Authors: Mario Puzo
“HI wait,” she said, “but don't take so long.” She squeezed his hand and her palm was wet with perspiration.
“You sure you're all right?” he asked.
She nodded. Mosca left
The adjutant was speaking over the phone, his voice polite, the bland, ingenuous face courteous with attention to the dead instrument. He raised his eyebrow to show Mosca he would be through in a moment. When he hung up he said briskly, “What can I do for you?”
Mosca stumbled over the words, feeling defensive and overawed. Then said, “I wonder if anything came through on my marriage papers?”
“No, nothing yet,” the adjutant said politely and began leafing through a bound volume of Army regulations.
Mosca hesitated again and then said, “Is there any way of rushing them through?”
TTie adjutant didn't look up. “No,” he said.
Mosca resisted the impulse to turn away and leave. “Do you think if I went down to Frankfort it would help? Maybe you could tell me who to see?”
The adjutant closed the thick, heavily bound book and looked up at Mosca for the first time. His voice was impersonal but curt. “Look, Mosca,” he said, “you lived with this girl for a year, you didn't file an application for marriage until six months after the ban was lifted. Now all of a sudden there's a big rush. I can't stop you from going to Frankfort, but I guarantee it won't help. You know how I feel about working outside the channels.”
Mosca felt no anger, only embarrassment and a sense of
shame. The adjutant went on in a softer tone. “As soon as they come in I'll let you know, okay?” And with this dismassal, Mosca left.
Walking back to the Personnel Office he tried not to feel depressed or anxious, knowing that Hella would see it in his face. But Hella and Inge were drinking coffee together and talking. Hella had her hat and veil off and she could only take little sips of coffee but he could see from her bright eyes that she had been telling Inge all about the baby. Eddie was leaning back in his chair, listening, smiling, and when he saw Mosca he asked, “How did it go?”
Mosca said, “Fine, he'll do what he can,” and smiled at Hella. He would tell Eddie the truth later.
Hella put on her hat and veil and shook hands with Inge. She shook hands with Eddie and then took Mosca's arm. When they were out of the office and had gone through the gate of the air base, Mosca said, “I'm sorry, baby.” She turned her veiled face
to
him, squeezed his arm. He turned his head away as if he could not bear her gaze without flinching.
In the early morning hours before dawn Mosca came out of sleep and heard Hella crying softly, sobbing into her pillow. He pulled her to him so she could bury her head in his naked shoulder. “Is it that bad?” he whispered. And she said, “Walter, I feel so sick, I feel so sick.” Saying the words seemed to frighten her and her crying became unrestrained like the weeping of a terrified child.
In the darkness the pain swept over her, took control of her blood and the organs of her body. The memory of Mosca at the air base powerless to help her gave her a sense of terror, made her helpless to restrain her tears. She said again, “I feel so sick,” and Mosca could barely make out the words, there was a curious distortion in her speech.
“I'll make you some more compresses,” he said and turned on the night lamp beside the bed.
He was shocked when he saw her. In the dim yellow light the side of her face was distended, the eye almost closed. There was a strange contour of her facial bones,
giving her a mongoloid look. She put her hands up over her face and he went out into the kitchen to get some water for the compresses.
The ruins of the city rode on two morning sunbeams straight into the stunned eyes of Yergen's daughter. She sat on a great stone dipping her fingers into an open tin of
mirabelle
plums. The smell of rubble was just beginning to rise from the earth. The little girl serenely fished out the yellow, waxlike globes of fruit and then licked the sticky juice from her fingers. Yergen sat on a stone beside her. He had taken her to this secluded valley of ruins so that she could eat the rare delicacy without sharing it with the German woman who cared for her during the day.
Yergen watched his daughter's face with love and sadness. The eyes showed clearly the slow fragmentation and splintering of her childish brain. The doctor had told him that there was one hope, to get her out of Germany or the continent. Yergen shook his head. All the money he made in tide black market went to build a wall between his child and the suffering, the misery of the world around her. But the doctor had made him understand that this was not enough. That it all seeped through somehow.
Now at this moment he made his decision. He would buy false papers and settle in Switzerland. It would take months to prepare and a great deal of money. She would be cured, she would grow and live to happiness.
