In this chap­ter titled The Bom­bard­ment, the nar­ra­tive opens with a pow­er­ful cho­rus of uni­ty, describ­ing men from every walk of life—bankers, black­smiths, painters, and field hands—marching with shared pur­pose. These men do not crave blood­shed but endure its toll in pur­suit of a peace worth sac­ri­fic­ing for. They are dri­ven by an inner fire to extin­guish the need for weapons alto­geth­er, break­ing the sym­bol­ic sword into frag­ments that scat­ter like dying stars. Their hands, used to tools of craft or com­merce, now grip rifles not with pride but with deter­mi­na­tion to end a cycle they nev­er wished to join. The poet­ic con­tra­dic­tion at the heart of their mission—waging war to end war—exposes the tragedy of their resolve. Yet there is nobil­i­ty in their com­mit­ment, a solemn dig­ni­ty in the deci­sion to step into fire with the hope that oth­ers may one day live beyond it.

The sto­ry then shifts tone and pace, tran­si­tion­ing into the sub­dued ten­sion of a city wait­ing beneath over­cast skies and falling rain. The streets are qui­et, the Cathe­dral square emp­ty, as the rain streaks down stat­ues and rooftops like tears from stone. The peace is unnat­ur­al, filled not with calm but with dread, each drop min­gling with dust while dis­tant echoes of bombs roll across the sky. Life paus­es. Doors stay shut, cur­tains drawn, and even the birds seem to have for­got­ten how to fly. The city is not bro­ken yet—but it is hold­ing its breath, lis­ten­ing. And then, with­out warn­ing, the moment frac­tures. Explo­sions crack through the silence, leav­ing only ring­ing ears and the trem­bling hush of shat­tered glass.

Inside, the qui­et is different—warmed by fire­light, scent­ed with old fab­ric and dried herbs. An old woman, seat­ed with a younger man named Vic­tor, stead­ies her­self as the out­er chaos creeps inward. A bomb doesn’t hit their home, but it hits their com­fort. The bohemi­an glass vase, long admired and always pro­tect­ed, top­ples from the man­tel and shat­ters. It is not the object’s worth that matters—it’s the mem­o­ry it car­ried, the still­ness it rep­re­sent­ed. In this sin­gle, sound­less moment, some­thing beau­ti­ful is erased, not by direct vio­lence but by its rip­ple. The vase, now splin­tered, becomes a metaphor for every qui­et life inter­rupt­ed by war’s long reach.

Vic­tor doesn’t speak much, and nei­ther does she. Their silence car­ries more than fear—it holds rev­er­ence for what has just been lost, and for what might come next. She does not cry, but the ten­sion in her hand as she sweeps the shards into her apron says enough. This scene doesn’t seek dra­ma; it shows how dev­as­ta­tion lands in the small­est cor­ners, where no bat­tle ever reach­es. The fire still burns, but it is no longer warm. It sim­ply remains, flick­er­ing, as if try­ing to hold the room togeth­er. This is war, too—not the front line, but the liv­ing room. And it is here, just as much as in the trench­es, that the cost of con­flict is count­ed.

Togeth­er, these scenes offer two per­spec­tives bound by a shared truth: that war touch­es every­thing. The men on the march may dream of end­ing vio­lence, but vio­lence moves faster than dreams. It reach­es qui­et kitchens, desert­ed streets, cher­ished objects, and weary hands. In every cor­ner of the city, some part of peace is being test­ed or lost. Yet still, peo­ple endure—not out of hope alone, but because endurance itself becomes a form of resis­tance. The old woman, sweep­ing glass with­out com­plaint, fights no less brave­ly than the sol­dier advanc­ing toward a burn­ing hori­zon.

The Bom­bard­ment does not ask read­ers to choose between front-line hero­ism and qui­et sur­vival. It invites them to see both as part of the same human struggle—to pro­tect mean­ing in a world unrav­el­ing. The chap­ter clos­es not with tri­umph but with a kind of qui­et defi­ance: a city scarred but still stand­ing, peo­ple shak­en but still present. War may break glass, but not mem­o­ry. Not yet.