The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [72]
They began to walk to the center of town. “Let's get Frau Saunders some ice cream from the Red Cross Club,” Hella said. Mosca looked at her.
“You two sure became awful good buddies in a week,” he said. “What goes on, anyway? I know you give her part of your meals and some of the sugar and coffee we have. When the Middletons leave you'll have to get stingy, baby. That stuff will be hard to get.”
She gave him an unused smile. “If I thought you really cared I wouldn't do it. I know it's just that you want me to have everything. But I can't do it, Walter. When I cook some meat the smell fills the whole hall, and I think of her in the living-room with just dry potatoes” Besides. Tm too fat. Look at me.”
That's not from eating,” Mosca said. She laughed and gave him a push. He grinned at her and said, “But you're pretty big. At least now you can't wear my shirts any more.” She had on a blue maternity dress Ann Middleton had given her.
They walked along, Mosca holding her arm when they had to climb over rubble that overflowed onto the walk. The trees were all heavy with leaves and the rays of the setting sun only occasionally glanced over them. Hella said thoughtfully, “Frau Saunders is really fine. You wouldn't think it to look at her, but she is a lot of fun to talk to and she does nearly all my wdrk for me. And not because I give her things, she really wants to help. Will you get her some ice cream?”
Mosca laughed and said, “Sure.”
She had to wait outside while he went into the Red Cross Club. On the way back they went by the Polizeihaus and on the outskirts of the Contrescarpe Park below they were blocked off by a small crowd listening to a man standing on a park bench. He was lecturing, waving his arms, shouting. They paused. Mosca shifted the cold box of ice cream to bis right hand and Hella leaned on his shoulder.
“The guilt is on every one of us,” the man was shouting. “This godless age, this godless land. Who thinks of Christ, of Jesus? We accept his blood as our salvation and do not believe. But I tell you, I tell you, his blood has washed away so many sins, that blood is weary, the Lord God is weary of our ways. How much longer will he be patient? How much longer will the blood of Jesus save us?” He paused and his voice became soft, pleading. “The love of Jesus is no longer enough, the blood of Jesus is no longer enough. Please believe me. Save yourselves and me and our children and our wives, our mothers, our fathers, sisters, brothers, and our country.” His voice became calm, factual, reasonable, and his body relaxed. He spoke conversationally.
“You see this land in ruins, the continent, and Christ sees farther than we, he sees a destruction of soul universal, evil triumphant, Satan looking over the world in glee, seeing with his laughing eyes the death of man and everything man has done since the beginning of time.”
A plane passed overhead on its way to the air base. The roar of the motor made him stop. He was a small man with a pouter-pigeon chest accentuated by the way he threw back his head to glare with his rolling, brilliant, birdy eyes. He went on.
“Picture to yourself a world innocent of life. In the polar regions the snow and ice everywhere untracked, unmoved upon. In Africa, in the jungles, where the sun gives, from God, innumerable and diverse forms of creation, there everything is still.” The voice now was madly rhetorical, pompous, the brilliant eyes bulging from his small head. “The carcasses of dead beasts lie putrefying in the rotting vegetation. On China's plains, by the fertile rivers, not even the crocodile lifts his grinning head to return the leer of Satan. And in our cities, in the many hearts of what is known as civilization, there is nothing but ruins. Hills of stone out of which no life will ever grow, a soil of broken glass. For eternity.”
He stopped and waited for a sign of approval but instead a surprising shout rose from different parts