“That was in the last century, Lilly,” I reminded her.
“And that man who fucked that woman four hundred and sixty-four times,” Lilly said.
“Schnitzler,” I said. “Almost a century ago, Lilly.”
“It’s probably worse now,” Lilly said. “Most things are.”
That would have been Frank—who told her that—I knew.
“And the flu,” said Lilly, “and the wars. And the Hungarians,” she said.
“The revolution?” I asked her. “That was last year, Lilly.”
“And all the rape in the Russian Sector,” Lilly said. “Franny will get raped again. Or I will,” she said, adding, “if someone small enough catches me.”
“The occupation is over,” I said.
“A violent climate,” Lilly repeated. “All the repressed sexuality.”
“That’s the other Freud, Lilly,” I said.
“And what will the bear do?” Lilly asked. “A hotel with whores and bears and spies.”
“Not spies, Lilly,” I said. I knew she meant the East-West relations people. “I think they’re just intellectuals,” I told her, but this didn’t appear to comfort her; she shook her head.
“I can’t stand violence,” Lilly said. “And Vienna reeks of it,” she said; it was as if she’d been studying the tourist map and had found all the corners where Junior Jones’s gangs hung out. “The whole place shouts of violence,” Lilly said. “It absolutely broadcasts it,” Lilly said; it was as if she had taken these words into her mouth to suck on them: reeks, shouts, broadcasts. “The whole idea of going over there just shivers with violence,” Lilly said, shivering. Her tiny knees gripped the seat of the screwed-down chair, her slender legs whipped back and forth, violently fanning the floor. She was only eleven, and I wondered where she’d found all the words she used, and why her imagination seemed much older than she was. Why were the women in our family either wise, like Mother, or an “old sixteen”—as Junior Jones said of Franny—or like Lilly: small and soft, but bright beyond her years? Why should they get all the brains? I wondered, thinking of Father; although Mother and Father were both thirty-seven, Father seemed ten years younger to me—“and ten years dumber,” Franny said. And what was I? I wondered, because Franny—and even Lilly—made me feel I would be fifteen forever. And Egg was immature—a seven-year-old with five-year-old habits. And Frank was Frank, the King of Mice, able to bring back dogs from the dead, able to master a different language, and able to put the oddities of history to his personal use; but in spite of his obvious abilities, I felt that Frank—in many other categories—was operating with a mental age of four.
Lilly sat with her head down and her little legs swinging. “I like the Hotel New Hampshire,” Lilly said. “In fact, I love it; I don’t want to leave here,” she said, the predictable tears in her eyes. I gave her a hug and picked her up; I could have bench-pressed Lilly while the seasons changed. I carried her back to her room.
“Think of it this way,” I told her. “We’ll just be going to another Hotel New Hampshire, Lilly. The same thing, but another country.” But Lilly cried and cried.
“I’d rather stay with the circus called Fritz’s Act,” she bawled. “I’d rather stay with them, and I don’t even know what they do!”
Soon wewould know what they did, of course. Too soon. It was summer, then, and before we were packed—before we’d even made the airplane reservations—the four-foot forty-one-year-old named Frederick “Fritz” Worter paid us a visit. There were some papers to sign, and some of the other members of Fritz’s Act wished to have a look at their future home.
One morning, when Egg was sleeping beside Sorrow, I looked out our window at Elliot Park. At first nothing seemed strange; some men and women were getting out of a Volkswagen bus. They were all, more or less, the same size. We were still a hotel, after all, and I thought they might be guests. Then I realized that there were five women and eight men—yet they quite comfortably spilled out of one Volkswagen bus—and when I recognized Frederick “Fritz” Worter as one of them, I realized that they were all the same size as him.
Max Urick, who’d been shaving while looking out his fourth-floor window, screamed and cut himself. “A fucking busload of midgets,” he told us later. “It’s not what you expect to see when you’re just getting up.”
It is impossible to say what Ronda Ray might have done, or said, if she had seen them; but Ronda was still in bed. Franny, and my barbells, were lying untouched in Franny’s room; Frank—whether he was dreaming, studying German, or reading about Vienna—was in a world of his own. Egg was sleeping with Sorrow, and Mother and Father—who would be embarrassed about it, later—were having fun in old 3E.
I ran into Lilly’s room, knowing she would want to see the arrival of at least the human part of Fritz’s Act, but Lilly was already awake and watching them through her window; she was wearing an old-fashioned nightgown that Mother had bought her in an antique store—it completely enveloped Lilly—and she was hugging her Raggedy Ann doll to her chest. “It’s a small circus, just like Mr. Worter said,” Lilly whispered, adoringly. In Elliot Park we watched the midgets gathering beside the Volkswagen bus; they were stretching and yawning; one of the men did a handstand; one of the women did a cartwheel. One of them started moving on all fours, like a chimpanzee, but Fritz clapped his hands, scolding such foolishness; they drew together, like a miniature football team having a huddle (with two extra players); then they started marching, in an orderly fashion, toward our lobby door.
Lilly went to let them in; I went to the switchboard to make the announcement. To 3E, for example: “New owners arriving—all thirteen of them. Over and out.” To Frank: “Guten Morgen! Fritz’s Act ist hier angekommen. Wachs du auf!” And to Franny: “Midgets! Go wake up Egg so he won’t be frightened; he’ll think he dreamed them. Tell him thirteen midgets are here, but it’s safe!”
