Chapter 22 In the Future
Of course it was Chantal who’d said she was a friend of Jimmy’s mother. Yimmys Mutter was the way the Frau said it. A J in German is pronounced like a Y.
In German, Claude couldn’t keep straight the two words that mean “accident”—Unfall and Zufall. A Zufall can be good or happy—it just happens by chance, unexpectedly.
“Oh boy, oh boy—is this an Unfall or a Zufall?” Claude asked.
“It doesn’t matter what you call it, Claude. “It’s Chantal. You’re the one who should take a bath,” Jolanda told him.
“Do you see, Yimmy?” the Frau asked; she pointed into his bedroom. Chantal’s big backpack was on the floor, at the foot of his bed. “Your mother left her things—she’s coming back,” the Frau said. “She’s looking for you at the café on the corner, if she understood me.”
“We’ll take turns in the bathtub later, Claude. We’ll go to the Nachtmusik now,” Jolanda said. She stomped back to her bedroom, taking off her bathrobe before she got there. Claude went into Jimmy’s bedroom, where he struggled to lift Chantal’s backpack.
“Maybe your mom is in the backpack!” Claude was saying to Jimmy, when Frau Holzinger hailed them from the far end of the hall.
“Gute Nacht!” the Frau called to Jimmy and Claude. They saw she was turning out lights in the living room. The Frau left one light on, maybe for the woman she thought was Jimmy’s mother. It was unclear if Irmgard had gone out; she might still have been dressing to go out.
It was a moment of clarity for James Winslow.
When he and his roommates were walking together to the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik, he assured Claude and Jolanda that his mother and Chantal weren’t crazy.
True, Jimmy’s mom had gone to extremes to have him—not what most women who wanted a child would have done.
Yet it suddenly made sense to Jimmy why his mother would go to extremes to keep him out of a war.
And Chantal loved and admired Jimmy’s mom; Chantal would do what Honor Winslow wanted, but only up to a point.
“Chantal is here for you, Claude. You get it, don’t you?” Jolanda asked.
“I just hope she likes me!” Claude cried, closing his eyes, praying while he was walking.
There were some ancient stone hitching posts along the curbside of the Schwindgasse—not that anyone was still tethering horses on the sidewalk.
Perhaps the thigh-high pillars of stone were expensive to remove.
Jolanda sharply cautioned Claude to open his eyes.
“Watch where you’re going, Claude! It wouldn’t be a good night to neuter yourself on a fucking hitching post!” Jolanda warned him.
Their experience earlier in the evening gave Jimmy a new perspective on going to extremes.
What Hildegund and her thugs tried to do to them was extreme.
How the Red Army wrestlers retaliated was extreme.
Jimmy’s mother and Chantal were different, but they weren’t dangerous.
As for knocking up someone, Jimmy had grown fond of Mieke from her photo.
Now that Hildegund and her thugs were gone—now that Jolanda was safe—Jimmy trusted that Mieke would be coming to Vienna.
It was the first night in James Winslow’s life when he felt like a grown-up, walking into the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik and seeing Chantal sitting with Dagmar and Fr?ulein Eissler.
A stranger would have thought this trio of attractive women were fast friends.
Hard Rain’s big head looked bigger than usual in Chantal’s small lap.
“The Ride of the Valkyries” from Wagner’s Die Walküre heralded the roommates’ arrival.
(Don’t think for a minute that Dagmar, Chantal, or Annelies resembled those maidens of Odin, the guides to Valhalla.)
“Chantal looks just like her picture!” Claude was whispering.
“Keep your pecker in your pants, Claude,” Jolanda told him.
“Why is Fr?ulein Eissler with them?” Claude asked Jimmy and Jolanda. Jimmy understood that Annelies had always known when Chantal was coming.
“Annelies doesn’t just know what’s happening, Claude—I think she arranges almost everything,” Jolanda said.
Jimmy was sure Annelies knew what had happened on the Dorotheergasse, near the Café Hawelka.
Hard Rain was happy to see her roommates.
Chantal and Jimmy were glad to see each other, too.
But Fr?ulein Eissler gave the lion’s share of her scrutiny to Jolanda.
Annelies was certainly relieved to see that Jolanda looked okay, but she had noticed the blood in Jolanda’s hair.
“Dear girl, is that their blood or your blood?” Annelies asked.
“Not mine,” Jolanda answered. Annelies gave her a hug.
Naturally, Claude asked Annelies if she had any idea what ultimately happened to Hildegund and her thugs.
“Keine Ahnung,” Fr?ulein Eissler automatically said.
