The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [85]
“You could do that,” Eddie said, “but you have to go back sometime. Especially now the Middletons are gone, you can't get the right food for a wife and kid.” He gave Mosca a strange, peering look. “You sure you want those papers, Walter; you ready to go back?”
Mosca said to Leo, “How about you, you made up your mind yet, U.S.A. or Palestine?”
“I'm doing well here,” Leo said. He thought of the professor. “But soon I must decide.”
“You ought to come back with me,” Mosca said. “You could stay with me and Hella until you get set. That is, if I can get a place myself.”
Eddie asked curiously, “What will you do when you get back to the States?”
“I don't know,” Mosca said. “I figure Til go to school maybe. I'm an ignorant guy, I went right from high school into the Army.” He grinned at them. “You wouldn't think it but I used to be a good student But I enlisted, you know that, Eddie, you used to break my bills about it when we were GIs. Now I want to learn what goes on.” He stopped, trying to think of how he could put it into words. “Sometimes I wanta fight like hell against everything around me, but I don't know what to fight It seems like I can't get out of a straight line to a trap. like now. I want to do something but I'm not allowed. My own personal business. I can't marry a kraut and I can see why the Army makes it tough. I don't give a crap about the Germans but that stops me. All right, screw it.” He took another drink.
“You know, when I was a kid I thought everybody was wonderful. I had definite ideas and now I can't even remember them. In a street fight when I was a kid I always used to fight like I was a hero in the movies, always fight fair, never hit the other guy when he dipped or was off balance. A real jerk. But that wasn't for real. Now it seems like that life before I got into the Army was never really real. like you could never believe the war would end. You knew you would go on to Japan, and then they would find somebody new to fight, the Russians maybe. Then after that maybe the men on Mars. But always somebody new so that you could never go home. Now for the first time I believe that it is over, that I'll have to go back to that dream life or whatever it was. I can start by going back to school.”
Leo and Eddie were embarrassed. It was the first time Mosca had ever spoken to them about his feelings, and they were surprised by the boyishness of the emotions behind the lean, dark, almost cruel-looking face. Leo said, “Don't worry, Walter, when you lead a normal life with a wife and children everything will be okay.”
“What the hell do you know?” Eddie demanded in drunken anger. “Eight years in a concentration camp without dames. What the hell do you know?”
Leo said with a quiet contempt, “I know one thing. You'll never leave here.” This stunned Eddie.
“You're right,” he said. “Goddamn if you're not right. I wrote my wife again that she gotta come and bring the kid or I'll never leave this goddamn continent. That's my only hope. But she's screwing for her boss, she thinks I don't know about it. But I've got her figured all the way.”
Leo said to Mosca, “Maybe I will come with you, who knows what will happen by that time? I can't stay here forever. Maybe we can go into a business together with oar black-market profits and you could go to school, too, how would that be?”
“TTiafs right,” Eddie said. “Go into business with Leo and you can't lose, Walter.” He smiled at them and saw that neither of them had understood or perhaps had not heard because the liquor was twisting the words as they came out of his loose mouth and also perhaps because about that, they had always trusted him. He felt ashamed. “You guys are dreaming,” he said and realized that he was angry because they were making plans together and leaving him out, with no malice, assuming that he would never leave hare. He felt, suddenly, concern for both of them. Leo for his innocence of the real world, Mosca for what he sensed was an endless struggle that raged behind that seemingly indifferent, dark proud face; a struggle to