Mother Night

We didn't recognize each other, and the guards had to introduce us.

Eichma

He beamed at me, and he said, 'I'm not mad at anybody.'

'That's certainly the way to be,' I said.

'I've got some advice for you,' he said.

'I'd be glad to have it,' I said.

'Relax,' he said, beaming, beaming, beaming. 'Just relax.'

'That's how I got here,' I said.

'Life is divided up into phases,' he said. 'Each one is very different from the others, and you have to be able to recognize what is expected of you in each phase. That's the secret of successful living.'

'It's good of you to share the secret with me,' I said.

'I'm a writer now,' he said. 'I never thought I'd be a writer.'

'May I ask a personal question?' I said.

'Certainly,' he said benignly. 'That's the phase I'm in now. This is the time for thinking and answering. Ask whatever you like.'

'Do you feel that you're guilty of murdering six million Jews?' I said.

'Absolutely not,' said the architect of Auschwitz, the introducer of conveyor belts into crematoria, the greatest customer in the world for the gas called Cyklon-B.

Not knowing the man for sure, I tried some intramural satire on him, what seemed to me to be intramural satire. 'You were simply a soldier, were you — ' I said, 'taking orders from higher-ups, like soldiers around the world?'

Eichma

'What did he say?' I asked the guard.

'He wondered if we'd showed you his statement,' said the guard. 'He made us promise not to show it to anybody until it was done.'

'I haven't seen it,' I said to Eichma

'Then how do you know what my defense is going to be?' he said.

This man actually believed that 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 Eichma

As a friend of the court that will try Eichma

My case is different. I always know when I tell a lie, am capable of imagining the cruel consequences of anybody's believing my lies, know cruelty is wrong. I could no more lie without noticing it than I could unknowingly pass a kidney stone.

If there is another me after this one, I would like very much, in the next one, to be the sort of person of whom it could truly be said, 'Forgive him — he knows not what he does.'

This ca

The only advantage to me of knowing the difference between right and wrong, as nearly as I can tell, is that I can sometimes laugh when the Eichma

'You still write?' Eichma

'One last project — ' I said, 'a command performance for the archives.'

'You are a professional writer?' he said.

'Some say so,' I said.

'Tell me — ' he said, '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?'

'A schedule,' I said, remembering back so many years.

I got some of his respect back. 'Yes, yes — ' he said, nodding, 'a schedule. That's what I've found, too. Sometimes I simply stare at a blank sheet of paper, but I still sit here and stare at it for the whole period I've set aside for work. Does alcohol help?'

'I think it only seems to — and only seems to for about half an hour,' I said. This, too, was an opinion from my youth.

Eichma

'Yes?' I said.

'I could spare you a few for your book,' he said. 'I don't think I really need them all.'

I offer this joke to history, on the assumption that no tape recorder was around. This was one of the memorable quips of the bureaucratic Genghis Khan.

It's possible that Eichma

The guards took me away, and the only other encounter I had with the Man of the Century was in the form of a note, smuggled mysteriously from his prison in Tel Aviv to mine in Jerusalem. The note was dropped at my feet by a person unknown in the exercise yard here. I picked it up, read it, and this is what it said:

'Do you think a literary agent is absolutely necessary?' The note was signed by Eichma

My reply was this: 'For book club and movie sales in the United States of America, absolutely.'

30: Don Quixote ...

We would fly to Mexico City — Kraft, Resi, and I. That became the plan. Dr. Jones would not only provide us with transportation, he would provide us with a reception committee in Mexico City as well

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.

Shyly, I told Resi so.

She wept for joy. For real joy? Who knows. I can only guarantee that her tears were wet and salty.

'Did I have anything to do with this lovely, this heavenly miracle?' she said.

'Everything,' I said, holding her close.

'No, no — very little — ' she said, 'but some — thank God, some. The big miracle is the talent you were born with.'

'The big miracle,' I said, 'is your power to raise the dead.'

'Love does that,' she said. 'And it raised me, too. How alive do you think I was — before?'

'Shall I write about it?' I said. 'In our village there in Mexico, on the rim of the Pacific — is that what I should write first?'

'Yes — yes, oh yes — darling, darling,' she said. 'I'll take such good care of you while you do it. Will — will you have any time for me?'

'The afternoons and the evenings and the nights,' I said. 'That's all the time I'll be able to give you.'

'Have you decided on a name yet?' she said.

'Name?' I said.

'Your new name — the name of the new writer whose beautiful works come mysteriously out of Mexico,' she said. 'I will be Mrs — .'

'Se?ora' I said.

'Se?ora who?' she said. 'Se?or and Se?ora who?'

'Christen us,' I said.

'It's too important for me to decide right away,' she said.

Kraft came in at this point

Resi asked him to suggest a pseudonym for me.

'What about Don Quixote?' he said. 'That,' he said to Resi, 'would make you Dulcinea del Toboso, and I would sign my paintings Sancho Panza.'

Dr. Jones now came in with Father Keeley. 'The plane will be ready tomorrow morning,' he said. 'You're sure you'll be well enough to travel?'