The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [26]
“Can't you sleep?” she murmured drowsily. “You're always up so early.”
“I guess well have to start getting put more. This home life is too much for me.”
Mosca watched the russet blanket of leaves being rolled up Metzer Strasse, covering the dirt bicycle path underneath the trees.
Hella leaned against him. “We need a baby, a wonderful baby,” she said softly.
“Christ,” Mosca said, “the FGkrer really drummed that crap into your heads.”
“Children were loved before that.” She was angry that he could laugh at what she wanted so much. “I know it's thought stupid to want children. In the Flak the Berlin girls used to laugh at us farmers because we cared about babies and talked about them.” She pushed away from him. “All right, go to work,” she said.
Mosca tried to reason with her. “You know we can't get married until they lift the ban. Everything we do here is illegal, especially your being here in the billet When the kid comes well have to move to German quarters and that's illegal for me. There's a million things I'd have to do that they could ship me back to the States for and no way to take you with me.”
She smiled at him and there was a trace of sadness in it. “I knew you won't leave me here again.” Mosca was surprised and shocked that die should know this. He had already decided to go underground with false papers if some tremble should come.
“Ah, Walter,” she said, “I don't want to be like the people downstairs; drink, dance at the club, go to bed, and never have anything to keep us together except ourselves. The way we live, that's not enough.” She stood there, the undershirt reaching just over her hipbone and navel, without dignity and without shame. He wanted to smile.
“It's no good,” he said.
“Listen to me. When you went away I was happy I was going to have a baby. I thought I had such very good luck. Because even if you didn't come back there would be another human being in the world I could love. Do you understand that? From my whole family I only have one sister left, and she is far away. Then you came and you left and I had no one. In all the world there was no one that it would be pleasure for me to bring pleasure to, no one that was part of my life. There's nothing more terrible.”
Below them some Americans came out of the building into the cold street, unlocked the security chains on their jeeps, and warmed up the motors, the rising and falling throb coming faintly through the closed windows.
Mosca put his arm around her. “You're not well enough.” He looked down at the thin, naked body. “I don't want anything to happen to you.” And as he said the words a wave of fear swept over him that she would leave for some reason, and that in the gray winter mornings he would stand alone at the window, the room empty behind him, and that the fault in some unforeseen way would be his. Turning to her suddenly, he said in a gentle voice, “Don't be mad at me. Wait a bit.”
She rested in his arms and then quietly she said, ‘You're afraid really of yourself. I think you know that. I see how you are with other people and how you are with me. Everyone thinks you're so unfriendly, so“—she searched for a word that would not make him angry—”so rough. I blow you're not that way, not really. I could never want a better man, in everything. Sometimes Frau Meyer and Yergen, when I say something nice about you, they look at each other. Oh, I know what they think.” Her voice was bitter, the bitterness of all women speaking in defense of their own against a world that does not comprehend the reason for their love. “They don't understand.’
He picked her up, put her on the bed, and drew the blanket over her. “You'll catch a cold,” he said. He leaned over to kiss her before he left for work. “You can have anything you want,” he said, then smiled. “Especially something that easy. And don't worry about them ever making me leave, no matter what.”
“I won't,