Author's note: Basically this is how I spent my Thanksgiving break. Drabbles are good for the busy college student's soul and Donny is good for everyone's soul. Inglorious Basterds belongs to Quentin Tarantino; everything you don't recognize is mine. Please read and review if you feel so inclined!
i. eins
Donny's real name was Lemuel.
It was an old family name, biblical, of course, meant "belonging to G-d" or something like that, but that didn't make it any less heinous. He didn't blame his parents; after all, how could they have known he would grow up to be the farthest thing from a Lemuel as you could possibly get? But from the moment he could talk he referred to himself as Donny and wouldn't answer to anything else. Thankfully it stuck and after awhile, even his parents seemed to forget that they had ever bestowed that tragedy of a name upon him. Not a lot of people even knew his real name, his parents, grandparents, best friend, but Donny preferred it that way. After all, he couldn't very well make it to Fenway with a name like Lemuel now, could he?
ii. tsvey
Donny lost his virginity at his bar mitzvah.
Her name was Eva Goldberg, she was fifteen, and just about every adolescent male from one side of the West End to the other jerked off at night while dreaming of her rack. She could have had any guy she wanted and did, in fact, but for some reason it was he she had chosen to entice into an illicit coatroom rendezvous that day. He hadn't been pondering too hard the reason as he followed her beckoning finger like an Israelite following Moses across the Red Sea. Her breasts when she bared them for him over the top of her dress were a thing of wonder to his thirteen-year-old eyes. Come to think of it, her cans were really the only thing Donny remembered about her.
The sex itself was mediocre at best. Having never gone balls deep into anything besides his own spit-slick fist, it sure had felt pretty great. But they were crammed in a pitch-black corner behind all the coats where it smelled overwhelmingly of mothballs, and Eva kept bitching that he was crushing her dress, as if he could actually prevent it. At one point someone came in to collect their coat, dangerously close to where they were, and they froze, hearts hammering against one another. Going up against Nazis was nowhere near as terrifying as those couple of seconds in which Donny was sure they would be caught. They weren't, but it was a close call. It didn't take him all that long to come and right before he did, Eva made him pull out and do it in some napkins she had packed precisely for this purpose. Then he accidentally got some onto her skirt, which pissed her off even further, but hey, it was dark in there. The final straw was when she kvetched that she hadn't gotten off yet and Donny decided that the appropriate response was, "The hell do you want me to do about it?" Eva cussed him out in a shrill whisper and readjusted her clothing huffily, then left him alone in the coatroom. But as he buttoned his trousers, pulled his suit jacket back on, and straightened his yarmulke, he couldn't help grinning to himself because now he was a man.
iii. dray
Despite what Aldo said, Donny never actually went to beauty school.
His pop owned a barbershop, and a barbershop was very different from a beauty parlor. He had grown up watching straight-edged razors scraping over soapy stubbled chins, scissors snipping at the napes of naked necks. When he was a kid he used to push the wide broom across the floor of the shop after school, clearing away the hair clippings. When he got older he expressed a wish to try bigger and better things. His pop made him present his own perfectly-shaved face every morning for inspection, then practice on him every evening for a month before he would even let Donny near a paying customer with a razor. It was lucky the Donowitzes spawned such hairy men, because he sure did get in a lot of practice.
Sometimes his pop would watch him at work and shake his head, sighing, "Son, one of these days you're gonna have to get a real job." But Donny enjoyed cutting hair. He'd never been too good with numbers or words, would never end up as one of the world's celebrated accountants or lawyers. He supposed he could try finding work at the steel mill, maybe move out of the city and be a lumberjack or something, put his muscles to better use. Cutting hair relaxed him though; he liked thinking he was carrying on the family business. No one ever had any complaints because he was pretty big, coming close to their faces with sharp objects, and a damn good barber to boot. Donny had always thought he might be cutting hair until the end of his days or at least until the Sox came knocking on his door. Then, of course, the war started.
So that was his haircutting history in a nutshell. He didn't know where Aldo had come up with this beauty school shit, but he sure didn't appreciate it. Now all the Basterds were going around with a mental image of their fearsome Staff Sergeant fixing curlers in some bubbe's steel-gray hair; for the record, he had never given any bubbe a body wave.
iv. fir
Donny loved his family more than life itself.
