“No, Supreme Commander.”
“Do you think we should give a homage to the Honorable Pacciardi?”
“As you wish.”
“Let’s defer it,” the Colonel said. He thought a moment, and signalled for another dry Martini.
“Do you think we might organize a homage and manifestation in some historic place such as San Marco or the old church at Torcello in favor of our Great Patron, Brusadelli, the Revered One?”
“I doubt if the religious authorities would permit it at this moment.”
“Then let us abandon all ideas of public manifestations for this winter, and work within our cadres, for the good of the Order.”
“I think that is soundest,” the Gran Maestro said. “We will re-group.”
“And how are you, yourself?”
“Awful,” the Gran Maestro said. “I have low blood pressure, ulcers, and I owe money.”
“Are you happy?”
“All the time,” the Gran Maestro said. “I like my work very much, and I meet extraordinary and interesting characters, also many Belgians. They are what we have instead of the locusts this year. Formerly we had the Germans. What was it Caesar said, ‘And the bravest of these are the Belgians.’ But not the best dressed. Do you agree?”
“I’ve seen them quite well costumed in Brussels,” the Colonel said. “A well fed, gay capital. Win, lose, or draw. I have never seen them fight though everyone tells me that they do.”
“We should have fought in Flanders in the old days.”
“We were not born in the old days,” the Colonel said. “So we automatically could not have fought then.”
“I wish we could have fought with the Condottieri when all you had to do was out-think them and they conceded. You could think and I would convey your orders.”
“We’d have to take a few towns for them to respect our thinking.”
“We would sack them if they defended them,” the Gran Maestro said. “What towns would you take?”
“Not this one,” the Colonel said. “I’d take Vicenza, Bergamo and Verona. Not necessarily in that order.”
“You’d have to take two more.”
“I know,” the Colonel said. He was a general now again, and he was happy. “I figured that I’d by-pass Brescia. It could fall of its own weight.”
“And how are you, Supreme Commander?” the Gran Maestro said, for this taking of towns had pulled him out of his depth.
He was at home in his small house in Treviso, close to the fast flowing river under the old walls. The weeds waved in the current and the fish hung in the shelter of the weeds and rose to insects that touched the water in the dusk. He was at home, too, in all operations that did not involve more than a company, and understood them as clearly as he understood the proper serving of a small dining room; or a large dining room.
But when the Colonel became a general officer again, as he had once been, and thought in terms that were as far beyond him as calculus is distant from a man who has only the knowledge of arithmetic, then he was not at home, and their contact was strained, and he wished the Colonel would return to things they both knew together when they were a lieutenant and a sergeant.
“What would you do about Mantova?” the Colonel asked.
“I do not know, my Colonel. I do not know whom you are fighting, nor what forces they have, nor what forces are at your disposal.”
“I thought you said we were Condottieri. Based on this town or on Padova.”
“My Colonel,” the Gran Maestro said, and he had diminished in no way, “I know nothing, truly, about Condottieri. Nor really how they fought then. I only said I would like to fight under you in such times.”
“There aren’t any such times any more,” the Colonel said and the spell was broken.
What the hell, maybe there never was any spell, the Colonel thought. The hell with you, he said to himself. Cut it out and be a human being when you’re half a hundred years old.
“Have another Carpano,” he said to the Gran Maestro.
“My Colonel, you will allow me to refuse because of the ulcers?”