The Dark Arena

by Mario Puzo

  Mosca looked in the waiting-room, but there was no sign of Eddie Cassin. He looked up and down the stre< but there was no jeep waiting.

  He stood uncertainly for a few moments, then follower the streetcar tracks down the Schwachhauser Heer Strasse swinging off into the long, curving Kurfiirsten Allee, nc conscious of the blue gym bag he was carrying, carefully picking his way through the ruins of the ghostly city. He never knew afterward why he did not go directly to the hospital.

  As Mosca approached his home he saw in the darknes of the city one single light burning and knew it was the light in his apartment He turned into the little grave path. As he ran up the steps he could hear the baby crying.

  He opened the door of the living-room and saw Fran Saunders seated on the sofa, facing him, watching the door, pushing the baby carriage back and forth across the rug. The infant's cries were patient, hopeless, as if nothing could ease or still it. Mosca saw that Frau Saunders's face was white and strained with fatigue, the usually neat, tightly drawn-back hair now loose and straggly around her head.

  He stood in the door waiting for her to speak but saw that she was frightened and would not do so.

  He asked, “How is she?”

  “She is in the hospital,” Frau Saunders said.

  “I know. How is she?”

  Frau Saunders didn't answer. She stopped pushing the baby carriage and put her hands over her face. The baby's wails became louder. Frau Saunders's body began to rock back and forth. “Oh, how she screamed,” she said, “oh how she screamed.” Mosca waited. “She fell down the stairs and screamed,” Frau Saunders said, weeping.

  She let her hands fall away from her face as if she could no longer hide her grief. She began to push the carriage back and forth again. The baby was still. Fran Saunders looked at Mosca waiting patiently in the doorway. “She is dead, she died in the evening. I waited for you.” She saw Mosca still waiting there patiently, as if she had not said anything, as if he were still waiting for her to speak.

  He felt only a numbness, like a tight fragile shell to keep out pain and light. He heard Frau Saunders say, “She died in the evening,” again, and he believed her but could not accept it as truth. He went out of the house and through the dark streets. When he came to the hospital he followed the arc of the great iron fence until he came to the main gate.

  Mosca went into the Administration Office. Behind the night-duty desk was a nun in the great white hat of her religious medical order. Then on a bench against the wall he saw Eddie Cassin.

  Eddie rose and stood awkwardly. He nodded to the nun. She motioned Mosca to come with her.

  Mosca followed the great white hat down the long silent corridors. He heard in the stillness, the exhausted sleeping breath of the sick. At the end of the corridor they weaved through black-clad charwomen who knelt and scrubbed the tiled floors white.

  They turned into another corridor. The nun opened the door of a small room and he entered behind her. She stepped off to one side and closed the door.

  Mosca took a step into the room and in the corner, framed in the white pillow, he saw Hella's face, her body covered with a white sheet to the neck. He could not see clearly and took another step into the room.

  Her eyes were closed and the side of her face was no longer swollen, as if the poison and life had fled her body together. The mouth was colorless, almost white. There was no spot of red anywhere. There were no lines in her face and she looked younger than he had ever remembered; but the face was vacant, the great hollows of her closed eyes giving it the effect of blindness.

  Mosca went nearer and stood beside the bed and on the sill of the draped window he could not see, there stood a great vase filled with white flowers. He looked down at Hella, feeling confused, knowing now he must accept the fact of her death but not knowing what to do, not able to think or feel. Death not being strange to him in its violent form, but now seeing it as it came disguised, seeing for the first time someone he had kissed and loved physically no longer possible to contact, feeling a revulsion to the dead form here, having seen what a body became after death. He reached down to touch the blind eyes and touched her cold face and put his hand on the white sheet which covered her body. He heard a curiously crackling sound and drew down the sheet a little further.

  Her body was enclosed in a shroud of heavy brown wrapping paper and he could see that underneath there were no clothes. Behind him the nun whispered, “Many wish it so, they need the clothing.”

