Seriously, Norman!, page 10
The boulevard was a noble one, proceeding along the ground that had once carried a mighty wall, a moat, and a green space created during a time when the town citizenry were never sure if the approaching caravan was arriving to sell carpets or to carry off all the above-average children. Happily, the Viennese and we, too, believe those times are gone, and so the wall has been taken down, the moat filled up, and the green space planted with leafy trees, grand buildings, and the street itself.
Along the sidewalks, one café after another beckoned to the Normann pair, who nevertheless walked on, as they were to meet Leonard and Sarah Piquant, who were arriving that day from Prague. With a great “Eeeeeyaaaah!” Norman announced that he had spotted them seated beneath one of the red-and-white table umbrellas at the Café Schmutzie.
“Norman!” said his mother. “Please, dear! Remember, we’re in Austria.”
“All right, then,” said Norman. “Eeeeeyäääääh!”
“Nörman! Oh dear, now you’ve got me doing it.”
In the meantime, Leonard leaped up from his chair and then over the railing corralling the tables.
“Waaayargg!” he said, karate-chopping and hugging Norman simultaneously. “Look! I’ve already ordered. And the hot chocolate is fantastic!”
Norman looked. On the table stood a tall, pedestaled glass mug, still one-quarter full; around the mug, the splashes and spills of foam and chocolate told the story of unbridled delight; off to the side stood a simple metal tray holding a small glass of water, a plate of cylindrical wafer cookies, and a white napkin.
“Mit Schlag?” asked Norman.
“Mit very much Schlag,” said Leonard. “Mom, call the waiter.”
* * *
When Norman had drunk his hot chocolate, and his mother her small coffee, the four happy tourists caught a taxi to the Military History Museum (the Piquants having left their luggage for the time being at the train station), where they wandered the wide halls. This had been Leonard’s choice. He had earned it by three days of dutiful visits, at his mother’s request, to all the architectural wonders of Prague.
“This is more like it,” he said, as he and Norman marched alongside great, raised tables, themselves the size of rooms. These carried proudly, though a little dustily, the meticulously detailed, handmade landscapes of all the battlefields of the last millennium that had been ennobled by spilled Austrian blood. Tiny companies and battalions and whole armies, re-created in tin and clay, marched and warred forever in silence.
“This is a bit overwhelming,” said Mrs. Piquant.
“All of those mothers’ sons,” said Norma forlornly.
“Awesome!” said Leonard.
“I wish I could be in there,” said Norman, peering at a miniature battlefield of some unlucky spot in France.
“I wish I could be sitting on that horse right there,” said Leonard.
“Eeeeeeyäääää!” said Norman, holding his imaginary sword aloft.
“Norman and Leonard,” called Mrs. Piquant quietly, “come look at these. They’re marvelous.”
Mrs. Piquant stood at the entrance to a long, wide hall lined on each side with glass vitrines enclosing the uniforms of all the ranks of Austrian soldiers, and even those of some of their foes.
“Leonard, look at these epaulets,” she said, “and that helmet! Oh, and the gloves and sash. The workmanship is exquisite. Think of sending that kind of stitching into a war zone.”
“Mom, there were people inside those things getting blown up. I think that’s a little more important than the stitching,” said Leonard.
“I know, dear, I know. That, I can’t bear to think about. But I can still be upset at the thought of the waste of such fine human effort.”
“Leonard! Mom! Mrs. Piquant!” shouted Norman from farther along the hall.
“Shh!” said his mother.
“You won’t believe this!” whispered Norman as loud as he could.
“What is it?” said Leonard. “Exquisite stitching?”
“Much better. The uniform of a member of the Alfurnian Imperial Guard! And he’s wearing the same hat as the old man in Dad’s study!”
And so it was. All four stopped at the vitrine. Within stood an impressive figure in tall black boots with spurs; yellow breeches with a maroon stripe at the sides; a three-quarter-length, double-breasted, sky-blue coat with tremendous golden trimming and pink epaulets around a stiff, standing collar over a white ruffled shirt. A red sash, falling across the chest from shoulder to waist, carried the thin sword and scabbard. But the most stunning element of this martial ensemble, the item that topped it all, was the fur-covered, conical, or, if you prefer, infundibular, helmet with a red chin strap.
