Mother Night (20 page)

“I told you what I need,” I said. “Call up somebody—not a psychiatrist. Call up somebody who wants to give me a trial.”

Epstein and his mother, a very old woman, argued back and forth about what to do with me. His mother
understood my illness immediately, that it was my world rather than myself that was diseased.

“This is not the first time you’ve seen eyes like that,” she said to her son in German, “not the first man you’ve seen who could not move unless someone told him where to move, who longed for someone to tell him what to do next, who would do anything anyone told him to do next. You saw thousands of them at Auschwitz.”

“I don’t remember,” said Epstein tautly.

“All right—” said his mother, “then let
me
remember. I can remember. Every minute I can remember.

“And, as one who remembers,” said his mother, “let me say that what he asks for he should have. Call someone.”

“Who will I call?” said Epstein. “I’m not a Zionist. I’m an anti-Zionist. I’m not even that. I never think about it. I’m a physician. I don’t know anybody who’s still looking for revenge. I have nothing but contempt for them. Go away. You’ve come to the wrong place.”

“Call somebody,” said his mother.

“You still want revenge?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

He put his face close to mine. “And you really want to be punished?” he said.

“I want to be tried,”I said.

“It’s all play-acting,” he said, exasperated with both of us. “It proves nothing!”

“Call somebody,” said his mother.

Epstein threw up his hands. “All right! All right! I will call Sam. I will tell him he can be a great Zionist hero. He always wanted to be a great Zionist hero.”

What Sam’s last name was I never found out. Dr. Epstein called him from the front room of the flat while I remained in the kitchen with Epstein’s old mother.

His mother sat down at the table, faced me, rested her arms on the table, studied my face with melancholy curiosity and satisfaction.

“They took all the light bulbs,” she said in German.

“What?” I said.

“The people who broke into your apartment—they took all the light bulbs from the stairway,” she said.

“Um,” I said.

“In Germany, too,” she said. “Pardon me?” I said.

“That was one of the things—when the S.S. or the Gestapo came and took somebody away—” she said.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Other people would come into the building, wanting to do something patriotic,” she said. “And that was one of the things they always did. Somebody always
took the light bulbs.” She shook her head. “Such a strange thing for somebody always to do.”

Dr. Epstein came back into the kitchen dusting his hands. “All right—” he said, “three heroes will be here shortly—a tailor, a watchmaker, and pediatrician—all delighted to play the part of Israeli parachutists.”

“Thank you,” I said.

The three came for me in about twenty minutes. They had no weapons, and no status as agents of Israel or as agents of anything but themselves. The only status they had was what my infamy and my anxiousness to surrender to somebody, to almost anybody, gave them.

What my arrest amounted to was a bed for the rest of the night—in the tailor’s apartment, as it happened. The next morning, the three surrendered me, with my permission, to Israeli officials.

When the three came for me at Dr. Epstein’s apartment, they banged on the front door loudly.

The instant they did that, I felt enormously relieved. I felt happy.

“You’re all right now?” said Epstein, before he let them in.

“Yes, thank you, Doctor,” I said. “You still want to go?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“He
has
to go,” said his mother. And then she leaned closer to me, across the kitchen table. She crooned something in German, made it sound like a
fragment of a ditty remembered from a happy childhood.

What she crooned was this, a command she had heard over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz—had heard many times a day for years.

“Leichenträger zu Wache,”
she crooned.

A beautiful language, isn’t it?

Translation?

“Corpse-carriers to the guardhouse.” That’s what that old woman crooned to me.

S
o
HERE I AM
in Israel, of my own free will, though my cell is locked and my guards have guns.

My story is told, and none too soon—for tomorrow my trial begins. The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art. There will be no more time for writing. Adventuring I must go again.

There are many to testify against me. None to testify for me.

The prosecution intends to begin, I’m told, by playing recordings of the worst of my broadcasts, so the most pitiless witness against me will be myself.

Bernard B. O’Hare is in town at his own expense, annoying the prosecution with the feverish irrelevance of all he has to say.

So, too, is Heinz Schildknecht, my erstwhile best friend and doubles partner, the man whose motorcycle I stole. My lawyer says that Heinz is full of venom for
me, and that Heinz, surprisingly, will make a credible witness. Whence this respectability for Heinz, who, after all, worked at a desk next to mine in the Ministry of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment?

Surprise: Heinz is a Jew, a member of the anti-Nazi underground during the war, an Israeli agent after the war and up to the present time.

And he can prove it.

Good for Heinz!

Dr. Lionel J. D. Jones, D.D.S., D.D., and Iona Potapov
alias
George Kraft, can’t come to my trial, both serving in a United States Federal Prison, as they are. They have both sent affidavits, however.

The affidavits of Dr. Jones and Kraft-Potapov aren’t much help, to say the least.

Dr. Jones declares under oath that I am a saint and a martyr in the holy Nazi cause. He says, too, that I have the most perfect set of Aryan teeth he’s ever seen outside of photographs of Hitler.

Kraft-Potapov declares under oath that Russian intelligence was never able to turn up any proof that I had been an American agent. He offers the opinion that I was an ardent Nazi, but that I shouldn’t be held responsible for my acts, since I was a political idiot, an artist who could not distinguish between reality and dreams.

The three men who took me into custody in Dr. Epstein’s apartment are on hand for the trial—the tailor, the watchmaker, and the pediatrician—on an even more bootless junket than Bernard B. O’Hare’s.

Howard W. Campbell, Jr.—this is your life!

My Israeli lawyer, Mr. Alvin Dobrowitz, has had all my New York mail forwarded here, hoping unreasonably to find in that mail some proof of my innocence.

Hi ho.

Three letters came today.

I shall open them now, reporting their contents one by one.

Hope springs eternal, they say, in the human breast. It springs eternal, at any rate, in the breast of Dobrowitz, which is, I suppose, why he costs so much.

All that I need to be a free man, says Dobrowitz, is the barest proof that there was such a person as Frank Wirtanen, and that Wirtanen made me an American spy.

Well now—about the letters for today:

The first starts off warmly enough. “Dear Friend” it calls me, in spite of all the evil things I am said to have done. It assumes that I am a teacher. I explained in an earlier chapter, I believe, how my name happened to find its way onto a list of supposed educators, how I became recipient of mail promoting materials useful to those in charge of training the young.

The letter at hand is from “Creative Playthings, Inc.”

To which I reply:

The second letter?

It, too, addresses Howard W. Campbell, Jr., as “Dear Friend,” proving that at least two out of three letter writers today aren’t sore at Howard W. Campbell, Jr., at all. The letter is from a stockbroker in Toronto, Canada. It is addressed to the capitalistic aspect of me.

It wants me to buy stock in a tungsten mine in Manitoba. Before I did that, I would have to know more about the company. I would have to know in particular whether it had a capable and reputable management.

I wasn’t born yesterday.

The third letter? It is addressed direct to me in prison here.

And—it’s a curious letter, indeed. Let it here be seen whole:

So I am about to be a free man again, to wander where I please.

I find the prospect nauseating.

I think that tonight is the night I will hang Howard W. Campbell, Jr., for crimes against himself.

I
know
that tonight is the night.

They say that a hanging man hears gorgeous music. Too bad that I, like my father, unlike my musical mother, am tone-deaf. All the same, I hope that the tune I am about to hear is not Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”

Goodbye, cruel world!

Auf wiedersehen?