Chapter 21 Not an Egyptian #6
Jimmy didn’t feel sorry for Jolanda’s two attackers.
They deserved the way Jolanda was working one of them over with her bicycle pump, while Claude kept whacking the other one with the crutch.
What the Red Army wrestlers did to them seemed a little unnecessary.
Sergei bear-hugged the thug who’d tried to mount Jolanda; Sergei drove him flat to his back on the pavement.
When Jimmy saw how the thug held his chest, as if he were afraid to breathe, Jimmy asked Sergei (who was, after all, a med student) if he thought the guy had rib damage.
“Could be ribs, Jim—could be a cracked sternum,” Sergei said.
“Now you Russians show up—you could have come sooner!” Jolanda berated them.
She was finally able to pull up her jeans.
As for the poor fucker Claude was beating, the thug who’d been holding down Jolanda, he was somehow still standing when Zander dropped under him and hit him with an outside single-leg takedown, blowing out the thug’s knee.
At least Jolanda’s two attackers were still conscious, Jimmy was thinking.
“We’ll take care of this mess,” Sergei was saying, indicating the carnage on the sidewalk. “You can go inside—we’ll wait for the police. You can go inside, too,” Sergei said to Leo.
“I’m sorry we were slow to arrive at the scene of the crime,” Zander told Jolanda. “We were busy calling the police.”
“It matters which police you call,” Sergei said.
“What does ‘which police’ mean?” Claude was asking, as the roommates walked along with Leo to the Café Hawelka.
“Let the Soviets do what they do, Claude,” Kleiner Spiegel said.
Jimmy knew Leo’s two big throws had relaxed him. Little Mirror seemed almost normal by the time the roommates got to the Hawelka. Claude wanted to know which of the thugs was Hildegund’s husband, but Jolanda had no idea. “Jesus Mary Joseph, Claude—we weren’t formally introduced!” she told him.
Jimmy was carrying the crutch he’d used as a weapon, but Claude had left his crutch at the scene of the attack. “Jimmy doesn’t need it, and it was bloody with someone else’s blood!” Claude cried.
“Look at me, Claude—I’m bloody with someone else’s blood! I’m glad you didn’t leave me behind!” Jolanda told him.
That’s when the man in a suit and tie came into the Café Hawelka.
He brought Claude’s bloody crutch to the roommates’ table.
“Aren’t you the American? Isn’t this your crutch?
” he politely asked—in English, with a Russian accent.
The man in the suit might have been a plainclothes cop—except for his accent and the kind of suit it was.
It was true, as Leo said, the Russians could get anything on the black market.
But, as Jolanda would say, men’s suits weren’t what the Soviets did well.
Jimmy just thanked the guy for returning the crutch.
If he’d been an actual policeman, the roommates knew, the man in the bad suit would have asked them some questions.
Claude was curious; he followed the unlikely plainclothes cop outside.
When he came back to the roommates’ table in the Hawelka, he was agitated.
No bodies were lying on the pavement; the dishwasher and her thugs had just disappeared.
Claude walked to the Graben. No cops in uniform, only men wearing ties and bad suits; they all spoke Russian.
“Not virgin births, Claude—they are Russians!” Jolanda told him. “Don’t you get it? There are no policemen, only Russians.”
Little Mirror was humming to himself, as happy as Jimmy had ever seen him. “Let the Soviets do what they do,” Leo sang like a song.
“But what happened to Hildegund and her thugs?” Claude asked the little throw-meister.
“For fuck’s sake, Claude—let it go!” Jolanda told him.
When the former Red Army wrestlers finished with their business, they joined the roommates and Kleiner Spiegel at their table.
After the mess they’d cleaned up—after Sergei’s sternum-cracking bear hug, after Zander’s single-leg takedown—the Soviets might have celebrated a little, but all they ordered was their usual beer.
“You guys don’t ever lighten up, do you?” Jolanda asked them.
“They’re Russians—they can’t help it. They just do what they do,” the throw-meister reminded Jolanda. Jimmy could tell that Sergei and Zander wanted to change the subject.
“You’re the real hero, Claude,” Sergei said. “You have no idea what you’re doing, but when Jolanda was in trouble, you just started swinging.”
“That’s you, Claude—you’re a hero with no idea what you’re doing,” Zander said.
“Not much training—just balls, Claude,” Sergei told him.
“You’re all balls, Claude—a true hero!” Zander said.
“All balls!” Little Mirror shouted, toasting Claude with his beer.
“You’re my hero, Claude—you always will be,” Jolanda told him. “I would do anything for you—you know I would, don’t you?” It was hard to tell if Claude was overwhelmed by everyone’s high esteem of his heroism, or if Jolanda’s offer to do anything for him was worrisome.
“For Christ’s sake, Claude—not that kind of anything,” Jolanda said, to put him at ease.
