“You don’t stay gentle very long,” the girl said. “Let us ask Ettore.”
They looked at the man at the third table. He had a strange face like an over-enlarged, disappointed weasel or ferret. It looked as pock-marked and as blemished as the mountains of the moon seen through a cheap telescope and, the Colonel thought, it looked like Goebbels’ face, if Herr Goebbels had ever been in a plane that burned, and not been able to bail out before the fire reached him.
Above this face, which was ceaselessly peering, as though the answer might be found by enough well directed glances and by queries, there was black hair that seemed to have no connection with the human race. The man looked as though he had been scalped and then the hair replaced. Very interesting, the Colonel thought. Can he be a compatriot? Yes, he must.
A little spit ran out of the corner of his mouth as he spoke, peeringly, with the elderly, wholesome looking woman who was with him. She looks like anybody’s mother in an illustration in “The Ladies’ Home Journal,” the Colonel thought. “The Ladies’ Home Journal” was one of the magazines received regularly at the Officer’s Club in Trieste and the Colonel looked through it when it came. It is a wonderful magazine, he thought, because it combines sexology and beautiful foods. It makes me hungry both ways.
But who do you suppose that character is? He looks like a caricature of an American who has been run one half way through a meat chopper and then been boiled, slightly, in oil. I’m not being so gentle, he thought.
Ettore, with his emaciated face, and his love of joking and fundamental and abiding disrespect, came over and the Colonel said, “Who is that spiritual character?”
Ettore shook his head.
The man was short and dark with glossy black hair that did not seem to go with his strange face. He looked, the Colonel thought, as though he had forgotten to change his wig as he grew older. Has a wonderful face though, the Colonel thought. Looks like some of the hills around Verdun. I don’t suppose he could be Goebbels and he picked up that face in the last days when they were all playing at Götterdämmerung. Komm’ Süsser Tod, he thought. Well they sure bought themselves a nice big piece of Süsser Tod at the end.
“You don’t want a nice Süsser Tod sandwich do you Miss Renata?”
“I don’t think so,” the girl said. “Though I love Bach and I am sure Cipriani could make one.”
“I was not talking against Bach,” the Colonel said.
“I know it.”
“Hell,” the Colonel said. “Bach was practically a co-belligerent. As you were,” he added.
“I don’t think we have to talk against me.”
“Daughter,” the Colonel said. “When will you learn that I might joke against you because I love you?”
“Now,” she said. “I’ve learned it. But you know it’s fun not to joke too rough.”
“Good. I’ve learned it.”
“How often do you think of me during the week?”
“All of the time.”
“No. Tell me truly.”
“All of the time. Truly.”
“Do you think it is this bad for everyone?”
“I wouldn’t know,” the Colonel said. “That’s one of the things I would not know.”
“I hope it’s not this bad for everyone. I had no idea it could be this bad.”
“Well you know now.”
“Yes,” the girl said. “I know now. I know now and for keeps and for always. Is that the correct way to say it?”
“I know now is enough,” the Colonel said. “Ettore, that character with the inspiring face and the nice looking woman with him doesn’t live at the Gritti does he?”
“No,” Ettore said. “He lives next door but he goes to the Gritti sometimes to eat.”
“Good,” the Colonel said. “It will be wonderful to see him if I should ever be down hearted. Who is the woman with him? His wife? His mother? His daughter?”
“There you have me,” Ettore said. “We haven’t kept track of him in Venice. He has aroused neither love, hate, dislike, fear nor suspicion. Do you really want to know anything about him? I could ask Cipriani.”