Chapter 18 Sharing a Bed #2
The Christmas part of their conversation prompted an anti-Christmas diatribe from Annelies.
Austria was a Catholic country, and a socialist one; Christmas was both a religious and socialist excuse not to work, she said.
Furthermore, Annelies knew that Jimmy’s mom was writing him.
But what was the point of paying extra for airmail if the Austrian postal workers were off because of Christmas?
Fr?ulein Eissler told Jimmy she would continue their tutorials during the Christmas holidays, except for Christmas Day—unless Jimmy was too busy writing and wrestling.
“Did Esther tell you my mother was writing me?” young James asked Annelies, but she didn’t respond to the Esther part of Jimmy’s question.
“Your mom is writing you a Vorschlag, Jimmy,” Annelies told him—a “proposal.” She wouldn’t say what it was.
She’d detected a new fragrance in his bedroom and had opened his balcony window to the cold.
“You’re not seeing Irmgard, are you?” Annelies had asked him.
“Has she changed her perfume? It’s not much better.
Immer noch furchtbar.” (“Still terrible.”)
“I’m not seeing Irmgard,” he told Annelies.
She’d caught a whiff of Hard Rain. Jimmy didn’t know what his Jewish German tutor might think of sharing a bed with a German shepherd.
The dog-sitting schedule was still new. Claude and Jimmy were taking turns, but Claude had nightmares that made him whimper in his sleep.
This made Hard Rain whimper and whine with him, which gave them both nightmares.
“It really shouldn’t be that complicated to sleep with a dog, Claude,” Jolanda had told him, but both Jimmy and Claude were sensing that Jolanda was finding it complicated to sleep with Hildegund, her tattooed dishwasher.
Jolanda had provided no details; she just blamed the “bunch of barbarians” Hildegund lived with.
As for Hard Rain, Jimmy and Claude loved her.
They’d never had a dog or slept with one; they didn’t know if Hard Rain’s habits were all her own or common to other German shepherds (perhaps to all dogs).
It wasn’t Hard Rain’s fault that she smelled slightly like garbage; the poor dog was chained in the alley where the café’s garbage was collected.
And that Hard Rain had a smoky smell was Hildegund’s fault—she was a smoker.
It didn’t escape Jimmy and Claude’s attention that Hildegund’s smoking had reignited Jolanda’s smoking habit.
“Whoever she is, Jimmy, her perfume is putrid, and she smokes, but if she lets you knock her up, she serves a purpose,” Annelies told him.
“She’s a German shepherd. I’m hiding her—what amounts to three or four nights a week,” Jimmy admitted.
Fr?ulein Eissler was unshockable. “I trust you will explain,” she calmly said. He did. No doubt Jimmy’s fondness for Hard Rain was evident.
“She doesn’t shed much,” young James told his tutor, pulling back his bedcovers to show Annelies the sheets.
“No, not much,” Annelies said, shrugging.
Jimmy loved the way she shrugged—her small shoulders rolling forward, her breasts shifting slightly when she sighed.
“A symbolic breed—it’s not the fault of the dog who their masters were or are,” Fr?ulein Eissler mysteriously said.
James Winslow was baffled by her reference to German shepherds.
It made him hesitate to tell Annelies what the foreign students were warned about Hard Rain—her alleged overreaction to thunderstorms. Jimmy saw no signs, in the Hard Rain he was getting to know and beginning to love, that this was a dog who would shit out her brains in a bathtub at the onset of thunder and lightning.
Jimmy and Claude didn’t trust anything Jolanda’s tattooed woman dishwasher had told her; they hated Hildegund.
What if Hard Rain had a onetime diarrheic episode in a bathtub? What if she’d eaten some tainted dog food, and the thunder and lightning were merely coincidental? Who were the so-called barbarians Hildegund said she lived with? In what way were they barbarians?
Jimmy could tell Claude really liked Hard Rain, even though they gave each other nightmares.
“She’s a good girl,” Claude said. “I don’t believe she shits out her brains in a bathtub every time there’s a thunderstorm.
If Hard Rain ever shit in a bathtub, she would be embarrassed about it,” Claude maintained.
“She’s even embarrassed when she farts, isn’t she?
” he asked Jimmy, who thought she was—or she looked more sad-eyed than usual after she farted.
When Hard Rain farted, she wagged her tail—a little uncertainly, as if seeking approval.
