The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [40]
Without turning his head, Gordon asked the professor, “What are they singing, the children with the lanterns?”
The professor sat by the chess table, surveying with satisfaction the ruin he had brought to his opponent. In the leather briefcase beside him were the two sandwiches he would take home with him and the two packs of cigarettes that were his weekly tuition fee for giving lessons in German to Gordon Middleton. The cigarettes he would save for his son, when he could visit him in Nuremberg. He must again ask permission to visit After all, if the great men could have visitors, why not his son?
“They are singing a song for the October Fest,” the professor said absently. “To show that the nights are getting longer.”
“And the lanterns?” Gordon Middleton asked.
“Really, I don't know, an ancient custom. To light the way.” The professor suppressed his irritation. He wanted to summon the American back to the game, complete the slaughter. But though the American never presumed on his position as conqueror, the professor never forgot his place as one of the conquered or, far back in his mind, his own secret shame about his son.
Gordon Middleton opened the window, and floating up the street from the lanterns, filling the room with a crystal-clear tone, like the October air, came the children's singsong voices. He listened intently, testing his newly acquired German, and the simplicity of the words and the clarity with which they sang made understanding easy. They sang:
Brenne auf mein Licht
Brenne auf mein Licht
Aber nur meine Hebe Laterne nicht
“You'd think their parents wotdd have more important things to worry about instead of making lanterns.” Gordon waited, listening to the song again.
Da oben leuchten die Sterne
Hier unten leuchten wir
and then on a long note without sadness but sounding so in the falling light.
Mein Licht ist aus, wir get? nach Ham
Und kommen Morgen wieder
Gordon Middleton saw Mosca crossing the Kurfiirsten Allee, walking through the cluster of lanterns and still-singing children, scattering the light
“My friend is coming,” Gordon said to the professor. Gordon walked over to the chess table and with his forefinger toppled over his king.
The professor smiled at him and said out of politeness, “It was yet possible to win.” The professor was afraid of all young men—the hard, sullen German youths with their years of warfare and defeat—but even more of all these young, drunken Americans who would beat or kill without provocation, purely out of drunken malice and the knowledge that they were safe from retaliation. But any friend of Middleton would surely not be dangerous. Herr Middle-ton had assured him of this, and Herr Middleton was himself reassuring. He was almost a caricature of the Puritan Yankee with his tall, awkward, loosely knit frame, prominent Adam's apple, long bony nose, and square mouth. And in his little New England town a schoolteacher. The professor smiled thinking how in the past these little grade-school teachers had fawned on the Herr Professor, and now in this relationship his learning and title meant nothing. He was the courier.
The bell rang and Gordon went to the door. The professor stood up and nervously straightened his coat, the frayed tie. He pulled his short body with its swollen potato stomach to an erect position and faced the door.
The professor saw a tall, dark boy, not more than twenty-four, certainly not older than his own son. But this boy had serious brown eyes and a grave, almost sullen face that just missed being ugly. He was dressed very neatly in officer green and had the white-and-blue patch denoting his civilian status sewed on his lapels and left sleeve. He moved with an athletic carelessness that would have been contemptuous if it had not been so impersonal.
When Gordon made the introduction, the professor said, “I am very happy to meet you,” and thrust out his hand. He tried to keep his