»I know. But he did not write execrably.»
»No. Leclerc could fight too. Excellently.»
»Now tell me.»
Her head was on his chest now, and the Colonel said, »Why did you not want me to take off the tunic?»
»I like to feel the buttons. Is it wrong?»
»I’ll be a sad son of a bitch,» the Colonel said. »How many people fought in your family?»
»Everybody,» she said. »Always. They were traders as well and several of them were Doges of this city as you know.»
»But they all fought?»
»All,» she said. »As far as I know.»
»OK,» the Colonel said. »I’ll tell you any God damn thing you want to know.»
»Just something picturesque. As bad or worse than in the illustrated papers.»
»Domenica Del Corriere or Tribuna Illustrata?»
»Worse if possible.»
»Kiss me first.»
She kissed him kind, and hard, and desperately, and the Colonel could not think about any fights or any picturesque or strange incidents. He only thought of her and how she felt and how close life comes to death when there is ecstasy. And what the hell is ecstasy and what’s ecstasy’s rank and serial number? And how does her black sweater feel. And who made all her smoothness and delight and the strange pride and sacrifice and wisdom of a child? Yes, ecstasy is what you might have had and instead you draw sleep’s other brother.
Death is a lot of shit, he thought. It comes to you in small fragments that hardly show where it has entered. It comes, sometimes, atrociously. It can come from unboiled water; an un-pulled-up mosquito boot, or it can come with the great, white-hot, clanging roar we have lived with. It comes in small cracking whispers that precede the noise of the automatic weapon. It can come with the smoke-emitting arc of the grenade, or the sharp, cracking drop of the mortar.
I have seen it come, loosening itself from the bomb rack, and falling with that strange curve. It comes in the metallic rending crash of a vehicle, or the simple lack of traction on a slippery road.
It comes in bed to most people, I know, like love’s opposite number. I have lived with it nearly all my life and the dispensing of it has been my trade. But what can I tell this girl now on this cold, windy morning in the Gritti Palace Hotel?
»What would you like to know, Daughter?» he asked her.
»Everything.»
»All right,» the Colonel said. »Here goes.»
CHAPTER 29
THEY lay on the pleasantly hard, new-made bed with their legs pressed tight against one another, and her head was on his chest, and her hair spread across his old hard neck; and he told her.
»We landed without much opposition. They had the true opposition at the other beach. Then we had to link up with the people who had been dropped, and take and secure various towns, and then we took Cherbourg. This was difficult, and had to be done very fast, and the orders were from a General called Lightning Joe that you never would have heard of. Good General.»
»Go on, please. You spoke about Lightning Joe before.»
»After Cherbourg we had everything. I took nothing but an Admiral’s compass because I had a small boat at that time on Chesapeake Bay. But we had all the Wehrmacht stamped Martell and some people had as much as six million German printed French francs. They were good until a year ago, and at that time they were worth fifty to the dollar, and many a man has a tractor now instead of simply one mule who knew how to send them home through his Esses, or sometimes his G’s.
»I never stole anything except the compass because I thought it was bad luck to steal, unnecessarily, in war. But I drank the cognac and I used to try to figure out the different corrections on the compass when I had time. The compass was the only friend I had, and the telephone was my life. We had more wire strung than there are cunts in Texas.»
»Please keep telling me and be as little rough as you can. I don’t know what the word means and I don’t want to know.»
»Texas is a big state,» the Colonel said. »That is why I used it and its female population as a symbol. You cannot say more cunts than Wyoming because there are less than thirty thousand there, perhaps, hell, make it fifty, and there was a lot of wire, and you kept stringing it and rolling it up, and stringing it again.»
»Go on.»
»We will cut to the break-through,» the Colonel said. »Please tell me if this bores you.»
»No.»
»So we made the mucking break-through,» the Colonel said, and now his head was turned to her head, and he was not lecturing; he was confessing.
»The first day most of them came over and dropped the Christmas tree ornaments that confuse the other people’s radar and it was called off. We were ready to go but they called it off. Quite properly I am sure. I love the very highest brass like I love the pig’s you know.»
»Tell it to me and don’t be bad.»
»Conditions were not propitious,» the Colonel said. »So the second day we were for it, as our British cousins, who could not fight their way out of a wet tissue towel, say, and over came the people of the wild, blue yonder.
»They were still taking off from the fields where they lived on that green-grassed aircraft carrier that they called England, when we saw the first of them.
»Shining, bright and beautiful, because they had scraped the invasion paint by then, or maybe they had not. My memory is not exact about this part.
»Anyway, Daughter, you could see the line of them going back toward the east further than you could see. It was like a great train. They were high in the sky and never more beautiful. I told my S-2 that we should call them the Valhalla Express. Are you tired of it?»
»No. I can see the Valhalla Express. We never saw it in such numbers. But we saw it. Many times.»
»We were back two thousand yards from where we were to take off from. You know what two thousand yards is, Daughter, in a war when you are attacking?»
»No. How could I?»
»Then the front part of the Valhalla Express dropped coloured smoke and turned and went home. This smoke was dropped accurately, and clearly showed the target which was the Kraut positions. They were good positions and it might have been impossible to move him out of them without something mighty and picturesque such as we were experiencing.
»Then, Daughter, the next sections of the Valhalla express dropped everything in the world on the Krauts and where they lived and worked to hold us up. Later it looked as though all of the earth had erupted and the prisoners that we took shook as a man shakes when his malaria hits him. They were very brave boys from the Sixth Parachute Division and they all shook and could not control it though they tried.
»So you can see it was a good bombing. Just the thing we always need in this life. Make them tremble in the fear of justice and of might.
»So then daughter, not to bore you, the wind was from the east and the smoke began to blow back in our direction. The heavies were bombing on the smoke line and the smoke line was now over us. Therefore they bombed us the same as they had bombed the Krauts. First it was the heavies, and no one need ever worry about hell who was there that day. Then, to really make the breakthrough good and to leave as few people as possible on either side, the mediums came over and bombed who was left. Then we made the break-through as soon as the Valhalla Express had gone home, stretching in its beauty and its majesty from that part of France to all over England.»
If a man has a conscience, the Colonel thought, he might think about air-power some time.
»Give me a glass of that Valpolicella,» the Colonel said, and remembered to add, »please.»
»Excuse me,» he said. »Be comfortable, honey dog, please. You asked me to tell you.»
»I’m not your honey dog. That must be someone else.»
»Correct. You’re my last and true and only love. Is that correct? But you asked me to tell you.»
»Please tell me,» the girl said. »I’d like to be your honey dog if I knew how to do it. But I am only a girl from this town that loves you.»
»We’ll operate on that,» the Colonel said. »And I love you. I probably picked up that phrase in the Philippines.»
»Probably,» the girl said. »But I would rather be your straight girl.»
»You are,» the Colonel said. »Complete with handles and with the flag on top.»
»Please don’t be rough,» she said. »Please love me true and tell me as true as you can, without hurting yourself in any way.»
»I’ll tell you true,» he said. »As true as I can tell and let it hurt who it hurts. It is better that you hear it from me, if you have curiosity on this subject, than that you read it in some book with stiff covers.»
»Please don’t be rough. Just tell me true and hold me tight and tell me true until you are purged of it; if that can be.»
»I don’t need to purge,» he said. »Except heavies being used tactically. I have nothing against them if they use them right even if they kill you. But for ground
