Mother Night (11 page)

End of chapter 643.

The city sky was clean and hard and bright the next morning, looking like an enchanted dome that would shatter at a tap or ring like a great glass bell.

My Helga and I stepped from our hotel to the sidewalk snappily. I was lavish in my courtliness, and my Helga was no less grand in her respect and gratitude. We had had a marvelous night.

I was not wearing war-surplus clothing. I was wearing the clothes I had put on after fleeing Berlin, after shucking off the uniform of the Free American Corps. I was wearing the clothes—fur-collared impresario’s cloak and blue serge suit—I had been captured in. I was also carrying, for whimsy, a cane. I did marvelous things with the cane: rococo manuals
of arms, Charlie Chaplin twirls, polo strokes at orts in the gutter.

And all the while my Helga’s small hand rested on my good left arm, creeping in an endless and erotic exploration of the tingling area between the inside of my elbow and the crest of my stringy biceps.

We were on our way to buy a bed, a bed like our bed in Berlin.

But all the stores were closed. The day wasn’t Sunday, and it wasn’t any holiday I could think of. When we got to Fifth Avenue, there were American flags flying as far as the eye could see. “Good God Almighty,” I said wonderingly.

“What does it mean?” said Helga.

“Maybe they declared war last night,” I said.

She tightened her fingers on my arm convulsively. “You don’t really think so, do you?” she said. She thought it was possible.

“A joke,” I said. “Some kind of holiday, obviously.”

“What holiday?” she said.

I was still drawing blanks. “As your host in this wonderful land of ours,” I said, “I should explain to you the deep significance of this great day in our national lives, but nothing comes to me.”

“Nothing?” she said.

“I’m as baffled as you are,” I said. “I might as well be the Prince of Cambodia.”

A uniformed colored man was sweeping the walk in front of an apartment. His blue and gold uniform bore a striking resemblance to the uniform of the Free American Corps, even to the final touch of a pale lavender stripe down his trouser legs. The name of the apartment house was stitched over his breast pocket. “Sylvan House” was the name of the place, though the only tree near it was a sapling, bandaged, armored and guy-wired.

I asked the man what day it was.

He told me it was Veterans’ Day.

“What date is it?” I said.

“November eleventh, sir,” he said.

“November eleventh is Armistice Day, not Veterans’ Day,” I said.

“Where you been?” he said. “They changed all that years ago.”

“Veterans’ Day,” I said to Helga as we walked on. “Used to be Armistice Day. Now it’s Veterans’ Day.”

“That upsets you?” she said.

“Oh, it’s just so damn cheap, so damn typical,” I said. “This used to be a day in honor of the dead of World War One, but the living couldn’t keep their grubby hands off of it, wanted the glory of the dead for themselves. So typical, so typical. Any time anything of real dignity appears in this country, it’s torn to shreds and thrown to the mob.”

“You hate America, don’t you?” she said.

“That would be as silly as loving it,” I said. “It’s impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn’t interest me. It’s no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can’t think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can’t believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.”

“You’ve changed so,” she said.

“People should be changed by world wars,” I said, “else what are world wars for?”

“Maybe you’ve changed so much you don’t really love me any more,” she said. “Maybe I’ve changed so much—”

“After a night like last night,” I said, “how could you say such a thing?”

“We really haven’t talked anything over—” she said.

“What is there to talk about?” I said. “Nothing you could say would make me love you more or less. Our love is too deep for words ever to touch it. It’s soul love.”

She sighed. “How lovely that is—if it’s true.” She put her hands close together, but not touching. “Our souls in love.”

“A love that can weather anything,” I said.

“Your soul feels love now for my soul?” she said.

“Obviously,” I said.

“And you couldn’t be deceived by that feeling?” she said. “You couldn’t be mistaken?”

“Not a chance,” I said.

“And nothing I could say could spoil it?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said.

“All right,” she said, “I have something to say that I was afraid to say before. I’m not afraid to say it now.”