After drinking in this polychrome spectacle for several moments, Leonard said, “I guess they figured if they wore those hats, at least they’d have a pretty good chance of making their enemies die laughing.”
* * *
“Goodn Morrgn!” said Orman Normann, sitting down to breakfast with his family at the hotel the next day. The Piquants, who had retrieved their luggage and checked into the hotel the evening before, would be joining them.
“It’s guten Morgen, Dad,” said Norman.
“Goodn Morrgn. That’s what I said.”
“Guten Morgen, Dad.”
“Whatever. Have it your way. Irregardless.”
He continued: “I feel good. I feel gut. Ha-ha. Pass me that coffee, son. Norma, I think I’m sitting on some fat and juicy bomber contracts.”
“That’s gross, Dad.”
“Fat and juicy and oh so nutritious for our bank accounts. Ha-ha!”
“Terrific, Dad.”
“Listen to this. I’ve been talking to my friend, who has been talking to some little old ladies, if you get my meaning, and I have been talking to some other little old ladies, and charming the pants off them—make that, charming the knickers off them—and it’s been sell, sell, sell! Didn’t I tell you the world loves bombers? I can’t keep them on the shelves. Now, where’s my bacon and eggs?”
“Dear, remember, they don’t serve that here. Have a nice roll with salami, dear.”
“For breakfast? Weird. All right, pass them over. Say, son. Howzabout a little wager? I’ll bet you one Wiener schnitzel with mushrooms that I can get bomber contracts from as many different countries as the number of rolls I eat this morning.”
“You’re on, Dad.”
“Dear, pass me six. Darn it, dear. I feel gut! So long’s I keep an eye on the Alfurnians. Gotta make sure they don’t try any funny business. Ha!”
So the morning proceeded, with many a hard roll and a sudden “Ha!” from Orman Normann, followed by a “Dear, not so loud, dear” from his wife.
When six hard rolls had been eaten, Mr. Normann rushed out to the street to find a taxi, with Norman following closely behind him.
“Why don’t you take me along, Dad?”
“Son, maybe next time. Maybe on ‘Bomb your kid to work day.’ No, really, I couldn’t take you along. ’Stoo grown-up. Look, if I can clear it with my buddy, when we get back to New York, I’ll take you around. Oof Widderrrrsayin!”
“Auf Wiedersehen, Dad. It’s pronounced auf Wiedersehen.”
“Right, Norm,” he said, opening the taxi door. “Nineteen Bombenhandler Strasse, and step on it. Bye, Norm!”
Norman watched the taxi merge into the quick-moving traffic, wishing he’d had some sort of homing device, like they have in the movies, that he could have attached to the trunk of the car.
He shrugged, took a look at the clouds—cumulostratus—and passed again through the revolving door to the breakfast room. Maybe Leonard was up.
fun house
As a matter of fact, Norman hadn’t had any intention of accompanying his father, as he and Leonard had big plans for the day. His father’s karma would have to wait. The boys had extracted agreements from their mothers to be taken to the Prater.
The Prater, for those of you who have not yet been there, is an old Viennese institution encompassing a grand park with ball fields, riding stables, an enormous Ferris wheel, and beautiful tree-lined allées, but above all, from the twelve-year-old perspective, an amusement park. It was a bit tattered and tawdry, but beloved by Viennese children and foreign children alike. Norman and Leonard had seen the great Ferris wheel rising above distant buildings, a huge thing carrying streetcars where its smaller cousins carried chairs for two, and had inquired about it at the desk. “Oh, that is the Riesenrad, the Giant Wheel in the Prater,” the friendly desk clerk had said. “You must take your children there to the amusement park, Frau Normann.” And that had been the beginning of the successful negotiations.
Mrs. Piquant insisted that they ride the Riesenrad first, which was exciting but slow, painfully slow, since Norman and Leonard could see all the rides they wanted to try but could not reach because they were swinging slowly back and forth hundreds of feet in the air. At last they burst out of the car doors and ran toward the colored bulbs of the target booths and the great papier-mâché monster heads of the haunted house.
