The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [27]
seven
A band was playfng fast dance mask when they entered the German night club. It was a long rectangular room bare of ornament and bleak with white, unshaded light The walls were roughly calcimined and the high, domed ceiling gave it a vast cathedral-like air. It had been a school auditorium, but the rest of the building had been blown away.
Hie chairs were of the hard, folding variety, the tables were equally bare and stern. There were no decorations. The room was full, people jammed together, so that the waiters hi many instances could not serve a table directly and had to ask intervening couples to pass the drinks on. Wolf was known here, and they followed his portly figure to a table near the wall.
Wolf offered his cigarettes all around and said to the waiter, “Six schnapps.” At the same time he slipped the rest of the cigarettes in the pack into the waiter's hand. ‘The clear stuff.” The waiter bowed and hurried off.
Frau Meyer turned her blonde head to look at the room.
“It's not very nice here,” she said.
Eddie patted her hand. “Baby, this is for people who lost the war.”
Mosca smiled at Hella, “Not too bad, is it?”
She shook her head. “It's a change,” she said. “I should see how my fellow Germans enjoy themselves.” Mosca missed the slight guilt in her voice, but Eddie understood and his delicate mouth curved into a smile. One weapon found, he thought, and felt a sudden elation, a sudden passion.
“There's a good story about this place,” Wolf said. “They had to bribe the Education Officer at Mil Gov to certify it as unfit for any school activities and then bribe the Fine Arts Officer as okay for entertainment purposes. Nobody knows whether it's really safe.” He added, “Not that it matters, it'll be closed up in a couple of days, anyway.”
“Oh, why?” Hella asked.
“Wait and see,” Wolf said, smiling with a knowing air.
Leo said with his usual good humor, “Look at them.” He gestured around the room. “I never saw sadder looking people in my life. And they are paying to have such a bad time?” They all laughed. The waiter brought their drinks.
Eddie raised his glass. His handsome face settled into a mock seriousness. “Happiness to our two friends, a perfectly matched couple. Look at them. One, a princess so sweet and fair. The other, a scowling brute. She will mend his socks and have his slippers ready each evening and for a reward she will receive some well-chosen hard words and a blow. My friends, this marriage will be perfect It wiH last a hundred years if he doesn't kill her first.” They drank, Mosca and Hella smiling at each other as if they possessed an answer, a secret no one at the table could guess.
The two couples went out to dance on the small floor before the raised stage at the other end of the room. Wolf and Leo were left alone. Wolf looked around with a practiced eye.
Cigarette smoke rose over the mass of people to the high, domed ceiling. The patrons were a curious mixture, old couples who had perhaps sold a piece of good furniture and decided on one night out to relieve the dun monotony of their lives; young black-market operators, good friends of American mess sergeants and PX officers, sat at tables with young girls who wore nylon stockings and smelled of perfume; old men who trafficked in diamonds and furs, automobiles and other valuables, sat with girls not richly dressed, sedate mistresses of long standing, a salaried relationship.
The densely packed room was not noisy, the general conversation not loud in volume. The drinks were ordered at long intervals, and there was no food of any kind in sight. The band tried its best to play American tunes jazz style, the drummer's square head shaking from side to side in a strained but reserved imitation of American performers helpless with inner rhythm.
Wolf nodded to some people at other tables, black-market operators he had done business with for cigarettes. They had been spotted for Americans as soon as they came in, he thought, and curiously enough more because of the ties they wore