The Hotel New Hampshire (5 page)

“What do you know about bears, anyway?” she asked. “Or motorcycles?”

She didn’t like, either, his idea that—
if
Freud was unwilling to part with his Indian or his bear—Father would travel the logging camps with Freud. Win Berry was a strong boy, but not vulgar. And Mother imagined the camps to be vulgar places, from which Father would not emerge the same—or would not emerge at all.

She needn’t have worried. That summer and how it would end were obviously planned more hugely and inevitably than any trivial arrangements my father and mother could imagine ahead of them. That summer of ’39 was as inevitable as the war in Europe, as it would soon be called, and all of them—Freud, Mary Bates, and Winslow Berry—were as lightly tossed along by the summer as the gulls knocked about in the rough currents at the mouth of the Kennebec.

One night in late August, when Mother had served at the evening meal and had only just had time to change into her saddle shoes and the long skirt she played croquet in, Father was called from his room to assist with an injured man. Father ran past the lawn for croquet where Mother was waiting for him. She held a mallet over her shoulder. The Christmas-like light bulbs strung in the trees lit the lawn for croquet in such a ghostly way that—to my father—my mother “looked like an angel holding a club.”

“I’ll be right with you,” Father said to her. “Someone’s been hurt.”

She came with him, and some other running men, and they ran down to the hotel piers. Alongside the dock was a throbbing big ship aglow with lights. A band with too much brass was playing on board, and the strong fuel smell and motor exhaust in the salt air mixed with the smell of crushed fruit. It appeared that some enormous bowl of alcoholic fruit punch was being served to the ship’s guests, and they were spilling it over themselves or washing the deck down with it. At the end of the dock a man lay on his-side, bleeding from a wound in his cheek: he had stumbled coming up the ladder and had torn his face on a mooring cleat.

He was a large man, his face florid in the blue wash of the light from the moon, and he sat up as soon as anybody touched him. “
Scheiss
!” he said.

My father and mother recognized the German word for “shit” from Freud’s many performances. With the assistance of several strong young men the German was brought to his feet. He had bled, magnificently, over his white dinner jacket, which seemed large enough to clothe two men; his blue-black cummerbund resembled a curtain, and his matching bow tie stuck up straight at his throat, like a twisted propeller. He was rather jowly and he smelled strongly of the fruit punch served on board ship. He bellowed to someone. From on board came a chorus of German, and a tall, tanned woman in an evening dress with yellow lace, or ruching, came up the dock’s ladder like a panther wearing silk. The bleeding man seized her and leaned on her so heavily that the woman, despite her own obvious strength and agility, was pushed into my father, who helped her maintain her balance. She was much younger than the man, my mother noted, and also German—speaking in an easy, clucking manner to him, while he continued to bleat and gesture, nastily, to those members of the German chorus left on board. Up the dock, and up the gravel driveway, the big couple wove.

At the entrance to the Arbuthnot, the woman turned to my father and said, with a controlled accent: “He
vill
need stitches,
ja
? Of course you
haf
a doctor.”

The deck manager whispered to Father, “Get Freud.”

“Stitches?” Freud said. “The doctor lives all the way in Bath, and he’s a drunk. But I know how to stitch anybody.”

The desk manager ran out to the dorm and shouted for Freud.

“Get on your Indian and bring old Doc Todd here! We’ll sober him up when he arrives,” the manager said. “But for God’s sake, get going!”

“It will take an hour,
if
I can find him,” Freud said. “You know I can handle stitching. Just get me the proper clothes.”

“This is different,” the desk manager said. “I think it’s different, Freud—I mean, the guy. He’s a
German
, Freud. And it’s his
face
that’s cut.”

Freud stripped his work clothes off his pitted, olive body; he began to comb his damp hair. “The clothes,” he said. “Just bring them. It’s too complicated to get old Doc Todd.”

“The wound is on his
face
, Freud,” Father said.

“So what’s a face?” said Freud. “Just skin,
ja
? Like on the hands or foots. I’ve sewn up lots of foots before. Ax and saw cuts—them stupid loggers.”

