Chapter 19 Der Vorschlag #3
Jolanda was complaining that she hadn’t officially broken up with Hildegund, and it didn’t feel right that Hildegund hadn’t officially broken up with her.
Jimmy and Claude told Jolanda that the breakup seemed official to them.
She’d called Hildegund an asshole. Hildegund had called them foreigners, in the superior-sounding way the Viennese say the word.
This was a breakup—official enough for Claude and Jimmy.
Jolanda was in search of a bigger reason, or more reasons.
The Beatles’ “Love Me Do” was of no help to Jolanda, who was in knots over the death of love.
When the couple with the beagle left, the students were surprised to see Dagmar with Hard Rain.
The widow manager was table-hopping, introducing the café customers to the German shepherd—as if Hard Rain were her dog.
When Dagmar got to the students’ table, the widow was taken aback by how happy Hard Rain was to see them.
Dagmar was less aloof than they’d ever seen her; she sat down at their table with them and told them how happy she was that she’d finally fired her “evil dishwasher.” The widow manager had wanted to fire Hildegund for a long time; she’d kept the evil one in the kitchen only because she was worried about what would happen to Hard Rain.
This resonated with Jimmy and his roommates—not least with Jolanda, who started to sob.
Dagmar then told them that the evil dishwasher’s husband and his gang of thugs were “a bunch of barbarians.” Dagmar further explained this was why Hildegund brought Hard Rain to the café—because her husband and his pals abused the dog.
It had been Hildegund who wouldn’t allow Hard Rain to hang out in the café; she’d told Dagmar that the café life would spoil the dog.
“Hildegund has a husband?” Jolanda blubbered.
Hard Rain put her head in Jolanda’s lap to console her.
Jimmy and Claude did their best to explain the situation to Dagmar, who—only that day—had seen Hildegund with Hard Rain in the alley when Dagmar was taking out the garbage.
Hildegund was beating Hard Rain with the short leash; this was after the evil one had chained up the poor dog.
“Hildegund probably thought we were spoiling Hard Rain to let her sleep in a bed!” Claude cried. Jolanda was still sobbing. Liszt’s Liebestr?ume might have had something to do with it. Jolanda was in no mood for love dreams, not after the Beatles’ “Love Me Do.”
Dagmar had not only fired her dishwasher; she’d taken Hard Rain away from Hildegund.
Dagmar sent Hildegund home with the chain—telling the bitch to chain up her barbarians.
Dagmar told Hildegund she would report her to the police for animal abuse if the dishwasher didn’t leave Hard Rain in the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik.
“I had to wait for the beagle to leave before I showed Hard Rain around,” Dagmar told the foreign students. “Hard Rain doesn’t like male dogs. She hates dogs with balls.”
“I can relate to that,” Jolanda said, sounding like herself again; Jimmy and Claude hoped her breakup with Hildegund was now official. Surely Jolanda thought the husband was a big enough reason.
The anger Hard Rain felt for dogs with balls made her less than ideal for a dog who hangs out in a café, Dagmar admitted.
It was awkward to warn dog owners of dogs with balls, but the real problem was that Hard Rain always knew which dogs had them.
Dagmar speculated that Hard Rain must have had a traumatic experience, “perhaps a dog with balls who was trying to hump her.” One look at Jolanda told Jimmy and Claude that Jolanda could relate to this, but Jolanda didn’t say anything.
Jimmy, Claude, and Jolanda knew there might be another factor that made Hard Rain less than ideal for a dog who hangs out in a café.
If Hard Rain had a thunderstorm issue, this could amount to a bigger problem than dogs with balls.
There was no bathtub at the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik, where the foreign students were listening to Hard Rain’s song—Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.
” The three friends hoped the timing of the Dylan song wasn’t prophetic.
Dagmar was being candid with the students about her situation; she lived with her mother (like Dagmar, a widow) and her mother’s aged schnauzer. The dog was an old male with balls. “There’s no cutting his balls off, short of killing him,” Dagmar explained.
“Hard Rain can sleep with us,” Claude said immediately.
“But there’s something you should know about the dear girl,” Jolanda began, uncharacteristically taking Dagmar’s hand.
“It may be hearsay,” Claude interjected; he was scratching Hard Rain behind her ears.
This was when the foreign students brought the widow manager into their confidence, because she had confided in them.
No doubt Claude was starved for optimism, because he instantly and stupidly became overly optimistic.
There’s no other explanation for why he grasped Dagmar’s other hand, the one Jolanda wasn’t holding.
“I’m sure you don’t think of remarrying.
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to!
” Claude suddenly said to the widow manager.
“But have you ever thought of just doing it with a younger man—maybe even having his child?” Claude asked.
Poor Dagmar. She withdrew her hands from Claude and Jolanda.
