by Mario Puzo
Mosca didn't say anything and after a few moments Leo dropped his hands from his face. The tic had stopped. Leo said, “I saw them beating this man they had dragged down the gangplank. I said ‘Don't do that,’ I was really surprised and just pushed one of them away. The other said, “Aw-right you Jew bawsted, you take some of his.” Leo imitated the cockney accent perfectly. “When I was on the ground I saw the German dock workers laughing at me, at all of us. I thought about my father then. I didn't think he was wrong. I just thought about him, what if he should see his son like this. What would he think then?”
Mosca said slowly, “I kept telling you, this is no place. Look, Tm going back to the States when the marriage papers go through. There's a rumor the air base is closing up so I'll be out of a job, anyway. Why don't you come with us?”
Leo bowed his head in his hands. The proposal aroused no emotion in him, no desire to accept, no affection for Mosca, no feeling of kinship.
“The Jews are perfectly safe in America?” Leo asked bitterly.
“I think so,” Mosca said.
“You just think so?”
“Nothing's sure,” Mosca said.
Leo didn't say anything. He thought about the English soldiers in their rough woolen uniforms, the same men who had wept when they had liberated him and his fellow inmates, had stripped off their own clothes, emptied their trucks of food, and he had believed his father, human beings are good, man is moved easily to pity and more to love than to hate.
“No,” he said to Mosca. “I can't go with you. Fve arranged to go to Palestine. I leave in a few weeks.” And then feeling he owed Mosca some explanation he said, “I don't feel safe any more except with my own people.” And as he said this he realized that he was reproaching Mosca, that Mosca's affection for him was personal, that Mosca in a time of danger would defend him, Leo, but would not defend a Jew he did not know or did not care for. And this affection was no longer enough, could never give him real security. He would never feel safe, even in America, no matter what kind of material success he achieved. In the back of his mind would always be the fear that all security could be destroyed in a manner he could not fight against or control, and that even friends like Mosca would not fight against that force. The face of the liberator and torturer were one face, blended, Mend and enemy only the enemy. He remembered a girl he had lived with shortly after coming out of Buchenwald, a thin and merry German girl with a gleeful and almost malicious grin. He had gone into the country and come back with a goose and a brace of chickens. And when he had told her of the low amount he had given she had looked up at him and said with a disturbing intonation and smile, “So, you are a good businessman.” And yet now he realized or made himself realize the attitude of mind behind what she had said, he felt only a vague bitterness against her with the others. She had been tender and loving, she had eared about him, she had treated him with every consideration and fairness except for that one time. And yet, she and the many others like her had burned the blue numerals in his arm he would carry to his grave. And where could he escape these people? Not in America, certainly not in Germany. Where could he go?
Father—Father, he cried in his mind, you never told me that every human being carries his own barbed wire, his ovens, his canes of torture, wherever they go; you never taught me to hate, to destroy, and now when Tm humiliated, jeered at, I feel only shame not even anger, as if I deserved every blow, every insult and now where can I go? In Palestine Ptt find barbed wire as surely as you found it in Heaven or in Hell And then quite simply, clearly, as if really he had known it secretly for a long time, he thought, Father, too, was the enemy.
There was nothing more to think about He saw Mosca still silent, still smoking his cigar.
“I leave in two weeks, I think, for Palestine, but I leave Bremen in a few days.”
Mosca said slowly, “I guess you're right” Come over to flie house before you leave.”
“No,” Leo said, “it's nothing personal. I don't want to see anybody.”
Mosca understood. He rose and held out his hand. “Okay, Leo, here's tack.” They shook hands. Ihey could hear Hella opening the door of the other room.
“I don't want to see her,” Leo said.
“Okay,” Mosca said and went out.
Hella had begun to dress. “Where were you?” she asked.
“With Leo, he's back.”
“Good,” she said, “call him in.”
Mosca thought for a moment. “He doesn't want to see anybody right now. He had a little accident and hurt his face. I guess he doesn't want you to see him.”
