Chapter 22 In the Future #7
Jimmy was sleeping in his bed with Hard Rain, with his bedroom door open, when Irmgard came home from work.
She sang “Girl from the North Country” to Hard Rain in the bathroom; there was no question Irmgard knew the music the dog liked best. After her bath, Irmgard came into Jimmy’s bedroom to talk to him.
Hard Rain got in bed with Jimmy, but Irmgard sat almost primly at the foot of his bed.
“I owe you,” she began; Irmgard was strictly businesslike about it.
She had paid Berta to have sex with Jimmy.
Everything was arranged; all Jimmy had to do was find Berta, and Berta would take care of the rest. “Don’t worry—I got you a student discount,” Irmgard told him.
She had an accurate but cruel way of imitating what the scar from the mayonnaise jar had done to Berta’s lip.
“Annelies isn’t the only one who can arrange things,” Irmgard said, smiling.
She was being nice to him, Jimmy knew—as nice as Irmgard knew how.
It was Jimmy’s last week in Vienna. He had a paper to write on the Victorian novel.
It was hard for him to think about the Bronte sisters and Dickens and Hardy and Eliot and Kipling when he was thinking about the future.
Claude had scared the shit out of Siegfried with a telescope that sees in the future—worse, Jimmy’s tutorials with Fr?ulein Eissler had come to an end.
Where would Annelies go? Jimmy wondered.
It was that time of night when the Frau and Siegfried were asleep, in their quarters.
Irmgard had gone out, or she was dressing to go out.
Hard Rain and Jimmy were on their own for a while.
Jimmy was trying to decide if he should study in his bedroom or go to the café on the corner.
When the first pebbles pinged against his bedroom window, Hard Rain got the jitters.
Jimmy went to the balcony window and saw Annelies on the sidewalk.
The window was open, and he could hear her clearly.
“I’m not your tutor tonight, Jimmy—I’ve just come to say goodbye,” Fr?ulein Eissler said.
But wouldn’t she always be his tutor? Jimmy imagined.
No, she wasn’t coming inside tonight, and she didn’t want Jimmy to join her on the sidewalk, Annelies told him.
She had to pack for a long trip. She was going to Argentina.
“Simon and Sol don’t speak Spanish, Jimmy, and I’m good at languages,” she added.
(As Sergei once said, the Eissler was working for Wiesenthal, or for the Mossad.)
“I hope you get to be what you want to be, Jimmy—a writer, if that’s what you choose,” Annelies said. “You don’t get to choose everything, but being a writer is your choice,” she told him.
“What don’t I get to choose?” Jimmy asked her. (He should have known where she was going with the choice business.)
“You don’t get to choose to be Jewish, Jimmy—you just are Jewish,” Fr?ulein Eissler told him.
“No matter what your two moms say, your father and your birth mother are Jewish. You’re a Jew, Jimmy,” Annelies said.
“In your case, you don’t have to do anything differently—you can be any kind of Jew you want to be, but you are Jewish.
” She thereupon turned and walked away from him in the direction of the Argentinierstra?e. Fr?ulein Eissler knew how to move on.
“I’m still learning from you! I didn’t get to choose to lose you!” Jimmy called out the window, but Fr?ulein Eissler was walking to Argentina.
It was only a fifteen-minute walk from the Schwindgasse to those side streets off the K?rntner Stra?e.
Jimmy wouldn’t remember if he found Berta on Johannesgasse or Annagasse, but she took him to the whore hotel on Krugerstra?e.
True to what Annelies told him, Berta explained that prostitutes didn’t kiss their customers.
In Jimmy’s case, however, Irmgard had arranged for Berta to kiss him.
Irmgard must have known that the slight disfigurement of Berta’s upper lip got to him.
That was Jimmy’s last night in Vienna—his bittersweet goodbye to the city on the Danube.
Jimmy was in his bedroom—packing for Amsterdam, with Hard Rain sniffing through his things—when Irmgard came home to take her nightly bath.
If Irmgard knew he’d seen Berta, she didn’t mention it.
She stretched out on Jimmy’s bed, still in her working clothes, but she wasn’t coming on to him.
Irmgard wanted Hard Rain to jump on the bed with her, which Hard Rain did.
The dog was a miracle, not only for Siegfried.
Jimmy told Irmgard that he was still upset about what happened to Siegfried in the Stadtpark—the five-year-old’s fear of a telescope that brings the future closer, as Claude had told the boy.
“I hope Siegfried is over the fright,” Jimmy said.
“I don’t think you’re over it,” Irmgard said.
Jimmy told Irmgard that he was happy to hear she’d made plans with Annelies—for the two of them to do things differently with Siegfried. Jimmy went so far as to say that Annelies was a good person for Siegfried to know.
“If Siegfried is lucky, Annelies will adopt him,” Irmgard said. She was taking off her clothes in the hall, as if Jimmy weren’t there—as if he weren’t watching, or he didn’t care. In Vienna, Jimmy couldn’t tell the difference between what was truly undisguised and what was merely cynical.
Hard Rain’s tail was wagging as she followed Irmgard into the bathroom, where Irmgard paused and faced Jimmy in the open doorway; because Irmgard was naked, Jimmy looked down, then he turned away.
“There is a telescope that sees into the future, Jimmy—it’s called the passage of time. Just wait and see,” she said, closing the door.
Jimmy said his goodbyes to the Frau and Siegfried and Hard Rain in the morning.
Jimmy knew Irmgard would be sleeping in.
When people asked the five-year-old about his German shepherd, Siegfried told them, “Hard Rain ist ein Weibchen”—meaning “Hard Rain is a female.” The boy had asked Jolanda how to say this in English.
Jolanda liked to fool around. “Hard Rain is a woman,” Jolanda had taught Siegfried to say. Siegfried understood that this sounded funny in English. The boy liked to say it; he always got a laugh out of it.
This was how Jimmy and Siegfried said their goodbyes—telling each other, “Hard Rain is a woman.” All Frau Holzinger kept telling Jimmy was to pay her respects to his sainted mother.
Jimmy had so many bags to take to the train station, he needed a taxi.
From the Schwindgasse sidewalk, waiting for his ride, Jimmy could see Siegfried and Hard Rain in the window of his former bedroom.
Hard Rain had perked up her ears when Jimmy called her name.
Siegfried silently mouthed the words. Jimmy could read the boy’s lips.
The five-year-old just repeated, “Hard Rain is a woman,” until Jimmy’s taxi came.