Chapter 21 Not an Egyptian #5
While Sergei and Zander packed the ice around Jimmy’s knee, they also wrapped his knee with an elastic bandage.
Jimmy just screamed louder. Between breaths, he heard Helene at the top of the stairs, yelling down to the wrestlers.
Helene sounded hysterical. Jimmy heard her say “Polizei” and “Krankenwagen,” the words for “police” and “ambulance.” He didn’t get another word Helene yelled, but Annelies translated for him.
“She says, ‘You animals must be killing someone!’ She’s calling the police and an ambulance if the screaming doesn’t stop,” Jimmy’s Jewish German tutor told him.
“Just tone down the screaming a little, Jimmy,” Annelies whispered in his ear.
And now another hairdresser replaced Helene at the top of the stairs; it was her turn to yell at the wrestlers.
Little Mirror shouted up the stairs to the hairdresser.
Fr?ulein Eissler translated their exchange. “You could kill one another more quickly and quietly if you used knives!” the hairdresser had yelled to the wrestlers.
“A wrestler has been injured!” Kleiner Spiegel yelled back. “Your lack of empathy is apparent. You hairdressers deserve to be strangled with your own hair!” Leo had shouted.
“The wrestlers and the hairdressers sound like they’re married,” Annelies observed.
She’d already told Jimmy she would never be married.
She also let Jimmy know her feelings about childbirth.
“If and when I want a kid, I’ll adopt one.
Lots of kids need to be adopted, Jimmy.” Sergei and Simon, the bigger wrestlers, carried Jimmy upstairs.
Sol and Zander, Jimmy’s fellow lightweights, carried his crutches.
At the top of the stairs, Helene and her hairdressers were waiting; they wanted to see the injured wrestler who’d been screaming. “He looks like he’s still alive,” Helene said to Leo. She sounded disappointed. (Annelies had translated for Jimmy without comment.)
When Fr?ulein Eissler spoke in German to Helene and her hairdressers, she spoke slowly enough that even Jimmy could understand her.
“You women should do something about your hair—you look truly terrible,” Annelies told them.
Leo added something that shocked Helene and the hairdressers.
Jimmy saw they were shocked, but he didn’t get what Little Mirror had said to them.
What mattered was that Claude and Jolanda were waiting with the taxi and the driver.
Out on the sidewalk, provided they were watching the Turnhalle Leopold, Hildegund and her thugs would have seen how awkward Jimmy was with his crutches; he appeared to be in pain when he was helped into the front seat of the taxi.
Jolanda and Claude crowded into the backseat with Annelies.
The crutches across their laps made them more uncomfortable.
In the taxi, Fr?ulein Eissler reluctantly told Jimmy what Kleiner Spiegel had said to Helene and the hairdressers.
“She’s a champion woman wrestler,” the suplay-meister had told Helene and the hairdressers, pointing to Annelies.
“She can tear off your tits and twats—she’ll hide them where you’ll never find them!
” Jimmy knew Fr?ulein Eissler wasn’t a wrestler; he understood why she’d hesitated to translate such a vulgar thing.
In his heart, Jimmy was just thinking that Leo was a truly loyal little guy.
“And you say the wrestlers and the hairdressers sound like they’re married,” Jimmy reminded Annelies.
“Like they’ve been married forever, Jimmy,” Fr?ulein Eissler said.
In Vienna, the Stra?enbahn rails and the cobblestones could be tricky or slippery for someone on crutches, and there was an unforeseen complication with the crutches.
Hard Rain liked to lick (or gnaw on) the rubber tips on the ends of the crutches.
The dog’s feelings were hurt if you told her to stop it.
When Jimmy started his alleged rehab routine at the Turnhalle Leopold, the wrestlers were glad to see him.
Helene and her hairdressers gave Jimmy their grudging respect.
The hairdressers were visibly relieved when Fr?ulein Eissler wasn’t with him.
Little Mirror swore they’d believed him; Helene and her hairdressers thought Jimmy’s Jewish German tutor was a champion woman wrestler—one who was poised to tear off their tits and twats, and somehow hide them.
The Easter weekend came and went. The appearance of a routine had been established.
Claude and Jolanda, and Jimmy on crutches, went to the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik, or they met with Jimmy’s wrestling teammates—either at the Augustinerkeller or the Café Hawelka.
