
Franny was singing the song Susie could make her sing, so I tried to concentrate on the fight in the lobby. It was an easy fight for Jolanta, I could tell. All the pain came from the man.
'You got a cock like a wet sock and you tell me it's my fault?' Jolanta was saying. This was followed by the sound of the man absorbing a blow -- the heel of the hand into the jowl? I guessed. Hard to be sure, but there was the sound of the man falling again -- that was clear. He said something, but his words seemed strangled. Was Jolanta choking him? I wondered. Should I interrupt Franny's song? Was this a job for Susie the bear?
And then I heard Screaming Annie. I think everyone on the Krugerstrasse heard Screaming Annie. I think that even some fashionable people who'd been to the Opera, and who were just leaving the Sacher Bar and walking home along the Karntnerstrasse, must have heard Screaming Annie.
One November day in 1969 -- five years after we left Vienna -- two seemingly unrelated bits of news made morning headlines in the city. As of the seventeenth of November, 1969,
it was announced, prostitutes were to be barred from strolling on the Graben and the Karntnerstrasse -- and from all the side streets off the Karntnerstrasse, too, except the Krugerstrasse. The whores had owned these streets for 300 years, but after 1969 they would be given only the Krugerstrasse. In my opinion, the people in Vienna gave up on trying to save the Krugerstrasse before 1969. In my opinion, it was Screaming Annie's fake orgasm on the night the New Hampshire family was staying with us that determined the official decision. That particular fake orgasm finished the Krugerstrasse.
And on the same day in 1969 when the Austrian officials made their announcements about limiting the Karntnerstrasse prostitutes to the Krugerstrasse, the newspapers also revealed that a new bridge over the Danube had cracked; a few hours after the ceremonies that opened the bridge, the bridge cracked. The official word on the fault of the crack put the blame on the poor sun. In my opinion, the sun was not to blame. Only Screaming Annie could crack a bridge -- even a new bridge. There must have been a window open somewhere where she was working.
I believe that Screaming Annie faking an orgasm could raise the corpses of the heartless Hapsburgs out of their tombs.
And that night when the timid New Hampshire family was visiting us, Screaming Annie got off what was surely the record fake orgasm for the duration of our stay in Vienna. It was a seven-year orgasm. It was followed so closely by the single short yelp of her male companion that I reached a hand out of my bed and grabbed one of my barbells for support. I felt the dressmaker's dummy in Frank's room fly off the wall, and Frank himself stumbled clumsily toward his door. Franny's fine song was nipped in the upswing and Susie the bear, I knew, would be frantically searching for her head. For all the growing Lilly might have accomplished before she turned out her light, I knew she probably lost an inch in the single moment of recoiling from Screaming Annie's terrible sound.
'Jesus God!' Father called out.
The man Jolanta was beating up in the lobby found the sudden strength necessary to break free and lunge out the door. And other prostitutes passing by on the Krugerstrasse -- I can only imagine them reconsidering their profession. Whoever called this 'the gentle occupation'? they must have been thinking.
Someone was whimpering. Babette, frightened, and thrown out of rhythm with Freud? Freud, seeking his baseball bat, as a weapon? Dark Inge, finally afraid for her mother? And it seemed that one of the radicals' typewriters way up on the fifth floor -- all by itself moved itself off a typing table and crashed to the floor.
In less than a minute, we were in the lobby, moving up the stairs to the second floor. I had never seen Franny look so deeply disturbed; Lilly went to her and hung on her hip. Frank and I fell in line, like soldiers, wordlessly drawn to the devastating cry. It was over now, and the silence Screaming Annie left behind was almost as bloodcurdling as her bellow. Jolanta and Susie the bear led the way upstairs -- like bouncers moving in, grimly, on some unsuspecting rowdies.
'Trouble,' Father was muttering. 'That sounded like trouble.'
On the second-floor landing we met Freud and his baseball bat, leaning on Babette.
'We can't have any more of that,' Freud was saying. 'No hotel can survive it, no matter what class of clientele -- that's too much, it's just more than anyone can bear.'
'Earl!' said Susie, bristling for a fight. Jolanta had her hands in her purse again. The whimpering continued and I realized it was Dark Inge, too frightened even to investigate her mother's incredible noise.
When we got to Screaming Annie's door, we saw that the New Hampshire family were not as timid as they had first appeared. The daughter certainly looked half-dead with fright, but she was standing almost on her own, leaning only slightly on her trembling father. He was in his pajamas and a red-and-black-striped robe. He held the shaft of a bedside lamp in his hand, the electrical cord wrapped around his wrist, the light bulb and shade removed -- to make it a more efficient weapon, I suppose. The woman from New Hampshire stood closest to the door.
'It came from there,' she announced to us all, pointing to Screaming Annie's door. 'Now it's stopped. They must be dead.'
'Stand back,' her husband said to her, the lamp leaping up and down in his hand. 'It's not a sight for women or children, I'm sure.'
The woman glared at Frank, because -- I guess -- he had been the man at the desk who had officially admitted her to this madhouse. 'We're Americans,' she said, defiantly. 'We've never been exposed to anything this sordid before, but if one of you doesn't have the guts to go in there, I will.'
'You will?' Father said.
'It's clearly a murder,' the husband said. 'Nothing could be clearer,' the woman said.
