by Mario Puzo
She had been hesitant, almost fearful, and when she came to kiss him good-by, as she always did when he left her, even for a few hours, she said, “Why don't you read the letters from your family? Why don't you answer them with more than a little note?”
Against his own body he could feel the slight swelling of her rounded stomach and filling breasts. “We have to leave here sometime,” she said. And he knew that this was true. But he couldn't tell her why he couldn't go home now. That he had no real feeling for his mother or Alf, and reading their letters would be like hearing their voices crying out That the sight of the ruined city pleased him, the gaping wounds left in streets by destroyed buildings, the ragged and torn sky line as if a great, jagged ax had chopped off the top of the city's skull. That when he was home the solid, unending, wall-like streets, unmarred, secure, had made him angry, uneasy.
“We have time,” he said. “After the baby comes in June, we'll get the papers and marry.”
Hella stood away from him. “I'm not worried about that But you shouldn't treat your family so, you should at least read their letters.”
He had flared up at her and said, “Look, don't keep trying to make me do things I don't want to do.”
And she had kissed him and said, “Be careful tonight,” and he knew she would wait up for him though he had told her not to.
He could hear Wolfs voice say, “Here we are,” and see the white face before him. There was a high stoop and they were standing in a pool of light formed by a naked bulb fastened into the face of the house. Its yellow light weakly stained the fabric of night. Mosca climbed the steps warily, holding fast to the iron rail.
“This guy is a long shot,” Wolf said as he rang the bell. “But I want you to know him. He's a jeweler, and if you want something for your girl, hell be a right guy.”
A window above their heads, above the naked lit bulb, was thrown open. Wolf tilted his head back and said, “Ah, Herr Furstenberg, good evening.”
“Please, just one moment, Herr Wolfgang.” TTie voice was mellow with sadness and age, and a despair that came natural to it
When the door opened a small bald-headed man, dark and with enormous black eyes, waited to greet them, and when Wolf introduced Mosca the German clicked his heels and bowed. “Please come up,” he said, and they climbed the stairs and went through a door to a large living-room with many pieces of furniture which included two large sofas, three or four stuffed chairs, and a grand piano. There was a large table in the center of the room and several smaller ones against the walls. On one of the sofas two young girls not more than sixteen were sitting, not dose to each other but with a space between them. Herr Furstenberg sat in this space.
“Please,” he said, motioning to the empty chairs nearest him. Wolf and Mosca sat down.
“I wanted you to meet the man I have spoken about,” Wolf said. “He is a very good friend of mine and I know you will treat him well if he should ever need your help.”
Herr Furstenberg, his arms around both girls” waists, bowed his bald head courteously and said with equal formality and graveness, “There can be no question of that.” Then turning his great, black hollow eyes directly to Mosca he said, “Please come to me any time if I can help you.”
Mosca nodded and sank back into the comfortable chair, feeling his legs quiver with fatigue. Idly, hazily through the fog of his tired mind, he noticed that the two young girls were fresh looking, without make-up, and wore heavy woolen stockings that rose tp their kneecaps. They sat soberly beside Herr Furstenberg in daughterly fashion, and one had pigtails braided down each side of her shoulder, long golden ropes which piled into her rough, woolen-skirted lap and coiled into Herr Furstenberg's waiting hand.
“In that other matter,” the German said, turning to Wolf again, “I am truly sorry, but I cannot help you. None of my friends have heard of such a thing, this theft of a million dollars of scrip. It is a fantastic story.” He smiled kindly at them both.
“No,” Wolf said firmly, “the story is true.” He rose, extended his hand. “I'm sorry I disturbed you at so late an hour. If some information should come, please let me know.”
“Of course,” Herr Furstenberg said. He rose, bowed to Mosca, and shook his hand, saying to him, “Please come to me any time.” The two girls rose from the sofa and Herr Furstenberg put his arms around their waists as a fond father might, and the three of them walked Mosca and Wolf to the staircase. One of the girls, mot the one with long hair, ran down the steps and showed them out. TTiey could hear the door being bolted behind them. Then the naked bulb above the stoop went out and they were in total darkness.
