Free Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Page A

out of Berlin. Tied to the back fender of my stolen motorcycle was a parcel of civilian clothes.
    My call on the Noths had nothing to do with cunning. I really wanted to say goodbye to them, to have them say goodbye to me. I cared about them, pitied them—loved them in a way.
    The iron gates of the great white house were open. Werner Noth himself was standing beside them, his hands on his hips. He was watching a work gang of Polish and Russian slave women. The women were lugging trunks and furniture from the house to three waiting horse-drawn wagons.
    The wagon drivers were small, gold Mongols of some sort, early prizes of the Russian campaign.
    The supervisor of the women was a fat, middle-aged Dutchman in a shabby business suit.
    Guarding the women was a tall and ancient man with a single-shot rifle from the Franco-Prussian War.
    On the old guard’s ruined breast dangled the Iron Cross.
    A woman slave shuffled out of the house carrying a luminously beautiful blue vase. She was shod in wooden clogs hinged with canvas. She was a nameless, ageless, sexless ragbag. Her eyes were like oysters. Her nose was frostbitten, mottled white and cherry-red.
    She seemed in danger of dropping the vase, of withdrawing so deeply into herself as simply to let the vase slip away.
    My father-in-law saw the vase about to drop, and he went off like a burglar alarm. He shrieked at God tohave pity on him just once, to make sense just once, to show him just one other energetic and intelligent human being.
    He snatched the vase from the dazed woman. Close to unashamed tears, he asked us all to adore the blue vase that laziness and stupidity had almost let slip from the world.
    The shabby Dutchman, the straw boss, now went up to the woman and repeated to her, word for word and shriek for shriek, what my father-in-law had said. The antique soldier came along with him, to represent the force that would be used on the woman, if necessary.
    What was finally done with her was curious. She wasn’t hurt.
    She was deprived of the honor of carrying any more of Noth’s things.
    She was made to stand to one side while others continued to be trusted with treasures. Her punishment was to be made to feel like a fool. She had been given her opportunity to participate in civilization, and she had muffed it.
    “I’ve come to say goodbye,” I said to Noth.
    “Goodbye,” he said.
    “I’m going to the front,” I said.
    “Right over that way,” he said, pointing to the East. “An easy walk from here. You can make it in a day, picking buttercups as you go.”
    “It isn’t very likely we’ll see each other again, I guess,” I said.
    “So?” he said.
    I shrugged. “So nothing,” I said.
    “Exactly,” he said. “Nothing and nothing and nothing.”
    “May I ask where you’re moving to?” I said.
    “I am staying here,” he said. “My wife and daughter are going to my brother’s home outside of Cologne.”
    “Is there anything I can do to help?” I said.
    “Yes,” he said. “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 Resi has led it to expect. So shoot it, please.”
    “Where is it?” I said.
    “I think you’ll find it in the music room with Resi,” he said. “She knows it’s to be shot. You will have no trouble with her.”
    “All right,” I said.
    “That’s quite a uniform,” he said.
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “Would it be rude of me to ask what it represents?” he said. I had never worn it in his presence.
    I explained it to him, showed him the device on the hilt of my dagger. The device, silver on walnut, was an American eagle that clasped a swastika in its right claw and devoured a snake in its left claw. The snakewas meant to represent international Jewish communism. There were thirteen stars around the head of the eagle, representing the thirteen original American colonies. I had made the original sketch of the device, and, since