The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [9]
In the living-room the phone began to ring, and he went to it. Gloria's voice, impersonal, yet friendly, answered him.
“I hear you're leaving tomorrow. Should I come over tonight to say good-by or just say it now over the phone?”
“Suit yourself,” Mosca said, “but I have to go out around nine.”
‘Til come before then,” she said. “Don't worry, it's just to say good-by.” And he knew that it was true, that she no longer cared for him, that he was no longer what she had loved, and she wished to say good-by with a friendliness that was really curiosity.
When his mother came back he had made up his mind. “Mom,” he said, “I'm leaving now. Gloria called. She's coming over tonight and I don't want to see her.”
“You mean now. This minute?”
“Yes,” Mosca said.
“But at least you can spend your last night home,” she said. “Alf will be home soon; you could at least wait to say good-by to your brother.”
“So long, Mom,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her cheek.
“Wait,” his mother said, “you've forgotten your gym bag.” And, as she had so many times before when he had left the house to play basketball and finally when he had left for the Army, she took the small, blue gym bag and began to fill it with what he would need. Only again now, instead of the satin-covered shorts, the leather knee guards, and sneakers, she put in his shaving kit, a fresh change of underwear, towel, and soap. Then taking a piece of string from one of the bureau drawers, she tied the gym bag to the handle of a suitcase.
“Ah,” she said, “I dont know what all the people will say. They'll think it's my fault, that I haven't made you happy. And at least after the way you treated Gloria, you could see her tonight, see her and say good-by and be nice to her so she won't feel so badly.”
“It's a tough world for everybody,” Mosca said He kissed her again, but before he could walk out of the apartment she held on to him.
“Are you going back to Germany because of that girl?” And Mosca realized that if he said yes, his mother's vanity would be soothed, that she would know then it was not her fault that he left. But he couldn't lie.
“I don't think so,” he said, “She probably has another GI by now.” And saying it out loud, in all sincerity, he was surprised that it should sound so false, as if the truth he told were a lie to hurt his mother.
She kissed him and let him go. In the street he looked up and saw her at the closed window, the white spot of a handkerchief to her face. He set the suitcases on the ground and waved to her and saw that she had left the window. Afraid that she would come down to make a scene in the street, he picked up Ms suitcases and walked quickly to the main avenue where he could catch a taxi.
But his mother was sitting on the sofa, weeping, with shame, grief, humiliation. Deep inside ler knowing that if her son had died on an unknown beach, buried in a foreign land, the white cross over his body mingled with thousands of others, her grief would have been perhaps greater. But there would have been no shame, and she would have been, in a later time, reconciled, in some measure, proud.
There would not have been this festering sorrow, this knowledge that he was irrevocably gone, that if he died, she could never weep over his tody, bury him, bring flowers to his grave.
On the train taking him back to the land of the enemy, Mosca, dozing, swayed from side to side with the movement of the car. Sleepily he walked back to his bench and stretched out on it. But lying there he heard the moans of the wounded man, the chattering of teeth, the sleeping body only now protesting against the insane rage of the world. Mosca rose and walked down to the GI half of the car. Most of the soldiers were asleep, and there was only a small halo of light, the flaring of three closely grouped candles. Mulrooney, crumpled up on a bench, was snoring, and two GIs, their carbines lying beside them, were playing rummy and drinking from a small bottle.
Mosca asked in a low voice, “Can one of you guys lend me a blanket?