The Dark Arena (8 page)

When the sun faced them across the sky, they walked back into the city. Over the prairie of ruins dusk would fall, and coming into the square they could see the GIs leaving the Red Cross Building. The victors had had their fill of sandwiches, ice cream, Cokes, Ping-pong and the professional, sterilized friendliness of the hostesses. In the street the soldiers would lounge just as if they were on the street corners back home. The lines of
Frauleins
passing up and down would thin out, enemy and conqueror disappearing together down the rubble-filled side streets to half-destroyed rooms in shattered buildings, or if time pressed, to cavelike cellars. In the square, black and almost still, there were only a few hopeful beggars, a child, tired and now stationary girls. As from a dying carnival, the blurring music would filter out of the building and wash gently over the silent figures in the darkened square, sift through the ruins down to the Weser, as if following them to the quiet river, and as Mosca and Hell a walked along the bank, they left the music behind and gazed across the water to the moonlit skeletal city on the other side.

In the Metzer Strasse Frau Meyer and Eddie Cassin would have tea and cookies waiting for them; sometimes Eddie would be in a drunken stupor on the couch but come alive when he heard their voices. They would drink their tea and talk quietly, feeling the new raw peace of the gentle summer night and the slow, rising drowsiness that would lead to safe and dreamless sleep.

In the billet, the room next to Mosca's was occupied
by a short, heavy-framed civilian wearing the usual olive-green uniform. But on it was a blue-and-white patch stitched with the letters AJDC. They saw him rarely, and no one in the billet knew him, but late at night he could be heard moving around his room, the radio playing softly. One evening he gave Mosca a lift in his jeep. They were both going to the Rathskellar for supper. His name was Leo, and he worked for the American Joint Distribution Committee, a Jewish relief organization. The initials were also painted on his jeep in great white letters.

As they were driving through the streets, Leo asked Mosca in a high voice with an English accent, “Have I met you some place? You look familiar to me.”

“I used to be with Mil Gov right after the war,” Mosca said. He was sure they had never met.

“Ah, ah,” Leo said, “you came up to Grohn with the coal trucks, eh?”

“That's right,” Mosca said surprised.

“I was an inmate there, a DP.” Leo grinned. “You didn't do such a good job. Many a week-end we went without hot water.”

“We had trouble for a while,” Mosea said, “It got straightened out”

“Yes, I know.” Leo smiled. “A fascist method but perhaps necessary.”

They had supper together. Leo in ordinary times would have been fat. He had a hawk-nosed, big-boned face, the left side of which twitched spasmodically. He moved nervously and quickly but with the awkwardness and lack of co-ordination of one who had never participated in any kind of athletics. He was ignorant of almost all sports.

Over their coffee Mosea asked, “What do you people do?”

“It is UNRRA work,” Leo said. “Distribute supplies to the Jews who are in the camps waiting to leave Germany. I was myself eight years in Buchenwald.”

A long time ago, a time that was no longer real, Mosea thought, that was one of the big reasons he had enlisted, to fight against concentration camps, but that hadn't been him, that was the guy in the photo, the one Gloria and his mother and Alf cared so much about. But remembering this aroused a strange emotion in him, of embarrassment and shyness because he no longer gave a damn.

“Yes,” Leo said. “I went in when I was thirteen.” He rolled up his sleeve and on his arm as if printed there with purple ink was a six-digit number with a smeared letter before it. “My father was there with me. He died a few years before the camp was liberated.”

“You speak English pretty well,” Mosea said. “No-body'd think you were German.”

Leo looked at him with a smile and said in his quick, nervous voice, “No, no, I am not a German. I am a Jew.” He was silent for a moment. “I was a German, of course, but Jews cannot any longer be Germans.” “How come you haven't left?” Mosea asked. “I have a very good” here. I have all the privileges Americans have and I earn good money. And then I must
make up my mind whether to go to Palestine or the United States. It is very difficult to decide.”

They talked for a long time, Mosca drinking whisky and Leo coffee. At one point Mosca found himself trying to explain different sports to Leo, realty trying to tell how it felt because the other had spent his childhood and his youth in the concentration camp, had it stolen, irretrievably lost.

