Mother Night

by Kurt Vonnegut

  "When I told you there were only three people who knew about your coded broadcasts--" said Wirtanen.

  "What about it?" I said.

  "You didn't ask who the third one was," he said.

  "Would it be anybody I'd ever heard of?" I said.

  "Yes," he said. "He's dead now, I'm sorry to say. You used to attack him regularly in your broadcasts."

  "Oh?" I said.

  "The man you called Franklin Delano Rosenfeld," said Wirtanen. "He used to listen to you gleefully every night."

  33

  COMMUNISM REARS

  ITS HEAD ...

  THE THIRD TIME I met my Blue Fairy Godmother, and the last time, from all indications, was, as I have said, in a vacant shop across the street from the house of Jones, across the street from where Resi, George Kraft and I were hiding.

  I took my time about going into that dark place, expecting, with reason, to find anything from an American Legion color guard to a platoon of Israeli paratroopers waiting to capture me inside.

  I had a pistol with me, one of the Iron Guard's Lugers, chambered for twenty-two's. I had it not in my pocket but in the open, loaded and cocked, ready to go. I scouted the front of the shop without showing myself. The front was dark. And then I approached the back in short rushes, from cluster to cluster of garbage cans.

  Anybody trying to jump me, to jump Howard W. Campbell, Jr., would have been filled with little holes, as though by a sewing machine. And I must say that I came to love the infantry, anybody's infantry, in that series of rushes and taking cover.

  Man, I think, is an infantry animal.

  There was a light in the back of the shop. I looked through a window and saw a scene of great serenity. Colonel Frank Wirtanen, my Blue Fairy Godmother, was sitting on a table again, waiting for me again.

  He was an old, old man now, as sleek and hairless as Buddha.

  I went in.

  "I thought surely you would have retired by now," I said.

  "I did--" he said, "eight years ago. Built a house on a lake in Maine with an axe and an adze and my own two hands. I was called out of retirement as a specialist."

  "In what?" I said.

  "In you," he said.

  "Why the sudden interest in me?" I said. "That's what I'm supposed to find out," he said. "No mystery why the Israelis would want me," I said.

  "I agree," he said. "But there's a lot of mystery about why the Russians should think you were such a fat prize."

  "Russians?" I said. "What Russians?"

  "The girl, Resi Noth--and the old man, the painter, the one called George Kraft," said Wirtanen. "They're both communist agents. We've been watching the one who calls himself Kraft now since 1941. We made it easy for the girl to get into the country just to find out what she hoped to do."

  34

  ALLES KAPUT ...

  I SAT WRETCHEDLY on a packing case. "With a few well-chosen words," I said, "you've wiped me out. How much poorer I am in this minute than I was in the minute before!

  "Friend, dream, and mistress--" I said, "alles kaput."

  "You've still got a friend," said Wirtanen.

  "What do you mean by that?" I said.

  "He's like you," said Wirtanen. "He can be many things at once--all sincerely." He smiled. "It's a gift."

  "What was he planning for me?" I said.

  "He wanted to uproot you from this country, get you to another one, where you could be kidnapped with fewer international complications. He tipped off Jones as to where and who you were, got O'Hare and other patriots all stirred up about you again--all as part of a scheme to pull up your roots."

  "Mexico--that was the dream he gave me," I said.

  "I know," said Wirtanen. "There's a plane waiting for you in Mexico City right now. If you were to fly down there, you wouldn't spend more than two minutes on the ground. Off you'd go again, bound for Moscow in the latest jet, all expenses paid."

  "Dr. Jones is in on this, too?" I said.

  "No," said Wirtanen. "He's got your best interests at heart. He's one of the few men you can trust."

  "Why should they want me in Moscow?" I said. "What do the Russians want with me--with such a moldy old piece of surplus from World War Two?"

  "They want to exhibit you to the world as a prime example of the sort of Fascist war criminal this country shelters," said Wirtanen. "They also hope that you will confess to all sorts of collusion between Americans and Nazis at the start of the Nazi regime."

  "Why would I confess such a thing?" I said. "What did they plan to threaten me with?"

  "That's simple," said Wirtanen. "That's obvious."