Mosca, dead tired, disgusted at leaving the comfortable room, asked Wolf curtly, “Do you think well ever find these bastards?”.
“rm just looking for a lead tonight,” Wolf said, “and letting these people look you over. That's the big thing.”
Now in the darkened streets they passed other hurrying forms, saw jeeps parked in front of deserted-looking houses. “Everybody is on the hunt tonigjht,” Wolf said. He waited for a moment and then asked, “How did you like Furstenberg?”
The wind had died away and they could talk easily. “He seems like a nice guy,” Mosca said.
“He's damn nice for a Jew especially,” Wolf said. “No offense against your buddy.” He waited for Mosca to say something and then went on. “Furstenberg did his time in a concentration camp. His wife and kids are in the States. He thought he was going to join them, but he has T.B. so bad they won't let him in. And he got it in the camp. Funny, huh?” Mosca didn't answer. They crossed a weU-lighted avenue, coming back to the heart of the city.
“He's gone a little crazy,” Wolf almost shouted. The wind had started up again and they were walking into it, tripping over rubble. They turned a corner and the wind was gone again. “You see those two girls? He gets them fresh from the country, new ones every month or so. His agent told me the story; we do business together. Fursten-berg goes along for weeks living with the girls, they have their own room. And then, bang, after treating them like daughters all this time, one night he goes into their room and humps their ass off. Next day he ships them away with some real valuable presents and a week later he gets a fresh set. These are new ones, I haven't seen them before. That must be a nice little scene when he slips them the business. Real wild. Like a guy chasing chickens to cut off their heads.”
Another guy, Mosca thought. Everybody going off their nuts. And he wasn't much better. So they wouldn't let the poor bastard in because he had T.B. That was a law for the books. Sensible, all laws were sensible. But they always screwed somebody. But screw that son of a bitch Fursten-berg, that heel-clicking prick. He had his own troubles. And that's what he had wanted to tell Hella this afternoon. That every day he lived he broke a law. Having her with him in the billet, buying clothes for her with Middleton's Army card, sleeping with her, and he could be sent to jail for loving her. And he wasn't complaining, that was the world, he wasn't indignant. But when they pulled all the other shit with this and tried to make you feel ashamed and tried to say it was right, justice, then it was shit. When they wanted him to act as if everything the world told him was so, then he just said fuck you in Ids mind. He couldn't stand listening to his mother, and Alf and Gloria. He couldn't stand reading the newspapers, they made him puke. They said this is good today and tomorrow they said you're evil, a murderer, a wild animal, and they made you believe it so much you helped hunt yourself down. He could get away with murdering Fritz but go to jail for taking care of a woman he wanted. And a week ago he had watched them shoot the Polacks against the wall, the handball court behind the air base, the three brave Polacks who had massacred a small German village, men, women, and children, but those poor bastard Polacks had made a mistake; they murdered a few days after the occupation had begun instead of a few days before, and instead of receiving their medals from the general as brave guerrillas, the top half of their bodies had been shrouded in brown cord sacks, and they were tied t
o wooden stakes driven into cracks in the cement, and ||e firing squad stood almost on top of them, shootinj down into the slumped bodies a few feet away. And you could say it any way you wanted, you could prove a million times how necessary it was, the murdering, backward and forward, and he didn't give a shit about the whole business anyway. Didn't he eat a good breakfast after watching the Polacks?
