MOTHER NIGHT

By Kurt Vonnegut,

Adapted for the Stage by Sam Robers

Act One

(Lights up on center stage. In it we see an older man, perhaps only in his late forties or early fifties, but beaten down by a life of disappointment. There is a drugged look in his eyes, the look of a man who doesn't feel anything anymore. He sits at a typewriter.)

Campbell: My name is Howard W. Campbell, Jr. I am an American by birth, a Nazi by reputation, and a nationless person by inclination. The year in which I write this book is 1961. I am behind bars. I am behind bars in a nice new jail in old Jerusalem. I am awaiting a fair trial for my war crimes by the Republic of Israel. I was born in Schenectady, New York, on February 16, 1912. My father, who was a Baptist minister, was an engineer in the Service Engineering Department of the General Electric Company. His job demanded such varied forms of technical cleverness of him that he had scant time and imagination left over for anything else. The man was the job and the job was the man. The only nontechnical book I ever saw him look at was a picture history of the First World War. He never told me what the book meant to him, and I never asked him. All he ever said was that it wasn't for children, that I wasn't to look at it. So of course I did. There were pictures of men hung on barbed wire, mutilated women, bodies stacked like cordwood - all the usual furniture of world wars. My mother was a housewife and an amateur cellist. She once had dreams of my playing the cello, too. I failed as a cellist because I, like my father, am tone-deaf. I had no siblings, and my father was often away, so I was for many years the principal companion of my mother. She was a beautiful, talented, morbid person. I remember a time when she filled a saucer with a mixture of rubbing alcohol and table salt. She put the saucer on the kitchen table, turned off the lights, and had me sit facing her across the table. Then she touched off the mixture with a match. The flame was almost pure yellow, and it made her look like a corpse to me, made me look like a corpse to her. "There"- she said, "That's what we'll look like when we're dead." From that moment she hardly spoke to me. In 1923, when I was eleven, my father was assigned to Berlin. From then on, my education, my friends and my principal language were all German. I eventually became a playwright in the German language, and I took a German wife, the actress Helga Noth. My mother and father left Germany in 1939, when war came. My wife and I stayed on. (Start a slow fade of the lights) I earned my keep until the war ended in 1945 as a writer and broadcaster of Nazi propaganda to the English-speaking world. When the war was ending, I was high on the list of war criminals, largely because my offenses were so obscenely public. I was captured by one Lieutenant Bernard B. O'Hare of the American Third army near Hersfield on April 12, 1945. I did not hang. (He takes a long dragon his cigarette, by now the light should be nearly out) I was recruited as an American agent in 1938, three years before America got into the war…

(Lights up on "Germany." We see Young Campbell and Wirtanen seated across from each other. Young Campbell is a young man, full of energy, who truly looks like he enjoys life, like things are happy for him. Wirtanen is middle aged, and looks like he knows something about life that no one else knows, and he knows it deeper and better than anything else he knows, this infuses his whole character. Wirtanen speaks very American English, a Chicago dialect if possible. Campbell speaks in a more British, affected manner because if his years in Europe. Two Nazi soldiers walk by.) 1

Wirtanen: Nice looking men.

YCampbell: I suppose.

Wirtanen: You understand English?

YCampbell: Yes

Wirtanen: Thank God for somebody who can understand English. I've been going crazy trying to find somebody to talk to.

YCampbell: That so?

Wirtanen: What do you think of all this - or aren't people supposed to go around asking questions like that?

YCampbell: All what?

W: The things going on in Germany. Hitler and the Jews and all that.

YC: It isn't anything I can control, so I don't think about it.

W: None of your beeswax, eh?

YC: Pardon?

W: None of your business.

YC: That's right.

W: You didn't understand that – when I said "beeswax" instead of "business"?

YC: It's a common expression, is it?

W: In America it is. You mind if I come over there so we don't have to holler?

YC: As you please.

W: As you please. (He crosses and sits next to Campbell) That sounds like something an Englishman would say.

YC: American.

W: Is that a fact? I was trying to guess what maybe you were, but I wouldn't have guessed that.

YC: Thank you.

W: So you figure that's a compliment. That's why you said "Thank you"?

YC: Not a compliment - or an insult either. Nationalities just don't interest me as much as they probably should.

W: Any of my Beeswax what you do for a living?

YC: Writer.

2

W: Is that a fact? That's a great coincidence. I was just sitting over there wishing I could write, on account of I've thought up what I think's a pretty good spy story.

YC: That so?

W: I might as well give it to you. I'll never write it.

YC: I've got all the projects I can handle now.

W: Well - some time you may run dry. There's this young American, see, who's been in Germany so long he's practically a German himself. He writes plays in German, and he's married to a beautiful German actress, and he knows a lot of big­ shot Nazis who like to hang around theater people.

YC: Who are you?

W: Let me finish my story first. So this young American knows there's a war coming, he figures America's gonna be on one side and Germany's gonna be on the other. So this American, who hasn't been anything but polite to the Nazis up to then, decided to pretend he's a Nazi himself, and he stays on in Germany when war comes along, and gets to be a very useful American spy.

YC: You know who I am?

W: Sure. (He takes out his wallet and shows it too Campbell) And that's who I am, Major Frank Wirtanen, US War Department, unit unspecified. I'm asking you to be an American intelligence agent, Mr. Campbell.

YC: Oh Christ. (Campbell slumps in his chair. Then with surprising power.) Ridiculous. No. Hell no.

W: Well - I'm not too let down, actually because today isn't the day when you give me your final answer.

YC: If you imagine that I'm going home to think this over, you're mistaken. When I go home, it will be to have a fine meal with my wife, to listen to music, to make love to my wife, and to sleep like a log. I'm an artist, not a soldier. If war comes, it'll find me still working at my peaceful trade.

W: I wish you all the luck in the world, Mr. Campbell but his war isn't going to let anybody stay in a peaceful trade."

YC: We'll see.

W: That's right - we'll see. That's why I said you wouldn't give me your final answer today. You'll live your final answer. If you decide to go ahead with it, you'll go ahead strictly on your own, working your way up with the Nazis as high as you can go.

YC: Charming.

W: Well - you'd be an authentic hero, about a hundred times braver than any ordinary man. You'll be volunteering right at the start of the war to be a dead man. Even if you get caught, you'll find your reputation gone, and probably have very little to live for. To do your job right you'll have to commit high treason. The most that will be done for you is that your neck will be saved. But there will be no magic time when you will be cleared, when America will call you out of hiding with a cheerful "Olly-oily-oxen- free!"

3

YC: You make it sound attractive.

W: I think there's a chance I've made it attractive to you. I saw the play you've got running now and I've read the one you're going to open.

YC: Oh? And what did you learn from those?

W: That you admire pure hearts and heroes, that you love good and hate evil, and that you believe in romance. (Lights fade out and begin to come up on older Campbell)

Campbell: It is a curious typewriter my lawyer, Mr. Dobrowitz has given to me - and an appropriate typewriter too. It is a typewriter obviously made in Germany during the Second World War. It puts at fingertips a symbol that was never used before the German Third Reich, a symbol that will never be used again. The symbol is the twin lightning strokes of the S.S., the Schutzsajfel, the most fanatical wing of Nazism. I used such a typewriter in Germany all through the war. Ancient history. All around me is ancient history. Though the jail I rot in is new, some of the stones in it, I'm told, were cut in King Solomon's time. How long ago that war, how nearly forgotten it is, even by the Jews - the young Jews that is. One of the Jews who guards me here knows nothing of it. (The guard enters. Spot expands to include him. The same guard, faceless will play all four guard parts.)

Arnold: My name is Arnold Marx. I have very red hair. I guard Mr. Campbell from six in the morning until noon.

Campbell: Arnold is studying to be a lawyer, but his avocation, and that of his father, is archaeology. They spend most of their spare time in the ruins of Razor, which Arnold tells me was a Canaanite city that was burned several times by Israeli armies, and eventually rebuilt by.....

Arnold: Tiglath-pileser the Third

Campbell: Who?

Arnold: Tiglath-pileser the Third. The Assyrian

Campbell: Ah. Tiglath-pileser the Third.

Arnold: I'll bring you a book about him if you like.

Campbell. That's nice of you. Maybe I'll get around to remarkable Assyrians later on. Right now my mind is pretty well occupied with remarkable Germans.

Arnold: Like who?

Campbell: Oh, I've been thinking a lot lately about my old boss, Paul Joseph Goebbels.

Arnold: Who? (The spot cuts himout, he exits.)

Campbell: The guard who relieves Arnold Marx every day at noon is nearly my own age, forty-eight, and who is named Andor Gutmann. (The spot widens to show the guard)

Andor: I had just volunteered for the Sonderkommando when the order came to shut the ovens down.