  "Torture?" I said.

  "Probably not," said Wirtanen. "Just death."

  "I don't fear it," I said.

  "Oh, it wouldn't be for you," said Wirtanen.

  "For whom, then?" I said.

  "For the girl you love, for the girl who loves you--" said Wirtanen. "The death, in case you were uncooperative, would be for little Resi Noth."

  35

  FORTY RUBLES EXTRA ...

  "HER MISSION was to make me love her?" I said.

  "Yes," said Wirtanen.

  "She did it very well," I said sadly, "not that it was hard to do."

  "Sorry to have such news for you," said Wirtanen.

  "It clears up some mysteries--not that I wanted them cleared up," I said. "Do you know what she had in her suitcase?"

  "Your collected works?" he said.

  "You knew about that, too? To think they would go to such pains--to give her props like those! How did they know where to look for those manuscripts?"

  "They weren't in Berlin. They were neatly stored in Moscow," said Wirtanen.

  "How did they get there?" I said.

  "They were the main evidence in the trial of Ste-pan Bodovskov," he said.

  "Who?" I said.

  "Stepan Bodovskov was a corporal, an interpreter, with the first Russian troops to enter Berlin," said Wirtanen. "He found the trunk containing your writings in a theater loft. He took the trunk for booty."

  "Some booty," I said.

  "It turned out to be remarkably fine booty," said Wirtanen. "Bodovskov was fluent in German. He went through the contents of the trunk, and he decided that he had a trunkful of instant career.

  "He started modestly, translating a few of your poems into Russian, and sending them off to a literary magazine. They were published and praised.

  "Bodovskov next tried a play," said Wirtanen.

  "Which one?" I said.

  "'The Goblet,'" said Wirtanen. "Bodovskov translated that into Russian, and he had himself a villa on the Black Sea practically before they'd taken the sandbags down from the windows of the Kremlin."

  "It was produced?" I said.

  "Not only was it produced," said Wirtanen, "it continues to be produced all over Russia by both amateurs and professionals. 'The Goblet' is the 'Charley's Aunt' of contemporary Russian theater. You're more alive than you thought, Campbell."

  "My truth goes marching on," I murmured.

  "What?" said Wirtanen.

  "I can't even tell you what the plot of 'The Goblet' is," I said.

  So Wirtanen told it to me. "A blindingly pure young maiden," he said, "guards the Holy Grail. She will surrender it only to a knight who is as pure as herself. Such a knight comes along, and is pure enough to win the Grail.

  "By winning it, he causes the girl to fall in love with him, and he falls in love with her," said Wirtanen. "Do I really have to tell you, the author, the rest?"

  "It--it's as though Bodovskov really did write it--" I said, "as though I'm hearing it for the first time."

  "The knight and the girl--" said Wirtanen, continuing the tale, "they begin to have impure thoughts about each other, tending, involuntarily, to disqualify themselves from any association with the Grail. The heroine urges the hero to flee with the Grail, before he becomes unworthy of it. The hero vows to flee without the Grail, leaving the heroine worthy of continuing to guard it.
<
br />   "The hero makes their decision for them," said Wirtanen, "since they have both become impure in thought. The Holy Grail disappears. And, stunned by this unanswerable proof of their depravity, the two lovers confirm what they firmly believe to be their damnation with a tender night of love.

  "The next morning, confident of hell-fire, they promise to give each other so much joy in life that hell-fire will be a very cheap price to pay. The Holy Grail thereupon appears to them, signifying that Heaven does not despise love like theirs. And then the Grail goes away again, forever, leaving the hero and the heroine to live happily ever after."

  "My God--I did write that, didn't I?" I said.

  "Stalin was crazy about it," said Wirtanen.

  "And the other plays--?" I said.

  "All produced, all well-received," said Wirtanen.

  "But 'The Goblet' was Bodovskov's big hit?" I said.

  "The book was the biggest hit of all," said Wirtanen.

  "Bodovskov wrote a book?" I said.

  "You wrote a book," said Wirtanen.

  "I never did," I said.

  "Memoirs of a Monogamous Casanova?" said Wirtanen.

  "It was unprintable!" I said.

