The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [112]
Seeking pain he thought of Hella, of her face so delicately fragile it exposed blue veins defenseless, without a veil of flesh to death and the world. He thought of her unconscious love springing like magic out of her heart and how fatal it had been, a weakness, in this world a sickness terrible and mortal as undenting blood.
He walked down the narrow path, past the chipped, scarred tottering tombstones wounded by war. He went out the cemetery gate. Walking toward the city his mind filled with images of Hella, how she had looked when he came back and the love she gave him that he needed to stay alive, the overwhelming relief at finding her so, but now it seemed that even then he had known he would bring her to death and to this grave.
He shook his head. Bad luck, just bad luck, he thought He remembered the many evenings he had returned for supper and found her asleep on the couch and he would put her to bed and leave and return to find her still asleep, a great deep sleep in which she was safe till morning. Bad luck, he thought again to save himself, but without hope, remembering the cruelty that had taken her away when she was completely alone, without warning, without letting her see or touch the few people she loved.
In the moment before he entered the city he tried to reach the other God, to summon him from the other world, the world his mother lived in, the upright homes, the happy, well-fed children, the virtuous women securely fastened to life with kind men and golden wedding rings. He tried to reach the world rich in drugs to soften nearly every agony, to call forth those great deep shadows of painless memories that might save him now.
And if he could have seen the city beneath him untouched, its skin of stone unlacerated, its flesh firm; and if the sun had shone and the iron sky had bled with light, and if he could have felt some love for the people groping through the shrouded winter ruins, he might have summoned that masked God who shielded his known true face with patient mercy.
Mosca descended the rolling hill to where the paved street began. Now he could not focus his mind on any real image of HeUa. Just once in the misted street he thought clearly and nakedly, It's come to ah end. But that, too, escaped him before he could think of what it meant
twenty-four
He gave Fran Sannders money to look after the child and moved back to the billet in Metzer Strasse. In the nights that followed he went to bed early. The parties would be just starting, music and laughter in the rooms around and below him. And he would sleep through it all. But in the night, after the merriment had died and die billet was still and dark, he would come fully awake. He would look at his watch on the night table and it always read one or two o'clock. Then he would lie stilly afraid to turn on the lamp because of its depressing, weak yellow light. A little before dawn he would fall asleep again and sleep through the bustle of men preparing and leaving for work. Every night it would be the same. When he woke he would lift up the watch and hold the tiny circle of yellow eyes near his face hoping it would tell him an hour near morning and light. And always he would have to smoke a cigarette and sit against the wooden headboard and prepare himself for the long dark hours he must remain awake. He would listen to the gurgling of pipes, the breathing of the couple in the next room, their drowsy moans and gurgles like death rattles and the muted cries of their somnambulist passion, and then the drip of water in the bathroom. There would be little dicks and scraping of