Then I ran up to Ronda Ray’s room; I was better at giving her messages in person. They’re here!” I whispered, outside her door.
“Keep running, John-O,” Ronda said.
“There’s thirteen of them,” I said. “Only five women and eight men,” I said. “There’s at least three men for you!”
“What size are they?” Ronda Ray asked.
“That’s a surprise,” I said. “Come see.”
“Keep running,” Ronda said. “All of you—keep running.”
Max Urick went and hid with Mrs. Urick in the kitchen; they were shy about being introduced, but Father dragged them out to meet the midgets, and Mrs. Urick marched the midgets through her kitchen—showing off her stockpots, and how plain-but-good everything smelled.
“They are small,” Mrs. Urick conceded later, “but there’s a lot of them; they’ll have to eat something.”
“They’ll never reach all the lights,” Max Urick said. “I’ll have to change all the switches.” Grumpily, he moved off the fourth floor. It was clear that the fourth floor was the one the midgets wanted—“suited to their tiny washing and tiny peeing,” Max grumbled, but not around Lilly. Franny thought Max was only angry that he was moving closer to Mrs. Urick; but he moved no nearer to her than the third floor, where, (I imagined), he would be forever blessed to hear the patter of little feet above him.
“Where will the animals go?” Lilly asked Mr. Worter. Fritz explained that the circus would use the Hotel New Hampshire only for their summer quarters; the animals would stay outside.
“What kind of animals are they?” Egg asked, clutching Sorrow to his chest.
“Live ones,” said one of the lady midgets, who was about Egg’s size and appeared to be intrigued with Sorrow; she kept patting him.
It was the end of June when the midgets made Elliot Park look like a fairground; the once-brightly-colored canvases, now faded to pastels, flapped over the little stalls, fringed the merry-go-round, domed the big tent where the main acts would be performed. Kids from the town of Dairy came and hung around our park all day, but the midgets were in no hurry; they set up the stalls; they changed the position of the merry-go-round three times—and refused to hook up the engine that ran it, even to test it out. One day a box arrived, the size of a dining-room table; it was full of large spools of different-coloured tickets, each spool as big as a tyre.
And Frank drove carefully through the now crowded park, circling the little tents and the one big tent, telling the kids from the town to move on. “It opens the Fourth of July, kids,” Frank would say, officiously—his arm hanging out the window of the car. “Come back then.”
We would be gone by then; we hoped that the animals might arrive before we had to leave, but we knew, in advance, we were going to miss opening night.
“We’ve seen all the things they do, anyway,” Franny said.
“Mainly,” Frank said, “they just go around looking small.”
Lilly burned. She pointed out the handstands, the juggling acts, the water and fire dance, the eight-man standing pyramid, the blind baseball team skit; and the smallest of the lady midgets said she could ride bareback—on a dog.
“Show me the dog,” said Frank. He was sour because Father had sold Fritz the family car, and Frank now needed Fritz’s permission to drive the car around Elliot Park; Fritz was generous about the car, but Frank hated to ask.
Franny liked to take her driving lessons with Max Urick in the hotel pickup, because Max was nervy about Franny driving fast. “Gun it,” he would encourage her. “Pass that sucker—you’ve got plenty of room.” And Franny would come back from a lesson, proud that she had laid nine feet of rubber around the bandstand or twelve feet around the corner of Front Street verging with Court. “Laying rubber” was what we said in Dairy, New Hampshire, for leaving a black stain on the road with squealing tyres.
“It’s disgusting,” Frank said. “Bad for the clutch, bad for the tyres, nothing but juvenile showing off—you’ll get in trouble, you’ll get your learner’s permit revoked, Max will lose his license (which he probably should ), you’ll run over someone’s dog, or a small child, some dumb hoods from the town will try to drag-race you, or follow you home and beat the shit out of you. Or they’ll beat the shit out of me,” Frank said, “just because I know you.”
“We’re going to Vienna, Frank,” Franny said. “Get in your licks at the town of Dairy while you can.”
“Licks!” said Frank. “Disgusting.”
HI
Freud wrote.
YOU ALMOST HERE! GOOD TIME TO COME. PLENTY OF TIME FOR KIDS TO GET ADJUSTED BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS. EVERYONE LOOKING FORWARD TO YOU COMING. EVEN PROSTITUTES! HA HA! WHORES HAPPY TO TAKE MATERNAL INTEREST IN KIDS—REALLY! I SHOW THEM ALL THE PICTURES. SUMMER A GOOD TIME FOR WHORES: LOTS OF TOURISTS, EVERYONE IN GOOD MOOD. EVEN EAST-WEST RELATIONS ASSHOLES SEEM CONTENT. THEY NOT SO BUSY IN SUMMER—DON’T START TYPING UNTIL 11 A.M. POLITICS TAKE SUMMER VACATIONS, TOO. HA HA! IT NICE HERE. NICE MUSIC IN PARKS. NICE ICE CREAM. EVEN BEAR IS HAPPIER—GLAD YOU COMING, TOO. BEAR’S NAME, BY THE WAY, IS SUSIE. LOVE FROM SUSIE AND ME, FREUD.