The Dark Arena

by Mario Puzo

  She went into the bedroom with him and carefully folded his clothes before he put them into the suitcases.

  “Do you need any cigarettes?” his mother asked.

  “No, I'll get them on the ship.”

  “I'll just run down and get some, you never can teU.”

  “They're only a nickel a pack on the ship,” he said. He didn't want her to give him anything.

  “You can always use extra cigarettes,” his mother said and left the apartment.

  Mosca sat on his bed and stared at the picture of Gloria that hung on the wall. He felt no emotion, ft hasn't worked out, he thought. Its too bad. And he wondered at their patience, realizing how hard they had tried and what little effort he had made. He searched in his mind for something he could say to his mother, to show her there was nothing she could do to help, that his actions had sprang from another root which neither he nor she could control.

  In the living-room the phone began to ring, and he went to it. Gloria's voice, impersonal, yet friendly, answered him.

  “I hear you're leaving tomorrow. Should I come over tonight to say good-by or just say it now over the phone?”

  “Suit yourself,” Mosca said, “but I have to go out around nine.”

  ‘Til come before then,” she said. “Don't worry, it's just to say good-by.” And he knew that it was true, that she no longer cared for him, that he was no longer what she had loved, and she wished to say good-by with a friendliness that was really curiosity.

  When his mother came back he had made up his mind. “Mom,” he said, “I'm leaving now. Gloria called. She's coming over tonight and I don't want to see her.”

  “You mean now. This minute?”

  “Yes,” Mosca said.

  “But at least you can spend your last night home,” she said. “Alf will be home soon; you could at least wait to say good-by to your brother.”

  “So long, Mom,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

  “Wait,” his mother said, “you've forgotten your gym bag.” And, as she had so many times before when he had left the house to play basketball and finally when he had left for the Army, she took the small, blue gym bag and began to fill it with what he would need. Only again now, instead of the satin-covered shorts, the leather knee guards, and sneakers, she put in his shaving kit, a fresh change of underwear, towel, and soap. Then taking a piece of string from one of the bureau drawers, she tied the gym bag to the handle of a suitcase.

  “Ah,” she said, “I dont know what all the people will say. They'll think it's my fault, that I haven't made you happy. And at least after the way you treated Gloria, you could see her tonight, see her and say good-by and be nice to her so she won't feel so badly.”

  “It's a tough world for everybody,” Mosca said He kissed her again, but before he could walk out of the apartment she held on to him.

  “Are you going back to Germany because of that girl?” And Mosca realized that if he said yes, his mother's vanity would be soothed, that she would know then it was not her fault that he left. But he couldn't lie.

  “I don't think so,” he said, “She probably has another GI by now.” And saying it out loud, in all sincerity, he was surprised that it should sound so false, as if the truth he told were a lie to hurt his mother.

  She kissed him and let him go. In the street he looked up and saw her at the closed window, the white spot of a handkerchief to her face. He set the suitcases on the ground and waved to her and saw that she had left the window. Afraid that she would come down to make a scene in the street, he picked up Ms suitcases and walked quickly to the main avenue where he could catch a taxi.

  But his mother was sitting on the sofa, weeping, with shame, grief, humiliation. Deep inside ler knowing that if her son had died on an unknown beach, buried in a foreign land, the white cross over his body mingled with thousands of others, her grief would have been perhaps greater. But there would have been no shame, and she would have been, in a later time, reconciled, in some measure, proud.

  There would not have been this festering sorrow, this knowledge that he was irrevocably gone, that if he died, she could never weep over his tody, bury him, bring flowers to his grave.

  On the train taking him back to the land of the enemy, Mosca, dozing, swayed from side to side with the movement of the car. Sleepily he walked back to his bench and stretched out on it. But lying there he heard the moans of the wounded man, the chattering of teeth, the sleeping body only now protesting against the insane rage of the world. Mosca rose and walked down to the GI half of the car. Most of the soldiers were asleep, and there was only a small halo of light, the flaring of three closely grouped candles. Mulrooney, crumpled up on a bench, was snoring, and two GIs, their carbines lying beside them, were playing rummy and drinking from a small bottle.

