The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

Author:John Irving
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Performing Arts, Inns & Hostels, Screenplays, Family, Travel, Family Life, Fiction, Romance, etc, Sagas, Vienna (Austria), New Hampshire, Psychological, Fiction - General, motels, General, Domestic Fiction, Media Tie-In, Hotels
ISBN: 9780345400475
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2012-02-21T14:24:06+00:00

Fritz drove us to Boston, where Franny had to shop for what Mother called “city underwear”; Lilly wept her way through the lingerie aisles; Frank and I cruised the escalators. We were at the airport much too early. Fritz apologized for not being able to wait with us; his animals needed him, he said, and Father wished him well—thanking him, in advance, for driving Mother and Egg to the airport tomorrow. Frank was “approached” in the men’s room at Logan International, but he refused to describe the incident to Franny and me; he continued to say only that he had been “approached.” He was indignant about it, and Franny and I were furious with him for not spelling it out to us in more detail. Father bought Lilly a plastic carry-on flight bag, to cheer her up, and we boarded the plane before dark. I think we took off about 7 or 8 P.M.: the lights of Boston, on a summer night, were half on and half off, and there was enough daylight left to see the harbor clearly. It was our first time on an airplane, and we loved it.

We flew all night across the ocean. Father slept the whole way. Lilly would not sleep; she watched the darkness, and reported sighting what she said were two ocean liners. I dozed and woke, dozed and woke again; with my eyes shut, I watched Elliot Park turning into a circus. Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy. I imagined returning to Dairy, and wondered if Fritz’s Act would improve or run down the neighborhood.

We landed in Frankfurt at quarter to eight in the morning. Maybe it was quarter to nine.

“Deutschland!” Frank said. He led us through the Frankfurt airport to our connecting flight to Vienna, reading all the signs out loud, speaking amiably to all the foreigners.

“We’re the foreigners,” Franny kept whispering.

“Guten Tag!” Frank hailed all the passing strangers.

“Those people were French, Frank,” Franny said. “I’m sure of it.”

Father almost lost the passports, so we attached them with two stout rubber bands to Lilly’s wrist; then I carried Lilly, who seemed exhausted from her tears.

We left Frankfurt at quarter to nine, or maybe quarter to ten, and arrived in Vienna about noon. It was a short, choppy flight in a smaller plane; Lilly saw some mountains and was frightened; Franny said she hoped it would be smoother weather, the next day, for Mother and Egg; Frank vomited twice.

“Say it in German, Frank,” Franny said, but Frank felt too terrible to answer her.

We had a day and a night and the next morning to get the Gasthaus Freud ready for Mother and Egg. Our flight had totaled about eight hours in the air-about six or seven from Boston to Frankfurt, and another hour or so to Vienna. The flight that Mother and Egg were taking was supposed to leave Boston slightly later in the evening of the next day and fly to Zurich; their connecting flight, to

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