blind
!” Wrench cried, enthusiastically. “He has to hit something. And when he does, there goes the Opera. The sympathy bomb will respond.”
“The
sympathy
bomb,” my father said, ironically. Even Father understood the sympathy part.
“It’s in a perfect place,” Arbeiter said. “It’s been there a long time, so we know no one knows where it is. It’s very big but it’s impossible to find,” he added.
“It’s under the stage,” Arbeiter said.
“It’s
built into
the stage,” Schraubenschlüssel said.
“It’s right where they come out to take their fucking final bows!” Arbeiter said.
“Of course, it won’t kill everyone,” Ernst said, simply. “Everyone onstage will die, and probably most of the orchestra, and most of the audience in the first few rows of seats. And to those sitting safely back from the stage it will be truly
operatic
,” Ernst said. “It will provide a very definite spectacle,” said Ernst.
“
Schlagobers
and blood,” Arbeiter teased Schwanger, but she just smiled—with 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 our car before you cross the street.”
Schwanger left the Hotel New Hampshire, composing herself—actually arranging her face in as motherly an expression as she could muster for the occasion. We would never see her again. I suppose she went to Germany; she might author a whole new book of symbols, one day. She might mother a new movement, somewhere else.
“You don’t have to do this, Freud,” my father whispered.
“Of
course
I have to do it, Win Berry!” Freud said, cheerfully. He got up; he tapped his way with the baseball bat toward the door. He knew his way around pretty well, considering his total darkness.
“Sit down, you old fool,” Arbeiter told him. “We’ve got ten minutes. Don’t forget to get out of the car, you idiot,” Arbeiter told Schraubenschlüssel, but Wrench was still staring at the dead quarterback on the floor. I stared at him, too. For ten minutes. I realized what a terrorist is. A terrorist, I think, is simply another kind of pornographer. The pornographer pretends he is disgusted by his work; the terrorist pretends he is uninterested in the
means
. The
ends
, they say, are what they care about. But they are both lying. Ernst loved his pornography; Ernst worshiped the means. It is never the ends that matter—it is
only
the means that matter. The terrorist and the pornographer are in it for the means. The means is everything to them. The blast of the bomb, the elephant position, the
Schlagobers
and blood—they love it all. Their intellectual detachment is a fraud; their indifference is feigned. They both tell lies about having “higher purposes.” A terrorist
is
a pornographer.
For ten minutes Frank tried to change Arbeiter’s mind, but Arbeiter didn’t have enough of a mind to experience a change. I think Frank only succeeded in confusing Arbeiter.
Frank was certainly confusing to
me
.
“You know what’s at the Opera tonight, Arbeiter?” Frank asked.
“Music,” Arbeiter said, “music and singing.”
“But it matters—
which
opera,” Frank lied. “I mean, it’s not exactly a full-house performance tonight—I hope you know that. It’s not as if the Viennese have come in
droves
. It’s not as if it’s Mozart, or Strauss. It’s not even Wagner,” Frank said.
“I don’t care what it is,” Arbeiter said. “The front rows will be full. The front rows are always full. And the dumb singers will be onstage. And the orchestra has to show up.”
“It’s
Lucia
,” Frank said. “Practically an empty house. You don’t have to be a Wagnerian to know that Donizetti’s not worth listening to. I confess to being something of a Wagnerian,” Frank confessed, “but you don’t have to share the Germanic opinion of Italian opera to know that Donizetti is simply insipid. Stale harmonies, lack of any dramatism appropriate to the music,” Frank said.
“Shut up,” Arbeiter said.
“Organ-grinder tunes!” Frank said. “God, I wonder if
anyone
will show up.”
“They’ll show up,” Arbeiter said.
“Better to wait for a big shot,” Frank said. “Blow the place another night. Wait for an
important
opera. If you blow up
Lucia
,” Frank reasoned, “the Viennese will
applaud
! They’ll think your target was Donizetti, or, even better—
Italian
opera! You’ll be a kind of cultural hero,” Frank argued, “not the villain you want to be.”
“And when you get your audience,” Susie the bear told Arbeiter, “who’s going to do the talking?”
“Your talker is dead,” Franny said to Arbeiter.
“You don’t think
you
can hold an audience, do you, Arbeiter?” Susie the bear asked him.