But he couldn't tell Hella why he practically bated his mother, his girl, his brother now, and why he loved her. Maybe because she had been afraid as he had been afraid, that she was as frightened of death as he was, and maybe really it was because she had lost everything as he had except that he had lost everything inside himself and she hadn't. That he hated all the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, sweethearts and wives that he saw in the newspapers, the newsreels, in brightly colored magazines, receiving medals for their dead sons, their dead heroes, the proud smiles, the proud weeping, the brave dress for the occasion showing real grief, painful but sweet in its very release of pain, and all the stern faces of the bestowing dignitaries in their blazing-white shirts and black ties, and he could imagine them all over the world, the loved ones of the enemies, too, receiving the same medals for their dead sons and heroes weeping and smiling bravely, accepting in exchange the beribboned metal disc in its satin-lined box—and suddenly wriggling into his throbbing brain came an image of all the monstrously sated worms raising their pupy white heads to bow in thanks to the dignitaries, the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sweethearts.
But you couldn't blame them because our cause was just; thafs true, he thought, but how about Fritz? That was an accident, really an accident. And everybody would forgive him, his own dignitaries, his mother, Alf and Gloria. They would all say you couldn't help what you did. The worms would forgive him. Hella had wept but she accepted because there was nothing else she had left. And he couldn't blame any of them, But don't try to tell me whafs wrong, don't say I should read their letters, don't say the world shouldn't come to an end because men are holy and have immortal souls, don't say I should smile and be polite to every son of a bitch who does me a favor and says hello. All of Hello's hints about being nicer to Frau Meyer and Yergen and my own friends and answer and read my family's letters. Its all mixed up and its nobody's fault and why blame them for being alive?
He had to stop walking, he felt really ill, his head was spinning, and he could not feel his own legs move. Wolf was holding his arm, and he rested against Wolfs shoulder until his head cleared so he could walk again.
White streaks and shadows ran through the night and Mosca, following them, raised his head and saw for the first time the cold and distant winter moon, and saw that they were in the Contrescarpe Park, skirting around the little lake. Icy moonbeams glinted over water and webbed the black trees with frosted light, and as he watched, great dark-blue shadows raced across the sky and drowned the moon, its light, and now he couldn't see anything at all. Then Wolf spoke to him saying, “You looked real bad, Walter; keep going a few minutes, and we'll make a stop where I can fix you up.”
They came suddenly into the city and to a square on a little rise of ground. On one corner stood a church, the great wooden doors barred shut. Wolf led the way to a side entrance and they climbed a narrow staircase to the steeple, and flush with the top step was a door which seemed to be cut out of the very wall. Wolf knocked, and through his nausea, Mosca still felt a shock to see that it was Yergen and thought, Wolf knows Yergen won't believe I have the cigarettes. But he was too sick to care.
The closeness of the room made him lean against a wall and then Yergen was giving him a green pill and hot coffee, shoving the pill into his mouth and holding a burning cup to his lips.
The room, Yergen, and Wolf sprang into focus. The nausea left Mosca's body, and he could feel the cold sweat over his whole body running down between his thighs. Wolf and Yergen were watching him with little knowing smiles on their faces and Yergen patted him on the shoulder and said kindly, “You're all right now, eh?”
The room was cold. It was large, square, with a very low ceiling, and one corner had been made into a cubicle by a wooden partition painted pink and covered with illustrations cut from a book of fairy tales. “My daughter is sleeping behind there,” Yergen said, and as he spoke they could hear the little #rl moaning, then wake and begjn to cry softly, as if she were alone and the sound of her own fear would frighten her. Yergen went behind the partition and came back out carrying his little daughter in his arms. She was wrapped in an American Army blanket, and she looked at them gravely with her wet eyes. She had jet-black hair, a sad, mature face.
Yergen sat on the couch against one wall and Wolf sat beside him. Mosca drew up the only other chair in the room.
“Can you go out with us tonight?” Wolf asked. “We're going over to Honny's place. He is the man I am counting on.”
Yergen shook his head. “I can't tonight” He rubbed his cheek against his daughter's wet one. “My little girl had a fright earlier this evening. Someone came up and kept knocking on the door, and she knew it wasn't me because we have a special signal. I have to leave her so much alone and the woman who takes care of her goes home at seven. When I came she was so frightened and in such shock I had to give her one of the pills.”
Wolf shook his head. “She is too young. That should not be done often. But I hope you don't think we came.
