“With Ottochen?” she says in a near whisper. “What do you think’s happened? Nothing has happened, there is no Ottochen anymore, that’s all!”

“Oh!’ the man says, just a deep “Oh!” from the core of his heart. Without knowing what he’s doing, he lets go of his wife’s head and reaches for the letter. His eyes stare at the lines without being able to decipher them.

Then the woman grabs it from him. Her mood has swung round, furiously she rips the letter into scraps and shreds and fragments and she shouts into his face: “What do you even want to read that filth for, those common lies they always write? That he died a hero’s death for Führer and Fatherland? That he was an exemplary soldier and comrade? Do you want to hear that from them, when you know yourself that Ottochen liked nothing better than fiddling about with his radio kits, and that he cried when he was called away to be a soldier? How often he used to say to me when he was recruited that he would give his right hand to be able to get away from them? And now he’s supposed to be an exemplary soldier, and died a hero’s death? Lies, all a pack of lies! But that’s what you get from your wretched war, you and that Führer of yours!”

Now she’s standing in front of him, the woman, so much shorter than he is, her eyes sparkling with fury.

“Me and my Führer?” he mumbles, stunned by this attack. “Since when is he my Führer? I’m not even in the Party, just in the Arbeitsfront, and everyone has to join that. As for voting for him, I only did that once, and so did you.”*

He says it in his slow and cumbersome manner, not so much to defend himself as to clarify the facts. He can’t understand what has induced her to mount this sudden attack on him. They were always of one mind…

But she says heatedly, “What gives you the right to be the man in the house and determine everything? If I want so much as a space for my potatoes in the cellar, it has to be the way you want it. And in something as important as this, it’s you who made the wrong decision. But then you creep around everywhere in carpet slippers, you want your peace and quiet and that’s all; you want never to come to anyone’s attention. So you did the same as they all did, and when they yelled: ‘Führer, give us your orders, we will obey!’ you went with them like a sheep. And the rest of us had to follow you! But now Ottochen’s dead, and no Führer in the world can bring him back, and nor can you!”

He listened to her without answering a word. He had never been a man for quarreling and bickering, and he could also tell that it was her pain speaking in her. He was almost glad to have her scolding him, because it meant she wasn’t giving in to her grief. The only thing he said by way of reply was: “One of us will have to tell Trudel.”

Trudel was Ottochen’s girlfriend, almost his fiancée; she called them Mother and Father. She often dropped in on them for a chat in the evening, even now, with Ottochen away. By day she worked in a uniform factory.

The mention of Trudel straightaway set Anna Quangel off on a different tack. She glanced at the gleaming clock on the mantel and asked, “Will you have time before your shift?”

“I’m on from one till eleven today,” he said. “I’ve got time.”

“Good,” she said. “Then go, but just ask her to come. Don’t say anything about Ottochen. I’ll tell her myself. Your dinner’ll be ready by midday.”

“I’ll ask her to come round tonight,” he said, but he didn’t leave yet, but looked into his wife’s jaundiced, suffering face. She returns his look, and for a moment they look at each other, two people who have been married for almost thirty years, always harmoniously, he quiet and silent, she bringing a bit of life to the place.

But however much they now look at each other, they can find no words for this thing that has happened, and so he nods and goes out.

She hears the apartment door close. No sooner is she certain he is gone than she turns back towards the sewing machine and sweeps up the scraps of the fateful letter. She tries to put them back together, but quickly sees that it will take too long now. She has to get dinner ready. She scoops the pieces into the envelope and slides it into her hymnbook. In the afternoon, when Otto is at work, she will have time to fit them together, glue them down.