Outside, the other Germans from the ship were bringing trunks and heavy luggage the shortest distance from the pier to the entranceway—across the eighteenth green. “Look at those swine,” Freud said. “Putting dents where the little white ball will get caught.”

The headwaiter came into Freud’s room. It was the best room in the men’s dorm—no one knew how Freud ended up with it. The headwaiter began to undress.

“Everything but your jacket, dummy,” Freud said to him. “Doctors don’t wear waiters’ jackets.”

Father had a black tuxedo jacket that more or less agreed with the waiter’s black pants, and he brought it to Freud.

“I’ve told them, a million times,” the headwaiter said—although he looked strange saying this with any authority, while he was naked. “There should be a doctor who actually lives at the hotel.”

When Freud was all dressed, he said, “There
is
.” The desk manager ran back to the main hotel ahead of him. Father watched the headwaiter looking helplessly at Freud’s abandoned clothes; they were not very clean and they smelled strongly of State o’ Maine; the waiter, clearly, did not want to put them on. Father ran to catch up with Freud.

The Germans, now in the driveway outside the entrance, were grinding a large trunk across the gravel; someone would have to rake the stones in the morning. “Is der not enough help at dis hotel to help us?” one of the Germans yelled.

On the spotless counter, in the serving room between the main dining hall and the kitchen, the big German with the gashed cheek lay like a corpse, his pale head resting on his folded-up dinner jacket, which would never be white again; his propeller of a dark tie sagged limply at his throat, his cummerbund heaved.

“It’z a
goot
doctor?” he asked the desk manager. The young giantess in the gown with the yellow ruching held the German’s hand.

“An excellent doctor,” the desk manager said.

“Especially at stitching,” my father said. My mother held his hand.

“It’z not too civilized a hotel, I tink,” the German said.

“It’z in der
vilderness
,” the tawny, athletic woman said, but she dismissed herself with a laugh. “But it’z
nicht
so bad a cut, I tink,” she told Father and Mother, and the desk manager. “We don’t need too goot a doctor to fix it up, I tink.”

“Just so it’z no
Jew
,” the German said. He coughed. Freud was in the small room, though none of them had seen him; he was having trouble threading a needle.

“It’z no Jew, I’m sure.” The tawny princess laughed. “They
haf
no Jews in Maine!” When she saw Freud, she didn’t look so sure.

“
Guten Abend, meine Dame und Herr
,” Freud said. “
Was ist los
?”

My father said that Freud, in the black tuxedo, was a figure so runted and distorted by his boil scars that he immediately looked as if he had stolen his clothes; the clothes appeared to have been stolen from at
least
two different people. Even his most visible instrument was black—a black spool of thread, which Freud grasped in the gray-rubber kitchen gloves the dishwashers wore. The best needle to be found in the laundry room of the Arbuthnot looked too large in Freud’s small hand, as if he’d grabbed the needle used to sew the sails for the racing boats. Perhaps he
had
.

“Herr
Doktor
?” the German asked, his face whitening. His wound appeared to stop bleeding, instantly.

“Herr Doktor Professor Freud,” Freud said, moving in close and leering at the wound.

“Freud?” the woman said.

“
Ja
,” Freud said.

When he poured the first shot glass of whiskey into the German’s cut, the whiskey washed into the German’s eyes.

“Ooops!” said Freud.

“I’m blind! I’m blind!” the German sang.

“
Nein
, you’re
nicht
so blind,” Freud said. “But you should have shut your eyes.” He splashed another glass in the wound; then he went to work.

In the morning the manager asked Freud
not
to perform with State o’ Maine until after the Germans left—they were leaving as soon as ample provisions could be loaded aboard their large vessel. Freud refused to remain attired as a doctor; he insisted on tinkering with the ’37 Indian in his mechanic’s costume, so it was in such attire that the German found him, seaward of the tennis courts, not exactly hidden from the main hotel grounds and the lawns of play, but discreetly off to himself. The huge, bandaged face of the German was badly swollen and he approached Freud warily, as if the little motorcycle mechanic might be the alarming twin brother of the “Herr Doktor Professor” of the night before.

