Chapter 21 Not an Egyptian
Honor Winslow would have liked how the Soviet med students worked together to drain her son’s cauliflower ear.
Zander drew out the fluid with the needle; Sergei applied the gauze with wet plaster to fit the configurations of Jimmy’s ear.
Jimmy had told them his mom was a nurse, and how she’d always drained his cauliflower ears.
All of his fellow wrestlers had very noticeable cauliflower ears.
Jimmy didn’t tell his newfound teammates how his aunts had compared cauliflower ears to animal droppings, like dog turds.
“You should try to do what your mom wants, Jim,” Sergei said.
What both my moms want? Jimmy thought, but he didn’t say it.
James Winslow was impressed that the Soviet wrestlers kept gauze pads and plaster and hypodermic needles in their locker at the Turnhalle Leopold. “They’re Russians, Jim,” Leo told him privately. “Even Russians who aren’t med students can get hypodermic needles on the black market.”
Before his roommates had left for the holidays, Jimmy had told them that Zander and Sergei were going to take him to a nightclub in Favoriten; he’d mentioned the belly dancer, the Egyptian, who was probably not an Egyptian.
“The poor belly dancer!” Claude cried, in empathy for underdogs.
“Maybe the belly dancer could carry your baby, Jimmy,” Jolanda said.
“Your family would only have to pay her more than she makes as a belly dancer, which probably isn’t much.
” Jolanda and Claude knew the Winslow family could afford to pay someone to have Jimmy’s baby, but Honor was fearful of the unknown legal factors.
“No, no, no—not the poor belly dancer,” Claude moaned. Claude still believed that Jolanda’s ex-girlfriend Mieke was the best mom for Jimmy’s ticket out of Vietnam. Claude remained convinced that Jolanda should hold Mieke’s head and talk to her throughout the knocking-up process.
But Claude and Jolanda were in Paris and Amsterdam now for Christmas, leaving Jimmy and Hard Rain in Vienna.
Keeping the dog hidden in the sleeping hours fell to Jimmy, who experimented with taking her to wrestling practice.
The wrestlers loved the dog, but Hard Rain didn’t like how the mat felt under her paws, and the thud of bodies on the mat frightened her.
The dog hid in the locker room area, cowering in a crapper stall.
When Hard Rain crept upstairs to the salon, Helene and the hairdressers were delighted.
The various sprays and hair products made the dog sneeze, but Hard Rain was happy among the hairdressers and their female clientele.
Zander and Sergei invited Leo Spiegel to join them when they took Jimmy and Sol and Simon to Die ?gypterin in Favoriten.
Kleiner Spiegel expressed his doubts about the Israelis going there.
Once, in Favoriten, Little Mirror had run into a couple of Turkish wrestlers he knew from a long-ago tournament.
“Kleiner Jude,” one of the wrestlers had called him.
(“Little Jew,” the Turk had said.) Then Little Mirror locked up with the Turkish wrestler and threw him.
“Ich habe geworfen,” Leo said. (“I threw,” Leo told the freestyle wrestlers.)
Little Mirror politely declined to go to Die ?gypterin.
The night the Soviets took Jimmy and the Israelis to Favoriten, they stopped on their way at the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik, where they left Hard Rain.
If Jimmy was still at Die ?gypterin past Dagmar’s closing time, Hard Rain would go home with Walter—the good dishwasher, as everyone now thought of the kindly, one-eared man.
James Winslow was distracted in the way someone writing a novel is.
For a young man who hadn’t seen a belly dancer, his mind was focused on his fictional characters and their story.
He had just finished a long conversation on the phone with his grandfather, who’d assured him it was okay for a novel to be loosely autobiographical.
“The more loosely, the better,” Thomas Winslow had said.
Jimmy was further distracted by what his grandfather told him about the orphanage at St. Cloud’s.
Jimmy was surprised his grandparents even knew that Honor Winslow wanted Chantal Beaudette to have Jimmy’s baby.
It was better to adopt a baby from the orphanage at St. Cloud’s, Thomas had said.
Both Thomas and Constance Winslow were disappointed when Honor rejected Thomas’s idea.
After all, their fourth daughter had grown up in a family with wonderful orphans; yet Honor adamantly wanted to know more about the birth mother of Jimmy’s child than one can ever know about orphans’ parents.
