The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [43]
When Gordon went to the door with them he said to Mosca, “We never use up all our allowance on our commissary card. Any time you need some groceries and want to use it, just let me know.”
Gordon locked the door and went back to the living-room. Ana said to him, “Really that was quite shameful, you were downright rude to Leo.”
Gordon, knowing that this from her was a stern rebuke, said without defiance but resolutely, “I still think the man was an impostor.”
This time his wife did not smile.
The soft, rose-colored lights went out Eddie Cassin leaned forward in his seat, applauded with the rest as the old, white-haired conductor entered the pit and tapped the music stand sharply with his baton. The curtain went up.
As the music started slowly, yet with passion, Eddie Cassin lorgot the school auditorium he was in, the Germans all around him, the two monstrous Russian officers almost blocking Lis view. The familiar figures on the stage were now all lis life, and he gripped his jaw and mouth with his hands to control the emotional workings of his face.
On the stage the man and woman who at the beginning had sung of their love for each other, now sang of their hate. The man in his peasant costume cried with anger in hard beautiful tones, rising and ascending, the orchestra playing beneath the voice, rising and falling with it, as a wave might, yet falling completely away when need be. The woman's voice, shrill, cut through his, mingled, the orchestra circling what they said. The man threw the woman away from him with so much force that as she spun away she fell to the floor, really slamming against the wood of the stage. She was up on her feet instantly, screaming reproaches yet musically, and as the man threatened her and she denied his accusations, suddenly the man's voice, the voices of the chorus, the orchestra, all fell away and the woman's voice found itself alone, admitted her guilt, hurled back defiance, and falling to a lower and sweeter tone sang of death and sorrow and a bodily love that led all men and women. Before Eddie Cassin's eyes the man took the woman hy the hair and thrust into her body with a dagger. On a loud clear note she called for help, and her lover died with her; the horns and violins rose to a high, crescending wave, and the man's voice made its final utterance, a long clean note of revenge, passion, and inconsolable grief. The curtain came down.
The Russian officers in their green-and-gold uniforms clapped enthusiastically, seeming to lead the applause. Ed-die Cassin pushed his way out of the auditorium and into the fresh right air. He leaned against his jeep, feeling exhausted and jet content. He waited until everyone had left, waited until the woman who had died on the stage came out. Ke saw that she was plain, with heavy German features, dressed all in black, loosely; lumpy as a fifty-year-old housewife. He waited until she was out of sight mid then got into the jeep and drove across the bridge into the Alstadt, Bremen proper, and as always the ruins rising up to meet him awakened a feeling of kinship. Mingled with this was the remembrance of the opera and how closely this physical world resembled—with the same element of the ridiculous—that interior make-believe world he had seen on the stage. Now that he was free of the music's spell, he was ashamed of the easy tears he had shed, tears for a tragedy so simple, so direct, a child's story of guiltless and unfortunate animals come to disaster, and his own tears a child's tears he would never understand.
The Officers’ dub had been one of the finest private homes in Bremen. What had been its lawn was now a parking lot for jeeps and command cars. The garden in the rear supplied flowers for the homes of the higher ranking officers.
When Eddie entered the club the dance floor was empty, . but ringed around it, seated on the floor and leaning against the wall, the officers were three rows deep. Others watched from the barroom, standing