In Chap­ter 42, the nar­ra­tor climbs to their attic, tak­ing in the sharp, cold air that fills the space, and reflect­ing on the unset­tling shift in their sur­round­ings. The famil­iar smells of coal dust and cook­ing, once asso­ci­at­ed with a sense of home, have been replaced by an eerie clean­li­ness, remind­ing the nar­ra­tor of ear­li­er trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences in Berlin dur­ing the bomb­ings. Along­side Hel­ga, the nar­ra­tor had lived through mul­ti­ple dev­as­ta­tions, often climb­ing stairs to homes stripped of roofs and win­dows. In those moments, a tem­po­rary sense of free­dom had been felt, akin to Noah and his wife after the flood, perched on Mount Ararat. This brief relief, how­ev­er, was fleet­ing, always over­shad­owed by the real­i­ty that they were ordi­nary peo­ple, lack­ing the pro­tec­tion of a dove or covenant. As they look back, they are remind­ed that the threats of war are far from over, leav­ing them vul­ner­a­ble in an unpre­dictable world.

The fleet­ing moment of free­dom soon gives way to ris­ing ten­sion as the air-raid sirens begin to wail, sig­nal­ing the immi­nent dan­ger of anoth­er bomb raid. This sound fills the nar­ra­tor and Hel­ga with dread as they are remind­ed of their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and the ever-present threat hang­ing over them. In their mem­o­ry, they recall the deep under­ground shel­ter they had sought dur­ing ear­li­er raids, where the echo­ing noise of bombs falling above cre­at­ed a con­stant atmos­phere of fear. The cramped, dim­ly lit space they shared with oth­ers became a place where ten­sion was pal­pa­ble. In the shel­ter, a fam­i­ly sits oppo­site them, and as the bombs fall relent­less­ly above, the moth­er begins to speak, her voice trem­bling with anx­i­ety. She speaks of the anger she believes is reign­ing above them, and her des­per­a­tion grows as she cries out for guid­ance, ask­ing what is expect­ed of them in these dire cir­cum­stances. The erup­tion of pan­ic is unde­ni­able as the sit­u­a­tion wors­ens.

When a bomb explodes near­by, the mother’s pan­ic reach­es a new peak, and in a des­per­ate cry, she asks for the chaos to end, a plea for relief from the mad­ness con­sum­ing them. Her break­down, how­ev­er, is met with an unset­tling reac­tion from her hus­band, who strikes her uncon­scious. This trag­ic response reveals a harsh real­i­ty of trau­ma: while some seek to sur­ren­der to the chaos, oth­ers may react vio­lent­ly, try­ing to reassert con­trol in sit­u­a­tions that are beyond their pow­er. The hus­band’s need to regain con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion leads him to approach a vice-admi­ral, who hap­pens to be present in the shel­ter. He frames his wife’s break­down as some­thing typ­i­cal, a response to the trau­ma they were all endur­ing. The vice-admi­ral, com­posed and unshak­en by the cri­sis, reas­sures the hus­band, telling him that moments of pan­ic are under­stand­able under the cir­cum­stances. This inter­ac­tion high­lights the cold, prag­mat­ic respons­es to stress in a war-torn world, where com­pas­sion may be over­shad­owed by the instinct to main­tain con­trol at all costs.

As the events unfold, the nar­ra­tor observes the last­ing impact of these moments on the chil­dren present in the shel­ter, their inno­cent lives marked by the trau­ma they are wit­ness­ing. The endur­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of such events are felt deeply by the nar­ra­tor, who sens­es a sig­nif­i­cant shift with­in them­selves. The harsh­ness of the war, and the vio­lence it brings out in indi­vid­u­als, leaves an indeli­ble mark not just on the vic­tims, but also on the wit­ness­es. In a world gov­erned by fear and loss, the bound­aries between san­i­ty and mad­ness become increas­ing­ly blurred. The ten­sion, the vio­lence, and the con­stant threat of destruc­tion have changed every­one involved, leav­ing them all more bro­ken and more aware of the unpre­dictable forces shap­ing their lives. The chap­ter empha­sizes the deep, psy­cho­log­i­cal scars left by trau­ma, affect­ing both those direct­ly involved in the events and those forced to wit­ness them.