Another ritual Jimmy falls into in Vienna is coffee with Jolanda, Claude, and their friends at the Kaffeehaus Nachtmusik. It is from the black and white TV there that Jimmy learns of JFK’s assassination. The proprietor, a handsome woman in her 40s called Dagmar, on whom Jimmy has a crush, sends the dishwasher Hildegund over to Jimmy’s table to commiserate: Jimmy is the sole American regular in the café.

Hildegund is tall and tattooed and ends up showing them her rescue dog, a German Shepherd she has named “Hard Rain” after the Bob Dylan song. Hildegund keeps Hard Rain chained in the alley behind the café as Hard Rain has abandonment issues and cannot stay without her. Hard Rain is also afraid of thunderstorms, which she can only withstand if she stays in a bathtub. Further, Hard Rain hates male dogs, especially those who try to hump her.

After Jimmy and the others get home, Jolanda expresses her attraction to Hildegund, wondering if she can bring Hildegund and Hard Rain to the apartment. Claude and Jimmy joke about Jolanda wanting Hard Rain to watch while she and Hildegund have sex. Jimmy and Claude agree to hide Hard Rain in the apartment while Jolanda and Hildegund get intimate.

Late at night, Jimmy resumes work on his novel, tentatively titled The Dickens Man. The novel is about an asexual bachelor English teacher called “Teacher Tom” who saves lost and depressed students by gifting them the right Dickens book. While the protagonist is modelled after Thomas, Jimmy’s grandfather, the asexual part comes from his mother, Honor. When Jimmy hears Irmgard around the apartment, he calls her to his room to ask about the bullet holes. Irmgard claims the holes were made by a Russian tenant so they could place poisoned sugar in them for the rats in the walls. The rats did not die inside the walls but were driven out by the thirst from the sugar into the sewers, where their stomachs exploded from the poison. When Jimmy asks Irmgard why the Russian needed to shoot holes in the wall instead of using a drill, Irmgard sighs that this is a house without a father, and thus, missing a toolbox.

Jimmy suddenly notices Irmgard is speaking perfect English. He asks her the reason and she finally drops the act she has been putting on for a few weeks. She reveals that Honor called her to check on Jimmy and suggested Irmgard get close to Jimmy and have his baby to save him from the draft. Irmgard tried to seduce Jimmy but has to confess that she has no interest in having another child. Jimmy realizes that the movie-watching routine with Irmgard is now over. He is reminded of Irmgard’s dislike of Jewish people and uses it as a reason to hate her. Jimmy is dismayed that his hate for Irmgard coexists with his desire for her body.

Jimmy wakes up to a commotion the next morning. Annelies has arrived at the apartment on a non-designated day, sparking objections from Irmgard and her mother. Annelies enters Jimmy’s room and closes its semi-opaque, frosted-glass door. She tells Jimmy she is there to check on how he is doing after receiving news of his president’s death.

However, she also gets into Jimmy’s bed and pulls up the covers to her neck, so that anyone watching from outside the frosted door would get the impression that she was naked under the clothes. Annelies tells Jimmy she wants Frau Holzinger—Irmgard’s mother—to think she and Jimmy are sleeping together. When Jimmy says he hates Irmgard for her Judenhass—a German term meaning “Jew-hatred”—Annelies tells Jimmy not to despise Irmgard as she has inherited antisemitism from her mother’s generation.

As Annelies intended, the news of Jimmy sleeping with his tutor reaches the dean of the IES. Coached by Annelies, Jimmy argues that Annelies only got under the covers because the Holzingers keep their apartment extremely cold. He also intentionally reveals that the Holzingers are biased against Jewish people. The institute instructs the Holzingers to crank up the heat and tone down their antisemitism, making Jimmy’s life in the apartment a little easier.

Annelies continues to visit Jimmy to coach him in German, even as Jimmy’s crush on her intensifies. Annelies grows fond of Hard Rain, whom Jimmy and Claude hide in their rooms, three to four nights a week. One night, there is a thunderstorm, with Jimmy fearing Hard Rain will jump in the bathtub—as is her habit, per Hildegund—and make her presence known to the Holzingers. However, Hard Rain goes through the thunderstorm without much incident.

Meanwhile, Jolanda tells the group that her relationship with Hildegund is going sour because of Hildegund’s crude attitude to lovemaking. Jolanda wants to leave Hildegund but does not want to lose Hard Rain, whom she has come to love. One night, Jolanda hides from Hildegund in Jimmy’s room with Claude, Jimmy, and Hard Rain. Hildegund comes looking for her dog, finds everyone hiding from her, and takes away Hard Rain by force, calling the group “foreigners,” which in Vienna is an insult.

With Hildegund turning hostile, the friends can longer hang out at their old café. Annelies urges them to seek out a more liberal coffee house, but Jimmy doesn’t warm up to her options. Annelies also asks the friends to intervene in Siegfried’s upbringing: She believes the child is being neglected and deserves a positive “international” influence. Jimmy finds Annelies’s ask excessive, wondering how he can help the sullen Siegfried. A window for influence opens up when Siegfried begins bringing the friends their mail. The mail is mostly for Jimmy.

