The Dark Arena (12 page)

The lines in the wrinkled face sprang leaks of blood. And then, before he began to walk across the stony pasture toward the dark wall of the forest he gave them one last look. It was a look of lost hope and more than fear of death. It was a look of horror, as if he had seen some terrible and shameful thing in which he had never believed.

They watched him walk slowly across the pasture. They waited for him to run, but he walked very slowly. Every few steps he turned his body around to watch them, as if it were some game, breeding a childish distrust They could see the white of bis collarless shirt

Mosca saw that every time the German tinned to watch them and then turned back again his course veered a little to the right. He saw the slight, rocky rise of ground that led to the forest. The trick was obvious. The men knelt on the dirt road and raised the carbines to their shoulders. Mosca let his hang barrel downward to the dirt road.

As the German made his sudden dash for the gully, the sergeant fired and the body had begun its fall as the other shots rang out The fall carried his body over the slight ridge, but the legs remained in view’

In the silence that followed the sharp, scattered reports of the carbines, under the gray wisps of smoke that spiraled above their heads, the living men froze in the positions from which they had fired. The acrid smell of powder floated away on the evening air.

“Go in,” Mosca said. ‘Til wait for the trailer. You guys go in.” No one had noticed his not firing. He turned from them and walked a few steps down the road.

He could hear the roar of the jeep as it moved away, and he leaned against a tree, staring across the stony pasture, and over the dangling legs to the black, impenetrable wall of the forest In the coming night, it seemed very near. He lit a cigarette. He felt no emotion, only a slight physical nausea and internal looseness. He waited, hoping the trailer would arrive before it became really dark.

In the now complete blackness of the room Mosca readied over Hella's body for the glass of water cm the night table. He drank and leaned back.

He wanted to be completely honest
‘Tt
doesn't bother me,” he said. “It's just when I see something like today, that woman chasing the truck. I remember what he said, he said it twice. I have a wife and children.’ It didn't mean anything then. I can't explain it, but it's lite the way we spent all our money whenever we could, because saving it didn't mean anything.” He waited for Hella to speak.”

He went on. “I tried to figure it out after, you know. I was afraid of going back into combat, and I guess I was afraid of that sergeant. And he was a German, and Germans had done a hell of a lot worse. But the main thing was, I didn't feel any pity, when he was hurt, when he begged, when he was killed. Afterward, I was ashamed and surprised, but I never felt pity and I know that's bad.”

Mosca reached down toward Hella's face and tracing along the cheek felt the wetness in the hollows beneath her eyes. For a moment he felt the nausea, and then the
fever in his body burned it out He wanted to tell her how it was, how it was like nothing else ever known, how it was like a dream, like magic, die fear all around. In the strange, deserted towns the dead people lay, the fighting went on over their rubbled graves, black flowers of smoke grew through skull-like homes, and then later the white tape lay everywhere, around the charred enemy tank, to show that it had not been demined, outside the doors of houses as in a child's game, a chalkmark over which you cannot step, and then more and more like a witch's spell, the white tape around the church, around the dead bodies in the square, around the casks of wine in the farmer's barn, and then in the open fields the sign with its skull and crossbones marking the dead animals, the cows, the heavy plow horses, all blown upside down by the land mines, their bellies torn open for the sun. And how one morning, the new strange town was so quiet, so still, and how for some reason he had been afraid, though the fighting was still some miles away. And then suddenly, far off, the church bells tolled, and they could see” the square filled with people, and he knew it was Sunday. On that same day, the fear gone, in some place where the skull and crossbones were not seen, where soms child had forgotten to make his white mark in chalk, where by some human error the magic white tape was not where it should be, he had suffered the first violation of his flesh and bone and come to know the meaning, the terror of annihilation. He said nothing. He could feel Hella turn over on her stomach and bury her face in the pillow. He shoved her roughly and said, “Go sleep on the couch.” He moved over against the wall, feeling its coolness against his body draw the heat of fever. He pressed against it

In his dream the trucks moved through many lands. The countless women sprang from the earth, stood on tiptoe in the streets, searched with hungry faces. The emaciated men danced like scarecrows in their joy, and then, as the women before them began to weep, bowed their heads and bodies to be kissed. The white tape circled them, the trucks, the men, the women, and the world. The
sick terror born of guilt was everywhere. The white flowers withered and died.

