Chapter 17 A German Shepherd Named Hard Rain
Now that the weather had turned reliably colder, Jimmy and his “roommates” (as Annelies called Claude and Jolanda) were an almost nightly presence.
Usually, those three were the only ones speaking English in the café.
The ancient waitstaff knew Jimmy was the sole American in the place, as did Dagmar—the attractive but reserved manager.
Dagmar was a widow—the age of Jimmy’s mom, he would have guessed.
Dagmar had made a point of inquiring about the foreign students’ respective nationalities; she was always welcoming to them, in her aloof way.
“Dagmar doesn’t choose the music—she looks like she doesn’t even hear the music,” Jolanda had told Jimmy and Claude. Jolanda was steadfast in seeking to correctly attach the blame for the café music selections.
“Dagmar looks like she’s in mourning, or she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” Claude said to Jimmy and Jolanda.
“You keep repeating ‘poor Chantal’ in your sleep, Claude—you are on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” Jolanda told him.
“This might be why I recognize Dagmar’s symptoms,” Claude said.
“Dagmar is pretty, but she seems sad.” Jimmy regretted saying this as soon as it left his mouth. Jolanda bent a teaspoon into one of her U-shaped handcuffs, causing Claude to close his eyes.
“Get over your attraction to sad, Jimmy—especially to older women who are sad,” Jolanda told him.
“Annelies isn’t sad, and I’m attracted to her,” Jimmy declared.
“Annelies is beyond you—you should get over her, too,” Jolanda said.
Dagmar was watching the TV over the bar; she only once interrupted her gaze at the screen to look at Jimmy.
“Dagmar doesn’t even notice the music,” Jolanda was complaining to Claude and Jimmy.
The music at this moment was Bob Dylan. James Winslow was thinking that he couldn’t get enough of Bob Dylan—not in Vienna.
Claude silently mouthed the words to “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which Claude (like everyone, of a certain age) knew by heart.
Jimmy saw Dagmar whisper to one of the old waiters; it looked like she was sending him to the kitchen, but before the waiter tottered through the swinging doors, the old guy gave Jimmy a despairing look.
“Dagmar may not even notice the music,” Claude observed, “but she has noticed what’s on the news tonight. It looks like the U.S. and the Soviets have launched their missiles, and we have only minutes—maybe only seconds—left to live.”
“For Christ’s sake, Claude!” Jolanda started to say, but she stopped.
The three friends saw the shaking waiter; he’d almost immediately emerged from the swinging doors with the tattooed woman dishwasher.
Dagmar was leading the muscular dishwasher to the students’ table.
“That the ink addict likes Bob Dylan somewhat redeems her,” Jolanda was saying.
Everyone crowded around the TV at the bar had turned to look at the foreign students. Dagmar’s hand signal to the bartender was clear; she drew her index finger across her throat, and the bartender killed the music. This was the first time Jimmy didn’t hear “Blowin’ in the Wind” to the end.
“Washington and Moscow are gone,” Claude announced.
“Paris, London, New York—all obliterated. We’re only alive because Vienna isn’t a strategic target.
We’re going to die slowly, from the nuclear fallout!
” Claude cried, giving a stricken look at the darkened windows.
“The radioactive particles are already in the atmosphere.”
“Jesus Mary Joseph, Claude—you doom fucker!” Jolanda said.
When the widow spoke, she looked at Jimmy. “You should know something,” Dagmar said. All Jimmy could think was how Irmgard would have said this. (“You something know should,” in Irmgard’s word order.)
“Es ist etwas passiert.” (“Something happened,” the tattooed woman dishwasher told James Winslow.)
“Wo?” Claude cried, jumping to his feet. (“Where?”)
“Not in France,” Dagmar assured him.
“In Dallas—to your president,” the ink addict told Jimmy.
The way the widow whispered made her hard to understand. “Er wurde erschossen,” Dagmar said.
“Kennedy is shot?” Jimmy asked; he couldn’t think.
“Er ist tot,” Dagmar whispered.
“JFK is dead?” Jimmy asked; he could barely speak.
“Ja, tot. Es tut mir leid,” Dagmar confirmed, in her managerial fashion. (“Yes, dead. I’m sorry,” she’d said.) “Hildegund speaks better English than I do,” Dagmar told Jimmy, pushing the tattooed woman dishwasher closer to the foreign students’ table.
“How can one person, the same person, like Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley?” Jolanda asked Hildegund. Jolanda had stood up to make sure Hildegund knew how tall she was, but Claude and Jimmy noticed that Hildegund was almost Jolanda’s height. Hildegund’s tattoos were of gargoyles and other demons.
“I like the Beatles, too,” Hildegund told Jolanda.