  He had drawn the sheet with arrogant certainty, with faith in die armor he had grown against grief, trusting his memory of the terrible years to shield him now. But he thought, She has enough clothes to be buried in, I can do that for her. And suddenly a thousand enemies came coursing through his blood, the bile rose in his throat, a giant hand cramped the beat of his heart, drowned all light Then without knowing how, he found himself outside the room, leaning against the wall of the corridor.

  The nun waited patiently for him. Finally Mosca said to her, “FU bring some proper clothes; will you dress her for me?” The nun made a motion of assent.

  He left the hospital and began to walk. He followed the perimeter of the fence. Though it was not yet light he became conscious of the Strassenbahn going by and people passing him in the streets. The curfew had ended. He kept turning into deserted streets but as he entered them people seemed to spring out of the rubbled earth and buried apartments. ITien there was a cold wintry sun and a pale light over the earth and he found himself on the edge of the town, walking into the countryside. The air was very cold. Mosca made himself stop.

  He accepted it all now and was not surprised that everything had turned out badly. There was left only a tired hopelessness, and far down in his being a shameful guilt.

  He thought of what he must do; bring a dark-colored dress to the hospital for Hella to be buried in, make arrangements for the funeral. Eddie could help him, would arrange everything. He turned back and felt something at his arm. He looked down and saw that he was still carrying the blue gym bag. He was very tired and had a long walk before him so he let it drop in the deep wet grass. He lifted his eyes to the light of the frozen morning sun and started to walk back into the city’

  twenty-three

  A tiny caravan passed through the huge central gate of black iron, left the hospital grounds and entered the surrounding city. Gray, early morning light shrouded the ruins with ghostly sheets of vapor.

  The ambulance carrying Hella's coffin led the way. The jeep, open to the wind, followed slowly behind, Eddie and Mosca hunched down to escape the cold. Frau Saunders, alone in the seat behind them, was wrapped in a brown Army blanket that hid her mourning from the world. Following the jeep came a little Opel car with its wood-burning motor and small smokestack. In it was the minister to whose church Frau Saunders belonged.

  The caravan rode against the tide of the world coming to the center of the city, clanging Strassenbahns crammed with workers, olive-drab Army busses; people whose life-rhythm had been broken only by rest and sleep and dreams. The bitter cold of late autumn, the early cold unprepared for and unforeseen, more bitter than the cold of deepest winter, iced the metal jeep and froze the body and mind. Mosca leaned toward Eddie. “You know where the cemetery is?” Eddie nodded. Mosca said emotionlessly, “Let's get there.” Eddie swung the jeep to the left and it shot forward, raced down the broad avenue winding in a slow curve through and out of the city. Then onto a little side road and through an open wooden gate and finally rolling slowly to rest on a small lawn before the long deep rows of tombstones.

  They sat in the jeep, waiting. Frau Saunders put the blanket aside. She was dressed in a black coat and veiled hat and wore black stockings. Her face was gray as the winter light filtered from the descending sky. Eddie and Mosca were in dark officer greens.

  The ambulance came slowly along the rutted road and entered the cemetery gate. It stopped and the driver and his helper got out. Eddie and Mosca went to help them. Mosca saw that they were the
two men who had brought Hella to the hospital for childbirth. They had the two rear doors of the ambulance open and as they, shoved out the black box, Mosca and Eddie gripped the handles of the end near them.

  It was rough wood stained watery black, the handles dull rough iron, the color of the sky. The two ambulance men faced Mosca over the coffin but pretended not to know him. They swung the coffin around so that they would lead. It was very light. They took a path through the scarred and broken tombstones until finally they came to an open pit Two little round-shouldered Germans in caps and dark jackets rested on their black, heart-shaped spades and watched the coffin being set down near the hole they had made. Behind them was a great pile of raw brown earth.

