Chapter 19 Der Vorschlag
There were additional postage stamps on the airmail letter; it felt like there was a photograph enclosed. Knowing his mom, Jimmy thought she might have included a photo of Chantal.
“It’s from your mother, right?” Jolanda asked.
“Der Vorschlag!” Claude cried, startling Siegfried, who dropped the garlic press on Jolanda’s knee. (“The proposal!” Claude had cried.)
“Don’t scare Siegfried, Claude—you idiot,” Jolanda said. She gave the garlic press to Siegfried, saying something soothing, to mollify the anxious child. “Nur von Yimmys Mutter,” Jolanda told the boy, pointing to the letter. (“Only from Jimmy’s mother.”)
“When you read us the letter from your mother, Jimmy, you should try to sound as much like your mother as you can,” Claude began. “After all, she is your mother, but Jolanda and I don’t know her at all,” Claude said.
“Jesus Mary Joseph, Claude! You’re not exactly brimming with girlfriend experience, but you sound as lacking in mother experience,” Jolanda told him. “Jimmy doesn’t have to act out his mom for us!”
“My mother is always trying to marry me off, Jolanda,” Claude said.
James Winslow would realize—but not until a few years later, when he was finishing his first novel—that this was a writing lesson.
Albeit inadvertently, he’d compounded the problem; his roommates (right now, his bedmates) were poised to hear him read aloud the proposal his mother was making to safeguard his passage through the Vietnam War.
And what Honor Winslow was proposing had preoccupied Jimmy’s Jewish German tutor.
When Jimmy managed to open the envelope, he saw that Siegfried was poised to listen to the proposal, too.
The little soldier was still standing at the bedside; he didn’t understand English, but Siegfried wasn’t moving on.
“Poor Chantal,” Claude uttered like a prayer, when he saw the photo.
Naturally, the photo was the first thing out of the envelope—the first thing everyone saw.
For once, Chantal was wearing a sweater that fit her.
Jimmy recognized the sweater—an old-fashioned cashmere cardigan his mom used to wear.
It fit Chantal perfectly, although the sweater made her look a little older than she was.
Even Siegfried looked closely at the photo.
The foreign students should have realized that Siegfried thought the photo was of Yimmy’s mother.
Someone should have spoken up before Claude started improvising.
When Claude began to speak to Siegfried—in overcareful German, as if Siegfried had not yet learned to talk in any language—Jolanda and Jimmy just thought Claude was trying to get the child to leave.
But knowing Claude and his baffling bad timing, they should have been prepared for Claude to bewilder the boy with whatever lay lurking in Claude’s subconscious.
“What do you think of dogs, Siegfried?” Claude asked the boy.
He spoke with an exaggerated slowness; the question seemed a matter of grave concern.
When Siegfried answered Claude, the boy understandably spoke as slowly as he’d been spoken to; Siegfried probably imagined that Claude had the mental capacity of a two- or three-year-old. “I don’t know any dogs,” Siegfried said in German even Jimmy could understand.
“But would you like to have a dog, Siegfried—a female dog?” Claude emphasized, in an unnatural way.
The word for a female dog in German (Hündin) is different from the word for a male dog (Hund).
Claude obviously felt it was necessary to specify the sex of the dog.
It’s a wonder Claude didn’t tell Siegfried that Hard Rain was spayed.
The gender-related part of having (or not having) a dog clearly caused Siegfried some consternation.
As Jolanda would say—thankfully not then, but later—the females in Siegfried’s family might not have predisposed the boy to wanting a female dog.
Claude’s question (Would Siegfried like to have a Hündin?) caused Siegfried to wave the garlic press around, as if he were conducting an unseen and unheard orchestra.
“For Christ’s sake, Claude,” Jolanda said, kicking him under the covers.
“Siegfried!” Jolanda suddenly said to the boy, startling him.
“Wouldn’t you rather have breakfast?” She spoke quickly to the child—that is, she spoke naturally—in her not-messing-around German.
Jolanda spoke in German to Siegfried the same way she would have spoken to Claude or Jimmy in English.
“Ich mochte lieber…” Siegfried started to say. (“I would rather…”) When Siegfried spoke again, there was no question that he meant what he said. “I would rather have a dog,” Siegfried told them—a Hündin, a female dog, the boy had distinctly said.
“What’s your follow-up, Claude?” Jolanda asked their improvisational roommate. Claude deserved credit; he’d started something with Siegfried, but at the time no one understood what had been set in motion.
