The boatman had finished putting out the decoys. They were in two bunches, one straight ahead and to the left toward where the sun would rise, and the other to the shooter’s right. Now he dropped over the hen mallard with her string and anchor, and the calling duck bobbed her head under water, and raising and dipping her head, splashed water onto her back.
»Don’t you think it would be good to break more ice around the edges?» the shooter called to the boatman. »There’s not much water to attract them.»
The boatman said nothing but commenced to smash at the jagged perimeter of ice with his oar. This ice breaking was unnecessary and the boatman knew it. But the shooter did not know it and he thought, I do not understand him but I must not let him ruin it. I must keep it entire and not let him do it. Every time you shoot now can be the last shoot and no stupid son of a bitch should be allowed to ruin it. Keep your temper, boy, he told himself.
CHAPTER 2
BUT he was not a boy. He was fifty and a Colonel of Infantry in the Army of the United States and to pass a physical examination that he had to take the day before he came down to Venice for this shoot, he had taken enough mannitol hexanitrate to, well he did not quite know what to—to pass, he said to himself.
The surgeon had been quite skeptical. But he noted the readings after taking them twice.
»You know, Dick,» he said. »It isn’t indicated; in fact it is definitely contra-indicated in increased intra-ocular and intra-cranial pressure.»
»I don’t know what you are talking about,» the shooter, who was not a shooter, then, except potentially, and was a Colonel of Infantry in the Army of the United States, reduced from being a general officer, said.
»I have known you a long time, Colonel. Or maybe it just seems a long time,» the surgeon told him.
»It’s been a long time,» the Colonel said.
»We sound like song writers,» the surgeon said. »But don’t you ever run into anything, or let any sparks strike you, when you’re really souped up on nitroglycerin. They ought to make you drag a chain like a high-octane truck.»
»Wasn’t my cardiograph O.K.?» the Colonel asked.
»Your cardiograph was wonderful, Colonel. It could have been that of a man of twenty-five. It might have been that of a boy of nineteen.»
»Then what are you talking about?» the Colonel asked.
That much mannitol hexanitrate produced a certain amount of nausea, sometimes, and he was anxious for the interview to terminate. He was also anxious to lie down and take a seconal. I ought to write the manual of minor tactics for the heavy pressure platoon, he thought. Wish I could tell him that. Why don’t I just throw myself on the mercy of the court? You never do, he told himself. You always plead them non-guilty.
»How many times have you been hit in the head?» the surgeon asked him.
»You know,» the Colonel told him. »It’s in my 201.»
»How many times have you been hit on the head?»
»Oh Christ.» Then he said, »You are asking for the army or as my physician?»
»As your physician. You didn’t think I’d try to wind your clock, did you?»
»No, Wes. I’m sorry. Just what was it you wanted to know?»
»Concussions.»
»Real ones?»
»Any time you were cold or couldn’t remember afterwards.»
»Maybe ten,» the Colonel said. »Counting polo. Give or take three.»
»You poor old son of a bitch,» the surgeon said. »Colonel, sir,» he added.
»Can I go now?» the Colonel asked.
»Yes, sir,» the surgeon said. »You’re in good shape.»
»Thanks,» the Colonel said. »Want to go on a duck shoot down in the marshes at the mouth of the Tagliamento? Wonderful shoot. Some nice Italian kids I met up at Cortina own it.»
»Is that where they shoot coots?»
»No. They shoot real ducks at this one. Good kids. Good shoot. Real ducks. Mallard, pin-tail, widgeon. Some geese. Just as good as at home when we were kids.»
»I was kids in twenty-nine and thirty.»
»That’s the first mean thing I ever heard you say.»
»I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant I didn’t remember when duck shooting was good. I’m a city boy, too.»
»That’s the only God-damn trouble with you, too. I never saw a city boy yet that was worth a damn.»
»You don’t mean that, do you, Colonel?»
»Of course, not. You know damn well I don’t.»
