The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [82]
The city hospital was a group of red brick buildings scattered over a great area of tree-lined walks and green lawns, and all encircled by an iron fence crawling with ivy to hide the defending spikes. Along the perimeter of the fence were little iron doors. The main entrance for visitors, however, was an enormous gateway through which entered vehicles and pedestrians. Tlie jeep went through this gate, moving slowly through eddies of German men and women.
“Find out where the maternity ward is,” Mosca said. The jeep stopped. The driver leaned out and spoke to a passing nurse, then put the jeep in motion. Mosca leaned back and tried to relax as they rolled slowly through the hospital grounds.
Now he was in a German world. Here there were no uniforms, no military vehicles except the one he rode in. The people around him were all the enemy; their clothes, their speech, the way they walked, the very atmosphere. As they rode, he could see from time to time the iron spears enclosing this world Near the fence was the maternity building.
Mosca went in and found a small office in which sat an elderly nurse. Against the wan stood two men wearing American Army fatigues but on their heads the peaked caps of the Wehrmacht. These were ambulance drivers.
‘Tm looking for Hella Broda, die entered hoe this morning,” Mosca said The nurse consulted a record book on her desk. For a moment Mosca was afraid she would say no and his fears would be realized. She looked up at him and smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Wait, FU call up about her.”
As she spoke over the phone one of the ambulance drivers said to Mosca, “We brought her here,” and both men smiled at him. He smiled bade politely and then saw they were hoping for cigarettes as a reward. He readied in Us pocket; he had given his driver the last pack. He shrugged and waited for the nurse to finish.
She hung up the phone. “You have a baby boy,” she said to him.
Mosca said impatiently, “Is my wife all right?” Then he was self-conscious about the word wife.
“Yes, of course,” the nurse said. “If you wish you can wait and see her in about an hour. She's sleeping now.”
“Fll wait,” Mosca said. He went out and sat on the wooden bench that ran along the ivy-covered building.
He could smell flowers from a near-by garden, a burning sweetness mixed with the reddish light of the burning midday sun. White-clad nurses and doctors passed to and fro, crossed over green lawns and entered blood-red brick buildings fastened squarely and without visible scars in the fresh, living earth. Filling the air was a muted trilling of insects and new-born birds. He felt a sense of absolute peace, a quiet restfulness, as if the iron fence were a barrier to the noise and ruin and dust of the city on the other side. The two ambulance drivers came out and sat near him. The bastards never give up, Mosca thought He was dying for a smoke himself. He turned to one of the men and asked, “Have you a cigarette?” They were stunned, the one nearest him actually gaped, his month open. Mosca grinned. “I have none with me. Fll leave a few packs for you both when I come again.”
The nearest man took out a dark-colored pack of German cigarettes and extended it to Mosca, saying, “If you really wish to smoke one of these—?
Mosca lit one up and choked on his first breath. The two ambulance drivers burst out laughing and one said, “These take getting used to.” But after that first puff, it tasted good to Mosca. He lay back on the bench, letting the afternoon sun strike his face, resting. He felt tired.
“How was she when you brought her?” He spoke with his eyes closed.
“Fine, like all of them,” the driver who had given him the cigarette said. He had a face that was perpetually set in an expression of good humor, a half-smile that was formed by the very structure of facial bone. “We've had hundreds like her, no trouble.”
Mosca opened his eyes to look at him. “Not nice work, carrying women around every