The Dark Arena (21 page)

As far as he could see, the trees along the Allee stood all alone, no children underneath them. The strip of grass was a continuous green line with no foreign body to mar its harmony with the trees above it. His eye singled out the exact spot in the row opposite him and it was as if it were a picture hanging on his wall, familiar, known every day, out of which the human figures he had always seen had magically faded. Eddie Cassin crossed the Allee and went to the nearest house. He knocked on the door and inquired in bad German about the girl taking care of four children, but no one knew anything about her, in that house or the others. The last house was an apartment billet for American civilians and the man who answered the door Eddie recognized as someone he had seen often at the Rathskellar. “No,” the man said, “she doesn't come from this street. The guys in here are laying all the dames in the block, and I know them all. I felt like going out myself.
You're out of luck, fella.” And he grinned sympathetically at Eddie Cassin.

He stood in the center of the Allee, not knowing which way to go. The spring evening fell upon him, fresh breezes blowing away the afternoon heat On the other side of the Allee and beyond it, he could see the gardens with their newly sprouting green, the even patches and the mottled brown wooden and paper huts in which the gardeners kept their tools and in which some of them lived. He could see some men working in that small, farmlike area, and he could smell the river behind the hill which rose above the gardens. Patched through the rubble and from the sides of ruined houses he could see wild little streaks of dark green. He knew he would never see the girl again and would not recognize her if he did, but suddenly the exhilaration returned and he started the long walk down the whole length of the Kurfiirsten Allee until it ended where the city ended and he could see the country unmarked, the slightly rolling, restful hills, the moist green of spring over them like fresh-grown skin; and where no blemish of gray and blackened ruins could mar the beauty of the day.

That evening Hella tacked the woodcut illustrations of fairy tales on the walls. She had bought them for the coming child, she said, but Mosca felt that it was some sort of superstition, a magic that would make everything go well. When she finished she said, “I think we should go in to see Frau Saunders.

“Christ, I'm too tired tonight,” Mosca said. “We did a hell of a lot of work.”

Hella sat still on the bed, her hands folded, inspecting the almost square room. The cream-colored carriage rested against one light-blue flowered curtain, looking like a picture on a wall. There was a blue cloth on a small round table, and the two chairs were upholstered in light gray. On the floor was a maroon rug, faded with age. Bed and dresser were both mahogany, and on each wall there was a small painting of a country scene in light green, violets,
blues, and the white silvers of running streams. A great surge of joy went through her body. Then she noticed Mosca's face set, strained, and she knew he felt uneasy. She took his hand and held it in her lap. “Now it seems really true, that we'll always be together.”

“Let's go in and pay our respects to the landlady,” Mosca said.

All the rooms had doors that opened on the hall, and the hall itself had a door that locked the floor off from the stairs. To go from one room to the other they had to go out in the hall and knock on the door of the living-room. They heard a voice telling them to come in.

Frau Saunders was sitting on the sofa reading a newspaper. She stood up when HeUa introduced them and shook Mosca's hand. Mosca saw that she was not as old as he had thought from the glimpse he had had of her. The hair was severely done and her face was” lined, but there was a curious youthfulness in the movements of her lanky body, in its straight flowing black.

“I hope you will feel free to use the living-room whenever you wish,” Frau Saunders said. She had a low, sweet voice but she said the words out of politeness.

“Thank you,” HeUa said. “I wanted to thank you for the curtains and the extras you put in the rooms. If there is anything we can help you in, please tell us.”

Frau Saunders hesitated. “I hope only that there will be no trouble with the authorities.” She gave Mosca a doubtful glance as if she wished to say something else.

Hella guessed what it was. “We're very quiet people, he's net one of these wild Americans always giving parties.” She smiled at Mosca but he did not smile in return. “We just came in for a few minutes,” Hella went on, “we had a hard day, so—” She rose and they said good night awkwardly, Mosca giving a polite smile, Frau Saunders giving the same smile in return, and in that moment Mosca realized that this woman was shy despite her age, and that she was a little frightened by the thought of the enemy living in her home.

As they undressed in their room Mosca told Hella a bit of news he had almost forgotten. “Orders finally came in
to ship the Middletons back to the States. They leave next week.”

