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Mother Night Chapter 9 Summary

Enter My Blue Fairy Godmother…

  • It's 1938: the year Major Frank Wirtanen recruits Campbell to be a spy.
  • Campbell's 26 and has only been married to Helga, the super-hot German actress, for a month when Wirtanen approaches him in a park.
  • The initial conversation reveals that Campbell has been living in Germany so long that he isn't aware of hip new ways of saying things like "beeswax" when you mean "business."
  • Wirtanen appeals to Campbell's sense of romance—based on reading Campbell's plays written up as medieval quest narratives—and his hammy-ness. Campbell would love a chance to act, himself.
  • Campbell refuses. At first.
  • Wirtanen (nicknamed Campbell's blue fairy godmother because after the war, nobody in the U.S. seems to acknowledge he exists) gives Campbell the call-and-response code words for when he meets his secret agent contact: 1) Make new friends. 2) But keep the old.
  • Ummmm, these are lines from a Brownies song.