Edna Ferber: Fanny Herself

16. CHAPTER SIXTEEN (continued)

"Whew!" from Fanny, when the door had closed.

"Gott im Himmel!" from Theodore. "I had forgotten that America was like that."

"But America IS like that. And Teddy, we're going to make it sit up and take notice."

At that Theodore drooped again. Fanny thought that he looked startlingly as she remembered her father had looked in those days of her childhood, when Brandeis' Bazaar was slithering downhill. The sight of him moved her to a sudden resolve. She crossed swiftly to him, and put one heartening hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, brother. Out with it. Let's have it all now."

He reached up for her hand and held it, desperately. "Oh, Fan!" began Theodore, "Fan, I've been through hell."

Fanny said nothing. She only waited, quietly, encouragingly. She had learned when not to talk. Presently he took up his story, plunging directly into it, as though sensing that she had already divined much.

"She married me for a living. You'll think that's a joke, knowing what I was earning there, in Vienna, and how you and mother were denying yourselves everything to keep me. But in a city that circulates a coin valued at a twentieth of a cent, an American dollar looms up big. Besides, two of the other girls had got married. Good for nothing officers. She was jealous, I suppose. I didn't know any of that. I was flattered to think she'd notice me. She was awfully popular. She has a kind of wit. I suppose you'd call it that. The other girls were just coarse, and heavy, and--well--animal. You can't know the rottenness of life there in Vienna. Olga could keep a whole supper table laughing all evening. I can see, now, that that isn't difficult when your audience is made up of music hall girls, and stupid, bullet-headed officers, with their damned high collars, and their gold braid, and their silly swords, and their corsets, and their glittering shoes and their miserable petty poverty beneath all the show. I thought I was a lucky boy. I'd have pitied everybody in Winnebago, if I'd ever thought of anybody in Winnebago. I never did, except once in a while of you and mother when I needed money. I kept on with my music. I had sense enough left, for that. Besides, it was a habit, by that time. Well, we were married."