The Dark Arena

by Mario Puzo

  The sergeant stood before Mosca, waiting. Mosca said, “There's one guy missing that I know about. My straw boss. I didn't make a count.”

  The sergeant was in natty ODs and wore a pistol and webbed cartridge belt around his broad middle. He moved among the prisoners and ordered them to form in ranks of ten. There were five ranks and two men for an incomplete sixth. The two men who formed their own rank had an air of guilt, as if they were to blame for the missing men.

  “What does that make it?” the sergeant asked Mosca.

  “Four missing, altogether,” Mosca said.

  The sergeant looked down on him. “A nice trick your ass-hole buddy pulled.” And for the first time since he had learned of the escape Mosca felt a sense of shame and some fear. But he could not feel angry.

  The sergeant sighed. “Weil it was a good racket while it lasted. There'll be a hell of a shake-up, the chicken shit will really fly.” He said to Mosca in a gentler voice, “Your assll be back up in the line, you know that?” They both stood there thinking of the easy life they had led, no reveille, no formation, no inspections, no fear—almost civilian.

  The sergeant straightened angrily. “Lefs see what we can do with these bastards. Achtung” he shouted, and walked up and down in front of the Germans standing rigidly at attention. He said nothing for a few minutes and then began to speak to them quietly in English.

  “All right. We know where we stand. The honeymoon is over. You men were all treated well. You were given good food, a good place to sleep. Did we ever work you too hard? You didn't feel well we let you stay in barracks. Who has a complaint? Step forward any man.” The sergeant paused as if one of them might really do so, then went on. “Okay, let's see if you appreciate it Some of you know when these men left and where they went. Speak up. Well remember it Well appreciate it” The sergeant stopped walking up and down and faced them. He waited as they murmured among themselves, some explaining to the others what the sergeant had said. But after they were still, none of the green-twilled prisoners stepped forward.

  The sergeant said in a different tone, “All right, yon bastards.” He turned to the jeep and said to the driver, “Go back to the barracks and draw twenty picks and twenty shovels. Get four men and another jeep. K no officer hears about this we might get through. And if tha” jerky supply sergeant squawks about the shovels tell him I'll come in and break his goddamn head.” He motioned the driver on his way.

  Then he signaled the prisoners to sit on the grass.

  When the jeeps returned with the extra men and a trailer loaded with tools, the sergeant lined up the prisoners in two ranks facing each other. He issued the tools and since there were not enough to go around he made the extra men go to the other side of the clearing and lie in the grass on their faces.

  No one spoke. The prisoners worked steadily digging the long trench. The rank with picks would hack at the earth, then rest. The men with shovels lifted the loose dirt away. They worked very slowly. ‘The giftrds around the clearing leaned against the trees, seemingly indifferent and unalert

  The sergeant winked at Mosca and said in a low voice, “A good bluff always works. Watch this.”

  He let them dig for a short time more, then he called a halt. “Does anyone here wish to speak?” He gave them a grim smile.

  No one answered.

  “Okay” The sergeant waved an arm. “Keep digging.’

  One of the Germans let his shovel fall. He was young and rosy cheeked. “Please,” he said. “I wish to tell you something.” He walked away from his fellow prisoners into the open space that separated him from the guards.

  “Spit it out,” the sergeant said.

  The German stood there wordless. He looked back TOt-easily at his fellow prisoners. The sergeant understood. He took the German by the arm and led him over to the jeep. They stood there talking earnestly in low voices, watcfed by prisoners and guards alike. The sergeant listened with his head thrust forward intently, his great body bent over, one arm thrown familiarly over the prisoner's shoulder. Then he nodded. He motioned the informer into the jeep.

  The prisoners were loaded onto the three trucks and the caravan moved through the now-deserted forest, the other roads crossing theirs empty of life. In the jeep bringing up the rear the sergeant drove, his long mustaches waving in the breeze. They left the forest, and as they entered the open countryside it was strange to see the familiar land bathed in a different light, the riper and reddish sun of late afternoon.

  Turning his head for a moment the sergeant spoke to Mosca. “Your buddy planned this for a long time. But he's out of luck.”

  “Where is he?” Mosca asked.

  “In town. I know the house.”

