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'They were the rats abandoning the sinking ship,' as Frank would say, later. They were not touched with Fehlgeburt's romanticism; they were never anything larger than whores. They left us without saying good-bye.

'So who's the driver, you super shit?' Susie the bear asked Ernst. 'Who the hell's left?'

Ernst smiled; it was a smile full of disgust, and he was smiling at Freud. Although Freud could not see this, Freud suddenly figured it out. 'It's me!' he cried, as if he'd won a prize; he was so excited, the baseball bat tapped double time. 'I'm the driver!' Freud cried.

'Yes, you are,' said Ernst, awfully pleased.

'Brilliant!' Freud cried. 'The perfect job for a blind man!' he shouted, the baseball bat like a baton, conducting, leading the orchestra -- Freud's Vienna State Opera Band!

'And you love Win Berry, don't you, Freud?' Schwanger asked the old man, gently.

'Of course I do!' Freud cried. 'Like my own son!' Freud yelled, wrapping his arms around my father, the baseball bat snug between his knees.

'So if you drive the car properly,' Ernst said to Freud, 'no harm will come to Win Berry.'

'If you fuck it up,' Arbeiter said, 'we'll kill them all.'

'One at a time,' Schraubenschlussel added.

'How can a blind man drive the car, you morons?' screamed Susie the bear.

'Explain how it works, Schraubenschlussel,' Ernst said, calmly. And now it was Wrench's big moment, the moment he'd been living for -- to describe every loving detail of his heart's desire. Arbeiter looked a little jealous. Schwanger and Ernst listened with the most benign expressions, like teachers proud of their prize pupil. My father, of course, didn't understand the language well enough to get all of it.

'I call it a sympathy bomb,' Wrench began.

'Oh, that's brilliant!' Freud cried out; then he giggled. 'A sympathy bomb! Jesus God!'

'Shut up,' Arbeiter said.

'There are actually two bombs,' Schraubenschlussel said. 'The first bomb is the car. The whole car,' he said, smiling slyly. 'The car simply has to be detonated within a certain range of the Opera -- quite close to the Opera, actually. If the car explodes within this range, the bomb in the Opera will explode, too -- you might say "in sympathy" with the first explosion. Which is why I call it a sympathy bomb,' Wrench added, moronically. Even Father could have followed this part. 'First the car blows, and if it blows close enough to the Opera, then the big bomb -- the one in the Opera -- then it blows. The bomb in the car is what I call a contact bomb. The contact is the front license plate. When the front license plate is depressed, the whole car blows sky-high. Several people in its vicinity will be blown sky-high, too,' Schraubenschlussel added.

'That's unavoidable,' Arbeiter said.

'The bomb in the Opera,' said Schraubenschlussel, lovingly, 'is much more complicated than a contact bomb. The bomb in the Opera is a chemical bomb, but a very delicate kind of electrical impulse is required to start it. The fuse to the bomb in the Opera -- in a quite remarkably sensitive way -- responds to a very particular explosion within its range. It's almost as if the bomb in the Opera has ears,' Wrench said, laughing at himself. It was the first time we had heard Wrench laugh; it was a disgusting laugh. Lilly started to gag, as if she was going to be sick.

'You won't be hurt, dear,' Schwanger soothed her.

'All I have to do is drive the car, with Freud in it, right down the Ringstrasse to the Opera,' Schraubenschlussel said. 'Of course, I have to be careful not to run into anything, I have to find a safe place to pull off to the side of the street -- and then I get out,' Schraubenschlussel said. 'When I'm out, Freud gets behind the wheel. Nobody will ask us to move on before we're ready; nobody in Vienna questions a streetcar conductor.'

'We know you know how to drive, Freud,' Ernst said to the old man. 'You used to be a mechanic, right?'

'Right,' said Freud; he was fascinated.

'I stand right next to Freud, speaking to him through the driver's side window,' said Wrench. 'I wait until I see Arbeiter come out of the Opera and cross the Karntnerstrasse -- to the other side.'

'To the safe side!' Arbeiter added.

'And then I just tell Freud to count to ten and floor it!' Schraubenschlussel said. 'I'll already have aimed the car in the right direction. Freud will simply floor it -- he'll get up to as fast a speed as he can. He'll run smack into something -- almost right away, no matter which way he turns. He's 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,' Schraubenschlussel said.

'It's right where they come out to take their fucking final bows!' Arbeiter said.