He didn't care if that made him a fruit or a fairy or whatever, because it was the truth. He used to help his ma in the kitchen, whisking eggs or kneading dough for her to save her aging joints, spend hours on his hands and knees poking at her stove before he was forced to admit he had no idea what was wrong with the damn thing, pick up a bottle of that rose water stuff she liked to dab behind her ears and on her wrists. He worked alongside his pop in the barbershop, cutting hair, joking with the customers, and after hours they would clean up together and argue over the latest Sox game together. He taught his kid brother Adam (who was lucky enough to get the normal name) how to hock the perfect loogie, how to swear in Yiddish, and how to bat lefty, which Adam preferred, even though Donny himself batted righty. The local girls would walk past the two of them playing ball in the empty schoolyard and coo to each other about how that Donny Donowitz was such a good brother. And he was. He was a mama's boy, a papa's boy, and a damn good big brother.
When he caught wind of the goings-on in Europe, he had only to think of those Jewish families over there suffering at Nazi hands before he had made up his mind to make it right.
v. finf
A baseball bat seemed only natural to pack alongside his rolled-up socks and mess kit.
The way Donny saw it was this: any Joe Schmoe off the street could take a machine gun, fire a few rounds, and take out an entire legion of Krauts. Quick and painless for everyone. But he didn't want quick and painless, either for him or the Krauts. He wanted to be able to look each and every one of them in the eyes, as a member of the people they had so cold-bloodedly tormented, before raising his bat and unleashing the Jewish revenge on them so utterly that it would probably throw out his back. And he was fine with that. After all the sacrifices made by the Jews in Europe, a few thrown backs was the least he could do to repay them. Besides, if he was going to be away for awhile, he could at least keep up his batting form.
Then he got the idea, the brilliant idea of the names. Donny had always had a fascination with the permanence that came along with signing things. He had gotten into a fight and had his arm broken shortly before his thirteenth birthday, and at his bar mitzvah had almost everyone present sign the cast, which he still had lying around the apartment somewhere. Covered end to end with the names of Boston's loved ones in Europe, the bat would be more than a charming memento; it would be a reminder to Donny of what he was fighting for, and to the Nazis of how many lives they had destroyed. Of course, getting all of those names meant he had to actually explain to his neighbors exactly what he was planning to do with a Louisville Slugger in France. Some of them went a little green at the thought of the blood and gore, and others, like cute little old Mrs. Himmelstein who sat on the park benches in Boston Commons and fed the pigeons stale challah crumbs, seemed positively thrilled by it. But in the end everyone signed the bat in support of the Basterds' mission, and that was all that mattered.
When Donny wrapped his hands around the bat, he felt it heavy with the weight of a nation.
vi. zeks
Donny fucked his last American girl half an hour before he was set to leave for Europe.
He didn't even like to attach the word "fuck" to this incident, to be completely honest, because it was more than just his usual taking care of business between the closest pair of open female legs. Growing up he had been best friends with this kid Reuben Schechter, a slightly neurotic smartass with a killer fastball, and this had been with his little sister Rivka. Towards the end of his time in Boston Donny had gone around his block a couple of times and then some, but out of loyalty to Reu and a chivalry that surprised even him, he never went anywhere near Rivka. Not that she was hideous or anything—she had dark curls, big brown eyes, and looked a lot like her brother, who was considered a decent-looking guy around the neighborhood, and once she hit puberty she grew cans to rival Eva Goldberg's.
Donny spent a lot of time at the Schechter apartment over the years, and by virtue of that got to know Rivka pretty well. She was so level-headed and grounded that they could probably shake the world upside-down and she'd stay attached somehow, and like most Jewish women she always had to be right. A lot of the time she was pissed with him about something, other times he could have sworn she was in love with him. She had asked him once under the influence of too much Manischewitz why he didn't go after her like he did the others, and then never brought it up again. But ever since that night Donny's curiosity only increased with time; he'd never been good with this whole forbidden fruit thing. It only got worse once both he and Reu got drafted and he found himself spending a lot more time at the Schechter apartment and with Rivka, both of them struggling to make sense of this whole thing. Then one day, with Reu off fighting in the Philippines and him to depart for France in a little less than an hour, he figured oh, what the hell.
