The Dark Arena

by Mario Puzo

  Gordon rose from his chair and moved away from her. He was profoundly shocked, not so much that she was capable of saying such a thing but that she knew him so little, the human being closest to him. That she could think he would leave the party as one would give up tobacco or a special food. But he had to answer her.

  ‘Tm thinking of our child,” Gordon said. “That's why Fm a Communist. How would you like to have him grow up and suffer what Leo went through or become someone like Mosca who cares nothing for his fellow human beings? I didn't like the way he talked in front of you, but he doesn't care about that though he professes to be fond of me. I want our son to grow up in a healthy society that won't send him to wars or concentration camps. I want him to grow up in a moral society. That's what I'm fighting for. And you know that our society is corrupt, Ann, you know it”

  Ann rose to face him. She was no longer tender or supplicating. She spoke to him factually. “You don't believe anything bad that has been written about Russia. I believe some of it, enough of it. They won't make my son safe. I have faith in my own country, as people have faith in their brothers and sisters. You always say that is nationalistic. I don't know. You're prepared to make sacrifices for what you believe in, but I'm not prepared to have our child suffer for your beliefs. And, Gordon, if I thought you fitted in with them I wouldn't try to make you stop. But what happened to Leo's father is exactly what will happen to you. I felt that when he told us, and I felt he told us for that reason, to warn you. Or even worse, you'll become corrupt. You have to quit, you just have to quit.” Her broad-planed face was stubborn and he knew that stubbornness to be invincible.

  ‘ -Let me see if we understand each other,” Gordon said slowly. “You want me to get a good job, live like a good middle-class citizen, and not place my future in jeopardy by remaining in the party. Is that correct?”

  She didn't answer and he went on. “I know your motives are irreproachable. Basically we both agree. We want to do the best thing for our son. We disagree on method. The security you want for him is only a temporary one, a security at the mercy of the capitalists who run the country. My way, we fight for a permanent security, a security that can't be shattered by a few members of the ruling class. Don't you see?”

  “You'll have to give it up,” Ann said stubbornly, “You'll just have to give it up.”

  “And if I can't?”

  “If you don't promise to give it up—” Ann paused and composed herself to say the words, “HI go back to England with the baby instead of to America.”

  They were both frightened by what she had finally said, then Ann went on in a low voice close to tears. “I know you'll keep your promise once you've made it. You see, I trust you.” And for the first time since they had been together Gordon was truly angry with her, because he knew her faith was justified; he had never lied to her, never broken a promise. His New England conscience had always functioned in personal relationships. And now she was using his honesty to trap him.

  “Let me get this straight,” Gordon said deliberately. “If I don't promise to leave the party, you'll take our son and go to England. You'll leave me.” He kept the pain and anger out of his voice. “If I do promise, you will come to the States with me.” Ann nodded her head.

  “You know that's not a fair thing to do,” Gordon said, and he couldn't hide the pain. He walked over to the chair and sat down again. Calmly and patiently he sorted out everything in his mind. He knew Ann meant what she said. He knew he never could give up the party, that he would only grow to hate her if he did, and he knew he could not give her and the child up, possibly her but not the baby.

  “I promise,” he said, and he knew he lied. And when she came to him, her face flooding with teats of relief, and knelt and put her head in his lap, he felt for her pity and compassion and felt also a sense of dread for what he had done. For he had full knowledge of his deed, that once in America it would take her some time to discover his deception, and once she had discovered it she would not have the money or the will to go back to England. Their roots in each other would be too strong. He knew that for both of them their lives would now be mixed with hate and distrust and contempt and that for the rest of their years there would be a struggle between them. But there was nothing he could do. He stroked her coarse and heavy hair, which always excited him, as did her sturdy peasant body. He turned her heavy-planed almost Slavic face upward so that he could kiss it through the tears.

  He thought, There was nothing I could do, and the kiss he gave her was painful to him.

  fifteen

  In twilight, the ruins of Nuremberg had a quiet grandeur, as if all this destruction was a thing of long ago, and by forces of nature—fire, earthquakes, centuries of rain and sun—and parts of it were tarry black as if the earth had been bled, and caked lava had formed enormous mounds.

  Leo drove through it and for the first time found pleasure in the sight of this desolation. In the suburbs he stopped in front of a little, square white-painted house absolutely identical with the houses beside it. He hoped the professor was ready; he was anxious to leave Nuremberg, glad to leave the trial behind him. He had given his testimony honestly, factually, against the guards and the kapos he had known. He had met some of his old friends, old inmates, and shared their grim satisfaction in this long-awaited vengeance. But curiously enough he had disliked being with his former comrades, as if they had not been victims but had all participated in some shameful act in which they all now felt an equal guilt. He tried to reason this out and knew that he did not wish to be with people who remembered and shared the degradation, the terror, the hopeless misery of his life hi that time. And just a face associated with that life made it real again. He pressed the horn of his jeep and shattered the evening stillness.

  Almost immediately he saw the professor's small, slight figure leave the house and come down the walk toward the jeep. He had a little surprise for the professor, Leo thought grimly, but he made an effort to be polite. “Did you have a good visit with your son?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes,” the professor said, “a very nice visit.” He said the words politely, listlessly. He looked ill, dark circles pouched beneath his eyes, an almost bloodless mouth and gray skin.

