The BigSofa, in the enemy camp

freud's couch*
not the BigSofa

Enter my blue fairy godmother...

I was recruited as an American agent in 1938, three years before America got into the war. I was recruited one spring day in the Tiergarten in Berlin...

I was sitting alone on a park bench in the sunshine that day, thinking of a fourth play that was beginning to write itself in my mind. It gave itself a title, which was "Das Reich der Zwei"--"Nation of Two."

It was going to be about the love my wife and I had for each other. It was going to show how a pair of lovers in a world gone mad could survive by being loyal only to a nation composed of themselves--a nation of two.

On a bench across the path from me a middle-aged American sat down. He looked like a fool and a gasbag...Three handsome officers of the S.S. stalked down the walk between us.

When they were gone, the man put his paper down and spoke to me in twanging Chicago English. "Nice-looking men," he said.

"I suppose," I said.

"You understand English?" he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Thank God for somebody who can understand English," he said. "I've been going crazy trying to find somebody to talk to."

"That so?" I said.

"What do you think of all this--" he said, "or aren't people supposed to go around asking questions like that?"

"All what?" I said.

"The things going on in Germany," he said. "Hitler and the Jews and all that."

"It isn't anything I can control," I said, "so I don't think about it."

He nodded. "None of your beeswax, eh?" he said.

"Pardon me?" I said.

"None of your business," he said.

"That's right," I said.

"You didn't understand that--when I said 'beeswax' instead of business?" he said.

"It's a common expression, is it?" I said.

"In America it is," he said. "You mind if I come over there, so we don't have to holler?"

"As you please," I said...

"Any of my beeswax what you do for a living?" he said.

"Writer," I said.

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

"That so," I said.

"I might as well give it to you," he said. "I'll never write it."

"I've got all the projects I can handle now," I said.

"Well--some time you may run dry," he said, "and then you can use this thing of mine. 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...so this young man knows there's a war coming, 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 he gets to be a very useful American spy...I'm asking you to be an American intelligence agent...you won'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 with it strictly on your own, working your way up with the Nazis as high as you can go...you'll be an authentic hero...you'll be volunteering right at the start of a war to be a dead man. Even if you live through the war without being caught, you'll find your reputation gone--and probably very little to live for..."

One of the many things my Blue Fairy Godmother told me was the sign and countersign that would identify me to my contact and my contact to me, if war should come.

The sign was, "Make new friends."

The countersign was: "But keep the old."

Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night