  Mosca asked in a low voice, “Can one of you guys lend me a blanket? That guy's cold.”

  One of the GIs threw him a blanket. “Thanks,” Mosca said.

  The GI shrugged. “I have to stay up and guard this joker anyway.”

  Mosca glanced at the sleeping Muhrooney. The face was blank. The eyes opened slowly, stared at him like a dumb animal, and in that moment, before the eyes closed, Mosca felt a sense of recognition and thought, You poor stupid bastard.

  He walked back down the car, threw the blanket over Mr. Gerald, and stretched out again on his bench. This time he fell asleep easily and quickly. He slept dream-lessly until the train reached Frankfort and somebody shook him awake.

  two

  The morning son of early June lit every corner of the roofless terminal, turning it into a vast outdoor stadium, and as Mosca stepped off the train he drew a great breath of spring air, smelling already a faint, acrid dust that rose from the debris and ruins of the city beyond. Along the length of the train he could see groups of OD-clad soldiers forming into platoons. With the other civilians, he followed a guide to the bus waiting outside.

  They moved through the crowd like conquerors, as in an earlier time the rich passed through the poor, looking to neither right nor left, knowing that a path wbuld appear before them. The conquered, their clothes worn, their bodies and faces thin, looked like masses of men and women accustomed to living in flophouses, eating in the soup kitchens of charity, and they made way sullenly, obediently, staring with envious eyes at the well-clad, well-fed Americans.

  They came out of the station into a large square. Opposite them was the Red Cross Club, GIs in olive drab already lounging on the steps, Walling the square stood rebuilt hotels that housed the occupation troops and administrators. Streetcars crisscrossed each other, and military busses and taxis filled the wide streets. Even this early, GIs were sitting on the benches around the station, and each had beside him a Frfiulein with her inevitable little suitcase. It was all the same; Mosca thought, It hasn't changed. The GIs met the incoming trains as suburban wives meet their commuting husbands, picked out a pretty girl, and made their propositions with varying degrees of crudity. To spend a night in a cbld, dirty station sleeping on a bench, waiting for a morning train; or a good dinner, liquor, cigarettes, a warm bed. He might give her a good deal of pleasure, at worst, if one were careful, a few moments of annoyance during the night Usually the sensible choice was made.

  On all the streets bounding the square stood the sharpers, the black-market operators, the children laying their trap for wary GIs, who emerged from thp PX with cartons full of candy, cigarettes, soap, and with eyes watchful as old prospectors carrying sacks of gold dust

  Mosca, waiting to enter the bus, felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning, he saw a dark, bony face topped by the cap of the Wehrmacht that was the standard headgear for German men.

  The young man said in a low, urgent voice, “You have American dollars?” Mosca shook his head, turned away, and again felt the hand on his shoulder.

  “Any cigarettes?”

  Mosca started to enter the bus. Hie hand grasped his shoulder more urgently” “Anything, you have anything you w
ish to sell?”

  Mosca said curtly in German, “Get your hands away quick.”

  The man stepped back, startled, and then into his eyes came a look of proud contempt, hatted. Mosca went into the bus and sat down. He saw the man looking at him through the window, at his gray gabardine suit, the white richness of his shirt, the streak of color that was his tie.

  And feeling the man's look of contempt, he wished for a moment that he was again in the olive drab of Ms uniform.

  The bus moved slowly away from the railroad station and took one of the many exits out of the square. It moved them through another world. Outside that central square which stood like a fortress in a wilderness, the ruins stretched away as far as the eye could see, with only a flora of building remnants, a still-standing wall, a door leading into the open air behind it, a steel skeleton reaching to the sky with pieces of brick, mortar, and glass clinging to it like fragments of torn flesh.

