The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving Read Free Book Online Page A

that. The dumb bear tore the tailgate off and beat in the rear window and mauled the guy in the cab. So don’t you be dumb. Buy the Indian.”
    “Two hundred dollars,” Father repeated.
    “Now for your clothes,” Freud said. He left his own wet things on the laundry room floor. The bear tried to follow them to my father’s room, but Freud told my mother to take State o’ Maine outside and chain him to the motorcycle.
    “He knows you’re leaving and he’s nervous, poor thing,” Mother said.
    “He just misses the motorcycle,” Freud said, but he let the bear come upstairs—although the Arbuthnot had asked him not to allow this.
    “What do I care now what they allow?” Freud said, trying on my father’s clothes. My mother watched up and down the hall; bears and women were not allowed in the men’s dorm.
    “My clothes are all too big for you,” my father told Freud when Freud had dressed himself.
    “I’m still growing,” said Freud, who must have been at least forty then. “If I’d had the right clothes, I’d be bigger now.” He wore three of my father’s suit pants, one pair right over the other; he wore two suit jackets, the pockets stuffed with underwear and socks, and he carried a third jacket over his shoulder. “Why trouble with suitcases?” he asked.
    “But how will you get to Europe?” Mother whispered into the room.
    “By crossing the Atlantic Ocean,” Freud said. “Come in here,” he said to Mother; he took my mother’s and father’s hands and joined them together. “You’re only teen-agers,” he told them, “so listen to me: you are in love. We start from this assumption, ja ?” And although my mother and father had never admitted any such thing to each other, they both nodded while Freud held their hands. “Okay,” Freud said. “Now, three things from this follow. You promise me you will agree to these three things?”
    “I promise,” said my father.
    “So do I,” Mother said.
    “Okay,” said Freud. “Here’s number one: you get married, right away, before some clods and whores change your minds. Got it? You get married, even though it will cost you.”
    “Yes,” my parents agreed.
    “Here’s number two,” Freud said, looking only at my father. “You go to Harvard—you promise me—even though it will cost you.”
    “But I’ll already be married,” my father said.
    “I said it will cost you, didn’t I?” Freud said. “You promise me: you’ll go to Harvard. You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day the opportunities stop, you know?”
    “I want you to go to Harvard, anyway,” Mother told Father.
    “Even though it will cost me,” Father said, but he agreed to go.
    “We’re up to number three,” Freud said. “You ready?” And he turned to my mother; he dropped my father’s hand, he even shoved it away from him so that he was holding Mother’s hand all alone. “Forgive him,” Freud told her, “even though it will cost you.”
    “Forgive me for what?” Father said.
    “Just forgive him,” Freud said, looking only at my mother. She shrugged.
    “And you !” Freud said to the bear, who was sniffing around under Father’s bed. Freud startled State o’ Maine, who’d found a tennis ball under the bed and put it in his mouth.
    “Urp!” the bear said. Out came the tennis ball.
    “You,” Freud said to the bear. “May you one day be grateful that you were rescued from the disgusting world of nature !”
    That was all. It was a wedding and a benediction, my mother always said. It was a good old-fashioned Jewish service, my father always said; Jews were a mystery to him—of the order of China, India, and Africa, and all the exotic places he’d never been.
    Father chained the bear to the motorcycle. When he and Mother kissed Freud good-bye, the bear tried to butt his head between them.
    “Watch out!” Freud cried, and they scattered apart. “He thought we were eating