Across the River and Into the Trees Page 12

�But you stayed.�

  �Sure,� the Colonel said. �I�m always the last man to leave the party, fiesta I mean, not as in political party. The truly unpopular guest.�

  �Should we go?�

  �I thought you had made up your mind.�

  �I had. But when you said it about unpopular guest it was unmade.�

  �Keep it made up.�

  �I can hold a decision.�

  �I know. You can hold any damn thing. But, Daughter, sometimes you don�t just hold. That is for stupids. Sometimes you have to switch fast.�

  �I�ll switch if you like.�

  �No. I think the decision was sound.�

  �But won�t it be an awfully long time until morning?�

  �That all depends on whether one has luck or not.�

  �I should sleep well.�

  �Yes,� the Colonel said. �At your age if you can�t sleep they ought to take you out and hang you.�

  �Oh please.�

  �Sorry,� he said. �I meant shoot you.�

  �We are nearly home and you could be kind now if you wanted.�

  �I�m so kind I stink. Let somebody else be kind.�

  They were in front of the palace now and there it was; the palace. There was nothing to do now but pull the bell cord, or enter with the key. I�ve been lost in this place, the Colonel thought, and I was never lost in my life.

  �Please kiss me good-night, kindly.�

  The Colonel did and loved her so he could not bear it.

  She opened the door with the key, which was in her bag. Then she was gone and the Colonel was alone, with the worn pavement, the wind, which still held in the north, and the shadows from where a light went on. He walked home.

  Only tourists and lovers take gondolas, he thought. Except to cross the canal in the places where there are no bridges. I ought to go to Harry�s, probably, or some damn place. But I think I�ll go home.

  CHAPTER XV

  IT WAS really home, if a hotel room can be so described. His pajamas were laid on the bed. There was a bottle of Valpolicella by the reading light, and by the bed a bottle of mineral water, in an ice bucket with a glass beside it on the silver tray. The portrait had been de-framed and was placed on two chairs where he could see it from the bed.

  The Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune lay on the bed beside his three pillows. He used three pillows, as Arnaldo knew, and his extra bottle of medicine, not the one that he carried in his pocket, was beside the reading light. The inner doors of the armoire, the mirrored ones, were opened in such a way, that he could see the portrait from the side. His scuffed slippers were by the bed.

  I�ll buy it, the Colonel said, to himself, since there was no one else there except the portrait.

  He opened the Valpolicella which had been uncorked, and then re-corked, carefully, precisely, and lovingly, and poured himself a glass into the glass which was much better than any hotel should use which was faced with breakage.

  �Here�s to you, Daughter,� he said. �You beauty and lovely. Do you know, that, among other things, you smell good always? You smell wonderfully even in a high wind or under a blanket or kissing goodnight. You know almost no one does, and you don�t use scent.�

  She looked at him from the portrait and said nothing.

  �The hell with it,� he said. �I�m not going to talk to a picture.�

  What do you think went wrong tonight? he thought.

  Me, I guess. Well I will try to be a good boy tomorrow all day; starting at first light.

  �Daughter,� he said, and he was talking to her, and not to a picture now. �Please know I love you and that I wish to be delicate and good. And please stay with me always now.�

  The picture was the same.

  The Colonel took out the emeralds from his pocket, and looked at them, feeling them slide, cold and yet warm, as they take warmth, and as all good stones have warmth, from his bad hand into his good hand.

  I should have put these in an envelope and locked them up, he thought. But what the effing security is there better than I can give them? I have to get these back to you fast, Daughter.

  It was fun, though. And they�re not worth more than a quarter of a million. What I would make in four hundred years. Have to check that figure.

  He put the stones in the pocket of his pajamas and put a handkerchief over them. Then he buttoned the pocket. The first sound thing you learn, he thought, is to have flaps and buttons on all your pockets. I imagine that I learned it too early.

  The stones felt good. They were hard and warm against his flat, hard, old, and warm chest, and he noted how the wind was blowing, looked at the portrait, poured another glass of Valpolicella and then started to read the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune.

  I ought to take the pills, he thought. But the hell with the pills.

