The lobster was imposing. He was double the size a lobster should be, and his unfriendliness had gone with the boiling, so that now he looked a monument to his dead self; complete with protruding eyes and his delicate, far-extended antennae that were for knowing what rather stupid eyes could not tell him.
He looks a little bit like Georgie Patton, the Colonel thought. But he probably never cried in his life when he was moved.
»Do you think that he will be tough?» he asked the girl in Italian.
»No,» the Gran Maestro assured them, still bowing with the lobster. »He’s truly not tough. He’s only big. You know the type.»
»All right,» the Colonel said. »Serve him.»
»And what will you drink?»
»What do you want, Daughter?»
»What you want.»
»Capri Bianco,» the Colonel said. »Secco and really cold.»
»I have it ready,» said the Gran Maestro.
»We are having fun,» the girl said. »We are having it again and without sorrow. Isn’t he an imposing lobster?»
»He is,» the Colonel answered. »And he better damn well be tender.»
»He will be,» the girl told him. »The Gran Maestro doesn’t lie. Isn’t it wonderful to have people who do not lie?»
»Very wonderful and quite rare,» the Colonel said. »I was thinking just now of a man named Georgie Patton who possibly never told the truth in his life.»
»Do you ever lie?»
»I’ve lied four times. But each time I was very tired. That’s not an excuse,» he added.
»I lied a lot when I was a little girl. But mostly it was making up stories. Or I hope so. But I have never lied to my own advantage.»
»I have,» said the Colonel. »Four times.»
»Would you have been a general if you had not lied?»
»If I had lied as others lied, I would have been a three-star general.»
»Would it make you happier to be a three-star general?»
»No,» said the Colonel. »It would not.»
»Put your right hand, your real hand, in your pocket once and tell me how you feel.»
The Colonel did so.
»Wonderful,» he said. »But I have to give them back you know.»
»No. Please no.»
»We won’t go into it now.»
Just then the lobster was served.
It was tender, with the peculiar slippery grace of that kicking muscle which is the tail, and the claws were excellent; neither too thin, nor too fat.
»A lobster fills with the moon,» the Colonel told the girl. »When the moon is dark he is not worth eating.»
»I didn’t know that.»
»I think it may be because, with the full moon, he feeds all night. Or maybe it is that the full moon brings him feed.»
»They come from the Dalmatian coast do they not?»
»Yes,» the Colonel said. »That’s your rich coast in fish. Maybe I should say our rich coast.»
»Say it,» the girl said. »You don’t know how important things that are said are.»
»They are a damn sight more important when you put them on paper.»
»No,» the girl said. »I don’t agree. The paper means nothing unless you say them in your heart.»
»And what if you haven’t a heart, or your heart is worthless?»
»You have a heart and it is not worthless.»
I would sure as hell like to trade it in on a new one, the Colonel thought. I do not see why that one, of all the muscles, should fail me. But he said nothing of this, and put his hand in his pocket.
»They feel wonderful,» he said. »And you look wonderful.»
»Thank you,» she said. »I will remember that all week.»
»You could always just look in the glass.»
»The mirror bores me,» she said. »Putting on lipstick and moving your mouths over each other to get it spread properly and combing your too heavy hair is not a life for a woman, or even a girl alone, who loves someone. When you want to be the moon and various stars and live with your man and have five sons, looking at yourself in the mirror and doing the artifices of a woman is not very exciting.»
»Then let us be married at once.»
»No,» she said. »I had to make a decision about that, as about the other different things. All week long is my time to make decisions.»
»I make them too,» the Colonel told her. »But I am very vulnerable on this.»
»Let’s not talk about it. It makes a sweet hurt, but I think we would do better to find out what the Gran Maestro has for meat. Please drink your wine. You haven’t touched it.»
»I’ll touch it now,» the Colonel said. He did and it was pale and cold like the wines of Greece, but not resinous, and its body was as full and as lovely as that of Renata.
»It’s very like you.»
»Yes. I know. That’s why I wanted you to taste it.»
»I’m tasting it,» the Colonel said. »Now I will drink a full glass.»
»You’re a good man.»
»Thank you,» the Colonel said. »I’ll remember that all week and try to be one.» Then he said, »Gran Maestro.»
