“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?”