Across the River and Into the Trees (9 page)

“Say it.”

“No.”

The Colonel thought, I order you to say it. And she said, “Please never look at me like that.”

“I’m sorry,” the Colonel said. “I had just slipped into my trade unconsciously.”

“And if we were such a thing as married would you practice your trade in the home?”

“No. I swear it. I never have. Not in my heart.”

“With no one?”

“With no one of your sex.”

“I don’t like that word your sex. It sounds as though you were practicing your trade.”

“I throw my trade out of that God-damn window into the Grand Canal.”

“There,” she said. “You see how quickly you practice it?”

“All right,” he said. “I love you and my trade can gently leave.”

“Let me feel your hand,” she said. “It’s all right. You can put it on the table.”

“Thank you,” the Colonel said.

“Please don’t,” she said. “I wanted to feel it because all last week, every night, or I think nearly every night, I dreamed about it, and it was a strange mixed-up dream and I dreamed it was the hand of Our Lord.”

“That’s bad. You oughtn’t to do that.”

“I know it. That’s just what I dreamed.”

“You aren’t on the junk, are you?”

“I don’t know what you mean, and please don’t make fun when I tell you something true. I dreamed just as I say.”

“What did the hand do?”

“Nothing. Or maybe that is not true. Mostly it was just a hand.”

“Like this one?” The Colonel asked, looking at the misshapen hand with distaste, and remembering the two times that had made it that way.

“Not like. It
was
that one. May I touch it carefully with my fingers if it does not hurt?”

“It does not hurt. Where it hurts is in the head, the legs and the feet. I don’t believe there’s any sensation in that hand.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. “Richard. There is very much sensation in that hand.”

“I don’t like to look at it much. You don’t think we could skip it.”

“Of course. But you don’t have to dream about it.”

“No. I have other dreams.”

“Yes. I can imagine. But I dream lately about this hand. Now that I have touched it carefully, we can talk about funny things if you like. What is there funny we should talk about?”

“Let’s look at the people and discuss them.”

“That’s lovely,” she said. “And we won’t do it with malice. Only with our best wit. Yours and mine.”

“Good,” the Colonel said. “Waiter,
Ancora due Martini
.”

He did not like to call for Montgomerys in a tone that could be overheard because there were two obvious Britishers at the next table.

The male might have been wounded, the Colonel thought, although, from his looks, it seems unlikely. But God help me to avoid brutality. And look at Renata’s eyes, he thought. They are probably the most beautiful of all the beautiful things she has, with the longest honest lashes I have ever seen and she never uses them for anything except to look at you honestly and straight. What a damn wonderful girl and what am I doing here anyway? It is wicked. She is your last and true and only love, he thought, and that’s not evil. It is only unfortunate. No, he thought, it is damned fortunate and you are very fortunate.

They sat at a small table in the corner of the room and on their right there were four women at a larger table. One of the women was in mourning; a mourning so theatrical that it reminded the Colonel of the Lady Diana Manners playing the nun in Max Reinhardt’s, “The Miracle.” This woman had an attractive, plump, naturally gay face and her mourning was incongruous.

At the table there was another woman who had hair three times as white as hair can be, the Colonel thought. She, also, had a pleasant face. There were two other women whose faces meant nothing to the Colonel.

“Are they lesbians?” he asked the girl.

“I do not know,” she said. “They are all very nice people.”

“I should say they are lesbians. But maybe they are just good friends. Maybe they are both. It means nothing to me and it was not a criticism.”

“You are nice when you are gentle.”

“Do you suppose the word gentleman derives from a man who is gentle?”

“I do not know,” the girl said, and she ran her fingers very lightly over the scarred hand. “But I love you when you are gentle.”

“I’ll try very hard to be gentle,” the Colonel said. “Who do you suppose that son of a bitch is at the table beyond them?”

“You don’t stay gentle very long,” the girl said. “Let us ask Ettore.”

They looked at the man at the third table. He had a strange face like an over-enlarged, disappointed weasel or ferret. It looked as pock-marked and as blemished as the mountains of the moon seen through a cheap telescope and, the Colonel thought, it looked like Goebbels’ face, if Herr Goebbels had ever been in a plane that burned, and not been able to bail out before the fire reached him.