  "A publishing house in Budapest will be amazed to hear that," said Wirtanen. "I'd guess they've printed something like a half-million copies."

  "The communists let a book like that be published openly?" I said.

  "Memoirs of a Monogamous Casanova is a curious little chapter in Russian history," said Wirtanen. "It could hardly be published with official approval in Russia--and yet, it was such an attractive, strangely moral piece of pornography, so ideal for a nation suffering from shortages of everything but men and women, that presses in Budapest were somehow encouraged to start printing it--and those presses have, somehow, never been ordered to stop." Wirtanen winked at me. "One of the few sly, playful, harmless crimes a Russian can commit at no risk to himself is smuggling home a copy of Memoirs of a Monogamous Casanova. And for whom does he smuggle it? To whom is he going to show this hot stuff? To that salty old crony, his wife.

  "For years," said Wirtanen, "there was only a Russian edition. But now, it is available in Hungarian, Rumanian, Latvian, Estonian, and, most marvelous of all, German again."

  "Bodovskov gets credit as the author?" I said.

  "It's common knowledge that Bodovskov wrote it, though the book carries no credits--publisher, author, and illustrator supposedly unknown."

  "Illustrator?" I said, harrowed by the idea of pictures of Helga and me cavorting in the nude.

  "Fourteen plates in lifelike color--" said Wirtanen, "forty rubles extra."

  36

  EVERYTHING BUT

  THE SQUEALS ...

  "IF ONLY it weren't illustrated!" I said to Wirtanen angrily.

  "That makes a difference?" he said.

  "It's a mutilation!" I said. "The pictures are bound to mutilate the words. Those words weren't meant to have pictures with them! With pictures, they aren't the same words!"

  He shrugged. "It's pretty much out of your control, I'm afraid," he said, "unless you want to declare war on Russia."

  I closed my eyes wincingly. "What is it they say in the Chicago Stockyards about what they do to a pig?"

  "I don't know," said Wirtanen.

  "They boast that they find a use for everything about a pig but his squeal," I said.

  "So?" said Wirtanen.

  "That's how I feel right now--" I said, "like a pig that's been taken apart, who's had experts find a use for every part. By God--I think they even found a use for my squeal! The part of me that wanted to tell the truth got turned into an expert liar! The lover in me got turned into a pornographer! The artist in me got turned into ugliness such as the world has rarely seen before.

  "Even my most cherished memories have now been converted into catfood, glue and liverwurst!" I said.

  "Which memories are those?" said Wirtanen.

  "Of Helga--my Helga." I said, and I wept. "Resi killed those, in the interests of the Soviet Union. She made me faithless to those memories, and they can never be the same again."

  I opened my eyes. "F--all," I said quietly. "I suppose the pigs and I should feel honored by those who proved our usefulness. I'm glad about one thing--"

  "Oh?" said Wirtanen.

  "I'm glad about Bodovskov," I said. "I'm glad somebody got to live like an artist with what I once had. You said he was arrested and tried?"

  "And shot," said Wirtanen.

  "For plagiarism?" I said.

  "For originality," said Wirtanen. "Plagiarism is the silliest of misdemeanors. What harm is there in writing what's already been written? Real originality is a capital crime, often calling for cruel and unusual punishment in advance of the coup de grace."

  "I don't understand," I said.

  "Your friend, Kraft-Potapov, realized that you were the author of a lot of things Bodovskov claimed to have written," said Wirtanen. "He reported the facts to Moscow. Bodovskov's villa was raided. The magic trunk containing your writings was discovered under straw in the loft in his stable."

  "So--?" I said.

  "Every word by you in that trunk had been published," said Wirtanen.

  "And--?" I said.

  "Bodovskov had begun to replenish the trunk with magic of his own," said Wirtanen. "The police found a two-thousand-page satire on the Red Army, written in a style distinctly un-Bodovskovian. For that un-Bodovskovian behavior, Bodovskov was shot.

  "But enough of the past!" said Wirtanen. "Listen to what I've got to tell you about the future. In about half an hour," he said, looking at his watch, "Jones' house is going to be raided. The place is surrounded now. I wanted you out of there, since it's going to be a complicated enough mess as it is."

