Ursula's father spoke behind him. “Ah, Wolfgang, home at last.” Wolf swung around. “You had a telephone message. You must get in touch with a man named Honny, at once.” The father had just come in from the storeroom and carried a great ham which he now put on the kitchen table. He took a large carving knife and lovingly cut off medium-thick slices to be fried with their potatoes.
One thing. Wolf thought wryly, the old man always made himself useful around the house. He asked, “Did the man say anything else?”
“No,” Ursula's father said, but he kept repeating that it was very important.
Wolf went into his bedroom and dialed the number. When someone picked up the phone mid said hello, he recognized Honny's voice and said, “Here is Wolfgang.”
Honny's voice, very excited and effeminate in its higher register, said, “Wolfgang, it is good you called so quickly. That contact you were looking for during the winter. I have it.”
“Are you sure?” Wolf asked.
Honny's voice became lower, more guarded. “I saw enough of the evidence to think so.” He stressed the word “tevidence.”
“Ah so,” Wolf said, “very well. I will be there in about an hour. Can you have him there then?”
“In two hours,” Honny said.
“All rigjit,” Wolf said and hung up. He called out to Ursula that he would not be eating supper and hurried out of the house. He heard her exclamation of surprise and disappointment before he closed the door. He walked quickly down the street and arrived just in time to catch a Strassenbahn, making it on the run.
Wolf was excited. He had given up hope on the whole deal, hadn't even thought about it for several months except when Mosca had kidded him. And now everything was breaking just right. The marriage papers were all set, he could get plane tickets, the hell with free government transportation. And it would be a perfect out on the old-man deal. Ursula and her father had been breaking his balls about taking the old man with them to the States, and he had almost laughed in their faces. But you had to lie to women all the time; he had promised Ursula he would try his best. And he wouldn't mind if the old man was on the ball. But the father had taken a nice shellacking when he had tried to put over a swindle on some black-market operators. He spent a week in the hospital recovering. Since then the father had stayed in the basement apartment like a mole, eating a whole twenty-pound ham in less than a week, three or four ducks at a sitting, almost an entire goose during the course of a Sunday. He must have gained forty pounds in the last two months. The wrinkles of his skin had been filled out with layer on layer of lard and he had let out his prewar suits to contain a great, new paunch.
He must be the only fat kraut in Bremen, Wolf thought, the only one who could pose for those posters and travel folders showing the tremendous, jolly German who illustrated the good living of his country. In his basement he had the fattest kraut in Germany. A goddamn cannibal. A twenty-pound ham in three days. Jesus Christ.
Wolf jumped off the Strassenbahn as it passed the mouth of the Kurfiirsten Allee and walked briskly past the Metzer Strasse to farther on where Mosca lived in the white stone house. Though the sun was going down the air was still hot and Wolf kept under the shade of the trees that lined the Allee. He hoped Mosca was home, but if not there was still time to pick him up at the Rathskellar or the club. No telephone on this.
Wolf opened the gate that cut the path from the sidewalk. He went up the stairs, knocked on the door, and Mosca opened it He was dressed only in suntan trousers and a T shirt, bis feet were bare. In his band be held a can of PX beet.
“Come on in, Wolf,” Mosca said. They went through the ball and through the door to the living-room. Fran Saunders was sitting in one corner of the sofa reading a magazine. Hella was rocking the cream-colored carriage serving now as a crib. The baby was crying.
Wolf said hello to the women, and though he was impatient, looked at the baby and complimented Hella on its beauty. Then he said to Mosca, “Can I see you for a minute alone, Walter?”
“Sure,” Mosca said. Still holding the can of bear he led Wolf into the bedroom.
“Listen, Walter,” Wolf said excitedly, “it's finally come through, the contact cm that scrip deal. I've got to meet the guy now and settle details. I want you to come with me just in case everything goes quick. Okay?”
