The Dark Arena (25 page)

When, finally, they met Eddie at the Rathskellar, Eddie was already drunk. He said, “You son of a bitch, why didn't you call? I had Inge phone the hospital and they gave me the dope. Then your landlady called and I told her the news.”

“Christ, I forgot,” Mosca said with a foolish smile.

Eddie threw an arm around his shoulders. “Congratulations. Now, tonight we celebrate.”

They ate and then went to one of the tables in the bar.

“Do we buy the drinks or does Walter?” Leo asked as if this were a very serious point.

Eddie gave them both an amused, paternal look. “Tonight I'll buy everything. If I know Walter he won't even jpve out cigars. Look at that sad face.”

“Jesus,” Mosca said, “how the hell can I act like a big-wheel fattier. We're not even married. They kept calling the kid by Hella's last name. That made me feel funny. I was thinking I'll put in the marriage papers.”

“Let's see,” Eddie said. “You can figure three months. But then thirty days after you're married, back to the States. You going to leave all this jpravy?”

Mosca thought it over. “I figure I can get the papers and hold off the marriage for a while. But I'd like to have everything set, just in case.”

“You could do that,” Eddie said, “but you have to go back sometime. Especially now the Middletons are gone, you can't get the right food for a wife and kid.” He gave Mosca a strange, peering look. “You sure you want those papers, Walter; you ready to go back?”

Mosca said to Leo, “How about you, you made up your mind yet, U.S.A. or Palestine?”

“I'm doing well here,” Leo said. He thought of the professor. “But soon I must decide.”

“You ought to come back with me,” Mosca said. “You could stay with me and Hella until you get set. That is, if I can get a place myself.”

Eddie asked curiously, “What will you do when you get back to the States?”

“I don't know,” Mosca said. “I figure Til go to school maybe. I'm an ignorant guy, I went right from high school into the Army.” He grinned at them. “You wouldn't think it but I used to be a good student But I enlisted, you know that, Eddie, you used to break my bills about it when we were GIs. Now I want to learn what goes on.” He stopped, trying to think of how he could put it into words. “Sometimes
I wanta fight like hell against everything
around
me, but I don't know what to fight It seems like I can't get out of a straight line to a trap. like now. I want to do something but I'm not allowed. My own personal business. I can't marry a kraut and I can see why the Army makes it tough. I don't give a crap about the Germans but that stops me. All right, screw it.” He took another drink.

“You know, when I was a kid I thought everybody was wonderful. I had definite ideas and now I can't even remember them. In a street fight when I was a kid I always used to fight like I was a hero in the movies, always fight fair, never hit the other guy when he dipped or was off balance. A real jerk. But that wasn't for real. Now it seems like that life before I got into the Army was never really real. like you could never believe the war would end. You knew you would go on to Japan, and then they would find somebody new to fight, the Russians maybe. Then after that maybe the men on Mars. But always somebody new so that you could never go home. Now for the first time I believe that it is over, that I'll have to go back to that dream life or whatever it was. I can start by going back to school.”

Leo and Eddie were embarrassed. It was the first time Mosca had ever spoken to them about his feelings, and they were surprised by the boyishness of the emotions behind the lean, dark, almost cruel-looking face. Leo said, “Don't worry, Walter, when you lead a normal life with a wife and children everything will be okay.”

“What the hell do you know?” Eddie demanded in drunken anger. “Eight years in a concentration camp without dames. What the hell do you know?”

Leo said with a quiet contempt, “I know one thing. You'll never leave here.” This stunned Eddie.

“You're right,” he said. “Goddamn if you're not right. I wrote my wife again that she gotta come and bring the kid or I'll never leave this goddamn continent. That's my only hope. But she's screwing for her boss, she thinks I don't know about it. But I've got her figured all the way.”

Leo said to Mosca, “Maybe I will come with you, who knows what will happen by that time? I can't stay here forever.
Maybe we can go into a business together with oar black-market profits and you could go to school, too, how would that be?”

