“I’m going to start off going after the American audience,” Father said. “We’re trying to drum up an American clientele, first—remember?”
“Better all brush up on our American, too,” said Franny.
Frank was getting the German more quickly than any of us. It seemed to suit him: every syllable was pronounced, the verbs fell like grapeshot at the ends of sentences, the umlauts were a form of dressing up; and the whole idea of words having gender must have appealed to Frank. By the late winter he was (pretentiously) chatting in German, purposefully bewildering us all, correcting our attempts to answer him, then consoling our failures by telling us that he’d take care of us when we were “over there.”
“Oh boy,” Franny said. “That’s the part that really gets to me. Having Frank take us all to school, talk to the bus drivers, order in the restaurants, take all the phone calls. Jesus, now that I’m finally going abroad, I don’t want to be dependent on him!”
But Frank seemed to flower at the preparations for moving to Vienna. No doubt he was encouraged by having been given a second chance with Sorrow, but he also seemed genuinely interested in studying Vienna. After dinner he read aloud to us, selected excerpts from what Frank called the “plums” of Viennese history; Ronda Ray and the Uricks listened too—curiously, because they knew they weren’t going and their future with Fritz’s Act was unclear.
After two months of history lessons, Frank gave us an oral examination on the interesting characters around Vienna at the time of the Crown Prince’s suicide at Mayerling (which Frank had earlier read to us, in full detail, moving Ronda Ray to tears). Franny said that Prince Rudolf was becoming Frank’s hero—“because of his clothes.” Frank had portraits of Rudolf hi his room: one in hunting costume—a thin-headed young man with an oversized moustache, draped with furs and smoking a cigarette as thick as a finger—and another in uniform, wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece, his forehead as vulnerable as a baby’s, his beard as sharp as a spade.
“All right, Franny,” Frank began, “this one is for you. He was a composer of genius, perhaps the world’s greatest organist, but he was a hick—a complete rube in the imperial city—and he had a stupid habit of falling in love with young girls.”
“Why is that stupid?” I asked.
“Shut up,” said Frank. “It’s stupid, and this is Franny’s question.”
“Anton Bruckner,” Franny said. “He was stupid, all right.”
“Very,” said Lilly.
“Your turn, Lilly,” said Frank. “Who was ‘the Flemish peasant’?”
“Oh, come on,” said Lilly, “that’s too easy. Give it to Egg.”
“It’s too hard for Egg,” Franny said.
“What is?” Egg said.
“Princess Stephanie,” said Lilly, tiredly, “the daughter of the King of Belgium, and Rudolf’s wife.”
“Now Father,” Frank said.
“Oh boy,” Franny said, because Father was almost as bad at history as he was at German.
“Whose music was so widely loved that even peasants copied the composer’s beard?” Frank asked.
“Jesus, you’re strange, Frank,” Franny said.
“Brahms?” Father guessed, and we all groaned.
“Brahms had a beard like a peasant’s,” Frank said. “Whose beard did the peasants copy?”
“Strauss!” Lilly and I yelled.
“The poor drip,” said Franny. “Now I get to ask Frank one.”
“Shoot,” said Frank, shutting his eyes tight and scrunching up his face.
“Who was Jeanette Heger?” Franny asked.
“She was Schnitzler’s ‘Sweet Girl,’” Frank said, blushing.
“What’s a ‘Sweet Girl,’ Frank?” Franny asked, and Ronda Ray laughed.
“You know,” said Frank, still blushing.
“And how many acts of love did Schnitzler and his ‘Sweet Girl’ make between 1888 and 1889?” Franny asked.
“Jesus,” said Frank. “A lot! I forget.”
“Four hundred and sixty-four!” cried Max Urick, who’d been present at all the historical readings, and never forgot a fact. Like Ronda Ray, Max had never been educated before; it was a novelty for Max and Ronda; they paid better attention at Frank’s lessons than the rest of us.
“I’ve got another one for Father!” Franny said. “Who was Mitzi Caspar?”
“Mitzi Caspar?” Father said. “Jesus God.”
“Jesus God,” said Frank. “Franny only remembers the sexual parts.”
“Who was she, Frank?” Franny asked.
“I know!” said Ronda Ray. “She was Rudolf’s ‘Sweet Girl’; he spent the night with her before killing himself, with Marie Vetsera, at Mayerling.” Ronda had a special place in her memory, and in her heart, for Sweet Girls.
“I’m one, aren’t I?” she had asked me, after Frank’s rendering of Arthur Schnitzler’s life and work.
“The sweetest,” I had told her.
“Phooey,” said Ronda Ray.
“Where did Freud live beyond his means?” Frank asked, to any of us who knew.
“Which Freud?” Lilly asked, and we all laughed.
“The Sühnhaus,” Frank said, answering his own question. “Translation?” he asked. “The Atonement House,” he answered.
“Fuck you, Frank,” said Franny.
“Not about sex, so she didn’t know it,” Frank said to me.
“Who was the last person to touch Schubert?” I asked Frank; he looked suspicious.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Just what I said,” I said. “Who was the last person to touch Schubert?” Franny laughed; I had shared this story with her, and I didn’t think Frank knew it—because I had taken the pages out of Frank’s book. It was a sick story.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Frank asked.