Saturday: Discord at the Quangels’

Three days of silence stretch between Otto and Anna Quangel; she longs to apologise for 'You and your Führer' but can't reach him, and he vanishes from meals mid-bite, absorbed in secret errands she can't fathom. On Saturday morning she catches him hiding a large sheet of paper before he rushes out again wearing an unfamiliar smile. Quangel scouts a busy office building on Prenzlauer Allee for its anonymity, then knocks out Karl Hergesell, who has approached him on the street with Trudel's request that the Quangels forget her entirely, a test Quangel passes by refusing to give anything away, even as the dazed Hergesell is questioned by a policeman afterward. Satisfied he isn't followed, Quangel buys postcards, a pen, engraving nibs, ink, and unmarked worsted gloves in separate small shops around the city, then eats a beer-hall meal before returning to the factory, outwardly unchanged, his resolve now fully formed.

The postcards and gloves, bought penny by penny across separate shops, are the novel's first physical evidence of the campaign to come, craft transferred from woodworking to conspiracy. The comic misdirection of the punch thrown at Hergesell lets Fallada confirm Quangel's discipline without yet naming his plan.