“TTiafs right,” Eddie said. “Go into business with Leo and you can't lose, Walter.” He smiled at them and saw that neither of them had understood or perhaps had not heard because the liquor was twisting the words as they came out of his loose mouth and also perhaps because about that, they had always trusted him. He felt ashamed. “You guys are dreaming,” he said and realized that he was angry because they were making plans together and leaving him out, with no malice, assuming that he would never leave hare. He felt, suddenly, concern for both of them. Leo for his innocence of the real world, Mosca for what he sensed was an endless struggle that raged behind that seemingly indifferent, dark proud face; a struggle to hold to the world with the help of one thin thread. And he felt an overwhelming drunken sorrow for himself. To the amazement of Leo and Mosca, he put his head down on the table and began to cry. Then he fell asleep.

Wolf eased Us pudgy body down the basement steps
and sighed wearily, glad to be out of the hot summer sun. He was tired, as there had been a lot of work to catch up after a month's vacation. He had taken his wife to visit a sister in Bavaria, a last visit before they went to the States. Now he went directly to the kitchen where Ursula was preparing supper. “They have a baby boy,” he said.

Ursula turned around and exclaimed happily, “Isn't that wonderful, just what she wanted. Is she back from the hospital yet? I must go to see her.”

“It happened the day after we left,” Wolf said. “The baby came early. So she's been home three weeks now.” And he thought,
They barely know each other and yet Ursula is happy.
Something about children being born always touched him, too. He wanted kids of his own, when he was all set That was one thing you were sure of and he could teach them how to take care of themselves. They'd be the sharpest kids in the neighborhood, they'd know what the score was.

“Have you heard anything about our marriage papers?” Ursula asked.

“They haven't come bade from Frankfort,” Wolf said. This was a lie. The papers were now in his desk at the air base. But if Ursula knew she would insist on getting married immediately and he would have to leave Germany within thirty days after the ceremony. He wanted to remain a few months longer and complete a few deals.

Ursula's father spoke behind him. “Ah, Wolfgang, home at last.” Wolf swung around. “You had a telephone message. You must get in touch with a man named Honny, at once.” The father had just come in from the storeroom and carried a great ham which he now put on the kitchen table. He took a large carving knife and lovingly cut off medium-thick slices to be fried with their potatoes.

One thing. Wolf thought wryly, the old man always made himself useful around the house. He asked, “Did the man say anything else?”

“No,” Ursula's father said, but he kept repeating that it was very important.

Wolf went into his bedroom and dialed the number. When someone picked up the phone mid said hello, he recognized Honny's voice and said, “Here is Wolfgang.”

Honny's voice, very excited and effeminate in its higher register, said, “Wolfgang, it is good you called so quickly. That contact you were looking for during the winter. I have it.”

“Are you sure?” Wolf asked.

Honny's voice became lower, more guarded. “I saw enough of the evidence to think so.” He stressed the word “tevidence.”

“Ah so,” Wolf said, “very well. I will be there in about an hour. Can you have him there then?”

“In two hours,” Honny said.

“All rigjit,” Wolf said and hung up. He called out to Ursula that he would not be eating supper and hurried out of the house. He heard her exclamation of surprise and disappointment before he closed the door. He walked quickly down the street and arrived just in time to catch a
Strassenbahn,
making it on the run.

Wolf was excited. He had given up hope on the whole deal, hadn't even thought about it for several months except when Mosca had kidded him. And now everything was breaking just right. The marriage papers were all set, he could get plane tickets, the hell with free government transportation. And it would be a perfect out on the old-man deal. Ursula and her father had been breaking his balls about taking the old man with them to the States, and he had almost laughed in their faces. But you had to lie to women all the time; he had promised Ursula he would try his best. And he wouldn't mind if the old man was on the ball. But the father had taken a nice shellacking when he had tried to put over a swindle on some black-market operators. He spent a week in the hospital recovering. Since then the father had stayed in the basement apartment like a mole, eating a whole twenty-pound ham in less than a week, three or four ducks at a sitting, almost an entire goose during the course of a Sunday. He must have gained forty pounds in the last two months. The wrinkles of his skin had been filled out with layer on layer of lard and he had let out his prewar suits to contain a great, new paunch.