“Shut Up,” Arbeiter said. “It’s possible to have a bear ride in the car with Freud. Everyone knows Freud’s got a thing for bears. It might be a nice idea to have a bear ride with him—on his last trip.”
“No change in the plan, not now,” said Schraubenschlüssel, nervously. “According to plan,” he said, looking at his watch. “Two minutes.”
“Go now,” Arbeiter said. “It will take a while to get the blind man out the door and in the car.”
“Not me!” Freud cried. “I know the way! It’s my hotel, I know where the door is,” the old man said, hobbling on the baseball bat toward the door. “And you’ve parked that damn car in the same place for years!”
“Go with him, Schraubenschlüssel,” Arbeiter told Wrench. “Hold the old fucker’s arm.”
“I don’t need any assistance,” Freud said, cheerfully. “Good-bye, Lilly dear!” Freud cried. “Don’t throw up, dear,” he urged her. “And keep growing!”
Lilly gagged again, and shook; Arbeiter moved the gun about two inches away from her ear. He was apparently disgusted with her puking, though it was only a very small puddle that Lilly had managed; she was not even a big vomiter.
“Hang in there, Frank!” Freud called—to the entire lobby. “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re queer! You’re a
prince
, Frank!” Freud cried. “You’re better than Rudolf!” Freud yelled to Frank. “You’re more majestic than all the Hapsburgs, Frank!” Freud encouraged him. Frank couldn’t speak, he was crying so hard.
“You’re lovely, Franny my dear, Franny my sweetheart,” said Freud softly. “One doesn’t have to see to know how beautiful you are,” he said.
“
Auf Wiedersehen
, Freud,” Franny said.
“
Auf Wiedersehen
, weight lifter!” Freud cried to me. “Give me a hug,” he asked me, holding out his arms, the Louisville Slugger like a sword in one hand. “Let me feel how strong you are,” Freud said to me, and I went up to him and hugged him. That was when he whispered in my ear.
“When you hear the explosion,” Freud whispered, “
kill
Arbeiter.”
“Come on!” Schraubenschlüssel said, nervously. He grabbed Freud’s arm.
“I love you, Win Berry!” Freud cried, but my father had his head in his hands; he would not look up from where he sat, sunk in the couch. “I’m sorry I got you in the hotel business,” Freud said to my father. “And the bear business,” Freud added. “Good-bye, Susie!” Freud said.
Susie started to cry. Schraubenschlüssel steered Freud through the door. We could see the car, the Mercedes that was a bomb; it was parked against the curb almost in front of the door to the Hotel New Hampshire. It was a revolving door, and Freud and Schraubenschlüssel revolved through it.
“I don’t need your assistance!” Freud was complaining to Wrench. “Just let me
feel
the car, just get me to the fender,” Freud complained. “I can find the door by myself, you idiot,” Freud was saying. “Just let me touch the fender.”
Arbeiter was getting a stiff back, leaning over Lilly. He straightened up a little; he glanced at me, checking on where I was. He glanced at Franny. His gun wandered around.
“There it is, I’ve got it!” we heard Freud crying, cheerfully, outside. “That’s the headlight, right?” he asked Schraubenschlüssel. My father raised his head from his hands and looked at me.
“Of
course
that’s the headlight, you old fool!” Schraubenschlüssel yelled at Freud. “Get
in
, will you?”
“Freud!” Father screamed. He must have known, then. He ran to the revolving door. “
Auf Wiedersehen
, Freud!” Father cried. At the revolving door, Father saw the whole thing very clearly. Freud, with his hand feeling along the headlight, slipped toward the grille of the Mercedes instead of toward the door.
“The other way, you moron!” Schraubenschlüssel advised. But Freud knew exactly where he was. He tore his arm out of Wrench’s grasp; he leveled the Louisville Slugger and started swinging. He was looking for the front license plate, of course. Blind people have a knack for knowing exactly where things that have always been are. It took Freud only three swings to locate the license plate, my father would always remember. The first swing was a little high-off the grille.
“Lower!” Father screamed, through the revolving door. “
Auf Wiedersehen
!”
The second swing hit the front bumper a little to the left of the license plate, and my father yelled, “To your right!
