The Dark Arena (30 page)

As he kept changing compresses, Mosca spoke to Hella softly, soothingly. “We'll keep this up a couple of days and everything will be okay, just hold still now.” They had been sitting so all afternoon and the swelling had gone down a little. The baby in Frau Saunders's arms began to cry and Hella sat up on the sofa and reached for him. She pushed the compress away and said to Mosca, “I can't any more.” She took the baby from Frau Saunders. She put the good side of her face against the infant's head and crooned softly, “Poor little baby, your mother can't look after you.” And then with fumbling hands she began to change the wet diapers, Frau Saunders helping her.

Mosca watched. He saw that the continual pain and lack of sleep for the last week had drained her of strength. The German hospital doctors had said her case was not serious enough to warrant penicillin. His only hope was that Yergen would have the drug} for him at midnight, tonight. The last two nights Yergen had disappointed him.

Hella finished dressing the baby and Mosca took the child from her. He cradled the infant in his arms and watched Hella try to smile at him as she lay back on the sofa. As he watched he saw the tears of pain start to her eyes, and she turned her head away from him. He could hear the small, uncontrollable whimpers.

Mosca stood it as long as he could then he put the child back in the carriage. “I'm going to see if Yergen has the medicine,” he said. It was a long way to midnight but the hell with it. He might catch Yergen home. It was near
eight, the German suppertime. He leaned over to kiss Hella and she put up her hand to touch his face. “Ill be back as soon as I can.”

The Kurfiirsten Allee was chilled with the first cold of winter and in the darkness he could hear the falling leaves sifting along the ground to become lost in the rums of the city. He caught a
Strqssenbahn
to the church in which Yergen lived. The side entrance was open, and he ran up the steps to the steeple. Standing a step below the door which was cut into the wall he knocked as hard as he could. He waited, there was no answer, no sound behind the door. He tried a variation of knocks, hoping that by some chance he would hit on Yergen's signal and the child would open the door and he could question her. But for some reason he did not call out. He waited again for some moments and then he heard a curious animal-like sound, monotonous, on one level shrilling tone and realized that the child behind the door was crying and would in her terror never open the door. He went down the stairs and waited outside the church for Yergen.

He waited for a long time. He wind became colder and the night darker, the rustling of the trees and falling leaves louder and more sibilant. As he stood there waiting there grew in him a sense of certain and terrible disaster. He tried to remain still but suddenly was walking away from the church and down Kurfiirsten Allee.

As soon as he had left the church and walked a few minutes the fear left him. Then the thought of watching helplessly the tears and pain he would be sure to see made him stop. All the strain and tension, the humiliations and refusals of the past week, the turning away by Dr. Adlock, the rebuke by the adjutant, the dismissal by the German hospital doctors, and his inability to fight back in any way against them—all this overwhelmed him. He wanted a drink, three or four drinks, so bad that he was surprised. He had never needed liquor. But now, without hesitating any longer, he turned and started walking toward the avenue that led to the Officers’ Club. He felt for one moment a sense of shame that he was not going home. It was a quiet night at the club. There were some officers
at the bar, but no music or dancing and only a few women. Mosca had three shots of whisky very quick. It worked like magic. He could feel the tension flow out of his body, the fear, and he saw everything in-correct proportion, that Hella had only a bad tooth and that the people who seemed such implacable enemies were only obeying laws imposed by others.

One of the officers at the bar said to him, “Your friend Eddie is upstairs shooting crap.” Mosca nodded acknowledgment and another officer said with a grin, “Your other buddy is up there too, the adjutant He's celebrating making major.”

“I gotta have a drink on that,” Mosca said and they laughed. Mosca unbuttoned his jacket and lit a cigar and had a few more drinks. He felt warm and sure that things would turn out all right. Hell, it was only a toothache, and he knew Hella was extra-sensitive to pain. It was funny how she had courage in everything except physical pain, he thought. She was a real coward about that Not coward; he felt a sudden rush of anger at himself that he thought of such a word in connection with her. But she cried easy. And now some of the warmness left him. In the inside pocket of his open jacket he caught a flash of white and remembered that a few days ago Hella had written her first letter to his mother and he had forgotten to mail it His mother had written asking for a letter and pictures of the baby. Mosca left the bar and dropped the letter in the mailbox in the hall. He hesitated for a moment, somewhere in his mind was a faint warning not to go up, but the whisky clouded over it. He wait upstairs to the game room.