They managed to bicker even during sex, not that he should have been surprised. Rivka was a virgin, which he liked most of the time but this time frustrated him because they only had about half an hour, and he tried to be gentle. For such a mouthy broad she was remarkably quiet as he finally popped her cherry, only bit her lips through the sting with tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. When it was over and he was hopping around the room getting his shit together, she went up to him, naked as the day she was born, took his face between her hands, and kissed him in a way that left no doubt in his mind how she felt about him. It had scared him shitless. Donny thought about her sometimes, how he hoped she would find someone eventually to appreciate her crazy ass, because despite it she really was a sweet kid who deserved as much. But these days the people he used to know back when he was who he used to be were becoming easier and easier to forget.
vii. zibn
Donny found this whole Bear Jew thing all kinds of hilarious.
The first time he heard it the Basterds were camping out in the woods near Nantes in late spring, when Hirschberg and Kagan happened upon a lone German patroller skulking between the trees. They brought him to Aldo, who tried pumping him for information using Wicki as translator. The German was a hardass and refused to tell them anything, even under the threat of death; eventually Aldo lost all patience and called Donny over to finish him off. The German took one look at him swaggering towards them with his bloodstained bat, whispered, "Der Bär Juden," with something akin to wonder, and promptly pissed himself.
"Bär Juden," Wicki supplied, amused, noticing Donny's perplexed expression. "Bear Jew."
Bear Jew. Huh. Fancy that, he was so famous that the Germans had a nickname for him. He'd always assumed they referred to him among themselves as the Big Fucker with the Bat or something along those lines, but Bear Jew certainly did roll off the tongue better. The folks back home would have gotten a real kick out of it. And so the newly-christened Bear Jew assumed an appropriately bear-like snarl, raised his bat, and bludgeoned that Nazi until his body stopped twitching and just lay there brokenly, waiting to be scalped.
viii. akht
Donny had never realized his accent was annoying.
The revelation came to him one summer night as the Basterds squatted at an old abandoned farmhouse. A couple of them were off tracking down supplies in the nearby village, Raine was muttering to himself over a map of the area, Utivich was scribbling away in that little notebook he carried around with him everywhere, and the others were doing who the hell knew what. As for Donny, he had found a radio in the kitchen that the Krauts forgot to take away with them. The reception wasn't amazing, but as he fiddled with the dials, catching snatches of violin trios and Edith Piaf, he struck gold in the crackly broadcast of a Red Sox game. Having been Sox-deprived for too long, this quickly became the best day of his life.
Donny talked too much, he couldn't help it. He had an interior monologue going through his head at all times, and sometimes he would open his mouth and it would just come out, regardless of who was around to hear it. Back in Boston he used to take girls out to the movie house, and in between bouts of necking he would simultaneously watch the movie and run his mouth without even thinking about it. The smart ones made sure he was more focused on them than what was happening on the screen, but the fact of the matter was that it annoyed the shit out of people. Reu was so patient that they should have made a portrait of him out of stained glass and stuck it in the window of a church, but even he could barely stand going to Sox games with Donny, because when it came to the Boston Red Sox, Donny pulled out all the stops. He could remember every game he ever went to at Fenway, and considering he went every chance he got there were quite a few. He could expound upon every win and every loss and recite every player's list of stats. He had an opinion on each subsection of dirt on the diamond. Needless to say, Donny did not take the discovery of the latest game being broadcasted in France with quiet and dignified pleasure.
About forty-five minutes into his animated monologue, which had crossed the line into full-blown hysteria ages ago, Utivich finally snapped. Slamming his notebook onto the tabletop, the private burst out with all the righteous indignation of a college graduate with a degree in English, "Dammit, Sarge, would it kill you to pronounce your 'r's'?"
ix. nayn
Donny could take human life in the most terrible and gruesome of fashions without batting an eye, but he could not remember feeling guiltier than he did for forgetting Rosh Hashana.
