The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [39]
He went on. “I tried to figure it out after, you know. I was afraid of going back into combat, and I guess I was afraid of that sergeant. And he was a German, and Germans had done a hell of a lot worse. But the main thing was, I didn't feel any pity, when he was hurt, when he begged, when he was killed. Afterward, I was ashamed and surprised, but I never felt pity and I know that's bad.”
Mosca reached down toward Hella's face and tracing along the cheek felt the wetness in the hollows beneath her eyes. For a moment he felt the nausea, and then the fever in his body burned it out He wanted to tell her how it was, how it was like nothing else ever known, how it was like a dream, like magic, die fear all around. In the strange, deserted towns the dead people lay, the fighting went on over their rubbled graves, black flowers of smoke grew through skull-like homes, and then later the white tape lay everywhere, around the charred enemy tank, to show that it had not been demined, outside the doors of houses as in a child's game, a chalkmark over which you cannot step, and then more and more like a witch's spell, the white tape around the church, around the dead bodies in the square, around the casks of wine in the farmer's barn, and then in the open fields the sign with its skull and crossbones marking the dead animals, the cows, the heavy plow horses, all blown upside down by the land mines, their bellies torn open for the sun. And how one morning, the new strange town was so quiet, so still, and how for some reason he had been afraid, though the fighting was still some miles away. And then suddenly, far off, the church bells tolled, and they could see” the square filled with people, and he knew it was Sunday. On that same day, the fear gone, in some place where the skull and crossbones were not seen, where soms child had forgotten to make his white mark in chalk, where by some human error the magic white tape was not where it should be, he had suffered the first violation of his flesh and bone and come to know the meaning, the terror of annihilation. He said nothing. He could feel Hella turn over on her stomach and bury her face in the pillow. He shoved her roughly and said, “Go sleep on the couch.” He moved over against the wall, feeling its coolness against his body draw the heat of fever. He pressed against it
In his dream the trucks moved through many lands. The countless women sprang from the earth, stood on tiptoe in the streets, searched with hungry faces. The emaciated men danced like scarecrows in their joy, and then, as the women before them began to weep, bowed their heads and bodies to be kissed. The white tape circled them, the trucks, the men, the women, and the world. The sick terror born of guilt was everywhere. The white flowers withered and died.
Mosca woke. The room was shot through with shadows, the last ghosts of night, and he could make out a vague outline of the wardrobe. The air was cold, but the fever and chill had left his body. He felt a gentle tiredness that was pleasant He was very hunpy, and he thought for a moment how good breakfast would taste later in the morning. He reached out and felt Hella's sleeping body. Knowing that she had never left him, he put his cheek against her warm back and fell asleep.
nine
Gordon Middleton watched the children march down the street past his house in a neat column of twos. They swung their paper lanterns in time to the slow chant that came faintly to Gordon's ears through the dosed window. Then the two files marched inward on its front and became a group, the lit yellow-red lanterns like a cluster of fireflies in the cold and pale October dusk. Gordon felt a pang of homesickness for the (tying New Hampshire village he had left so long ago, the cold, bare