Then, one night, the roommates pretended to yield to Jolanda’s last-minute whim; after all, she was a girl inclined to whims. They appeared to be on their way to meet the throw-meister and Jimmy’s teammates at the Café Hawelka when Jolanda proposed a spontaneous change of plans—suited to her free spirit.
“Let’s stop first for a beer at the Augustinerkeller,” Jolanda told her roommates.
“The Augustinerkeller isn’t really on our way to the Hawelka—it’s not exactly a straight line to the part of the Dorotheergasse where we’re going,” Claude pointed out.
“For fuck’s sake, Claude—just one beer!” Jolanda said. “I need a beer before I get the waist-high once-over from the troll, and before the Russians tell me all about their studies of obstetrical and gynecological procedures.”
Jimmy and Claude couldn’t argue with that, and the Augustinerkeller was kind of on their way to the Café Hawelka.
Jolanda had downed only half her beer when Claude, who was choking, got a glimpse of the dishwasher’s thugs.
Jolanda checked out the women’s room, where Hildegund herself was hiding out.
“How’s Jimmy’s knee doing, cunt?” the ink addict had asked Jolanda. “That’s what he gets for wrestling,” Hildegund added.
When Jolanda came out of the women’s room, Claude and Jimmy were ready to leave; it was time to join forces with the Red Army wrestlers and the Israelis at the Hawelka, but they were some distance away from the Dorotheergasse.
Jimmy (on his crutches) was supposed to have trouble keeping up with Claude and Jolanda.
The roommates knew the dishwasher and her thugs would catch up to them, but not until they got to the relative darkness of the Dorotheergasse, where an attack would be less conspicuous.
The roommates didn’t start running until they heard Hildegund and her thugs coming up behind them.
Jimmy tossed one crutch to Claude when they were running.
Jolanda and Jimmy let Claude get ahead of them before they stopped running.
Jolanda and Jimmy stood back-to-back as Hildegund and her three thugs surrounded them.
“Hit Hildegund first. The thugs won’t be expecting that,” Annelies had directed Jimmy.
He held his crutch like a baseball bat, at the tip end; it was no Louisville Slugger, but it was wooden, and Jimmy hit Hildegund with the heavy end.
As Kleiner Spiegel directed him to do, Jimmy then kneecapped her.
Annelies had prepared Jimmy for the thug who thought he knew which of Jimmy’s knees was the bad one.
The thug came in low, reaching for Jimmy’s knee.
Jimmy sprawled, the way wrestlers do; he got behind the guy and put him in an arm bar.
Jimmy didn’t need the crutch to separate his assailant’s shoulder.
The two thugs attacking Jolanda had her pinned on the pavement; one of them held her down while the other one unzipped her jeans and yanked them all the way down to her ankles.
Jimmy saw that her holster was also at her ankles, but Jolanda had practiced how to reach for it.
She quickly took hold of the bicycle pump; she was beating the face and ribs of the thug trying to mount her.
Her panties were near her knees, but the guy trying to mount her was getting the worst of it.
“Fuck her, you idiots!” Hildegund was crying.
Jimmy was surprised he understood her. Even carrying a crutch, Claude ran so fast to the Hawelka, he’d already run back—ahead of all the wrestlers.
Claude started swinging the crutch the crazy way he’d rehearsed it.
He hammered on the thug who was holding Jolanda down.
Jolanda was already beating to death the thug who’d tried to mount her.
Claude had broken the nose and half-blinded the thug who’d been holding down Jolanda.
The thug who’d tried to mount Jolanda was bloodied and sobbing.
Hildegund, who’d been kneecapped, was struggling to stand; the thug with the separated shoulder had managed to get to his feet.
The first of the wrestlers to arrive was too low to the ground for Jimmy to see, but Jimmy recognized the fierce grip of the throw-meister’s locked hands.
It was a belly-to-back suplay—a lights-out throw, a headfirst landing.
Hildegund was now standing. She and Jimmy were holding his crutch between them; it would be a short-lived standoff.
Little Mirror locked his hands at Hildegund’s hips.
She must have known whose hands they were.
“Kleiner Jude!” she said. (It seemed fitting that her last words were “Little Jew!”) Jimmy let go of his end of the crutch.
“Goodbye,” he told the tattooed dishwasher.
The suplay-meister had Hildegund locked up; Jimmy knew the crutch would be no help to her.
It was as well executed a throw as Jimmy ever saw.
The dishwasher didn’t land on a wrestling mat—the ink addict landed on the back of her neck and head on the Dorotheergasse.