Part 28 (1/2)

Lilly went and put her head in Franny's lap; she cried there - comfortably, I thought. Franny, of course, knew that I loved her - hopelessly, and too much - and so I didn't have to make a gesture or say anything to her.

'Well, I don't need a sixteen-year-old straightening me out,' said Susie the bear, but her bear's head was off; she held it in her big paws. Her ravaged complexion, her hurt eyes, her too-small mouth betrayed her. She put her bear's head back on; that was her only authority.

The student, Miss Miscarriage, serious and well intentioned, seemed at a loss for words. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I don't know.'

'Say it in German,' Frank encouraged her.

'Just spit it out any way you can,' Franny said.

'Well,' Fehlgeburt said. 'That pa.s.sage. That lovely pa.s.sage, that ending ending - to - to The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby - that's what I mean,' she said. - that's what I mean,' she said.

'Get to it, Fehlgeburt,' Franny said. 'Spit it out.'

'Well,' Fehlgeburt said. 'I don't know, but - somehow - it makes me want to go to the United States. I mean, it's against my politics - your country - I know that. But that ending ending, all of it - somehow - is just so beautiful beautiful. It makes me want to be be there. I mean, there's no there. I mean, there's no sense sense to it, but I would just like to be in the United States.' to it, but I would just like to be in the United States.'

'So you think you'd you'd like to be there?' Franny said. 'Well, I wish we'd never left.' like to be there?' Franny said. 'Well, I wish we'd never left.'

'Can we go back, Franny?' Lilly asked.

'We'll have to ask Father,' Frank said.

'Oh boy,' Franny said. And I could see her imagining that moment, waltzing a little reality into Father's dreams.

'Your country, if you'll forgive me,' said one of the other radicals-the one they called simply Arbeiter (Arbeiter means 'worker' in German), 'your country is really a means 'worker' in German), 'your country is really a criminal criminal place,' Arbeiter said. 'If you'll forgive me,' he added, 'your country is the ultimate triumph of corporate creativity, which means it is a country controlled by the place,' Arbeiter said. 'If you'll forgive me,' he added, 'your country is the ultimate triumph of corporate creativity, which means it is a country controlled by the group group-thinking of corporations. These corporations are without humanity because there is no one personally responsible for their use of power; a corporation is like a computer with profit as its source of energy - and profit as its necessary fuel. The United States is - you'll forgive me - quite the worst country in the world for a humanist to live in, I think.'

'f.u.c.k what you think,' Franny said. 'You raving a.s.shole,' she said. 'You sound sound like a computer.' like a computer.'

'You think like a transmission,' Frank told Arbeiter. 'Four forward gears - at predetermined speeds. One speed for reverse.'

Arbeiter stared. His English was a little plodding - his mind, it would occur to me, later, was about as versatile as a lawn mower.

'And about as poetic,' Susie the bear would say. No one liked Arbeiter - not even the impressionable Miss Miscarriage. Her weakness - among the radicals - was her fondness for literature, especially for the romance that is American literature. ('Your silly major major, dear,' Schw.a.n.ger always chided her.) But Fehlgeburt's fondness for literature was her strength - to us children. It was the romantic part of her that wasn't quite dead; at least, not yet. In time, G.o.d forgive me, I would help to kill it.

'Literature is for dreamers,' Old Billig would tell poor Fehlgeburt. Old Billig the radical, I mean. Old Billig the wh.o.r.e liked liked dreams; she told Frank once that dreams were dreams; she told Frank once that dreams were all all she liked - her dreams and her 'mementos.' she liked - her dreams and her 'mementos.'

'Study economics, dear,' Schw.a.n.ger told Fehlgeburt - that's what Miss Pregnant told Miss Miscarriage.

'Human usefulness,' Arbeiter lectured to us, 'is directly related to the proportion of the whole population involved in decisions.'

'In the power power,' Old Billig corrected him.

'In the powerful decisions,' Arbeiter said - the two men stabbing like hummingbirds at a single small blossom.

'Bullf.u.c.k,' Franny said. Arbeiter's and Old Billig's English was so bad, it was easy to say things like 'Take it in the ear' to them all the time - they didn't get it. And despite my vow to clean up my language, I was sorely tempted to say these things to them; I had to content myself, vicariously, by listening to Franny speak to them.

'The eventual race war, in America,' Arbeiter told us, 'will be misunderstood. It will actually be a war of cla.s.s stratification.'