She held up a gleaming
mirabelle,
shiny pale yellow in its coat of syrup and to please her he opened his mouth to receive it She smiled at him and the smile made him put his hand on her face, in love and protection, for in this valley of ruins his daughter seemed like a plant growing, inhuman, her eyes blank, the smile a muscular spasm.
The morning air was cold, autumn had weakened the strength of the rising sun and changed the color of the earth, turned the rubble gray and patched it with dead brown grass.
Yergen said gently, “Giselle, come now, I must take you home, I must go to work.” The child let the can of
mirabelles
slip from her hand, the heavy syrup spilled out, clotted over bits of stone and brick. She began to cry.
Yergen lifted her up from the great stone she sat on and held her, pressed her head against his neck. “TU be home early tonight, don't fret. And I'll have a present, something to wear.” But he knew she would continue to cry until he carried her up the church steps to their apartment in the steeple.
Framed against the pale sky, Yergen saw a man coming over a hill of ruins and then disappear and then come over another little hill, always coming toward him, coming out of the sun's light. Yergen put the girl down and she clung to his legs. The figure came over the last little rolling hill. Yergen was surprised to see that the man was Mosca.
He was wearing his officer greens with the white civilian patch. In the morning sunlight his dark skin had a grayish tinge and lines of tiredness in his face that cut the features away from each other, making each distinct in its own right.
“I been looking all over for you,” Mosca said. Yergen stroked his daughter's head. Neither looked directly at Mosca. Yergen felt a little strange that they could be found so easily. Mosca seemed to sense this. “Your housekeeper, she told me you usually come over this way mornings.”
Daylight was now at full strength. Yergen could hear the clanging of the
Strassenbahn.
He asked slowly, mistrustfully, “Why do you want to see me?”
On one of the slopes surrounding them there was a shifting and falling of rubble, a tiny landslide that sent a small cloud of dust toward the sky. Mosca shifted his feet, he could feel them sinking in the treacherous ground. He said, “I need some morphine or codeine and some penicillin for Hella. You know about that tooth. She's become really ill.” He paused awkwardly. “I need it today, the morphine, she's in very bad pain. I'll pay anything you say.”
Yergen picked up his daughter and began to walk over the ruins. Mosca walked beside him. “That will be very hard to do,” Yergen said, but everything had already
clicked together in his mind. At one stroke he would come three months closer to Switzerland. “The price will be terribly high.”
Mosca stopped, and though the morning sun had no fire Yergen saw that the sweat was pouring off his face, and Yergen saw in that face an enormous relief.
“Christ,” Mosca said, “I was scared you couldn't swing it. I don't care what I pay, you can steal me blind. Just get the stuff tonight.”
They were standing now on the last hill and before them was that part of the city not completely destroyed, with the church Yergen lived in. “Come to me at midnight,” Yergen said. “Don't come in the evening, my daughter will be alone and she is very ill, she must not be frightened,” He waited for Mosca to make an expression of sympathy and felt an angry bitterness when none came. This American so concerned about his mistress, why didn't he take her to America and safety? And the fact that Mosca could do for someone he loved what he could not do for his daughter increased the bitterness in Yergen. He said almost spitefully, “If you come before midnight, I won't help you.”
Mosca stood on top of the hill and watched Yergen sliding down it, the child cradled in his arms. He called after him, “Don't forget, pay anything to get the stuff.” Yergen turned and nodded, the child's face in his arms staring directly upward to the autumn sky.
Eddie Cassia and Mosca left the Civilian Personnel
Building, walked through the gray autumn twilight toward the hangars and the take-off strip.
“Another guy leaving the old gang,” Eddie Cassin said, “First Middleton, Leo, now Wolf. I guess you'll be next, Walter.’
Mosca didn't answer. They were walking against the stream of workers leaving the base, German laborers and mechanics moving toward the guarded exits. Suddenly the ground began to shake and they could hear the roar of powerful engines. Rounding a corner of the Administration Building, they came upon the great, silvery plane.
The late afternoon sun was far away across the sky Mosca and Eddie waited, smoking cigarettes. Finally they saw the jeep come past the hangars and onto the field. They started down the ramp toward the plane and reached it the moment the jeep swung around its finned tail and came to a stop.
