Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night

'No answer to my question?' he said.

'Now is as good a time as any to see if I've got any imagination left,' I said. 'Give me a minute or two — '

'Take all the time you want,' he said.

So I projected myself into the situation he described, and what was left of my imagination gave me a corrosively cynical answer. 'There is every chance,' I said, 'that I would have become a sort of Nazi Edgar Guest, writing a daily column of optimistic doggerel for daily papers around the world. And, as senility set in, the sunset of life, as they say — I might even come to believe what my couplets said: that everything was probably all for the best.'

I shrugged. 'Would I have shot anybody? I doubt it, Would I have organized a bomb plot? That's more of a possibility; but I've heard a lot of bombs go off in my time, and they never impressed me much as a way to get things done. Only one thing can I guarantee you: I would never have written a play again. That skill, such as it was, is lost.

The only chance of my doing something really violent in favor of truth or justice or what have you,' I said to my Blue Fairy Godmother, 'would lie in my going homicidally insane. That could happen. In the situation you suggest, I might suddenly run amok with a deadly weapon down a peaceful street on an ordinary day. But whether the killing I did would improve the world much would be a matter of dumb luck, pure and simple.

'Have I answered your question honestly enough for you?' I asked him.

'Yes, thank you,' he said.

'Classify me as a Nazi,' I said tiredly. 'Classify away. Hang me, if you think it would tend to raise the general level of morality. This life is no great treasure. I have no postwar plans.'

'I only want you to understand how little we can do for you,' he said. 'I see you do understand.'

'How little?' I said.

'A false identity, a few red herrings, transportation to wherever you might conceivably start a new life — ' he said. 'Some cash. Not much, but some.'

'Cash?' I said. 'How was the cash value of my services arrived at?'

'A matter of custom,' he said, 'a custom going back to at least the Civil War.'

'Oh?' I said.

'Private's pay,' he said. 'On my say-so, you're entitled to it for the period from when we met in the Tiergarten to the present.'

'That's very generous,' I said.

'Generosity doesn't amount to much in this business,' he said. 'The really good agents aren't interested in money at all, Would it make any difference to you if we gave you the back pay of a brigadier general?'

'No,' I said.

'Or if we paid you nothing at all?'

'No difference,' I said.

'It's almost never money,' he said. 'Or patriotism, either.'

'What is it, then?' I said.

'Each person has to answer that question for himself — ' said Wirtanen. 'Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.'

'Interesting,' I said emptily.

He clapped his hands to break the mood. 'Now then — ' he said, 'about transportation: where to?'

'Tahiti?' I said.

'If you say so,' he said. 'I suggest New York. You can lose yourself there without any trouble, and there's plenty of work, if you want it'

'All right — New York,' I said.

'Let's get your passport picture taken. You'll be on a plane out of here inside of three hours,' he said.

We crossed the deserted parade ground together, dust devils spinning here and there. It was my fancy to think of the dust devils as the spooks of former cadets at the school, killed in war, returning now to whirl and dance on the parade ground alone, to dance in as unmilitary a fashion as they damn well pleased.

'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'

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 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.

'1 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.'

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 kidnaped 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?'