4

Campbell: Sonderkommando mean special detail. At Auschwitz it meant a very special detail indeed - one composed of prisoners whose job it was to shepherd condemned prisoners into the gas chambers, and then lug their bodies out. The members of the Sonderkommando were themselves killed.

Ander: Many people actually volunteered for the Sonderkommando.

Campbell: Why?

Ander: If you could write a book about that, and answer that question - Why? - you would have a very great book.

Campbell: Do you know the answer?

Ander: No. Even though I was one of the ones who volunteered. (He pauses) There were loudspeakers all over the camp, and they were never silent for long. There was much music played through them. Those who were musical told me it was often good music - sometimes the best. Of course there was no music by Jews, that was forbidden. The music was always stopping in the middle, and then there was an announcement. All day long music and announcements. There was one announcement that was always crooned, like a nursery rhyme. It was the call for the Sonderkommando. (He closes his eyes and croons the next line) Leichentrager zu Wache.

Campbell: Corpse-diggers to the guardhouse. (The spot narrows again, the guard exits.) The guard who relieves Ander Gunmann is named Arpad Kovacs. Faced with the problem of being a Jew in Nazi Hungary, Arpad got himself false papers and joined the Hungarian S.S. (Light widens to show guard)

Arpad: Tell them the things a man does to survive! What is so noble about being a briquette!

Campbell: By briquettes he means people who did nothing to save their own lives or anybody else's life when the Nazi's took over. A briquette, of course, is a molded block of coal dust, the soul of convenience where transportation, storage, and combustion are concerned. (He turns to Arpad) Did you ever hear any of my broadcasts?

Arpad: No. I don't need to. Everyone was saying the same things those days.

Campbell: No one ever suspected you?

Arpad: How would they dare? I was such a pure and terrifying Aryan that they even put me in a special detachment whose mission was to found out how the Jews always knew what the S.S. was going to do.

Campbell: Was the detachment successful?

Arpad: I'm happy to say that fourteen S.S. men were shot on our recommendation. Adolf Eichmann himself congratulated us.

Campbell: You met him, did you?

Arpad: Yes - and I'm sorry I didn't know at the time how important he was.

Campbell: Why?

Arpad: I would have shot him in the head. (The spot narrows again)

5

Campbell: Bernard Mengel guards me from midnight until six in the morning, He tells me that I sleep very noisily here.

Bernard: You are the only man I ever heard of who has a bad conscience about what he did in the war.

Campbell: What makes you think I have a bad conscience?

Bernard: The way you sleep, the way you dream. Even Hoess did not sleep like that. He slept like a saint, right up to the end.

Campbell. Mengel is speaking of Rudolf Franz Hoess, the commandant of the extermination camp at Auschwitz. Before emigrating to Israel in 1947, Mengel helped to hang Hoess.

Bernard: When Hoess was hanged, the strap around his ankles - I put that on and made sure it was tight.

Campbell: Did that give you a lot of satisfaction?

Bernard: After we finished hanging Hoess, I packed up my clothes to go home. The catch on my suitcase was broken, so I buckled it with a big leather strap. Twice within an hour I did the same job - once to Hoess and once to my suitcase.

Both jobs felt about the same. (Spotlight narrows. Guard exits.)

Campbell: I, too, knew Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz.

(Lights up on Young Campbell down in Nazi Germany. There is a party occurring. We see several couples dancing, including Helga and Young Campbell)

Campbell: I met him at a New Year's Eve party in Warsaw during the war, the start of 1944. Helga and I were a very popular couple, gay and patriotic. People used to tell us that we cheered them up. We were always going to parties. My wife never knew I was a spy. I would have lost nothing by telling her. My telling her wouldn't have made her love me any less. My telling her wouldn't have put me in danger. It would simply have made my heavenly Helga's world, which was already something to make the Book of Revelation seem pedestrian. The war was enough without that. And Helga didn't go through the war simply looking decorative either. She entertained the troops, often within the sound of enemy guns. Enemy guns? Somebody's guns anyway. That was how I lost her. She was entertaining troops in the Crimea, and the Russians took the Crimea back. My Helga was presumed dead. After the war I paid a good deal of money to a private detective agency in West Berlin to trace the wispiest word of her. My standing offer to the agency, unclaimed, was a prize of ten thousand dollars. Hi ho. My Helga believed the things I said about the races of man and the machines of history. No matter what I was really, what I really meant, uncritical love was what I needed - and my Helga gave it to me. Copiously. No young person on earth is so excellent as to need no uncritical love. Das Reich Der Zwei, the nation of two my Helga and I had - it's territory. The territory we defended so jealously, didn't go much beyond the bounds of our great double bed. Flat, tufted, springy country, with my Helga and me for mountains. And, with nothing making sense in my life but love, what a student of geography I was! Oh, how we clung, my Helga and I - how mindlessly we clung. We didn't listen to each other's words. We heard only the melodies in our voices. The things we listened for carried no more intelligence than the purrs and growls of great cats. If we had listened for more, what a nauseated couple we would have been. Away

6

from the Sovereign territory of our nation of two, we talked like the patriotic lunatics all around us. But it did not count. Only one thing counted. The nation of two.

(Hoess pulls young Campbell to one side. Hoess and all of the Nazis other than Goebbels will be played by the same actor.)

Hoess: I wish I could write! How I envy you creative people - Creativity is a gift from the gods. You know I have some great stories to tell, true stories that no one would believe. I can't tell them to you now, but after the war... maybe we could collaborate? I can talk it, but I can't write.

(Young Campbell breaks away from Hoess)

Campbell: What was I doing in Warsaw? I had been order there by my boss Reichslater Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. Dr. Goebbels wanted me to write a pageant honoring the German soldiers who had given their last full measure of devotion - who died, that is - in putting down the uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

(Goebbels approaches Campbell)

Goebbels: I have a dream ... of producing this pageant annually in Warsaw after the war. Of letting the ruins of the ghetto stand forever as a setting for it.

YCampbell: There would be Jews in this pageant?

Goebbels: Certainly - Thousands of them.

Campbell: Can the writing of this ghastly pageant be added to the list of my war crimes? No, Thank God, it never got beyond a working title "Last Full Measure." I am willing to admit, however, that I probably would have written it. Actually, I am willing to admit almost anything. About this pageant: it had one peculiar result. It brought the Gettysburg Address to the attention of Hitler. Goebbels asked me where I had gotten the working title, so I made a translation for him of the entire Gettysburg Address.

Goebbels: You know, this is a very fine piece of propaganda. We are never as modern, as far ahead of the past as we think we are.

YCampbell: It's a very famous speech in my native land, every schoolchild knows it by heart.

Goebbels: Do you miss America?

YCampbell: I miss the mountains, the rivers, the broad plains, the forests, but I could never be happy with the Jews in charge of everything.

Goebbels: they will be taken care of in due time. About the speech by Abraham Lincoln - There are phrases in here that might be used most impressively in dedications of German military cemeteries. I'd like very much to send this to Hitler.

YCampbell: Whatever you say, sir. Goebbels: Lincoln wasn't a Jew, was he?

YCampbell: I'm sure not.

Goebbels: It would be very embarrassing to me if he turned out to be one.

7

YCampbell: I've never heard anyone suggest that he was.

Goebbels: The name Abraham is very suspicious...

Campbell: Two weeks later, the Gettysburg address came back from Hitler. There was a note stapled to the top of it. "Some parts of this almost made me weep."

(Lights fade low on Nazi Germany)

Campbell: When I was locked up in Tel Aviv for twenty-four hours. On my way to my cell there, the guards stopped me outside Eichmann's cell to hear what we had to say to each another. (Lights fade up on Eichmann in the present.) We didn't recognize each other, and the guards had to introduce us. He was writing the story of his life. He was sweetly interested in his work, in me, the guards in prison, in everybody.

Eichmann: I'm not mad at anybody.

Campbell: That's certainly the way to be.

Eichmann: I've got some advice for you.

Campbell: I'd be glad to have it.

Eichmann: Relax, just relax.

Campbell: May I ask a personal question?

Eichmann: Certainly

Campbell: Do you feel you're guilty of murdering six million Jews?

Eichmann: Absolutely not.

Campbell: (With a smirk) You were simply a soldier, were you - taking orders from higher ups, like soldiers around the world?

Eichmann: Did they show you my statement?

Campbell: I haven't seen it.

Eichmann: Then how did you know what my defense was going to be?

