Across the River and Into the Trees (19 page)

“Domenico,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I have something here in an envelope that you can put in the safe. It may be called for either by myself, in person, or in writing, or by the person you have just put that call through to. Would you like that in writing?”

“No. It would be unnecessary.”

“But what about you, boy? You’re not immortal, are you?”

“Fairly so,” the concierge told him. “But I will put it in writing, and after me, comes the Manager and the Assistant Manager.”

“Both good men,” the Colonel agreed.

“Wouldn’t you like to sit down, my Colonel?”

“No. Who sits down except men and women in change of life hotels? Do you sit down?”

“No.”

“I can rest on my feet, or against a God damned tree. My countrymen sit down, or lie down, or fall down. Give them a few energy crackers to stall their whimpers.”

He was talking too much to regain confidence quickly.

“Do they really have energy crackers?”

“Sure. It has something in it that keeps you from getting erections. It’s like the atomic bomb, only played backwards.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“We have the most terrific military secrets that one General’s wife ever told another. Energy crackers is the least of it. Next time we will give all Venice botulism from 56,000 feet. There’s nothing to it,” the Colonel explained. “They give you anthrax, and you give them botulism.”

“But it will be horrible.”

“It will be worse than that,” the Colonel assured him. “This isn’t classified. It’s all been published. And while it goes on you can hear Margaret, if you tune in right, singing the Star Spangled Banner on the radio. I think that could be arranged. The voice I would not describe as a big one. Not as we know voices who have heard the good ones in our time. But everything is a trick now. The radio can almost make the voice. And the Star Spangled Banner is fool-proof until toward the last.”

“Do you think they will drop anything here?”

“No. They never have.”

The Colonel, who was four star general now, in his wrath and in his agony and in his need for confidence, but secured temporarily through the absorption of the tablets, said, “
Ciao
, Domenico,” and left the Gritti.

He figured it took twelve and one half minutes to reach the place where his true love would probably arrive a little late. He walked it carefully and at the speed he should walk it. The bridges were all the same.

HIS true love was at the table at the exact time that she said she would be. She was as beautiful as always in the hard, morning light that came across the flooded square, and she said, “Please, Richard. Are you all right? Please?”

“Sure,” the Colonel said. “You wonder beauty.”

“Did you go to all our places in the market?”

“Only a few of them. I did not go to where they have the wild ducks.”

“Thank you.”

“For nothing,” the Colonel said. “I never go there when we are not together.”

“Don’t you think I should go to the shoot?”

“No. I am quite sure. Alvarito would have asked you if he wanted you.”

“He might not have asked me because he wanted me.”

“That’s true,” the Colonel said, and pondered that for two seconds. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Breakfast is worthless here, and I don’t like the square when it is flooded. It is sad and the pigeons have no place to alight. It is only really fun toward the last when the children play. Should we go and have breakfast at the Gritti?”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We’ll have breakfast there. I’ve had mine already.”

“Really?”

“I’ll have some coffee and hot rolls, and only feel them with my fingers. Are you awfully hungry?”

“Awfully,” she said, truly.

“We’ll give breakfast the full treatment,” the Colonel said. “You’ll wish you had never heard of breakfast.”

As they walked, with the wind at their back, and her hair blowing better than any banner, she asked him, holding close, “Do you still love me in the cold, hard Venice light of morning? It is really cold and hard isn’t it?”

“I love you and it is cold and hard.”

“I loved you all night when I was skiing in the dark.”

“How do you do that?”

“It is the same runs except that it is dark and the snow is dark instead of light. You ski the same; controlled and good.”

“Did you ski all night? That would be many runs.”

“No. Afterwards I slept soundly and well and I woke happy. You were with me and you were asleep like a baby.”

“I wasn’t with you and I was not asleep.”

“You’re with me now,” she said and held close and tight.

“And we are almost there.”

“Yes.”

“Have I told you, yet, properly, that I love you?”

“You told me. But tell me again.”

“I love you,” he said. “Take it frontally and formally please.”