  Leo drove slowly so that they could talk, the slight breeze pleasant against his face. Later he would go at the fullest speed and then because of the rushing night wind they would not be able to speak. He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket with his right hand, controlling the wheel with his left. He gave one to the professor, and the professor lit a match, cupped it in his hand, and leaned over to light Leo's cigarette, then lit his own. After a few puffs Leo said, “I know about your son, one of my friends testified against him last month.” He saw the professor's hand shake as it brought the cigarette up to the mouth but the old man said nothing.

  “If I had known about him I would never have taken you here,” Leo said, and wondered why then he was taking the man back to Bremen.

  The professor said nervously, excitedly, holding tightly to the open side of the jeep, “I did not want you to help me. I knew it was not proper. But Herr Middleton said he explained everything to you, that you understood.”

  “When wiH they execute your son?” Leo asked cruelly and then felt ashamed.

  “In a few weeks,” the professor said. He had lost the cigarette and his hands were tugging at each other in nervous spasms. “This was my last visit.” He sat and waited for pity, hoping that Leo would not question him.

  Leo was silent. They were in the open country, the smell of fresh grass and growing trees untainted by dust The jeep was moving very slowly, Leo turned his head toward the old man. He spoke slowly. “He was convicted by a German court, your son, for killing a fellow German, not for his crimes as a camp guard. That is ironic. You will never be able to think in your heart that the damn Jews killed him. That hatred can never be your consolation. What a pity.”

  The professor bowed his head and watched his hands. “I never tho
ught such things,” he said. “Truly, I am an educated man.”

  “Your son deserves to die,” Leo said. “He is a monster. If ever a man deserved to have his life taken away, that monster does. Do you know the things he did? An evil creature, the world will be better without him. I say that with a clear conscience. Do you know the things he did?” The hate in his voice and in his heart made him stop the jeep on the side of the road and turn for an answer.

  But the professor did not answer. He had buried his head in his arms as if to hide as much of himself as he could. His whole body was shaking. There was no sound coming from the old man, but his small body was weaving backward and forward, continuously, aimlessly, as if severed from the motor of his brain.

  Leo waited for it to end, and as pity and compassion began to wash away the hate, he thought no no and called to his mind the image of his own father, the tall emaciated figure, head shaven, walking down the gravel path, and Leo in his own uniform walking to meet him, not knowing him, and his father suddenly stopping and saying, “What are you doing here?” and Leo at that time remembering, and remembering now, how in an even earlier time he had been caught by his father in the Tiergarten when he was supposed to have been in school and his father saying in the selfsame tone, “Was machst du fuer?” Only now here along the gravel path with its white-painted stones, the barbed wire ringing the horizon all around them, now the father saying these words was weeping, stooping down to his son, the red stripe of the political prisoner across his breast, the boy with the green diagonal denoting his race. And Leo in the jeep, remembering tins, only now knowing what his father must have suffered at that time ten years ago, felt only contempt for this old man before him paying for his father's grief with his own. This man, well educated, knowing right from wrong, who out of fear, cowardice, impotence, did not come to the help of his father. Slept warm in his bed, ate well, and earned it all with a helpless shrug, an easy resignation. Leo looked away from the professor and across the road and down into a green valley growing black with the falling night. He knew he could never remain in Germany, that he could never live with these people, could not even hate them, they who had kept his youth behind barbed wire, burned a number into his arm that he would carry to his grave, killed his father, made his toother flee into the night thousands of miles away, robbing her mind erf the co-ordination necessary to live so that finally a time had me when she had died because she could not sleep, literally could not sleep. And now in this land, and with this people, he lived in peace and did not rage with fire and sword. Slept with their daughters, gave chocolate bars to their children, gave them cigarettes, drove them around the countryside. With his contempt for himself Leo drove out the last pity he felt for the old man. He put the jeep in motion, making it go at top speed, wanting to get back to Bremen. The professor had wiped his face with a handkerchief and sat passively, bracing his feet against the floor, his body rigid, fighting the swaying of the jeep.

  In the early morning hours, the countryside becoming shadowy with the first beginning light, Leo stopped at one of the coffee-and-snack bars the Americans had set up on the Autobahn. He took the professor in with him, and they sat at a long wooden table. Along it some GI truck drivers were sleeping, their heads pillowed on their arms. They drank their first cup of coffee in silence but when Leo returned with the cups filled a second time and a handful of doughnuts, the professor began to talk, slowly at first, then more quickly, his hands trembling as he hurriedly sipped coffee.