One morning, Siegfried brings a letter from Jimmy’s mother that is unusually thick, prompting Claude to exclaim that the letter may contain “Der Vorschlag” (235) or the proposal on safeguarding Jimmy through the Vietnam war. Siegfried is startled by Claude’s loud voice; Claude distracts him by asking him if he would like a “Hundin” (236) or a female dog (perhaps referring to Hard Rain). Siegfried says he would like that and runs off.

Meanwhile, as Jimmy had expected from its size, Honor’s letter contains a picture of Chantal looking beautiful. Claude insists Jimmy read the letter aloud, taking on Honor’s voice. Jimmy reads the letter, in which Honor suggests that Jimmy get together with Chantal so she can have his baby. Although Chantal had previously insisted that she only wanted to marry a Frenchman who did not want children, she is starting to see that path is difficult. Chantal may now be more amenable to getting together with Jimmy. Claude startles at the mention of Chantal’s preference for Frenchmen, wondering why Jimmy hasn’t introduced him. Jolanda asks Claude to stop staring at Chantal’s photo. After Jimmy finishes the letter, Claude and Jolanda are silent for once, surprised at the unconventional approach of Jimmy’s family.

The three friends lie in Jimmy’s bed, lost in their thoughts, when Siegfried enters the room to show them on old photo of his family. The photo is of a young Frau Holzinger, a preteen Irmgard, and their dog, a German shepherd. Siegfried wonders if the dog is a female, like the one Claude had mentioned. Jolanda thinks that it is a possibility. When Siegfried’s grandmother can be heard shouting for him, Jolanda advises Siegfried to put the picture back. Siegfried nods and leaves the room.

That evening, the friends visit their old coffee house, Jolanda hoping for a more civil closure with Hildegund. She learns from Dagmar, the café’s proprietor, that Hildegund has been fired. Dagmar insisted Hildegund leave Hard Rain with her as Hildegund’s husband and his friends previously abused the dog. Claude and Jolanda volunteer to take Hard Rain. Dagmar happily agrees, but when Claude asks her if she can have a baby to help them out, Dagmar says she doesn’t “do children” (247). The friends tell Jimmy that Mieke may be his only way out.

It turns out that Dagmar said no to Claude because she had assumed it was him propositioning her. When she understands that Claude was offering to get to know Jimmy, Dagmar is more amenable. She begins flirting with Jimmy, but by now, Jimmy is deeply in love with Annelies. Further, though Jimmy finds Dagmar desirable, at 44 she is exactly the same age as Honor. The fact that he wants someone who could be his mother confuses Jimmy.

Meanwhile, Honor’s missives intensify, suggesting that if he doesn’t fool around with Chantal, she and her sisters may be forced to save him from the draft by busting his kneecap or severing his index finger. Jimmy begins to fear that Honor will send Chantal to Vienna to seduce him. Thomas is unaware of his youngest daughter’s manipulations and sends Jimmy a postcard from an old production of King Lear. Irmgard unexpectedly becomes friends with Jimmy and the others, inviting Jimmy to watch Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal with her. In the movie, a knight plays chess with Death to defer his own demise. Watching the film, Irmgard tells Jimmy that Honor is right in wanting to save him from the horrors of war. Irmgard’s perspective makes Jimmy more sympathetic to Honor.

Jimmy finally writes to Chantal, but to invite her to Vienna to meet Claude. He also writes back to Honor saying that he knows if he has a child, they will have many maternal figures in the Winslow sisters. Claude and Jolanda go home for Christmas. Jimmy takes up wrestling again to pass the time, and meets Leo Spiegel, a Russian wrestler, at a gym called Turnehalle Leopold. Leo, a featherweight, doesn’t wrestle competitively anymore but agrees to train Jimmy along with two Israeli and two Soviet wrestlers, all free-stylists like Jimmy. Jimmy hangs out with the wrestlers after their sessions, even after Claude and Jolanda return.

Claude and Jolanda pitch in with Dagmar to have a pen built for Hard Rain in the alley behind the café. Housed in the safe pen during nights, Hard Rain becomes more relaxed, often walking up to the café’s patrons for petting. At the Holzinger house, Siegfried has become fixated with the idea of getting a dog.

Meanwhile, one night, Annelies takes Jimmy to a distant neighborhood to show him something. They wait at a street-corner till they spot Irmgard coming out of a hotel used by sex workers. It is clear that Irmgard engages in sex work for money. Irmgard spots Jimmy and introduces her friend to him as “prostituierte” (267). Jimmy finally understands why Irmgard had muttered “not like Donna Reed” (267) during From Here to Eternity: She had meant to say she was a real sex worker, unlike someone playing a part. Jimmy is filled with conflicting emotions on his walk back with Annelies after learning about Irmgard.