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By Root 286 0

were in your bag, Walter. Why didn't you show them to us?” She sat on the sofa and started looking at the photos one by one. She passed them on io Gloria and Alf. Mosca helped himself to a drink as they exclaimed over the different pictures and asked questions about where they had been snapped. Then he saw his mother turn pale, staring hard at one of the photos. For a moment Mosca had a feeling of panic, wondering if the really obscene pictures he had picked up were still there. But he was sure he had sold them all on the boat. He saw his mother pass the photos on to Alf, and he was angry with himself that he had felt any kind of fear.

“Well, well,” Alf said, “what's this?” Gloria went over and looked at the picture. He saw the three pairs of eyes turned to him, waiting.

Mosca leaned toward Alf and when he saw what it was, he felt a surge of relief. He remembered now. He had been riding on the back of a tank when it happened.

In the photo was the huddled figure of a German bazooka man lying crumpled in the snow, a dark line running black from his body to the end of the print Over the body stood himself, Mosca, staring straight into the camera, his M—I slung over his shoulder. He, Mosca, looked curiously misshapen in his winter combat clothing. The blanket, in which he had cut holes for his head and arms, hung like a skirt beneath his combat jacket. He seemed to stand there like a successful hunter, ready to carry home the fallen game.

And not in the picture were the burning tanks on the covered plain. Not in the picture were the charred bodies sprinkled across the whitened field like rubbish. The German had been a good bazooka man.

“My buddy took that picture with a Leica the kraut had.” Mosca turned to his drink and turning back saw them still waiting.

“My first victim.’ he said, trying to make it sound like a joke. And yet it was as if he had said the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids, explaining a background against which he had been standing.

His mother was studying the other photos. ‘Where was this taken?” she asked. Mosca sat down beside her and said, ‘That was in Paris on my first leave.” He put his arm around his mother's waist.

“And this?” his mother asked.

“That was in Vitry.”

“And this?”

“That was in Aachen.”

And this? And this? And this? He named the towns and told funny little stories. The drinks had put him into a good mood, but he thought, This was in Nancy where I waited two hours on line to get laid, this was in Dombasle where I found the dead naked German with his balls swollen big as melons. The placard on the door had said, Dead German Inside. And it hadn't lied. He wondered even now why someone had troubled to write it, even as a joke. And this was in Hamm, where he got his first piece in three months and his first dose. And this and this and this were the countless towns where the Germans, men, women, and children rested in their shapeless, rubbled tombs and gave out an overpowering stench.

And m all these the background against which he stood was like a man being photographed on a desert. He, the conqueror, stood on the flattened, pulverized remains of factories, homes, human bones—the ruins stretching away like rolling sand dunes.

Mosca sat back on the sofa. He puffed on his cigar. “How about some coffee?” he asked. “I'll make it.” He went into the kitchen, Gloria following him, and together they set out the cups, cut the whipped-cream cake she took from the Frigidaire. And while the coffee boiled on the stove, she clung to him and said, “Darling, I love you, I love you.”

They brought the coffee into the living-room, and it was their turn to tell Mosca stories. How Gloria had never gone out on a date in three years, how Alf had lost his leg in a truck crash in a southern Army camp, and how his mother had gone to work again, clerking in a large department store. They had all had their adventures, but thank God the war was over, the Moscas had come through safely, a leg lost, but as Alf said, with modern transportation what did legs mean, and now here they all were, safe in this little room.