None of the Basterds had remembered except for Utivich, anal son-of-a-gun, who kept track of the days in that little notebook of his. He brought it up around one of their nighttime campfires, self-consciously flippant, as if he didn't want anyone to feel bad for forgetting since they all had so much on their minds already and besides, it wasn't like the beginning of the Jewish New Year was that big of a deal anyways. But it was a big deal, and if the awkward silence that followed the pronouncement was any indication, Donny wasn't the only one who felt bad for forgetting. Zimmerman, who was sharing his log, nudged him with a muttered, "shana tova," which he returned quietly. His mind brought him back to Rosh Hashanas past, his mother forcing him and Adam into their best clothes and hustling the whole family off to Temple, where they packed like sardines into a tight pew and listened to the cantor intone prayers for what felt like eons. When he was a kid it hadn't meant too much to him, anxious as he was for the service to end so they could go home and eat the kugel, but now that he was sitting with a wet ass smack-dab in the middle of a French forest miles away from civilization, Donny couldn't help feeling somewhat bereft.
It came as somewhat of a relief when Aldo suggested stiffly that they do something to observe it, well, technically he gave them permission to observe it. The sun had set awhile ago and they had no wine to make Kiddush, but collectively they decided that they could still recite some prayers together. A feeling of camaraderie, entirely different from the one he got when they were all scalping Nazis, overcame Donny as he rooted around in his pack for his yarmulke and noticed the others doing the same; clearly he hadn't been the only one who had thought he might need it in France. Omar offered Aldo a makeshift yarmulke made from a square of canvas, and he indicated his cabby hat with a sardonic twist of his lips. Hirschberg had also thought to pack a prayer book so they elected him cantor. Flushed with the responsibility, he began the prayers, unsteadily at first but growing in confidence as he went along. Heads bowed and eyes closed, the small band of men raised in a soft rumble the holy words so deeply ingrained in their persons, which warmed them in a way the fire could not. For these few moments they gathered together not as Basterds but Jews, joining their brethren this night in welcoming the New Year. As he sat there, Donny mused idly that all they needed was someone to exclaim that he had packed a shofar and then this would be indistinguishable from a service at his home shul on North Russell Street. But what they had here already wasn't bad.
Barukh attah Adonai eloheinu melekh ha'olam, she'hecheyanu v'ki'yemanu v'higianu lazeman hazeh. Amein.
x. tsen
Donny was pleased to know that if he kicked the bucket tonight, at least he'd do so looking like a million bucks.
Let it never be said that the Bear Jew didn't clean up well, quite the opposite, in fact. He had gotten into the bath kvetching to high heaven, just to piss off Von Hammersmark and make sure the other guys didn't think he was enjoying scrubbing off years' worth of grime and dousing himself in flower-scented shit. But as he emerged, toweling himself off and breathing in the unfamiliar sweetness of soap, he felt more like the kid from Boston he used to be than he had in a long while. He'd never had occasion to wear a tuxedo before, which was too bad, because once he put it on and checked himself out in the mirror it was clear that Donny Donowitz had been born to spend every second of his life in a tuxedo. Add the sticky pomade slicking his hair back and he felt Italian enough to whip up a plate of spaghetti and-a meat-a-balls right on the spot. Antonio Margheriti. Margher-iti.
Bridget appeared in the mirror, a paragon of Aryan beauty, her statuesque figure swathed in midnight blue studded with rhinestones and a flower nestled in her blonde curls. "It is time." A cumbersome pause, and then she added grudgingly, "You look very handsome."
"Not so bad yourself, Goldilocks." Donny bent quickly to wrap his fingers around the comforting shape of dynamite still strapped securely around his ankle. Comforting and dynamite, two words he would never have associated with each other before tonight. He straightened to give his reflection a last once-over, ran his fingertips over his smoothed-back hair, thought about Le Gamaar erupting spectacularly in flames, smiled at his Italian cameraman doppelganger.
The end was near, and Donny was not afraid.
A/N2: If anyone is interested, the prayer at the end of the penultimate section translates to, "Blessed are You, Lord our God, Sovereign of the Universe, Who has kept us alive, Who has sustained us, and Who has enabled us to reach this festive occasion. Amen." Also the section headings are one through ten in Yiddish.