“We’ve noticed,” Jolanda said. “How can anyone like Elvis at all?” Jolanda asked her.
“I only like ‘It’s Now or Never’—just one song,” the dishwasher said.
“It’s definitely a theme with you,” Jolanda told her.
Claude and Jimmy could see where this was going—no kneecapping.
“The dog in the alley—the German shepherd you smoke with,” Jolanda was saying. “That’s your dog, isn’t it?” she asked Hildegund.
Jolanda had never wanted to kneecap the ink addict—only sleep with her. “She’s my dog—for now, anyway,” the tattooed woman dishwasher told Jolanda, as Claude and Jimmy made their way to the bar.
“What’s her name?” Jolanda asked Hildegund.
“Hard Rain—it’s from the Bob Dylan song,” Hildegund said.
“I know where it’s from,” Jolanda told her, but Claude and Jimmy were caught up in the news from Dallas.
On the black-and-white TV above the bar, they kept showing the footage of JFK’s motorcade approaching Dealey Plaza and the chaos that ensued after the shooting; there followed footage of Parkland Hospital, where the president was pronounced dead.
James Winslow knew he should call his mother, but it was his grandfather Jimmy wished he could talk to. When the roommates got back to Frau Holzinger’s apartment, Jimmy didn’t call home; he didn’t want to talk about JFK. The living room was in darkness, the TV turned off.
“Irmgard must have gone to bed,” was all Jimmy could say.
“Or she went out,” Jolanda said. “You can still smell her perfume.”
“Irmgard wears perfume?” Claude had asked.
“When she goes out, Claude. I’ve seen her all dolled up when she was going somewhere,” Jolanda said. “I’ve smelled her perfume before.”
That was when James Winslow knew he’d seen Irmgard “all dolled up, when she was going somewhere”—he’d smelled her perfume before, too. (He hadn’t just dreamed this when he slept through From Here to Eternity.)
“Once, when I had to get up to pee at night, a woman’s clothes were strewn in the hall, and the smell of perfume was very strong, and someone was taking a bath in the bathtub—not Siegfried, not at two or three in the morning. It must have been Irmgard!” Claude declared.
“I don’t like to think of you getting up to pee at night, Claude,” Jolanda told him. But that was when Jimmy realized he’d heard someone taking a bath in the middle of the night before; he hadn’t just imagined he heard the bathtub filling or draining in the early-morning hours.
“There are bullet holes in my bedroom wall,” Jimmy said to Jolanda and Claude. “Fr?ulein Eissler showed me. The bullet holes are behind the ugly painting. Maybe the Soviets shot someone against the wall when they occupied this district.”
“For Christ’s sake, show us the wall!” Jolanda cried.
“Maybe all three of us shouldn’t be in one bedroom—not at this hour of the night,” Claude said, for no discernible reason.
“We’re Jimmy’s roommates, Claude—we’re not visitors, we live here!” Jolanda cried. “We three could fuck one another in the same bed, if we wanted to!”
“I wasn’t thinking of that—I was just speculating!
” Claude cried. The friends took a long look at the bullet holes.
There were only three holes, close together, in a diagonal line; the holes were of a circumference slightly bigger than a pencil, maybe more between a pencil and an adult index finger.
The holes were chest-high to Jimmy, but he was thinking the bullets would have struck Jolanda in her lower abdomen.
There was no imagining what Claude was speculating.
The concept of the three of them fucking one another in the same bed must have been more disturbing to Claude than the bullet holes, which he appeared to be examining closely.
“They look like bullet holes, but if someone was shot against this wall, where’s the blood?
” Claude asked. “If a person had been shot here,” he speculated, standing in front of the holes, “wouldn’t the bullets have passed through the body?
Wouldn’t the wall be spattered with blood? ”
“Maybe they wallpapered over the bloodstains, Claude,” Jolanda said.
“Then wouldn’t they have bothered to put some plaster in the bullet holes? Wouldn’t they have wallpapered over the bullet holes, too?” Claude kept speculating, in his irritating way.
“Are you saying someone just shot the wall, Claude?” Jolanda asked him. “Why would anyone, even a trigger-happy Soviet, just shoot a wall?”
“I’m just saying that’s what it looks like,” Claude protested. From this impasse, the foreign students’ conversation degenerated.
Jolanda complained it was impossible for her to have sex with Hildegund. There was simply nowhere they could do it. Hildegund had told Jolanda that the dishwasher’s place was off-limits for their sleeping together. Hildegund lived with “a bunch of barbarians,” or so she’d told Jolanda.
“Do you think you should have sex with someone who lives with barbarians?” Claude asked Jolanda, who ignored him.
“On the other hand, if Hildegund comes here, what do we do with her dog?” Jolanda asked. “Where does Hard Rain go?”