Mother Night

18: Werner Noth's Beautiful Blue Vase ...

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.

My call on the Noths had nothing to do with cunning. I really wanted to say goodbye to them, to have them say goodbye to me. I cared about them — pitied them, loved them in a way.

The iron gates of the great white house were open. Werner Noth himself was standing beside them, his hands on his hips. He was watching a work gang of Polish and Russian slave women. The women were lugging trunks and furniture from the house to three waiting horse-drawn wagons.

The wagon drivers were small, gold Mongols of some sort, early prizes of the Russian campaign.

The supervisor of the women was a fat, middle-aged Dutchman in a shabby business suit

Guarding the women was a tall and ancient man with a single-shot rifle from the Franco-Prussian War.

On the old guard's ruined breast dangled the Iron Cross.

A woman slave shuffled out of the house carrying a luminously beautiful blue vase. She was shod in wooden clogs hinged with canvas. She was a nameless, ageless, sexless ragbag. Her eyes were like oysters. Her nose was frostbitten, mottled white and cherry-red.

She seemed in danger of dropping the vase, of withdrawing so deeply into herself as simply to let the vase slip away.

My father-in-law saw the vase about to drop, and he went off like a burglar alarm. He shrieked at God to have pity on him just once, to make sense just once, to show him just one other energetic and intelligent human being.

He snatched the vase from the dazed woman. Close to unashamed tears, he asked us all to adore the blue vase that laziness and stupidity had almost let slip from the world.

The shabby Dutchman, the straw boss, now went up to the woman and repeated to her, word for word and shriek for shriek, what my father-in-law had said. The antique soldier came along with him, to represent the force that would be used on the woman, if necessary.

What was finally done with her was curious. She wasn't hurt.

She was deprived of the honor of carrying any more of Noth's things.

She was made to stand to one side while others continued to be trusted with treasures. Her punishment was to be made to feel like a fool. She had been given her opportunity to participate in civilization, and she had muffed it.

'I've come to say goodbye,' I said to Noth.

'Goodbye,' he said.

'I'm going to the front,' I said.

'Right over that way,' he said, pointing to the East 'An easy walk from here. You can make it in a day, picking buttercups as you go.'

'It isn't very likely well see each other again, I guess,' I said.

'So?' he said.

I shrugged. 'So nothing,' I said.

'Exactly,' he said. 'Nothing and nothing and nothing.'

'May I ask where you're moving to?' I said.

'I am staying here,' he said. 'My wife and daughter are going to my brother's home outside of Cologne.'

'Is there anything I can do to help?' I said.

'Yes,' he said. 'You can shoot Resi's dog. It can't make the trip. I have no interest in it, will not be able to give it the care and companionship Resi has led it to expect. So shoot it, please.'

'Where is it?' I said.

'I think you'll find it in the music room with Resi,' he said. 'She knows its to be shot, You will have no trouble with her.'

'All right,' I said.

'That's quite a uniform,' he said.

'Thank you,' I said.

'Would it be rude of me to ask what it represents?' he said. I had never worn it in his presence.

I explained it to him, showed him the device on the hilt of my dagger. The device, silver on walnut, was an American eagle that clasped a swastika in its right claw and devoured a snake in its left claw. The snake was meant to represent international Jewish communism. There were thirteen stars around the head of the eagle, representing the thirteen original American colonies. I had made the original sketch of the device, and, since I don't draw very well, I had drawn six-pointed stars of David rather than five-pointed stars of the U.SA. The silversmith, while lavishly improving on my eagle, had reproduced my six-pointed stars exactly.

It was the stars that caught my father-in-law's fancy. 'These represent the thirteen Jews in Franklin Roosevelt's cabinet,' he said.

'That's a very funny idea,' I said.

'Everyone thinks the Germans have no sense of humor,' he said.

'Germany is the most misunderstood country in the world,' I said.

'You are one of the few outsiders who really understands us,' he said.

'I hope that's a compliment I deserve,' I said.

'It's a compliment you didn't come by very easily,' he said. 'You broke my heart when you married my daughter. I wanted a German soldier for a son-in-law.'

'Sorry,' I said.

'You made her happy,' he said.

'I hope so,' I said.

'That made me hate you more,' he said. 'Happiness has no place in war.'

'Sorry,' I said.

'Because I hated you so much,' he said, 'I studied you. I listened to everything you said. I never missed a broadcast.'

'I didn't know that,' I said.

'No one knows everything,' he said. 'Did you know,' he said, 'that until almost this very moment nothing would have delighted me more than to prove that you were a spy, to see you shot?'

'No,' I said.

'And do you know why I don't care now if you were a spy or not?' he said. 'You could tell me now that you were a spy, and we would go on talking calmly, just as we're talking now. I would let you wander off to wherever spies go when a war is over. You know why?' he said.

'No,' I said.

'Because you could never have served the enemy as well as you served us,' he said. 'I realized that almost all the ideas that I hold now, that make me unashamed of anything I may have felt or done as a Nazi, came not from Hitler, not from Goebbels, not from Himmler — but from you.' He took my hand. 'You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone insane.'

He turned away from me abruptly. He went to the oyster-eyed woman who had almost dropped the blue vase. She was standing against a wall where she had been ordered to stand, was numbly playing the punished dunce.

Werner Noth shook her a little, trying to arouse an atom of intelligence in her. He pointed to another woman who was carrying a hideous Chinese, carved-oak dog, carrying it as carefully as though it were a baby.

'You see?' Noth said to the dunce. He wasn't intentionally tormenting the dunce. He was trying to make her, in spite of her stupidity, a better-rounded, more useful human being.

'You see?' he said again, earnestly, helpfully, pleadingly. 'That's the way to handle precious things.'