Chapter 22 In the Future #4
Jimmy’s German tutor was a distraction to him when he was studying for his philosophy exam; she was more of a hindrance than a help.
Fr?ulein Eissler said she disapproved of Wittgenstein’s wealthy family; they claimed to be Roman Catholics, but they were of assimilated Jewish ancestry.
“I only half like Wittgenstein, Jimmy,” Annelies said; she was sitting on his bed, unbuttoning her short-sleeved cardigan.
“Don’t get the wrong idea—I’m just showing you my tattoo,” she told him.
Below her collarbones and above both breasts was the first line of Proposition 1 from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, “Die Welt ist alles”—no comma after the alles word.
The rest of Proposition 1 wasn’t tattooed.
“Just ‘The world is all’ or ‘The world is everything’—the rest of it is Wittgenstein screwing around with rhymes, Jimmy,” Annelies said, buttoning up her sweater.
Fr?ulein Eissler didn’t like the end line to Proposition 1—in German, “was der Fall ist,” which means “that is the case.” James Winslow decided he only half liked Wittgenstein, too, but he never forgot his brief glimpse of Annelies’s tattoo and the tops of her breasts in the cups of her bra.
Jolanda told Jimmy that she hated the haircuts he’d been getting.
“Your Friseur or your Barbier is furchtbar, Jimmy,” Jolanda said.
(His “hairdresser” or “barber” was “terrible.”) He’d been going to a barbershop somewhere on the Argentinierstra?e, but Jolanda took him to see Helene and her hairdressers, above the Turnhalle Leopold.
It was in the morning. The wrestling room below them was strangely silent—no thudding on the mat, no screaming from the wrestlers in the ice-cold showers.
While the women fussed over him, Helene kept patting Jimmy’s knee—the one she thought had been injured.
“He has an important date coming up,” Jolanda told the hairdressers.
“Jimmy’s a virgin, you know,” she also told them.
“I’m glad your thing is all better!” Helene said, patting his knee again. There were gales of laughter from Jolanda and the hairdressers, who went on and on about Jimmy’s important date—not to mention his being a virgin.
Claude was almost as excited to meet Mieke as Jimmy was. “Keep your pecker in your pants, Claude. It’s Jimmy’s turn to lose his virginity—you’ve had your turn,” Jolanda told him.
With his loss of virginity pending, it might not have been the best time for Jimmy to write to Esther, but he’d heard from her—as Annelies said he would.
“Dear Honor’s Child,” Esther’s letter to Jimmy began, making herself clear from the start.
“You may write to me, but I’m not your mother—she’s the one who raised you and did all the work.
All I did was get pregnant and give birth to you.
” It was a typewritten letter. She’d not signed it; she’d just typed her full name, Esther Nacht.
Her return address was in Tel Aviv. As Fr?ulein Eissler had forewarned Jimmy, it was in care of someone else.
“Dear Esther Nacht,” Jimmy began his first letter to his birth mother.
“There is a foreignness inside me, not only when I’m in Vienna.
There is more make-believe than reality inside me, and I’m wondering where this comes from.
I’m becoming a fiction writer (more make-believe) and I’m just wondering if you ever wanted to be a writer—if the foreignness inside me is also inside you.
” He’d typed his letter, but he wanted to sign it in longhand.
Love, Jimmy, he almost wrote, but he typed “James Winslow” instead.
At wrestling practice, Sol and Simon teased Jimmy about his haircut—his “hairdo,” Leo called it.
Helene and her hairdressers had been talking.
Even the Greco-Roman guys knew all about Jimmy’s important date.
Jimmy was grateful to the hairdressers, who’d not told the wrestlers he was a virgin.
If they’d known, the wrestlers would have been merciless to him about that.
“Where are Zander and Sergei?” Jimmy asked Leo and the Israelis. Even the Greco guys looked uncomfortable, and what would they care if two freestyle wrestlers skipped practice? Sol and Simon just looked at Leo.
“They’re Soviets, Jim—Soviets are always moving on,” Sol said.
“But they’re med students—how do med students move on?” Jimmy asked; he was looking at Little Mirror, who was dancing all around. “Are they now interns, or something—did they just become doctors?” Jimmy asked.
“The Russians do what they do, Jim—they just go where they go,” Kleiner Spiegel said.
The former Red Army wrestlers had moved on.
Now Sol was Jimmy’s only workout partner, and Simon didn’t have one.
No live wrestling for Simon, who just drilled moves with one of the Greco guys.
One day, Jimmy understood, Sol and Simon would move on.
The Israelis had other work to do. Like the Russians, Jimmy knew, the Israelis also did what they did—they just went where they went, too.
James Winslow remembered how Esther made him read Arthur Schnitzler’s The Road into the Open.
