Chapter 16 Bad Paintings over Bullet Holes #5
“What do you mean?” Claude blurted out; his teeth were chattering to beat the band. Young James wasn’t sure what Jolanda meant, either.
“For Christ’s sake, Claude, we come here to get warm—stop the teeth and the shivers!
” Jolanda shouted at him. A passing waiter, elderly and disapproving, was shakily carrying a tray of water glasses; the glasses were too full and kept spilling.
Whenever Jolanda raised her voice, which was often, all the old waiters shook and scowled.
The foreign students had blamed the ancient waiters for the oft-played selections of classical music.
In the kitchen, young people were working; only young people could be blamed for the contemporary music selections, which were random and startling (and no less repetitive).
There were some good choices, more not. Perhaps made by an unseen sous-chef, or the tattooed woman dishwasher the foreign students had seen smoking in an alley off the Schwindgasse—where the garbage was collected and there was a sad-eyed German shepherd on a chain.
Everyone smoked in the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik, including in the kitchen.
Maybe the tattooed woman dishwasher wanted to keep the dog company, or the sad-eyed German shepherd was her dog.
Jimmy thought against telling Jolanda and Claude about his prospects of sharing a sofa with Irmgard—more moviegoing in the semidarkness of the increasingly cold living room.
Besides, Jolanda had worked herself up to explaining what she’d meant by saying Annelies was “the kind of woman who’s always having her period”—the prospect of which had made Claude’s teeth chatter more.
“I forgot, for a second, that I’m talking to a couple of sexual beginners,” Jolanda began, putting Jimmy and Claude in their respective places.
She’d already made compromising remarks about their respective penises.
“I’m not trying to be a sexual beginner—it just works out that way,” Claude protested. Jolanda sighed, moving on to Jimmy.
“Fr?ulein Eissler is the kind of woman who tells you she’s having her period when she doesn’t want to get laid. When Annelies doesn’t want to do it with you, she’ll blame her period,” Jolanda told Jimmy.
“Oh,” Claude and Jimmy said in unison. James Winslow realized that a wrestling teammate had explained this to him before, even in Pennacook.
“What a couple of choirboys you two are!” Jolanda declared.
There’d been an awkward moment in the hall outside the bathroom—Claude and Jimmy with just towels wrapped around them.
Claude had taken a bath; Jimmy was waiting his turn.
When Jolanda tried to slip past them in the hall, she’d brushed against them and their towels fell off.
Before they could cover themselves, Jolanda had noticed what was different about those boys. Jimmy was circumcised; Claude wasn’t.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Jolanda cried. “You guys have different penises!”
Typical of Jolanda, this led to a closer inspection in Jimmy’s bedroom.
“This might be my only time to see a penis—not to mention two penises!” Jolanda explained.
Claude and Jimmy had already had a brief conversation concerning circumcision.
Jolanda thought both penises were unappealing, but in different ways.
“Jimmy’s is smaller—it’s almost cute, but it looks like a misconceived clitoris,” Jolanda declared.
“Claude’s is like a horse’s dick, or a big dog’s dick! ” she exclaimed.
In the café, the three foreign students were listening to the second of the two Johann Strauss II waltzes—the more familiar one, “The Blue Danube Waltz.” (These were the only two Strauss II waltzes in the unfathomable repertoire of the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik.)
And Claude said, for the hundredth time, “I wonder why the younger Strauss wrote waltzes—he was reputed to be a terrible dancer.”
Jolanda replied, as she usually did: “If someone had kneecapped him, he might have stopped writing waltzes.” Jimmy just thought he should go back to his bedroom at Frau Holzinger’s.
Although the Frau had turned down the heat, maybe he could get in bed and try writing under the covers.
The café wasn’t hopping at night; they gave the three foreign students a table for six, so they had room for their homework and Jimmy’s writing notebooks.
The Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik was busier in the daytime hours, but the foreigners didn’t know who the few bookish-looking daytime customers were—perhaps from the Polish Reading Room, also on the Schwindgasse.
Jimmy was on the verge of leaving, but the prospect of the nighttime chill in the Holzinger apartment made him linger at the café with his newfound friends and the repetitive music.
Then the music changed—in its often jarring, always illogical fashion—and Jimmy decided to brave the chill in his bedroom.
It was October; the nights were beginning to get colder.
It was best to get used to the cold, James was thinking, while the only Elvis Presley they ever played in the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik assaulted them—making the elderly waiters tremble and causing Claude to close his eyes.
Claude hated to see how “It’s Now or Never” always made Jolanda bend her teaspoon into a U-shaped bracelet, which she put around her wrist like a handcuff.
“I would like to see Elvis try to move his hips after I kneecap him,” Jolanda murmured, as if she were praying.
She hated Elvis. Jolanda believed the Elvis selection was the tattooed woman dishwasher’s fault.
As Elvis kept crooning, Jolanda said she wanted to kneecap the ink addict.
When the tattooed woman dishwasher was smoking in the garbage alley, she had an Elvis-like, now-or-never look about her.
Yet Claude and Jimmy saw how Jolanda had looked at the ink addict.
It wasn’t a kneecapping look. The look Jolanda gave the woman was more of a girlfriend look.
Claude and Jimmy thought the tattooed woman dishwasher was Jolanda’s kind of girl.
