The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [15]
“I want you to leave now,” he said. “I don't want you to wait for the truck.”
“All right,” she said submissively, and she gathered her clothes together into a bundle and put them into her small suitcase.
Before she left he gave her all the cigarettes and German money he had and they left the building together. On the street he said, “Good-by,” and kissed her. He saw she couldn't speak, that the tears were running down her face, but she walked straight down the street, down the Con-trescarpe to the Am Wald Strasse, not seeing anything, not turning around.
He watched her until she was out of sight, believing it was the last time he would ever see her, feeling a vague relief that it was all over, and so easily, with no fuss. And then he remembered what she had told him a few nights before and it had been impossible to doubt her sincerity. “Don't worry about me or the baby,” she had said. “Don't feel guilty about it; if you don't come back, the baby will keep me happy, will always make me think how happy we were together. And don't come back for me, if you don't want to.”
He was angered by what he thought was the false nobility of her speech but then she went on. “I'll wait for you at least a year, maybe two years. But if you don't come I'll be happy. I'll find another man and make my life; that's the way people are. And Fm not afraid, not afraid of having the baby or taking care of it alone. Do you understand that I'm not afraid?” And he had understood. That she was not afraid of any pain or sorrow he might give her, or the cruelty and lack of tenderness that was now part of him, but most of all what she did not understand herself he envied most, that she had no fear of her own inner being, that she accepted the cruelty and rage of the world around her and kept her belief in the giving of love, and that she felt more sorrow for him than for herself.
A brown-green wall tilted before his eyes, blocking off his vision, and as if on a level before him but lying on their sides, were groups of buildings and small oblongs that were people. The plane leveled off and Mosca could see the neat outlines of the airfield, the small groups of buildings that were aircraft hangars, and the long, low administration building, gleaming white in the sun. Far away he could see a ragged outline formed by the few tall buildings that were still standing in Bremen. He felt the wheels meet the earth, gingerly, distrustfully, and there swept over him an impatient eagerness to be out of the plane, to stand waiting for Hella outside a door. At that moment, when he was ready to leave the plane, he was sure he would find her waiting for him.
three
Mosca let a German porter cany his suitcases out of the plane, and he saw Eddie Cassin coming down the ramp of the airfield to meet him. They shook hands, and Eddie Cassin said in the quiet, carefully modulated voice, vibrant with a sincerity that he always used when he felt unnatural, “It's good to see you again, Walter,”
“Thanks for fixing up the job and the papers to come here,” Mosca said,
“That was nothing,” Eddie Cassin said. ‘It's worth it to me to have one of the old gang back. We had some great times together, Walter.” He picked up one of Mosca's suitcases, and Mosca took the other and the blue gym bag and they walked up the ramp, off the flying area.
“Weil go to my office and have a drink and meet some of the guys,” Eddie Cassin said. He put his free arm across Mosca's shoulder for a moment and said in a natural voice, “You old bastard, I'm really glad to see you, you know that?” And Mosca felt what he had not felt in his previous home-coming! a sense of true arrival, of reaching a final destination.
They followed a wire fence to a small brick building that stood some distance away from the other installations of the base. “Here I'm the lord and master,