When the Gran Maestro came over, happy, conspiratorial, and ignoring his ulcers, the Colonel asked him, »What sort of meat have you that is worth our eating?»
»I’m not quite sure I know,» the Gran Maestro said. »But I will check. Your compatriot is over there in hearing distance. He would not let me seat him in the far corner.»
»Good,» the Colonel said. »We’ll give him something to write about.»
»He writes every night, you know. I’ve heard that from one of my colleagues at his hotel.»
»Good,» the Colonel said. »That shows that he is industrious even if he has outlived his talents.»
»We are all industrious,» the Gran Maestro said.
»In different ways.»
»I will go and check on what there actually is among the meats.»
»Check carefully.»
»I am industrious.»
»You are also damn sagacious.»
The Gran Maestro was gone and the girl said, »He is a lovely man and I love how fond he is of you.»
»We are good friends,» the Colonel said. »I hope he has a good steak for you.»
»There is one very good steak,» the Gran Maestro said, reappearing.
»You take it, Daughter. I get them all the time at the mess. Do you want it rare?»
»Quite rare, please.»
»Al sangue,» the Colonel said, »as John said when he spoke to the waiter in French. Crudo, bleu, or just make it very rare.»
»It’s rare,» the Gran Maestro said. »And you, my Colonel?»
»The scaloppine with Marsala, and the cauliflower braised with butter. Plus an artichoke vinaigrette if you can find one. What do you want, Daughter?»
»Mashed potatoes and a plain salad.»
»You’re a growing girl.»
»Yes. But I should not grow too much nor in the wrong directions.»
»I think that handles it,» the Colonel said. »What about a fiasco of Valpolicella?»
»We don’t have fiascos. This is a good hotel, you know. It comes in bottles.»
»I forgot,» the Colonel said. »Do you remember when it cost thirty centesimi the liter?»
»And we would throw the empty fiascos at the station guards from the troop trains?»
»And we would throw all the left over grenades away and bounce them down the hillside coming back from the Grappa?»
»And they would think there was a break-through when they would see the bursts and you never shaved, and we wore the fiamme nere on the grey, open jackets with the grey sweaters?»
»And I drank grappa and could not even feel the taste?»
»We must have been tough then,» the Colonel said.
»We were tough then,» the Gran Maestro said. »We were bad boys then, and you were the worst of the bad boys.»
»Yes,» the Colonel said. »I think we were rather bad boys. You forgive this will you, Daughter?»
»You haven’t a picture of them, have you?»
»No. There weren’t any pictures except with Mr. d’Annunzio in them. Also most of the people turned out badly.»
»Except for us,» the Gran Maestro said. »Now I must go and see how the steak marches.»
The Colonel, who was a sub-lieutenant again now, riding in a camion, his face dust, until only his metallic eyes showed, and they were red-rimmed and sore, sat thinking.
The three key points, he thought. The massif of Grappa with Assalone and Pertica and the hill I do not remember the name of on the right. That was where I grew up, he thought, and all the nights I woke sweating, dreaming I would not be able to get them out of the trucks. They should not have gotten out, ever, of course. But what a trade it is.
»In our army, you know,» he told the girl, »practically no Generals have ever fought. It is quite strange and the top organization dislikes those who have fought.»
»Do Generals really fight?»
»Oh yes. When they are captains and lieutenants. Later, except in retreats, it is rather stupid.»
»Did you fight much? I know you did. But tell me.»
»I fought enough to be classified as a fool by the great thinkers.»
»Tell me.»
»When I was a boy, I fought against Erwin Rommel half way from Cortina to the Grappa, where we held. He was a captain then and I was an acting captain; really a sub-lieutenant.»
»Did you know him?»
»No. Not until after the war when we could talk together. He was very nice and I liked him. We used to ski together.»
»Did you like many Germans?»
»Very many. Ernst Udet I liked the best.»
»But they were in the wrong.»
»Of course. But who has not been?»
»I never could like them or take such a tolerant attitude as you do, since they killed my father and burned our villa on the Brenta and the day I saw a German officer shooting pigeons with a shot-gun in the Piazza San Marco.»
»I understand,» the Colonel said. »But please, Daughter you try to understand my attitude too. When we have killed so many