  The caravan entered the camp, and then the two jeeps swung in a wide arc away from the trucks and raced toward the town. Then close together, as if coupled, they went down the main street, and on the corner on which stood the church, turned right. They halted by a small stone house. Mosca and the sergeant went to the front door. Two of the men in the other jeep moved slowly to the rear of the house. The other men stayed in the jeeps.

  The door was opened before they could knock. Fritz stood there before them. He wore old, crumpled blue serge trousers, a white collarless shirt, and a dark jacket. He gave them an uncertain smile. “The rest are upstairs,” he said. “They are afraid to come down.”

  “Call them,” the sergeant said. “Go up and tell them they won't be hurt.”

  Fritz went to the foot of the stairs and called up in German. “All is in order. Come down. Don't be afraid.”

  They heard a door open above them, and the three other prisoners came slowly down the stairs. They were dressed in ragged civilian clothes. On their faces was a sheepish, almost guilty look.

  “Go out to the jeeps,” the sergeant said. Then he asked Fritz, ‘Whose house is this?”

  Hie German raised his eyes. For the first time he looked at Mosca. “A woman I used to know. Let her go, she did it for—you know—she was lonely. It has nothing to do with the war.”

  “Get out there,” the sergeant said.

  They all left. The sergeant whistled for the two men behind the house. As the jeeps pulled away, a woman came down the street carrying a large bundle in brown wrapping paper. She saw the prisoners in the jeep, turned, and walked back in the direction from which she had come. The sergeant gave Mosca a sour grin. “Goddamn women,” he said.

  On a lonely stretch of road nearly halfway back to camp the sergeant's lead jeep pulled to the side and stopped. The other jeep halted dose behind. On one side of the road was a rough stony pasture leading into the dark line of the forest two hundred yards away.

  “Gct those men out of the jeeps,” the sergeant said. They all dismounted and stood awkwardly, ill at ease in the deserted road. The sergeant stood for, some moments, deep in thought. He felt his mustaches and said, “A couple of you guys can bring these krauts back to camp. Empty the tools out of that trailer and bring it back.” He pointed to Fritz. “You stay here.”

  “I'll go back,” Mosca said quickly.

  The sergeant looked him up and down, slowly, with insolent contempt. “Listen, you son of a bitch, you're staying here. If it wasn't for me your ass'd be up in the line. By Christ, Fm not going to chase krauts all over the country whenever they get a bug up their ass. You stay here.”

  Two of the guards moved off silently with the three prisoners. They got into the jeep and disappeared down the road. Fritz turned his head to watch them go.

  The four men in their olive drab stood facing the lone German and the stony pasture beyond him. The sergeant stroked his mustache. TTie German's face was gray, but he stood stiffly, as if at attention.

  “Start running,” the sergeant said. He pointed across the pasture to the forest

  TTie German did not move. The sergeant gave him a shove. “Run,” he said, “well give you a good start.” He pushed the German onto the pasture grass, spinning him so that he faced the forest. Hie sun was gone
, and there was no color on the earth, only the grayness of falling twilight The forest was a long dark wall, far away.

  The German turned, facing them again. His hand went to his collarless shirt as if searching for some dignity. He looked at Mosca, then at the others. He took a step toward them, off the grass and stone. His legs trembled, and his body wavered for a moment, but his voice was steady. He said, “HerrMosca, Ich hab’ eineFrau undKinder”

  On the sergeant's face came a look of rage and hatred. “Run, you bastard, run.” He rushed to the German and struck him in the face. As the German began to fall he lifted him and shoved him toward the pasture. “Run, you kraut bastard.” He shouted it three or four times.

  The German fell and rose and turned to face them again, and again he said, not pleading this time but as if in explanation, “Ich hob’ erne Frau und Kinder” One of the guards stepped forward quickly and struck him in the groin with the butt of his carbine and then, letting the weapon dangle in one hand, smashed the German's face with the other.

  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.

  nine

  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:

  Brenne auf mein Licht

  Brenne auf mein Licht

  Aber nur meine Hebe Laterne nicht

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

  Da oben leuchten die Sterne

  Hier unten leuchten wir

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

  Mein Licht ist aus, wir get? nach Ham

  Und kommen Morgen wieder

  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.