Norman said, “Let’s go on the bumper cars, then the haunted house, then the Alpine roller coaster, then the bungee jump, then the trampoline, then the spinning thing where the floor drops out, and then the bumper cars again, then the duck ring toss and then the fun house.”
“No, no,” said Leonard. “Let’s go on the Alpine roller coaster, then the spinning thing where the floor drops out, then the bucket swings, then the haunted house, then the bumper cars, then the trampoline, then the go-carts, and then the fun house.”
“Nein, nein, nein,” said Norman, “let’s go on the—”
At this point, Norma Normann and Mrs. Piquant had caught them up, and Mrs. Piquant intervened. “I’ll decide the order,” she said.
“Mom!”
Nevertheless, this time there was no negotiation, Mrs. Piquant assuming emergency dictatorial powers.
In the end, with the summer sun slanting through the lindens of the park, their agenda included the following: the bumper cars, which, according to Leonard, were “pretty good, but a red-haired girl kept smashing into me from the side”; the bungee-cord trampoline, which Norman called “freaky, a bounce with turbochargers”; the haunted house, dismissed by Leonard as “hilariously lame-o, there were real cobwebs on the fake cobwebs!”; the go-carts, which intimidated Norman a bit, “fun, but I was a little afraid of the big kids”; the rug slide, which received a glowing response from Leonard, “awesome, proving the old proverb, sometimes simplest is best”; the Alpine roller coaster, which, on the other hand, Norman liked better, saying it was “jazzy—proving the old proverb that sometimes complicated, highly technical, shiny, and fast is better”; and finally the spinning thing where the floor drops out, which both Leonard and Norman found “totally awesome, epoch-making.”
Seated at a café, Leonard took a last long gulp of his sparkling Almdudler, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, “Ah, now for the fun house.”
“All right, last ride, boys,” said Mrs. Piquant.
“Nööööö!” shouted the two critics, running from the table with their final tickets clutched in their hands.
The fun house was a grand fun house, four stories tall, festooned, oddly enough, with images and statues of American football players, the whole edifice under a tiara of naked lightbulbs spelling out these words: CHICAGO YANKEE FUN.
“Our kinda place,” said Leonard, plunging through the turnstile.
Immediately he was buffeted by giant boxing gloves, his shouts of pain and delight soon joined by Norman’s own.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!”
Then up the moving ladder (like a steep escalator split in two) they struggled, nearly falling back on each other, laughing and shouting over the thumping Yankee disco music.
“Eeeeyaaaa!” shouted Leonard.
“What?” shouted Norman.
“I said, Eeeeeyaaaa!” shouted Leonard.
“Oh!” shouted Norman.
Off they ran, down black-lighted hallways, over heaving floors, down hidden corkscrew slides, across rope ladders, dodging more giant boxing gloves and random blasts of compressed air. Other fun-house-goers bumped or crawled past them, in the light and in the dark, sometimes shouting to them phrases that were, to Leonard’s and Norman’s ears, only gibble-gabble, and nothing but gibble-gabble.
They reached the hall of mirrors, which occupied all of the top floor. At first the mirrors did no more than distort their images, making them hoot at each other. However, as they proceeded deeper into the labyrinth of mirrored glass, the mirrors seemed to close in on the boys, confusing them, moving them around, confounding them as they reached for each other but discovered that where Norman had turned left, Leonard had turned right.
“Leonard!” Norman shouted.
“I’m over here. Where are you?”
“I’m over here!” But this did no good for either of them, as it was impossible to tell where “here” was. All they could do was bump along farther into the ever-bifurcated and many-angled crystal heart of the dizzying hall.
Then the lights went out, all but a string of tiny bulbs hanging from the ceiling, which created a ghostly light reflected in all the mirrors, giving anyone groping through the dark the terrible feeling of having suddenly been pitched into deep space.
Norman got down on his hands and knees and began to crawl, feeling a twinge of desperation for fresh air and sunshine, guessing that Leonard was feeling the same. He crawled forward and bumped his head. He turned to the right, crawled forward, and bumped his head. He turned to the left, crawled forward, and bumped his head, but this wall budged a little, so he pushed through a kind of dark curtain into a dimly lit room, also mirrored.
