The Dark Arena

by Mario Puzo

  “No, I haven't,” Mosca said slowly.

  “Well, I got an idea. I need help and that's why I'm asking you. Fm no philanthropist. You interested?”

  “Go ahead,” Mosca said.

  Wolf paused again, puffing on his cigar. “You know the money we use, the Army scrip? The black-market operators break their necks to get it. Then they trade it back to GIs for money orders. But they have to make it pretty slow. We can change all the scrip we can get our hands on into money orders, something we couldn't do with the old occupation marks.”

  “So?” Mosca said.

  “Now here's the thing. The last couple of weeks the German operators seem to have a hell of a lot of scrip. I'm making a nice bit of change turning it into money orders for them. Til cut you in on that, by the way. Now here's the angle. I got curious and started snooping around, and I heard a terrific story. When the scrip money was shipped from the States the boat docked in Bremerhaven. And even though everything was top-secret, something slipped and a case of scrip, over a million bucks, disappeared. The Army keeps quiet because it makes them look stupid as hell. How do you like that?” In telling the story Wolf became excited. “A million bucks,” he repeated.

  Mosca grinned at the pure hunger in Wolfs voice. “A lot of money,” he said.

  “Now here's my idea. The money is probably split up all over the country, but there must be a gang here with a big chunk. If we could only find them, that's the thing. It's a long shot.”

  Mosca said, “How do we find it and how do we take it?”

  “Finding the money is my job,” Wolf said, “but you help. It's not as hard as it sounds and remember, I'm a trained man. I have a lot of contacts. I'll take you around and introduce you as a big Post Exchange wheel who's looking to dump cigarettes at three or four bucks a carton. They'll jump at the price. We'll get rid of twenty or thirty cartons that way. I can get the butts. The word'll get around. Then well say we have to get rid of five thousand cartons in one lump. A big deal. We'll make up a story. If everything works out somebody!! come to us, and we'll close the deal. They show up with twenty thousand bucks worth of scrip. We take it. They can't go to the police, theirs or ours. They're screwed.” Wolf stopped, took a last nervous puff, and threw his cigar into the street. Then he said quietly, “It'll be hard work, tramping around town a couple of nights a week. And the final business takes guts.”

  “Real cops and robbers,” Mosca said and Wolf smiled. Mosca looked out into the dark street and over the ruins. Far away, as if separated from them by a lake or prairie, he could see a lone streetcar with its yellow light moving slowly through the blackness of the city.

  Wolf said slowly, seriously, “We have to prepare for our future. Sometimes I feel that my life before now was just a dream, nothing serious, maybe you feel the same. Now we have to get ready for our real life, and it's going to be tough, real tough. This is our last chance to fix ourselves up.”

  “Okay,” Mosca said, “but it sounds complicated as hell.”

  Wolf shook his head. “It may not work out. But meanwhile I'll throw you some of this exchange business. You'll make a good few hundred, anyway, no matter what happens. If we're lucky, just a little lucky, we'll split fifteen or twenty thousand. Maybe more.”

  Mosca got out of the jeep as Wolf raced the motor, then watched him drive away. Looking up he saw Hella's dark head in the pane of light that was his window. He waved to her and then entered the building and ran up the stairs.

  eight

  Mosca slouched down in the parked jeep, trying to escape the cold October wind of late afternoon. The frozen metal of the floor chilled his whole body.

  Farther on up the street was an important intersection, streetcars swinging to the right and left, and military vehicles pausing momentarily for drivers to read the long row of white shingles that directed them to different headquarters in the city. Ruins stretched away on four sides like rough pasture land, and beyond the crossroads, where little houses began to stand, a small German movie theater opened its doors, and a long waiting line moved slowly inside.

  Mosca was hungry and impatient. He watched three covered trucks filled with German prisoners of war go by and stop at the intersection. Probably war criminals, he thought. A jeep with two armed guards followed dutifully behind. Leo appeared in the door of the tailor shop and Mosca straightened up in his seat.

