How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
'No one knows everything,' he said. 'Did you know,' he said, 'that until almost this very moment nothing would have delighted me more than to prove that you were a spy, to see you shot?'
'No,' I said.
'And do you know why I don't care now if you were a spy or not?' he said. 'You could tell me now that you were a spy, and we would go on talking calmly, just as we're talking now. I would let you wander off to wherever spies go when a war is over. You know why?' he said.
'No,' I said.
'Because you could never have served the enemy as well as you served us,' he said. 'I realized that almost all the ideas that I hold now, that make me unashamed of anything I may have felt or done as a Nazi, came not from Hitler, not from Goebbels, not from Himmler—but from you.' He took my hand. 'You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone insane.' (18.85-89)
Mr. Noth, sir? What? This is one of those wink-wink moments in campy comedies when we get an audience laugh track to show we're all in on this joke that Campbell is a spy, and nobody knows, even though they're getting this close to guessing. What we're getting here is a story-within-the-story, and a little bit of camp. Noth makes the above observation in order to drive home the fact that Campbell was too good of a Nazi.
Even if Noth were to feel a shred of guilt about what he's done, he's going to pass the buck and put the blame on Campbell's broadcasts. Campbell is happy to let him: he blames himself for it all, even though the truth is complicated.
Quote #5
The details of his death came to hand by chance, in a Greenwich Village barber shop. I was leafing through a girly magazine, admiring the way women were made, and awaiting my turn for a haircut. The story advertised on the magazine cover was 'Hang-women for the Hangman of Berlin.' There was no reason for me to suppose that the article was about my father-in-law. Hanging hadn't been his business. I turned to the article. (20.2)
One aspect of the unique coincidences we often find in postmodern novels is that everything in the wider world is seen to reflect, affect, or somehow connect to the inner, private world of the novels' main characters. Only in this scenario would a random photo in a magazine at a barber shop relate the intimate details of Campbell's life. But maybe that's actually how things work in reality?
Quote #6
Resi told me later what the last things the man said were, and what the present for me was in the shopping bag.
'I'm one guy who hasn't forgot that war,' he said to me, though I could not hear him. 'Everybody else has forgot it, as near as I can tell—but not me.
'I brought you this,' he said, 'so you could save everybody a lot of trouble.'
And he left. Resi put the noose in the ash can, where it was found the next morning by a garbage man named Lazlo Szombathy. Szombathy actually hanged himself with it—but that is another story. (26.35-39)
This moment is beyond bizarre. We're not 100% certain we're supposed to look too closely at it, though. Here's our official take: what we're getting here is postmodern absurdism, though it still carries some weight, because Campbell actually is inadvertently responsible for another person's death.