Auf Wiedersehen
, Freud!” Schraubenschlüssel, Father said later, was already running away. He never got far enough away, however. Freud’s third swing was on the money; Freud’s third swing was the grand slam. What a lot for that baseball bat to go through in one night! That Louisville Slugger was never found. Freud was never entirely found, either, and Schraubenschlüssel’s own mother would fail to identify him. My father was blasted back from the revolving door, the white light and glass flying in his face. Franny and Frank ran to help him, and I got my arms around Arbeiter just as the bomb blew—just as Freud had told me to do.
Arbeiter in his black tuxedo, dressed for the Opera, was a little taller than I was, and a little heavier; my chin rested firmly between his shoulder blades, my arms went around his chest, pinning his arms to his side. He fired the gun once, into the floor. I thought for a moment that he might be able to shoot my foot with it, but I knew I’d never let him raise the gun any higher. I knew Lilly was out of Arbeiter’s range. He fired two more shots into the floor. I held him so tightly that he couldn’t even locate my foot, which was right behind his foot. His next shot hit his own foot and he started screaming. He dropped the gun. I heard it hit the floor and saw Lilly grab it, but I wasn’t paying much attention to the gun. I was concentrating on squeezing Arbeiter. For someone who’d shot himself in the foot, he stopped screaming pretty soon. Frank would tell me, later, that Arbeiter stopped screaming because he couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t paying much attention to Arbeiter’s screaming, either. I concentrated on the squeezing. I imagined the biggest barbell in the world. I don’t know, exactly, what I imagined I was doing to the barbell—curling it, bench-pressing it, dead-lifting it, or simply hugging it to my own chest. It didn’t matter; I was just concentrating on its
weight
. I really concentrated. I made my arms believe in themselves. If I had hugged Jolanta this hard, she would have broken in two. If I had hugged Screaming Annie this hard, she would have been quiet. Once I had dreamed of holding Franny this tightly. I had been lifting weights since Franny was raped, since Iowa Bob showed me how; with Arbeiter in my arms, I was the strongest man in the world.
“A
sympathy
bomb!” I heard Father yelling. I knew he was in pain. “Jesus God! Can you believe it? A fucking
sympathy
bomb!”
Franny later said that she knew, immediately: Father was blind. It was not just because of where he was standing when the car blew up, or the glass that was blasted into his face as he stood at the revolving door; it was not all the blood in his eyes that Franny saw when she wiped his face enough to
see
what was wrong with him. “I knew somehow,” she said. “I mean,
before
I saw his eyes. I always knew he was as blind as Freud, or he would be. I knew he
would
be,” Franny said.
“
Auf Wiedersehen
, Freud!” Father was crying.
“Hold still, Daddy,” I heard Lilly saying to Father.
“Yes, hold still, Pop,” Franny said.
Frank had run up the Krugerstrasse to the Kärntnerstrasse, and around the corner up to the Opera. He had to see, of course, if the
sympathy
bomb had responded—but Freud had possessed the vision to see that the Mercedes parked in front of the Hotel New Hampshire was too far from sympathy to make the Opera respond. And Schwanger must have just kept walking. Or maybe she decided simply to stay and watch the end of the opera; maybe it was one she liked. Maybe she wanted to be there, watching them all at the curtain call, taking their last bows above the unexploded bomb.
Frank said later that when he ran out of the Hotel New Hampshire to go see if the Opera was safe, he noticed that Arbeiter was a very vivid magenta color, that his fingers were still moving—or perhaps just twitching—and that he seemed to be kicking his feet. Lilly told me later that while Frank was gone—Arbeiter turned from magenta to blue. “A slate-blue color,” Lilly, the writer, said. “The color of the ocean on a cloudy day.” And by the time Frank got back from seeing if the Opera was safe, Franny told me that Arbeiter was completely motionless and a dead-white color—the color was all gone from his face. “He was the color of a pearl,” Lilly said. He was dead. I had crushed him.
“You can let him go now,” Franny finally had to tell me. “It’s okay, it’s going to be okay,” she whispered to me, because she knew how I liked whispering. She kissed my face, and then I let Arbeiter go.
I have not felt the same about weight lifting since. I still do it, but I’m very low-key about the lifting now; I don’t like to push myself. A little light lifting, just enough to make me start feeling good; I don’t like to strain, not anymore.