  They both saw the woman across the street start to run before she screamed. She left the sidewalk and ran awkwardly, wildly toward the intersection. She waved one arm frantically and screamed continuously a name that her emotion made unintelligible. From the last truck of prisoners a figure waved to the woman in return. The truck picked up speed, the jeep at its heels like a shepherd dog. The woman saw there was no hope and stopped. She fell to her knees and then collapsed her full length on the street, blocking traffic.

  Leo qlimbed into the jeep. The roaring and shaking of the motor gave them an illusion of warmth. They waited until the woman had been carried to the sidewalk, then Leo put the jeep in motion. They didn't say anything about what they had seen. It was none of their concern, but far back in Mosca's mind a vague, familiar image began to stir and form and shape itself.

  Just before the war's end he had been in Paris and found himself caught in an immense throng. Trying to escape from it had been like a nightinare, and against his will he had been carried to the center, the focal point There, inching slowly through the crowd which filled the streets, the sidewalks, the caf6s, were a string of open trucks filled with Frenchmen; freed prisoners of war, slave laborers, men given up for dead. Hie cheering and shouting from the crowd drowned the jubilant cries of the men in the trucks. But they jumped up and down and leaned out over the sides of their trucks to be kissed, to accept the white flowers offered and thrown to than. Suddenly one of the men had flung himself from the truck, slithered off the heads of people he landed on, and fell to the ground. A woman fought her way to the man and caught him to her in a fierce, possessive embrace. From the truck someone flung a crutch and shouted obscene congratulations that at any other time would make a woman blush. But she had laughed with the rest of the crowd.

  The pain, the shock, the guilt Mosca had felt then he felt now.

  When Leo stopped the jeep in front of the RathskeHar, Mosca got ont. “I don't feel like eating,” he said “I'll see you at the house later.”

  Leo, busy putting the padlock on the jeep's security chain, lifted his head in surprise. “What's wrong?” he asked.

  “Just a headache, I'll walk it oft.”

  He felt cold and lit a cigar; the heavy tobacco smoke warmed his face. He took the small, quiet side streets, impassable to vehicles because of the rubble which had overflowed the ruins and sidewalks, picking his way over the loose stones and bricks, careful in the gathering dusk not to fall.

  When he entered his room he felt really ill, his face hot and feverish. Without turning on the light he undressed and flung his clothes over on the couch and went to bed. Under the covers he was still cold and could smell the stale cigar butt he had left lying on the table edge. He huddled and curved his body together for warmth but the chill shook him continuously. His mouth was dry, and the pounding in his head became a slow monotonous beat, barely painful.

  He heard a key turn in the door, and Hella moving into the room. The light flashed on. She came to the bed and sat on it.

  “Aren't you well?” she asked with concern. It gave her a queer shock to see him so.

  “Just a chill,” Mosca said. “Get me some aspirin and throw that cigar out.”

  She went to the bathroom for a glass of water and when she gave it to him she brushed her hand over his head and murmured, “It's funny to see you ill. Shall I sleep on the couch?”

  “No,” Mosca said. “I'm cold as hell. Come in here witB me.”

  She put out the light and came to the bed to undress. Dimly in the blackness of the room he could see her hanging her clothes over the back of a chair. He felt his body bur
ning with fever and desire, and when she came into bed he pressed against her. Her breasts and thighs and mouth were cool, her cheeks cold, and he held her as tightly as he could.

  When he rested back against the pillow he could feel the sweat between Ms thighs and rolling down his back. The headache was gone but his very bones seemed to hurt. He reached over her body to the night table for water.

  Hella ran her hand over his burning face. “Darling, I hope that didn't make you worse.”

  “No, I feel better,” Mosca said.

  “Do you want me to sleep on the couch now?”

  “No, stay here.”

  He reached over for a cigarette but after a few puffs crushed it against the wall and watched the red shower of sparks fall on the blanket.

  “Try to sleep,” she said.