  The bus unloaded most of the civilians on the outskirts of Frankfort, then continued with Mosca and a few officers to the Wiesbaden airfield. Mosca was the only one of the civilians, beside Mr. Gerald, who had been given his permanent assignment in the States. Hie others had to wait in Frankfort for definite orders.

  When, finally, his documents were checked at the airfield, he had to wait until after lunch for the plane to Bremen. And when the plane left the field he had no feeling of rising from the earth, no sense that the plane could run off the edges of the continent, or even that it was possible to fall. He watched the earth tilt, slanting toward him so that it seemed to be coming up to form a wall of green and brown before his eyes, and then as the plane banked away, the continent was an endless and depthless valley. And then all the mystery was gone as the plane flew level, and they looked down as from a balcony to the flat, checkered, tableclothed fields.

  Now that he was so near his final destination, that this return was so nearly completed, he thought about his few months at home and felt an uncomfortable, vague guilt at the patience his family had shown. But there was no desire to see any of them again, and feeling now a mounting impatience with the plane's slowness, its seeming suspension in the boundless spring-clear sky, he realized that the truth he had told his mother had been a lie, that he was going back because of that German girl, as his mother had said, but going back with no expectation of finding her, with no real hope of their lives coming together after these months of separation, but because he had to return to this continent in any case. He no more expected to find her waiting for him than if he had left her in a trackless jungle, disabled, with no means of sustenance, weaponless against the wild beasts. And thinking so he felt a sickness inside him, a poison of shame and sorrow flowing into his blood and mouth. He saw clearly her body, her face, the color of her hair, thought of her fully in his mind, consciously, for the first time in the months he had left her, and finally, clearly and concretely, as if he had spoken it aloud, he thought of her name.

  The police presidio had blown up just a little before noon that hot summer morning nearly a year ago and Mosca, sitting in his jeep in the Hoch Allee, felt the earth shake. The officer he had been waiting for, a young lieutenant fresh from the States, came out a few minutes later and they drove back to Military Government headquarters on the Contresearpe. Someone shouted the news and they drove to the police building. The military police had already sealed off the area, their jeeps and white helmets blocking streets leading to the square. The lieutenant with Mosca showed his identification, and they passed through.

  The massive, dark-green building stood on a small rise of ground at the top of the Am Wald Strasse. It was large and square, with an inner courtyard for vehicle parking. German civilians were still streaming out of the main entrance, their faces and clothing covered with dust Some of the women were weeping hysterically with shock. A crowd was being pushed away from the building, but the building itself seemed silent, untouched.

  Mosca followed the lieutenant to one of the small side entrances. It was an archway packed almost to the ceiling with debris. They crawled through to the inner courtyard.

  The great inner square was filled now with a mountain of rubble. Vehicle tops, jeeps, and trucks, could be seen sticking above it in some spots like masts of sunken ships in shallow water. The walls to a height three stories high had been hacked away by the explosion, and naked to their view were the desks, chairs, and wall clocks of the offices above them.

  Mosca heard a sound he had never heard before, a sound which had become a commonplace in the great cities of that continent. For a moment it seemed to come from all sides, a low, steady, monotonous animal scream, not recognizable as human. He located it, and half-walking, half-crawling over the rubble made his way to the right side of the square; saw the fat, red neck encircled by the green collar of the German police uniform. The neck and head in their rigidity were lifeless, the scream came from beneath the body. Mosca and the lieutenant tried to clear away the bride but rubble kept sliding down over the dead man. The lieutenant crawled back through the archway to get help.

  And now from the many archways and descending the rubbled walls, rescuers began to fill the courtyard. Army doctors from the base hospitals, still in their dress pinks; GIs; German litter bearers and laborers to dig the bodies out. Mosca crawled back through the archway.