As for her being a bathtub shitter, the evidence against Hard Rain was “strictly hearsay,” Claude concluded.
It was also unrealistic for the foreign students to imagine they could keep the door to the bathroom open—in case Hard Rain had to jump in the bathtub, at the first flash of lightning or a distant rumble of thunder.
Jimmy and Claude couldn’t be expected to make sure Hard Rain had access to the bathtub—certainly not when Irmgard was taking baths in the wee hours of the morning.
All Jolanda would say about Hard Rain’s reputation as a bathtub shitter was: “She farts a lot.” Surely Jolanda knew she would see Mieke back in Amsterdam during Christmas break.
Jolanda was already feeling guilty about having sex with Hildegund.
Jimmy told Annelies about the night Irmgard must have heard him talking to Hard Rain, who was biting his toes under the bedcovers; she wasn’t biting hard, just being playful.
“No biting—be a good girl,” Jimmy was telling her.
She thumped her tail under the covers. “What a good girl you are,” Jimmy told her, and she wagged her tail harder; then she snorted or sneezed, thrashing her head all around.
Sometimes she sounded more like a pig than a dog, especially when she was under the bedcovers.
That was when he saw Irmgard’s big and blurry body pressed against the frosted glass; she was wrapped in towels, fresh from her bath, steaming up the glass oval on his bedroom door.
“I hear you talking to someone, Jimmy,” Irmgard said. “Is your German tutor with you?”
“Not the tutor,” Jimmy said, but Irmgard opened his bedroom door, her body filling the doorway.
In the early-morning darkness, when Hildegund left Jolanda’s bed, the tattooed dishwasher came into Claude’s room or Jimmy’s—to take Hard Rain home with her, back to the barbarians.
Hard Rain didn’t like to leave with Hildegund, faced with venturing into the cold and darkness at such an early hour of the morning. She always cowered under the covers.
“What’s the matter with her—is she just shy?
” Irmgard asked now. There was a single thump of the tail from Hard Rain, like the twitch of an arm or a leg.
This was followed by a bed-shaking snort—a violent, strangled sneeze.
Then Hard Rain rolled over on her back, poking up the bedcovers with her forepaws.
“She’s just shy, and she has a cold,” Jimmy explained to Irmgard. “And she’s naked—she doesn’t want you to see her,” he added.
“I hope she’s not underage, Jimmy. She’s not underage, is she? We don’t want the Polizei coming here,” Irmgard told him.
“No police—I promise. She’s not underage,” Jimmy said to Siegfried’s angry and depressed mother.
Hard Rain was arching her back and scratching herself under the covers; she was also gnawing on Jimmy’s wrist, in her gentle way.
“She just acts underage,” Jimmy tried to assure Irmgard, but Irmgard was leaving—abruptly closing his door behind her.
Before Irmgard turned off the light in the hall, Jimmy heard her say: “I’ll know how old she is when I get a look at her.”
“Whatever Irmgard thought, she couldn’t possibly have imagined you were under the covers,” Jimmy told Fr?ulein Eissler. He expected her to be amused by the story, but she was not in the least amused. She looked worried or distracted, or both.
“I said you shouldn’t hate Irmgard, and you shouldn’t,” Annelies said, “but you also shouldn’t get too close to her, Jimmy.
It’s safer to sleep with the German shepherd.
” Jimmy thought so, too, but Fr?ulein Eissler was already moving ahead—this time, to the 1964 Winter Olympics.
Everyone was talking about how the Austrians would do in alpine skiing.
At the end of January, through early February, the 1964 Winter Games would be held in Innsbruck.
Austrian television would air all the skiing, but Irmgard would probably be watching the movie channel.
Jimmy, Claude, and Jolanda were counting on Dagmar at the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik, who had told the foreign students that the TV in the café would be showing the Olympics.
When the Austrians were skiing, Dagmar even said, she’d turn on the sound.
Fr?ulein Eissler, who didn’t ski, just said she was “dreading” the Olympics.
“It brings out nationalism, which doesn’t have a good history in this country,” she said.
But Jimmy, Claude, and Jolanda were looking forward to watching the skiing in their local café, where they did their homework—and Jimmy tried to write, or to believe in himself as a future writer—where at least they were warm, and they didn’t have far to go when they were tired and wanted to go to bed.