It is Still Wednesday

Frau Gesch lets Enno sleep off his beating, then tries to shame Eva Kluge into taking him back; Eva refuses, still reeling from her interrogation at the post office, where officials pressed her about leaving the Party and about Enno's illnesses and women, though she kept her real reason, Karlemann, private. Regretting that she gave Enno no money, she asks Frau Gesch where he's gone, but he has already left for someone called Tutti. Reflecting, Eva feels oddly relieved: she has been suspended from her delivery round, told her Party resignation isn't yet accepted, and ordered to stay available for further questioning. She decides to defy this and take the early train to her sister's farm in Ruppin, telling no one, wanting to be entirely alone. That night she dreams of hoeing a vast field of potatoes by herself, and smiles in her sleep for the first time in a long while.

Eva's arc completes an inversion: the woman who has spent the novel absorbing other people's demands chooses total isolation and finds it restful rather than punishing. Her potato-field dream answers Quangel's solitary resolve from Chapter 9 with a gentler, more hopeful version of the same withdrawal.