  Then he took them just the same, and went on reading the New York Herald. He was reading Red Smith, and he liked him very much.

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE Colonel woke before daylight and checked that there was no one sleeping with him.

  The wind was still blowing hard and he went to the open windows to check the weather. There was no light as yet in the east across the Grand Canal, but his eyes could see how rough the water was. Be a hell of a tide today, he thought. Probably flood the square. That�s always fun. Except for the pigeons.

  He went to the bathroom, taking the Herald Tribune and Red Smith with him, as well as a glass of Valpolicella. Damn I�ll be glad when the Gran Maestro gets those big fiascos, he thought. This wine gets awfully dreggy at the end.

  He sat there, with his newspaper, thinking of the things of that day.

  There would be the telephone call. But it might be very late because she would be sleeping late. The young sleep late, he thought, and the beautiful sleep half again as late. She certainly would not call early, and the shops did not open until nine or a little later.

  Hell, he thought, I have these damned stones. How could anyone do a thing like that?

  You know how, he said to himself, reading the ads in the back of the paper. You�ve put it on the line enough times. It isn�t crazy or morbid. She just wanted to put it on the line. It was a good thing it was me, he thought.

  That is the only good thing about being me, he considered. Well I�m me, God-damn it. For better or for much worse. How would you like to sit on the can as you have sat almost every morning of your damned life with this in your pocket?

  He was addressing no one, except, perhaps, posterity.

  How many mornings have you sat in the row with all the others? That�s the worst of it. That and shaving. Or you go off to be alone, and think or not think, and pick a good piece of cover and there are two riflemen there already, or some boy asleep.

  There�s no more privacy in the army than in a professional shit-house. I�ve never been in a professional shit-house but I imagine they run it much the same. I could learn to run one, he thought.

  Then I�d make all my leading shit-house characters Ambassadors and the unsuccessful ones could be Corps-Commanders or command military districts in peace time. Don�t be bitter, boy, he said to himself. It�s too early in the morning and your duty�s not completed yet.

  What would you do with their wives, he asked himself? Buy them new hats or shoot them, he said. It�s all part of the same process.

  He looked at himself in the mirror, set in the half closed door. It showed him at a slight angle. It�s a deflection shot, he said to himself, and they didn�t lead me enough. Boy, he said, you certainly are a beat-up, old looking bastard.

  Now you have to shave and look at that face while you do it. Then you must get a hair-cut. That�s easy in this town. You�re a Colonel of Infantry, boy. You can�t go around looking like Joan of Arc or General (Brevetted) George Armstrong Custer. That beautiful horse-cavalryman. I guess it is fun to be that way and have a loving wife and use sawdust for brains. But it must have seemed like t
he wrong career to him when they finished up on that hill above the Little Big Horn, with the ponies making the circle around them in all the dust, and the sage brush crushed by the hooves of the horses of the other people, and nothing left to him for the rest of his life but that old lovely black powder smell and his own people shooting each other, and themselves, because they were afraid of what the squaws would do to them.

  The body was unspeakably mutilated, they used to put in this same paper. And on that hill to know you�d made one real mistake, finally, and for good, and complete with true handles. Poor horse-cavalryman, he thought. The end of all his dreams. That�s one good thing about being an Infantryman. You never have any dreams except bad dreams.

  Well, he said to himself, we�re finished here, and pretty soon there will be good light and I can see the portrait. I�ll be damned if I�ll turn that in. I keep that.

  Oh Christ, he said, I wonder what she looks like now sleeping. I know how she looks, he said to himself. Wonderful. She sleeps as though she had not gone to sleep. As though she were just resting. I hope she is, he thought. I hope she�s resting well. Christ Jesus how I love her and I hope I never do her harm.

  CHAPTER XVII

  WHEN it started to be light, the Colonel saw the portrait. He, very probably, saw it as quickly as any man who was civilized and had to read and sign the forms he did not believe in, could see an object, as soon as it was visible. Yes, he said to himself, I have eyes and they have fairly fast perception still, and once they had ambition. I have led my Ruffians where they were well peppered. There are but three of the two hundred and fifty of them left alive and they are for the town�s end to beg during life.