'With a knife,' the daughter said, and cringed, involuntarily -- she twitched against her father. 'It must have been a knife,' she almost whispered.
The husband dropped the lamp, then snatched it up again.
'Well?' the woman said to Frank, but Susie the bear pushed forward.
'Let the bear in!' Freud said. 'Don't mess with the guests, just let the bear in!'
'Earl!' said Susie. The husband, thinking Susie might attack him and his family, poked the lamp, threateningly, in Susie's face.
'Don't make the bear hostile!' Frank warned him, and the family retreated.
'Be careful, Susie,' Franny said.
'Murder,' murmured the New Hampshire woman.
'Something unspeakable,' her husband said.
'A knife,' the daughter said.
'It was just a fucking orgasm,' Freud said. 'Haven't you ever had one, for Christ's sake?' Freud blundered forward with his hand on Susie's back; he struck the door a blow with his baseball bat, then fumbled for the knob. 'Annie?' he called. I noticed Jolanta close behind Freud, like his larger shadow -- her fierce hands in her dark purse. Susie made a convincing snorfle at the base of the door.
'An orgasm?' said the woman from New Hampshire -- her husband automatically covered the daughter's ears.
'My God,' Franny would say later. 'They would bring their daughter to see a murder, but they wouldn't even let her hear about an orgasm. Americans sure are strange.'
Susie the bear shouldered the door, knocking Freud off balance. The end of his Louisville Slugger skidded along the hall floor, but Jolanta caught the old man and propped him up against the doorjamb, and Susie roared into the room. Screaming Annie was naked, except for her stockings and her garter belt; she was smoking a cigarette, and she leaned over the completely unmoving man on his back on the bed and blew smoke into his face; he didn't flinch, or cough, and he was naked except for his ankle-length dark green socks.
'Dead!' gasped the woman from New Hampshire.
'Tod?' whispered Freud. 'Somebody tell me!'
Jolanta took her hands out of her purse and sunk a fist in the man's groin. His knees snapped up all by themselves and he coughed; then he went flat again.
'He's not dead,' Jolanta said, and muscled her way out of the room.
'He just passed right out on me,' Screaming Annie said. She seemed surprised. But I would think, later, that there was no way you could keep both sane and conscious when you were deluded into thinking that Screaming Annie was coming. It was probably safer to pass out than to hang on and go home crazy.
'Is she a whore?' the husband asked, and this time it was the woman from New Hampshire who covered her daughter's ears; she tried to cover the girl's eyes, too.
'What are you, blind?' Freud asked. 'Of course she's a whore!'
'We're all whores,' Dark Inge said, coming from nowhere and hugging her mother -- glad to see she was all right. 'What's wrong with that?'
'Okay, okay,' Father said. 'Everyone back to bed!'
'These are your children?' the New Hampshire woman asked Father; she wasn't sure which of us to indicate with her sweep of the hand.
'Well, some of them are,' Father said, amiably.
'You should be ashamed,' the woman told him. 'Exposing children to this sordid life.'
I don't think it had occurred to Father
that we were being 'exposed' to anything particularly 'sordid.' Nor was the New Hampshire woman's tone of voice anything Father ever would have heard from my mother. But nonetheless my father seemed suddenly stricken by this accusation. Franny said later that she could see in the genuine bewilderment on his face -- and then the growing look of something as close to guilt as we would ever see in him -- that despite the sorrow Father's dreaming might cause us, we would always prefer him dreamy to guilty; we could accept him as being out of it, but we couldn't like him as much if he were truly a worrier, if he had been truly 'responsible' in the way that fathers are expected to be responsible.
'Lilly, you shouldn't be here, darling,' Father said to Lilly, turning her away from the door.
'I should think not,' said the husband from New Hampshire, now struggling to keep both his daughter's eyes and ears covered at the same time -- but unable to tear himself away from the scene.
'Frank, take Lilly to her room, please,' Father said, softly. 'Franny?' Father asked, 'are you okay, dear?'
'Sure,' Franny said.
'I'm sorry, Franny,' Father said, steering her down the hall. 'For everything,' he added.
'He's sorry!' said the woman from New Hampshire, facetiously. 'He exposes his children to such disgusting filth as this and he's sorry!' But Franny turned on her. We might criticize Father, but no one else could.
'You dead cunt,' Franny said to the woman.
'Franny!' Father said.
'You useless twat,' Franny told the woman. 'You sad wimp,' she told the man. 'I know just the man to show you what's "disgusting," ' she said. 'Aybha, or gajasana,' Franny said to them. 'You know what that is?' But I knew; I could feel my hands start to sweat. 'The woman lies prone,' Franny said, 'and the man lies on top of her pressing his loins forward and curving the small of his back.' The woman from New Hampshire shut her eyes upon mention of the word 'loins'; the poor husband seemed to be trying to cover the eyes and ears of his entire family at once. 'That's the elephant position,' Franny said, and I shuddered. The 'elephant position' was one of the two main positions (with the cow position) in the vyanta group; it was the elephant position that Ernst spoke of in the dreamiest way. I thought I was going to be sick, and Franny suddenly started to cry. Father took her down the hall, quickly -- Susie the bear, worriedly but ever bearlike, went whining after them.