Eddie was at a corner of the table, in one hand a small sheaf of dollar scrip bills. The adjutant was opposite him and there was something strange about the adjutant. Hie ingenuous face was flushed and twisted into an expression of slyness. Mosca felt a sense of shock. Christ, the guy was loaded. For one moment he thought of turning and going out. But then curiosity made him go to the dice table. He thought,
Lets see if the bastard gets human on a drunk.

Eddie asked, “How's your girl?”

Mosca said, “All right.” A waiter came upstairs and into the room with a tray of drinks.

The game was slow—relaxation, not gambling. Mosca liked it that way tonight. He made small bets, talking casually to Eddie.

The adjutant was the only one playing with gusto. He tried everything to goad the players into higher action. When his turn came to shoot he laid down thirty dollars. Only ten was faded. He offered bets in various fashions, but the players, seemingly out of perversity, refused to become excited and continued to bet in one- or five-dollar amounts.

Mosca felt a little guilty. He thought,/
could leave and go home and see how Hella is and then go to Yergen.
But in another hour the club would close for the night. He decided to stay.

Hie adjutant, looking now for any kind of excitement and giving up hope of finding it in the game, said to Mosca, “I hear you had your
Frauldn
out to the base for some free medical treatment. You should know better than that, Walter.” It was the first time he had ever used Mosca's given name.

One of the officers said, “For Christ sake, relax, don't talk shop in the club.’

And in that moment Mosca knew why he had stayed, why he had come to the club. He tried to make himself leave now, tried to make his body move away from the table, tried to take his hands off the green felt. But the cruel satisfaction rose in his body and flooded over his mind and reason. All the humiliations and defeats of the past week poisoned his blood, the vessels of his brain. He thought,
All right, you son of a bitch, all right, all right.
But he kept his voice casual, saying, “I just thought the Doc might help.” Making it sound a little nervous. He'd eaten shit all week, just this little more won't hurt

Things like that don't happen where I'm running things,” the adjutant said. “And when it does, and I find out, it's usually somebody's ass. And I usually find out.

‘Tm not a prick,” the adjutant went on in a serious tone. “I believe in fair play. But if he treated your
Fraiilein
all the GIs would start bringing their clapped-up
Frallleins
to the base for shots. Can't have that.” The adjutant's ingenuous face had a boyish, happy smile. He raked his glass and took a long drink.

Mosca stared at the dice, at the green doth on the table. Eddie was saying something but the words were jumbled up. He made an effort and looked up. He said quietly, “TH shoot the two bucks there.”

The adjutant put his glass on the window sill behind him, then threw a ten-dollar bill on the table.
“I
got you,” he said.

Mosca picked up the bill and threw it back at die adjutant. “Don't you fade me.” He said it in a cold, deliberate voice. One of the other officers threw some money down and Mosca rolled the dice.

“You're pretty touchy about that
Fr&uldn”
the adjutant said. He was in a good humor, did not sense any of the tension around him. “Maybe you think those
Frduleins
have a pure, disinterested love for your homely mugs. If it were up to me I wouldn't let any of you chumps marry here.”

Mosca let the dice drop onto the table. In an almost indifferent, casual voice he asked, “That why you held up my papers, you sneaky bastard?”

TTie adjutant smiled with real delight. ‘Til have to deny that and ask where you got your information.” He said this with his coldly formal, official manner, in it a note of menace and command.

Mosca picked up the dice. He bad stopped thinking or caring. He was just waiting for the adjutant to pass him.

“Where did you get that information?” The adjutant asked. His bland face was serious, had its familiar look of youthful sternness. “Where did you get that information?” he repeated.

Mosca rattled the dice and threw them out carelessly. He said to the adjutant, “You stupid prick, go scare some krauts.”

Eddie Cassin broke in, “I told him and if die colonel wants to know, I'll tell him the story. That you let the papers lay for two weeks before you sent them to Frankfort.
“ He turned to Mosca, “Come on, Walter, let's get out of here.”