Mosca took a dp of beer. In the other room he could hear the murmur of voices as Fran Saunders and Hella spoke to each other and spaced in between, the tentative, discontented wailing of the baby. He was surprised and the shock was unpleasant. He had written the whole deal off and now he found he had no taste for it
“I don't go for that any more, Wolf,” Mosca said. “YouTl have to get a new partner.”
Wolf had already started toward the door of the bedroom. Now, stunned, he turned back again to Mosca, his white face angry and full of disbelief.
“What the hell kind of crap is that, Walter?” hf said. “We knock our balls off all winter and now, everything all set, you back out? That's no good, Walter. That doesn't go.”
Mosca grinned at Wolfs anger and excitement. It was an excuse not to feel ashamed of backing out. He knew he was giving Wolf a dirty deal But he was glad die pasty-faced bastard was getting tough.
“What the hell, Wolf,” he said, “we're not gangsters. It was an idea. Maybe I would have gone through with it six months ago. Now I've got a dame and kid to think about If something screws up, what happens to them? Besides my marriage papers are coming through in a few months. I won't need all that money.”
Wolf restrained his outraged anger. “Look, Walter,” he said in a friendly, reasonable voice, “you're going back to the States in three or four months. Maybe you saved a thousand bucks while you've been here, maybe you made another thousand on the black market. That thousand I helped you make, Walter. In the States you have to set up a home, look for a job, a lot of other crap. You'll need dough.” And then letting a hurt tone come into his voice he said earnestly, “And you're not treating me right, Walter. I lose out, too. I can't go running around for another partner. I need a guy I can trust. Come on, Walter, it'll be easy, you don't have to worry about cops, they can't turn us in. And since when have you been afraid of a couple of lousy krauts?”
“No dice,” Mosca said, and took another sip from the can of beer. With his free hand he flapped out his T shirt and said, “Boy, is it hot.”
“Christ.” Wolf slammed the door with his hand. “Goddamn it, hangin’ out with that yellow Jew and that gash hound Eddie made you lose all your guts? I thought you were a better guy than that, Walter.”
Mosca put his beer can down on the dresser. “Listen Wolf, keep my friends out. Don't talk about them any more. Now about this business. Wolf, you shrewd prick, I know you got your marriage papers; so now you can just pull off this deal and take off for the States. Meanwhile I sit here three or four months. I'm not afraid of krauts but Tm not walking around Bremen after I pull a stunt like that. If we do this it's either get out of Bremen afterward or knock the guys off when we take the money. Right now I can't do either. And I'm not going to keep looking behind me the rest of the summer, not even for a million bucks.” He paused and then said sincerely, “No shit, Wolf, I'm sorry.”
Wolf stared at the floor shaking his head up and down as if pondering on something he already knew, and then, remembering the scene at the Officers’ Club when the adjutant had made Mosca back down, he said, “You know, Walter, I can bust this whole thing up, you and Hella. All I have to do is turn in a report at the base and at the Military Police. You're breaking a Military Government law living in a German billet. And there are a couple of other things I could really go to town on.”
To his amazement and anger, Mosca burst out laughing and then said, “Wolf, for Christ's sake, have a can of beer or get the hell out I don't mind playing gangster with you but don't for Christ's sake pull that line. Fm not one of those kraut prisoners you used to scare the shit out of.”
Wolf tried to bring his head u
p to stare balefully at Mosca, but there was such evident power in the lightly covered body, so much force and confidence in the lean face and thin mouth, the dark serious eyes, that he could only sigh and smile weakly.
“Ah, you son of a bitch,” Wolf said resignedly, “give me a bear.” Adding ruefully, shaking his head, “A five-grand can of beer.” But as he drank he thought of some way to pay Mosca back for the desertion. He saw there was really nothing he could do. If he turned Mosca in to the MPs and then left for the States, that would not help this deal any, there would be no gain and there was always the possibility of retaliation. No, he was well off. He had a small fortune in diamonds and quite a bit of cash. Why invite any remote chance of disaster?
He sighed, sipped at his beer. It was hard to let such a fine opportunity go by. He knew he would never have the nerve to do it alone. Well, he thought, he would scrape together all the cigarettes possible, bargain around the base, buy cheaply and sell high. He might clear a thousand bucks.