Mosca tried to explain how it felt to go up for a shot in basketball, the thrill of faking a guard out of position and rising easily in the air
to
float the ball through the basket, the quick whirling and running on the warm wooden floor of the gym, the soaking, sweaty tiredness, and the magical refreshment of the warm shower afterward. Then walking down the street, his whole body relaxed, carrying the blue gym bag, and the prls waiting for them in the ice-cream parlor. Later the peaceful and complete oblivion of perfect sleep.

Riding back to the billet, Leo said, “Tm always on the ways, my job makes me travel a great deal. But with the cold weather coming I will spend more time in Bremen. We'll get to know each other better, eh?”

‘I'll show you how to play baseball,” Mosca said with a smile, “get you ready for the States. And don't say ‘on the ways.’ That's German. Say ‘on the road,’ or ‘traveling.’ ”

After that he would come to their room some nights and drink tea and coffee, and Mosca taught him how to play cards—poker, casino, and rummy. Leo never talked about the time he had spent in the camps and never seemed depressed, but he never had the patience to stay in one place long and their quiet life was not appealing to him. They became good Maids, Leo and Hella, and he claimed that she was the only girl who had been able to teach him how to dance properly.

And then when autumn came and the trees dropped their leaves on the bicycle paths and laid a speckled brown-and-green carpet along the shaded streets, the freshened air stirred Mosca's blood and lifted him out of his summer
lethargy. He became restless, ate more often at the Raths-kellar, went drinking at the Officers” Club—all places where Hella was not allowed to enter because she was the enemy. Returning late to the billet, a little drunk, he would eat the thick, canned soup Hella wanned up for him on the electric plate and then sleep fitfully through the night. On many mornings he would wake at dawn and watch the gray clouds being swept across the sky by the early October wind. He watched the German workers walking briskly to the corner where they could catch a
Strassenbahn
to the heart of the city.

One morning as he stood by the window, Hella rose and stood by him. She was in the undershirt she used for bedclothing. She put her aim around him, and they both looked down at the street below.

“Can't you sleep?” she murmured drowsily. “You're always up so early.”

“I guess well have to start getting put more. This home life is too much for me.”

Mosca watched the russet blanket of leaves being rolled up Metzer Strasse, covering the dirt bicycle path underneath the trees.

Hella leaned against him. “We need a baby, a wonderful baby,” she said softly.

“Christ,” Mosca said, “the
FGkrer
really drummed that crap into your heads.”

“Children were loved before that.” She was angry that he could laugh at what she wanted so much. “I know it's thought stupid to want children. In the
Flak
the Berlin girls used to laugh at us farmers because we cared about babies and talked about them.” She pushed away from him. “All right, go to work,” she said.

Mosca tried to reason with her. “You know we can't get married until they lift the ban. Everything we do here is illegal, especially your being here in the billet When the kid comes well have to move to German quarters and that's illegal for me. There's a million things I'd have to do that they could ship me back to the States for and no way to take you with me.”

She smiled at him and there was a trace of sadness in
it. “I knew you won't leave me here again.” Mosca was surprised and shocked that die should know this. He had already decided to go underground with false papers if some tremble should come.

“Ah, Walter,” she said, “I don't want to be like the people downstairs; drink, dance at the club, go to bed, and never have anything to keep us together except ourselves. The way we live, that's not enough.” She stood there, the undershirt reaching just over her hipbone and navel, without dignity and without shame. He wanted to smile.

“It's no good,” he said.

“Listen to me. When you went away I was happy I was going to have a baby. I thought I had such very good luck. Because even if you didn't come back there would be another human being in the world I could love. Do you understand that? From my whole family I only have one sister left, and she is far away. Then you came and you left and I had no one. In all the world there was no one that it would be pleasure for me
to
bring pleasure to, no one that was part of my life. There's nothing more terrible.”

Below them some Americans came out of the building into the cold street, unlocked the security chains on their jeeps, and warmed up the motors, the rising and falling throb coming faintly through the closed windows.

