Page 72

'Bonbons,' said Franny. 'Oh boy.'

'Which is the door to the candy store, and which is the door to the hotel?' Frank asked; Frank would always think like a doorman.

'I think you have to live there to know,' Franny said.

Lilly got a magnifying glass and deciphered the name of the street, in funny script, under the street number on the hotel's double door.

'Krugerstrasse,' she decided, which at least matched the name of the street in Freud's address. Father bought a map of Vienna from a travel agency and we located Krugerstrasse -- in the First District, as Freud had promised; it appeared very central.

'It's only a block or two from the opera!' Frank cried, enthusiastically.

'Oh boy,' Franny said.

The map had little green areas for parks, thin red and blue lines where the streetcars ran, and ornate buildings -- grossly out of proportion to the street -- to indicate the places of interest.

'It looks like a kind of Monopoly board,' Lilly said.

We noted cathedrals, museums, the town hall, the university, the Parliament.

'I wonder where the gangs hang out,' said Junior Jones, looking over the streets with us.

The gangs?' said Egg. 'The who?'

'The tough guys,' said Junior Jones. 'The guys with guns and blades, man.'

'The gangs,' Lilly repeated, and we stared at the map as if the streets would indicate their darkest alleys to us.

'This is Europe,' Frank said, with disgust. 'Maybe there aren't gangs.'

'It's a city, isn't it?' Junior Jones said.

But on the map it looked like a toy city, to me -- with pretty places of interest, and all the green spots where nature had been arranged for pleasure.

'Probably in the parks,' said Franny, biting her lower lip. The gangs hang out in the parks.'

'Shit,' I said.

'There won't be any gangs!' Frank cried. 'There will be music! And pastry! And the people do a lot of bowing, and they dress differently!' We stared at him, but we knew he'd been reading up on Vienna; he'd gotten a head start on the books Father kept bringing home.

'Pastry and music and people bowing all the time, Frank?' Franny said. 'Is that what it's like?' Lilly was using her magnifying glass on the map now -- as if people would spring to life, in miniature, on the paper; and they'd either be bowing, and dressed differently, or they'd be cruising in gangs.

'Well,' Franny said. 'At least we can be pretty sure there won't be any black gangs.' Franny was still angry with Junior Jones for sleeping with Ronda Ray.

'Shit,' Junior said. 'You better hope there are black gangs. Black gangs are the best gangs, man. Those white gangs have inferiority complexes,' Junior said. 'And there's nothing worse than a gang with an inferiority complex.'

'A what?' said Egg. No doubt he thought that an inferiority complex was a weapon; sometimes, I guess, it is.

'Well, I think it's going to be nice,' said Frank, grimly.

'Yes, it will be,' Lilly said, with a humourlessness akin to Frank's.

'I can't see it,' Egg said, seriously. 'I can't see it, so I don't know what it's going to be like.'

'It'll be okay,' Franny said. 'I don't think it's going to be great, but it'll be all right.'

It was odd, but Franny seemed the most influenced by Iowa Bob's philosophy -- which, to a degree, had become Father's philosophy. This was odd because Franny was frequently the most sarcastic to Father -- and the most sarcastic about Father's plans. Yet when she was raped, Father had said to her -- incredibly! I thought -- that when he had a bad day, he tried to see if he could construe it as the luckiest day of his life. 'Maybe this is the luckiest day of your life,' he had said to her; I was amazed that she seemed to find this reverse thinking useful. She was a kind of parrot of other tidbits of Father's philosophy. 'It was just a little event among so many,' I heard her say -- to Frank, about scaring Iowa Bob to death. And once, about Chipper Dove, I heard Father say, 'He probably has a most unhappy life.' Franny actually agreed with him!

I felt much more nervous about going to Vienna than Franny seemed to feel, and I was ever conscious of what feelings Franny and I didn't absolutely share -- because it mattered to me that I stay close to her.