  In the street the air was pure. Ambulances were drawn up in a long line, and opposite them the German fire engines stood in readiness. Laborers were already clearing the entrances leading into the courtyard, the rubble being loaded onto waiting trucks. On the sidewalk opposite the building a table had been set up as a command post and he saw his colonel standing there waiting patiently, a group of his junior officers around him. Mosca noticed with amusement that they were all wearing steel helmets. One of the officers beckoned to him.

  “Go up and guard our Intelligence office,” he said. He handed Mosca his pistol belt “If there's another explosion get out of there as quick as you can.”

  Mosca went in the building through the main entrance. The stairway was a hill of ruins and he climbed it slowly, gingerly. He walked down the corridor with one eye on the ceiling, taking care not to pass under places where it sagged.

  The Intelligence office was halfway down the corridor, and opening the door he saw that now it was only half a room, the other half part of the rubble in the courtyard. There was nothing left to guard, only one locked file cabinet. But he had a fine view of the drama being played beneath him.

  Settling comfortably in a chair, he pulled a cigar from his pocket and lit it. His foot struck something on the floor and looking down he saw with surprise two bottles of beer lying on their sides. He picked one up; it was crusted with mortar and bits of brick. Mosca opened the bottle on the door lock and settled in his chair again.

  Below him in the courtyard the scene was static, and in the dust-laden air, almost dreamlike. Beside the body be had found, the German laborers were now picking away bricks carefully in slow motion. Looming above them an American officer stood patiently still, his pink trousers and green blouse turning white with dust. By his side stood a sergeant, holding in his hands before him the round cylinder containing blood plasma. Arid this scene had been copied all over the courtyard, as if from a master print. Over them all the dust from the pulverized concrete hung in the sunlit air, then fell gently to dye their hair and clothing white,

  Mosca drank his beer and smoked his cigar. He heard someone stumbling along the corridor and went out of the room.

  Down the long hall which ended and disappeared where floor and ceiling almost met, staggering out of the dark, inner recesses of the building, came a small file of German men and women. They went past him, not seeing him, blind and weak with shock and terror. The last one in the file was a slight girl in khaki ski pants and woolen blouse. She stumbled and fell and when none of the others turned to help her, Mosca stepped from the room and raised her to her feet. She would have gone on but Mosca stretched out his arm, the bottle of beer at the e
nd of it, and stopped her.

  She lifted her head and Mosca saw that her face, her neck, were dead white and her eyes dilated with shock. She said in German, tearfully, “Please let me get out, please.” Mosca let his ami fall and she went past him down the corridor. But she went only a few steps and crumpled against the wall.

  Mosca bent over and saw that her eyes were open. Not knowing what else to do, he put the bottle of beer to her mouth but she pushed it away.

  “No,” she said in German, Tm just too scared to walk.” He heard the note of shame, just barely understanding. He lit a cigarette and stuck it between her lips, then lifted die thin body and carried her to a chair in the room.

  Mosca opened the other bottle of beer and this time she drank a little. Below them the scene had increased its tempo. The doctors bent over, their hands busy; the men holding the plasma containers kn<?lt on the rubble. litter bearers made their way slowly over the ruins; the corpses, flattened, dust-covered bodies, making their exits through the many archways.

  The girl moved from her chair. “I can walk now.” She 6tarted to leave but Mosca blocked the door.

  In his awkward German he said, “Wait for me outside.” She shook her head. “You need a drink,” he said, “schnapps, real schnapps, warm.” She shook her head again. “No monkey business,” he said in English, “honest, cross my heart” And he mockingly held the bottle of bear over his breast She smiled and brushed past him. He watched her thin figure going slowly but steadily down the corridor to the rubbled staircase.

  That was how it began; the dead, conqueror and enemy alike, being carried away below them, the brick dust settling on their eyelids, and he, Mosca, moved to pity and a strange tenderness by her fragile body and thin face. At night in his room they listened to the small radio, finished off a bottle of peppermint liqueur, and when she tried to leave he had kept her there with one pretext or another until it was after curfew and she had to stay. She hadn't let him kiss her the whole evening.