Campbell: This man actually believed he had invented his own trite defense, though a whole nation of ninety some-odd million had made the same defense before him. Such was his paltry understanding of the Godlike human act of invention. The more I think about Eichmann and me, the more I think he should be sent to a Hospital, and that I am the sort of person for whom punishments by fair, just men were devised. As a friend of the court who will try Eichmann, I offer my opinion that Eichmann cannot distinguish between right an wrong - that not only right and wrong, but truth and falsehood, hope and despair, beauty and ugliness, kindness and cruelty, are all processed by Eichmann's mind indiscriminately, like birdshot through a bugle.

Eichmann: You still write?

8

Campbell: One last project - a command performance for the archives.

Eichmann: Tell me, do you set a certain time of day aside for writing, whether you feel like it or not, or do you wait for inspiration to strike, night or day?

Campbell: A schedule

Eichmann: Yes, yes, a schedule. Does alcohol help?

Campbell: I think it only seems to, and only seems to for about half an hour.

Eichmann: Listen - about those six million

Campbell: Yes?

Eichmann: I could spare you a few for your book. I don't think I really need them all. (Lights fade out on Eichmann. Fade back up on Nazi Germany, at the dance.)

Campbell: I wrote one manuscript. It was called Memoirs of a Monogamous Casanova. In it I told of my conquests of all the hundreds of women my wife, my Helga, had been. It was a dairy, recording day by day, for the first two years of the war, our romantic life, to the exclusion of all else. There is a man of many moods, a woman of many moods. In some of the early entries, settings are referred to sketchily, but from there on, there are no settings at all. Helga knew I kept this peculiar diary. I kept it as one of many devices for keeping our sexual pleasure keen. The book is not only a report of an experiment, but a part of the experiment it reports - a self-conscious experiment by a man and a woman to be endlessly fascinating to each other sexually. To be more than that. To be to each other, body and soul, sufficient reason for living, thought there might not be a single other satisfaction to be had. (Campbell begins to cry. Lights fade on dance and Campbell.)

(Lights up on Nazi Germany Young Campbell and Heinz Schildknecht sit in a darkened apartment with a bottle of liquor)

Campbell: Heinz Schildknecht, my closest friend in Nazi Germany.

Heinz: I feel I can tell you anything - absolutely anything.

YCampbell: I feel the same way about you

H: Anything I have is yours

YC: Anything I have is yours, Hienz.

Campbell: The property between us was negligible. I had a watch, a typewriter, a bicycle, and that was about it. Heinz had long since traded his typewriter and watch for cigarettes. All he had was his motorcycle.

H: If anything happens to the motorcycle, I am a pauper. I will tell you something terrible.

YC: Don't if you don't want to.

H: I want to. You are the person I can tell terrible things to. I am going to tell you something simply awful. Howard, I love my motorcycle more than I loved my wife.

9

YC: I want to be a friend of yours, and I want to believe everything you say, Hienz, but I refuse to believe that, let's just forget you said it, because it isn't true.

H: No. This is one of those moments when somebody really speaks the truth, one of those rare moments. People hardly ever speak the truth, but now I am speaking the truth.

YC: All right.

H: I sold her jewelry, her favorite furniture, even her meat ration one time - all for cigarettes for me.

YC: We've all done things we're ashamed of.

H: I would not quit smoking for her sake.

YC: We all have bad habits.

H: When the bomb hit the apartment, killed her, and left me with nothing but a motorcycle, the black market man offered me four thousand cigarettes for the motorcycle

YC: I know.

H: And I gave up smoking at once, because I loved the motorcycle so.

YC: We all cling to something

H: To the wrong things. And we start clinging too late. I will tell you the one thing I really believe out of all the things there are to believe.

YC: All right

H: All people are insane.

YC: Heinz - I wonder how good a friend you really are?

H: Why should you ask me that?

YC: I want to ask a favor of you - a very big one – and I don't know if I should.

H: I demand you ask it!

YC: Lend me your motorcycle, so I can visit my in-laws tomorrow.

H: Take it. (Lights fade)

Campbell: When I went calling on the Noths, the Russians were only twenty miles from Berlin. I had decided that the war was almost over, that it was time for my career as a spy to end. The iron gates of the great house were open…

(Lights up on Werner Noth in Nazi Germany. Young Campbell enters.)

YCarnpbell: I've come to say goodbye.

Werner: Goodbye.

YC: I'm going to the front. 10

W: Right over that way. An easy walk from here. You can make it in a day, picking buttercups as you go.

YC: It isn't very likely we'll see each other again, I guess.

W: So?

YC: So nothing.

W: Exactly. Nothing and nothing and nothing.

YC: May I ask where you're moving to?

W: I am staying here. My wife and daughter are going to my brother's house outside of Cologne.

YC: Is there anything I can do to help?

W: Yes. 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 that Resi has led it to except. So shoot it, please.

YC: Where is it?

W: I think you'll find it in the music room with Resi. She knows it's to be shot.

YC: All right.

W: You broke my heart when you married my daughter. I wanted a German soldier for a son-in-law.

YC: Sorry,

W: You made her happy.

YC: I hope so.

W: That made me hate you more. Happiness has no place in war.

YC: Sorry

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

YC: I didn't know that.

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

YC: No.

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

YC. No.

W: Because you could have never served the enemy as well as you served us. I realize that almost all of the ideas I hold now, that make me unashamed of anything I may have felt or done as a Nazi, came not 11

from Hitler, not from Goebbels, not from Himmler - but from you. You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone insane.

(Lights fade out. Lights up on Nazi Germany. Resi hold a dog in her lap. Resi is played by the same actress as Helga. Young Campbell enters)

YCampbell: Resi?

Resi: I know. It's time to kill the dog

Campbell: I did not know Resi well. She had chilled me once, early in the war, by lispingly calling me an American spy. Since then I had spent as little time as possible before her childish gaze. When I came into the room I was startled by how much she was corning to resemble my Helga.

YC: It isn't anything I want to do very much.

R: Are you going to do it?

YC: Your father asked me to do it.

R: You're a soldier now.

YC: Yes

R: You'll die

YC: So I hear. Maybe not.

R: Everybody who isn't dead is going to be dead very soon now.

YC: Not everybody.

R: I will be.

YC: I hope not. I'm sure you'll be fine.

R: It won't hurt when I get killed. Just all of a sudden I wont be anymore. (Young Campbell picks up the dog.)

YC: It will be much better off dead.

R: I'll be better off dead too

YC: That I can't believe.

R: Do you want me to tell you something?

YC: All right.

R: Since nobody's going to go on living much longer, I might as well tell you that I love you.

YC: That's very sweet.

12

R: I mean I really love you. When Helga was alive and you two would come here, I used to envy Helga. When Helga was dead, I started dreaming about how I would grow up and marry you and be a famous actress and you would write plays for me.

YC: I am honored.

R: It doesn't mean anything. Nothing means anything. You can go shoot the dog now. (Young Campbell carried the dog outside. An old soldier and an old woman watch in interest.)

Soldier: Are you going to bury it?

C: I suppose I better.

S: If you don't somebody will eat it.

(Campbell prepares to fire. Lights out. A gun shot is heard. Pause. Multiple gunshots are heard.)

Campbell: I was captured by one Lieutenant Bernard B O'Hare of the American Third army near Hersfeld on April 12, 1945.

(O'Hare grabs Campbell from behind and starts to manhandle him.)

Campbell: I was taken from a Third Army prisoner-of-war camp near Ohrdruf on April 15. I was driven to Wiesbaden in a Jeep.

(Campbell shakes O'Hare off.)

Campbell: He left me at the door of a dining hall, and told me to go inside and wait.

(Lights up on World War II Germany. Young Campbell enters a dining hall where Wirtanen is seated.)

Wirtanen: Well-what did you think of that war, Campbell?

YC: I would just as soon have stayed out of it.

W: Congratulations. You lived through it, anyway. A lot of people didn't.

YC: I know. My wife for instance.

W: Sorry about that. I found out she was missing the same day you did.

YC: How?

W: From you. That was one of the pieces of information you broadcast that night.

YC: That was vital military information? That had to be got out of Germany at the risk of my neck?

W: Certainly. The instant we got it we began to act. To find a replacement for you. We thought you'd kill yourself before the sun came up again.

YC: I should have.

W: I'm damn glad you didn't.

13

YC: I'm damn sorry I didn't. You would think that a man who has spent as much time in the theater as I have would know when the proper time came for the hero to die - if he was to be a hero.

W: I don't admire suicide.

YC: I admire form. I admire things with a beginning, a middle, and an end - and, whenever possible, a moral too.

W: There's a chance she's still alive, I guess.

YC: A loose end.

W: I did a little morbid arithmetic last night, Campbell. Calculated that you, by being neither incompetent nor dead, were one in forty-two.

YC: So what happens to me next.

