Chap­ter 18 begins with Howard and Hel­ga final­ly alone togeth­er, nav­i­gat­ing an awk­ward sense of shy­ness. Despite their years of celiba­cy and advanc­ing age, Howard feels a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that he can­not eas­i­ly over­come, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the pres­ence of Hel­ga, who car­ries a youth­ful and radi­ant demeanor. The two engage in a con­ver­sa­tion, con­duct­ed in Ger­man, where they attempt to recon­nect emo­tion­al­ly and bridge the gap of their long sep­a­ra­tion. In a moment of light-heart­ed­ness, Hel­ga teas­es Howard by chal­leng­ing him to define his polit­i­cal beliefs based on the patri­ot­ic sym­bols he has absent-mind­ed­ly doo­dled on the win­dow. Howard, clear­ly uncom­fort­able with the polit­i­cal ques­tion, redi­rects the con­ver­sa­tion to music, men­tion­ing his fond­ness for Bing Crosby’s “White Christ­mas.” This humor­ous shift in focus reveals the com­plex­i­ties of their sit­u­a­tion, where past bur­dens and present real­i­ties cre­ate an uncom­fort­able but deeply human moment between the two.

As they con­tin­ue to share small, inti­mate moments, Hel­ga express­es con­cern for her family—particularly her par­ents and her sis­ter, Resi Noth. Howard, touched by her wor­ry, recalls a poignant mem­o­ry from Feb­ru­ary 12, 1945, the last day he saw the Noth fam­i­ly. He remem­bers vis­it­ing the Noths’ well-main­tained white house, which stood resilient on the out­skirts of war-torn Berlin. Dressed in his Free Amer­i­can Corps uni­form, a group he had helped form but which had ulti­mate­ly failed in its mis­sion, Howard had intend­ed to say his final good­byes. His love for the Noths is evi­dent as he recalls the chaot­ic scene unfold­ing out­side, with Pol­ish and Russ­ian women haul­ing away fur­ni­ture, while Wern­er Noth, Helga’s father, fran­ti­cal­ly tries to save a beau­ti­ful blue vase from being dropped by a slave. This vignette cap­tures the con­trast between the triv­ial and the trag­ic, as the fam­i­ly clings to what lit­tle beau­ty remains in their crum­bling world.

The image of Werner’s intense reac­tion to the vase’s near destruc­tion serves as a pow­er­ful sym­bol of the chaot­ic and bru­tal envi­ron­ment in which they lived. Despite the exter­nal vio­lence and despair, Wern­er insists that oth­ers appre­ci­ate the vase, an act that sym­bol­izes the des­per­ate cling­ing to beau­ty amidst the over­whelm­ing destruc­tion sur­round­ing them. Howard, aware of the futil­i­ty of their sit­u­a­tion, express­es his intent to leave and head for the front, a moment of mutu­al under­stand­ing and silent accep­tance between him and the fam­i­ly. As they bid farewell, the con­ver­sa­tion takes a more per­son­al turn when Wern­er directs Howard to deal with Resi’s dog, a pet that can­not accom­pa­ny them on their jour­ney. This task fur­ther per­son­al­izes their grief, as it under­scores the trag­ic and absurd real­i­ty of war—where even the sim­plest of attach­ments must be aban­doned. Wern­er also com­pli­ments Howard’s uni­form, a sub­tle acknowl­edg­ment of the com­plex­i­ty of their rela­tion­ship, shaped by years of enmi­ty and war but now tem­pered with a begrudg­ing respect.

In the final moments of their inter­ac­tion, Wern­er com­mu­ni­cates a sense of ambiva­lence toward Howard. Despite the long-stand­ing ani­mos­i­ty between them, root­ed in their dif­fer­ing nation­al­i­ties and the scars of war, Wern­er express­es a cer­tain appre­ci­a­tion for Howard’s role in help­ing to anchor him dur­ing these tur­bu­lent times. This moment of con­nec­tion, fraught with lay­ers of his­to­ry, duty, and regret, paints a nuanced por­trait of the human con­di­tion in times of extreme hard­ship. The chap­ter, through its emo­tion­al exchanges about loy­al­ty, duty, and the absur­di­ty of war, cap­tures the com­plex and often con­tra­dic­to­ry nature of human rela­tion­ships amidst the loom­ing shad­ow of destruc­tion. It is a poignant reminder that even in the dark­est moments, indi­vid­u­als are capa­ble of find­ing brief moments of under­stand­ing and con­nec­tion, even if those moments are fleet­ing and marked by history’s harsh­est real­i­ties.