»You’re in good shape, Colonel,» the surgeon said. »I’m sorry I can’t go on the shoot. I can’t even shoot.»
»Hell,» said the Colonel. »That doesn’t make any difference. Neither can anybody else in this army. I’d like to have you around.»
»I’ll give you something else to back up what you’re using.»
»Is there anything?»
»Not really. They’re working on stuff, though.»
»Let ’em work,» the Colonel said.
»I think that’s a laudable attitude, sir.»
»Go to hell,» the Colonel said. »You sure you don’t want to go?»
»I get my ducks at Longchamps on Madison Avenue,» the surgeon said. »It’s air-conditioned in the summer and it’s warm in the winter and I don’t have to get up before first light and wear long-horned underwear.»
»All right, City Boy. You’ll never know.»
»I never wanted to know,» the surgeon said. »You’re in good shape, Colonel, sir.»
»Thanks,» said the Colonel and went out.
CHAPTER 3
THAT was day before yesterday. Yesterday he had driven down from Trieste to Venice along the old road that ran from Monfalcone to Latisana and across the flat country. He had a good driver and he relaxed completely in the front seat of the car and looked out at all this country he had known when he was a boy.
It looks quite differently now, he thought. I suppose it is because the distances are all changed. Everything is much smaller when you are older. Then, too, the roads are better now and there is no dust. The only times I used to ride through it was in a camion. The rest of the times we walked. I suppose what I looked for then, was patches of shade when we fell out, and wells in farm yards. And ditches, too, he thought. I certainly looked for plenty of ditches.
They made a curve and crossed the Tagliamento on a temporary bridge. It was green along the banks and men were fishing along the far shore where it ran deep. The blown bridge was being repaired with a snarl of riveting hammers, and eight hundred yards away the smashed buildings and outbuildings of what was now a ruined country house once built by Longhena showed where the mediums had dropped their loads.
»Look at it,» the driver said. »In this country you find a bridge or a railway station. Then go half a mile from it in any direction and you find it like that.»
»I guess the lesson is,» the Colonel said, »don’t ever build yourself a country house, or a church, or hire Giotto to paint you any frescoes, if you’ve got a church, eight hundred yards away from any bridge.»
»I knew there must be a lesson in it, sir,» the driver said.
They were past the ruined villa now and onto the straight road with the willows growing by the ditches still dark with winter, and the fields full of mulberry trees. Ahead a man was pedalling a bicycle and using both his hands to read a paper.
»If there are heavies the lesson ought to say a mile,» the driver said. »Would that be about right, sir?»
»If it’s guided missiles,» the Colonel said. »Better make it two hundred and fifty miles. Better give that cyclist some horn.»
The driver did, and the man moved over to the side of the road without either looking up or touching his handlebars. As they passed him, the Colonel tried to see what paper he was reading, but it was folded over.
»I guess a man would do better now not to build himself a fine house or a church, or to get who did you say it was to paint frescoes?»
»Giotto, I said. But it could be Piero della Francesca or Mantegna. Could be Michelangelo.»
»Do you know a lot about painters, sir?» the driver asked.
They were on a straight stretch of road now and were making time so that one farm blended, almost blurred, into another farm and you could only see what was far ahead and moving toward you. Lateral vision was just a condensation of flat, low country in the winter. I’m not sure I like speed, the Colonel thought. Brueghel would have been in a hell of a shape if he had to look at the country like this.
»Painters?» he answered the driver. »I know quite a little about them, Burnham.»
»I’m Jackson, sir. Burnham’s up at the rest center at Cortina. That’s a fine place, sir.»
»I’m getting stupid,» the Colonel said. »Excuse me, Jackson. It is a fine place. Good chow. Well run. Nobody bothers you.»
»Yes, sir,» Jackson agreed. »Now the reason I asked you about painters, is these madonnas. I thought I ought to see some painting so I went to that big place in Florence.»
»The Uffizi? The Pitti?»
»Whatever they call it. The biggest one. And I kept looking at those paintings until madonnas started to run out of my ears. I tell
