»Please.»
»If you ever want to quit a beat-up character like me that guy could give you ground support.»
»You are not beat-up, whatever that is, and I love you.»
»Please give me two tablets from that bottle and pour the glass of Valpolicella that you neglected to pour, and I will tell you some of the rest of it.»
»You don’t have to. You don’t have to tell me and I know now it is not good for you. Especially not the Valhalla Express day. I am not an inquisitor; or whatever the female of inquisitor is. Let us just lie quietly and look out of the window, and watch and see what happens on our Grand Canal.»
»Maybe we better. Who gives a damn about the war anyway?»
»You and me, maybe,» she said and stroked his head. »Here are the two things from the square bottle. Here is the glass of decanted vino. I’ll send you better from our own estates. Please let us sleep a little while. Please be a good boy and we just lie together and love each other. Please put your hand here.»
»My good or my bad?»
»Your bad,» the girl said. »The one I love and must think about all week. I cannot keep it like you keep the stones.»
»They’re in the safe,» the Colonel said. »In your name,» he added.
»Let’s just sleep and not talk about any material things nor any sorrows.»
»The hell with sorrows,» the Colonel said with his eyes closed and his head resting lightly on the black sweater that was his fatherland. You have to have some damned fatherland, he thought. Here is mine.
»Why aren’t you President?» the girl asked. »You could be an excellent president.»
»Me President? I served in the Montana National Guard when I was sixteen. But I never wore a bow tie in my life and I am not, nor ever have been, an unsuccessful haberdasher. I have none of the qualifications for the Presidency. I couldn’t even head the opposition even though I don’t have to sit on telephone books to have my picture taken. Nor am a no-fight general. Hell, I never even was at SHAEF. I couldn’t even be an elder statesman. I’m not old enough. Now we are governed in some way, by the dregs. We are governed by what you find in the bottom of dead beer glasses that whores have dunked their cigarettes in. The place has not even been swept out yet and they have an amateur pianist beating on the box.»
»I don’t understand it because my American is so incomplete. But it sounds awful. But don’t be angry about it. Let me be angry for you.»
»Do you know what an unsuccessful haberdasher is?»
»No.»
»It is not discreditable. There are many of them in our country. There is at least one in every town. No, Daughter, I am only a fighting soldier and that is the lowest thing on earth. In that you run for Arlington, if they return the body. The family has a choice.»
»Is Arlington nice?»
»I don’t know,» the Colonel said. »I was never buried there.»
»Where would you like to be buried?»
»Up in the hills,» he said, making a quick decision. »On any part of the high ground where we beat them.»
»I suppose you should be buried on the Grappa.»
»On the dead angle of any shell-pocked slope if they would graze cattle over me in the summer time.»
»Do they have cattle there?»
»Sure. They always have cattle where there is good grass in the summer, and the girls of the highest houses, the strong built ones, the houses and the girls, that resist the snow in winter, trap foxes in the fall after they bring the cattle down. They feed from pole-stacked hay.»
»And you don’t want Arlington or Père Lachaise or what we have here?»
»Your miserable boneyard.»
»I know it is the most unworthy thing about the town. The city rather. I learned to call cities towns from you. But I will see that you go where you wish to go and I will go with you if you like.»
»I would not like. That is the one thing we do alone. Like going to the bathroom.»
»Please do not be rough.»
»I meant that I would love to have you with me. But it is very egotistical and an ugly process.»
He stopped, and thought truly, but off-key, and said, »No. You get married and have five sons and call them all Richard.»
»The lion-hearted,» the girl said, accepting the situation without even a glance, and playing what there was she held as you put down all the cards, having counted exactly.
»The crap-hearted,» the Colonel said. »The unjust bitter criticizer who speaks badly of everyone.»
»Please don’t be rough in talking,» the girl said. »And remember you speak worst of all about yourself. But hold me as close as we can and let’s think about nothing.»
He held her as close as he could and he tried to think about nothing.
CHAPTER 30
THE Colonel and the girl lay quietly on the bed and the Colonel tried to think of nothing; as he had thought of nothing so many times in so many places. But it was no good now. It would not work any more because it was too late.
They were not Othello and Desdemona, thank God, although it was the same town and the girl was certainly better looking than the Shakespearean character, and the Colonel had fought as many, or more times than the garrulous Moor.
They are excellent soldiers, he thought. The damned Moors. But how many of them have we killed in my time? I think we killed more than a generation if you count the final Moroccan campaign against Abdel Krim. And each one you have to kill separately. Nobody ever killed them in mass, as we killed Krauts before they discovered Einheit.
»Daughter,» he said. »Do you want me to really tell you, so you will know, if I am not rough telling it?»
»I would rather have you tell me than anything. Then we can share it.»
»It cuts pretty thin for sharing,» the Colonel said. »It’s all yours, Daughter. And it’s only the high-lights. You wouldn’t understand the campaigns in detail, and few others would. Rommel might. But they always had him under wraps in France and, besides, we had destroyed his communications. The two tactical air-forces had; ours and the RAF. But I wish I could talk over certain things with him. I’d like to talk with him and with Ernst Udet.»
»Just tell me what you wish and take this glass of Valpolicella and stop if it makes you feel badly. Or don’t tell it at all.»
»I was a spare-parts Colonel at the start,» the Colonel explained carefully. »They are hang-around Colonels, which are given to a Division Commander to replace one that he may have killed, or that are relieved. Almost none are killed; but many are relieved. All the good ones are promoted. Fairly fast when the thing starts to move sort of like a forest fire.»
»Go on, please. Should you take your medicine?»
»The hell with my medicine,» the Colonel said. »And the hell with SHAEF.»
»You explained that to me,» the girl said.
»I wish the hell you were a soldier with your straight true brain and your beauty memory.»
»I would wish to be a soldier if I could fight under you.»
»Never fight under me,» the Colonel said. »I’m cagey. But I’m not lucky. Napoleon wanted them lucky and he was right.»
»We’ve had some luck.»
»Yes,» the Colonel said. »Good and bad.»
»But it was all luck.»
»Sure,» the Colonel said. »But you can’t fight on luck. It is just something that you need. The people who fought on luck are all gloriously dead like Napoleon’s horse cavalry.»
»Why do you hate cavalry? Almost all the good boys I know were in the three good regiments of cavalry, or in the navy.»
»I don’t hate anything, Daughter,» the Colonel said, and drank a little of the light, dry, red wine which was as friendly as the house of your brother, if you and your brother are good friends. »I only have a point of view, arrived at after careful consideration, and an estimate of their capabilities.»
»Are they not really good?»
»They are worthless,» the Colonel said. Then, remembering to be kind, added, »In our time.»
»Every day is a disillusion.»
»No. Every day is a new and fine illusion. But you can cut out everything phony about the illusion as though you would cut it with a straight-edge razor.»
»Please never cut me.»
»You’re not cut-able.»
»Would you kiss me and hold me tight, and we both look at the Grand Canal where the light is lovely now, and you tell me more?»
When they were looking out at the Grand Canal where the light was, indeed, lovely, the Colonel went on, »I got a regiment because the Commanding General relieved a boy that I had known since he was eighteen years old. He was not a boy any more, of course. It was too much regiment for him and it was all the regiment I ever could have hoped for in this life until I lost it.» He added, »Under orders, of course.»
»How do you lose a regiment?»
»When you are working around to get up on the high ground and all you would have to do is send in a flag, and they would talk it over and come out if you were right. The professionals are very intelligent and these Krauts were all professionals; not the fanatics. The phone rings and somebody calls from Corps who has his orders from Army
