Chapter 22 In the Future #2
“Of course it was!” Claude cried, but Jolanda looked as disconcerted as Jimmy.
They’d not heard about an actual bathtub shitter before.
If there was another dog who did it, Hard Rain could be a bathtub shitter, too.
Thunder and lightning were coming. This could complicate the plot to bring Hard Rain and Siegfried together, but Jimmy was grateful to Walter for warning them, and for buying him more storytelling time.
To anyone who listens to music, it’s discordant to go from Wagner to the Beatles.
At the Nachtmusik, the playlist went from “The Ride of the Valkyries” to “I Saw Her Standing There”—it was quite inharmonious.
More dissonance followed with “The Blue Danube Waltz.” From the Beatles to Johann Strauss II was a stretch, and tonight wasn’t the night for the roommates and their friends to dwell on the Danube, where the tattooed dishwasher and her thugs were going downstream—they were no longer waltzing.
No maidens of Odin were guiding them to Valhalla.
Hildegund and her thugs were headed to the Black Sea—they weren’t having a “Blue Danube” kind of night.
That night, at the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik, the approaching thunderstorm helped Jimmy to focus.
It was the night when storytelling became James Winslow’s business.
Frau Holzinger had simply misheard Chantal.
It wouldn’t be hard to explain to her that Chantal was a friend of Jimmy’s mother.
But Jimmy decided to make it his mom’s idea to give Siegfried a dog, the very dog he wanted.
The way the story would go, Jimmy had told his mother that he lived with a five-year-old.
Jimmy’s mom had asked him if there was anything Siegfried wanted.
Naturally, Chantal hadn’t brought a female German shepherd from the United States.
This was where Fr?ulein Eissler would enter the story.
She had arranged for the perfect female German shepherd—spayed, regularly shampooed, and with all her shots.
Furthermore, the Holzinger family could share Hard Rain with the café on the corner of Argentinierstra?e.
The widow manager was a dog person and the one-eared dishwasher had built Hard Rain her own doghouse.
And, by the way, the shepherd was welcome to sleep with the student boarders—until such a time as the Frau, Irmgard, and Siegfried made other sleeping arrangements for the dog.
How could the Holzingers refuse a Geschenk from Jimmy’s Mutter?
Surely the Frau and Irmgard would accept a gift for Siegfried.
If Fr?ulein Eissler had a hand in it, wouldn’t it be too obvious if the Holzingers turned the dog down?
Jimmy had learned a little in Vienna, after all.
(Some anti-Semites don’t like to be too obvious about their anti-Semitism.)
Jolanda liked Jimmy’s story. Claude had been taking notes. Dagmar was disconsolate; she regretted that her mother’s dog with balls was still alive, but Dagmar promised she would share Hard Rain for as long as the Holzingers wanted to.
“What’s the title for this novel, Jimmy?” Annelies asked him.
“A Boy’s First Dog!” Claude cried, bursting into tears. Jolanda kicked him under the table.
“Eine Hündin für Siegfried,” Jolanda suggested. But Fr?ulein Eissler thought A Female Dog for Siegfried sounded strange in English.
“I’m still thinking of a title,” Jimmy told them.
But for now he had a plan, and he was sticking to it.
Hard Rain had no discernible reaction to Jimmy’s story, but what if she didn’t want to become Siegfried’s dog?
Jimmy was worrying. He hoped Hard Rain was a dog who liked children.
Not all dogs do. It occurred to Jimmy that he couldn’t write the future, but he had an ending-driven plot. It was a start.
There was back-to-back Bob on the playlist as the roommates were leaving the café with Chantal and Annelies—kisses all around. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” was playing.
“You be a good girl,” Dagmar said to Hard Rain.
Jimmy took it as a good omen that the next Dylan on the playlist was “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” but Claude had a couple of convulsions when he heard it.
Claude never knew an omen that wasn’t evil.
Presentiments of doom caused him violent and involuntary muscle contractions, which Jimmy and Jolanda found hard to ignore.
Bob Dylan sang something about a newborn baby surrounded by wolves, which clearly didn’t comfort Claude.
“Get a grip, Claude,” Jolanda said.
Bob Dylan just kept singing. It was something about young children handling guns.
Claude’s convulsions had subsided, but he was quietly moaning.
Outside the café, the nighttime sky was overcast, the air humid and still.
The roommates knew how oppressive and unmoving the air always was before a thunderstorm.
Claude was scanning the glowering sky, looking for lightning, when he walked into one of the stone hitching posts. Everyone waited for him while he got back on his feet and resumed normal breathing.