The adjutant was on that side of the table hemmed by the wall and window. Mosca wanted him to come out, to squeeze by the corner. He thought for a moment, then said, “You think this fuck gets away with it tonight?”

There was a split second before the adjutant recognized the threat. Then he shouted angrily, ‘Let's see what you'll do about it,” and started to come around the table. Mosca waited until the corner would pin his arms. Then he swung as hard as he could at the profiled face. The blow glanced off the adjutant's cheekbone and skull not hutting him, but making him fall. Mosca kicked viciously underneath the table. He felt the heel meet with a solid shock against bone. Then an officer and Eddie were pulling him away. The adjutant, really hurt now, was put on his feet Submissively Mosca let the officer and Eddie push him toward the wood. Suddenly Mosca whirled and ran across the room. The adjutant was standing straight up. Running he swung as hard as he could into the adjutant's side and they both fell on the floor. The adjutant screamed with pain. The look on Mosca's face and his attack on the defenseless man so horrified the other men that for one second they were frozen motionless. Then three of the officers swarmed over Mosca as he put his fingers inside the adjutant's ear and tried to tear the side of his face off. One of them hit Mosca a stunning blow on the temple and then they were hustling him down the stairs and out of the club. There was no thought of retaliation in this, Eddie was helping them. The cold night air cleared Mosca's brain.

He and Eddie were alone. “That last shot queered everything,” Eddie said. “Why the hell couldn't you be satisfied?”

Mosca said, “I wanted to kill the bastard, that's why.” But the reaction had set in. He couldn't keep his hands from shaking when he lit his cigarette and he felt a chilly sweat over his body.
Christ,
he thought,
over a lousy fist fight,
trying to keep his hands still.

They stood together in the dark street. ‘TU try to fix it,”

Eddie said, “but you're washed up with the Army. You know that? Don't wait, shoot down to Frankfort tomorrow and try to get those marriage papers. Ill cover you here. Don't worry about anything but the papers.”

Mosca thought for a moment. “I guess that's it. Thanks, Eddie.” For some reason he shook hands with Cassin, awkwardly, knowing that Eddie would do everything he could to help.

“You going home now?” Eddie asked.

“No,” Mosca said. “I have to see Yergen.” He turned and walked away from Eddie, then called back over his shoulder, “TU phone you from Frankfort.”

A cold, autumn moon lit his way to the church. He ran up the steps and before he could knock Yergen had opened the door.

“Be very still,” Yergen said, “my daughter has just fallen asleep after much trouble.” They went into the room. Behind the wooden partition came the sound of the child's heavy breathing. Mosca could hear a curiously halting stitch in it., He saw that Yergen was angry and almost belligerent.

“Were you here earlier this evening?” Yergen asked.

“No,” Mosca lied. But he had hesitated a fraction of a second and Yergen knew.

“I have the drugs for you,” Yergen said. He was glad that Mosca had frightened his child and given him the angry courage to do what he must do. “I have the penicillin vials and the codeine tablets, but they cost a great deal.” He took out of his pocket a small cardboard box, uncovered it to show Mosca the four dark-brown vials and the square box of large, red-shelled codeine tablets. Even now his instinct was to tell Mosca that the penicillin had only cost a fraction of the usual black-market price and therefore might be useless; to charge him a reasonable price for the drugs. But in that wavering moment there was a great stitching gasp in his daughter's breathing, the room was completely still. He could see Mosca looking at the wooden partition, then before either of them could move, the breathing started again, regularly, in the heavy
rhythm of sleep. Yergen relaxed. “The cost will be fifty cartons of cigarettes.” He saw the tiny black lights in Mosca's eyes focusing on him with a sudden cruel insight and understanding.

“All right,” Mosca said. “I don't care what I pay. You sure it's good stuff?”

In time Yergen paused only for a moment but many thoughts flashed through his mind.

He needed as many cigarettes as possible, then he could swing a big deal he had planned and be out of Germany in a month. Hella probably did not really need penicillin, the Bremen doctors when they knew a girl had an American friend always asked for penicillin so that they could keep some for themselves. And he thought of his daughter again, she came before everything.