In this excerpt from “Moth­er Night,” the nar­ra­tor reflects on his life and expe­ri­ences as a spy dur­ing the tumul­tuous times of war, reveal­ing inti­mate truths about his rela­tion­ship with his wife, Hel­ga. He empha­sizes that Hel­ga nev­er knew about his espi­onage activ­i­ties, real­iz­ing that dis­clos­ing such infor­ma­tion would not have dimin­ished her love for him. The bur­den of his secret weighed heav­i­ly on him, yet he val­ued Hel­ga’s unwa­ver­ing affec­tion, which he describes as uncrit­i­cal love—a vital trea­sure amid the chaos sur­round­ing them.

The nar­ra­tive takes a poignant turn as the nar­ra­tor recounts the loss of Hel­ga, pre­sumed dead after the Rus­sians reclaimed the Crimea where she was enter­tain­ing the troops. Post-war, he hired a pri­vate detec­tive in West Berlin to dis­cov­er her fate but received no leads, despite offer­ing a gen­er­ous reward for any infor­ma­tion regard­ing her sta­tus.

The close­ness between the cou­ple is paint­ed vivid­ly as the nar­ra­tor recalls their shared micro­cosm, a “nation of two” encased in the con­fines of their mar­i­tal bed. Their lives were iso­lat­ed from the broad­er world; immersed in each oth­er, they exchanged unar­tic­u­lat­ed emo­tions rather than engag­ing in mean­ing­ful dis­course. The bond between them was so pro­found that they were obliv­i­ous to the out­er cacoph­o­ny of war and con­flict, instead delight­ing in the sim­plic­i­ty of their love.

How­ev­er, when this inti­mate world col­lapsed with Hel­ga’s dis­ap­pear­ance, the nar­ra­tor found him­self adrift—a state­less indi­vid­ual bereft of his anchor. He reflects on the warn­ing giv­en to him by his recruiter in the past, indi­cat­ing that the very nature of his espi­onage meant he had com­mit­ted trea­son against his coun­try. The recruiter omi­nous­ly fore­warned him that there would be no for­give­ness for his actions, encap­su­lat­ing a heavy truth from which the nar­ra­tor strug­gles to escape.