Mother Night

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 copy of 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 content 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.

'I know he would,' I said. 'I ran into him on Fifty-second Street about a month ago, and he called me by name. He was very shocked to see me in such reduced circumstances. He said he knew a lot of people in the public relations business, and he offered to talk to them about giving me a job.'

'You'd be good at public relations,' said Kraft.

'I certainly don't have any powerful convictions to get in the way of a client's message,' I said.

The game of Old Maid broke up, with Father Keeley the loser, with that pathetic old virgin still stuck with the queen of spades.

'Well,' said Keeley, as though he'd won much in the past, as though a rich future were still his, 'you can't win them all.'

He and the Black Fuehrer went upstairs, pausing each few steps to count to twenty.

And then Resi, Kraft-Potapov and I were alone.

Resi came over to me, put her arm around my waist, laid her cheek against my chest. 'Just think, darling, — ' she said.

'Hmm?' I said.

'Tomorrow well be in Mexico,' she said.

'Um,' I said.

'You seem worried,' she said.

'Me worry?' I said.

'Preoccupied,' she said.

'Do I look preoccupied to you?' I said to Kraft. He was studying the picture of the swamp again.

'No,' he said.

'My good old normal self,' I said.

Kraft pointed to a pterodactyl that was winging over the swamp. 'Who would think a thing like that could fly?' he said.

'Who would ever think that a ramshackle old fart like me would win the heart of such a beautiful girl, and have such a talented, loyal friend besides?' I said.

'I find it very easy to love you,' said Resi. 'I always have.'

'I was just thinking — ' I said.

'Tell me your thoughts,' said Resi.

'Maybe Mexico isn't exactly what we want,' I said.

'We can always move on,' said Kraft

'Maybe — there at the Mexico City airport — ' I said, 'maybe we could just get right on a jet — '

Kraft put his magazine down. 'And go where?' he said.

'I don't know,' I said. 'Just go somewhere very fast I suppose it's the idea of movement that excites me; I've been sitting still so long.'

'Um,' said Kraft.

'Moscow, maybe,' I said.

'What?' said Kraft incredulously.

'Moscow,' I said. 'I'd like very much to see Moscow.'

'That's a novel idea,' said Kraft

'You don't like it?' I said.

'I — I'll have to think about it,' he said.

Resi started to move away from me, but I held her tight. 'You think about it, too,' I said to her.

'If you want me to,' she said faintly.

'Heaven!' I said, and I jiggled her to make her bubble. 'The more I think about it, the more attractive it becomes,' I said. 'If we only stayed in Mexico City for two minutes between planes, that would be long enough for me.'

Kraft stood up, exercising his fingers elaborately. 'This is a joke?' he said.

'Is it?' I said. 'An old friend like you should be able to tell if I'm joking or not.'

'You must be joking,' he said. 'What is there in Moscow that could interest you?'

'I'd try to locate an old friend of mine,' I said.

'I didn't know you had a friend in Moscow,' he said.

'I don't know that he's in Moscow — just somewhere in Russia,' I said. 'I'd have to make inquiries.'

'What's his name?' said Kraft.

'Stepan Bodovskov — ' I said, 'the writer.'

'Oh,' said Kraft. He sat down again, picked up the magazine again.

'You've heard of him?' I said.

'No,' he said.

'What about Colonel Iona Potapov?' I said. Resi twisted away from me, stood with her back to the farthest wall.

'You know Potapov?' I asked her.

'No,' she said.

'You?' I asked Kraft

'No,' he said. 'Why don't you tell me about him?'

'He's a communist agent,' I said. 'He's trying to get me to Mexico City so I can be kidnaped and flown to Moscow for trial.'

'No!' said Resi.

'Shut up!' Kraft said to her. He stood, threw the magazine aside. He went for a small pistol he had in his pocket, but I got the drop on him with the Luger.

I made him throw the pistol on the floor.

'Look at us — ' he said wonderingly, as though he were an innocent bystander, 'cowboys and Indians.'

'Howard — ' said Resi.

'Don't say a word,' Kraft warned her.

'Darling — ' said Resi tearfully, 'the dream about Mexico — I thought it was really coming true! We were all going to escape!' She opened her arms. 'Tomorrow — ' she said weakly.

'Tomorrow — ' she whispered again.

And then she went to Kraft, as though she wanted to claw him. But there was no strength in her hands. The hold they took on Kraft was feeble.

'We were all going to be born anew,' she said to him brokenly. 'You, too — you, too. Didn't — didn't you want that for yourself? How could you speak so warmly about the new lives we would have, and still not want them?'

Kraft did not reply.

Resi turned to me. 'I am a communist agent — yes. And so is he. He is Colonel Iona Potapov. And our mission was to get you to Moscow. But I wasn't going to go through with it — because I love you, because the love you gave me was the only love I've ever had, the only love I ever will have.

'I told you I wasn't going through with it, didn't I?' she said to Kraft.

'She told me,' said Kraft.

'And he agreed with me,' said Resi 'And he came up with this dream of Mexico, where we would all get out of the trap — live happily ever after.'

'How did you find out?' Kraft asked me.

'American agents followed the scheme all the way,' I said. 'This place is surrounded now. You're cooked.'