After nearly two hours of “scientific” investigation, Bruckner could restrain himself no longer. He grabbed the head of Schubert and hugged it until he was asked to let it go. So Bruckner touched Schubert last. It was Frank’s kind of story, really, and he was furious not to know it.
“Bruckner, again,” Mother answered, quietly, and Franny and I were amazed that she knew; we went from day to day thinking that Mother knew nothing, and then she turned up knowing it all. For Vienna, we know, she had been secretly studying—knowing, perhaps, that Father was unprepared.
“What trivia!” said Frank, when we had explained the story to him. “Honestly, what trivia!”
“All history is trivia,” Father said, showing again the Iowa Bob side of himself.
But Frank was usually the source of trivia—at least concerning Vienna, he hated to be outdone. His room was full of drawings of soldiers in their regimentals: Hussars in skin-tight pink pants and fitted jackets of a sunny-lake blue, and the officers of the Tyrolean Rifle in dawn-green. In 1900, at the Paris World’s Fair, Austria won the Most Beautiful Uniform Prize (for Artillery); it was no wonder that the fin de siècle in Vienna appealed to Frank. It was only alarming that the fin de siècle was the only period Frank really learned—and taught to us. All the rest of it was not as interesting to him.
“Vienna won’t be like Mayerling, for Christ’s sake,” Franny whispered to me, while I was lifting weights. “Not now.”
“Who was the master of the song—as an art form?” I asked her. “But his beard was plucked raw because he was so nervous he never let the hairs alone.”
“Hugo Wolf, you asshole,” she said. “Don’t you see? Vienna isn’t like that anymore.”
HI!
Freud wrote to us.
YOU ASKED FOR A FLOOR PLAN? WELL I HOPE I KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN. THE JOURNAL FOR THE SYMPOSIUM ON EAST-WEST RELATIONS OCCUPIES THE SECOND FLOOR—THEIR DAYTIME OFFICES—AND I LET THE PROSTITUTES USE THE THIRD FLOOR, BECAUSE THEY’RE ABOVE THE OFFICES, YOU SEE, WHICH ARE NEVER USED AT NIGHT. SO NOBODY COMPLAINS (USUALLY). HA HA! THE FIRST FLOOR IS OUR FLOOR, I MEAN THE BEAR AND ME—AND YOU, ALL OF YOU, WHEN YOU COME. SO THERE’S THE FOURTH AND FIFTH FOR THE GUESTS, WHEN WE GET THE GUESTS. WHY YOU ASK? YOU HAVE A PLAN? THE PROSTITUTES SAY WE NEED AN ELEVATOR, BUT THEY MAKE LOTS OF TRIPS. HA HA! WHAT YOU MEAN, HOW OLD AM I? ABOUT ONE HUNDRED! BUT VIENNESE ANSWER IS BETTER: WE SAY, “I KEEP PASSING THE OPEN WINDOWS.” THIS IS AN OLD JOKE. THERE WAS A STREET CLOWN CALLED KING OF THE MICE: HE TRAINED RODENTS, HE DID HOROSCOPES, HE COULD IMPERSONATE NAPOLEAN, HE COULD MAKE DOGS FART ON COMMAND. ONE NIGHT HE JUMPED OUT HIS WINDOW WITH ALL HIS PETS IN A BOX. WRITTEN ON THE BOX WAS THIS: “LIFE IS SERIOUS BUT ART IS FUN!” I HEAR HIS FUNERAL WAS A PARTY. A STREET ARTIST HAD KILLED HIMSELF. NOBODY HAD SUPPORTED HIM BUT NOW EVERYBODY MISSED HIM. NOW WHO WOULD MAKE THE DOGS MAKE MUSIC AND THE MICE PANT? THE BEAR KNOWS THIS, TOO: IT IS HARD WORK AND GREAT ART TO MAKE LIFE NOT SO SERIOUS. PROSTITUTES KNOW THIS TOO.
“Prostitutes?” Mother said.
“What?” said Egg.
“Whores?” said Franny.
“There are whores in the hotel?” Lilly asked. So what else is new? I thought, but Max Urick looked more than usually overcome with sullenness at the thought of staying behind; Ronda Ray shrugged.
“Sweet Girls!” said Frank.
“Well, Jesus God,” Father said. “If they’re there, we’ll just get them out.”
Wo bleibt die alte Zeit
und die Gemütlichkeit?
Frank went around singing.
Where is the old time?
Where is the Gemütlichkeit?
It was the song Bratfisch sang at the Fiacre Ball; Bratfisch had been Crown Prince Rudolf’s personal horse-cab driver—a dangerous-looking rake with a whip.
Wo bleibt die alte Zeit?
Pfirt di Gott, mein schönes Wien!
Frank went on singing. Bratfisch had sung this after Rudolf murdered his mistress and then blew out his own brains.
Where is the old time?
Fare thee well, my beautiful Vienna!
HI!
Freud wrote.
DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE PROSTITUTES. THEY’RE LEGAL HERE. IT’S JUST BUSINESS. THAT EAST-WEST RELATIONS BUNCH IS THE BUNCH TO WATCH. THEIR TYPEWRITERS BOTHER THE BEAR. THEY COMPLAIN A LOT AND THEY TIE UP THE PHONES. DAMN POLITICS, DAMN INTELLECTUALS, DAMN INTRIGUE.
“Intrigue?” Mother said.
“A language problem,” Father said. “Freud doesn’t know the language.”
“Name one anti-Semite for whom an actual square, a whole Platz, in the city of Vienna has been named,” Frank demanded. “Name just one.”
“Jesus God, Frank,” Father said.
“No,” Frank said.
“Dr. Karl Lueger,” Mother said, with such a dullness in her voice that Franny and I felt a chill.
“Very good,” said Frank, impressed.
“Who thought all Vienna was an elaborate job of concealing sexual reality?” Mother asked.
“Freud?” said Frank.
“Not our Freud,” said Franny.
But our Freud wrote to us:
ALL VIENNA IS AN ELABORATE JOB OF CONCEALING SEXUAL REALITY. THIS IS WHY PROSTITUTION IS LEGAL. THIS IS WHY WE BELIEVE IN BEARS. OVER AND OUT!
I was with Ronda Ray one morning, thinking wearily of Arthur Schnitzler fucking Jeanette Heger 464 times in something like eleven months, and Ronda asked me, “What does he mean, it’s ‘legal’—prostitution is legal—what’s he mean?”
“It’s not against the law,” I said. “In Vienna, apparently, prostitution is not against the law.”
There was a long silence from Ronda; she moved, awkwardly, out from under me.
“Is it legal here?” she asked me; I could see she was serious—she looked frightened.
“Everything’s legal in the Hotel New Hampshire!” I said; it was an Iowa Bob thing to say.
“No, here!” she said, angrily. “In America. Is it legal?”