“Say away!” I said lightly.

“I’m not Helga,” she said. “I’m her little sister Resi.”

A
FTER SHE GAVE ME
the news, I took her into a nearby cafeteria so we could sit down. The ceiling was high. The lights were merciless. The clatter was hell.

“Why did you do this to me?” I said.

“Because I love you,” she said.

“How could you love me?” I said.

“I’ve always loved you—since I was a very little girl,” she said.

I put my head in my hands. “This is terrible,” I said.

“I—I thought it was beautiful,” she said.

“What now?” I said.

“It can’t go on?” she said.

“Oh, Jesus—how bewildering,” I said.

“I found the words to kill the love, didn’t I—” she said, “the love that couldn’t be killed?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I shook my head. “What is this strange crime I’ve committed?”

“I’m the one who’s committed the crime,” she said. “I must have been crazy. When I escaped into West Berlin, when they gave me a form to fill out, asked me who I was, what I was—who I knew—”

“That long, long story you told—” I said, “about Russia, about Dresden—was any of it true?”

“The cigarette factory in Dresden—that was true,” she said. “My running away to Berlin was true. Not much else. The cigarette factory—” she said, “that was the truest thing—ten hours a day, six days a week, ten years.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said. “Life’s been too hard for me ever to afford much guilt. A really bad conscience is as much out of my reach as a mink coat. Daydreams were what kept me going at that machine, day after day, and I had no right to them.”

“Why not?” I said.

“They were all daydreams of being somebody I wasn’t.”

“No harm in that,” I said.

“Look at the harm,” she said. “Look at you. Look at me. Look at our love affair. I daydreamed of being my sister Helga. Helga, Helga, Helga—that’s who I was. The lovely actress with the handsome playwright
husband, that’s who I was. Resi, the cigarette-machine operator—she simply disappeared.”

“You could have picked a worse person to be,” I said.

She became very brave now. “It’s who I am,” she said. “It’s who I am. I’m Helga, Helga, Helga. You believed it. What better test could I be put to? Have I been Helga to you?”

“That’s a hell of a question to put to a gentleman,” I said.

“Am I entitled to an answer?” she said.

“You’re entitled to the answer yes,” I said. “I have to answer yes, but I have to say I’m not a well man, either. My judgment, my senses, my intuition obviously aren’t all they could be.”

“Or maybe they are all they should be,” she said. “Maybe you haven’t been deceived.”

“Tell me what you know about Helga,” I said.

“Dead,” she said.

“You’re sure?” I said.

“Isn’t she?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I haven’t heard a word,” she said. “Have you?”

“No,” I said.

“Living people make words, don’t they?” she said. “Especially if they love someone as much as Helga loved you.”

“You’d think so,” I said.

“I love you as much as Helga did,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“And you did hear from me,” she said. “It took some doing, but you did hear from me.”

“Indeed,” I said.

“When I got to West Berlin,” she said, “and they gave me the forms to fill out—name, occupation, nearest living relative—I had my choice. I could be Resi Noth, cigarette-machine operator, with no relatives anywhere. Or I could be Helga Noth, actress, wife of a handsome, adorable, brilliant playwright in the U.S.A.” She leaned forward. “You tell me—” she said, “which one should I have been?”

God forgive me, I accepted Resi as my Helga again.

Once she got that second acceptance, though, she began to show in little ways that her identification with Helga wasn’t as complete as she’d said. She felt free, bit by bit, to accustom me to a personality that wasn’t Helga’s but her own.

This gradual revelation, this weaning of me from memories of Helga, began as we left the cafeteria. She asked me a jarringly practical question:

“Do you want me to keep on bleaching my hair white,” she said, “or can I let it come back the way it really is?”

“What is it really?” I said.

“Honey,” she said.

“A lovely color for hair,” I said. “Helga’s color.”

“Mine has more red in it,” she said.

“I’d be interested to see it,” I said.