  “You don't know yet how a father feels, Leo, a father is helpless, I know all about my son, and he confessed to me something else. When his mother was dying he was on the Russian front, and I managed to get him leave—he was a hero, he had courage, many decorations, but he never came. He wrote that his leave was canceled. Now he told me everything, that he went on through to Paris. That he wanted a good time. He explained to me that he could feel no pity, no love for his mother. And after that was when everything went bad, and he began to do all those terrible things. But,” the professor paused as if bewildered and then more intensely, “but how is that, a son not weep for his mother's death? He was never unnatural, he was like all the other boys, perhaps more handsome, more intelligent. I taught him to be generous, to share his things with his little playmates, to believe in God. We both loved him, his mother and I, we never spoiled him. He was a good son. Now, even now, I can't believe the things he's done, but he confesses, he confessed to me.” The pouched eyes filled with tears. ‘He told me these things, and last night he cried in my arms and said, ‘Poppa, I'm glad to die, I'm glad to die.’ We talked all week about our lives together, and the last night he cried as he used to when a child.” The professor stopped suddenly and Leo realized that his face must be showing the mixture of repulsion and pity that he felt.

  The professor began again but now his voice was calm, reasonable, and slightly apologetic as if showing his grief had been the extreme of bad manners. He spoke very slowly. “I go over our life together and try to find out where did it start? I can't find it. I can see nothing. It all happened by itself that he became a monster. It's terrifying to think that. That makes you stop. You called him that, Leo, and it is true. Your son could be such a monster.” The professor smiled to show that this was impersonal, mere theorizing, and this smile was so ghastly in that grief-masked face, the bloodless lips twisted so unnaturally, that Leo had to bow his head over his coffee not to see. And this smile taking all of his strength the old man became more intense. “I say these things to you because you are the victim. My son and I, I, too, we were the ones who did these things to you. What can I say? That it was an accident, as if I drove a car and was careless and ran you down. Without malice. My son caught a terrible fever, as if he lived in a swamp, do you understand that? He must die of this illness, I know that. But I believe he is good in spite of everything, I believe he is good.” The professor began to weep and said loudly, hysterically, “God have pity on him. God have pity on him.”

  One of the GIs lifted his head from the table and said, “Pipe down for Chris&ake.” The professor became silent

  Leo said, “Sleep a little and then we'll go in, first smoke a cigarette.” When they had finished they both pillowed their heads on their arms and the professor fell asleep immediately, but not Leo.

  He raised his head again and stared at the brown-skinned doughnuts scattered on the dirty wooden table. A black pool of coffee in its tin mess kit caught a few golden glints from the weak yellow bulbs in the room. He felt no pity for the old man; he could not. His own suffering rose in his blood as antidote. But he knew now his mother and father's grief on his account, a cruel suffering. Sleepily his mind made a circle around a half-formed dream of countless evil men put to death with perfect justice and that death spreading like a disease to countless more innocent. There was no other way, but before his head dropped onto the wooden table he thought hazily of a wonderful solution, at every execution a drug be given to the loved ones, a drug of forgetfulness, and in a full dream he dipped a great steel needle into the black pool of coffee, drew the golden glints up into the glass tube with the black liquid and finally in the back of the professor's head with its little fleshy neck he stabbed until the steel hit bone and watched the needle empty itself” The professor turned his face up to him, humbly, gratefully.

  It was almost dawn when they woke, and they made the long ride to Bremen without further conversation than was necessary. The afternoon sun had just begun its voyage west when they rode through the outskirts of Bremen, and Leo stopped the jeep at the house where the professor had his room.

  Leo raced the motor to drown out the old man's polite gratitude. He drove away quickly. He felt cold, fatigued, but not ready for sleep. He drove through the town, past the Polizeihaus and down the Schwachhauser, then made the turn into the Kurfursten Allee. He drove slowly down the long, curved tree-lined avenue, the sunlight and warm afternoon breeze giving him new strength. As he approached Mosca's house he took his foot off the
gas pedal and bumped over the curb so that the jeep was tilted, one side on the street and one on the walk. He steered into the tree to stop the slowly rolling jeep but he had been going faster than he thought and the shock of contact snapped his head back. He cursed, leaned against the cushion, and lit a cigarette, then honked the jeep horn three times.

  The window went up quickly, but instead of Hella it was Frau Saunders who put her head out. She called down to him, “Frau Mosca is not here. She was taken this morning to the hospital. The child came early.’

  Leo in his excitement stood up in the jeep. “Ah, no, is she all right?”

  “She's fine,” Frau Saunders said. “The child is a boy. Everything, went well. Herr Mosca is there now.”

  Leo didn't wait to answer her. He roared the jeep into action and made the turn that would take him to the city hospital. On the way he stopped by the Officers’ Club and gave a German servant a papk of cigarettes for a great bouquet of flowers.

  sixteen

  Mosca heard Inge calling him to the phone in the outer office. He went in, picked up the receiver, and said hello. A woman's voice answered in German. “Herr Mosca, here is Frau Saunders. They took your wife to the hospital an hour ago. I think it is die baby.”

  Mosca paused, looking at Inge and Eddie, as if they could hear the voice over the phone. They were both busy, bent over their desks.

  “But it's two weeks early,” Mosca said and saw Eddie look up and Inge turn around to watch him.

  “I think it is the baby,” Frau Saunders was saying. “She had pains this morning after you left I called the hospital and they sent an ambulance.”

  “Okay,” Mosca said, “Til go right away.”

  “Will you telephone me when you find out?” Frau Saunders asked.