W: You've already disappeared again. Where would you like to go from here, and who would you like to be?

YC: I don't suppose there's a hero's welcome for me anywhere?

W: Hardly.

YC: Any news of my parents?

W: I'm sorry to tell you- they died four months ago.

YC: Nobody told them what I was really doing?

W: Our little radio station in the heart of Berlin was worth more than the piece of mind of two old people.

YC: How many people knew what I was doing?

W: The good things or the bad things?

YC: The good.

W: Three. There was me, General Donovan, and one other.

YC: Three people in all the world knew me for what I was - and all the rest...

W: They knew you for what you were, too.

YC: That wasn't me.

W: Whoever it was - he was one of the most vicious sons of bitches who ever lived.

YC: You give me hell for that - knowing what you do? How else could I have survived?

W: That was your problem. Very few men could have solved it as thoroughly as you did. Let me ask you a question.

YC: Ask away. 14

W: If Germany had won - had conquered the world –

YC: How would I have lived? What would I have done?

W: Exactly.

YC: There is every chance that I would have become sort of a Nazi Edgar Guest, writing a daily column of optimistic doggerel for newspapers around the world. Classify me as a Nazi. Hang me, if you think it would tend to raise the general level of morality. Life is no great treasure.

W: I only want you to understand how little we can do for you. A false identity, a few red herrings, transportation to wherever you might conceivably start a new life. Some cash, not much, but some.

YC: Cash? How were the cash value of my services arrived at?

W: A matter of custom. Custom going back to the Civil War. Private's pay. Would it make any difference to you if we gave you the back pay of a Brigadier general, or no back pay at all?

YC: No difference.

W: Its almost never money, or patriotism. Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible. Now then, about transportation: where to?

YC: Tahiti.

W: I suggest New York, you can lose yourself there without any trouble, and there's plenty of work, if you want it.

YC: All right, New York.

W: When I told you there were only three people who knew about your coded broadcasts. You didn't ask who the third one was.

YC: Would it be anybody I'd ever heard of?

W: Yes. He's dead now, I'm sorry to say. You used to attack him regularly in your broadcasts.

YC: Oh?

W: The man you used to call Franklin Delano Rosenfeld. He used to listen to you gleefully every night. (Lights fade on Nazi Germany. Up on Campbell.)

Campbell: I came to New York under an assumed name. In Greenwich Village I rented a depressing attic apartment with rats squeaking and scrabbling in its walls. There was one pleasant thing about my ratty attic: the back window overlooked a little private park, a little Eden formed by four back walls. It was big enough for children to play in. I often heard a cry from that little Eden, a child's cry that never failed to make me stop and listen. The cry was this: "Olly--olly--oxen -free"

(Lights up on present Young Campbell enters apartment looking aged. He putters around.)

Campbell: I started a new life, in my ratty attic overlooking the park. I was left alone, so much alone that I was able to take back my own name, and almost nobody wondered ifl was the Howard W. Campbell Jr.

15

Until the very end of my purgatory in Greenwich Village, the closest I came to being caught was when I went to a Jewish doctor in the same building as my attic. My finger was infected.

(Lights up on Epstein and his mother. Young Campbell enters and Epstein begins to bandage his finger. Epstein's mother looks on.)

EM: That is a very famous name you have.

YC: Pardon me?

EM: You do not know about anybody else named Howard W. Campbell Jr.?

YC: I suppose there are some others.

EM: How old are you?

YC: Forty-one.

EM: Then you are old enough to remember the war.

E: Forget the war.

EM: And you never heard Howard W Campbell Jr. broadcasting from Berlin?

YC: I do remember now-yes. I'd forgotten. That was a long time ago. I never listened to him, but I remember he was in the news. Those things fade.

E: They should fade. They belong to a period of insanity that should be forgotten as quickly as possible.

EM: Auschwitz.

E: Forget Auschwitz.

EM: Do you know what Auschwitz was?

YC: Yes.

EM: That was where I spent my young womanhood. And that was where my son the doctor spent his childhood.

(E has finished. He hustles Young Campbell out)

EM: Sprechen-Sie Deutsch?

YC: Pardon me?

EM: I asked if you spoke German.

YC: No- I'm afraid not. Auf Wiedersehen. That's good-bye, isn't it?

EM: Until we meet again.

YC: Oh. Well-Auf Wiedersehen.

EM: Auf Wiedersehen.

16

(Lights fade.)

Campbell: During my postwar years as an odd duck and recluse in Greenwich Village, I lived on four dollars a day, rent included, and I even had a television set. My new furnishings were all war surplus, like myself. My library was largely war surplus, coming as it did from recreation kits. And, since phonograph records came in these unused kits, I got myself a war-surplus, water-proofed, portable phonograph. By buying recreation kits, I came into possession of twenty-six recordings of Bing Crosby's "White Christmas." My overcoat, my raincoat, my jacket, my socks, and my underwear were war-surplus, too. By buying a war-surplus first-aid kit for a dollar, I also came into possession of a quantity of morphine. I was tempted to take the morphine, but then I realized that I was already drugged. I was feeling no pain. My narcotic was what had gotten me through the war. It was an ability to let my emotions be stirred by only one thing - my love for Helga. And so, with my Helga presumed dead, I became a death-worshipper, as content as any narrow-minded religious nut anywhere. And then, one day in 1958,after thirteen years of living like that, I bought a war-surplus wood-carving kit. When I got home, I started to carve up my broom handle with no particular purpose. And it suddenly occurred to me to make a chess set.

(Lights up on Young Campbell holding chess figures.)

Campbell: When I was finished I had a handsome set of chess men to show for my labors. And yet another strange impulse came over me. I felt compelled to show somebody, somebody still among the living, the marvelous thing I had made.

(Young Campbell knocks on Kraft's door.)

YC: Do you play chess?

(The door opens. Lights up on New York. Kraft's apartment is filed with paintings.)

YC: I didn't know I had a painter living underneath me.

K: Maybe you don't have one.

YC: Marvelous paintings! Where do you exhibit?

K: I never have.

YC: You'd make a fortune if you did.

K: You're nice to say so, but I started painting too late.

Campbell: He then told me what was supposed to be the true story of his life, none of it true. He said he was a widower from Indianapolis. He said he had no children. The real name of this old man was Colonel Iona Potapov. This antique sonofabitch was a Russian agent, had been operating continuously in America since 1935. He had a very live wife named Tanya. He had three children and nine grandchildren. At this very moment, I'm told, Kraft's paintings are bringing as much as ten thousand dollars apiece in New York.

K: You said something about chess?

YC: I've just made these, and I've got a terrific yen to play with them.

17

K: Pride yourself on your game do you?

YC: I haven't played in a good long while.

(Young Campbell and Kraft set up on a chessboard Kraft has.)

Campbell: He beat me. After that we played at least three games a day, every day for a year. And we built up between ourselves a pathetic sport of domesticity that we both felt need of. One particularly touching thing between us was the matter of wines. Kraft knew a lot more than I did about the subject of wines, and often brought home cobwebby treasures to go with a meal. The wine was all for me. Kraft was an alcoholic. That much of what he had told me was true. He was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for sixteen years. While he used A.A. for spy drops, his appetite for what the meeting offered spiritually was real. It was typical of his schizophrenia as a spy that he would use an institution he so admired for purposes of espionage. It was typical of his schizophrenia as a spy, that he should be a true friend of mine, and that he should eventually think of a way to use me cruelly in advancing the Russian cause.

(Lights fade. Up on Young Campbell and Kraft, laughing and joking. Young Campbell has scratched a swastika, a hammer and sickle, and the Starsand Stripes on the wall.)

Young Campbell: The meaning of patriotism to a Nazi. (He salutes the swastika.) Hooray. To a Communist. (He salutes the hammer and sickle.) Hooray. To an American. (He salutes the Stars and Stripes.) Hooray.

(They collapse in laughter.)

Campbell: For a little while, I lied to Kraft about who I was and what I had done. But the friendship deepend so much, so fast, that I soon told him everything. He was eager to see my plays. When I told him I didn't have copies, he made me tell him about them, scene by scene.

(Young Campbell is acting out scenes for Kraft.)

Kraft: Marvelous!

(Young Campbell exits and moves to the mail box. He stars looking at the mail, and throwing it away.)

YC: Dividend checks. Notices of stockholders' meetings. Trash mail. Advertising flyers for books and apparatus said to be useful in the field of education.

Campbell: How did I happen to receive advertisement for educational materials?

(Young Campbell is holding a paper, and is intently studying it with a shocked expression on his face. Campbell eventually trails off, becoming interested in what YC is reading.)

Campbell: One time I applied for a job as a teacher of German at a private school in New York. I applied, I think, simply to demonstrate to myself that there really was a person such as me...