  "Where do you suggest I go?" I said.

  "Don't go back to your flat," he said. "Patriots have taken the place apart. They'd probably take you apart, too, if they caught you there."

  "What's going to happen to Resi?" I said. "Deportation is all," said Wirtanen. "She hasn't committed any crimes."

  "And Kraft?" I said.

  "A good long stretch in prison," he said. "That's no shame. I think he'd rather go to prison than home anyway.

  "The Reverend Lionel J. D. Jones, D.D.S., D.D.," said Wirtanen, "will go back to prison for illegal possession of firearms and whatever else of a straightforward criminal nature we can pin on him. Nothing is planned for Father Keeley, so I imagine he'll drift back to Skid Row again. The Black Fuehrer will be set adrift again, too."

  "And the Iron Guardsmen?" I said.

  "The Iron Guardsmen of the White Sons of the American Constitution," said Wirtanen, "are going to get an impressive lecture on the illegality in this country of private armies, murder, mayhem, riots, treason, and violent overthrow of the government. They'll be sent home to educate their parents, if such a thing is possible."

  He looked at his watch again. "You'd better go now--get clear out of the neighborhood."

  "Can I ask who your agent in Jones' house is?" I said. "Who was it that slipped the note into my pocket, telling me to come here?"

  "You can ask," said Wirtanen, "but you must surely know I won't tell you."

  "You don't trust me to that extent?" I said.

  "How could I ever trust a man who's been as good a spy as you have?" said Wirtanen. "Hmm?"

  37

  DAT OLD

  GOLDEN RULE ...

  I LEFT WIRTANEN.

  But I hadn't taken many steps before I understood that the only place I wanted to be was back in Jones' cellar with my mistress and my best friend.

  I knew them for what they were, but the fact remained that they were all I had.

  I returned by the same route over which I had fled, went in through Jones' coalbin door.

  Resi, Father Keeley, and the Black Fuehrer were playing cards when I got back.

  Nobody had missed me.

  The Iron Guard of the White Sons of the American Constitution was having a class
in flag courtesy in the furnace room, a class conducted by one of its own members.

  Jones had gone upstairs to write, to create.

  Kraft, the Russian Master Spy, was reading a copyof Life that had a portrait of Werner von Braun on the cover. Kraft had the magazine open to the center spread, a panorama of a swamp in the Age of Reptiles.

  A small radio was playing. It announced a song. The title of the song fixed itself in my mind. This is no miracle of total recall, my remembering the title. The title was apt for the moment--for almost any moment, actually. The title was "Dat Old Golden Rule."

  At my request, the Haifa Institute for the Documentation of War Criminals has run down the lyric of that song for me. The lyric is as follows: Oh, baby, baby, baby,

  Why do you break my heart this way?

  You say you want to go steady,

  But then all you do is stray.

  I'm so confused,

  I'm not amused,

  You make me feel like such a fool.

  You smile and lie,

  You make me cry.

  Why don't you learn dat old Golden Rule?

  "What's the game?" I said to the card players.

  "Old Maid," said Father Keeley. He was taking the game seriously. He wanted to win, and I saw that he had the queen of spades, the Old Maid, in his hand.

  It might make me seem more human at this point, which is to say more sympathetic, if I were to declare that I itched and blinked and nearly swooned with a feeling of unreality.

  Sorry.

  Not so.

  I confess to a ghastly lack in myself. Anything I see or hear or feel or taste or smell is real to me. I am so much a credulous plaything of my senses that nothing is unreal to me. This armor-plated credulity has been continent even in times when I was struck on the head or drunk or, in one freakish adventure that need not concern this accounting, even under the influence of cocaine.

  There in Jones' basement, Kraft showed me the picture of von Braun on the cover of Life, asked me if I knew him.

  "Von Braun?" I said. "The Thomas Jefferson of the Space Age? Sure. The Baron danced with my wife once at a birthday party in Hamburg for General Walter Dornberger."

  "Good dancer?" said Kraft.

  "Sort of Mickey Mouse dancing--" I said, "the way all the big Nazis danced, if they had to dance."

  "You think he'd recognize you now?" said Kraft.