The Dark Arena (6 page)

“This I'd like to hear,” Wolf said. He had an easy,
UH
gradating way of speaking that was almost oily and had a trick of nodding his head up and down to assure the speaker of his complete comprehension.

Ingeborg brought in the glasses, the bottle, and the fruit juice. Eddie fixed four drinks but one without gin. He gave this to Gordon Middleton, “The only guy in the occupation who doesn't gamble, drink, or chase women. That's why the colonel wants to get rid of him. He gives the krauts a bad impression.”

“Let's hear the story,” Gordon said. IBs low, drawling voice was a reproach but a gentle one; patient

“Well,” Eddie said, “it got so that Mosca would have to ride way the hell out to the camp every Saturday to makesore
the coal got there. One Saturday he was In a crap game and let the trucks go alone. No coal. He really got chewed out. Ill never forget. I drove him out to where die trucks had broken down and he gave the drivers a little
speech”

Mosca rested against the desk, lit a cigar, and puffed on it nervously. He remembered the incident and knew the kind of story Eddie would make out of it. Build him up to be a real hard guy and it hadn't been that way at all. He had told the drivers that if they did not wish to drive he would see to their release without prejudice. But if they wanted to stay on the job they had better get the coal to the DP camp even if they had to carry it on their backs. One driver had quit, and Mosca had taken his name and passed cigarettes all around. Eddie was making it sound as if he had knocked the hell out of six of them in a free-for-all.

“Then he went to the coal administrator's house and had a little talk in English that I understood. That kraut was really shitting when he got through. After that he shot crap Saturday afternoon and the coal got to the camp. A real executive.” Eddie shook his head admiringly.

Wolf kept nodding his head up and down with understanding and approbation. “That's the kind of stuff we need around here,” he said. “These krauts get away with murder.”

“You couldn't do that now, Walter,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, we're teaching the krauts democracy,” Wolf said, so wryly that Mosca and Eddie laughed, and even Middleton smiled.

They sipped their drinks, and then Eddie got up to look out the window at a woman passing by on her way to the exit gate. “There's some nice gash,” he said; “how would you like to cut a piece of that?”

“That's a question for the
Fragebogen”
Wolf said, and as he was about to add something else, the door leading to the corridor was flung open and a tall, blond boy was shoved into the room. His wrists were handcuffed and he
was crying. Behind him were two short men in dark sack suits. One of the men stepped forward

“Herr Dolman,” he said, “we have the person who has been stealing the soap.” Wolf burst out laughing.

“The soap bandit,” he explained to Eddie and Mosca. “We've been missing a lot of Red Cross soap bars we were supposed to give the German kids. These men are detectives from the city.”

One qf the two men started to unlock the handcuffs. He held his forefinger under the boy's nose, the gesture almost fatherly, and said, “No dumb tricks, eh?” The boy nodded his head.

“Leave them on,” Wolf said sharply. The detective stepped back.

Wolf walked close to the boy and shoved the blond head up with his hand. “Did you know this soap was for German children?”

The boy let his head fall and didn't answer.

“You worked here, you were trusted … You'll never work for the Americans again. However, if you'll sign a papa” admitting what you've done, we will not prosecute. Do you agree to that?’

The boy nodded his head.

“Ingeborg,” Wolf called. The German typist came in. Wolf nodded to the two men. “Take him in there to the other office; the girl knows what to do.” He turned to Eddie and Mosca. “Too easy,” and smiled his friendly smile. “But it saves everybody a lot of trouble and the kid will get his six months.”

Mosca, not really caring, said, “Hell, you promised to let him off.”

Wolf shrugged. “Right, but the German cops get him for making a black market The chief of police in Bremen is an old friend of mine, and we co-operate.”

“Justice at work,” Eddie murmured. “So what if the kid stole some soap; give him a break.”

Wolf said briskly, “Caft't do it; they'd steal us blind.” He put on his cap. “Well, Fve got a busy night ahead of me. Have to make a full-scale search on all the kitchen workers before they leave the base. There's something.”

He grinned at them. “We get a woman cop from Bremen
to
search die female workers and she comes out with a big pair of rubber gloves and a bar of GI soap. You should see where those women hide a stick of butter. Phew.” He spit “I hope I never get that hungry.”