We walked up Fifth Avenue, and a little later she said to me, “Will you write a play for me some time?”

“I don’t know if I can write any more,” I said.

“Didn’t Helga inspire you to write?” she said.

“Not to write, but to write the way I wrote,” I said.

“You wrote a special way—so she could play the part,” she said.

“That’s right,” I said. “I wrote parts for Helga that let her be the quintessence of Helga onstage.”

“I want you to do that for me some time,” she said.

“Maybe I’ll try,” I said.

“The quintessence of Resi,” she said. “Resi Noth.”

We saw a Veterans’ Day parade down Fifth Avenue, and I heard Resi’s laugh for the first time. It was nothing like Helga’s laugh, which was a rustling thing. Resi’s laugh was bright, melodious. What struck her so funny was the drum majorettes, kicking at the moon, twitching their behinds, and twirling chromium dildos.

“I’ve never seen such a thing before,” she said to me. “War must be a very sexy thing to Americans.”
She went on laughing, and she thrust out her bosom to see if she might not make a good drum majorette, too.

She was growing younger by the second, gayer, more raucously irreverent. Her white hair, which had made me think so recently of premature aging, now updated itself, spoke of peroxide and girls who ran away to Hollywood.

When we turned away from the parade, we looked into a store window that showed a great gilded bed, one very much like the one Helga and I once had.

And not only did the window show that Wagnerian bed, it showed a reflection of Resi and me, too, ghostlike, and with a ghostly parade behind us. The pale wraiths and the substantial bed formed an unsettling composition. It seemed to be an allegory in the Victorian manner, a pretty good barroom painting, actually, with the passing banners and the golden bed and the male and female ghosts.

What the allegory was, I cannot say. But I can offer a few more clues. The male ghost looked God-awful old and starved and moth-eaten. The female ghost looked young enough to be his daughter, sleek, bouncy, and full of hell.

R
ESI AND
I dawdled on our way back to my ratty attic, looked at furniture, drank here and there.

Resi went to the ladies’ room in one bar, leaving me alone. A barfly started talking to me.

“You know what the answer to communism is?” he asked me.

“Nope,” I said.

“Moral Rearmament,” he said.

“What the hell is that?” I said.

“It’s a movement,” he said.

“In what direction?” I said.

“That Moral Rearmament movement,” he said, “believes in absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love.”

“I certainly wish them all the luck in the world,” I said.

In another bar, Resi and I met a man who claimed
he could satisfy, thoroughly satisfy, seven women in a night, provided they were all different.

“I mean really different,” he said.

Oh, God—the lives people try to lead.

Oh, God—what a world they try to lead them in!

R
ESI AND
I didn’t get home until after supper, after dark. Our plan was to spend another night at a hotel. We came home because Resi wanted to have a waking dream of how we would refurnish the attic, wanted to play house.

“At last I have a house,” she said.

“It takes a heap of living,” I said, “to make a house a home.” I saw that my mailbox was stuffed again. I left the mail where it was.

“Who did that?” said Resi.

“Who did what?” I said.

“That,” she said, pointing to my namecard on the mailbox. Somebody had drawn a swastika after my name in blue ink.

“It’s something quite new,” I said uneasily. “Maybe we’d better not go upstairs. Maybe whoever did it is up there.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“You picked a miserable time to come to me, Resi,” I said. “I had a cozy little burrow, where you and I might have been quite content—”

“Burrow?” she said.

“A hole in the ground, made secret and snug,” I said. “But, God!—” I said in anguish, “just when you were coming to me, something laid my den wide open!” I told her how my notoriety had been renewed. “Now the carnivores,” I said, “scenting a freshly opened den, are closing in.”

“Go to another country,” she said.

“What other country?” I said.

“Any country you like,” she said. “You have the money to go anywhere you want.”

“Anywhere I want—” I said.

And then a bald, bristly fat man carrying a shopping bag came in. He shouldered Resi and me away from the mailboxes with a hoarse, unapologetic bully’s apology.