  That�s from Shakespeare, he told the portrait. The winner and still the undisputed champion.

  Someone might take him, in a short bout. But I would rather revere him. Did you ever read King Lear, Daughter? Mister Gene Tunney did, and he was the champion of the world. But I read it too. Soldiers care for Mister Shakespeare too, though it may seem impossible. He writes like a soldier himself.

  You have anything to say in your defense except to put your head back? he asked the portrait. You want some more, Shakespeare?

  You don�t have to defend. You just rest and leave it as it is. It�s no good. Your defense and my defense is no damn good. But who could tell you to go out and hang yourself the way we do?

  Nobody, he said to himself, and to the portrait. And certainly not me.

  He put his good hand down and found that the room waiter had left a second bottle of Valpolicella alongside of where the first had been.

  If you love a country, the Colonel thought, you might as well admit it. Sure, admit it boy.

  I have loved three and lost them thrice. Give a credit. We�ve re-took two. Retaken, he corrected.

  And we will retake the other one, General Fat Ass Franco on his shooting stick with the advice of his doctor and tame ducks and a screen of Moorish cavalry when he shoots.

  Yes, he said softly to the girl who looked at him clearly now in the first and best light.

  We will retake and they will all be hung upside down outside of filling stations. You have been warned, he added.

  �Portrait,� he said, �why the hell can�t you just get into bed with me instead of being eighteen solid stone blocks away. Maybe more. I�m not as sharp now as I was; whenever.�

  �Portrait,� he said to the girl, and to the portrait, and to the girl both; but there wasn�t any girl, and the portrait was as it was painted.

  �Portrait, keep your God-damn chin up so you can break my heart easier.�

  It certainly was a lovely present, the Colonel thought.

  �Can you maneuver?� he asked the portrait. �Good and fast?�

  Portrait said nothing and the Colonel answered, You known damn well she can. She�d out-maneuver you the best day you were ever born and she would stay and fight where you would eff-off, discreetly.

  �Portrait,� he said. �Boy or daughter or my one true love or whatever it is; you know what it is, portrait.�

  The portrait, as before, did not answer. But the Colonel, who was a General now again, early in the morning at the only time he really knew, and with Valpolicella, knew as absolutely as though he had just read his third Wassermann that there was no eff-off in portrait, and he felt shame for having talked to portrait roughly.

  �I�ll be the best God-damned boy you ever witnessed today. And you can tell your principal that.�

  Portrait, as was her fashion, was silent.

  She probably would speak to a horse-cavalryman, the General, for now he had two stars, and they grated on his shoulders, and showed white in the vague, scuffed red on the plaque in front of his jeep. He never used command cars, nor semi-armoured vehicles complete with sand bags.

  �The hell with you, portrait,� he said. �Or get your T.S. slip from the universal chaplain of us all, with combined religions. You ought to be able to eat on that.�

  �The hell with you,� the portrait said, without speaking. �You low class soldier.�

  �Yes,� the Colonel said, for now he was a Colonel again, and had relinquished all his former rank.

  �I love you, portrait, very much. But don�t get rough with me. I love you very much because you are beautiful. But I love the girl better, a million times better, hear it?�

  There was no sign that she heard it, so he tired of it.

  �You are in a fixed position, portrait,� he said. �Without or with any frame. And I am going to maneuver.�

  The portrait was as silent as she had been since the concierge had brought her into the room, and aided and abetted by the second waiter, had shown her to the Colonel and to the girl.

  The Colonel looked at her and saw she was indefensible, now that the light was good, or almost good.

  He saw, too, that she was the portrait of his own true love, and so he said, �I am sorry for all the stupidnesses I say. I do not wish ever to be brutal. Maybe we could both sleep a little while, with luck, and then, perhaps, your Mistress would call on the telephone?�

  Maybe she will even call, he thought.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE hall porter pushed the Gazzetino under the door, and the Colonel had it, noiselessly, almost as soon as it had passed through the slit.

  He very nearly took it from the hall porter�s hand. He did not like the hall porter since he had found him, one day, going through his bag, when he, the Colonel, had re-entered the room after having left it, presumably for some time. He had to come back to the room to get his bottle of the medicine, which he had forgotten, and the hall porter was well through his bag.