Above this face, which was ceaselessly peering, as though the answer might be found by enough well directed glances and by queries, there was black hair that seemed to have no connection with the human race. The man looked as though he had been scalped and then the hair replaced. Very interesting, the Colonel thought. Can he be a compatriot? Yes, he must.

A little spit ran out of the corner of his mouth as he spoke, peeringly, with the elderly, wholesome looking woman who was with him. She looks like anybody’s mother in an illustration in “The Ladies’ Home Journal,” the Colonel thought. “The Ladies’ Home Journal” was one of the magazines received regularly at the Officer’s Club in Trieste and the Colonel looked through it when it came. It is a wonderful magazine, he thought, because it combines sexology and beautiful foods. It makes me hungry both ways.

But who do you suppose that character is? He looks like a caricature of an American who has been run one half way through a meat chopper and then been boiled, slightly, in oil. I’m not being so gentle, he thought.

Ettore, with his emaciated face, and his love of joking and fundamental and abiding disrespect, came over and the Colonel said, “Who is that spiritual character?”

Ettore shook his head.

The man was short and dark with glossy black hair that did not seem to go with his strange face. He looked, the Colonel thought, as though he had forgotten to change his wig as he grew older. Has a wonderful face though, the Colonel thought. Looks like some of the hills around Verdun. I don’t suppose he could be Goebbels and he picked up that face in the last days when they were all playing at
G
ö
tterd
ä
mmerung. Komm’ S
ü
sser Tod
, he thought. Well they sure bought themselves a nice big piece of Süsser Tod at the end.

“You don’t want a nice Süsser Tod sandwich do you Miss Renata?”

“I don’t think so,” the girl said. “Though I love Bach and I am sure Cipriani could make one.”

“I was not talking against Bach,” the Colonel said.

“I know it.”

“Hell,” the Colonel said. “Bach was practically a co-belligerent. As you were,” he added.

“I don’t think we have to talk against me.”

“Daughter,” the Colonel said. “When will you learn that I might joke against you because I love you?”

“Now,” she said. “I’ve learned it. But you know it’s fun not to joke too rough.”

“Good. I’ve learned it.”

“How often do you think of me during the week?”

“All of the time.”

“No. Tell me truly.”

“All of the time. Truly.”

“Do you think it is this bad for everyone?”

“I wouldn’t know,” the Colonel said. “That’s one of the things I would not know.”

“I hope it’s not this bad for everyone. I had no idea it could be this bad.”

“Well you know now.”

“Yes,” the girl said. “I know now. I know now and for keeps and for always. Is that the correct way to say it?”

“I know now is enough,” the Colonel said. “Ettore, that character with the inspiring face and the nice looking woman with him doesn’t live at the Gritti does he?”

“No,” Ettore said. “He lives next door but he goes to the Gritti sometimes to eat.”

“Good,” the Colonel said. “It will be wonderful to see him if I should ever be down hearted. Who is the woman with him? His wife? His mother? His daughter?”

“There you have me,” Ettore said. “We haven’t kept track of him in Venice. He has aroused neither love, hate, dislike, fear nor suspicion. Do you really want to know anything about him? I could ask Cipriani.”

“Let us skip him,” the girl said. “Is that how you say it?”

“Let’s skip him,” the Colonel said.

“When we have so little time, Richard. He is rather a waste of time.”

“I was looking at him as at a drawing by Goya. Faces are pictures too.”

“Look at mine and I will look at yours. Please skip the man. He didn’t come here to do anyone any harm.”

“Let me look at your face and you not look at mine.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not fair. I have to remember yours all week.”

“And what do I do?” the Colonel asked her.

Ettore came over, unable to avoid conspiracy and, having gathered his intelligence rapidly and as a Venetian should, said,

“My colleague who works at his hotel, says that he drinks three or four highballs, and then writes vastly and fluently far into the night.”

“I dare say that makes marvelous reading.”