The authorities told us that Schraubenschlüssel’s “sympathy bomb” might even have worked if the car had been closer. The bomb authorities also implied that
any
explosion in the area might have set the sympathy bomb off at
any
time; I guess old Schraubenschlüssel hadn’t been as exact as he thought he was. A lot of nonsense was written about what the radicals had
meant
. An unbelievable amount of garbage would be written about the “statement” they had been trying to make. And there wasn’t enough about Freud. His blindness was noted, in passing; and that he had been in one of the camps. There was absolutely nothing about the summer of 1939, about State o’Maine and the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea, about
dreaming
—or about the
other
Freud, and what
he
might have had to say about all this. There was a lot of idiocy about the
politics
of what had happened.
“Politics are always idiotic!” as Iowa Bob would have said.
And there was not enough about Fehlgeburt, how she could break your heart the way she read the ending of
The Great Gatsby
. They acknowledged that my father was a hero, of course. They seemed polite about the reputation that our second Hotel New Hampshire had enjoyed—“in its prime,” as Frank would refer to those sordid days.
When Father got out of the hospital, we gave him a present. Franny had written Junior Jones for it. Junior Jones had provided us with baseballs for seven years, so Franny knew that Junior could be counted on to find Father a new baseball bat. A Louisville Slugger all his own. He would need it, of course. And Father seemed touched by our present—by Franny’s thoughtfulness, really, because the bat was Franny’s idea. I think Father must have cried a little when he first reached out his hands and we placed the bat in them, and he felt what it was he held. We couldn’t see if he cried, however, because the bandages were still on his eyes.
And Frank, who had always had to translate for Father, had to become his interpreter in other ways. When the people from the Stastsoper wanted to pay us a tribute, Frank had to sit next to Father—at the Opera—and whisper to him about the action on the stage. Father could follow the music, just fine. I don’t even remember what opera it was. It wasn’t
Lucia
, I know that much. It was a particularly farcical comic opera, because Lilly had insisted that we wanted no
Schlagobers
and blood. It was nice that the Vienna State Opera wanted to thank us for saving them, but we didn’t want to sit through any
Schlagobers
and blood. We’d already seen
that
opera. That was the opera that played in the Hotel New Hampshire for seven years.
And so, at the opening of this merry farce of an opera—whatever it was—the conductor and the orchestra and all the singers pointed out my father in one of the front-row seats (that’s where Father had insisted on sitting. “So I can be sure to
see
,” he had said). And Father stood up and took a bow; he was great at bowing. And he waved the baseball bat to the audience; the Viennese loved the Louisville Slugger part of the story, and they were touched and applauded for a long time when Father waved the bat at them. We children felt very proud.
I often wonder if the New York publisher who wanted Lilly’s book for five thousand dollars would have listened to Frank’s demands
if
we hadn’t all become famous—if we hadn’t saved the Opera and murdered the terrorists in our good old American family kind of way. “Who cares?” Frank asks, slyly. The point is, Lilly had not signed the five-thousand-dollar contract. Frank had gone for higher stakes. And when the publishers realized that
this
Lilly Berry was the little girl who’d had a gun held to her head, that little Lilly Berry was the youngest surviving (and certainly the smallest) member of
the
Berry family—the terrorist killers, the Opera savers—well … at that point, of course, Frank was in the driver’s seat.
“My author is already at work on a new book,” Frank, the agent, said. “We’re in no hurry about any of this. As far as
Trying to Grow
is concerned, we’re interested in the best offer.”
Frank would make a killing, of course.
“You mean we’re going to be
rich
?” Father asked, sightlessly. When he was first blind, he had an awkward way of inclining his head too far forward—as if this might help him to see. And the Louisville Slugger was his ever-restless companion, his percussion instrument.
“We can do anything we want, Pop,” Franny said. “
You
can,” she added, to him. “Just think of it,” she told Father, “and it’s yours.”
“Dream on, Daddy,” Lilly said, but Father seemed stupefied by all the options.
“
Anything
?” Father asked.
“You name it,” I told him. He was our hero again; he was our father—at last. He was blind, but he was in charge.
“Well, I’ll have to think about it,” Father said, cautiously, the baseball bat playing all kinds of music—that Louisville Slugger in my father’s hands was as musically complicated as a full orchestra. Though Father would never make as much noise with a baseball bat as Freud had made, he was more various than Freud could have dreamed of being.
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