YC: Supreme Court demands U.S be mongrel? Red Cross gives whites Negro blood? International Jewry only winners of World War II.

18

(Campbell snatches paper form Young Campbell, and starts leafing through it. Young Campbell opens the last thing he is holding - it is a letter. He begins to read it to himself and lights come up on Bernard B. O'Hare)

Bernard: Dear Howard. I was very surprised and disappointed to hear you aren't dead yet. When I think of all the good people who died in World War II, and then think that you're alive ... I hope you dream of the concentration camp at Ohrdruf. I should have pushed you into a lime pit when I had the chance. Very, very truly yours, Bernard B. O'Hare.

(Campbell, having found what he is looking for, reads. Doctor Lionel Jones enters the light.)

Campbell: An American Tragedy?

Dr. Jones: Howard W. Campbell, Jr. a great writer and one of the most fearless patriots in American history, now lives in poverty and loneliness in the attic of 27 Bethune Street. Such is the fate of thinking men brave enough to tell the truth about the conspiracy of Jewish bankers and International Jewish Communists who will not rest until the bloodstream of every American is hopelessly polluted with Negro and/or Oriental blood.

(Jones enters the actual scene. Campbell and O'Hare exit. Campbell returns to his desk.)

Jones: Campbell?

YC: Yes.

Jones: My names is Dr. Jones. I have a surprise for you.

YC: I'vealready seen your paper.

J: No - not the paper. A bigger surprise than that. (Krapptauer and Keely enter, panting.)

YC: An even bigger surprise?

J: The woman I've brought with me –

YC: What about her?

J: She's your wife.

(Campbell sits bolt upright at his desk, leaps to the floor, and watches the scene.)

Jones: I got in touch with her, and she begged me not to tell you about her. She insisted it had to be like this, with her just walking in without any warning.

Helga (offstage): So I could see for myself if there was still room for me in your life. If there is no room, I will simply say goodbye again , disappear, and never bother you again.

(Young Campbell, visibly shaken, whirls on Jones.)

YC: My wife? I don't believe you.

J: Its easy enough to prove I am a liar. And if l am a liar, have a look for yourself.

19

(Young Campbell starts to move for the darkened space where Helga is. Campbell stops him, and goes himself. As Campbell approaches Helga lights come up on the actress that played Helga, entirely unaged, except that her hair is now white.)

Campbell: My -my wife. (Campbell runs to embrace her.) (Blackout)

Act Two

(Lights up on New York. Campbell is embracing Helga. Dr. Jones, Krapptauer, and Keely look on. Kraft enters.)

Campbell: My - my wife. How is it that it's you who gives me back my wife?

Jones: A fantastic coincidence. One day I learn that you are still alive. A month later I learned that your wife was still alive. What can I call a coincidence like that but the Hand of God? My paper has a small circulation in West Germany. One of my subscribers read about you and he sent me a cable. He asked me if I knew your wife had turned up in a refugee camp in West Berlin.

Campbell: Why didn't he cable me? Sweetheart - why didn't you cable me?

Helga: We'd been apart so long - I'd been dead so long. I thought surely you'd built a new life. With no room for me in it. I'd hoped that.

C: My life is nothing but room for you. It could never be filled by anyone but you. (Krapptauer exits)

Helga: So much to say - so much to tell. I was captured in the Crimea. I was raped. I was shipped to Ukraine in a boxcar and put to work in a labor gang. We were stumbling sluts, married to mud. When the war was over, no one bothered to tell us. After two years, I escaped the labor gang, but was caught the next day by Asiatic half wits with sub­ machine guns and police dogs. I spent three years in prison before being sent to Siberia as an interpreter at a huge prisoner­ of-war camp. I was there for eight years, until I was finally repatriated. Repatriated not to Berlin, but to Dresden, In East Germany, where I worked in a cigarette factory. One day, I finally escaped. I fled to Berlin, escaped over the wall, and days later found myself being flown to America to be reunited with you.

Campbell: Who paid your way?

Jones: Admirers of yours. Don't feel you have to thank them. They feel they owe you a debt of gratitude they'll never be able to repay.

C: For what?

J: For having the courage to tell the truth during the war, when everybody else was telling lies. (Krapptauer re-enters with Helga's luggage, breathing very heavily)

J: You fool.

K: No - no. I'm perfectly fine

J: Why didn 't you let Robert do it? You should have let Robert bring those things up. My gosh - you mustn't risk your life like that.

20

K: It is an honor to risk my life for the wife of a man who served Adolf Hitler as well as Howard Campbell did.

(He drops dead. Campbell and Jones and Keely immediately try to revive him, taking his pulse, calling his name, CPR Campbell gets up and exits almost immediately while Jones and Keely continue. Campbell re- enters with Epstein, who briefly checks Krapptauer's pulse.)

Epstein: He's dead. Absolutely, completely, dead.

Dr. Jones: I happen to be a dentist, doctor.

Epstein: That so? I'm going to go call an ambulance.

(Dr. Jones covers Krapptauer with a sheet Campbell has brought in.)

J: Just when things were beginning to look up for him.

C: In what way?

J: He was beginning to get a little organization going again. Not a big thing - but loyal, dependable, devoted. The Iron Guard of the Whites Sons of the American Constitution.

(Robert Wilson, the Black Fuehrer of Harlem, enters.)

Robert: Everything all right up here? You was up here so long. J: Not quite. August Krapptauer died.

R: All dying, all dying. Who's gonna pick up the torch when everybody's dead? J: Robert, this is Howard W. Campbell Jr.

R: I heard about you, but I aint never listened to you.

C: Well, you can't please all of the people all of the time.

R: We was on opposite sides. I was on the colored folks' side. I was with the Japanese. We needed you, and you needed us - Only there was a lot of things we couldn't what you'd call agree about.

C: I guess thats so.

R: I mean, I heard you say you don't think the colored people was so good.

J: Now, now. What useful purpose does it serve to squabble among ourselves. The thing to do is pull together.

R: I just wanna tell him what I tell you. I tell this Reverend gentleman here the same thing every morning, the same thing I tell you now. I give him his hot cereal for breakfast, and then I tell him: "The colored people are gonna rise up in righteous wrath, and they're gonna take over the world. White folks gonna lose. The colored people gonna have a hydrogen bomb all their own. They working on it right now. Pretty soon gonna be Japan's turn to drop one. The rest of the colored folks gonna give them the honor of dropping the first one.

C: Where they going to drop it?

R: China, most likely.

21

C: On other colored people?

(Lights out. )

(Lights up on Campbell and Helga, alone at last. They gaze adoringly, yet shyly at each other.)

Campbell: This is what's known as getting to know each other again.

Helga: Yes. (She turns to the three symbols on the wall: the swastika, the hammer and sickle, and the Stars and Stripes.) Which of these is you now, Howard?

C: Pardon me?

H: The swastika, the hammer and sickle. Or the Stars and Stripes? Which one do you like the most?

C: Ask me about music.

H: What?

C: Ask me what kinds of music I like these days. I have some opinions on music. I have no political opinions at all. H: I see. All right - what music so you like these days?

C: Bing Crosby's White Christmas.

H: Excuse me?

C: Its my favorite piece of music. I love it so much, I own twenty-six copies.

H: You do?

C: It's a private joke.

H: Oh.

C: Private. I've been living alone for so long, everything about me is private. I'm surprised anyone's able to understand a word I say.

H: I will. Give me a little time -not much, but some, and I'll understand everything you say - again. I have private jokes, too.

C: From now on - we'll make the privacy for two again.

H: That will be nice.

(Pause. They gaze at each other.)

C: Look. This attic will never do for a love nest. Not even for one night. We'll get a taxi. We'll go to some hotel. And tomorrow we'll throw out the furniture and get everything brand new. And then we'll look for a really nice place to live.

H: I'm very happy here.

C: Tomorrow we'll find a bed like our old bed - two miles long and three miles wide, with a headboard like an Italian sunset. Remember?

22

H: Yes. We leave right now?

C: Whatever you say.

H: Can I show you my present first?

C: Presents? You're my present, what more could I need?

H: You might want these too. (She opens a suitcase. It is filled with manuscripts.) The collected works of Howard W. Campbell, Jr.

(Campbell falls to his knees and starts to look through the manuscripts.)

C: How queer this makes me feel.

H: I shouldn't have brought them?

C: I don't know. These pieces of paper were me at one time. What does this young stranger have to say about life? (He reads a scrap of paper)

Kund und hell der Sonnenaufgang leis und suss der Glocke Klang

Ein Magdlein hold, Krug in der Hand sitzt an des tie/en Brunnes Rand

(He pauses, thinking)

Cool, bright sunrise - Faint, sweet bell.

