Frida's Murder turns an attempt at resistance into a killing by Fiete Honka, whose sexual violence and possessiveness have left Frida too injured and exhausted to flee. The scene pivots on a knife, a sudden counterattack, and four hundred D-Mark hidden in a bra: the money's discovery precipitates the strangling, after which Fiete tries to erase the evidence and soothe himself with a repeated appeal to God, his mother, and Christ.

Background and Immediate Trigger

After two comparatively quiet days, Frida is made to endure another of Fiete's sexual assaults. The narration conveys the pattern through her exhausted calculation that it cannot continue much longer and that he will eventually kill her. Her thought, framed as a choice between him and herself, becomes the immediate prelude to resistance. The episode presents no safe route out: even when Fiete is incapacitated, Frida does not know where she could go and feels too battered to make it down the stairs.

Frida reaches for a potato-peeling knife lying on the small table beside the bed. The object is ordinary, but its presence gives her a means to interrupt the assault. She stabs at Fiete; he turns aside quickly enough to avoid a wound to the chest. She then kicks him in the testicles with the pointed heel of her sandal. The pain makes him lose consciousness. For a moment, the balance of power has reversed: Fiete is helpless, and Frida could attempt to leave. Yet the narrative makes clear that opportunity alone does not amount to escape. Her uncertainty about where to go and her physical condition keep her in place until he wakes roughly two hours later.

The Discovery and the Killing

Fiete's injury remains severe when he comes to. He examines it and puts his testicles in cold water, keeping them there for what the narration describes uncertainly as hours or minutes, but long enough to mark his disorientation and pain. When he returns to the living room, Frida is wearing a bra. He treats the change as suspicious, tears it off, and discovers four hundred D-Mark concealed in its right cup.

The discovery changes the scene's course. The money is identified as all of Fiete's money, and the narration gives it several possible meanings: capital for a new life, payment for sex, and compensation for pain. These descriptions do not establish Frida's intentions; they show how the money becomes charged in Fiete's perception. His response is immediate and fatal. Reaching for a cloth, he sees hatred in Frida's face; she struggles to throw him off, but he manages to brace himself against the bedside table, loop the cloth around her neck, and pull it tight. The woman who has just wounded him and hidden money from him is killed by him in the same room.

Aftermath and Concealment

After Frida is dead, Fiete turns her onto her stomach so that, as the narration puts it, she cannot look at him. He drinks, then takes a kitchen knife and cuts at his own testicles. The act is presented as an attempt to attack the part of his body he regards as the source of his curse, but he does not carry through his wish to cut off his penis. He trembles and stops short. The sequence places his self-directed violence after Frida's killing without confusing the two: he has killed her, while his threatened mutilation remains incomplete.

The next morning, Fiete intends to put the body in a storage recess but finds it full. He wraps a rope around the corpse and attaches it to a roof beam, then begins removing traces of what happened. During this work he croaks a plea that, when he stands before God, he will be judged as not having wanted the deed, and that before his mother and Christ he can claim to be pure. He repeats the reassurance from the beginning. The repetition follows the practical work of concealment; it does not undo the killing or stop him from hiding the body.

Narrative Significance

The scene is structured around reversals that are brief but consequential. Frida's attack momentarily disables Fiete, yet her inability to leave allows him to recover. The hidden money then makes visible a conflict over possession: Fiete treats the discovery as a violation and responds by killing the person who hid it. The event does not present her resistance as a successful escape; it shows how physical exhaustion, fear, and the absence of a destination narrow the possibility of action even after she has fought back.

The aftermath sets bodily violence beside moral self-exoneration. Fiete turns Frida away from his gaze, tries to injure his own body, hides hers, and repeats a claim of purity before imagined religious judges. His words are reported as a recurring plea, while his actions supply the contradiction: he is actively concealing the death he says he did not want. The scene ends not with confession or relief but with concealment and repetition, leaving fear in the air as the remaining consequence.