Mother Night

Campbell describes the last time he saw his best friend in Berlin. This occurs just before he visits his father-in-law, as the Russian army is advancing on Berlin. His friend, a man named Heinz, was his ping-pong doubles partner. By the end of the war, both men are destitute, and Heinz has a single motorcycle in his possession. He loans this to Campbell so he can visit Noth and Resi. This is the last time Campbell sees Heinz, though he learns the man survived the war and is working as a groundskeeper in Ireland.

Helga shows Campbell a trunk of his preserved manuscripts that she retrieved from a theatre in Berlin, including everything he wrote: plays, poems, and an unpublished novel entitled Memoirs of a Monogamous Casanova. Campbell feels detached from the young man who write them, but Helga is ardent in her appreciation of them. Just then, Kraft enters the attic, searching for his pipe. He is agitated, but his irritating behavior serves to further bond Campbell and Helga.

Campbell details his unpublished novel, Memoirs of a Monogamous Casanova, which is an erotic diary he kept of his and Helga’s lovemaking during their younger years. He suggests it should be amended to include a final chapter, featuring their sexual reunion in a New York hotel room, and he provides the text for this chapter. After their passionate night, Campbell is smitten with Helga and the two go to buy a new bed for his attic. Helga worries that Campbell has changed, and won’t love her anymore, but Campbell assures her that there is nothing she can say that will cause him to stop loving her. The woman then reveals that she is not actually Helga but instead her younger sister, Resi.

Resi admits to Campbell that much of what she told Campbell about her tribulations is true, but that while undergoing them she constantly daydreamed about being her sister, married to a handsome playwright. When she was repatriated, she identified herself as her sister to fulfill part of her daydream. She tells Campbell she has always loved him and asks if they can stay together if she continues to pretend she is Helga. Campbell accepts this offer, but Resi’s true youthful nature soon begins to show, causing Campbell to feel old.

Resi and Campbell make their way back to his attic, stopping at bars along the way. Campbell speaks with a man who claims the answer to Communism is a militant recommitment to “fundamental values.” Another man, in another bar, claims to have the ability to satisfy many women.

Resi and Campbell return to Campbell’s building, where they come across Campbell’s overflowing mailbox. He explains that he has been inundated with mail, both supportive and hateful, since The White Christian Minuteman published his address. A “bald, bristly” (144) man enters the building and recognizes Campbell. He displays a newspaper report that Israel is requesting Campbell be sent to them for a war crimes trial. Saying he wants to hurt Campbell before he loses his chance, he assaults Campbell, dedicating each attack to a different military serviceman who was killed in the war. Campbell is knocked unconscious and wakes in a room he doesn’t recognize, near a large picture of Adolf Hitler.

Campbell awakens in a cellar outfitted by August Krapptauer for The Iron Guard of the White Sons of the American Constitution, which is under the printing press for The White Christian Minuteman. Jones had Campbell examined after his attack, then brought him, Resi, and Kraft to a place where Resi suggests they are safe from “‘the Jews’” (151). She informs Campbell that Israel is no doubt sending commandos to capture him, as they did with Adolf Eichmann, and that Jones is currently trying to spirit them out of the country.

Campbell visits Kraft in the shooting gallery next to the cellar. Kraft is shooting at a target, a crudely drawn hateful caricature of “a cigar-smoking Jew” (153), and Campbell recognizes it as his own work. He reflects on how greatly he benefitted from its popularity, though he did originally attempt to make it too ludicrous to be accepted. Its acceptance, he realizes, reflects “the soul’s condition in a man at war” (155). Kraft expresses his excitement that Campbell will begin writing again in the tropical location they are bound for, and asks permission to join Campbell and Resi, as Campbell is the only friend he has. Campbell accepts.

Campbell stays in the cellar while he is recovering. Resi and Kraft tend to him and make plans for their escape, while Campbell passively listens, unwilling to take part. Israel increases its demands for Campbell’s surrender, Germany is unable to find records of his citizenship, Russia demands his execution, and an immense amount of vitriol is poured toward Campbell in America, as people break into his attic and wreck what they find. The narrative shifts forward in time, as Campbell reflects on meeting Adolf Eichmann in the prison in Jerusalem. Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, cheerily greets Campbell and asks for writing advice, as he is working on his own memoirs. Campbell asks him if he feels guilty for the six million deaths he caused, and Eichmann admits that he doesn’t. He insists, as he did during his war crimes trial, that he was simply following orders. Campbell is disgusted by this defense, a defense he ascribes to the whole German nation, and differentiates himself from Eichmann by admitting that at least he knew what he was doing was wrong, though he did it anyway.