“I take it anyway you want as long as it is true.”

“That’s the proper attitude,” he said. “You good, brave, lovely girl. Turn your hair sideways once on top of this bridge and let it blow obliquely.”

He had made a concession, with obliquely, instead of saying, correctly, oblique.

“That’s easy,” she said. “Do you like it?”

He looked and saw the profile and the wonder early morning colour and her chest upstanding in the black sweater and her eyes in the wind and he said, “Yes. I like it.”

“I’m very glad,” she said.

AT the Gritti, the
Gran Maestro
seated them at the table which was beside the window that looked out on the Grand Canal. There was no one else in the dining room.

The
Gran Maestro
was festive and well with the morning. He took his ulcers day by day, and his heart the same way. When they did not hurt he did not hurt either.

“Your pitted compatriot eats in bed at his hotel, my colleague tells me,” he confided to the Colonel. “We may have a few Belgians. ‘The bravest of these were the Belgians,’ ” he quoted. “There is a pair of
pescecani
from you know where. But they are exhausted and I believe they will eat, as pigs, in their room.”

“An excellent situation report,” the Colonel said. “Our problem,
Gran Maestro
, is that I have already eaten in my room as pitted does and as the
pescecani
will. But this lady—”

“Young girl,” interrupted the
Gran Maestro
with his whole-face smile. He was feeling very good since it was a completely new day.

“This very young lady wants a breakfast to end breakfasts.”

“I understand,” the
Gran Maestro
said and he looked at Renata and his heart rolled over as a porpoise does in the sea. It is a beautiful movement and only a few people in this world can feel it and accomplish it.

“What do you want to eat, Daughter?” the Colonel asked, looking at her early morning, unretouched dark beauty.

“Everything.”

“Would you give any suggestions?”

“Tea instead of coffee and whatever the
Gran Maestro
can salvage.”

“It won’t be salvage, Daughter,” said the
Gran Maestro
.

“I’m the one who calls her Daughter.”

“I said it honestly,” the
Gran Maestro
said. “We can make or
fabricar rognons
grilled with champignons dug by people I know. Or, raised in damp cellars. There can be an omelet with truffles dug by pigs of distinction. There can be real Canadian bacon from maybe Canada, even.”

“Wherever that is,” the girl said happily and unillusioned.

“Wherever that is,” said the Colonel seriously. “And I know damn well where it is.”

“I think we should stop the jokes now and get to the breakfast.”

“If it is not unmaidenly I think so too. Mine is a decanted flask of the Valpolicella.”

“Nothing else?”

“Bring me one ration of the alleged Canadian bacon,” the Colonel said.

He looked at the girl, since they were alone now, and he said, “How are you my dearest?”

“Quite hungry, I suppose. But thank you for being good for so long a time.”

“It was easy,” the Colonel told her in Italian.

THEY sat there at the table and watched the early stormy light over the Canal. The grey had turned to a yellow grey, now, with the sun, and the waves were working against the outgoing tide.

“Mummy says she can’t live here too long at any time because there are no trees,” the girl said. “That’s why she goes to the country.”

“That’s why everyone goes to the country,” the Colonel said. “We could plant a few trees if we found a place with a big enough garden.”

“I like Lombardy poplars and plane trees the best, but I am still quite uneducated.”

“I like them, and cypresses and chestnut trees. The real chestnut and the horse-chestnut. But you will never see trees, Daughter, until we go to America. Wait till you see a white pine or a ponderosa pine.”

“Will we see them when we make the long trip and stop at all the filling stations or comfort stations or whatever they are called?”

“Lodges and Tourist Camps,” the Colonel said. “Those others we stop at; but not for the night.”

“I want so much for us to roll up to a comfort station and plank down my money and tell them to fill her up and check the oil, Mac, the way it is in American books or in the films.”

“That’s a filling station.”

“Then what is a comfort station?”

“Where you go, you know—”

“Oh,” the girl said and blushed. “I’m sorry. I want to learn American so much. But I suppose I shall say barbarous things the way you do sometimes in Italian.”