Wolf held out his hand to Mosca. “No hard feelings,” he said. He was a little worried now that Mosca might take his former threat seriously, and he didn't want to keep looking around his last few weeks in Germany. ‘Tm sorry about trying to get tough, but losing all that dough-Forget what I said.” They shook hands.
“It's okay,” Mosca said. He walked Wolf to the door and said to Mm, “Maybe you can do something cm your own.”
When Mosca went into the living-room, both women looked up inquiringly; they had heard the anger in Wolfs loud voice. The baby was no longer crying, was sleeping in his carriage.
“Your friend left so quickly,” Frau Saunders said.
“He just wanted to tell me something,” Mosca said. Then to Hella who was knitting and reading at the same time, “Wolf is getting married soon; he has the papers.”
Hella looked up from her book and said absently, “Yes?” Her thin pale face went back to the book as she murmured, “I hope ours come soon.”
Mosca went into the bedroom for another can of beer and a tin of peanuts. He brought them into the living-room and offered the opened can to the two women. They both took a handful. “Sure you don't need a beer?” They both shook their heads and kept reading.
They all sat, eating peanuts, Mosca drinking beer, the two women reading and Hella knitting. Hella's hair was cut very short for the summer, and the fragile bones of her face were scarcely veiled by the thin curtain of flesh and skin; a tiny blue vein coursed down her cheek to her Ups. The room was filled with the warm, peaceful quietness of a summer evening, a slight cooling breeze came through the open window, ruffling die flowered curtain.
Mosca studied both women. One could be bis mother, the other was actually the mother of his child, and the child in the carriage was his. He sorted all this out in his mind, making it very simple because the beer had made him sleepy. But everything jumbled together.
One day, long ago, he had put on his steel helmet, taken up his rifle, and on ships, in trucks, cm the back of tanks had traveled through North Africa, England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, to search out the enemy and put him to death. And even now this did not serai wrong, or stupid, or even ironical. It just seemed queer. A hell of a thing, he thought, a hell of a thing. He was amazed now that he thought of it. He took another handful of peanuts and almost missed his mouth, some of the nuts trickling to the floor. He felt very sleepy and went to stand by the window, letting the little breeze come through the porous cotton of his T shirt and onto his warm body. He walked unsteadily over to the carriage and stared down at the baby and said solemnly and out loud, “A hell of a thing.”
Both of the women smiled. “I think I'll have to put you to bed,” HeUa said to Mosca. Then to Frau Saunders, “This is the first time he ever really looked at the baby. Don't you believe it, Walter, that you are a father?”
“He'll be better with the second one,” Frau Saunders said.
Mosca kept staring down at the child. It was not ugly now, the wrinkles of the face had been filled out to a clean, white mask. The women were reading again. Mosca went back to the window.
“Don't be so restless,” Hella said, not looking up from her book.
“I'm not restless,” Mosca said. And it #as true. He felt more as if he were exploring the room, really looking at it for the first time. He walked over to the carriage again and watched the baby sleeping. It was getting to look almost human, he thought. Then he said to Hella, “How about us going to the country club tomorrow? We can sit on die lawn with the carriage and I'll bring you hot dogs and ice cream from the PX snack bar. We can hear the band out there, too.”
Hella nodded her head, still reading. Mosca said to Frau Saunders, “How would you like to come with us?”
Frau Saunders looked up and said, “Oh, no, I have some people coming.”
Hella smiled at her. “He really meant it, he wouldn't ask you otherwise. You can eat yourself sick on ice cream.”
“No, really,” Frau Saunders said. She went back to her reading. Mosca realized that she wouldn't go because she was too shy, that she really thought he had asked out of politeness.
“No kidding,” he said.
Frau Saunders smiled. “Bring me back some ice cream,” she said.
Mosca took another beer can from the bedroom; everything was okay, he thought
“While you're feeling so friendly,” Hella said. “I have a favor to ask you. Frau Saunders has an uncle in America and she wants you to send a letter for her through your Army mail.”
