“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?”