Mosca woke. The room was shot through with shadows, the last ghosts of night, and he could make out a vague outline of the wardrobe. The air was cold, but the fever and chill had left his body. He felt a gentle tiredness that was pleasant He was very hunpy, and he thought for a moment how good breakfast would taste later in the morning. He reached out and felt Hella's sleeping body. Knowing that she had never left him, he put his cheek against her warm back and fell asleep.

Gordon Middleton watched the children march down
the street past his house in a neat column of twos. They swung their paper lanterns in time to the slow chant that came faintly to Gordon's ears through the dosed window. Then the two files marched inward on its front and became a group, the lit yellow-red lanterns like a cluster of fireflies in the cold and pale October dusk. Gordon felt a pang of homesickness for the (tying New Hampshire village he had left so long ago, the cold, bare beauty of its countryside, the night air lit only with fireflies, and where it seemed, there as here, that everything was dying as winter came.

Without turning his head, Gordon asked the professor, “What are they singing, the children with the lanterns?”

The professor sat by the chess table, surveying with satisfaction the ruin he had brought to his opponent. In the leather briefcase beside him were the two sandwiches he would take home with him and the two packs of cigarettes that were his weekly tuition fee for giving lessons in German
to Gordon Middleton. The cigarettes he would save for his son, when he could visit him in Nuremberg. He must again ask permission to visit After all, if the great men could have visitors, why not his son?

“They are singing a song for the October
Fest,”
the professor said absently. “To show that the nights are getting longer.”

“And the lanterns?” Gordon Middleton asked.

“Really, I don't know, an ancient custom. To light the way.” The professor suppressed his irritation. He wanted to summon the American back to the game, complete the slaughter. But though the American never presumed on his position as conqueror, the professor never forgot his place as one of the conquered or, far back in his mind, his own secret shame about his son.

Gordon Middleton opened the window, and floating up the street from the lanterns, filling the room with a crystal-clear tone, like the October air, came the children's singsong voices. He listened intently, testing his newly acquired German, and the simplicity of the words and the clarity with which they sang made understanding easy. They sang:

“You'd think their parents wotdd have more important things to worry about instead of making lanterns.” Gordon waited, listening to the song again.

and then on a long note without sadness but sounding so in the falling light.

Gordon Middleton saw Mosca crossing the Kurfiirsten
Allee, walking through the cluster of lanterns and still-singing children, scattering the light

“My friend is coming,” Gordon said to the professor. Gordon walked over
to
the chess table and with his forefinger toppled over his king.

The professor smiled at him and said out of politeness, “It was yet possible to win.” The professor was afraid of all young men—the hard, sullen German youths with their years of warfare and defeat—but even more of all these young, drunken Americans who would beat or kill without provocation, purely out of drunken malice and the knowledge that they were safe from retaliation. But any friend of Middleton would surely not be dangerous. Herr Middle-ton had assured him of this, and Herr Middleton was himself reassuring. He was almost a caricature of the Puritan Yankee with his tall, awkward, loosely knit frame, prominent Adam's apple, long bony nose, and square mouth. And in his little New England town a schoolteacher. The professor smiled thinking how in the past these little grade-school teachers had fawned on the Herr Professor, and now in this relationship his learning and title meant nothing. He was the courier.

The bell rang and Gordon went to the door. The professor stood up and nervously straightened his coat, the frayed tie. He pulled his short body with its swollen potato stomach to an erect position and faced the door.