Maiden with a pitcher By a cool, deep well.

(Lights out)

(Lights up on Helga and Campbell, exterior.)

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

H: All the stores are closed.

C: It's not Sunday, or any holiday I can think of.

(A uniformed African-American walks by. Camppbell stops him.)

C: What day is it?

Soldier: Veteran's Day.

C: What date is it?

S: November eleventh, sir.

C: November eleventh is Armistice day, not Veteran's day.

S: Where you been? They changed all that years ago. (He exits)

C: So damn typical. 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 it, wanted the glory of the dead for themselves. So typical. 23

H : You hate America, don't you?

C: That would be as silly as loving it. It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. I can't think in terms of boundaries, I can't believe 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.

H: You've changed so.

C: People are changed by World Wars. What else are World Wars for?

H: Maybe you've changed so much you don't really love me anymore. Maybe I've changed­

C: After a night like last night, how could you say such a thing?

H: We really haven't talked anything over.

C: Nothing you could say would make me love you any less.

H: How lovely that is - its true. Our souls in love.

C: A love that can weather anything.

H: Your soul feels love now for my soul?

C: Obviously.

H: And you couldn't be mistaken in that feeling? You couldn't be mistaken?

C: Not a chance.

H: And nothing I could say could spoil it?

C: Not a chance.

H: All right. I have something to say that I was afraid to say before.

C: Say away!

H: I'm not Helga. I'm her little sister, Resi.

(Campbell says nothing, then starts to walk away. He exits, Resi chases after. Lights out.)

(Lights up on New York. Resi and Campbell are standing near his mail box.)

C: Why did you do this to me?

Resi: Because I love you.

C: How could you love me?

R: I've always loved you - since I was a very little girl.

C: This is terrible.

R: I found the words that killed the love - didn't I? 24

C: I don't know. What is this strange crime I've committed?

R: I'm the one who committed the crime. I must have been crazy. When I escaped into West Berlin, they gave me a form to fill out, asked me who I was.... I daydreamed of being my sister Helga. Helga, Helga, Helga, that's who I was. Resi, the cigarette-machine operator, she simply disappeared.

C: You could have picked a worse person to be.

R: It's who I am. Helga, Helga, Helga. You believed it. What better test could I be put to? Have I been Helga to you?

C: That's a hell of a question to put to a gentleman.

R: Am I entitled to an answer?

C: You're entitled to the answer yes. I have to answer yes, but I have to say I'm not a well man, either. My judgment, my intuition, my sense aren't all they should be.

R: Or maybe they are all they should be. Maybe you haven't been deceived.

C: Tell me all you know about Helga.

R: Dead.

C: You're sure?

R: Isn't she?

C: I don't know.

R: I haven't heard a word. Have you?

C: No.

R: Living people make words.

(A man enters)

Man: Scuse me. (He goes to the mail box.) Campbell. Howard W. Campbell. You know him?

C: No.

M: No? You look just like him. (He takes out a paper and opens it, handing to Resi) Now doesn't that look just like the gentleman you're with?

C: Let me see. (He takes the paper. The man punches him through the paper, driving him to the ground.)

M: Before the Jews put you in a cage in a zoo, or whatever they're going to do to you, I'd like to play with you a little myself. Felt that one did you?

C: Yes.

M: That one was for Private Irving Buchanon.

C: Is that who you are? 25

M: Buchanon is dead. He was the best friend I ever had. Five miles from Omaha beach, the Germans cut his nuts off and hung him from a telephone pole. (He kicks Campbell.) That’s for Ansel Brewer, run over by a tank in Aachen. (He kicks Campbell again.) That's for Eddie McCarty, cut in two by a burp gun in Ardennes. Eddie was gonna be a doctor. (He kicks Campbell again. Campbell passes out.) And this one - (He notices Campbell is unconscious. He takes a noose out of his pocket.) I brought you this, so you could save everybody a lot of trouble.

(Lights up on Dr. Jones' basement. The room is covered with mildewed Nazi banners. Over a mantle hangs a large picture of Adolph Hitler, hung in black silk. Campbell lays on a bed, covered in a leopard print mattress. Resi stands over the bed. Campbell wakes up. Gunshots are heard offstage.)

C: Don't tell me. I've joined the Hottentots.

R: This is the cellar of Dr. Lionel JD Jones, DDS DD

C: Why Jones?

R: He was the only person in this country I knew I could trust. He was the only person I knew for sure was on your side.

C: What is life without friends? Why here?

R: It's safe.

C: From what?

R: The Jews.

(Robert enters with breakfast.)

Ro: Headache?

C: Yes.

Ro: Take an aspirin.

C: Thanks for the advice. Who in God's name is doing that shooting? Can't he stop until my head feels a little better?

R: That is your friend?

C: Dr. Jones?

R: George Kraft

C: Kraft? What's he doing here?

R: He's coming with us.

C: To where?

R: It's all been decided. Everybody agrees, darling, the best thing for you is to get out of the country. Dr. Jones has a friend with an airplane. As soon as your well enough, darling, we get on the plane, fly to some divine place where you aren't known, and we'll start life all over again. 26

(Lights fade. Lights up on Kraft aiming at a target. The target is a horrible caricature of a Jew. Campbell watches Kraft fire and miss.)

C: Try opening your eyes next time you fire.

K: Oh. You're up and around.

C: Yes.

K: Too bad, what happened.

C: I thought so.

K: Maybe its for the beast, though. Maybe we will all end up thanking God for what happened.

C: How so?

K: It has jarred us out of our ruts. When you get out of this country with your girl, get yourself new surroundings, a new identity -you'll start writing again. And you'll write ten times better than you ever did before. Think of all the maturity you'll bring to your writing!

C: My head hurts too much just now to -

K: It'll stop aching soon. It isn't broken and it's filled with a heartbreakingly clear understanding of the self and the world. And I'm going to be a better painter for the change, too. I've never seen the tropics before - that brutal glut of color, that visible, audible heat.

C: What's this about the tropics?

K: I thought that's where we'd go. That's where Resi wants to go too.

C: You're coming, too?

K: Do you mind?

C: People certainly have been active while I slept.

K: Was that wrong of us? Would we plan anything that would be bad for you?

C: George. Why should you throw your lot in with us? Why should you come down into this cellar with the black beetles, too? You have no enemies. Stay with us, George, and you'll deserve every enemy I have.

K: Howard. When my wife died, I had no allegiance to anything on earth. I , too was a meaningless fragment of a nation of two. And then I discovered something I had never known before - what a true friend was. I throw my lot in with you gladly friend. Nothing else attracts me in the least. With your permission, my paints and I would like nothing better than to go with you wherever Fate takes you next.

C: This - this is friendship indeed.

K: I hope so

(Lights out. Spot on Young Campbell, now looking as old as Campbell.)

27

YC: We would fly to Mexico City - Me, Kraft, and Resi. That became the plan. From Mexico City we would go exploring by automobile, would seek some secret village in which to spend the rest of our days. The plan was surely as charming a daydream as I had had in many a day. And it seemed not only possible but certain that I would write again. I told Resi so.

(Lights up on Campbell and Resi. Young Campbell exits.)

R: Did I have anything to do with this lovely, this heavenly miracle?

C: Everything.

R: No, no. Very little. But some, thank god, some. The big miracle is the talent you were born with. C: The big miracle is your power to raise the dead.

R: Yes. And it raised me too. How alive do you think I was - before?

C: Shall I write about it?

R: Yes - yes. Oh darling, yes. (They embrace.) Have you decided on a name yet?

C: Name?

R: Your new name - the name of the new writer whose beautiful works come mysteriously out of Mexico? I will be Mrs.

C: Senora.

R: Senor and Senora - ? (Kraft enters.)

R: What do you think is a good name for Howard?

K: How about Don Quixote. That would make you Dulcinea del Toboso, and I would sign y paintings Sancho Paza. (Dr. Jones enters with Father Keeley.)

J: Father Keeley and I have a special request to make of you.

C: Oh?

J: Tonight is the weekly meeting of the Iron Guard of the White Sons of the American Constitution. Father Keeley and want to stage some sort of memorial service for August Krapptauer.

C: I see.

J: Father Keeley and I don't think either of us could deliver the eulogy without breaking down. We wondered if you would accept the honor of saying a few words.

C: Thank you gentleman. A eulogy?

J: I think the theme should be - "His Truth goes Marching On."

(Lights fade. Lights up on a meeting of the Iron Guard of the White Sons of the American Constitution. Dr. Jones is speaking to the crowd.)