(“Not the slightest idea.”) “There’s snowmelt in the Danube every spring—a lot of water in the river this time of year,” she added.
There were no crocodile tears for the tattooed dishwasher and her thugs, who were headed down the Danube—the second-longest river in Europe.
They were bound for Bratislava—as the river flows, sixty kilometers away.
Dagmar had already moved on. She’d put “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” back on the café’s playlist. Everyone knew Bob Dylan wasn’t to blame for the departed dishwasher’s bad behavior.
“Hard Rain is a great name for a dog—for this dog,” Chantal said, as she held Hard Rain’s head in her lap, but Chantal was looking at Jimmy, who was looking at her. “Your mom misses you, Jimmy, but I guess you’ll have to make do with me,” Chantal said. Now she was looking at Claude.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Claude started to say, but Jolanda stopped him.
“For Christ’s sake, Claude, speak French!” Jolanda said.
Jimmy and Jolanda had never heard Claude speak French.
Naturally, the roommates didn’t understand what Claude was saying, but Claude sounded confident and composed.
In French, Claude was impassioned but controlled; he sounded like another person.
The patrons of the Nachtmusik were stunned, Dagmar among them.
They’d heard the French boy’s accent, in English and German, but they’d not heard his French before.
Hard Rain had perked up her ears. This was a different Claude, even to a dog.
Of course, Claude overdid it. He didn’t pause to let Chantal speak. Claude might have gone on talking until closing time if Jolanda hadn’t purposely interrupted him; she kicked him under the table.
“We take turns sleeping with Hard Rain. We also take turns sleeping with each other—not in the way you might think,” Jolanda told Chantal.
Chantal smiled at Jolanda and her roommates.
“I guess you’ll have to make do with me, too—not in the way you might think,” Chantal said.
She said something in French to Claude; whatever she said, it made him moan.
Then Chantal turned her attention to Fr?ulein Eissler.
“We’ve been talking about Siegfried’s dog, about saving Siegfried,” Chantal said.
“We like your part-time-moms idea, Jolanda,” Chantal told her.
“Now that there’s a plan to save Jimmy from the war in Vietnam, we’ll move on to saving Siegfried.
” Jimmy knew that moving on was what Annelies did best. Unwitting draft dodger that Jimmy was, he trusted Jolanda and Mieke to save him from the war in Vietnam.
He was aware that saving Siegfried was Fr?ulein Eissler’s next salvation project.
What Claude had in mind was saving Hard Rain, but Claude had started something more; he had set a story in motion.
Claude made Siegfried want a female German shepherd.
This was a writing lesson James Winslow would learn.
“You’re the writer, Jimmy, or you want to be,” Fr?ulein Eissler said. “Tell us how Hard Rain and Siegfried save each other. You’re the storyteller. Tell us how we bring them together.”
At the time, beginner writer that he was, Jimmy only knew he was being asked to finish a story Claude had started—or Annelies had started it, by urging the roommates to somehow save Siegfried.
Either way, Jimmy knew he was starting his story by finishing theirs.
For Jimmy, the writing lesson entailed beginning a story with an ending—namely, he had to figure out how Hard Rain could become Siegfried’s dog.
Walter, the one-eared dishwasher, saved him.
By suddenly showing up at the table, the former child soldier and POW bought Jimmy a little more storytelling time.
Everyone saw that Walter was worried about something.
Dagmar’s new dishwasher didn’t beat around the bush.
A Gewitter was coming. Walter had seen or heard a weather forecast. A thunderstorm was expected in the wee hours of the morning.
Walter reiterated his concerns; he didn’t want Hard Rain to be “embarrassed.” In the event of thunder and lightning, Walter wanted her to have “a place to go.”
“I’ll leave the bathroom door open for her, even if I’m taking a bath,” Claude told the kind-hearted dishwasher.
“I’ll let Hard Rain shit in the bathtub when I’m in it,” Jolanda said.
“I’ll let Hard Rain into the bathroom, even if Irmgard is in the bathtub!” Claude cried. (His newfound heroism knew no bounds.)
Fr?ulein Eissler had been translating the one-eared dishwasher’s words for Chantal, including Walter’s repeated expression of empathy for Hard Rain. (“If only the poor girl could tell us her thoughts.”) From the safe haven of Chantal’s lap, Hard Rain stared lovingly at her protectors.
“This dog can’t be a bathtub shitter—not this dog,” Chantal said. “I’ve heard of only one dog who shit in a tub during thunderstorms,” she went on. “I just assumed it was a New Hampshire thing,” she said.