“I dare say,” Ettore said. “But it was hardly the method of Dante.”

“Dante was another
vieux con
,” the Colonel said. “I mean as a man. Not as a writer.”

“I agree,” Ettore said. “I think you will find no one, outside of Firenze, who has studied his life who would not agree.”

“Eff Florence,” the Colonel said.

“A difficult maneuver,” Ettore said. “Many have attempted it but very few have succeeded. Why do you dislike it, my Colonel?”

“Too complicated to explain. But it was the depot,” he said
deposito
, “of my old regiment when I was a boy.”

“That I can understand. I have my own reasons for disliking it too. You know a good town?”

“Yes,” said the Colonel. “This one. A part of Milano; and Bologna. And Bergamo.”

“Cipriani has a large store of vodka in case the Russians should come,” Ettore said, loving to joke rough.

“They’ll bring their own vodka, duty free.”

“Still I believe Cipriani is prepared for them.”

“Then he is the only man who is,” the Colonel said.

“Tell him not to take any checks from junior officers on the Bank of Odessa, and thank you for the data on my compatriot. I won’t take more of your time.”

Ettore left and the girl turned toward him, and looked in his old steel eyes and put both her hands on his bad one and said, “You were quite gentle.”

“And you are most beautiful and I love you.”

“It’s nice to hear it anyway.”

“What are we going to do about dinner?”

“I will have to call my home and find out if I can come out.”

“Why do you look sad now?”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“I am not, really. I am as happy as I ever am. Truly. Please believe me, Richard. But how would you like to be a girl nineteen years old in love with a man over fifty years old that you knew was going to die?”

“You put it a little bluntly,” the Colonel said. “But you are very beautiful when you say it.”

“I never cry,” the girl said. “Never. I made a rule not to. But I would cry now.”

“Don’t cry,” the Colonel said. “I’m gentle now and the hell with the rest of it.”

“Say once again that you love me.”

“I love you and I love you and I love you.”

“Will you do your best not to die?”

“Yes.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“So-so.”

“Not worse?”

“No,” he lied.

“Then let us have another Martini,” the girl said. “You know I never drank a Martini until we met.”

“I know. But you drink them awfully well.”

“Shouldn’t you take the medicine?”

“Yes,” the Colonel said. “I should take the medicine.”

“May I give it to you?”

“Yes,” the Colonel said. “You may give it to me.”

They continued to sit at the table in the corner and some people went out, and others came in. The Colonel felt a little dizzy from the medicine and he let it ride. That’s the way it always is, he thought. To hell with it.

He saw the girl watching him and he smiled at her. It was an old smile that he had been using for fifty years, ever since he first smiled, and it was still as sound as your grandfather’s Purdey shot-gun. I guess my older brother has that, he thought. Well, he could always shoot better than I could and he deserves it.

“Listen, daughter,” he said. “Don’t be sorry for me.”

“I’m not. Not at all. I just love you.”

“It isn’t much of a trade is it?” He said
oficio
instead of trade, because they spoke Spanish together too, when they left French, and when they did not wish to speak English before other people. Spanish is a rough language, the Colonel thought, rougher than a corncob sometimes. But you can say what you mean in it and make it stick.

“
Es un oficio bastante malo
,” he repeated, “loving me.”

“Yes. But it is the only one I have.”

“Don’t you write any more poetry?”

“It was young girl poetry. Like young girl painting. Everyone is talented at a certain age.”

At what age do you become old in this country, the Colonel thought. No one is ever old in Venice, but they grow up very fast. I grew up very rapidly in the Veneto myself, and I was never as old as I was at twenty-one.

“How is your mother?” he asked, lovingly.

“She is very well. She does not receive and she sees almost no one because of her sorrow.”

“Do you think she would mind if we had a baby?”

“I don’t know. She is very intelligent, you know. But I would have to marry someone, I suppose. I don’t really want to.”

“We could be married.”

“No,” she said. “I thought it over, and I thought we should not. It is just a decision as the one about crying.”

“Maybe you make wrong decisions. Christ knows I’ve made a few and too many men are dead from when I was wrong.”