I wonder if she’d like that? he thought. No. It builds me up too much. I’d like to get somebody else to tell it to her though and build me solid. George can’t tell it to her. He’s the only one that could tell it to her and he can’t. He sure as hell can’t.
I’ve been right over ninety-five percent of the time and that’s a hell of a batting average even in something as simple as war. But that five percent when you are wrong can certainly be something.
I’ll never tell you about that, Daughter. That’s just a noise heard off stage in my heart. My lousy chicken heart. That bastard heart certainly couldn’t hold the pace.
Maybe he will, he thought, and took two of the tablets and a swallow of gin and looked across the gray ice.
I’m going to get that sullen character in now and pick up and get the hell to the farm house or the lodge, I suppose that I should call it. The shooting’s over.
CHAPTER 42
THE COLONEL had signalled the boatman in by standing up, in the sunken barrel, firing two shots toward the empty sky, and then waving him toward the blind.
The boat came in slowly, breaking ice all the way, and the man picked up the wooden decoys, caught the calling hen and put her in her sack, and, with the dog slithering on the ice, picked up the ducks. The boatman’s anger seemed to be gone and to be replaced by a solid satisfaction.
»You shot very few,» he said to the Colonel.
»With your help.»
That was all they said and the boatman placed the ducks carefully, breasts up, on the bow of the boat and the Colonel handed his guns and the combination cartridge box and shooting stool into the boat.
The Colonel got into the boat and the boatman checked the blind and unhooked the pocketed, apron-like device which had hung on the inside of the blind to hold shells. Then he got into the boat too and they commenced their slow and laborious progress out through the ice to the open water of the brown canal. The Colonel worked as hard with the poling oar as he had worked coming in. But now, in the bright sunlight, with the snow mountains to the north, and the line of the sedge that marked the canal ahead of them, they worked together in complete co-ordination.
Then they were into the canal, slipping breakingly in from the last ice; then, suddenly, light-borne and the Colonel handed the big oar to the boatman and sat down. He was sweating.
The dog, who had been shivering at the Colonel’s feet, pawed his way over the gunwale of the boat and swam to the canal bank. Shaking the water from his white bedraggled coat, he was into the brown sedge and brush, and the Colonel watched his progress toward home by the movement of the brush. He had never received his sausage.
The Colonel, feeling himself sweating, although he knew he was protected from the wind by his field jacket, took two tablets from the bottle and a sip of gin from his flask.
The flask was flat and of silver with a leather cover. Under the leather cover, which was worn and stained, it was engraved, on one side, to Richard From Renata With Love. No one had ever seen this inscription except the girl, the Colonel, and the man who had engraved it. It had not been engraved in the same place it was purchased. That was in the earliest days, the Colonel thought. Now who cared?
On the screw-on top of the flask was engraved From R. to R.C. The Colonel offered the flask to the boatman who looked at him, at the flask, and said, »What is it?»
»English grappa.»
»I’ll try it.»
He took a long drink of it; the type of drink peasants take from a flask.
»Thank you.»
»Did you have good shooting?»
»I killed four ducks. The dog found three cripples shot by other people.»
»Why did you shoot?»
»I’m sorry that I shot. I shot in anger.»
I have done that myself sometimes, the Colonel thought, and did not ask him what the anger was about.
»I am sorry they did not fly better.»
»Shit,» the Colonel said. »That’s the way things go.»
The Colonel was watching the movement the dog made in the high grass and sedge. Suddenly he saw him stop; he was quite still. Then he pounced. It was a high leap and a dive forward and down.
»He has a cripple,» he said to the boatman.
»Bobby,» the boatman called. »Bring. Bring.»
The sedge moved and the dog came out with the mallard drake in his jaws. The gray white neck and the green head were swaying up and down as a snake’s might move. It was a movement without hope.
The boatman put the boat in sharp for shore.
»I’ll take him,» the Colonel said. »Bobby!»
He took the duck from the dog’s light-holding mouth and felt him intact and sound and beautiful to hold, and with his heart beating and his captured, hopeless eyes.