  “I can't sleep. Anything special happen today?”

  “No, I was just having supper with Frau Meyer. Yergen saw you come into the building and came up to tell me. He said you didn't look well, and he thought I might want to come right down. He's a very kind man.”

  “I saw something funny today,” Mosca said and told her about the woman.

  In the blackness of the room he could feel the silence. Hella was thinking, I'll I had been in the jeep surely I would have taken her and followed, set her mind at rest about what she had seen. Men were harder, she thought, there was less pity in them.

  But she said nothing. Slowly, as in other dark nights, she ran her finger tips over his body, over the scar that cut down the whole trunk of his frame. She ran her fingers over the bumpy seam as a child runs a toy back and forth over a welt in the sidewalk, the slight rise and fall almost hypnotic.

  Mosca sat up straight so that his shoulders rested against the wooden headrest of the bed. He folded his hands behind his neck as a cushion and said quietly, “I was lucky I got that where nobody sees it.”

  “I see it,” Hella said.

  “You know what I mean. It would be different if it were on my face.”

  She kept her fingers moving over the scar. “Not to me,” she said.

  The fever in his body made Mosca uncomfortable. The fingers moved soothingly over him, and he knew she would accept what he had done.

  “Don't faH asleep,” he said. “I always meant to tell you something but I never thought it important enough.” Mockingly he gave his voice the singsong inflection of one about to tell a fairy tale to a child. “I'll tell you a little story,” he said. He groped for a cigarette on the night table.

  The ammunition dump stretched for miles and miles, the shells stacked in clusters like black cordwood. He, Mosca, sat in the cab of the bullet-shaped truck and watched the prisoners load the vehicles in front of him. The prisoners wore green twill fatigues and on their heads floppy hats of the same material. They would have blended easily into the forest around them if it had not been for the large, white letter P painted heavily on their backs and on each trouser leg.

  From somewhere in the forest three blasts of a whistle sounded recall. Mosca jumped out of the cab of the truck and yelled, “Hey, Fritz, e'mere.”

  The prisoner he had made straw boss over his three truckloads of workers came to him.

  “We got time to finish this load before we start back?”

  The German, a small man of forty, with a curiously wrinkled, old-young face, stood before Mosca without obsequiousness, shrugged his shoulders, and said in broken English, “We be late for chow.”

  They grinned at each other. Any of the other prisoners would have assured Mosca that the load could be finished, merely to remain in favor.

  “Okay, dump what you got,” Mosca said. “Well let the bastards squawk;” He gave the German a cigarette and the German shoved it into the pocket of his green twill jacket It was against regulations to smoke in the dump area though, of course, Mosca and the other GI guards did so.

  “Get the rest of the Fritzes loaded and give me a count.” The German left him and the prisoners began to pile into the trucks.

  They moved slowly over the dirt road through the forest. Where other roads intersected more vehicles joined the procession, until finally, the long line of open trucks, in single file, left the shade of the forest and entered the open countryside, the lemon-colored sunlight of very early spring. For guards and prisoners alike the war was very far away. They were safe, between them the issue had been settled. They moved in quiet and seeming content from the forest land of the ammunition dump to the barracks enclosed in barbed wire.

  The GI guards, men who had been wounded too badly to be returned for line duty, had had enough of war. The prisoners regretted their fate only in the evening when they saw their guards pile into jeeps for a trip to the nearby town. The prisoners” faces behind their barbed wire had the wistful envy of children watching parents prepare to leave their homes for an evening out

  Then, in the very early morning light, they would ride out together to the forest. During the morning breaks, the prisoners would scatter around on the grass munching pieces of bread they had saved from breakfast. Mosca gave his crew more time than was usual. Fritz sat with him on a pile of shells.

  “Not too bad a life, eh, Fritz?” Mosca asked.