There were hugs all around when the roommates and the wrestlers said, “Auf Wiederschauen,” though Claude and Jolanda were anxious about hugging Leo.
Everyone should be anxious when hugging Greco-Roman guys, and Little Mirror was a big hugger.
He couldn’t hug you without lifting you—a little.
“Please don’t lock your hands, okay?” Jolanda asked Kleiner Spiegel, before he hugged her.
Of course the throw-meister’s hands were locked when he lifted her, just a little.
Greco-Roman guys can’t help it—lifting you with locked hands is what they do.
On the roommates’ way home, Claude pointed out to Jolanda that Leo’s head came up to her boobs—not to her waist, as Jolanda once said.
“Please don’t remind me, Claude. I can feel exactly where the troll’s head was,” Jolanda told him.
“You’re the crutch-meister, Claude—you’re the real hero!” Jimmy told the brave Frenchman.
“You’re my hero, Claude—forever and ever,” Jolanda told him, hugging him to her. Jimmy couldn’t help noticing that Claude’s head didn’t come up much higher than Jolanda’s boobs, and that Jolanda’s hands were locked when she lifted him.
Jimmy was walking fine without his crutches, which he’d given to one of the waiters at the Café Hawelka.
The rubber tip at the end of Claude’s crutch had been lost. Without the rubber tip, the crutch was a hazard.
But the waiter’s son was in a school play.
The director was asking parents of the cast if they could donate crutches as stage props.
Jimmy was happy to give the waiter his bloody crutches.
The roommates were passing the Staatsoper before they realized what an early night they were having.
Looking at his watch, Claude said, “When you’re in a fight, it feels like an eternity, but all that violence actually took no time at all! ”
“Some violence can take an eternity, Claude—some violence is fucking eternal,” Jolanda told him.
They’d been thinking they’d have to hurry to pick up Hard Rain before closing time at the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik, but the night was young.
They had lots of time. Jolanda said she wanted to take a bath.
As she told Jimmy and Claude, she’d been lying on the filthy pavement in her panties, and her assailant had bled on her.
It was a good time to take a bath, Claude conjectured, in his nerdy way.
“Irmgard will be out—it’s too early for after-hours bath.
Frau Holzinger and Siegfried will have gone to bed,” he commented.
When they got back to the Schwindgasse apartment, Frau Holzinger was wide awake and fretting; it was past her bedtime, but she was excited, making her harder to understand than usual. Even in close quarters, in the hall by the roommates’ bedrooms, the Frau was almost incomprehensible.
“Your mother was here!” the widow Holzinger exclaimed, taking hold of Jimmy’s hands. “She’s so pretty, so beautiful!”
“My mother?” Jimmy asked. The door to the bathroom was open, and there was no one in the bathtub.
“She wouldn’t stay, but she’s coming back,” Frau Holzinger said. “I asked her to stay—I said she could wait for you here—but we couldn’t understand each other. I told her you might be at the café on the corner, but I don’t know if she understood me.”
“Are you sure she was Jimmy’s mother?” Jolanda asked the Frau. “You heard the Mutter word, did you?”
“Ja, Yimmys Mutter!” the Frau declared.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Claude cried, jumping up and down. “Your mom doesn’t want you to make her pregnant, does she?”
“Jesus Mary Joseph, Claude!” Jolanda said. “I’m going to take a bath. You two can sort this out,” she told Jimmy and Claude.
Frau Holzinger had all the while been babbling incoherently.
“So pretty, so beautiful,” Jimmy heard her repeat, “und mütterlich,” the Frau added (“and motherly”).
“Of course your mother is welcome to stay here,” the Frau told Jimmy.
“There’s nothing like Mutterliebe!” the widow Holzinger declared—at the moment Jolanda reappeared in a bathrobe, carrying a towel and swearing to herself.
“There’s nothing like what?” Jolanda asked Claude and Jimmy.
“There’s nothing like motherly love,” Claude translated.
“Don’t make me vomit, Claude. I’m going to take a bath before I throw up,” Jolanda said, but she was still in the hall, not in the bathroom, when Frau Holzinger spoke again—this time, more slowly and comprehensibly. Who knew how Frau Holzinger could rhapsodize on the holy subject of motherliness?
“Mütterlichkeit!” the Frau cried, in ecstasy.
“Your mother is so pretty, and so young!” she exclaimed.
With the young word, the roommates realized Frau Holzinger’s misunderstanding.
She’d seen a photo of Chantal; she still thought Chantal was Jimmy’s mother.
If she’d recognized the mother word, Chantal had probably told her she was a friend of Jimmy’s mother.
“It’s not just you, Claude—we’re all idiots,” Jolanda said. “It’s Chantal, isn’t it?” she asked Jimmy.