The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [25]
Over their coffee Mosea asked, “What do you people do?”
“It is UNRRA work,” Leo said. “Distribute supplies to the Jews who are in the camps waiting to leave Germany. I was myself eight years in Buchenwald.”
A long time ago, a time that was no longer real, Mosea thought, that was one of the big reasons he had enlisted, to fight against concentration camps, but that hadn't been him, that was the guy in the photo, the one Gloria and his mother and Alf cared so much about. But remembering this aroused a strange emotion in him, of embarrassment and shyness because he no longer gave a damn.
“Yes,” Leo said. “I went in when I was thirteen.” He rolled up his sleeve and on his arm as if printed there with purple ink was a six-digit number with a smeared letter before it. “My father was there with me. He died a few years before the camp was liberated.”
“You speak English pretty well,” Mosea said. “No-body'd think you were German.”
Leo looked at him with a smile and said in his quick, nervous voice, “No, no, I am not a German. I am a Jew.” He was silent for a moment. “I was a German, of course, but Jews cannot any longer be Germans.” “How come you haven't left?” Mosea asked. “I have a very good” here. I have all the privileges Americans have and I earn good money. And then I must make up my mind whether to go to Palestine or the United States. It is very difficult to decide.”
They talked for a long time, Mosca drinking whisky and Leo coffee. At one point Mosca found himself trying to explain different sports to Leo, realty trying to tell how it felt because the other had spent his childhood and his youth in the concentration camp, had it stolen, irretrievably lost.
Mosca tried to explain how it felt to go up for a shot in basketball, the thrill of faking a guard out of position and rising easily in the air to float the ball through the basket, the quick whirling and running on the warm wooden floor of the gym, the soaking, sweaty tiredness, and the magical refreshment of the warm shower afterward. Then walking down the street, his whole body relaxed, carrying the blue gym bag, and the prls waiting for them in the ice-cream parlor. Later the peaceful and complete oblivion of perfect sleep.
Riding back to the billet, Leo said, “Tm always on the ways, my job makes me travel a great deal. But with the cold weather coming I will spend more time in Bremen. We'll get to know each other better, eh?”
‘I'll show you how to play baseball,” Mosca said with a smile, “get you ready for the States. And don't say ‘on the ways.’ That's German. Say ‘on the road,’ or ‘traveling.’ ”
After that he would come to their room some nights and drink tea and coffee, and Mosca taught him how to play cards—poker, casino, and rummy. Leo never talked about the time he had spent in the camps and never seemed depressed, but he never had the patience to stay in one place long and their quiet life was not appealing to him. They became good Maids, Leo and Hella, and he claimed that she was the only girl who had been able to teach him how to dance properly.
And then when autumn came and the trees dropped their leaves on the bicycle paths and laid a speckled brown-and-green carpet along the shaded streets, the freshened air stirred Mosca's blood and lifted him out of his summer lethargy. He became restless, ate more often at the Raths-kellar, went drinking at the Officers” Club—all places where Hella was not allowed to enter because she was the enemy. Returning late to the billet, a little drunk, he would eat the thick, canned soup Hella wanned up for him on the electric plate and then sleep fitfully through the night. On many mornings he would wake at dawn and watch the gray clouds being swept across the sky by the early October wind. He watched the German workers walking briskly to the corner where they could catch a Strassenbahn to the heart of the city.
One morning