•That's silly,” Hella said. When die had finished dressing she went out of the room and knocked on Leo's door. Mosca stayed in his own room, resting on the bed. He heard Leo open the door for Hella and listened as they spoke, their voices indistinct murmurs. He didn't want to go in, there was nothing he could do.
Mosca dozed off and when he woke he felt that it was very late, it was pitch dark in the room. He could still hear Leo and Hella talking in the other room. He waited for a few minutes and then he called out, “Hey, how about getting something to eat before the Red Cross closes up?” The voices broke off and started again. Then he heard Leo's door open and a moment later Hella came into the room and snapped on the light
“I'm ready,” she said; “let's go.” He saw that she was biting her lips to keep from crying.
Mosca picked up the blue gym bag into which he had stuffed the wet towels and dirty underclothing. TTiey went down the steps and out of the building. Frau Meyer was still standing on the steps. “Did you see our friend?” she asked. There was a slightly patronizing and amused tone in her voice.
“Yes,” Hella said curtly.
On the way down the Kurfiirsten Allee, Mosca asked, “He tell you everything?”
“Yes,” Hella said.
“What the hell did you talk about so long in there?”
She didn't say anything for a time. “About when we were children. He grew up in the city, and I was raised on the land but a lot of the same things happened to both of us. When we were children Germany was a nice country to live in.”
“Everybody is leaving,” Mosca said. “First Middleton, now Leo, and pretty soon Wolf. That leaves just us and Eddie. I'll have to keep an eye on you and Eddie.”
Hella looked at him without smiling. Her face was tired, the eyes a very pale gray. The blue lump had spread to a long welt the length of her jaw. “I want to leave now as soon as we can,” she said. “I don't like Eddie, I don't like you to be with him. I know he is a good friend, he does things for us. But I'm afraid of him. Not about me but about you,”
“Don't worry,” Mosca said. “Our marriage papers will get here soon. We'll leave Germany in October.”
When they were nearly home, Hella sad, tiredly, “Walter, do you think the world will get better for helpless people?”
“I don't know,” he said, “but don't worry, we're not helpless.”
Then to cheer her up he said, “I wrote my mother about the whole deal. She's real happy, especially that I'm going home. She just hopes I picked a good girl.’ They smiled at each other.
“I think I'm good,” Hella said a little sadly. “I wonder about my father and mother, what they would think of me if they were alive. They wouldn't be happy.” She paused for a moment. “I'm afraid they wouldn't think me a good girl.”
‘We're trying, baby,” Mosca said, “we're trying like hell. It's a different world.”
They turned into the little path that led to their home, following a stream of moonlight to the doQr. Through the walls of the stone house they could hear the baby crying, not desperately, but in perfunctory protest. Hella smiled at Mosca. “That little stinker,” she said, but she ran up the steps ahead of him.
nineteen
It was the first time HeUa had ever come out to the air base, and Mosca went outside the wire fence to meet her and bring her past the guards. She was very slim and chic in a suit made from officer'
s pink. He had bought the material with Ann Middleton's Army store card. With the suit she wore a white silk blouse and white hat and veil. The veil screened her swollen cheek. She held on to Mos-ca's arm as they entered the gate of the air base.
In the Civilian Personnel Office, Inge left her desk and stood up to greet Hella. They shook hands and murmured their names. Herr Topp, the chief clerk, came in from the outer office with some papers for Eddie Cassin to sign. He was all smiles and pleasantness. “We have a peat dentist on the air base, American dentists are the finest,” Herr Topp assured Hella.
“Did you fix it with Captain Adlock sure?” Mosca asked Eddie.
Eddie nodded, then said to HeUa gently, “How do you feel?”
“It hurts a bit,” Hella said. She could feel the power that Eddie and Mosca held over the people here, how respectful Herr Topp and the girl Inge were, here the role of conqueror and conquered clean-cut, not blurred by sex or personal service. It made her shy of Eddie, and Mosca, too, so that she said almost defensively to Eddie, “The German dentists couldn't help.”
