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'Four hundred and sixty-four!' Frank sang.

'I wouldn't want children until after the revolution,' Fehlgeburt said, humorlessly.

'Do you think Fehlgeburt likes me?' I asked Frank, when we were walking home.

'Wait till we start school,' Frank suggested. 'Find a nice young girl -- your own age.'

And so, although I lived in a Viennese whorehouse, my sexual world was probably like the sexual world for most Americans who were fifteen in 1957; I beat off to images of a dangerously violent prostitute, while I kept walking a young 'older' girl to her home -- waiting for the day I might dare to kiss her, or even hold her hand.

I expected that the 'timid souls' -- the guests who (Schwanger had predicted) would be drawn to the Hotel New Hampshire -- would remind me of myself. They didn't. They came occasionally in buses: odd groups on organized tours -- and some of the tours were as odd as the groups. Librarians from Devon, Kent, and Cornwall; ornithologists from Ohio -- they had been observing storks at Rust. They were so regular in their habits that they all went to bed before the whores started working; they slept right through the nightly rumpus and were often off on a tour in the morning before Screaming Annie wrapped up her last orgasm, before the radical Old Billig walked in off the street -- the new world shining in his old mind's eye. The groups were the oblivious ones, and Frank could sometimes make extra money by marching them off on 'walking tours.' The groups were easy -- even the Japanese Male Choral Society, who discovered the whores as a group (and used them as a group). What a loud, strange time that was -- all that screwing, all that singing! The Japanese had a great many cameras with them and took everyone's picture -- all of our family pictures, too. In fact, Frank would always say it's a shame that the only photographs we have of our time in Vienna come from that one visit of the Japanese Male Choral Society. There is one of Lilly with Fehlgeburt -- and a book, of course. There's a touching one of the two Old Billigs; they look like what Lilly would call a 'sweet' old couple. There's Franny leaning on the stout shoulder of Susie the bear, Franny looking a little thin, but sassy and strong -- 'strangely confident' is how Frank describes Franny in this period. There's a curious one of Father and Freud. They appear to be sharing the baseball bat -- or they appear to have been squabbling over the bat; it is as if they'd been fighting over who was up next, and they'd interrupted their brawl only long enough for the picture to be taken.

I'm standing with Dark Inge. I remember the Japanese gentleman who asked Inge and me to stand beside each other; we had been sitting down, playing crazy eights, but the Japanese said the light wasn't right and so we had to stand. It's a slightly unnatural moment; Screaming Annie is still sitting down -- at that part of the table where the light was generous -- and overly powdered Babette is whispering something to Jolanta, who is standing a little back from the table with her arms folded across her impressive bosom. Jolanta could never learn the rules to crazy eights. In this picture, Jolanta looks like she's about to break up the game. I remember that the Japanese were afraid of her, too -- perhaps because she was so much bigger than any of them.

And what distinguishes all these photographs -- our only pictorial record of Vienna, 1957-64 -- is that all these people familiar to us have to share the photographs with a Japanese or two, with a total stranger or two. Even the photograph of Ernst the pornographer leaning against the car outside. Arbeiter is leaning against the fender with him -- and those legs protruding from under the grille of the old Mercedes, those legs belong to the one called Wrench; Schraubenschlussel never got more than his legs in a picture. And surrounding the car are Japanese -- strangers none of us would see again.

Might we have known, then -- had we looked at that photograph closely -- that this was no ordinary car? Who ever heard of a Mercedes, even an old one, that needed so much mechanical attention? Herr Wrench was always under the car, and crawling around in it. And why did the one car belonging to the Symposium on East-West Relations need so much care when it was so rarely driven anywhere? Looking at it, now, of course ... well, the photograph is obvious. It is hard to look at that photograph and not recognize that old Mercedes for what it was.

A bomb. A constantly wired and rewired, ever-ready bomb. The whole car was a bomb. And those unrecognizable Japanese that populate all of our only photographs ... well, now it's easy to see these strangers, those foreign gentlemen, as symbolic of the unknown angels of death which would accompany that car. To think that for years we children told each other jokes about how bad a mechanic Schraubenschlussel must be in order to be constantly fussing with that Mercedes! When all the while he was an expert! Mr. Wrench, the bomb expert; for almost seven years that bomb was ready -- every day.

We never knew what they were waiting for -- or what moment would have been ripe for it, had we not forced their hand. We have only the Japanese pictures to go on, and they make a murky story.

'What do you remember of Vienna, Frank?'' I asked him -- I ask him all the time. Frank went into a room to be alone with himself, and when he came out he handed me a short list:

1.Franny with Susie the bear.

2.Going to buy your damn barbells.

3.Walking Fehlgeburt home.

4.The presence of the King of Mice.

Frank handed me this list and said, 'Of course, there's more, but I don't want to get into it.'

I understand, and of course I remember going to buy my barbells, too. We all went. Father, Freud, Susie, and we children. Freud went because he knew where the sports shop was. Susie went because Freud could help her remember where the shop was by shouting at her in the streetcar. 'Are we past that hospital-supply place on Mariahilfer?' Freud would cry. 'It's the second left, or the third, after that.'

'Earl!' Susie would say, looking out the window. The Strassenbahn conductor would caution Freud, saying, 'I hope it's safe -- it's not tied: the bear. We don't usually let them on if they're not tied.'

'Earl!' Susie said.

'It's a smart bear,' Frank told the conductor.

In the sports shop I bought 300 pounds of weights, one long barbell, and two dumbbell bars for the one-

arm curls.

'Deliver them to the Hotel New Hampshire, Father said.

'They don't deliver,' Frank said.

'They don't deliver?' Franny said. 'Well, we can't carry them!'

'Earl!' Susie said.

'Be nice, Susie!' Freud shouted. 'Don't be rude!'

'The bear would really appreciate it if these weights were delivered,' Frank told the man in the sports shop. But it didn't work. We should have seen then that the power of a bear in getting things to work out for us was diminishing. We distributed the weights as best we could. I put seventy-five on each of the short dumbbell bars and carried one in each hand. Father and Frank and Susie the bear struggled with the long bar, and another 150 pounds. Franny opened doors and cleared the sidewalk, and Lilly held on to Freud; she was his Seeing Eye bear for the trip home.

'Jesus God!' Father said, when they wouldn't let us on the Strassenbahn.