Summary

In this chapter, Laszlo brings Claudia a package of papers she requests, which turns out to be Tom’s war diary. Claudia has read it once before, on her 70th birthday, and now she reads it again on her deathbed. We read it along with her. Tom’s diary is both a blow-by-blow account of his war experience and a document of his self-examination during that experience. Tom says the worst part of combat is not the fear one experiences during an operation but the fear of fear that precedes this. He speaks repeatedly of Claudia, to whom he refers simply as “C,” and he expresses his hope that someday they will look at this diary together. Obviously, they never do, and the diary ends with a line written by his sister saying Tom died in an air attack while trying to repair an oil leak...