'When you fart, Arbeiter,' Franny asked him, 'do the seals in the zoo stop swimming?'

The other radicals were rarely a part of our group discussions. One spent himself on the typewriters; the other, on the single automobile that the Symposium on East-West Relations owned among themselves: all six of them, they could just fit. The mechanic who labored over the decrepit car - the ever-ailing car, useless in any getaway, we imagined, and probably never to be called upon for a getaway, Father thought - was a sullen, smudge-faced young man in coveralls and a navy-blue streetcar conductor's cap. He belonged to the union and worked the main-line Mariahilfer Stra.s.se Stra.s.senbahn Stra.s.senbahn all night. He looked sleepy and angry every day, and he clanked with tools. Appropriately, he was called Schraubenschlussel - a all night. He looked sleepy and angry every day, and he clanked with tools. Appropriately, he was called Schraubenschlussel - a Schraubenschlussel Schraubenschlussel is a wrench. Frank liked to roll Schraubenschlussel's name off his tongue, to show off, but Franny and Lilly and I insisted on the translation. We called him Wrench. is a wrench. Frank liked to roll Schraubenschlussel's name off his tongue, to show off, but Franny and Lilly and I insisted on the translation. We called him Wrench.

'Hi, Wrench,' Franny would say to him, as he lay under the car, cursing. 'Hope you're keeping your mind clean, Wrench,' Franny would say. Wrench knew no English, and the only thing we knew about Wrench's private life was that he had once asked Susie the bear for a date.

'I mean, virtually n.o.body n.o.body asks me out,' Susie said. 'What an a.s.shole.' asks me out,' Susie said. 'What an a.s.shole.'

'What an a.s.shole,' Franny repeated.

'Well, he's never actually seen seen me, you know,' Susie said. me, you know,' Susie said.

'Does he know you're female female?' Frank asked.

'Jesus G.o.d, Frank,' Franny said.

'Well, I was just curious curious,' Frank said.

'That Wrench is a real weirdo, I can tell,' Franny said. 'Don't go out with him, Susie,' Franny advised the bear.

'Are you kidding?' Susie the bear said. 'Honey, I don't go out. With men men.'

This seemed to settle almost pa.s.sively at Franny's feet, but I could see Frank edging uncomfortably near to, and then away from, its presence.

'Susie is a lesbian, Franny,' I told Franny, when we were alone.

'She didn't exactly say that,' Franny said.

'I think she is,' I said.

'So?' Franny said. 'What's Frank? The grand banana? And Frank's okay.'

'Watch out for Susie, Franny,' I said.

'You think about me too much,' she repeated, and repeated. 'Leave me alone, will you?' Franny asked me. But that was the one thing I could never do.

'All s.e.xual acts actually involve maybe four or five different s.e.xes,' the sixth member of the Symposium on East-West Relations told us. This was such a garbling of Freud - the other other Freud - that we had to beg Frank for a second translation because we couldn't understand the first. Freud - that we had to beg Frank for a second translation because we couldn't understand the first.

'That's what he said,' Frank a.s.sured us. 'All s.e.xual acts actually involve a bunch of different different s.e.xes.' s.e.xes.'

'Four or five?' Franny asked.

'When we do it with a woman,' the man said, 'we are doing it with ourselves as we will become, and with ourselves in our childhoods. And, it goes without saying, with the self our lover will become, and with the self of her childhood.'

' ”It goes without saying”?' Frank asked.

'So every time there's one f.u.c.k there's four or five people actually at it?' Franny asked. 'That sounds exhausting.'

'The energy spent on s.e.x is the only energy that doesn't require replacement by the society,' the rather dreamy sixth radical told us. Frank struggled to translate this. 'We replace our s.e.xual energy ourselves,' the man said, looking at Franny as if he'd just said the most profound thing in the world.

'No kidding,' I whispered to Franny, but she seemed a little more mesmerized than I thought she should have been. I was afraid she liked this radical.

His name was Ernst. Just Ernst. A normal name, but just a first name. He didn't argue. He crafted isolated, meaningless sentences, spoke them quietly, went back to the typewriter. When the radicals left the Gasthaus Freud in the late afternoon, they seemed to flounder for hours in the Kaffee Mowatt (across the street) - a dark and dim place with a billiard table and dart boards, and an ever-present solemn row of tea-with-rum drinkers playing chess or reading the newspapers. Ernst rarely joined his colleagues at the Kaffee Mowatt. He wrote and wrote.