Anna’s murder is the decisive end of her confinement in Fiete Honka’s apartment, where physical collapse, alcohol, sexual violence, and Fiete’s attempts to manage the consequences converge in a killing. The scene makes the murder more than a sudden act: Anna’s suffering is prolonged, Fiete repeatedly treats her condition as an inconvenience to be endured, and after killing her he tries to erase both her body and the language he associates with her abuse of him.

Confinement and Collapse

Anna has been living in Fiete’s apartment for almost a week and has not managed to go outside. On his Friday off, Fiete leaves her there while he takes his uniform to the cleaners on Bahrenfelder Straße, buys room spray and scented stones at Budnikowsky, and drinks at the nearby Schultheiß-Quelle. He thinks of Anna as a badly burned, nearly dead creature and imagines that she may die before he returns. Her death by itself has already become, in his thinking, one possible way for the situation to end.

Anna has drunk almost two bottles of Korn. She lies awkwardly between the sofa and the floor, her body described as pliant and artificial, while the air in the unventilated apartment presses on her. She has no children, relatives, money, or home of her own; even memories seem to her like a human possession she has forfeited. Her immediate wish is to burst apart, and her anger turns toward Fiete for leaving her alone in the heat and stench. She drags herself to the toilet, where brownish-red urine passes but her hardened stool does not. These details establish the bodily crisis before Fiete’s violence: Anna is already gravely debilitated, but she remains furious, distressed, and capable of resistance.

When Fiete comes home, he finds that Anna has put on the worst scraps from the collection of women’s clothing in the apartment. The narration presents his response through a torrent of demeaning descriptions: he sees her as mad and monstrous, as though something repulsive were emerging from her. Anna curses him, inventing insults as well as using familiar ones, and hurls a succession of glasses, followed by a plate and a bowl, against the wall. The outburst is described as a final, mysterious reserve of energy in a creature close to death. Fiete silently gathers the broken pieces and hopes that she will calm down, that the police, a doctor, or the fire brigade will come, or that his brother Siggi might arrive. His wish for outside intervention does not become action on Anna’s behalf.

Neglect, Sexual Violence, and Escalation

Anna falls asleep on the bedroom bed. Later, under cramps, she defecates; when Fiete tries to turn her and clean up, she knocks the bucket from his hands and rolls in the filth. He leaves the room and drinks. Once she is quiet, he checks on her and finds her staring at the ceiling with her eyes wide open. He eventually persuades her to get up so he can strip and clean the bed. He scrubs the room and stuffs the soiled bedding into garbage bags, then sits with Anna on the sofa and opens another bottle of Korn. His muttered reassurances are meant to keep her calm, in particular to prevent her from soiling the living room as well. Even his care is framed by the management of mess and inconvenience.

The next turn is Fiete’s sexual arousal. The narration emphasizes the disturbing contradiction between Anna’s condition and his desire: she has been severely weakened, is surrounded by filth, and has only just fallen asleep, yet he wants to continue. He sprays an entire can of pine-needle deodorizer around the apartment and distributes scented stones in the corners before drinking again. When he returns to Anna, she is asleep and unresponsive. He shakes her shoulders; she presses her legs together with all her strength. Her refusal and his rage form the immediate trigger for the assault. The text does not present the killing as an accident or as an act required by her physical condition: Fiete responds to her resistance with deliberate violence.

The Killing

Fiete pulls Anna’s head up and strikes it repeatedly against the bedside table. She asks him to let go, and blood seeps from the back of her head. He reaches under the bed for a stiff, encrusted rag and forces it around her neck. As he strangles her, his hatred takes the form of a wish that she should not escape so easily. He loosens his grip when she turns red, then blue and purple, and resumes after she coughs and gasps. The repeated tightening and release prolong the violence. He uses his hands and watches for the transition into death, intent on noticing each detail; Anna’s body convulses and kicks before it finally becomes still.

Afterward, Fiete sits on the edge of the bed and stares ahead, physically motionless. At dawn, as a thin rain begins, his anger rises again. He blames Anna for the filth in his bed and for the insults that had come from her mouth. He takes a kitchen knife and cuts her throat, pursuing the idea that speech resides there and that her vocal cords must be destroyed. He then covers her eyes with the rag, acting on the belief that the dead may still see, and places a towel on the floor to catch the blood. The sequence links his fear of being seen by the dead with his effort to eliminate the part of Anna he associates with speech. It does not undo the killing; it extends his violence into an attempt to control what remains of her.

Mutilation and Concealment

The following day, Fiete is again overcome by anger, which he assigns entirely to Anna. He cuts off her breasts and removes part of her vagina. He places the removed body parts, together with a pullover and skirt, on the corpse, bends her legs, and ties her thighs with parcel string so that the body will fit into the alcove. This handling of Anna’s body is both mutilation and practical preparation for concealment: Fiete intends to move her there temporarily, not to seek help or report her death.

The corpse’s smell eventually threatens the concealment. Two weeks later, Fiete seals the alcove hatch with strips of Leukoplast and papers over it with wallpaper. That delayed measure gives the event a grim aftermath beyond the murder itself: the apartment is not simply the site where Anna dies but also the place where Fiete hides the evidence of her body. The progression from leaving her without care, to killing her when she resists, to cutting and concealing her body shows how the domestic space becomes an instrument of control. Anna’s final destruction is accompanied by Fiete’s attempt to suppress her voice, her presence, and the trace she leaves behind.