AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"But there have been some complaints," I added.
"I'm sure there have," Johanna said.
"And animals," I added. My mother gave me a look.
"Animals?" said Johanna.
"Animals," I admitted.
"A suspicion of animals," my mother corrected me.
"Yes, be fair," Father said.
"Oh, wonderful!" Grandmother said. "A suspicion of animals. Their hair on the rugs? Their terrible waste in the corners! Did you know that my asthma reacts, severely, to any room in which there has recently been a cat?"
"The complaint was not about cats," I said. My mother elbowed me sharply.
"Dogs?" Johanna said. "Rabid dogs! Biting you on the way to the bathroom."
"No," I said. "Not dogs."
"Bears!" Robo cried.
But my mother said, "We don't know for sure about the bear, Robo."
"This isn't serious," Johanna said.
"Of course it's not serious!" Father said. "How could there be bears in a pension?"
"There was a letter saying so," I said. "Of course, the Tourist Bureau assumed it was a crank complaint. But then there was another sighting--and a second letter claiming there had been a bear."
My father used the rear-view mirror to scowl at me, but I thought that if we were all supposed to be in on the investigation, it would be wise to have Grandmother on her toes.
"It's probably not a real bear," Robo said, with obvious disappointment.
"A man in a bear suit!" Johanna cried. "What unheard-of perversion is that? A beast of a man sneaking about in disguise! Up to what? It's a man in a bear suit, I know it is," she said. "I want to go to that one first. If there's going to be a Class C experience on this trip, let's get it over with as soon as possible."
"But we haven't got reservations for tonight," Mother said.
"Yes, we might as well give them a chance to be at their best," Father said. Although he never revealed to his victims that he worked for the Tourist Bureau, Father believed that reservations were simply a decent way of allowing the personnel to be as prepared as they could be.
"I'm sure we don't need to make a reservation in a place frequented by men who disguise themselves as animals," Johanna said. "I'm sure there is always a vacancy there. I'm sure the guests are regularly dying in their beds--of fright, or else of whatever unspeakable injury the madman in the foul bear suit does to them."
"It's probably a real bear," Robo said, hopefully--for in the turn the conversation was taking, Robo certainly saw that a real bear would be preferable to Grandmother's imagined ghoul. Robo had no fear, I think, of a real bear.
I drove us as inconspicuously as possible to the dark, dwarfed corner of Planken and Seilergasse. We were looking for the Class C pension that wanted to be a B.
"No place to park," I said to Father, who was already making note of that in his pad.
I double-parked and we sat in the car and peered up at the Pension Grillparzer; it rose only four slender stories between a pastry shop and a Tabak Trafik.
"See?" Father said. "No bears."
"No men, I hope," said Grandmother.
"They come at night," Robo said, looking cautiously up and down the street.
We went inside to meet the manager, a Herr Theobald, who instantly put Johanna on her guard. "Three generations traveling together!" he cried. "Like the old days," he added, especially to Grandmother, "before all these divorces and the young people wanting apartments by themselves. This is a family pension! I just wish you had made a reservation--so I could put you more closely together."
