Mother Night

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 Stepan 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.

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 We 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 is 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.'