Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night

'Kids who would ordinarily be at loose ends and getting into trouble,' said Father Keeley.

'He was one of the greatest admirers you ever had,' Jones said to me.

'He was?' I said.

'Back when you were broadcasting, he never missed listening to you. When he went to prison, the first thing he did was build a short-wave receiver, just so he could go on listening to you. Every day he was bubbling over with the things you'd said the night before.'

'Um' I said.

'You were a beacon, Mr. Campbell' said Jones passionately. 'Do you realize what a beacon you were through all those black years?'

'Nope,' I said.

'Krapptauer had hoped you'd be the Idealism Officer for the Iron Guard,' said Jones.

'I'm the Chaplain,' said Keeley.

'Oh, who, who, who will lead the Iron Guard now?' said Jones. 'Who will step forward and pick up the fallen torch?'

There was a sharp, strong knock on the door. I opened the door, and outside stood Jones' chauffeur, a wrinkled old colored man with malevolent yellow eyes. He wore a black uniform with white piping, a Sam Browne belt, a nickel-plated whistle, a Luftwaffe hat without insignia, and black leather puttees.

There was no Uncle Tom in this cotton-haired old colored man. He walked in arthritically, but his thumbs were hooked into his Sam Browne belt, his chin was thrust out at us, and he kept his hat on.

'Everything all right up here?' he said to Jones. 'You was up here so long.'

'Not quite,' said Jones. 'August Krapptauer died.'

The Black Fuehrer of Harlem took the news in stride. 'All dying, all dying,' he said. 'Who's gonna pick up the torch when everybody's dead?'

'I just asked the same question myself,' said Jones. He introduced me to Robert

Robert didn't shake hands. 'I heard about you,' he said, 'but I ain't never listened to you.'

'Well — ' I said, 'you can't please all the people all of the time.'

'We was on opposite sides,' said Robert.

'I see,' I said. I didn't know anything about him, was agreeable to his belonging to any side that suited him.

'I was on the colored folks' side,' he said. 'I was with the Japanese.'

'Uh — huh,' I said.

'We needed you, and you needed us — ' he said, speaking of the alliance between Germany and Japan in the Second World War. 'Only there was a lot of things we couldn't what you'd call agree about'

'I guess that's so,' I said.

'I mean I heard you say you don't think the colored people was so good,' said Robert.

'Now, now,' said Jones soothingly. 'What useful purpose does it serve for us to squabble among ourselves? The thing to do is to pull together.'

'I just want to tell him what I tell you,' said Robert. 'I tell this Reverend gentleman here the same thing every morning, the same thing I tell you now, I give him his hot cereal for breakfast, and then I tell him: "The colored people are gonna rise up in righteous wrath, and they're gonna take over the world. White folks gonna finally lose!'''

'All right, Robert,' said Jones patiently.

'The colored people gonna have hydrogen bombs all their own,' he said. 'They working on it right now. Pretty soon gonna be Japan's turn to drop one. The rest of the colored folks gonna give them the honor of dropping the first one.'

'Where they going to drop it?' I said.

'China, most likely,' he said.

'On other colored people?' I said.

He looked at me pityingly. 'Who ever told you a Chinaman was a colored man?' he said.

Helga and I were finally left alone.

We were shy.

Being a man of fairly advanced years, so many of the years having been spent in celibacy, I was more than shy. I was afraid to test my strength as a lover. And the fear was amplified by the remarkable number of youthful characteristics my Helga had miraculously retained.

'This — this is what's known as getting to know each other again,' I said. 'Our conversation was in German.

'Yes,' she said. She had gone to the front window now, was looking at the patriotic devices I'd drawn on the dusty window-panes. 'Which one of these is you now, Howard?' she said.

'Pardon me?' I said.

'The hammer and sickle, the swastika, or the Stars and Stripes — ' she said, 'which one do you like the most?'

'Ask me about music,' I said.

'What?' she said.

'Ask me what kinds of music I like these days,' I said. 'I have some opinions on music. I have no political opinions at all.'

'I see,' she said. 'All right — what music do you like these days?'

'"White Christmas" — ' I said, 'Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas''

'Excuse me?' she said.

'My favorite piece of music,' I said. 'I love it so much, I have twenty-six copies of it.'

She looked at me blankly. 'You do?' she said.

'It — it's a private joke,' I said lamely.

'Oh,' she said.

'Private — ' I said. 'I've been living alone so long, everything about me's private. I'm surprised anyone's able to understand a word I say.'

'I will,' she said tenderly. 'Give me a little time — not much, but some and I'll understand everything you say — again.' She shrugged. 'I have private jokes, too — '

'From now on — ' I said, 'well make the privacy for two again.'

'That will be nice' she said.

'Nation of two again' I said.

'Yes,' she said. Tell me — '

'Anything at all' I said.

'I know how Father died, but I haven't been able to find out a thing about Mother and Resi,' she said. 'Have you heard a word?'

'Nothing' I said.

'When did you see them last?' she said.

I thought back, was able to give the exact date on which I'd last seen Helga's father, mother, and her pretty, imaginative little sister, Resi Noth.

'February 12, 1945,' I said, and I told her about that day.

That day was a day so cold that it made my bones ache. I stole a motorcycle, and I went calling on my in-laws, on the family of Werner Noth, the Chief of Police of Berlin.

Werner Noth lived on the outskirts of Berlin, well outside the target area. He lived with his wife and daughter in a walled white house that had the monolithic, earthbound grandeur of a Roman nobleman's tomb. In five years of total war, that house had not suffered so much as a cracked window-pane. Its tall, deep-set windows on the south framed an orchard within the walls. On the north they framed the jagged monuments in the ruins of Berlin.

I was wearing a uniform. At my belt was a tiny pistol and a big, fancy, ceremonial dagger. I didn't usually wear a uniform, but I was entitled to wear one — the blue and gold uniform of a Major in the Free American Corps.

The Free American Corps was a Nazi daydream — a daydream of a fighting unit composed mainly of American prisoners of war. It was to be a volunteer organization. It was to fight only on the Russian front. It was to be a high-morale fighting machine, motivated by a love of western civilization and a dread of the Mongol hordes.

When I call this unit a Nazi daydream, incidentally, I am suffering an attack of schizophrenia — because the idea of the Free American Corps began with me. I suggested its creation, designed its uniforms and insignia, wrote its creed

That creed began, 'I, like my honored American forefathers, believe in true freedom — '

The Free American Corps was not a howling success. Only three American P.W.'s joined. God only knows what became of them. I presume that they were all dead when I went calling on my in-laws, that I was the sole survivor of the Corps.

When I went calling, the Russians were only twenty miles from Rerun. I had decided that the war was almost over, that it was time for my career as a spy to end. I put on the uniform in order to dazzle any Germans who might try to keep me from getting out of Rerun. Tied to the back fender of my stolen motorcycle was a parcel of civilian clothes.