The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [116]
He was struck by an idea. He grabbed Mosca by the arm. “Look,” he said, “listen to me. I'm going with Frau Meyer for a week, up to the mountains around Marburg. You come along. I'll get you a girl, a real sweet girl. Well have lots of laughs, farmer food, liquor. Cmon, say yes for a buddy.”
Mosca smiled at him. “Sure, okay,” he said.
Eddie laughed out loud. “That's it, Walter. That's fine. Fine.” He slapped Mosca on the shoulder. “WeTl leave tomorrow night. Wait till you see those mountains. Beautiful, really beautiful.” He paused for a moment and with real affection, almost fatherly, he said, “Maybe we can figure a way to get your kid back to the States with you. That's the thing you know she'd want, Walter. More than anything else.” Then with an embarrassed smile, “Come on down. Just for one drink.”
Mosca said, “You getting Yergen here for me?”
Eddie looked at him thoughtfully. Mosca said, “The truth is I'm broke, Eddie. I have to leave money with Frau Saunders for the kid. I need dough to go with you to Marburg.” He laughed. “Unless you're treating for the whole week.” He made his voice quietly sincere. “And I need the money for the trip to the States. That's all there is to it. I paid the guy a small fortune for that stuff.”
Eddie was convinced. “Sure, I'll get him,” he said. “Ill go right now. And then after you come down to the party. Okay?”
“Sure, Mosca said.
When Eddie left, Mosca looked round the empty room. He saw the letters on the bed, picked one up, and sat down on the bed to read it When he finished he realized he had not understood a sentence. He went ova: it again. He tried to connect the words so they would mean something. They wavered through his unfocused mind, filtered through the noises of the billet.
Please come, his mother wrote. Don't think about anything, please come home. Pit take care of the baby. You can go back to school, yot/re only twenty-three, I always forget how young you are and for six years you've been away. If you feel bitter now, pray to God, that is the only thing that helps. Your life is beginning.
He threw the letter on the floor and stretched out on the bed. Below him he could hear the parties starting, the soft music and the laughing voices. His headache was be ginning again. He switched out the light. The tiny yellow eyes of his watch told him it was six-thirty. He had plenty of time. He closed his eyes.
He thought of how it would be, the return home, seeing his mother and child every day, finding another girl and settling down. Buried inside himself he would carry this other life, his hatred for everything they believed. His life would be a stone over the grave of everything he had ever seen or done or felt. He thought with surprise of what he had shouted at Frau Saunders. It had sprung out of him. He had never even thought such a thing. But now he could see all the mistakes he had made, he forced his mind onto something else.
Drowsily the images formed into Hella carrying the child off die boat and meeting his mother. Then aD of them in the living-room together, and then every morning, every night, seeing each other's face. He fell asleep.
He dreamed, or thought, a fraction of his brain awake, that he was on his way home, that the sign on the door read, Welcome Home, Walter, that he had left Hella alive in Germany and on his way home had dreamed a year away. TTiat he had never returned to Hella, that she had not held the gray bread in her hands and let it fall to the floor, that he had opened that other door and Gloria and his mother and Alf were waiting for him, and he had come out of a nightmare to them, and they were in a great flood of light. But then his mother had a bundle of pictures in her hand, and he could see a crib in the corner and the curled back of a sleeping child and he was afraid, and then they were