He must be the only fat kraut in Bremen, Wolf thought, the only one who could pose for those posters and travel folders showing the tremendous, jolly German who illustrated the good living of his country. In his basement he had the fattest kraut in Germany. A goddamn cannibal. A twenty-pound ham in three days. Jesus Christ.

Wolf jumped off the
Strassenbahn
as it passed the mouth of the Kurfiirsten Allee and walked briskly past the Metzer Strasse to farther on where Mosca lived in the white stone house. Though the sun was going down the air was still hot and Wolf kept under the shade of the trees that lined the Allee. He hoped Mosca was home, but if not there was still time to pick him up at the Rathskellar or the club. No telephone on this.

Wolf opened the gate that cut the path from the sidewalk. He went up the stairs, knocked on the door, and Mosca opened it He was dressed only in suntan trousers
and a T shirt, bis feet were bare. In his band be held a can of PX
beet.

“Come on in, Wolf,” Mosca said. They went through the ball and through the door to the living-room. Fran Saunders was sitting in one corner of the sofa reading a magazine. Hella was rocking the cream-colored carriage serving now as a crib. The baby was crying.

Wolf said hello to the women, and though he was impatient, looked at the baby and complimented Hella on its beauty. Then he said to Mosca, “Can I see you for a minute alone, Walter?”

“Sure,” Mosca said. Still holding the can of bear he led Wolf into the bedroom.

“Listen, Walter,” Wolf said excitedly, “it's finally come through, the contact cm that scrip deal. I've got to meet the guy now and settle details. I want you to come with me just in case everything goes quick. Okay?”

Mosca took a dp of beer. In the other room he could hear the murmur of voices as Fran Saunders and Hella spoke to each other and spaced in between, the tentative, discontented wailing of the baby. He was surprised and the shock was unpleasant. He had written the whole deal off and now he found he had no taste for it

“I
don't go for that any more, Wolf,” Mosca said. “YouTl have to get a new partner.”

Wolf had already started toward the door of the bedroom. Now, stunned, he turned back again to Mosca, his white face angry and full of disbelief.

“What the hell kind of crap is that, Walter?” hf said. “We knock our balls off all winter and now, everything all set, you back out? That's no good, Walter. That doesn't go.”

Mosca grinned at Wolfs anger and excitement. It was an excuse not to feel ashamed of backing out. He knew he was giving Wolf a dirty deal But he was glad die pasty-faced bastard was getting tough.

“What the hell, Wolf,” he said, “we're not gangsters. It was an idea. Maybe I would have gone through with it six months ago. Now I've got a dame and kid to think about
If something screws up, what happens to them? Besides my marriage papers are coming through in a few months. I won't need all that money.”

Wolf restrained his outraged anger. “Look, Walter,” he said in a friendly, reasonable voice, “you're going back to the States in three or four months. Maybe you saved a thousand bucks while you've been here, maybe you made another thousand on the black market. That thousand I helped you make, Walter. In the States you have to set up a home, look for a job, a lot of other crap. You'll need dough.” And then letting a hurt tone come into his voice he said earnestly, “And you're not treating me right, Walter. I lose out, too. I can't go running around for another partner. I need a guy I can trust. Come on, Walter, it'll be easy, you don't have to worry about cops, they can't turn us in. And since when have you been afraid of a couple of lousy krauts?”

“No dice,” Mosca said, and took another sip from the can of beer. With his free hand he flapped out his T shirt and said, “Boy, is it hot.”

“Christ.” Wolf slammed the door with his hand. “Goddamn it, hangin’ out with that yellow Jew and that gash hound Eddie made you lose all your guts? I thought you were a better guy than that, Walter.”

Mosca put his beer can down on the dresser. “Listen Wolf, keep my friends out. Don't talk about them any more. Now about this business. Wolf, you shrewd prick, I know you got your marriage papers; so now you can just pull off this deal and take off for the States. Meanwhile I sit here three or four months. I'm not afraid of krauts but Tm not walking around Bremen after I pull a stunt like that. If we do this it's either get out of Bremen afterward or knock the guys off when we take the money. Right now I can't do either. And I'm not going to keep looking behind me the rest of the summer, not even for a million bucks.” He paused and then said sincerely, “No shit, Wolf, I'm sorry.”