  �I guess you don�t say stick them up in this hotel,� the Colonel had said. �But you�re no credit to your town.�

  There was silence produced, and re-produced, by the striped waist-coated man with the Fascist face, and the Colonel said, �Go on, boy, look through the rest of it. I don�t carry any military secrets with my toilet articles.� Since then, there was scant friendship between them, and the Colonel enjoyed trying to take the morning paper from the striped waist-coated man�s hand; noiselessly, and when he heard, or saw it first make a move under the door.

  �OK, you won today, jerk,� he said in the best Venetian dialect he could summon at that hour. �Go hang yourself.�

  But they don�t hang themselves, he thought. They just have to go on putting papers under other people�s doors that do not even hate them. It must be quite a difficult trade being an ex-Fascist. Maybe he is not an ex-Fascist too. How do you know.

  I can�t hate Fascists, he thought. Nor Krauts either, since unfortunately, I am a soldier.

  �Listen, Portrait,� he said. �Do I have to hate the Krauts because we kill them? Do I have to hate them as soldiers and as human beings? It seems too easy a solution to me.�

  Well, portrait. Forget it. Forget it. You�re not old enough to know about it. You are two years younger than the girl that you portray, and she is younger and older than
hell; which is quite an old place.

  �Listen, portrait,� he said, and saying it, knew that now as long as he lived, he would have someone to talk to at the early hours that he woke.

  �As I was saying, portrait. The hell with that too. That�s too old for you too. That is one of the things you can�t say no matter how true it is. There are lots of things I can never say to you and maybe that will be good for me. It is about time something was. What do you think would be good for me, Portrait?

  �What�s the matter, Portrait?� he asked her. �You getting hungry? I am.�

  So he rang the bell for the waiter who would bring breakfast.

  He knew that now, even though the light was so good that every wave showed on the Grand Canal, lead colored and solid heavy with the wind, and the tide now high over the landing steps of the Palace directly opposite his room, there would be no telephone call for several hours.

  The young sleep good, he thought. They deserve it. �Why do we have to get old?� he asked the waiter who had come in with his glass-eye and the menu.

  �I don�t know, my Colonel. I suppose it is a natural process.�

  �Yes. I guess I imagine that too. The eggs fried with their faces up. Tea and toast.�

  �You don�t want anything American?�

  �The hell with anything American except me. Is the Gran Maestro astir yet?�

  �He has your Valpolicella in the big wicker fiascos of two liters and I have brought this decanter with it.�

  �That one,� the Colonel said. �I wish to Christ I could give him a regiment.�

  �I don�t think he would want one, really.�

  �No,� the Colonel said. �I don�t want one, really, myself.�

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE Colonel breakfasted with the leisure of a fighter who has been clipped badly, hears four, and knows how to relax truly for five seconds more.

  �Portrait,� he said. �You ought to relax too. That�s the only thing that is going to be difficult about you. That�s what they call the static element in painting. You know, Portrait, that almost no pictures, paintings rather, move at all. A few do. But not many.

  �I wish that your mistress was here and we could have movement. How do girls like you and she know so much so damn young and be so beautiful?

  �With us, if a girl is really beautiful, she comes from Texas and maybe, with luck, she can tell you what month it is. They can all count good though.

  �They teach them how to count, and keep their legs together, and how to put their hair up in pin curls. Sometime, portrait, for your sins, if you have any, you ought to have to sleep in a bed with a girl who has put her hair up in pin curls to be beautiful tomorrow. Not tonight. They�d never be beautiful tonight. For tomorrow, when we make the competition.

  �The girl, Renata, that you are, is sleeping now without ever having done anything to her hair. She is sleeping with it spread out on the pillow and all it is to her is a glorious, dark, silky annoyance, that she can hardly remember to comb, except that her governess taught her. �I see her in the street with the lovely long-legged stride and the wind doing anything it wants to her hair, and her true breasts under the sweater, and then I see the nights in Texas with the pin curls; tight and subjected by metallic instruments.