He looked at him carefully, gentling him as you might gentle a horse.
»He’s only wing-tipped,» he said. »We’ll keep him for a caller or to turn loose in the Spring. Here, take him and put him in the sack with the hen.»
The boatman took him carefully and put him in the burlap bag that was under the bow. The Colonel heard the hen speak to him. Or, maybe she is protesting, he thought. He could not understand duck-talk through a burlap bag.
»Take a shot of this,» he said to the boatman. »It’s damned cold today.»
The boatman took the flask and drank deeply again.
»Thank you,» he said. »Your grappa is very, very good.»
CHAPTER 43
AT the landing, before the long low stone house by the side of the canal, there were ducks laid out on the ground in rows.
They were laid in groups that were never of the same number. There were a few platoons, no companies, and, the Colonel thought, I barely have a squad.
The head game-keeper was standing on the bank in his high boots, his short jacket and his pushed back old felt hat, and he looked critically at the number of ducks on the bow of the boat as they came alongshore.
»It was frozen-up at our post,» the Colonel said.
»I suspected so,» the head keeper said. »I’m sorry. It was supposed to be the best post.»
»Who was top gun?»
»The Barone killed forty-two. There was a little current there that kept it open for a while. You probably did not hear the shooting because it was against the wind.»
»Where is everyone?»
»They’re all gone except the Barone who is waiting for you. Your driver is asleep in the house.»
»He would be,» the Colonel said.
»Spread those out properly,» the head keeper told the boatman who was a game-keeper too. »I want to put them in the game book.»
»There is one green-head drake in the bag who is only wing-tipped.»
»Good. I will take good care of him.»
»I will go inside and see the Barone. I’ll see you later.»
»You must get warm,» the head keeper said. »It’s been a bitter day, my Colonel.»
The Colonel started to walk toward the door of the house.
»I’ll see you later,» he said to the boatman.
»Yes, my Colonel,» the boatman said.
Alvarito, the Barone, was standing by the open fire in the middle of the room. He smiled his shy smile and said in his low pitched voice, »I am sorry you did not have better shooting.»
»We froze up completely. I enjoyed what there was very much.»
»Are you very cold?»
»Not too cold.»
»We can have something to eat.»
»Thank you. I’m not hungry. Have you eaten?»
»Yes. The others went on and I let them take my car. Can you give me a lift to Latisana or just above? I can get transportation from there.»
»Of course.»
»It was a shame that it should freeze. The prospects were so good.»
»There must have been a world of ducks outside.»
»Yes. But now they won’t stay with their feed frozen over. They will be on their way south tonight.»
»Will they all go?»
»All except our local ducks that breed here. They’ll stay as long as there is any open water.»
»I’m sorry for the shoot.»
»I’m sorry you came so far for so few ducks.»
»I always love the shoot,» the Colonel said. »And I love Venice.»
The Barone Alvarito looked away and spread his hands toward the fire. »Yes,» he said. »We all love Venice. Perhaps you do the best of all.»
The Colonel made no small talk on this but said, »I love Venice as you know.»
»Yes. I know,» the Barone said. He looked at nothing. Then he said, »We must wake your driver.»
»Has he eaten?»
»Eaten and slept and eaten and slept. He has also read a little in some illustrated books he brought with him.»
»Comic books,» the Colonel said.
»I should learn to read them,» the Barone said. He smiled the shy, dark smile. »Could you get me some from Trieste?»
»Any amount,» the Colonel told him. »From superman on up into the improbable. Read some for me. Look, Alvarito, what was the matter with that game-keeper who poled my boat? He seemed to have a hatred for me at the start. Pretty well through, too.»
»It was the old battle-jacket. Allied uniform affects him that way. You see he was a bit over-liberated.»
»Go on.»
»When the Moroccans came through here they raped both his wife and his daughter.»
»I think I’d better have a drink,» the Colonel said.
»There is grappa there on the table.»
CHAPTER 44
THEY had dropped the Barone off at a villa with great gates, a gravelled drive and a house, which, since it was
