Their handshake was only long enough to feel, firmly, the contact and the pleasure of meeting and then the Maitre d’Hotel said, »My Colonel.»
The Colonel said, »Gran Maestro.»
Then the Colonel asked the Gran Maestro to accompany him in a drink, but the Maitre d’Hotel said that he was working. It was impossible as well as forbidden.
»Fornicate forbidden,» said the Colonel.
»Of course,» the Gran Maestro said. »But everyone must comply with his duty, and here the rules are reasonable, and we all should comply with them; me especially, as a matter of precept.»
»Not for nothing are you the Gran Maestro,» the Colonel said.
»Give me a small Carpano punto e mezzo,» the Gran Maestro said to the bar-tender, who was still outside of the Order for some small, not defined, unstated reason. »To drink to the ordine.»
Thus, violating orders and the principle of precept and example in command, the Colonel and the Gran Maestro downed a quick one. They did not hurry nor did the Gran Maestro worry. They simply made it fast.
»Now, let us discuss the affairs of the Order,» the Colonel said. »Are we in the secret chamber?»
»We are,» said the Grand Maestro. »Or I declare it to be such.»
»Continue,» said the Colonel.
The order, which was a purely fictitious organization, had been founded in a series of conversations between the Gran Maestro and the Colonel. Its name was El Ordine Militar, Nobile y Espirituoso de los Caballeros de Brusadelli. The Colonel and the head waiter both spoke Spanish, and since that is the best language for founding orders, they had used it in the naming of this one, which was named after a particularly notorious multi-millionaire non-taxpaying profiteer of Milan, who had, in the course of a dispute over property, accused his young wife, publicly and legally through due process of law, of having deprived him of his judgment through her extraordinary sexual demands.
»Gran Maestro,» the Colonel said. »Have you heard from our Leader, The Revered One?»
»Not a word. He is silent these days.»
»He must be thinking.»
»He must.»
»Perhaps he is meditating on new and more distinguished shameful acts.»
»Perhaps. He has not given me any word.»
»But we can have confidence in him.»
»Until he dies,» the Gran Maestro said. »After that he can roast in hell and we will revere his memory.»
»Giorgio,» the Colonel said. »Give the Gran Maestro another short Carpano.»
»If it is your order,» the Gran Maestro said, »I can only obey.»
They touched glasses.
»Jackson,» the Colonel called. »You’re on the town. You can sign here for chow. I don’t want to see you until eleven hundred tomorrow in the lobby, unless you get into trouble. Do you have money?»
»Yes, sir,» Jackson said and thought, the old son of a bitch really is as crazy as they say. But he might have called me instead of shouting.
»I don’t want to see you,» the Colonel said.
Jackson had entered the room and stood before him at a semblance of attention.
»I’m tired of seeing you, because you worry and you don’t have fun. For Christ sake have yourself some fun.»
»Yes, sir.»
»You understand what I said?»
»Yes, sir.»
»Repeat it.»
»Ronald Jackson, T5 Serial Number 100678, will present himself in the lobby of this Gritti Hotel at 1100 tomorrow morning, I don’t know the date, sir, and will absent himself from the Colonel’s sight and will have some fun. Or,» he added, »will make every reasonable attempt to attain that objective.»
»I’m sorry, Jackson,» the Colonel said. »I’m a shit.»
»I beg to differ with the Colonel,» Jackson said.
»Thank you, Jackson,» the Colonel told him. »Maybe I’m not. I hope you are correct. Now muck off. You’ve got a room here, or you should have, and you can sign for chow. Now try and have some fun.»
»Yes, sir,» said Jackson.
When he was gone, the Gran Maestro said to the Colonel, »What is the boy? One of those sad Americans?»
»Yes,» the Colonel said. »And by Jesus Christ we’ve got a lot of them. Sad, self-righteous, over-fed and under-trained. If they are under-trained, it is my fault. But we’ve got some good ones, too.»
»Do you think they would have done Grappa, Pasubio and the Basso Piave as we did?»