“Sure,” Mosca said. It was standard. All the Germans were writing to their relatives in the States hinting for packages.
Frau Saunders said, “Thank you.” And with a wry smile, “We are all very much concerned these days for our dear uncles in America.” Hella and Mosca laughed, Mosca couldn't stop and choked cm a mouthful of beer he had been ready to swallow.
The women had gone back to their reading so Mosca glanced at the copy of Stars and Stripes that lay on the table, then said, “Maybe Leo will be back from Hamburg tomorrow and come out to the club with us.”
Hella looked up. “He has been a long” time this trip. I hope nothing has happened to him.”
Mosca went for a fresh can of beer. “You sure you two don't want some?” They both shook their heads. He stood by the window. ‘I guess Leo figured he'd spend the weekend there, see what's doing. Otherwise he should have been back yesterday.”
Hella put her book on the table and said to Frau Saunders, “Finished. It was fine.”
Frau Saunders said, “I have others in the bedroom you haven't read. Go look at them.”
“Not tonight,” Hella said. She went to the window and stood beside Mosca, slipping her arm around his waist, under his T shirt They both stared out into the darkness, letting the tree-scented breeze blow against them. They could smell the vegetable gardens and the river which flowed beyond; the summer night air had only the slightest acrid taint of ruins. The full moon was screened by clouds and all around him in the quiet darkness Mosca could hear German voices and laughter from near-by houses. A radio tuned to a Bremen station was playing soft string music.
He had a sudden longing to go to the Rathskellar or the club, to shoot dice or drink with Eddie and Wolf.
“Oh, you are drinking so much beer,” Hella said. “I hope you can walk to bed.”
Mosca stroked her hair and said, “Don't worry about me, I'm all right”
She leaned against him. “I feel good tonight,” she said. “You-know what I'd like?” She said this softly so that Frau Saunders could not hear.
“What?” Mosca asked, and she smiled at him and reached up to kiss his mouth.
“You're sure it's all right?” he asked, speaking as softly as she. “It's only been a month.” Eddie Cassin had told him he should wait at least two months.
“I'm all right now,” she said, “don't worry about me. I. feel wonderful tonight, like an old family woman, as if we were together, oh, so many years.”
They stood there for a few moments longer, listening to the murmurings of the city and the night and then Mosca turned and said to Frau Saunders, “Good night.” He held the door of the living-room open so that Hella could wheel tiie carriage into the bedroom. When he followed her he checked the hall door to the apartment to make sure that it was locked.
eighteen
Mosca sat in flie shade thrown by a great, white-painted house, the requisitioned country club. Before him stretched the archery course with its blue- and red-circled targets, beside him Hella sat in a low, comfortable chair. On the wide lawn sat GIs, their wives, and baby carriages.
Over everything hung the peace of late Sunday afternoon. The evening had begun to fall a little quicker than usual, Mosca thought, autumn near, coming earlier this year. Scattered through the green of the lawn were patches of brown, and there was a reddish tinge in the leaves of the great elms that screened the golf course.
He saw Eddie Cassin coming toward them, skirting the archers. Eddie sat on the grass, tapped Hella's foot, and said, “Hello, baby.” Hella smiled down at him and kept reading Stars and Stripes, forming the words silently with her lips.
“I got a letter from my wife,” Eddie Cassin said. “She's not coming over.” He was silent for a few moments. “The final word,” he said, and smiled gravely, the delicate mouth twisting. “She's going to marry her boss. I told you she was screwing for him, Walter. I didn't even know anything then. Just pure intuition. How's that for intuition, Walter?”
Mosca could see that Eddie was well on his way to a big drunk. “What the hell, Eddie, you're not a family man.”
“I could be,” Eddie Cassin said. “I could toy.” He pointed to the cream-colored carriage which sat so prettily on its green carpet of grass, the blue woolen blanket peeping out of it “You're not a family man but you're trying.”