Armageddon - Leon Uris

He reached up on a shelf, took his mandolin down. It was covered with dust. He blew the film away, tuned the sour strings, then remembered that Lotte had not greeted him. He found her asleep on the living-room couch.

She fluttered her eyes open. “I lay down for a moment. I must have dozed,” she said.

She was quite pale. What the devil was getting into her? She had always been a picture of health and energy. Now all this weeping and dragging about.

In the topsy-turvy world of working by night and running days together one was apt to overlook small things. Igor thought ... how long has it been? How long?

“You little fool!”

She did not answer.

“You are pregnant.”

“Yes,” she said.

He was seized with panic! Where to run! What to do!

She took his hand and made him sit. “I have always loved you, Igor. I am not afraid.”

He knelt beside her and lay his head in her lap. “You little fool ...”

“I must have something when you are gone.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

SCOTT SHOVED A BOUQUET of roses into Judy Loveless’ hand. “You are a sexy babe ... it’s you I really crave.”

“I also think you’re great ... but damn, you’re ten years late. Come in, Scott, Hilde will be down in a minute.”

Lynn and Tony picked Scott’s pockets for the ransom that usually turned up. Tony found a wooden Hussar carved in the Black Forest, and Lynn a charm in the shape of a heart to go on a bracelet they were building.

He began to tell the children about a hair-raising landing with three Jap Zeros on his tail, which he never made, and they didn’t think he made, but it was exciting the way he told it.

Hilde entered dressed the way Judy had advised for a football game. She looked like a co-ed from William and Mary.

“We better get in gear or we’ll miss the kick-off.”

“I won’t be too late, Mrs. Loveless.”

“No rush.”

“Wiedersehen, children.”

A chorus of soldiers’ whistles greeted Hilde as Scott led her to their seats. She settled between him and Nick Papas. Scott explained that the enemy was the team in the blue shirts, the Army from Heidelberg, and the whites were the Air Force, Wiesbaden. Nick Papas had three bills riding on the outcome.

At the first crunching blocks, Hilde’s eyes bulged. “Mein Gott! They’re killing each other!”

“The idea, honey,” a perplexed Nick Papas explained for the third time, “is the man who is running ... well, his team has four turns to advance the ball ten yards ... or meters. Then, they are entitled to another four chances ... see?”

She jabbed Scott in the ribs. “Why didn’t you explain it that way?”

“For Christ’s sake, watch the game.”

“Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“If he must only make ten meters, why did he just run twenty-five meters?”

“Because ... because his true objective is to get it all the way down the field and score a goal.”

“Ja, ja, now I see.”

“Good.”

“Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“Why does he kick the ball?”

“For Christ’s sake, watch the game.”

“Mein Gott!” Hilde hid her face in Scott’s shoulder as the Air Force safety man took the punt and the Army gang tackled him viciously.

“Come on, Hilde,” Scott said. “He isn’t hurt and he isn’t mad. Look, he’s running back to play ... he likes the game.”

“I will watch and I will be very still.”

The stands came to their feet. The soldiers were in a state or hysteria over an interception.

“Who has the ball, Nick? I did not see.”

The Army officers were guests at the Scala Officers’ Club and celebrated their victory rousingly. Hilde changed to high heels as Judy had instructed her to do.

Scott was barely able to have a dance without being cut in on. Anyhow, it was kind of nice to study her from a distance. She danced near their table with a pink-cheeked, fuzz-faced Army second lieutenant, and winked to Scott. He appraised her backside, her legs, her bust. It all checked out ... gorgeous. He didn’t know how long he would be able to keep his promise.

A wild, barefoot congo line circled the club, a converted theater, moving from the little bar and dance floor to the main bar, where the band on the stage joined as they picked up dancers. They congoed up the stairs to the balcony where couples were necking and back down again and Hilde laughed until her sides hurt She continued to bubble all the way home.

“It has been a wonderful day ... the most wonderful day since ...” Since the last time she saw Scott. Scott was wonderful days.

But she understood by his silence what was happening and was bound to happen. He pulled up to the curb.

“Let’s sit and talk a moment,” he said.

“Okay. I don’t know how to thank you for the day.”

“That’s a bad question to ask me. How long you figure we’re supposed to go on like this?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Hilde, we’ve got to bend a little. I’m a nice guy.”

She shook her head. “That is just the trouble. You aren’t a nice guy. You are a rat, just like I am. We are two of a kind. I do not dislike you because you are a rat ... but I know you.”

“All right, so we’re both rats. Then what’s the harm?”

“Good night, Scott.”

Hilde tried to compose a letter to Erna, but found herself contradicting her own ideas.

When it came to a definition of love she did not know it. Scott was a wanderer who would never change his ways. Yet, she had never cared for a man as she did for him. She even desired him, but to give him sex would be the beginning of the end.

From the time she began to work for her first American family, Colonel and Mrs. Smith, a new experience began. The colonel was a great bear of a man who spoke softly and with warmth. He called her “Miss Hilde.” He was a gentle person, perhaps like Uncle Ulrich would be if she knew him better. The colonel’s children loved to cuddle on his lap for their story.

But there was strength in Colonel Smith too. One could tell that by the respect his officers showed, although they seemed at ease around him.

She and Mrs. Smith shopped together and she was allowed to join certain family outings, and after a while they even gossiped together. It was strange, this nice way the Americans treated each other. It was how an officer like Scott and a man from the ranks like Nick could share a brotherly love.

Hilde remembered her shock the first time she saw Colonel Loveless chase his wife through the garden calling, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

And she remembered standing in the hallway in the morning listening at their bedroom door when Tony and Lynn jumped into bed with them and they all wrestled.

At first Hilde resented Ami laughter. Sure, the Amis could laugh ... they were not hungry. Their cities were not in ruins, but they laughed as much about themselves and their own failings as anything else.

In the rigid adherence to reverence for her father Hilde remembered little laughter and little warmth for anyone but Ernestine. She had never known a German man who did not take himself seriously. Perhaps, she wrote to Ernestine, the Americans deserve laughter.

Judy knocked on Hilde’s door the next morning as she sat before the mirror brushing her long, thick brown hair. Mrs. Loveless muttered something envious.

“Hilde, Colonel Loveless has managed to get three days off starting Saturday. We would like to get away, just anywhere. He hasn’t seen a thing of Germany except air bases.”

“I hope he isn’t called back to his office like the last time you tried to get away.”

“Never can tell.”

“Everything here will be fine.”

“By the way, it will be all right to entertain Captain Davidson here while we’re gone.”