While Jimmy was waiting for Mieke to come to Vienna, he reread the passages he’d marked in Schnitzler’s novel.
Among Georg von Wergenthin’s friends, the death of Georg’s stillborn child with Anna Rosner arouses no pity for the child who never lived, and Else Ehrenberg feels no pity for Georg.
“She had no idea of how the death of the child had shocked him,” Jimmy read.
“How could she have had an idea, either? What did she know of the hour when the garden had lost its color for him and the heavens their light, because his own beautiful child lay dead within the house?” This was the moment when James Winslow realized that Esther had always known he was destined to be a father.
Esther knew that Honor Winslow would want her child to have of a child of his own.
Yet when Jimmy asked Fr?ulein Eissler what she thought of Esther’s intentions—of why she’d made him read The Road into the Open—Jimmy’s German tutor reminded him that he knew how to write Esther.
“That’s something you should ask Esther, Jimmy,” Annelies said.
“We’re studying for your German exam—today we’re reviewing strong and irregular verbs.
That’s my job, remember?” There were more than two hundred strong and irregular verbs in German, and Jimmy knew he would be asked to recite the present tense, the past tense, and the past participle of the verbs on the test. Knowing Jimmy wanted to be a writer, Fr?ulein Eissler began with an easy verb for him.
“I write, I wrote, I have written,” Annelies said softly.
“Ich schreibe, ich schrieb, ich habe geschrieben,” Jimmy said loudly.
“I think, I thought, I have thought,” Annelies said more softly.
“Ich denke, ich dachte, ich habe gedacht,” Jimmy recited, robustly. Irmgard, passing by in the hall, didn’t hear Fr?ulein Eissler—only Jimmy.
“I sleep, I slept, I have slept,” Annelies whispered sleepily.
“Ich schlafe, ich schlief, ich habe geschlafen!” Jimmy said, shouting.
“You sound like you need to get laid, Jimmy,” Irmgard said from the hall. Then Irmgard heard Fr?ulein Eissler laughing.
“I speak, I spoke, I have spoken!” Annelies cried out.
“Ich spreche, ich sprach, ich habe gesprochen!” Jimmy called out to Irmgard, who shouted back to them from the kitchen.
“Ich trinke, ich trank, ich habe getrunken!” Irmgard yelled.
“I drink, I drank, I have drunk,” Annelies softly translated for him.
“Ich wei?, ich wusste, ich habe gewusst,” Jimmy quietly told his German tutor. (“I know, I knew, I have known.”) It was their last tutorial together, an anticlimactic one—just verbs.
“I’ll come say goodbye before I go, Jimmy,” Annelies told him.
“Where are you going?” Jimmy asked her; he’d followed her out on the Schwindgasse sidewalk.
“I’ve got other business, Jimmy. I’m in the Jewish business—I just go where my Jewish business takes me,” Fr?ulein Eissler said.
“You made me your business. You were more than my German tutor—you looked after me!” Jimmy told her.
“Esther made you her business—she looks after you, Jimmy. Looking after Esther is my business,” Annelies said. She’d made plans with Irmgard, Fr?ulein Eissler wanted him to know. Annelies assured him that she and Irmgard were going to do things differently with Siegfried.
They were standing on the corner of Argentinierstra?e. “I love you!” Jimmy told her; he thought his heart was breaking.
“Oh, don’t be silly, Jimmy—just have fun with Mieke and Jolanda,” Fr?ulein Eissler said.
“I’ll come say goodbye before I go,” she repeated.
Then she walked away from him, in the direction of the Karlskirche, where the eighteen-year-old Hedwig Kiesler, who later became Hedy Lamarr, married a thirty-three-year-old Austrian armaments dealer.
Where he stood crying, Jimmy could hear the song from the Nachtmusik.
Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” was winding down when Jimmy found Claude and Jolanda at their usual table in the Kaffeehaus. The roommates knew Fr?ulein Eissler had stayed later than usual. Jolanda and Claude could see Jimmy was crying.
“No tears tonight, lover boy. Guess who’s in town tomorrow?
” Jolanda asked him. Claude stood up and hugged him, but Jimmy kept crying.
“You should try to think of something positive, Jimmy. Mieke’s boobs are bigger than mine,” Jolanda told him.
She knew how to uplift the spirits of a twenty-three-year-old virgin.
Later, back in the Holzinger apartment, Claude confided to Jimmy when Jolanda was in the bathroom.
“You’re short and Jolanda is tall,” Claude began, as if this weren’t obvious.
“Mieke is as tall as Jolanda, but don’t worry, Jimmy—when you’re lying down, it doesn’t matter.
” Now that Claude had had sex, he was speaking as an expert.