“
Nein
, it’z
him
,” said the tanned woman, trailing on the German’s arm.

“What’s the Jew doctor fixing this morning?” the German asked Freud.

“My hobby,” Freud said, not looking up. My father, who was handing Freud his motorcycle tools—like an assistant to a surgeon—took a firmer grip on the three-quarters-inch wrench.

The German couple did not see the bear. State o’ Maine was scratching himself against the fence of the tennis courts—making deep, thrusting scratches with his back against the metal mesh, groaning to himself and rocking to a rhythm akin to masturbation. My mother, to make him more comfortable, had removed his muzzle.

“I never heard of such a motorcycle as
dis
,” the German told Freud, critically. “It’z
junk
, I tink,
ja
? What’s an Indian? I never heard of it.”

“You should try riding it yourself,” Freud said. “Want to?”

The German woman seemed unsure of the idea—and quite sure that
she
didn’t want to—but the idea clearly appealed to the German. He stood close to the motorcycle and touched its gas tank and ran his fingers over its clutch cable and fondled the knob to the gearshift. He seized the throttle at the handlebars and gave it a sharp twist. He felt the soft rubber tube—like an exposed vital organ among so much metal—where the gas ran from the tank into the carburetor. He opened the valve to the carburetor, without asking Freud’s permission; he tickled the valve and wet his fingers with gasoline, then wiped his fingers on the seat.

“You don’t mind,
Herr Doktor
?” the German asked Freud.

“No, go on,” Freud said. “Take it for a spin.”

And that was the summer of ’39: my father saw how it would end, but he could not move to interfere. “I couldn’t have stopped it,” Father always said. “It was
coming
, like the war.”

Mother, at the tennis court fence, saw the German mount the motorcycle; she thought she’d better put State o’ Maine’s muzzle back on. But the bear was impatient with her; he shook his head and scratched himself harder.

“Just a standard kick starter,
ja
?” the German asked.

“Just kick it over and she’ll start right up,” Freud said. Something about the way he and Father stepped away from the motorcycle made the young German woman join them; she stepped back, too.

“Here goes!” the German said, and kicked the starter down.

With the fast catch of the engine, before the first rev, the bear called State o’ Maine stood erect against the tennis court fence, the coarse fur on his dense chest stiffening; he stared across center court at the 1937 Indian that was trying to go somewhere without him. When the German chunked the machine into gear and began, rather timidly, to advance across the grass to a nearby gravel path, State o’ Maine dropped to all fours and charged. He was in full stride when he crossed center court and broke up the doubles game—racquets falling, balls rolling loose. The player who was playing net chose to
hug
the net instead; he shut his eyes as the bear tore by him.

“Earl!” cried State o’ Maine, but the German on the throaty ’37 Indian couldn’t hear anything.

The German woman heard, however, and turned—with Father and Freud—to see the bear. “
Gott
! Vut vilderness!” she cried, and fainted sideways against my father, who wrestled her gently to the lawn.

When the German saw that a bear was after him, he had not yet got his bearings; he was unsure which way the main road was. If he’d found the main road, of course, he could have outdistanced the bear, but confined to the narrow paths and walkways of the hotel grounds, and the soft fields for sports, he lacked the necessary speed.

“Earl!” growled the bear. The German swerved across the croquet lawn and headed for the picnic tents where they were setting up for lunch. The bear was on the motorcycle in less than twenty-five yards, clumsily trying to mount behind the German—as if State o’ Maine had finally learned Freud’s driving lesson, and was about to insist that the act be performed properly.

The German would not allow Freud to stitch him up
this
time, and even Freud confessed that it was too big a job for him. “What a mess,” Freud wondered aloud to my father. “Such a lot of stitches—not for me. I couldn’t stand to hear him bawl all the time it would take.”

So the German was transported, by the Coast Guard, to the hospital at Bath. State o’ Maine was concealed in the laundry room so that the bear’s mythical status as “a wild animal” could be confirmed.

“Out of the
voods
, it came,” said the revived German woman. “It must haf been
incensed
by der noise from der motorcycle.”