In this chap­ter, the nar­ra­tor, along with Resi, returns home after dark, plan­ning to spend the night at a hotel but instead finds them­selves drawn to their home. Resi express­es her excite­ment about final­ly hav­ing a house, while the nar­ra­tor reflects on the chal­lenges of turn­ing a house into a home. Their return is over­shad­owed by the dis­cov­ery that some­one has drawn a swasti­ka next to the nar­ra­tor’s name on their mail­box, indi­cat­ing a dis­turb­ing resur­gence of noto­ri­ety and hos­til­i­ty sur­round­ing him.

The nar­ra­tor express­es trep­i­da­tion at the poten­tial dan­ger of return­ing home, recall­ing past con­tent­ment and lament­ing the intru­sion of renewed atten­tion from those seek­ing to harm him. Resi sug­gests he should leave for anoth­er coun­try, but he ques­tions where he would go. Their inter­ac­tion is inter­rupt­ed by a rude, aggres­sive man who rec­og­nizes the nar­ra­tor, Howard W. Camp­bell, and con­fronts him, pre­sent­ing an arti­cle that reveals the Israeli gov­ern­men­t’s request for Campbell’s extra­di­tion for his alleged com­plic­i­ty in the Holo­caust.

This vio­lent con­fronta­tion esca­lates as the man phys­i­cal­ly assaults the nar­ra­tor, pun­ish­ing him in the name of his fall­en friends from the war—Irving Buchanon, Ansel Brew­er, and Eddie McCar­ty. The man express­es his rage against Camp­bel­l’s per­ceived escape from jus­tice, attribut­ing to him the loss­es that his friends suf­fered dur­ing the war. After suf­fer­ing a severe injury, the nar­ra­tor los­es con­scious­ness, only to awak­en lat­er in a damp room filled with Nazi mem­o­ra­bil­ia and Resi’s pres­ence.

The after­math reveals the emo­tion­al tur­moil the nar­ra­tor faces, liv­ing with the weight of his past and the fear of being hunt­ed for it. The chap­ter con­cludes with a hint of dark humor as the nar­ra­tor, now in com­pro­mis­ing cir­cum­stances, makes a joke about hav­ing joined the Hot­ten­tots, illus­trat­ing cop­ing mech­a­nisms amid trau­ma and irony in a tense envi­ron­ment. The chap­ter encap­su­lates themes of guilt, mem­o­ry, and the haunt­ing reper­cus­sions of war on per­son­al iden­ti­ty.