Hella was surprised. “Oh, that is too bad,” she said.

“Don't worry,” Mosca said, “I can get some other people's commissary cards, and we can trade out in the country like real Germans.”

In bed Hella said, “So that is why you looked so worried today.” Mosca didn't say anything. After she had fallen asleep he lay awake for a long time.

He felt strange that now, finally, as if this had been the purpose behind everything, he lived as one of the enemy. The house was full of Germans and the houses in the streets around him; in his bed, carrying his child. He missed the sound of parties that went on in the billet, the throbbing of jeep motors, radios tuned to the Armed Forces Network giving out American music. Here all was still. The bathroom in the hall gave a small sudden roar of water. Frau Saunders, he thought, and then had to get up and go himself, waiting a little to give the woman plenty of time to get back to her own room. Then he stood by the curtained window, smoking a cigarette, trying to see in the darkness outside. He tried to think back to when he had been given his first weapon, his first steel helmet, his first combat orientation lecture to protect himself against the enemy. But that now too seemed unreal and unimportant What finally was real was this room, the carriage, the woman in the bed.

The evening before the Middletons were to leave
Germany, Hella and Mosca went for a walk through the city before visiting them. Leaving the house on the Kurfiir-sten Allee, Hella stopped to say good evening to the women in their doorways. Mosca stood by her patiently, a polite smile on his face.

They began to walk to the center of town. “Let's get Frau Saunders some ice cream from the Red Cross Club,” Hella said. Mosca looked at her.

“You two sure became awful good buddies in a week,” he said. “What goes on, anyway? I know you give her part of your meals and some of the sugar and coffee we have. When the Middletons leave you'll have to get stingy, baby. That stuff will be hard to get.”

She gave him an unused smile. “If I thought you really cared I wouldn't do it. I know it's just that you want me to have everything. But I can't do it, Walter. When I cook some meat the smell fills the whole hall, and I think
of her in the living-room with just dry potatoes” Besides. Tm too fat. Look at me.”

That's not from eating,” Mosca said. She laughed and gave him a push. He grinned at her and said, “But you're pretty big. At least now you can't wear my shirts any more.” She had on a blue maternity dress Ann Middleton had given her.

They walked along, Mosca holding her arm when they had to climb over rubble that overflowed onto the walk. The trees were all heavy with leaves and the rays of the setting sun only occasionally glanced over them. Hella said thoughtfully, “Frau Saunders is really fine. You wouldn't think it to look at her, but she is a lot of fun to talk to and she does nearly all my wdrk for me. And not because I give her things, she really wants to help. Will you get her some ice cream?”

Mosca laughed and said, “Sure.”

She had to wait outside while he went into the Red Cross Club. On the way back they went by the
Polizeihaus
and on the outskirts of the Contrescarpe Park below they were blocked off by a small crowd listening to a man standing on a park bench. He was lecturing, waving his arms, shouting. They paused. Mosca shifted the cold box of ice cream to bis right hand and Hella leaned on his shoulder.

“The guilt is on every one of us,” the man was shouting. “This godless age, this godless land. Who thinks of Christ, of Jesus? We accept his blood as our salvation and do not believe. But I tell you, I tell you, his blood has washed away so many sins, that blood is weary, the Lord God is weary of our ways. How much longer will he be patient? How much longer will the blood of Jesus save us?” He paused and his voice became soft, pleading. “The love of Jesus is no longer enough, the blood of Jesus is no longer enough. Please believe me. Save yourselves and me and our children and our wives, our mothers, our fathers, sisters, brothers, and our country.” His voice became calm, factual, reasonable, and his body relaxed. He spoke conversationally.

“You see this land in ruins, the continent, and Christ sees farther than we, he sees a destruction of soul universal,
evil triumphant, Satan looking over the world in glee, seeing with his laughing eyes the death of man and everything man has done since the beginning of time.”

A plane passed overhead on its way to the air base. The roar of the motor made him stop. He was a small man with a pouter-pigeon chest accentuated by the way he threw back his head to glare with his rolling, brilliant, birdy eyes. He went on.