Mosca put his arm around her. “You're not well enough.” He looked down at the thin, naked body. “I don't want anything to happen to you.” And as he said the words a wave of fear swept over him that she would leave for some reason, and that in the gray winter mornings he would stand alone at the window, the room empty behind him, and that the fault in some unforeseen way would be his. Turning to her suddenly, he said in a gentle voice, “Don't be mad at me. Wait a bit.”

She rested in his arms and then quietly she said, ‘You're afraid really of yourself. I think you know that. I see how you are with other people and how you are with me. Everyone thinks you're so unfriendly, so“—she searched for a word that would not make him angry—”so rough. I blow you're not that way, not really. I could never want a
better man, in everything. Sometimes Frau Meyer and Yergen, when I say something nice about you, they look at each other. Oh, I know what they think.” Her voice was bitter, the bitterness of all women speaking in defense of their own against a world that does not comprehend the reason for their love. “They don't understand.’

He picked her up, put her on the bed, and drew the blanket over her. “You'll catch a cold,” he said. He leaned over to kiss her before he left for work. “You can have anything you want,” he said, then smiled. “Especially something that easy. And don't worry about them ever making me leave, no matter what.”

“I won't,” she said laughing. “FU be waiting for you tonight”

A band was playfng fast dance mask when they
entered the German night club. It was a long rectangular room bare of ornament and bleak with white, unshaded light The walls were roughly calcimined and the high, domed ceiling gave it a vast cathedral-like air. It had been a school auditorium, but the rest of the building had been blown away.

Hie chairs were of the hard, folding variety, the tables were equally bare and stern. There were no decorations. The room was full, people jammed together, so that the waiters hi many instances could not serve a table directly and had to ask intervening couples to pass the drinks on. Wolf was known here, and they followed his portly figure to a table near the wall.

Wolf offered his cigarettes all around and said to the waiter, “Six schnapps.” At the same time he slipped the rest of the cigarettes in the pack into the waiter's hand. ‘The clear stuff.” The waiter bowed and hurried off.

Frau Meyer turned her blonde head to look at the room.

“It's not very nice here,” she said.

Eddie patted her hand. “Baby, this is for people who lost the war.”

Mosca smiled at Hella, “Not too bad, is it?”

She shook her head. “It's a change,” she said. “I should see how my fellow Germans enjoy themselves.” Mosca missed the slight guilt in her voice, but Eddie understood and his delicate mouth curved into a smile. One weapon found, he thought, and felt a sudden elation, a sudden passion.

“There's a good story about this place,” Wolf said. “They had to bribe the Education Officer at Mil Gov to certify it as unfit for any school activities and then bribe the Fine Arts Officer as okay for entertainment purposes. Nobody knows whether it's really safe.” He added, “Not that it matters, it'll be closed up in a couple of days, anyway.”

“Oh, why?” Hella asked.

“Wait and see,” Wolf said, smiling with a knowing air.

Leo said with his usual good humor, “Look at them.” He gestured around the room. “I never saw sadder looking people in my life. And they are paying to have such a bad time?” They all laughed. The waiter brought their drinks.

Eddie raised his glass. His handsome face settled into a mock seriousness. “Happiness to our two friends, a perfectly matched couple. Look at them. One, a princess so sweet and fair. The other, a scowling brute. She will mend his socks and have his slippers ready each evening and for a reward she will receive some well-chosen hard words and a blow. My friends, this marriage will be perfect It wiH last a hundred years if he doesn't kill her first.” They drank, Mosca and Hella smiling at each other as if they possessed an answer, a secret no one at the table could guess.

The two couples went out to dance on the small floor before the raised stage at the other end of the room. Wolf and Leo were left alone. Wolf looked around with a practiced eye.

Cigarette smoke rose over the mass of people to the high, domed ceiling. The patrons were a curious mixture,
old couples who had perhaps sold a piece of good furniture and decided on one night out to relieve the dun monotony of their lives; young black-market operators, good friends of American mess sergeants and PX officers, sat at tables with young girls who wore nylon stockings and smelled of perfume; old men who trafficked in diamonds and furs, automobiles and other valuables, sat with girls not richly dressed, sedate mistresses of long standing, a salaried relationship.