“I’m just a dog person, Claude—I don’t do children,” Dagmar said. “Let’s just do the best job we can with Hard Rain.”
Not only was the widow his mother’s age, but Jimmy saw something of his mom’s aloofness in her. Dagmar had a similar opaqueness, and an obdurate nature—not unlike Honor Winslow, who was very resistant to change.
Dagmar continued her table-hopping, but she’d left Hard Rain at the foreign students’ table.
Hard Rain’s head was back in Jolanda’s lap.
Jolanda was bent over her, kissing her, while the shepherd’s big tail thumped the floor.
“No dishwasher will touch you again—I promise,” Jolanda told the dear girl.
“You hear thunder, you see lightning—you come find me. Forget about the bathtub,” Jolanda said to Hard Rain.
“And what’s all this about balls?” Jolanda asked Hard Rain, who wagged her tail harder.
“Don’t pay any attention to dogs with balls—just ignore those dogs, and their balls,” Jolanda advised the German shepherd.
Jimmy and Claude didn’t think that ignoring dogs with balls was advice Hard Rain would be likely to follow.
“If those dogs mess with you, bite their balls off,” Jolanda went on saying to the dutiful-looking dog. “But try ignoring them first.”
Jimmy and Claude just wished they knew what Hard Rain would do with respect to thunder and lightning or dogs with balls.
She was a German shepherd of a certain age, and with a complicated history.
The business at hand would determine what Hard Rain would do.
Jimmy watched Dagmar, who was still table-hopping.
Jimmy saw that Claude was back to staring at the postcards of the Karlskirche, where the young Hedy Lamarr married an Austrofascist. And Jolanda, Jimmy and Claude could see, was engaged in assembling her own and Hard Rain’s future—after their evil dishwasher.
Jolanda held Hard Rain’s big head in her hands.
As an emerging writer, James Winslow understood this moment in the story.
What Hard Rain would do was out of Jolanda’s hands.
Like the widow manager, making her rounds—like Jimmy’s mom, hell-bent on saving her only child—Hard Rain would do what she was inclined to do.
You couldn’t reconstruct her. Hard Rain would tell her own story.
“Der Vorschlag, the proposal—whatever you call it, it’s not entirely in my mother’s hands,” Jimmy told Fr?ulein Eissler, when he met with her.
He’d shown her his mom’s letter. He’d described for her the duplicate postcards of the Karlskirche, his messages to his mother and Chantal.
(He’d already airmailed the postcards to New Hampshire.)
Fr?ulein Eissler read Honor Winslow’s letter twice. She nodded, as if in agreement, when he told her what he’d written on his postcards, but she wondered why he had chosen to send them pictures of the Karlskirche. “Hedy Lamarr was married there,” Jimmy said, as if Annelies didn’t know.
“Everyone knows,” she told him.
Jimmy wished his tutor would say something, now that he’d shown her everything he knew, but she sat beside him on the settee—their love seat by the glass-topped table—as if she were waiting for him to show her more.
Jimmy was staring at her feet in his white athletic socks when he said: “It comes down to how determined my mother is, when there’s something she wants, or it’s something she believes in, and how Esther always goes along with it—whatever it is. ”
Annelies made no response; she waited, as if she knew that Jimmy had more to tell her.
James Winslow was aware of what he didn’t say.
He’d learned something from his mother’s letter; he hadn’t known why his mom wanted him to keep wrestling, how “the right kind of knee injury could be useful.” Jimmy was considering that Esther must have known this.
And if Esther knew, wouldn’t Fr?ulein Eissler know, too?
“What it comes down to, Jimmy, is how much you want to control your own destiny,” Annelies said. “We should revisit the idea of Mieke, Jolanda’s former girlfriend—the lesbian who wants to try it with a guy.”
Naturally, Jimmy remembered how repelled Annelies had been by the thought of Jolanda holding Mieke’s head.
(“There’s a more natural way to get a girlfriend pregnant, Jimmy,” Annelies had told him.) Now, given the dearth of potential girlfriends, it seemed Fr?ulein Eissler was considering an unnatural solution to Jimmy’s predicament.
But she didn’t linger over Jolanda and Mieke; in her fashion, Fr?ulein Eissler just moved on.
There was the “ordeal” of Christmas in a Catholic country to get through, Annelies reminded Jimmy.
And before Christmas, she told him, she had to “suffer through” eight days of fried food.
She meant Hanukkah, Fr?ulein Eissler explained.
Before Christmas, there were eight days of Hanukkah—commemorating the Maccabean Revolt and the rededication of the Temple in 164 B.C.
, following its desecration by the Greeks.
“This is how Jewish people have a good time, Jimmy,” Annelies told him.
“We celebrate our survival after someone has desecrated us.”