Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Page B

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 playwrighthusband, 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,