“The mirror bores me,” she said. “Putting on lipstick and moving your mouths over each other to get it spread properly and combing your too heavy hair is not a life for a woman, or even a girl alone, who loves someone. When you want to be the moon and various stars and live with your man and have five sons, looking at yourself in the mirror and doing the artifices of a woman is not very exciting.”
“Then let us be married at once.”
“No,” she said. “I had to make a decision about that, as about the other different things. All week long is my time to make decisions.”
“I make them too,” the Colonel told her. “But I am very vulnerable on this.”
“Let’s not talk about it. It makes a sweet hurt, but I think we would do better to find out what the Gran Maestro has for meat. Please drink your wine. You haven’t touched it.”
“I’ll touch it now,” the Colonel said. He did and it was pale and cold like the wines of Greece, but not resinous, and its body was as full and as lovely as that of Renata.
“It’s very like you.”
“Yes. I know. That’s why I wanted you to taste it.”
“I’m tasting it,” the Colonel said. “Now I will drink a full glass.”
“You’re a good man.”
“Thank you,” the Colonel said. “I’ll remember that all week and try to be one.” Then he said, “Gran Maestro.”
When the Gran Maestro came over, happy, conspiratorial, and ignoring his ulcers, the Colonel asked him, “What sort of meat have you that is worth our eating?”
“I’m not quite sure I know,” the Gran Maestro said. “But I will check. Your compatriot is over there in hearing distance. He would not let me seat him in the far corner.”
“Good,” the Colonel said. “We’ll give him something to write about.”
“He writes every night, you know. I’ve heard that from one of my colleagues at his hotel.”
“Good,” the Colonel said. “That shows that he is industrious even if he has outlived his talents.”
“We are all industrious,” the Gran Maestro said.
“In different ways.”
“I will go and check on what there actually is among the meats.”
“Check carefully.”
“I am industrious.”
“You are also damn sagacious.”
The Gran Maestro was gone and the girl said, “He is a lovely man and I love how fond he is of you.”
“We are good friends,” the Colonel said. “I hope he has a good steak for you.”
“There is one very good steak,” the Gran Maestro said, reappearing.
“You take it, Daughter. I get them all the time at the mess. Do you want it rare?”
“Quite rare, please.”
“Al sangue,” the Colonel said, “as John said when he spoke to the waiter in French. Crudo, bleu, or just make it very rare.”
“It’s rare,” the Gran Maestro said. “And you, my Colonel?”
“The scaloppine with Marsala, and the cauliflower braised with butter. Plus an artichoke vinaigrette if you can find one. What do you want, Daughter?”
“Mashed potatoes and a plain salad.”
“You’re a growing girl.”
“Yes. But I should not grow too much nor in the wrong directions.”
“I think that handles it,” the Colonel said. “What about a fiasco of Valpolicella?”
“We don’t have fiascos. This is a good hotel, you know. It comes in bottles.”
“I forgot,” the Colonel said. “Do you remember when it cost thirty centesimi the liter?”
“And we would throw the empty fiascos at the station guards from the troop trains?”
“And we would throw all the left over grenades away and bounce them down the hillside coming back from the Grappa?”
“And they would think there was a break-through when they would see the bursts and you never shaved, and we wore the fiamme nere on the grey, open jackets with the grey sweaters?”
“And I drank grappa and could not even feel the taste?”
“We must have been tough then,” the Colonel said.
“We were tough then,” the Gran Maestro said. “We were bad boys then, and you were the worst of the bad boys.”
“Yes,” the Colonel said. “I think we were rather bad boys. You forgive this will you, Daughter?”