You know I respect your wishes and come only by appointment”
Yergen held his daughter closely. “I know, Wolfgang, I know you are dependable. And I know I should not give her drugs. But she was in such a state that I was frightened.” Mosca was surprised to see the look of love on Yergen's proud face, and the sadness and despair.
“Do you think Honny has some news yet?” Wolf asked.
Yergen shook his head. “I don't think so, but, forgive me for saying this. I know you and Honny are very good friends. But if he does have news I am not so sure that he will tell it immediately.”
Wolf smiled. “I know that. So Tm bringing Mosca to see him tonight, to convince him I have a man witfi five thousand cartons.”
Yergen looked into Mosca's eyes and for the first time Mosca realized that Yergen was their accomplice, a partner. And he saw that in Yergen's eyes was a look of fascinated fear as if he were looking at someone he knew would perform an act of murder. For the first time he realized concretely the exact role his two partners had pven him. He stared back at Yergen until Yergen bowed his head.
They left. Out in the street the blackness of the night had become thinner as if the moon had spread itself against the sky and diluted the shadows without giving light. Mosca felt refreshed, alert, and the cold wind cleared his head. He walked briskly beside Wolf. He lit a cigarette and the smoke was mellow and warm on his tongue. They were silent. Once Wolf said, “This is a long walk, but one more stop will end the night and we'll get treated good. Combine business with pleasure.”
They took short cuts through ruined buildings until Mosca lost all sense of direction, and then suddenly they were in a street that seemed cut off from the rest of the city, a little village surrounded by a desert of rubble. Wolf stopped at the last house at the end of the street and gave a quick series of raps on the door.
It opened, and facing them stood a short, blond man, the front of his head completely bald, the golden hair covering the back and top of his head like a skullcap. He was very neatly dressed.
The German grasped Wolfs hand and said, “Wolfgang, just in time for a midnight snack.” He let them in and bolted the door. He put his arm around Wolfs shoulder and hugged him. “Ah, it is good to see you. Come in.” They went into a living-room that was luxurious, with a china closet stuffed full of cut glass and tableware, the floor covered by rich, dark-red rugs. There was a wall of books and glowing yellow lamps and soft armchairs, and in one of the armchairs, her feet over a yellow hassock, sat a thick-bodied, thick-lipped woman with bright-red hair. She was reading a brightly covered American fashion magazine. The
blond man said to her, “Here is our Wolfgang and the friend he told us about.” She extended a limp hand to both of them. She let the magazine fall to the floor.
Wolf peeled off his coat and put his briefcase on the chair beside him.
“So,” he said to the blond man. “Any luck, Honny?”
“Ah,” the woman said, “I think you are making a little joke with us. We have been able to find out nothing.” She spoke to Wolf, but she looked at Mosca. Her voice was peculiarly sweet, softening the meaning of everything she said. Mosca lit a cigarette, feeling his face tighten with the desire she aroused in him with her look, the complete frankness of her eyes, and the memory of her hand which had been burning hot when it touched his. And yet now, raising his eyes, watching her through the cigarette smoke, he saw that she was ugly; despite her careful disguise with make-up she could not hide her voracious mouth, the cruel tiny blue eyes.
“It is a true story,” Wolf was saying. “I know. I need only to make contact with the right people. Whoever helps me with that contact will earn a pretty reward.”,
“And this really is your rich friend?” the blond man asked with a smile. Mosca noticed that his face was covered with large freckles, giving him a boyish look.
Wolf laughed and said, “There sits a man with five thousand cartons,” burlesquing it but making his voice sound really envious. Mosca, enjoying himself, gave the two Germans a smile as if he already had a truck loaded with cigarettes outside the house. They smiled back at him. He thought, You kraut bastards, smile later.
The sliding door to the next room opened and there was another German, slight, in a dark business suit. Behind him Mosca could see a dining table set with snowy white tablecloth and napkins, gleaming silver, and tall, beautifully cut drinking glasses.
