Where It All Goes Down
Israel 1961; WWII-Era Germany; New York City in the 1950s
Campbell is writing to us from his jail cell in Israel. It's 1961, and from his vantage point—which is limited—he gets a sense of the shiny and modern glopped on top of the very, very old:
I am surrounded by ancient history. Though the cell in which I rot is new, some of the stones in it, I'm told, were cut in the time of King Solomon.
And sometimes, when I look out through my cell window at the gay and brassy youth of the infant Republic of Israel, I feel that I and my war crimes are as ancient as Solomon's old gray stones. (1.13-15)
Campbell's entombed in this new-but-old place telling us about the other places he's been. Most recently, he's been in purgatory, which is his pet name for New York City. It's where he's been hiding out since the end of WWII. Most of his NYC life is spent in a dingy attic apartment filled with U.S. military supply surplus goods. Like the souls in actual purgatory, Campbell is stuck in limbo: because of his past, he's not free to live his life normally, but he's also not in any actual prison at this point.
It's an interesting choice, as well, for this wealthy man (his parents invested well, and he inherited a ton) to live a meager existence while filling his room with stuff stamped "U.S.A." It's kind of like he's making up for the fact that as a spy in Germany, he didn't get to serve in the U.S. army openly.
As for his heyday in Germany, we don't get too much of a sense of setting. Campbell spends a lot of time in Berlin and moves around here and there throughout the country. We see bombed houses, and we see military academy buildings that pass by in a blur of rubble, but really the longest description we get is of the Noth home. It's fancy, bare, and freezing, because there's a shortage of heating during the war.