28

Jones: Nowhere could America find the truth. Almost nowhere. If a man was fortunate to have a shortwave radio, there was still one fountainhead of truth- just one. (He begins to play a recorded Howard W. Campbell Broadcast from World War II. The broadcast is pre-recorded and fades with he lights. Campbell has taken a note from his pocket and is reading it.)

C: Coal-bin door unlocked. Leave at once. I am waiting for you in a vacant store across the street. Frank Wirtanen. (Lights fade slowly. Lights up on Campbell and Wirtanen sitting in Modern New York.)

C: I though surely you would have retired by now.

W: I did - eight years ago. Built a house on a lake in Maine with an axe and an adze and my own two hands. I was called out of retirement as a specialist.

C: In what?

W: ln you.

C: Why the sudden interest in me?

W: That's what I'm supposed to find out.

C: No mystery why the lsraelis want me.

W: I agree. But there's a lot of mystery about why the Russians should think you were such a fat prize.

C: Russians - What Russians?

W: The girl, Resi Noth, and the old man, the painter, the one called George Kraft. They're both communist agents. We've been watching the one who calls himself Kraft now since 1941. We made it easy for the girl to get into the country so we could see what she was up to.

C: With a few well chosen words, you've wiped me out. How much poorer I am in this minute than I was in the minute before. Friend, dream, and mistress - Alles Kaput!

W: You've still got a friend.

C: What do you mean by that?

W: He's like you. He can be many things at once, all sincerely. It's a gift.

C: What was he planning for me?

W: He wanted to uproot you form this country and get you to another one, where you could be kidnapped with fewer international complications. He tipped off Jones as to where and who you were, got O'Hare and all the other patriots stirred up again - all as part of a scheme to pull up your roots.

C: Mexico - that was the dream he gave me.

W: I know. There's a plane waiting for you in Mexico City right now. If you were to fly there, you wouldn't spend more than two minutes on the ground. Off you'd go again, bound for Moscow in the latest jet, all expenses paid.

C: Dr. Jones is in on this too?

29

W: No. He's got your best interest at heart. He's one of the few men you can trust.

C: Why should they want me in Moscow?

W: They want to exhibit you to the world as a prime example of the sort of Fascist war criminal this country harbors. They also hope you will confess to all sorts of collusion between the Americans and the Nazis at the start of the Nazi regime.

C: Why would I confess to such a thing? What did they plan to threaten me with?

W: that's simple. That's obvious

C: Torture?

W: Probably not Just death.

C: I don't fear it.

W: Oh, it wouldn't be for you.

C: For whom then?

W: For the girl you love, the girl who loves you. In this case the death would be for little Resi Noth.

C: Her mission was to make me love her?

W: Yes.

C: She did it very well. It clears up some mysteries. Do you know what she had in her suitcase?

W: Your collected works?

C: You knew about that too. To think they would go to such pains. How did they know where to look for those manuscripts?

W: They weren't in Berlin, they were in Moscow.

C: How did they get there?

W: They were the main evidence in the trial of Stepan Bodovskov.

C: Who?

W: Stepan Bodovskov was a corporal. An interpreter with the first Russian troops to enter Berlin. He found the trunk of your writings in a theater loft. He took the trunk as booty.

C: Some booty.

W: It turned out to be remarkably fine booty. Bodovskov was fluent in German. He went through the contents of the trunk, and he decided he had a trunkful of instant career. He started modestly, translating a few of your poems and sending them off to a magazine. They were published. Next he tried a play.

C: Which one?

30

W: The Goblet. Bodovskov translated it into Russian, and he had himself a villa on the Red Sea practically before they'd taken the sandbags down from the windows of the Kremlin.

C: It was produced?

W: Not only was it produced, it continues to be produced all over Russia by both amateurs and professionals. "The Goblet" is the "Charley's Aunt" of contemporary Russian theater.

C: I'm glad about Bodovskov. I'm glad somebody got to live like an artist with what I once had. You said he was arrested and tried?

W: And shot.

C: For plagiarism?

W: For originality. Plagiarism is the silliest of misdemeanors. What harm is there in writing what has already been written? Real originality is a capital crime, often calling for cruel and unusual punishment in advance of the coup de grace.

C: I don't understand.

W: Your friend, Kraft- Potapov, realized that you were the author of a lot of things Bodovskov claimed to have written. He reported the facts to Moscow. Bodovskov's villa was raided. The magic trunk containing your writings was discovered in the loft in his stable.

C: So-?

W: Every word written by you in that trunk had been published.

C: And?

W: Bodovskov had begun to replenish the trunk with magic of his own. The police found a two-thousand page satire of the Red Army, written in a style distinctly un-Bodskovian. For that un-Bodskovian behavior, Bodovskov was shot. But enough of the past. Jones' house is about to be raided. The place is surrounded now. I wanted you out of there, since it's going to be a complicated enough mess as it is.

C: What's going to happen to Resi?

W: Deportation is all. She hasn't committed any crimes.

C: And Kraft.

W: A good long stretch in prison. That's no shame. I think he'd rather go to prison than home anyway. Dr. Jones will go back to prison for illegal possession of firearms and whatever else of a straightforward criminal nature we can pin on him. You'd better go now.

(Lights fade. Spot up on Campbell.)

C: A final moment with my mistress and my best friend

(Lights up on Dr. Jones basement. Resi, Keeley, and Robert are playing cards. Kraft reads a magazine.)

C: What's the game?

31

Ke: Old Maid.

(Campbell sits. They finish the game in silence. Resi comes to Campbell.)

R: Just think, darling. Tomorrow we'll be in Mexico.

C: Um.

R: You seem worried. Preoccupied.

C: Do I look preoccupied to you?

K: No.

C: My good old normal self. Who would ever think a ramshackle old fart like me would win the heart of such a beautiful girl, and have such a talented, loyal friend.

R: I find it very easy to love you.

C: I was just thinking. Maybe Mexico isn't exactly what we want.

K: We can always move on.

C: Maybe - there at the Mexico City airport, we could just get on another jet

K: And go where?

C: I don't know. Moscow maybe.

K: What?

C: Moscow. I'd like very much to see Moscow. I'd try to locate an old friend of mine.

K: I didn't know you had a friend in Moscow.

C: I don't know if he's in Moscow, just somewhere in Russia.

K: What's his name?

C: Stepan Bodovskov - the writer. You've heard of him.

K: No.

C: What about Colonel Iona Potapov? You know Potapov?

R: No.

C: You?

K: No.

C: He's a communist agent. He's trying to get me to fly to Mexico so I can be kidnapped and flown to Moscow for trial.

R: No!

32

K: Shut up! (He goes for a pistol. Campbell draws a Luger out first. He makes Kraft drop the pistol.)

R: Howard. Darling. The dream about Mexico, I thought it was going to come true. We were all going to escape. Tomorrow... (She lunges weakly at Kraft. Campbell holds her back.) We were all going to be born anew. You - you, too. Didn't you want that for yourself? I am a communist - 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. I told you I wasn't going to go through with it, didn't I?

K: She told me.

R: And he agreed with me. And we came up with this dream of Mexico, where we would all get out of the trap and live happily ever after.

K: How did you find out?

C: American agents followed the scheme all the way. The place is surrounded now. You're cooked. Resi, at least, will only be deported.

R: Nothing worse than that?

C: That's all. I doubt you'll even have to pay for passage back.

R: You're not sorry to see me go?

C: Certainly, I'm sorry. But there's nothing I can do to keep you with me. Any minute now, people are going to come in here and arrest you. You don't except me to fight them do you?

R: You won't fight them?

C: What chance would I have?

R: That matters?

C: You mean why won't I die for love, like a knight in a Howard W. Campbell, Jr. play?

R: That's exactly what I mean. Why don't we die together, right here and now?

C: (laughs) Resi, darling, you have a full life ahead of you.

R: I have a full life behind me, in those few sweet hours with you.

C: That sounds like a line I might have written as a young man.

R: It is a line you wrote as a young man.

C: Foolish young man,

R: I adore that young man.

C: When was it you fell in love with him? As a child?

R: As a child - and then as a woman. When they gave me all the things you'd written, told me to study them, thats when I fell in love as a woman.

C: I'm sorry - I can't congratulate you on your literary tastes. 33

R: You no longer believe that love is the only thing you live for?

C: No.

R: Then tell me what to live for - if anything at all. It doesn't have to be love. Anything at all! (She starts hurling things around the room) I'll live for that chair, that picture, that furnace pipe, that couch, that crack in the wall! Tell me what to live for and I will! It doesn't have to be love. Just tell me what it should be.

C: Resi...

R: Tell me!

C: I'm an old man.

R: All right old man, tell me what to live for. Tell me what you live for, so I can live for it too, here or ten thousand kilometers from here! Tell me why you want to go on being alive, so I can go on wanting to be alive, too.

