They were up on the causeway from Mestre to Venice now with the ugly Breda works that might have been Hammond, Indiana.
»What do they make there, sir?» Jackson asked.
»The company makes locomotives in Milan,» the Colonel said. »Here they make a little of everything in the metallurgic line.»
It was a miserable view of Venice now and he always disliked this causeway except that you made such good time and you could see the buoys and the channels.
»This town makes a living on its own,» he said to Jackson. »She used to be the queen of the seas and the people are very tough and they give less of a good Goddamn about things than almost anybody you’ll ever meet. It’s a tougher town than Cheyenne when you really know it, and everybody is very polite.»
»I wouldn’t say Cheyenne was a tough town, sir.»
»Well, it’s a tougher town than Casper.»
»Do you think that’s a tough town, sir?»
»It’s an oil town. It’s a nice town.»
»But I don’t think it’s tough, sir. Or ever was.»
»O.K., Jackson. Maybe we move in different circles. Or maybe we have a differing definition for the word. But this town of Venice, with everybody being polite and having good manners, is as tough as Cooke City, Montana, on the day they have the Old Timers’ Fish Fry.»
»My idea of a tough town is Memphis.»
»Not like Chicago, Jackson. Memphis is only tough if you are a Negro. Chicago is tough North, South, there isn’t any East, and West. But nobody has any manners. But in this country, if you ever want to know a really tough town where they eat wonderfully too, go to Bologna.»
»I never was there.»
»Well, there’s the Fiat garage where we leave the car,» the Colonel said. »You can leave the key at the office. They don’t steal. I’ll go in the bar while you park upstairs. They have people that will bring the bags.»
»Is it okay to leave your gun and shooting gear in the trunk, sir?»
»Sure. They don’t steal here. I told you that once.»
»I wanted to take the necessary precaution, sir, on your valuable property.»
»You’re so damned noble that sometimes you stink,» the Colonel said. »Get the wax out of your ears and hear what I say the first time.»
»I heard you, sir,» Jackson said. The Colonel looked at him contemplatively and with the old deadliness.
He sure is a mean son of a bitch, Jackson thought, and he can be so God-damn nice.
»Get my and your bag out and park her up there and check your oil, your water and your tires,» the Colonel said, and walked across the oil and rubber stained cement of the entry of the bar.
CHAPTER 6
IN THE bar, sitting at the first table as he came in, there was a post-war rich from Milan, fat and hard as only Milanese can be, sitting with his expensive looking and extremely desirable mistress. They were drinking negronis, a combination of two sweet vermouths and seltzer water, and the Colonel wondered how much taxes the man had escaped to buy that sleek girl in her long mink coat and the convertible he had seen the chauffeur take up the long, winding ramp, to lock away. The pair stared at him with the bad manners of their kind and he saluted, lightly, and said to them in Italian, »I am sorry that I am in uniform. But it is a uniform. Not a costume.»
Then he turned his back on them, without waiting to see the effect of his remark, and walked to the bar. From the bar you could watch your luggage, just as well as the two pescecani were watching theirs.
He is probably a Commendatore, he thought. She is a beautiful, hard piece of work. She is damned beautiful, actually. I wonder what it would have been like if I had ever had the money to buy me that kind and put them into the mink? I’ll settle for what I have, he thought, and they can go and hang themselves.
The bar-tender shook hands with him. This bar-tender was an Anarchist but he did not mind the Colonel being a Colonel at all. He was delighted by it and proud and loving about it as though the Anarchists had a Colonel, too, and in some ways, in the several months that they had known each other, he seemed to feel that he had invented, or at least, erected the Colonel as you might be happy about participating in the erection of a campanile, or even the old church at Torcello.
The bar-tender had heard the conversation, or, rather, the flat statement at the table and he was very happy.
He had already sent down, via the dumb-waiter, for a Gordon’s gin and Campari and he said, »It is coming up in that hand-pulled device. How does everything go at Trieste?»
»About as you would imagine.»
»I couldn’t even imagine.»
»Then don’t strain,» the Colonel said, »and you will never get piles.»
»I wouldn’t mind it if I was a Colonel.»
»I never mind it.»
»You’d be over-run like a dose of salts,» the waiter said.
»Don’t tell the Honorable Pacciardi,» the Colonel said.
He and the bar-tender had a joke about this because the Honorable Pacciardi was Minister of Defense in the Italian Republic. He was the same age as the Colonel and had fought very well in the first world war, and had also fought in Spain as a battalion Commander where the Colonel had known him when he, himself, was an observer. The seriousness with which the Honorable Pacciardi took the post of Minister of Defense of an indefensible country was a bond between the Colonel and the bar-tender. The two of them were quite practical men and the vision of the Honorable Pacciardi defending the Italian Republic stimulated their minds.
»It’s sort of funny up there,» the Colonel said, »and I don’t mind it.»
»We must mechanize the Honorable Pacciardi,» the bar-tender said. »And supply him with the atomic bomb.»
»I’ve got three of them in the back of the car,» the Colonel said. »The new model, complete with handles. But we can’t leave him unarmed. We must supply him with botulism and anthrax.»
»We cannot fail the Honorable Pacciardi,» the bartender said. »Better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep.»
»Better to die on our feet than to live on our knees,» the Colonel said. »Though you better get on your belly damn fast if you want to stay alive in plenty places.»
»Colonel, do not say anything subversive.»
»We will strangle them with our bare hands,» the Colonel said. »A million men will spring to arms overnight.»
»Whose arms?» the bar-tender asked.
»All that will be attended to,» the Colonel said. »It’s only a phase in the Big Picture.»
Just then the driver came in the door. The Colonel saw that while they had been joking, he had not watched the door and he was annoyed, always, with any lapse of vigilance or of security.
»What the hell’s been keeping you, Jackson? Have a drink.»
»No, thank you, sir.»
You prissy jerk, the Colonel thought. But I better stop riding him, he corrected.
»We’ll be going in a minute,» the Colonel said. »I’ve been trying to learn Italian from my friend here.» He turned to look at the Milan profiteers; but they were gone.
I’m getting awfully slow, he thought. Somebody will take me any day now. Maybe even the Honorable Pacciardi, he thought.
»How much do I owe you?» he asked the bar-tender shortly.
The bar-tender told him and looked at him with his wise Italian eyes, not merry now, although the lines of merriment were clearly cut where they radiated from the corners of each eye. I hope there is nothing wrong with him, the bar-tender thought. I hope to God, or anything else, there’s nothing really bad.
»Good-bye, my Colonel,» he said.
»Ciao,» the Colonel said. »Jackson, we are going down the long ramp and due north from the exit to where the small launches are moored. The varnished ones. There is a porter with the two bags. It is necessary to let them carry them since they have a concession.»
»Yes, sir,» said Jackson.
The two of them went out the door and no one looked back at anyone.
At the imbarcadero, the Colonel tipped the man who had carried their two bags and then looked around for a boatman he knew.
He did not recognize the man in the launch that was first on call, but the boatman said, »Good-day, my Colonel. I’m the first.»
»How much is it to the Gritti?»
»You know as well as I, my Colonel. We do not bargain. We have a fixed tariff.»
»What’s the tariff?»
»Three thousand five hundred.»
»We could go on the vaporetto for sixty.»
»And nothing prevents you going,» the boatman, who was an elderly man with a red but un-choleric face, said. »They won’t take you to the Gritti but they will stop at the imbarcadero past Harry’s, and you can telephone for someone from the Gritti to get your bags.»
And what would I buy with the God-damn three thousand five hundred lire; and this is a good old man.
»Do you want me to