  The little Opel car came through the gate, its smokestack pouring a rope of mourning to the sky. The minister came out. He was tall and thin and his cragy face was stern. He walked slowly, slightly bent, dragging his long black robe against the damp earth. He spoke a few words to Frau Saunders and then to Mosca. Mosca kept his eyes on the ground. He could not understand the heavy Bavarian accent The stillness of the air was broken by the even, guttural prayer of the minister. He heard the words love and pray and the German word pray was like die word beg, he heard the voice saying forgive forgive and accept accept accept and something of the wisdom and mercy and love of God. Someone gave him a handful of earth, and he threw it before him, heard it strike wood, then heard other little pats of earth. Then he heard great chunks striking like great slow steady heartbeats, growing softer and softer until there was just the inaudible sighing of earth falling on earth, and above the blood pounding in his head, Mosca could hear Frau Saunders weeping.

  Finally there were no more sounds. He could hear them moving. He heard the roar of a motor, then another, then the jeep.

  Mosca looked up. The mist from the city they had left behind had stolen through the graves and stones. He raiset his eyes to the opaque and sunless sky as men raise theii eyes to pray. In his heart he cried out with hatred, impotent anger,/believe, I believe. Crying out that he believed in the true God, that his vision was clear, that he saw the true tyrannical Father, merciless, pitiless, bathec in blood, drowning in terror and pain and guilt, devours and consumed by His insane hatred for mankind. In his heart and mind great fissures opened to receive the God he saw and then a pale-gold sun appeared before the cur-taind sky and forced his eyes to earth.

  Across the plain that lay before the city he could see the empty ambulance and the Opel car rising and falling on the bumpy road. The two black spaded men had disappeared. Frau Saunders and Eddie sat in the jeep waiting for him. Frau Saunders had the blanket wrapped aroun< her, hiding her mourning. It was very cold. He motionec that they should leave and watched the olive-drab jeep move slowly through the gate. Frau Saunders turned for a last look, but he could not see her face. Her black veil, heavy threaded and covered with mist, shielded her eyes,

  And now alone for the first time Mosca could look Hella's grave, the mounded earth, the raw brown dirt hei body had displaced. He felt no sorrow, only a bewilderec sense of loss, as if there was nothing he could ever want to do and no place in all the world he could go. He looked across the open field to where the city began and under whose ruins more bones were buried than would ever fill this prepared and holy ground. TTie dead winter sun, shrouded in clouds, shed its pale yellow light and Mosca tried to see across the field to his own life and everything he had felt and known. He tried to reach back over a great continent of graves to the games he had played as a child, the streets he had walked in boyhood, the love his mother gave, and the face of his father long dead, his first farewell. He remembered his mother always saying, “You have no father but God is your father.” And saying, “You have to be extra good because you have no father and God is your father.” He tried to reach back and find the love he had felt then, the streams of pity and mercy that hollowed wells for tears.

  Seeking pain he thought of Hella, of her face so delicately fragile it exposed blue veins defenseless, without a veil of flesh to death and the world. He thought of her unconscious love springing like magic out of her heart and how fatal it had been, a weakness, in this world a sickness terrible and mortal as undenting blood.

  He walked down the narrow path, past the chipped, scarred tottering tombstones wounded by war. He went out the cemetery gate. Walking toward the city his mind filled with images of Hella, how she had looked when he came back and the love she gave him that he needed to stay alive, the overwhelming relief at finding her so, but now it seemed that even then he had known he would bring her to death and to this grave.

  He shook his head. Bad luck, just bad luck, he thought He remembered the many evenings he had returned for supper and found her asleep on the couch and he would put her to bed and leave and return to find her still asleep, a great deep sleep in which she was safe till morning. Bad luck, he thought again to save himself, but without hope, remembering the cruelty that had taken her away when she was completely alone, without warning, without letting her see or touch the few people she loved.

  In the moment before he entered the city he tried to reach the other God, to summon him from the other world, the world his mother lived in, the upright homes, the happy, well-fed children, the virtuous women securely fastened to life with kind men and golden wedding rings. He tried to reach the world rich in drugs to soften nearly every agony, to call forth those great deep shadows of painless memories that might save him now.

