In the chap­ter from “Moth­er Night,” the nar­ra­tive begins with Howard and Hel­ga, who are final­ly alone togeth­er, feel­ing an awk­ward sense of shy­ness. Despite being some­what advanced in age and hav­ing spent many years in celiba­cy, Howard strug­gles with his vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty as a lover, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en Hel­ga’s youth­ful demeanor. Their con­ver­sa­tion, con­duct­ed in Ger­man, unfolds as they attempt to recon­nect. Hel­ga humor­ous­ly chal­lenges Howard to define his polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions based on patri­ot­ic sym­bols he doo­dled on the win­dow, prompt­ing him to avoid pol­i­tics entire­ly and instead focus on music, specif­i­cal­ly his fond­ness for Bing Crosby’s “White Christ­mas,” reveal­ing the lay­er of humor in his sit­u­a­tion.

As they share smiles and small moments, Hel­ga express­es con­cern about their fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly about her par­ents and her sis­ter, Resi Noth. Howard shares a poignant mem­o­ry from Feb­ru­ary 12, 1945, the day he last saw them. He recalls vis­it­ing the Noths in their resilient, well-main­tained white house on the out­skirts of a war-torn Berlin. Dressed in a uni­form of the Free Amer­i­can Corps, which he helped cre­ate yet was not tru­ly suc­cess­ful, Howard recounts his inten­tion to bid farewell to the fam­i­ly. His love for them shines through as he describes Wern­er Noth, Hel­ga’s father, and the chaot­ic scene out­side: Pol­ish and Russ­ian women lug­ging fur­ni­ture away, while Wern­er him­self pan­ics over a beau­ti­ful blue vase almost dropped by a weary slave.

Werner’s intense reac­tion under­scores the chaos and vio­lence sur­round­ing them; he saves the vase and implores oth­ers to appre­ci­ate it, demon­strat­ing a haunt­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion of beau­ty and des­o­la­tion. In this con­text, Howard express­es his intent to head for the front as they say good­bye, reveal­ing mutu­al under­stand­ing and con­cern. The con­ver­sa­tion shifts as they touch on the painful real­i­ties of the war: Wern­er directs Howard to deal with Resi’s dog which can­not accom­pa­ny them, fur­ther per­son­al­iz­ing their tragedy. He com­pli­ments Howard’s uni­form, hint­ing at a com­plex rela­tion­ship shad­ed by his­to­ry and regret.

Final­ly, Wern­er com­mu­ni­cates his ambiva­lence toward Howard, show­ing that despite decades of enmi­ty linked to nation­al­i­ty and war, he appre­ci­ates the way Howard helped anchor him amid the mad­ness of the times. With lay­ered emo­tion­al exchanges about duty, loy­al­ty, and the absur­di­ty of war, the chap­ter crafts a por­trait of con­nec­tion and mis­un­der­stand­ing amidst loom­ing destruc­tion.