  “It could be worse,” the German said; “it's peaceful here.” Mosca nodded. He liked the German though he never took the trouble to remember his real name. They were friendly, but it was impossible to forget the relation-ship of the conqueror and conquered. Even now Mosca held his carbine in his hand as a symbol. There was never a bullet in the chamber and sometimes he forgot to put a magazine in its slot

  The German was in one of his depressed moods. Suddenly he began to pour out a flooding speech in his native tongue which Mosca understood imperfectly.

  “Isn't it queer that you stand here, seeing that we do not move as we wish? What a duty for human beings. And how we kill each other and hurt each other. And for what? Tell me, if Germany had kept Africa and France, would I personally have earned another penny thereby? Me, myself, do I help myself if Germany conquers the world?

  Even if we win, I win only a uniform for the rest of my life. When we were children how it used to thrill us to read of our country's golden age, how France or Germany or Spain ruled Europe and the world. They build statues to men who give death to millions of their fellows. How is this? We hate each other, we kill each other. I could understand if we gained something. If afterward they said, ‘Here, here is an extra piece of land we took from the French, everyone gets a little piece of cake.’ And you, we already know you are the winners. And do you think you will win anything?”

  In the warm sun the other prisoners rolled on their backs, slept in the cool grass. Mosca listened only half understanding, vaguely displeased, not reached. The German spoke as one of the vanquished, without authority. He had walked the streets of Paris and Prague, the cities in Scandinavia, with cheerful pride; a sense of justice came only behind barbed wire.

  For the first time the German put his hand on Mosca's arm. “My friend,” he said, “people like you and me meet face to face and kill each other. Our enemies are behind us.” He let his hand fall. “Our enemies are behind us,” he repeated bitterly, “and commit the crimes for which we die.”

  But most of the time the German was cheerful. He had shown Mosca a picture of his wife and two children, and a picture of himself taken with comrades outside the factory in which they had worked. And he would talk about women.

  “Aha,” the German would say with an almost wistful zest. “When I was in Italy,” or “When I was in France, the women they were wonderful. I must admit it, I like them better than German women, let the Fiihrer say what he likes. Women never let politics interfere with more important things. It's been that way through the centuries.” His blue eyes twinkled in the lined, old-young face. Tm always sorry we did not get to America. Those beautiful jprls with the long legs, like marzipan the color. Really unbelievable. I remember them from your movies and magazines. Yes it is too bad.”

  And
Mosca playing the game would say, “They wouldn't even look at you krautheads.”

  The German would shake his head slowly but with decision. “Women are hardheaded,” he would say. “Do you think they starve because they should notjuse their bodies with the enemy. In these things women think clearly. They have more fundamental values. Ahf yes, occupation duty in New York would have been wonderful.”

  Mosca and the German would grin at each other and then Mosca would say, “Get the rest of the Fritzes to work.”

  On the final evening, when the recall whistle blew, the prisoners milled together quickly from all over the clearing in which they were working, and the trucks were loaded in a few minutes. The drivers started their motors.

  Mosca almost fell for the ruse. Mechanically his eyes looked for Fritz. Still unsuspecting, he took a few steps toward the nearest of the three vehicles and then seeing the strained look on some of the prisoners’ faces sensed immediately what had happened.

  He ran to the beginning of the dirt road and signaled the drivers out of the cabs of their trucks. As he ran he worked the bolt of the carbine, throwing a cartridge into the chamber. Then taking from his pocket the whistle he had never used, he blew six short blasts. He waited a moment mid blew six more.

  While he waited he made all the prisoners dismount from the truck and sit in a close-packed circle on the grass. He stood a distance away, watching them, though he knew none would try to escape.

  The security jeep came directly through the woods, and he could hear it crashing through the underbrush before it entered the clearing. The sergeant in it had long, handlebar mustaches in the English style and was very big and heavy. When he saw the orderly scene he left the jeep slowly and walked over to Mosca. The other two GIs sauntered to opposite sides of the clearing. The driver took his submachine gun from its jeep scabbard and sat behind the wheel, one foot dangling out of the vehicle and touching the ground.