Fiete and Anna’s Cohabitation, Abuse, and Murder

Fiete Honka and Anna’s relationship is a short, brutal episode in which an encounter at the Zum Goldenen Handschuh becomes cohabitation, sexual violence, and murder. Fiete first treats Anna’s presence as an expedient answer to loneliness and his wish for sex without paying; when her needs and condition make her impossible to dismiss, his indecision gives way to violence. The progression from shared drinking to concealment of her body exposes the lethal imbalance at the center of their domestic life.

Meeting at the Zum Goldenen Handschuh

Anna arrives at Fiete’s regular place after the drinking companion who had been buying her drinks collapses in the toilet and is taken to hospital, leaving her alone with a nearly full bottle of Korn. She has settled in Fiete’s usual seat. Anus tells her to move, but Fiete makes a gesture indicating that she may stay. For him, this small intervention removes the awkwardness of approaching her: Anna thanks him by buying him a drink, and when that bottle is gone, he orders the next.

They drink for hours. Fiete is struck by how much Anna can consume, but her drinking also suits his immediate purpose. He thinks that he wants sex without paying and that, at this point in the night, women like Anna are his only prospect. He takes her home. There, the expected arrangement reverses: Anna continues drinking, while Fiete, overwhelmed by the alcohol, collapses on the sofa before they have sex. The first night thus establishes the pattern that will govern their brief shared life: Fiete imagines himself choosing the terms, but Anna’s condition and behavior frustrate his assumptions.

Cohabitation and Fiete’s Failed Exit

When Fiete wakes in the afternoon, Anna is asleep and one of the two bottles he had at home is almost empty. He calculates that she must have consumed nearly three bottles, counting what she drank beforehand. He offers her bread with a choice of margarine, sausage, cheese, or jam; she refuses it, saying she has no appetite and may eat later. In daylight, Fiete sees her appearance differently and recognizes that he misjudged her in the bar. His immediate wish is to get rid of her, but the sight of her face recalls the look of his mother and leaves him unable to make her go.

He tells himself that he will sober up during his night shift and speak plainly to Anna on Monday, insisting that he cannot earn money for someone who drinks away ten marks a day. Yet when he comes home, he cannot do it. He fails on Monday, then again on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. His repeated postponement is not a reconciliation or a commitment to care for her; he expects the arrangement to end badly and says to himself that he now wants it to end that way. In the meantime, he keeps avoiding the decisive act of sending her away.

On Friday, Fiete takes his uniform to the cleaners on Bahrenfelder Straße, buys spray and scented blocks at Budnikowsky, and goes to the Schultheiß-Quelle. Anna stays in the apartment, too exhausted to make it to the door; she has not managed to go outside at all. Fiete imagines that she may die while he is away, and that this would resolve the problem without his having to act. The thought makes clear how far his response has shifted from the casual welcome at the bar: he now treats Anna’s possible death as an acceptable alternative to confronting her presence.

Anna’s Deterioration and Fiete’s Violence

Anna has drunk almost two bottles of Korn. She lies partly on the sofa and partly on the floor, her limbs slack, and the narrative presents her as bereft of children, relatives, money, a home, and even a usable store of memories. Alone in the apartment, she grows angry at Fiete for leaving her there. When he returns, she has put on the worst of the women’s clothes gathered in the apartment. She hurls glasses, a plate, and a bowl at the wall, then collapses into sleep. Later, she loses control of her bowels. Fiete brings water, cloths, a brush, and a dustpan, but when he tries to turn her to clean, she knocks away the bucket and rolls in the filth. He retreats to the living room and drinks.

After Anna falls asleep again, Fiete becomes sexually aroused. He tries to have sex with her; when she presses her legs together, he grows angry. He seizes her head and repeatedly strikes it against the bedside table. Anna asks him to let go, and blood seeps from the back of her head. He then uses a hardened, encrusted rag to strangle her, repeatedly tightening and releasing it. The violence is deliberate: he wants to feel her suffering and watch the transition into death. When her body stops convulsing, Anna is dead.

Murder, Mutilation, and Concealment

Fiete sits on the bed and stares ahead. At dawn, he retrieves a knife from the kitchen and cuts Anna’s throat, telling himself that speech resides there; he continues cutting until he believes her vocal cords are destroyed. He covers her eyes with the rag because he fears that the dead may still see, and puts a towel on the floor to catch the blood. The effort to silence her and prevent her gaze continues the violence beyond the act of killing: Fiete tries to control even the remains of Anna’s presence.

The following day, another surge of anger leads him to cut off her breasts and remove part of her vagina. He places the severed parts, together with a pullover and skirt, on the body, bends her legs, and ties her thighs with parcel string so that the corpse will fit into the storage alcove. This is not an attempt to dispose of the body immediately; he puts it in the alcove first. Two weeks later, because of the strong smell, he seals the hatch with strips of Leukoplast and papers over it.

The Relation’s Meaning

The relationship begins amid a world in which people at the bar are assessed through their drinking, appearance, and presumed sexual availability. Fiete’s first calculation about Anna is explicit in the narrative: he sees her as a chance to have sex without paying, not as a person whose circumstances he wants to understand. But the account does not reduce the later violence to that first decision alone. It traces the intervening domestic days: Anna’s refusal of food, her inability to leave, Fiete’s repeated failure to send her away, his own continued drinking, and the escalating filth and anger in the apartment. Each postponement closes off an ordinary exit without making the relationship mutual or safe.

The starkest reversal is that Fiete initially experiences himself as the one who can grant Anna a place, then repeatedly imagines that she should disappear, and finally takes control through murder and concealment. His sporadic gestures—letting her keep the seat, offering food, cleaning the bed, and hoping for help from the police or emergency services—do not undo the coercion that culminates in killing her. The episode’s ending replaces the temporary arrangement of two people drinking in Fiete’s home with a hidden corpse behind a sealed hatch. Their cohabitation is therefore defined not by shared domestic life but by Fiete’s attempt to convert Anna from an unwanted, demanding presence into something he believes he can silence, alter, and hide.