A Visit to Fräulein Anna Schönlein

Learning Borkhausen has found Enno Kluge, Inspector Escherich hesitates: he knows Enno never wrote the Hobgoblin postcards, and interrogating him would expose the false statement Escherich extracted earlier. Leaving Prinz Albrecht Strasse he swaps his revolver for a small pistol and makes an odd, half-ashamed salute to his own office, sensing he won't return unchanged. At Ansbacher Strasse he questions the concierge, then confronts Fräulein Anna Schönlein — a gaunt, consumptive woman in tracksuit bottoms and a canary jersey — about cigarette butts, foreign records, and unregistered 'nephews and nieces' who are really political refugees she shelters. She defiantly confesses to hiding fugitives and listening to enemy radio rather than accept his pity. Escherich reveals he already knows a man is suffocating in her closet, and drags out the terrified Enno, laying him on the chaise longue to revive him while Anna waits in the kitchen. He then begins toying with Enno, hinting at a fresh statement he must sign.

The swapped pistol and the salute to his office quietly foreshadow what Escherich is about to become capable of, before he himself has decided anything. Anna Schönlein gives the chapter its second, unexpected hero — a minor figure who chooses exposure over the inspector's pity, then vanishes from the story.