In the long talk with his grandfather, there’d been no mention of Honor’s backup plan—clearly unknown to the senior Winslows.
Jimmy didn’t talk about the bullet in his patella or cutting off the index finger on his writing hand—the repercussions of his failing to knock up someone.
While James Winslow was thus preoccupied on the way to Favoriten, the Soviet med students discussed how menstruation might affect a belly dancer.
The Israeli wrestlers were more worried about anti-Semitism.
Sergei thought most belly dancers were at their best in their thirties or early forties.
“After they’ve had children, they have more of a belly,” Zander said.
“In the first three days of her period, a belly dancer’s abdominal movements could cause her some excessive bleeding,” Sergei speculated.
“No hip drops or hip shimmies, or do them gently,” Zander suggested.
“No pelvic locks or reverse undulations—they’ll hurt,” Sergei said.
Sol asked the Soviets about the nightclub’s clientele.
Were they mostly Turkish men, or were the Turks only a small percentage of the patrons?
Simon wanted to know if the belly dancer mingled with the audience after her dance.
The Russians had noticed only the Turks with cauliflower ears; the wrestlers represented a small percent of the clientele.
The belly dancer, they said, was very discreet about her mingling.
She touched no one. There was no anfassen allowed—no touching or feeling.
The belly dancer discreetly moved among the tables of men, just making conversation; some men pushed their chairs away from the tables, hoping the belly dancer would sit in their laps.
Zander said the belly dancer chose to sit in only one man’s lap.
Sergei said there was no anfassen during the lap-sitting—nothing overtly sexual.
James Winslow was typically withdrawn and introspective, even when the conversation concerned a belly dancer’s moving hips—her pelvic thrusts and erotic undulations. The Russians had reserved a table near the stage at Die ?gypterin. The wrestlers would have a close-up view of the belly dancer.
“It’s a lesbian’s fantasy or a nightmare that I’m living with two guys in their twenties who’ve never had sex,” Jolanda had told Claude and Jimmy—this was before she went home for Christmas, hoping to make up with Mieke.
This was odd for Jimmy to remember while he was waiting with his teammates for the belly dancer.
And if Jimmy actually had sex with Mieke—imagining that Mieke gave birth to Jimmy’s child—wouldn’t their child want to have some sort of relationship with her?
This was what Jimmy was thinking at Die ?gypterin.
He also remembered his conversation with Fr?ulein Eissler—when he’d asked her to ask Esther, his birth mother, if he could write to her.
Not meet her, or speak to her, but just write to her.
Jimmy started to tell Annelies about the pact between Honor Winslow and Esther, but Annelies stopped him.
“I know who gave birth to you, Jimmy,” she’d told him.
Did James Winslow want to write Esther because he was becoming a writer, or was it only natural or inevitable that he would seek to have some contact with his birth mom?
These were Jimmy’s thoughts when the house lights dimmed; the shapes of the men at their tables were unmistakable, even in semidarkness.
On the spotlighted stage, the motionless belly dancer appeared to be looking straight at Jimmy, who guessed she was in her mid-thirties—about Esther’s age when she’d given birth.
“There’s something wrong with you if you don’t get a hard-on,” Zander, Jimmy’s workout partner, whispered in his ear when the music started and the belly dancer began to move her hips.
Her undulations, especially the way she could move her whole pelvis, gave Jimmy a hard-on.
Yet he wouldn’t have called the dancing pornographic—erotic, yes, but he hadn’t realized how much a belly dancer had to learn.
It was an art form, Jimmy was thinking—as the belly dancer’s hip-shimmying kept pace with the music, rising to a crescendo.
Now the men stood and applauded. The dance was done; the belly dancer bowed to her audience and left the stage.
“The way she was moving, she’s not having her period tonight,” Sergei said.
The Soviets explained how the belly dancer would soon mingle with the patrons, beginning at the tables farthest from the stage and making her way forward.
That way, she could once again bow to her audience from onstage—bidding them farewell from there.
Like many of the men, the wrestlers pushed their chairs back from their table—in preparation for the lap-sitting.
Jimmy was relieved that his hard-on had subsided.
If he had an erection, he would have kept his lap under the table.
Truly, all James Winslow was thinking was that it would be fun for him to bring Jolanda and Claude to Die ?gypterin to see the belly dancer.