“It is an easy language. The further West you go the straighter and the easier it becomes.”

The
Gran Maestro
brought the breakfast and the odor of it, although it did not spread through the room, due to the silver covers on the dishes, came to them steady and as broiled bacon and kidneys, with the dark lusterless smell of grilled mushrooms added.

“It looks lovely,” the girl said. “Thank you very much,
Gran Maestro
. Should I talk American?” she asked the Colonel. She extended her hand to the
Gran Maestro
lightly, and fastly, so that it darted as a rapier does, and said, “Put it there, Pal. This grub is tops.”

The
Gran Maestro
said, “Thank you, my lady.”

“Should I have said chow instead of grub?” the girl asked the Colonel.

“They are really interchangeable.”

“Did they talk like that out West when you were a boy? What would you say at breakfast?”

“Breakfast was served, or offered up, by the cook. He would say, ‘Come and get it, you sons of bitches, or I’ll throw it away.’ ”

“I must learn that for in the country. Sometimes when we have the British Ambassador and his dull wife for dinner I will teach the footman, who will announce dinner, to say, ‘Come and get it, you son of bitches, or we will throw it away.’ ”

“He’d devaluate,” the Colonel said. “At any rate, it would be an interesting experiment.”

“Tell me something I can say in true American to the pitted one if he comes in. I will just whisper it in his ear as though I were making a rendezvous, as they did in the old days.”

“It would depend on how he looks. If he is very dejected looking, you might whisper to him, ‘Listen, Mac. You hired out to be tough, didn’t you?’ ”

“That’s lovely,” she said and repeated it in a voice she had learned from Ida Lupino. “Can I say it to the
Gran Maestro
?”

“Sure. Why not.
Gran Maestro
!”

The
Gran Maestro
came over and leaned forward attentively.

“Listen, Mac. You hired out to be tough, didn’t you?” the girl hard-worded him.

“I did indeed,” the
Gran Maestro
said. “Thank you for stating it so exactly.”

“If that one comes in and you wish to speak to him after he has eaten, just whisper in his ear, ‘Wipe the egg off your chin, Jack, and straighten up and fly right.’ ”

“I’ll remember it and I’ll practice it at home.”

“What are we going to do after breakfast?”

“Should we go up and look at the picture and see if it is of any value, I mean any good, in daylight?”

“Yes,” the Colonel said.

UPSTAIRS the room was already done and the Colonel, who had anticipated a possible messiness of locale, was pleased.

“Stand by it once,” he said. Then remembered to add, “Please.”

She stood by it, and he looked at it from where he had looked at it last night.

“There’s no comparison, of course,” he said. “I don’t mean likeness. The likeness is excellent.”

“Was there supposed to be a comparison?” the girl asked, and swung her head back and stood there with the black sweater of the portrait.

“Of course not. But last night, and at first light, I talked to the portrait as though it were you.”

“That was nice of you and shows it has served some useful purpose.”

They were lying now on the bed and the girl said to him, “Don’t you ever close windows?”

“No. Do you?”

“Only when it rains.”

“How much alike are we?”

“I don’t know. We never had much of a chance to find out.”

“We’ve never had a fair chance. But we’ve had enough of a chance for me to know.”

“And when you know what the hell have you got?” the Colonel asked.

“I don’t know. Something better than there is, I suppose.”

“Sure. We ought to try for that. I don’t believe in limited objectives. Sometimes you’re forced to, though.”

“What is your great sorrow?”

“Other people’s orders,” he said. “What’s yours?”

“You.”

“I don’t want to be a sorrow. I’ve been a sorry son of a bitch many times. But I never was anybody’s sorrow.”

“Well you are mine now.”

“All right,” he said. “We’ll take it that way.”

“You’re nice to take it that way. You’re very kind this morning. I’m so ashamed about how things are. Please hold me very close and let’s not talk, or think, about how things might have been different.”

“Daughter, that’s one of the few things I know how to do.”