The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [95]
Mosca stared at him for a moment then walked over to the table and sat by it. He lit a cigar. He had a good idea of what had happened, the headlines he had seen in Stars and Stripes last night. It hadn't registered then through all the beer.
There had been a picture of a ship sailing into the harbor of Hamburg. The ship was black with people. Underneath the picture was the story of how this ship had tried to make its way to Palestine carrying former inmates of concentration camps. The British had intercepted the ship and brought it to Hamburg. The people in it had refused to disembark and had been forced to do so by armed troops.
Mosca asked quietly, “You see that business up in Hamburg, is that it?”
Leo nodded. Mosea thought for a while, smoking, putting things together, the fact that Leo hadn't come to see them, hadn't answered their knock on the door.
“You want me to beat it?” he asked Leo.
Leo shook his head. “No,” he said. “Stay a bit.”
“Who hit you, the Limeys?”
Leo nodded. “I tried to keep them from beating a man they had taken off the boat. I got this.” He pointed to his face. Mosca noticed there was no sign of the twitch, as if the muscles had been paralyzed with shock.
“How was it?”
Leo said evasively, “Didn't you read the paper?”
Mosca made an impatient gesture. “What happened?”
Leo sat on the bed, not speaking, and Suddenly the tears were rolling down his face. The tic jerked the side of his face up and down and he put up his hand to hold the flesh still. He burst out, “My father was wrong. My father was wrong.”
Mosca didn't say anything and after a few moments Leo dropped his hands from his face. The tic had stopped. Leo said, “I saw them beating this man they had dragged down the gangplank. I said ‘Don't do that,’ I was really surprised and just pushed one of them away. The other said, “Aw-right you Jew bawsted, you take some of his.” Leo imitated the cockney accent perfectly. “When I was on the ground I saw the German dock workers laughing at me, at all of us. I thought about my father then. I didn't think he was wrong. I just thought about him, what if he should see his son like this. What would he think then?”
Mosca said slowly, “I kept telling you, this is no place. Look, Tm going back to the States when the marriage papers go through. There's a rumor the air base is closing up so I'll be out of a job, anyway. Why don't you come with us?”
Leo bowed his head in his hands. The proposal aroused no emotion in him, no desire to accept, no affection for Mosca, no feeling of kinship.
“The Jews are perfectly safe in America?” Leo asked bitterly.
“I think so,” Mosca said.
“You just think so?”
“Nothing's sure,” Mosca said.
Leo didn't say anything. He thought about the English soldiers in their rough woolen uniforms, the same men who had wept when they had liberated him and his fellow inmates, had stripped off their own clothes, emptied their trucks of food, and he had believed his father, human beings are good, man is moved easily to pity and more to love than to hate.
“No,” he said to Mosca. “I can't go with you. Fve arranged to go to Palestine. I leave in a few weeks.” And then feeling he owed Mosca some explanation he said, “I don't feel safe any more except with my own people.” And as he said this he realized that he was reproaching Mosca, that Mosca's affection for him was personal, that Mosca in a time of danger would defend him, Leo, but would not defend a Jew he did not know or did not care for. And this affection was no longer enough, could never give him real security. He would never feel safe, even in America, no matter what kind of material success he achieved. In the back of his mind would always be the fear that all security could be destroyed in a manner he could not fight against or control, and that even friends like Mosca would not fight against that force. The face of the liberator and torturer were one face, blended, Mend and enemy only the enemy. He remembered