“We have the medicines they can't get,” Eddie said reassuringly. “Captain Adlock will fix you up fine.” He turned to Mosca. “You can take her over there now.”
Hella and Mosca left the Civilian Personnel Office. In the outer room the German clerks stopped work, as if in interested surprise, to see that the ugly American with his curt manner and cruel face had chosen a seemingly shy, sweet girl, slender and tall, directly opposite to what they had thought his choice would be.
They penetrated to the interior of the air base, crossing the many walks that radiated to the hangars, the flying fields, the Administration Building, until finally they came to the long low barrack that served as the medical dispensary and base hospital.
The dental chair of black leather was empty as was the white-walled room. Then a German doctor in white smock came in. He said, “Captain Adlock asked me to attend you. He is busy at the moment Please.” He motioned Hella toward the dental chair.
She took off her hat and veil and gave them to Mosca. She put her hand to the swollen cheek as if to hide it, then sat in the dental chair. Mosca stood near her and she reached out her hand to hold his arm. The German dentist's eyes narrowed as he saw her swollen cheek. He helped her open her mouth wide, forcing the jaws apart gently but firmly. He took one long look. Then he turned to Mosca and said, “We can do nothing until the infection is cleared up. It goes all the way down to the root, the bone. She needs penicillin and hot compresses. When the swelling goes down I can take out the root”
Mosca said, “Can you give her the shots?”
The German dentist shrugged. “I cannot do it. The penicillin is locked up and only the American doctors have the authority to use it. Shall I call Captain Adlock?” Mosca nodded. The German left the room.
Hella raised her head to smile at Mosca, as if to apologize for the trouble she was causing. Only one side of her face twisted. Mosca smiled back and said, “It's okay.” He put the hat and veil on a chair.
They waited a long time. Finally Captain Adlock came in. He was a stout, young, kind-looking man who wore his uniform with a recruit's sloppiness, the tie loosely knotted and pulled down from the unbuttoned collar, Ids blouse open.
“Ah, let's see now,” he said cheerfully and stuck his fingers impersonally into Hella's mouth to separate her teeth. “Yes, I'm afraid my boy is right.” He nodded toward the elderly German dentist who had re-entered the room. “She has to get penicillin shots and compresses. When the swelling goes down we can fix her up with no trouble at all.’
Mosca knew what the answer would be but he had to ask. “Can you give her the penicillin?” He realized that his voice sounded angry, surly, that he had worded the question the wrong way. He felt Hella's hand pressing on his arm.
“I'm sorry,” Captain Adlock shook his head. “You know how it is. I don't mind breaking the regulations but if I did it for you every GI would bring his girl here. And the penicillin has to be strictly accounted for.”
“I've got my marriage papers in,” Mosca said. ‘Does that make any difference?”
“I'm sorry,” Captain Adlock said. Mosca saw the genuine regret. The captain was thoughtful. “Look, as soon as your papers come back from Frankfort approved let me know and I'll give her full treatment. We don't have to wait for you to actually get married. I wouldn't want to wait and fool around with an infection like that.”
Hella put on her hat and veil. She murmured her thanks to the captain, who patted her shoulder and said, “Now keep putting compresses on her cheek. Possibly the swelling will go down with just that. If it gets worse take her to the German hospital.” As they went out the door, Mosca saw a look of doubt on the face of the elderly German dentist, as if it were all being taken too lightly.
Back in the Personnel Office, he told Eddie what had happened. Hella sat in the chair at Mosca's desk, seemingly calm, undistressed.
Eddie clucked with sympathy. He said, “Why don't yon go up to the adjutant's office and see if he can make Frankfort rush those papers through.”
Mosca said to Hella, “Can you wait here” a little while, or do you want to go home now?”
“HI wait,” she said, “but don't take so long.” She squeezed his hand and her palm was wet with perspiration.
“You sure you're all right?” he asked.