“You’re the one who’s going to shit your brains out in the bathtub, Claude,” Jolanda told him. Chantal, who took hold of Claude’s hand, gave him a reassuring squeeze.
“I’ll tell you a title—just call it A Gift from Yimmy,” Annelies said. “Siegfried will remember you, Jimmy. Siegfried never met your mother.” She kissed everyone good night before she went her own way.
Hard Rain, bless her heart, took a dump; everyone had to wait for this.
Then Jimmy and Chantal waited on the sidewalk with the dog, while Claude and Jolanda made sure the coast was clear in the Holzinger apartment.
It was the time of night when Irmgard was working in the Krugerstra?e hotel, and the Frau and Siegfried were sleeping.
Those two could be expected to sleep through the night.
“What did you say to Claude in French?” Jimmy asked Chantal.
“I said he would hear my French when we were alone together. ‘I’ll always speak French when we’re alone,’ I told him,” Chantal said.
Claude took the first bath, insisting that Hard Rain be there—in the bathroom, while he was in the tub.
“That was tragic,” Claude said, after his bath.
He didn’t think Hard Rain knew anything about bathtubs.
The whole time Claude was having his bath, Hard Rain had kept her distance from the tub.
“If you ask me, the poor girl is wary of baths—or of people in bathtubs!” Claude cried.
Jolanda took the next bath. “Hard Rain seems bored with bathtubs,” she said. The dog fell asleep on the bathmat while Jolanda was having her bath and slept through Jolanda drying herself and wrapping herself in a towel. “I’m not used to being ignored when I’m naked,” Jolanda said.
Claude had shipped his encyclopedia set in a steamer trunk from France.
No, not the entire set, which wouldn’t have fit in the steamer trunk.
Claude had ventured a guess as to which letters of the alphabet to leave out.
He was always complaining that he’d left the wrong encyclopedias at home, but not this time.
The encyclopedia for all things beginning with the letter D was in the steamer trunk.
After Claude and Jolanda took their baths, it was Chantal’s turn in the bathroom with Hard Rain.
Claude translated his French encyclopedia for Jolanda and Jimmy.
Claude imparted his obsession with the course of the Danube to his tired roommates.
Budapest was some three hundred kilometers downstream from Vienna, Claude explained.
Belgrade was some five hundred kilometers downriver from Budapest, he carried on.
“You should’ve read this to Hard Rain in the bathroom,” Jolanda told Claude.
“You would’ve given Hard Rain such a boring bathroom experience, the poor girl would never shit her brains out in a bathtub—she would shit her brains out anywhere but a bathtub!
” Jolanda said. By the time Jimmy took a bath, Hard Rain refused to go in the bathroom.
Chantal and Jolanda had been towel-drying their hair in Jimmy’s bedroom, but they were ready for bed now.
Jolanda had put her pajamas on; she’d opened the window by Jimmy’s writing desk, where she said she was listening for thunder, but Jimmy knew the open window was for her cigarette smoke.
“I can’t imagine listening to Claude getting laid without having a last cigarette,” she whispered to Jimmy.
“If Siegfried were my five-year-old, and anyone gave him a German shepherd without telling me first, I think I’d be pretty pissed off about it,” Chantal said to the roommates.
As Jimmy told Chantal, he would almost certainly see Irmgard first. “Irmgard takes a bath as soon as she’s home from work,” Jimmy explained. He’d pointed out that his bedroom was across the hall from the bathroom.
“I hope Irmgard won’t be in the tub when the thunderstorm starts,” Jolanda said.
This had occurred to the roommates. They agreed Hard Rain should start out sleeping with Claude and Chantal, and Jolanda would sleep with Jimmy in his bedroom.
This way, Jimmy and Jolanda could tell Irmgard about the gift from Jimmy’s mother.
Later, Irmgard could meet Hard Rain and be introduced to Chantal—not necessarily in that order.
Was it going to be a night of comedy or a night of conscience?
Jimmy turned off the light in the hall. Irmgard would turn it on when she came home.
Jimmy’s bedroom lights were off, but there was more light than usual in his room.
Jolanda had left the window open, and she’d not closed the curtains.
She wanted to be sure they could hear the thunder and see the lightning.
If Jolanda slept at all, her tossing and turning kept Jimmy awake.
Jimmy thought he heard Jolanda tapping her fingernails on the wooden frame of the bed—as if she were waiting, impatiently, for the thunderstorm.