The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [109]
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