The professor saw a tall, dark boy, not more than twenty-four, certainly not older than his own son. But this boy had serious brown eyes and a grave, almost sullen face that just missed being ugly. He was dressed very neatly in officer green and had the white-and-blue patch denoting his civilian status sewed on his lapels and left sleeve. He moved with an athletic carelessness that would have been contemptuous if it had not been so impersonal.

When Gordon made the introduction, the professor said, “I am very happy to meet you,” and thrust out his hand. He tried to keep his dignity but realized that he had said the words obsequiously and betrayed his nervousness with his smile. He saw the boy's eyes go hard and noticed the quick withdrawal after their hands touched. The
knowledge that he had offended this youth made the professor tremble, and he sat down to arrange the chess pieces on the board.

“Do yon care to play?” he asked Mosca and tried to suppress the apologetic smile.

Gordon waved Mosca toward the table and said, “See what yon can do, Walter; he's too good for me.”

Mosca sat in the chair opposite the professor. “Don't expect too much; Gordon taught me this game just a month ago.”

The professor nodded his head and murmured, “Please take the white pieces.” Mosca made the opening move.

The professor became absorbed in the game and lost his nervousness. They all used the simple opening, these Americans, but where the little schoolteacher had played a cautious game, sound but uninspired, this one played with all the impetuosity of youth. Not without talent, the professor thought, as with a few expert moves he broke the force of the headlong attack. Then swiftly and ruthlessly he swooped on the unprotected rooks and bishop and slaughtered the pawns standing forward without support.

“You're too good for me, professor,” the boy said, and the professor noted with relief that there was no rancor in the voice.

Then without any transition Mosca said abruptly in German, “I'd like you to give English lessons to my fiancee twice a week. What does it cost?”

The professor flushed. It was humiliating, this common bargaining, as if he were a shopkeeper. “Whatever you wish,” he said stiffly, “but you speak quite a good German, why not teach her yourself?”

“I have,” Mosca said, “but she wants to learn the structure, grammar and all that. A pack of cigarettes for every two lessons okay?”

The professor nodded.

Mosca borrowed a pencil from Gordon and wrote on a slip of paper. He gave it to the professor and said, “Here's a note in case anyone in the billet questions you. The address is there, too.”

“Thank you.” The professor almost bowed. “Will tomorrow evening be suitable?”

“Sure,” Mosca said.

Outside the house a jeep horn began a steady honking. “That must be Leo,” Mosca said. “We're going over to the Officers” Club. Feel like coming, Gordon?”

“No,” Gordon said. “Is that the boy that was in Buchen-wald?” And when Mosca nodded, “Have him come in for just a second; Fd like to meet him.”

Mosca went to the window and pushed it open and the horn stopped. “Come on in,” Mosca shouted. It was very dark now, the children and their lanterns out of sight

When Leo came in he shook hands with Gordon and said to the professor stiffly,
“Angenehm”
The professor bowed, picked up his briefcase and said to Gordon, “I must go.” Gordon took him to the outer door, and they shook hands in farewell. Then Gordon went to the kitchen in the rear of the house.

IBs wife was sitting at the table with Yergen, haggling over the price of some black-market goods. Yergen was polite, dignified, and firm; they both knew she was getting a good bargain. Yergen believed in quality. On a chair beside the table was a foot-high stack of rich-looking, rusty-colored woolen material.

“Isn't this lovely stuff, Gordon?” Ann Middleton asked in a pleased voice. She was a plump woman, her features good-natured and kind despite the determined chin and shrewd eyes.

Gordon in his slow, deliberate way made a sound of assent and then said, “If you're through here I'd like you to come and meet some friends.” Yergen hurriedly gulped the cup of coffee before him and began to fill his leather briefcase with the round tins of fats and meats that rested on the table. “I must go,” he said.

“You won't forget the material for my husband's coat next week?” Ann Middleton asked warningly.