Jimmy bid his friends good night. He returned to the Schwindgasse apartment, where he gave writing under his bedcovers a try.
He was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants under the covers, and the same pair of white athletic socks Annelies had worn.
Jimmy heard Jolanda and Claude come home from the café; they took their turns in the bathroom across the hall from Jimmy’s bedroom.
He was still trying to write under the covers when the big, blurry figure pressed herself against his door—first her breath fogging the frosted glass, then showing him her breasts in profile.
“Verdammt in alle Ewigkeit—in all eternity damned,” Irmgard said. Did she mean this should happen to students with Jewish German tutors?
All Irmgard meant was that From Here to Eternity was badly translated in German.
“Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra, Montgomery Clift, Donna Reed,” Irmgard named the cast—her voice trailing away as she went down the hall to the living room, where the movie was starting.
“Jetzt!” she called. (“Now!”) When Jimmy hurried after her, he kept his socks on.
Naturally, Jimmy couldn’t part with the socks, now that Fr?ulein Eissler had worn them.
James Winslow knew perfectly well it was another Fred Zinnemann movie in black and white, but he knew better than to try to remind Irmgard that the director was an Austrian-born Jew.
Jimmy didn’t care about From Here to Eternity.
On his way to the living room, Jimmy was rehearsing how he should say to Irmgard that there’d been a change in the weather.
He needn’t have bothered. Jimmy saw her sprawled on the sofa, beckoning him with both arms. “It already colder is—better on one sofa movie to watch,” Siegfried’s unmarried mother said.
Lying on top of Irmgard, between her legs, which she wrapped around him, with his head pillowed between her big breasts, represented the height of James Winslow’s erotic experience thus far.
And she was very clean, albeit smelling slightly of baby powder.
She’d probably sprinkled the baby powder on herself and Siegfried after their nightly bath.
Yet the way Irmgard made herself comfortable under Jimmy—the way she purposely arranged him between her legs and breasts to suit herself—gave Jimmy the feeling that he was being used as a blanket.
She seemed not in the least sexually interested in him.
And inconceivably, to Jimmy, Irmgard was as riveted to Verdammt in alle Ewigkeit as she’d been to 12 Uhr mittags.
“Burt Lancaster,” Irmgard told him, pointing to the small screen, which Jimmy knew would soon give him a crick in his neck—unless he removed his face from Irmgard’s mountainous bosom, which he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing.
“Burt not a Jew is—Montgomery Clift und Deborah Kerr also not are,” Irmgard asserted, sighing.
“Ich wei?,” Jimmy said, also sighing.
“Frank Sinatra Italian is. Er ist wahrscheinlich katholisch.” (“He almost certainly Catholic is,” Irmgard had added.)
“Ich wei?—Frank is probably Catholic,” Jimmy agreed.
“Ja, wahrscheinlich—yes, probably,” Irmgard replied.
She’d shifted herself under him, pushing Jimmy’s head to the snug hollow between her left breast and her armpit, where he couldn’t see the screen at all.
He was more interested in Irmgard’s underarm deodorant than he was in From Here to Eternity.
Jimmy had seen the spray deodorant in the bathroom with the tub.
He should spray Irmgard’s deodorant in his typewriter, Jimmy thought.
Her deodorant could kill the sausage smell.
“Ernest Borgnine is probably also Catholic and Italian,” Jimmy told Irmgard. (She’d not mentioned Ernest Borgnine with the rest of the cast.)
“Fatso?” Irmgard asked. Jimmy nodded his head, trying not to disturb her bosom or her armpit area. “Wahrscheinlich auch katholisch und italienisch,” Irmgard agreed.
He’d fallen asleep when he heard her say something curious about Donna Reed.
“Donna not a real prostitute is,” Jimmy thought Irmgard said.
Did she mean that, in real life, Donna Reed wasn’t a prostitute, or was Irmgard venturing into the field of film criticism—was Irmgard saying that Donna wasn’t convincing as a prostitute in From Here to Eternity?
But this question was beyond Jimmy’s capabilities to say in German.
He needed more tutorials with Fr?ulein Eissler before Jimmy could sort out what Irmgard meant by saying Donna Reed wasn’t “a real prostitute.”
Besides, he was too comfortable lying in Irmgard’s less than erotic but warm embrace. He’d never slept with his face buried in a woman’s bosom, and Jimmy’s feet were very cozy in the socks his Jewish German tutor had worn.
James Winslow was not aware when Irmgard left him alone on the sofa.
He presumed she was tired and had gone to bed.
He thought it was only in his dreams that he smelled a more womanly perfume than baby powder.
And Jimmy must have been dreaming when he imagined Irmgard dressed as he’d never seen her before.
In his dreams, Irmgard was a sensual woman in beautiful clothes—as if she were going out for the night.
Jimmy woke up at the end of the movie, when the unfaithful wife (Deborah Kerr) and the prostitute (Donna Reed) are onboard the ship—just before the end credits roll.
Jimmy must have dreamed that Irmgard said something during the love scene on the beach—when Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr are wet and lying on the sand.
Oh, the things you imagine when you’re sleeping, for the first time, on a woman’s breasts!
Yet, in Jimmy’s dreams (if he’d been dreaming), it sounded like something Irmgard could have said.
“You will sand in your vagina get—if you on beach fuck,” Irmgard said. But what did Jimmy know? He would have sworn he was asleep.