Chap­ter 19 unfolds in the music room of Wern­er Noth’s now-dwin­dling home, where a young Resi, no old­er than ten, sits with her dachs­hund on her lap. She is bun­dled in thick win­ter cloth­ing, look­ing out at the walled orchard, prepar­ing for the inevitable depar­ture of the wag­on train. This event sym­bol­izes a harsh, cold real­i­ty devoid of warmth, leav­ing Resi in a state of emo­tion­al numb­ness. As she gazes into the orchard, her mit­tens are removed, and she absent­mind­ed­ly pets her dog, which, due to a wartime diet, is frail, hair­less, and immo­bile. The dog’s con­di­tion appears almost amphibi­ous, fur­ther high­light­ing the des­o­la­tion of the sit­u­a­tion. Resi’s ten­der­ness toward the dog sharply con­trasts with the chill­ing way she acknowl­edges the grim cir­cum­stances that sur­round her, under­scor­ing the emo­tion­al dis­tance she has devel­oped as a result of the hor­rors of war.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Resi had called the nar­ra­tor an Amer­i­can spy, caus­ing him dis­com­fort around her, but now he notices some­thing unset­tling about her resem­blance to his late wife, Hel­ga. As the inter­ac­tion pro­gress­es, Resi blunt­ly announces that it is time to kill her dog. Caught off guard, the nar­ra­tor hes­i­tates but explains that her father had asked him to per­form the deed. What is most dis­turb­ing is Resi’s calm accep­tance of the sit­u­a­tion; she shows no emo­tion or regret, almost as if the idea of death has become mun­dane. The chill­ing nature of the con­ver­sa­tion is marked by the detach­ment Resi exhibits as she con­tem­plates the end of her pet’s life. This casu­al atti­tude towards such vio­lence expos­es the har­row­ing effects war has had on the inno­cence of a child, whose under­stand­ing of death is far too prag­mat­ic for her age.

As the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues, it becomes evi­dent that Resi has already accept­ed the idea of death itself. She antic­i­pates her own demise with unset­tling calm, express­ing a belief that noth­ing tru­ly hurts when one ceas­es to exist. Her unset­tling out­look on life and death is fur­ther high­light­ed when she con­fess­es that she had nev­er real­ly liked her dog and believes it will be bet­ter off dead. This cold rea­son­ing con­trasts sharply with the emo­tion­al detach­ment she exhibits when con­fess­ing a sud­den and dis­turb­ing admi­ra­tion for the nar­ra­tor. This moment, par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­nec­tion she makes with him, adds an eerie weight to the con­ver­sa­tion, as Resi appears to be try­ing to find some kind of human con­nec­tion in an envi­ron­ment over­whelmed by loss. Her fix­a­tion on a bleak, uncer­tain future is both poignant and chill­ing, as she seems to view death as sim­ply anoth­er mun­dane event in a world that no longer offers hope.

The ten­sion esca­lates when the nar­ra­tor, after this unset­tling con­ver­sa­tion, decides to car­ry out the task Resi has set before him. He takes the dog out­side into the snow-cov­ered orchard, prepar­ing to shoot it with a small pis­tol. The cold, indif­fer­ent nature of the set­ting adds to the cru­el­ty of the act, and the silence that fol­lows as Resi and oth­ers watch only serves to deep­en the emo­tion­al weight of the moment. In a dis­turb­ing turn, an old sol­dier present shows a mor­bid curios­i­ty toward the act, illus­trat­ing how war desen­si­tizes peo­ple to the loss of life, mak­ing acts of vio­lence seem almost rou­tine. When the dog dies qui­et­ly, the real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion becomes grotesque, forc­ing the nar­ra­tor to con­sid­er whether a bur­ial is nec­es­sary, won­der­ing if leav­ing it to the ele­ments would be just as fit­ting. This chap­ter stark­ly por­trays the loss of inno­cence, the nor­mal­iza­tion of bru­tal­i­ty in times of war, and the dis­con­cert­ing accep­tance of death, whether human or ani­mal. Through the lens of a child’s detach­ment and the narrator’s reluc­tant par­tic­i­pa­tion, the nar­ra­tive explores how war erodes emo­tion­al con­nec­tion and numbs indi­vid­u­als to the sanc­ti­ty of life.