»The good ones, yes. Maybe better. But you know, in our army, they don’t even shoot for self-inflicted wounds.»
»Jesus,» said the Gran Maestro. He and the Colonel both remembered the men who decided that they did not wish to die; not thinking that he who dies on Thursday does not have to die on Friday, and how one soldier would wrap another’s puttee-ed leg in a sandbag so there would be no powder burns, and loose off at his friend from as far a distance as he figured he could hit the calf of the leg without hitting bone, and then fire twice over the parapet to alibi the shot. They had this knowledge shared between them and it was for this reason and for a true, good hatred of all those who profited by war that they had founded the Order.
They knew, the two of them, who loved and respected each other, how poor boys who did not want to die, would share the contents of a match box full of gonorrheal pus to produce the infection that would keep them from the next murderous frontal attack.
They knew about the other boys who put the big ten centime pieces under their arm-pits to produce jaundice. And they knew, too, about the richer boys who, in different cities, had paraffin injected under their knee-caps so they would not have to go to the war.
They knew how garlic could be used to produce certain effects which could absent a man from an attack, and they knew all, or nearly all, of the other tricks; for one had been a sergeant and the other a lieutenant of infantry and they had fought on the three key points, Pasubio, Grappa, and the Piave, where it all made sense.
They had fought, too, in the earlier stupid butchery on the Isonzo and the Carso. But they were both ashamed of those who had ordered that, and they never thought about it except as a shameful, stupid thing to be forgotten and the Colonel remembered it technically as something to learn from. So, now, they had founded the Order of Brusadelli; noble, military and religious, and there were only five members.
»What is the news of the Order?» the Colonel asked the Gran Maestro.
»We have ascended the cook at the Magnificent to the rank of Commendatore. He comported himself as a man three times on his fiftieth birthday. I accepted his statement without corroboration. He never lied ever.»
»No. He never lied. But it is a topic on which you must be chary in your credibility.»
»I believed him. He looked ruined.»
»I can remember him when he was a tough kid and we called him the cherry buster.»
»Anch’ io.»
»Have you any concrete plans for the Order during the Winter?»
»No, Supreme Commander.»
»Do you think we should give a homage to the Honorable Pacciardi?»
»As you wish.»
»Let’s defer it,» the Colonel said. He thought a moment, and signalled for another dry Martini.
»Do you think we might organize a homage and manifestation in some historic place such as San Marco or the old church at Torcello in favor of our Great Patron, Brusadelli, the Revered One?»
»I doubt if the religious authorities would permit it at this moment.»
»Then let us abandon all ideas of public manifestations for this winter, and work within our cadres, for the good of the Order.»
»I think that is soundest,» the Gran Maestro said. »We will re-group.»
»And how are you, yourself?»
»Awful,» the Gran Maestro said. »I have low blood pressure, ulcers, and I owe money.»
»Are you happy?»
»All the time,» the Gran Maestro said. »I like my work very much, and I meet extraordinary and interesting characters, also many Belgians. They are what we have instead of the locusts this year. Formerly we had the Germans. What was it Caesar said, ‘And the bravest of these are the Belgians.’ But not the best dressed. Do you agree?»
»I’ve seen them quite well costumed in Brussels,» the Colonel said. »A well fed, gay capital. Win, lose, or draw. I have never seen them fight though everyone tells me that they do.»
»We should have fought in Flanders in the old days.»
»We were not born in the old days,» the Colonel said. »So we automatically could not have fought then.»
»I wish we could have fought with the Condottieri when all you had to do was out-think them and they conceded. You could think and I would convey your orders.»
»We’d have to take a few towns for them to respect our thinking.»
»We would sack them if they defended them,» the Gran Maestro said. »What towns would you take?»
»Not this one,» the Colonel said. »I’d take Vicenza, Bergamo and Verona. Not necessarily in that order.»
»You’d have to take two more.»
»I know,» the Colonel said. He was a general now again, and he was happy. »I figured that I’d by-pass Brescia. It could fall of its own weight.»
»And how are you, Supreme Commander?» the Gran Maestro said, for this taking of towns had