  And if he could have seen the city beneath him untouched, its skin of stone unlacerated, its flesh firm; and if the sun had shone and the iron sky had bled with light, and if he could have felt some love for the people groping through the shrouded winter ruins, he might have summoned that masked God who shielded his known true face with patient mercy.

  Mosca descended the rolling hill to where the paved street began. Now he could not focus his mind on any real image of HeUa. Just once in the misted street he thought clearly and nakedly, It's come to ah end. But that, too, escaped him before he could think of what it meant

  twenty-four

  He gave Fran Sannders money to look after the child and moved back to the billet in Metzer Strasse. In the nights that followed he went to bed early. The parties would be just starting, music and laughter in the rooms around and below him. And he would sleep through it all. But in the night, after the merriment had died and die billet was still and dark, he would come fully awake. He would look at his watch on the night table and it always read one or two o'clock. Then he would lie stilly afraid to turn on the lamp because of its depressing, weak yellow light. A little before dawn he would fall asleep again and sleep through the bustle of men preparing and leaving for work. Every night it would be the same. When he woke he would lift up the watch and hold the tiny circle of yellow eyes near his face hoping it would tell him an hour near morning and light. And always he would have to smoke a cigarette and sit against the wooden headboard and prepare himself for the long dark hours he must remain awake. He would listen to the gurgling of pipes, the breathing of the couple in the next room, their drowsy moans and gurgles like death rattles and the muted cries of their somnambulist passion, and then the drip of water in the bathroom. There would be little dicks and scraping of floors against walls as if they, too, were settling for rest There would be a murmur of a faraway radio sometimes, and then someone alive speaking and footsteps along the hall, and in the street below his window the muted laughter of women as they left the billet. And then as dawn came Mosca would fall asleep and wake in the quiet noon of an empty house, the walls of his room painted pale lemon by winter sunlight.

  On one of these afternoons, two weeks after the burial, Mosca heard the quiet broken by footsteps in the hall and then there was a knock. He got out of bed and put on his trousers. He went to the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open.

  Before him was the face he had seen only once but would never forget. Honny, with his skullpap of yellow hair, his fleshy nose and heavy freckles. Honny smi
led and asked, “May I come in?”

  Mosca stepped aside, then closed the door. Honny rested his briefcase on the table and looked around the room, thai said pleasantly to Mosca, “I'm sorry if I woke you.”

  “I was just getting up,” Mosca said.

  The little blond man said slowly, “I was sorry, very sorry to hear about your wife.” He smiled uncertainly.

  Mosca turned and walked to the bed. “We weren't married,” Mosca said.

  “Ah, so.” Honny nervously passed his hand over the bald front of his head until he could feel the reassuring silkiness of the hair farther back. “I came to tell you something very important”

  Mosca cut in, “I have no cigarettes.”.

  Honny said gravely, “I know you have no cigarettes, that you are not a PX manager, that I know since Wolfgang went back to America.”

  Mosca smiled at him. “So what.”

  “No, you misunderstand,” Honny said quickly. “I came to tell you about Yergen. That penicillin he gave you he bought through me. I was the intermediary.” He stopped for a moment. “Yergen knew it was defective, he only paid a fraction of the usual price to the contact I gave him. You see?”

  Mosca had to sit on the bed. He put his hand on the scar, his stomach hurt Suddenly he had a great throbbing headache. Yergen, Yergen, he thought, Yergen who had done so much for them, made Hella happy, whose daughter Hella loved. He felt a sick humiliation that Yergen could trick him so and into such sorrow. He bowed his face into his hands.

  Honny was speaking again, gently. “I learned you refused to go on with Wolfs scheme. I am not stupid. That means you spared my life. Believe me if I had known that Yergen meant his goods for you I would have stopped him. I learned too late. Yergen was willing to sacrifice me, and he was willing to sacrifice your woman.” He saw that Mosca still sat on the bed with his face in his hands and so he said even more softly, “I have good news. Yergen is back in Bremen, in his old place. Your landlady, Frau Meyer, sent word to him that all was in order, that he need have no fear.”