“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 send that man there?” he pointed to a destroyed old man who did odd jobs and ran errands around the docks, always ready with the unneeded aid to the elbow of the ascending or descending passenger, always ready to help when no help was needed, his old felt hat held out as he bowed after the un-needed act. “He’ll take you to the vaporetto. There’s one in twenty minutes.”
“The hell with it,” the Colonel said. “Take us to the Gritti.”
“Con piacere,” the boatman said.
The Colonel and Jackson lowered themselves into the launch which looked like a speed boat. It was radiantly varnished and lovingly kept and was powered with a marine conversion of a tiny Fiat engine that had served its allotted time in the car of a provincial doctor and had been purchased out of one of the grave-yards of automobiles, those mechanical elephant cemeteries that are the one certain thing you may find in our world near any populated center, and been reconditioned and reconverted to start this new life on the canals of this city.