Norman scampered on all fours like a puppy, blinking in the light, and bumped his head again, but not against glass or a curtain this time; he bumped his head against a pair of tall black boots. He tilted his head slowly back and let his eyes travel up. Above the black boots, Norman saw in the weak light a pair of yellow breeches with a maroon stripe, a sky-blue coat with golden trimming, pink epaulets, a stiff collar over a ruffled white shirt, and a red sash leading to a scabbard and sword. But this time past the stiff collar and out of the ruffled white shirt rose a pinkish face with beetle eyes, tremendous waxed mustaches, and terrible black eyebrows, beneath the now horrifying brown, furred, and infundibular helmet with a red chin strap.
“Äääääääääääääääääääää!” screamed Norman.
go fly a dragon
“Are you sure it really was an Alfurnian Imperial Guard?” said Leonard, sipping a lime soda.
“Am I sure it really was an Alfurnian Imperial Guard! Who else wears a two-foot-tall furry hat? And boots? And mustaches?” said Norman, searching for the letter B on the keyboard in front of him.
The boys sat at a computer terminal at the Zum Web Internet Café on the morning after their trip to the Prater. Norman was in the middle of writing a long and, he hoped, compelling narrative for Balthazar Birdsong, all about his close encounter in a fun house.
* * *
On the morning after the day after their trip to the Prater, they sat at the same café, at another computer terminal, and eagerly checked for a response from Mr. B.
Norman scrolled down through his inbox; Leonard was draped over his shoulder like a starfish on a seacoast rock.
Norman mumbled, “Buy Viagra cheaper, why would I want Viagra? Collect millions, nope. Enter our contest, forget it. Don’t break the chain, I’m breaking it. Here it is, from Balthazar Birdsong, balthazarb@meistertalk.net, re: fun house no fun.”
“Open it, open it!” said Leonard.
“I’m openiting it!”
Balthazar Birdsong’s e-mail popped up:
Norman (and Leonard too, as I imagine you are draped like a starfish over Norman’s shoulder)—
“Weird,” said Leonard.
“That guy has got one spooky imagination,” said Norman.
The letter continued.
I commend you on the excellent description of the Alfurnian Imperial Guard’s attire; it was comprehensive and well detailed; you are showing gratifying improvement in your observational skills. Bravo!
“He commends me on my improved observational skills,” said Norman.
Now add a dash of imagination, and carry on, carry on.
“‘Carry on, carry on’? That’s it?” said Leonard.
“There’s more,” said Norman.
While you are carrying on, do not neglect your other lessons; it is imperative that you fly kites frequently.
At this point in his e-mail, Balthazar Birdsong wrote a rather lengthy and highly detailed description of how to procure kites in a German-speaking country. For instance, what to ask for at the store (ein Drachen, a dragon), where to buy them, and, once procured, what to do with them in Vienna: specifically, for instance, where to fly them (Schönbrunn Palace Gardens), how to get there, and many other things, including maps and drawings, etc., etc. We can skip these; it is enough that Norman and Leonard read them (and printed them out). However, we will take a look at Balthazar’s P.S.
As ever,
BB
P.S.: Before you go fly kites, do cross the square to the Stephansdom, Vienna’s great cathedral
Norman looked at Leonard and raised a bewildered eyebrow. “How does he even know where we are?”
and pay your euro to climb the north tower. This is very important, for it is here that you will see the bench built into the wall that made more comfortable the work of the watchman as he looked out for the advancing Turkish army, which was famously turned back by the brave Viennese, but not before an invader of a different sort snuck past the city walls in the pockets of a Viennese spy: what I mean is, coffee! After the Turks had left in a hurry, the spy, Franz Georg Kolschitzky, was rewarded for his bravery: he could take what he liked and he chose the coffee, soon opening Vienna’s first coffeehouse. In other words, had Mohammed IV not advised Suleiman the Turk to capture Vienna, the Western world would be a sleepier place.