(The door bursts open and soldiers run into the room. They surround Jones, Kraft, Resi, and Campbell.)

Soldier: How does it feel to have such a long and distinguished career come to an end?

K: All careers do end. Thats something I've known for a long time

S: Maybe they'll make a movie of your life.

K: Maybe, I would want a lot of money for the rights

S: There's only one actor who could really play the part, though.

K: Who?

S: Charlie Chaplin. Who else could play a spy who was steadily drunk from 1941 until 1948? Who else could play a Russian spy who built an apparatus built almost entirely of American agents?

K: That's not true!

S: Ask your superiors, if you don't believe me.

K: They know?

S: You were on your way home to a bullet in the back of the head.

K: Why did you save me?

S: Call it sentimentality. You, of course, are Resi Noth. Did you enjoy your little stay in our country?

R: What am I supposed to say?

S: Anything you like. If you have any complaints, I will pass them along to the proper authorities. We are trying to increase the tourist trade from Europe you know.

R: You say very funny things. I am sorry I can't say funny things back. This is not a funny time for me.

34

S: I'm sorry.

R: You aren't sorry. I'm the only person who is sorry. I am sorry because I have nothing to live for. All I have is love for one man, but that man does not love me. He is so used up he can't love anymore. There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes. I can't say anything funny, but I can show you something interesting. (She dabs her lips) I will show you a woman who dies for love. (She pitches forward, into Campbell's arms. He freezes. Pause.)

J: All l 've done is what you people should be doing.

S: What should we be doing?

J: Protecting the Republic! Everything we do is to make the country stronger! Join with us and let's go after the people who are trying to make it weaker! The Jews! The Catholics! The Negros! The Orientals! The Unitarians!

S: For you information, I am a Jew.

J: That proves what I've just been saying. The Jews have infiltrated everything! S: You're completely crazy.

(Lights fade. Spot up on Young Campbell.)

YC: Jones wasn't completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained. The missing teeth, of course, are simple obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds in most cases. The willful filing off of gear teeth, the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information That was how a household as contradictory as one composed of Jones, Father Keely, Vice-Bundesfuerher Krapptauer, and the Black Fuerher could exist in relative harmony. That was how Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz could alternate over the loudspeakers of Auschwitz great music and calls for corpse carriers. This was how Nazi Germany could see no difference between civilization and hydrophobia. (Low light up on Campbell being taken from Jones' basement) I was l arrested along with everyone else in the house. I was released within an hour. (Campbell walk into low light New York. Lights fade on Jones' basement.) An agent took me down on an elevator and out onto the sidewalk. I took perhaps fifty steps down the sidewalk, and then I stopped. I froze. It was not guilt that froze me. It was not a ghastly sense of loss that froze me. It was not a loathing of death that froze me. It was not heartbroken rage against injustice that froze me. It was not the thought that I was unloved that froze me. It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction.

(A policeman enters.) Policeman: You all right?

C: Yes.

P: You've been standing here a long time.

C: I know.

P: You waiting for somebody?

C: No. 35

P: You better move along don't you think?

C: Yes sir. (Lights fade.)

(Lights up on Campbell's apartment. It is trashed. Bernard B. O'Hare crouched in the shadows. Campbell shuffles in. Bernard leaps out.)

Bernard: Know who I am?

C: Yes.

B: I'm not as young as I once was. I haven't changed much have I?

C: No.

B: Excepting me?

C: You told me I could.

B: Ever have nightmares about me, Campbell?

C: Often.

B: Surprised I didn't bring anybody with me?

C: Yes.

B: You know what you are to me, Campbell? You're pure evil. You're absolutely pure evil.

C: Thank you.

B: You're right - it is kind of a compliment. Usually a bad man's got some good in him - almost as much good as evil. But you -you're the pure thing. For all the good there is in you, you might as well be the Devil.

C: Maybe I am.

B: Don't think I haven't thought of that.

C: What do you plan to do to me? (Campbell moves towards a pair of fire tongs.)

B: Take you apart. When I heard you were alive, I knew it was something I had to do. There wasn't any way out. It had to end like this.

C: I don't see why. I'm not your destiny - or the devil either.

B: I'll show you why. I'll show you, by God, I was born to take you apart. Yellow belly. Nazi.

(Blackout. Spot on Young Campbell)

YC: Then he called me the most offensive compound word in the English language. So I broke his right arm with the fire-tongs. This is the only violent act I have ever committed in what has now been a long, long life. To me, O'Hare was simply one more gatherer of wind-blown trash in the tracks of war. O'Hare had a far more exciting view of what we were to each other. When drunk, at any rate, he thought of himself as St. George and of me as the dragon. When he realized that he'd been hit, that the dragon 36

meant to give St. George a real tussle, he looked surprised. "There are plenty of reasons for fighting" I said, "but no good reason to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. It's that part of an imbecile that punishes, and vilifies, and makes war so gladly." O' Hare threw up. And O'Hare went away.

(Lights fade. Lights up on Campbell knocking at Epstein's door. The Doctor opens the door a crack.)

Dr. Epstein: Yes.

C: Could I come in?

E: this is a medical manner?

C: No. Personal - political.

E: It can't wait?

C: I'd rather it didn't.

E: Give me an idea of what this is all about.

C: I want to go to Israel to stand trial.

E: You what?

C: I want to be tried for my crimes against humanity. I thought you might know someone who'd like to be notified.

E: I'm not a representative of lsrael. I'm an American. Tomorrow you can find all the Israeli's you want.

C: I'd like to surrender to an Auschwitzer.

E: The find someone who thinks about Auschwitz all the time! (He slams the door. Campbell stands still. We hear conversation in German behind the door. Finally it opens.) What do you think you're doing? Get the hell away from here! (Campbell stands perfectly still.) Oh for Christ' sake! (He leads Campbell inside.) Can you hear me?

C: Yes.

E: Do you know who I am - where you are?

C: Yes.

E: Have you ever been like this before?

C: No.

E: You need a psychiatrist. I'm no psychiatrist.

Epstein's mother: This is not the first time you've seen eyes like that. 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. 37

E: I don't remember

EM: All right, then let me remember. I can remember. Every minute I can remember. And, as someone who remembers, let me say that what he asks for he should have. Call someone.

E: You still want revenge?

EM: Yes.

E: And you really want to be punished?

C: I want to be tried.

E: All right.

EM: (sits near Campbell) They took all the light bulbs.

C: What?

EM: The people who broke into your apartment, they took all the lightbulbs from the stairway.

C: Uh.

EM: In Germany too.

C: Pardon me?

EM: That was one of the things - when the SS or the Gestapo came and they took somebody away –

C: I don't understand.

M: Other people would come into the building, wanting to do something patriotic. And that was one of the things they always did. Somebody always took the light bulbs.

(Lights fade.)

(Lights up on Campbell at his desk.)

C: So here I am in Israel, of my own free will, though my cell is locked, and the guards have guns. 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. The first letter starts off warmly enough "Dear Friend," it calls me in spite of all the evil things I am said to have done. It assumes I am a teacher. The second letter? It, too addresses Howard W. Campbell, Jr. as "Dear Friend," proving that at least two out of three letter writers aren't sore at Howard W. Campbell, Jr. 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. "Dear Howard,

Wirtanen: (Voice over) The discipline of a lifetime is the tune his trumpets play? I wish I knew. The music that has worked such havoc against such old walls is not loud. It is faint diffuse, and peculiar. Could it be the music of my conscience: That I doubt. I have done no wrong to you. I think the music must be an old soldier's itch for a little treason. And treason this letter is. I here violate direct and explicit orders that were given to me, were given to me in the best interests of the United States of America. I here give you 38

my true name and I identify myself as the man you knew as Frank Wirtanen. My name is Harold J. Sparrow. I exist. I can be seen, heard, and touched almost any day, in or around the only dwelling on Coggin's Pond, six miles due west of Hinkleyville, Maine. I affirm, and will affirm under oath, that I recruited you as an American agent, and that you, at personal sacrifices that proved total, became one of the most effective agents of the Second World War. If there must be a trial of Howard W. Campbell Jr., by the forces of self-righteous nationalism, let it be one hell of a contest. (As Campbell speaks, Young Campbell enters and approaches him.)

C: 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. (Lights begin to fade, Campbell begins to climb up on his chair. Young Campbell tosses a rope over a hanging bar. When Campbell finishes talking lights are out.) 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 the tune I am about to hear is not Bing Crosby's White Christmas. Auf Wiedersehen? (In the blackout we hear Young Campbell kick Campbell' s chair away. Silence. Spot up on a typewriter, sitting alone.)

39