When Wolf had left, Gordon Middleton stood up and said in his deep, laconic voice, “The colonel likes him.” He smiled at Mosca, good-naturedly, as if it were something that amused him and which he did not resent Before he left the office he said to Eddie, “I think I'll catch an early bus home,” and to Mosca, simply and in a friendly tone, “See you around, Walter.”

It was the end of the working day. Through the windows Mosca could see the German laborers massing at the exit gate, waiting to be searched and checked by the military police before they could leave the air base. Eddie went to the window and stood beside him.

“I guess you want to get to town and look for your girl,” Eddie said and smiled, a smile almost womanly in its sweetness, in the hesitancy of the delicately cut mouth. “That's the reason I took all the trouble to fix a job here when you wrote. I figured it had to be the girl. Right?”

“I don't know,” Mosca said. “Partly, I guess.”

“Do you want to fix up about your billet in town first and then look her up? Or go see her now?”

“Let's fix up the billet first,” Mosca said.

Eddie laughed outright “If you go now you'll catch her home. By the time the billet is arranged you won't get to her until at least eight. Maybe shell be out by then.” He watched Mosca carefully when he said this.

“My tough luck,” Mosca said.

They each picked up a suitcase and went out of the building to where Eddie had parked his jeep. Before Eddie started the motor he turned to Mosca and said, “You won't ask, but Til tell you anyway. I've never seen her around the officer or enlisted-men clubs or with any GIs. I've never even seen her.” After a pause he added slyly, “And I didn't think you'd want me to look her up.”

As they passed through the Neustadt, then over the
bridge into Bremen proper, Mosca saw his first remembered landmark. It was a church steeple and tower, the body like a face eaten away by disease, a slim thread of stone and plaster holding the spire toward the sky. Then they were going by the massive police presidio, the white scars of the explosion still showing on its dark-green walls. They traveled on the Schwachhauser Heer Strasse to the other side of Bremen, in what had once been the fashionable suburbs, the houses almost untouched and now used as billets and homes for the occupation forces.

Mosca was thinking about the man beside him. Eddie Cassin wasn't a romantic guy. As far as Mosca knew he was the opposite. He remembered when they had been GIs, Eddie had found in the city a very young, very developed Belgian girl, pretty as a Dresden doll. He had established her in a small, windowless room in the billet and thrown a party. The girl had serviced the thirty-odd GIs in the billet, not leaving the room for three days. The men
played cards in the anteroom, a kitchen, waiting their turn. The girl was so pretty and good-natured that the men had pampered her as husbands pamper pregnant wives. They scrounged eggs, bacon, and ham and took turns preparing her breakfast tray. They brought packages of food from the mess hall for her lunch and supper. She laughed and joked as she sat up naked in bed to eat from the tray. There was always someone in her room at any hour of the day and she seemed to have a real affection for everyone. She was difficult about only one thing. Eddie Cassin had to visit her once a day for at least an hour. She always called him Daddy.

“She was just too pretty to keep to myself.’ Eddie had said. But Mosca always remembered a note of mean satisfaction in his voice.

They turned from the Kurftirsten Allee into the Metzer Strasse and drove in late-afternoon shade cast by the long rows of wide and leafy trees. Eddie parked in front of a four-story, new-looking brick building that had a small lawn. “This is it,” he said, “the best bachelor billet for Americans in Bremen.”

The summer sun dyed the brick a dark red, and the street fell into deep shadows. Mosca took both suitcases and the gym bag, and Eddie Cassin went before him up the walk They were met at the door by the German housekeeper.

“This is Frau Meyer,” Eddid Cassin said and put his arm around her waist. Frau Meyer was a woman of nearly forty, an almost platinum blonde. She had a superb figure molded by years of service as swimming teacher in the
Bunddeutscher Maedel.
Her face had a friendly but dissipated look accentuated by large, very white buck teeth.

Mosca nodded and she said, “I'm very pleased to see you, Mr. Mosca. Eddie has told me so much about you,”

They went up the stairs to the third floor, and Frau Meyer unlocked the door to one of the rooms and gave the key to Mosca. It was a very large room. In the corner was a narrow bed and in another corner a huge, white, painted wardrobe. Two large windows let in the dying sun and
the first beginnings of the long summer twilight. The rest of the room was bare.