“Picture to yourself a world innocent of life. In the polar regions the snow and ice everywhere untracked, unmoved upon. In Africa, in the jungles, where the sun gives, from God, innumerable and diverse forms of creation, there everything is still.” The voice now was madly rhetorical, pompous, the brilliant eyes bulging from his small head. “The carcasses of dead beasts lie putrefying in the rotting vegetation. On China's plains, by the fertile rivers, not even the crocodile lifts his grinning head to return the leer of Satan. And in our cities, in the many hearts of what is known as civilization, there is nothing but ruins. Hills of stone out of which no life will ever grow, a soil of broken glass. For eternity.”

He stopped and waited for a sign of approval but instead a surprising shout rose from different parts of the crowd. “Where is your permit? Where is your permission from Military Government?” Three or four male voices could be heard shouting this. The preacher was stunned.

Hella and Mosca found themselves standing now almost in the middle of the crowd, a pile of people bunched up behind them. On their left was a young man dressed in a blue, washed-out shirt and heavy working trousers. He carried in his arms a pretty girl of six or seven whose eyes were curiously blank and whose sleeve on the side facing them was pinned to her flowered frock. On their right was an old worker puffing a stubby pipe. The young man was shouting with the others, “Where is your permit, where is your permission from Military Government?” Then he turned to Mosca and the old worker and said, “We're bawled out by everybody now that we've lost, even by swine like this.” Mosca, in civilian clothes, smiled at Hella, amused that he had passed as German.

Now the preacher pointed his arm slowly toward the sky and said in a great solemn voice, “I have permission from our Creator.” The sun, red with its last, dying fire bathed the upraised arm with crimson light. The sun began to sink below the earth, and gray in the soft summer twilight, springing up on the horizon like a great ragged circle of spears, the ruins of the city rose like magic before their eyes. The preacher bowed his head in thanksgiving. He raised his head to the sky. He embraced them all with a sweep of his arms. “Come back to Jesus Christ,” he shouted. “Come back to Jesus.
Leave your sins behind. Leave the drinking. Leave the fornication. Renounce the gambling, the pride for worldly success. Believe in Jesus and be saved. Believe in Jesus and be saved. You have been punished for your sins. The punishment is before your eyes. Repent before it is too late. Sin no more.”

The deafening voice stopped for breath. The crowd was stunned, rolled back by the great volume of sound from that little man. He returned to a normal shout.

“Each one of you, think of the lives you led before the war, are you not to believe that the suffering, the ruin you see is God's punishment for the sins you committed then? “And now the young girls fornicate with enemy soldiers, the young men beg for cigarettes. Puff Puff.” He blew out imaginary smoke with maniacal hatred. “On our Sabbath people go to the country to steal or bargain for food. The house of the Lord is empty. We invite destruction. Repent, I say again. Repent. Repent,” The words began to run together, hysterically. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ Believe in the Lord the one and only God Believe in the One Lord Believe in Christ.

He paused and then in a threatening and scolding voice shouted at them. Harshly. Accusingly. “You are all sinners, you are all condemned to everlasting hell. I see some of you smile. You pity yourselves. Why should God make us suffer so? You ask that?”

Someone in the crowd shouted mockingly, “It wasn't God, it was the Ami bombers.” The crowd laughed.

Hie man on the bench waited for them to be still and then peering through the failing light, savagely, vindiciively,
he pointed to a woman wearing black. “You, woman, do you laugh at God? Where is your husband; your children?” He pointed to the young man beside Mosca. “Look,” he said to the crowd and they all turned and followed that pointing finger. “There is another scoffer, one of the young men, the hope of Germany. For
Ms
sins his child is mutilated and he laughs at the wrath of God. Wait, scoffer, in your child's face I see another punishment. Wait. Look at your child and wait.” With spite and malice he pointed out other members of the crowd.

The young man with the child set her down and said to Hella, “Please look after her.” Then they could see him push through to where the preacher stood on his bench, break through to the open space. With one violent blow he struck the little preacher to the ground. He knelt on the preacher's chest, grabbed a handful of hair and slammed the bird-shaped head against the cement walk. Then he rose.