Wolf, Ursula, and Ursula's father got out of the jeep,
the father unloading the heavy Val-paeks at once. Wolf gave his friends a huge, joyful grin.
“It's damn nice of you guys to see me off,” he said and shook their hands, then introduced them to the father. They knew Ursula lie propellers blasted great gusts of air that almost blew the words away. The father went close to the airplane, ran his hands over the gray skin, then prowled around it like a hungry animal.
Eddie Cassin said jokingly to Wolf, “He going to stow away?”
And Wolf laughed and said, “He couldn't stow away on the
Queen EUwbeth”
Ursula had not understood. She watched with quick darting eyes the luggage being carried aboard the plane, then put her hand on Wolfs arm.
Wolf extended his hand again to Mosca and Eddie and said, “Well, so long, you guys. It's been a pleasure, no kidding. When you get to the States, look me up. Eddie, you got my address.”
“Sure thing,” Eddie said coolly.
Wolf looked into Mosca's eyes and said, “Good luck, Walter. I'm sorry that deal didn't go through, but now maybe I think you're right.”
Mosca smiled and said, “Good luck, Wolf.”
Wolf hesitated. Then he said, “One last piece of advice. Don't wait too long to get out of here, Walter. Get back to the States as soon as you can. That's all I can say.”
Mosca smiled again and said, “Thanks, Wolf, I wiU.”
The father came waddling around the nose of the plane. He came close to Wolf, arms extended. “Wolfgang, Wolfgang,” he cried out emotionally, “you will not forget me here, Wolfgang?” He was close to tears. Wolf patted his shoulder and the fat old man embraced him. “You are like a son to me,” the old man said, “I will miss you.”
Mosca could see that Wolf was annoyed, bored, and anxious to be off. The father took Ursula into his arms. He was sobbing now. “Ursula, my daughter, my little daughter, you're the only one I have, you won't forget your old father, you won't leave him all alone in this
terrible land, eh? My little Ursula would not do such a thing?”
His daughter kissed him and murmured comfortingly, “Papa, don't take on so, you will come, too, as soon as I can make the papers. Please don't take on so.”
Wolf had a tight little smile on his face. He touched Ursula on the shoulder and said in German, “It is time.”
The fat old man let out a wail, “Ursula, Ursula.” But now the girl, herself overwrought, with guilty anger at this unseemly grief for her good fortune, tore herself away and ran up the steps into the plane.
Wolf took the old man's hand. “You've upset her. Now I promise. You will leave here. You will spend the rest of your days in America with your daughter and your grandchildren. Here is my hand on it.”
The old man nodded his head, “You are good, Wolfgang, you are very good.”
Wolf gave Eddie and Mosca an embarrassed half-salute, then quickly went up the steps into the plane.
Through one of the windows Ursula's face appeared grimacing a farewell through dirt-streaked glass to her father. He burst into tears again and waved a great white handkerchief to her in return. The engines roared into sound again. Ground-crew men wheeled the mobile stairs away. The great silvery plane began to move slowly, pushing itself along the ground. It made a slow, seemingly wing-dragging turn and rolled away faster and faster until reluctantly, as if fighting some malignant power, it parted itself from the earth and flew toward the dark autumn sky.
Mosca watched the plane until it disappeared. Then he heard Eddie saying, “Mission accomplished, a successful man leaves Europe.” There was only a faint note of bitterness in his voice.
The three of them stood silently staring at the sky, their shadows blending into one great shadow as the sun escaped the autumn clouds before it fell below the horizon. Mosca looked at the old man who would never see his daughter again, who would never leave this continent That great meat-creased face stared dumbly into empty sky, as if searching for some hope or promise and then
the small slitted eyes rested on Mosca, the voice thick with hate and despair, said, “Ach, my friends, it is gone from us.”
Mosca dipped the linen rag into the hot pan of water and after wringing it out, applied the steaming cloth to Hella's face. She lay on the sofa, tears of pain in her eyes, the swollen flesh pulling the nose out of line and twisting the side of her mouth, making a grotesque distortion of the left eye. In the armchair near the foot of the sofa Frau Saunders held the baby, tilting the nippled bottle so that the infant could feed more easily.