Mosca put the two suitcases on the floor and Eddie sat on the bed. Eddie said to Frau Meyer, “Call Yergen.”

Frau Meyer said, ‘Til get the sheets and blankets, too.” They could hear her going up the stairs.

“It doesn't look so good,” Mosca said.

Eddie Cassin smiled. “We have a magician in the house. This guy Yergen. Hell fix everything.” And while they waited, Eddie told Mosca about the billet Frau Meyer was a good housekeeper, saw to it there was always hot water, that the eight maids were thorough in their cleaning, and (by special arrangement with Frau Meyer) the laundry perfectly done. She lived herself in two comfortably furnished rooms in the attic. “I spend most of my time up there,” Eddie went on, “but I think she screws Yergen on the side. My room is on the floor below this one so we can't keep a real close check on one another, thank God.”

Mosca, becoming more and more impatient as the twilight deepened, listened to Eddie go on about the billet as if he owned it. Yergen was indispensable, Eddie said, to the Americans billeted in the Metzer Strasse. He could fix the house water pump so that even people on the top floor could take baths. He made up boxes for the chinaware Americans sent home, and packed so skillfully that the grateful relatives in America never complained of breakage. They made a good team, Yergen and Frau Meyer. Only Eddie knew that during the day they would carefully loot the rooms. From one it would be a pair of shorts, another a pair of socks, here a few towels or some handkerchiefs. The Americans were careless and kept no close check on their possessions. From the room of those extraordinarily careless it would be a pack or half-filled pack of cigarettes. All this was done with discretion. The maids who cleaned the rooms were kept honest by strict discipline.

“For Christ sake,” Mosca said, “you know I want to get out of hero. Get those krauts on the ball.”

Eddie went to the door and yelled, “Hey, Meyer, snap
it up.” And then to Mosca, “She probably knocked off a quickie with Yergen. She loves it” They could hear her coming down the stairs.

She came in with an armful of bedclothing and behind her came Yergen. In his hand was a hammer and in his mouth some nails. He was a short, slender German of vigorous middle age, dressed in overalls and an American Army khaki shirt. There was an air of quiet competence and dignity about him that would have inspired trust and confidence if it had not been for the bunched and wrinkled skin beneath his eyes which gave him an air of shrewd cunning.

He shook hands with Eddie Cassin and then extended to Mosca the same greeting. Mosca shook hands to be polite. The occupation was getting real friendly, he thought

“I am the Jack-of-all-trades here,” Yergen said. He brought out the phrase with a stilted relish. “Times you want anything fixed just call on me.”

“I'll need a bigger bed,” Mosca said, “some furniture, a radio, some other stuff I'll think of later.”

Yergen unbuttoned the pocket of his khaki shirt and took out a pencil. “Of course,” he said briskly, “they furnish these rooms very badly. Regulations. But I have helped other of your comrades. A small or large radio?”

“How much?” Mosca asked.

“Five to ten cartons.”

“Money,” Mosca said. “I have no cigarettes.”

“American dollars or scrip?”

“Money orders.”

“I tell you,” Yergen said slowly, “I think you need here a radio, some table lamps, four or five chairs, a couch, and a large bed. I get you all these thinp, we talk about the price later. If you have no cigarettes now, I can wait. I'm a businessman; I know when to give credit. And besides you are a friend of Mr. Cassin.”

“That's fine,” Mosca said. He stripped to the waist and opened the blue gym bag for a soap and towel.

“And if you want someone to do your laundry, please let me know. I'll give the order to the maid.” Frau Meyer
smiled at him. She liked his long torso with its white ornamental scar that she guessed ran to his groin,

“What does it cost?” Mosca asked. He had opened a suitcase and was laying out a fresh change of clothing.

“Oh, please, no payment. Give me a few bars of chocolate a week, and I'll see to it that the maids are happy.”

“Okay, okay,” Mosca said impatiently. And then to Yergen, “See if you can get that stuff in here tomorrow.”

After the two Germans left, Eddie Cassin shook his head sadly in mock reproof. “Times have changed, Walter,” he said. “The occupation has entered into a new phase. We treat people like Frau Meyer and Yergen with respect, shake their hands and always, always, give them a cigarette to smoke when we talk business to them. They can do us favors, Walter.”