She nodded. Mosca left
The adjutant was speaking over the phone, his voice polite, the bland, ingenuous face courteous with attention to the dead instrument. He raised his eyebrow to show Mosca he would be through in a moment. When he hung up he said briskly, “What can I do for you?”
Mosca stumbled over the words, feeling defensive and overawed. Then said, “I wonder if anything came through on my marriage papers?”
“No, nothing yet,” the adjutant said politely and began leafing through a bound volume of Army regulations.
Mosca hesitated again and then said, “Is there any way of rushing them through?”
TTie adjutant didn't look up. “No,” he said.
Mosca resisted the impulse to turn away and leave. “Do you think if I went down to Frankfort it would help? Maybe you could tell me who to see?”
The adjutant closed the thick, heavily bound book and looked up at Mosca for the first time. His voice was impersonal but curt. “Look, Mosca,” he said, “you lived with this girl for a year, you didn't file an application for marriage until six months after the ban was lifted. Now all of a sudden there's a big rush. I can't stop you from going to Frankfort, but I guarantee it won't help. You know how I feel about working outside the channels.”
Mosca felt no anger, only embarrassment and a sense of shame. The adjutant went on in a softer tone. “As soon as they come in I'll let you know, okay?” And with this dismassal, Mosca left.
Walking back to the Personnel Office he tried not to feel depressed or anxious, knowing that Hella would see it in his face. But Hella and Inge were drinking coffee together and talking. Hella had her hat and veil off and she could only take little sips of coffee but he could see from her bright eyes that she had been telling Inge all about the baby. Eddie was leaning back in his chair, listening, smiling, and when he saw Mosca he asked, “How did it go?”
Mosca said, “Fine, he'll do what he can,” and smiled at Hella. He would tell Eddie the truth later.
Hella put on her hat and veil and shook hands with Inge. She shook hands with Eddie and then took Mosca's arm. When they were out of the office and had gone through the gate of the air base, Mosca said, “I'm sorry, baby.” She turned her veiled face to him, squeezed his arm. He turned his head away as if he could not bear her gaze without flinching.
In the early morning hours before dawn Mosca came out of sleep and heard Hella crying softly, sobbing into her pillow. He pulled her to him so she could bury her head in his naked shoulder. “Is it that bad?” he whispered. And she said, “Walter, I feel so sick, I feel so sick.” Saying the words seemed to frighten he
r and her crying became unrestrained like the weeping of a terrified child.
In the darkness the pain swept over her, took control of her blood and the organs of her body. The memory of Mosca at the air base powerless to help her gave her a sense of terror, made her helpless to restrain her tears. She said again, “I feel so sick,” and Mosca could barely make out the words, there was a curious distortion in her speech.
“I'll make you some more compresses,” he said and turned on the night lamp beside the bed.
He was shocked when he saw her. In the dim yellow light the side of her face was distended, the eye almost closed. There was a strange contour of her facial bones, giving her a mongoloid look. She put her hands up over her face and he went out into the kitchen to get some water for the compresses.
The ruins of the city rode on two morning sunbeams straight into the stunned eyes of Yergen's daughter. She sat on a great stone dipping her fingers into an open tin of mirabelle plums. The smell of rubble was just beginning to rise from the earth. The little girl serenely fished out the yellow, waxlike globes of fruit and then licked the sticky juice from her fingers. Yergen sat on a stone beside her. He had taken her to this secluded valley of ruins so that she could eat the rare delicacy without sharing it with the German woman who cared for her during the day.
Yergen watched his daughter's face with love and sadness. The eyes showed clearly the slow fragmentation and splintering of her childish brain. The doctor had told him that there was one hope, to get her out of Germany or the continent. Yergen shook his head. All the money he made in tide black market went to build a wall between his child and the suffering, the misery of the world around her. But the doctor had made him understand that this was not enough. That it all seeped through somehow.
Now at this moment he made his decision. He would buy false papers and settle in Switzerland. It would take months to prepare and a great deal of money. She would be cured, she would grow and live to happiness.