The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [102]
Mosca dipped the linen rag into the hot pan of water and after wringing it out, applied the steaming cloth to Hella's face. She lay on the sofa, tears of pain in her eyes, the swollen flesh pulling the nose out of line and twisting the side of her mouth, making a grotesque distortion of the left eye. In the armchair near the foot of the sofa Frau Saunders held the baby, tilting the nippled bottle so that the infant could feed more easily.
As he kept changing compresses, Mosca spoke to Hella softly, soothingly. “We'll keep this up a couple of days and everything will be okay, just hold still now.” They had been sitting so all afternoon and the swelling had gone down a little. The baby in Frau Saunders's arms began to cry and Hella sat up on the sofa and reached for him. She pushed the compress away and said to Mosca, “I can't any more.” She took the baby from Frau Saunders. She put the good side of her face against the infant's head and crooned softly, “Poor little baby, your mother can't look after you.” And then with fumbling hands she began to change the wet diapers, Frau Saunders helping her.
Mosca watched. He saw that the continual pain and lack of sleep for the last week had drained her of strength. The German hospital doctors had said her case was not serious enough to warrant penicillin. His only hope was that Yergen would have the drug} for him at midnight, tonight. The last two nights Yergen had disappointed him.
Hella finished dressing the baby and Mosca took the child from her. He cradled the infant in his arms and watched Hella try to smile at him as she lay back on the sofa. As he watched he saw the tears of pain start to her eyes, and she turned her head away from him. He could hear the small, uncontrollable whimpers.
Mosca stood it as long as he could then he put the child back in the carriage. “I'm going to see if Yergen has the medicine,” he said. It was a long way to midnight but the hell with it. He might catch Yergen home. It was near eight, the German suppertime. He leaned over to kiss Hella and she put up her hand to touch his face. “Ill be back as soon as I can.”
The Kurfiirsten Allee was chilled with the first cold of winter and in the darkness he could hear the falling leaves sifting along the ground to become lost in the rums of the city. He caught a Strqssenbahn to the church in which Yergen lived. The side entrance was open, and he ran up the steps to the steeple. Standing a step below the door which was cut into the wall he knocked as hard as he could. He waited, there was no answer, no sound behind the door. He tried a variation of knocks, hoping that by some chance he would hit on Yergen's signal and the child would open the door and he could question her. But for some reason he did not call out. He waited again for some moments and then he heard a curious animal-like sound, monotonous, on one level shrilling tone and realized that the child behind the door was crying and would in her terror never open the door. He went down the stairs and waited outside the church for Yergen.
He waited for a long time. He wind became colder and the night darker, the rustling of the trees and falling leaves louder and more sibilant. As he stood there waiting there grew in him a sense of certain and terrible disaster. He tried to remain still but suddenly was walking away from the church and down Kurfiirsten Allee.
As soon as he had left the church and walked a few minutes the fear left him. Then the thought of watching helplessly the tears and pain he would be sure to see made him stop. All the strain and tension, the humiliations and refusals of the past week, the turning away by Dr. Adlock, the rebuke by the adjutant,