“Siegfried! Frühstück!” Frau Holzinger hollered, and Siegfried darted away; that the boy would rather have a female dog did not deter him from running to his breakfast. Naturally, Siegfried took the photo of Yimmys Mutter with him to show his grandmother.
The Frau brought the photo back to Jimmy’s bedroom.
She was clearly disapproving of the three of them in one bed; she didn’t linger, and Jimmy couldn’t understand what she’d said about the photo, which she returned to him.
When the Frau went back to the kitchen, Jolanda got out of bed to close the bedroom door.
She was wearing an oversize T-shirt that hung to her knees, and when she got back in bed, she kicked Claude again—her long legs could have reached him anywhere.
Claude was just staring at the photo of Chantal, which he’d taken from Jimmy.
In the sweater that fit her, it was clear—even to Claude—that Chantal wasn’t a onesie.
“Everyone has two, Claude—you idiot,” Jolanda was saying.
The Frau had said Yimmys Mutter was very pretty; she’d wondered how long ago the photo had been taken.
Jimmy’s mom looked so young, the Frau had added.
“Chantal is very pretty, and she looks so young!” Claude was saying.
“Chantal is only two years older than we are, Claude. Chantal is young, you idiot,” Jolanda told him.
“Just start reading, Jimmy. We’ll catch on,” Claude said. Jimmy knew his mother was good at beginnings; when Honor Winslow had determined what she wanted, she knew how to set something in motion.
“Honey, you know I wouldn’t say (or even think) any of this, except for your own good—don’t you?” the letter from Jimmy’s mom began.
“Wait, wait, wait—the ‘honey’ is already complicated!” Claude cried. “Does your mother call everyone ‘honey,’ or only you?” Claude asked Jimmy.
“If your mother calls everyone ‘honey,’ that’s a different kind of story. That’s not this story, Claude,” Jolanda said.
“You have a classification problem, honey,” Jimmy’s mom went on. “Right now, your draft deferment is 2-S—that’s your classification. The student deferment gets you through college, but what happens then? I didn’t go through what I endured to have you, only to lose you in a misbegotten war!”
“I like your mother,” Jolanda said. Claude made a panting sound—something he’d picked up from Hard Rain.
“It’s too bad you’re not wrestling, honey—the right kind of knee injury could be useful,” Jimmy’s mother had written. “A 4-F deferment is ideal. You know, ‘unfit for service’ sounds fine to a mom like me! But you can’t count on the right kind of wrestling injury, can you?”
Claude shook his head in the insane way Hard Rain shook hers—hard enough to make her ears flap. Jolanda kicked Claude under the covers.
“That’s why I like 3-A, ‘married with child’—the dependency deferment,” Honor Winslow called it. “But you haven’t met someone you can knock up—have you, honey?”
What a scornful look James Winslow got from Claude and Jolanda. Claude was shaking his head like Hard Rain again. Jimmy was thinking of the girls he knew at the Institute for European Studies, but he couldn’t think of one who would go out with him.
“Generally, you have to meet a girl and go out with her a few times before she’ll consider getting knocked up by you,” Jolanda was saying, as if she’d been reading Jimmy’s mind under the covers.
“Poor Chantal. I can see Chantal coming!” Claude cried despairingly.
“Ideally, honey, you should start knocking someone up this spring—like in March or April,” Jimmy’s mom asserted.
“Why does your mother think you should ‘start knocking someone up this spring’—you don’t have to do it more than once to knock someone up, do you?” Claude asked.
“Usually, Claude, you and the person you’re knocking up like doing it more than once,” Jolanda had pointed out to him. But the three of them saw Chantal coming. They knew Chantal was where Jimmy’s mom was going.
“You have JFK to thank for 3-A, honey, but now that he’s gone, you can’t count on 3-A always being there,” Jimmy’s mother wrote to him.
“What about Dagmar? Is she still young enough to get knocked up?” Claude suddenly asked. Jimmy had told Claude and Jolanda that he thought the widow manager of their nighttime café was attractive.
“Jesus Mary Joseph, Claude! Dagmar must be in her forties. Why would Dagmar want Jimmy to knock her up?” Jolanda asked Claude.
“I was just wondering if Dagmar was still young enough to get knocked up,” Claude said, sorrowfully.
Dagmar was probably still young enough to have children, Jimmy thought. He guessed the widow was about his mom’s age, around forty-four.