“You forgive me, Daughter. Much of what I say is unjust. But it is truer than the things that you will read in Generals’ memoirs. After a man gets one star, or more, the truth becomes as difficult for him to attain as the Holy Grail was in our ancestors’ time.”
“But you were a general officer.”
“Not for too damn long,” the Colonel said. “Now Captains,” the General said, “they know the exact truth and they can mostly tell it to you. If they can’t, you reclassify them.”
“Would you reclassify me if I lied?”
“It would depend on what you lied about.”
“I’m not going to lie about anything. I don’t want to be reclassified. It sounds horrible.”
“It is,” the Colonel said. “And you send them back to have it done to them with eleven different copies of why it should be done, every one of which you sign.”
“Did you reclassify many?”
“Plenty.”
The concierge came into the room with the portrait, carrying it in its big frame, much as a ship moves when she is carrying too much sail.
“Get two chairs,” the Colonel said to the second waiter, “and put them there. See that the canvas does not touch the chairs. And hold it so it does not slip.”
Then to the girl he said, “We’ll have to change that frame.”
“I know,” she said. “It was not my choice. Take it unframed with you and we’ll choose a good frame next week. Now look at it. Not at the frame. At what it says, or does not say, of me.”
It was a beautiful portrait; neither cold, nor snobbish, nor stylised, nor modern. It was the way you would want your girl painted if Tintoretto were still around and, if he were not around, you settled for Velasquez. It was not the way either of them painted. It was simply a splendid portrait painted, as they sometimes are, in our time.
“It’s wonderful,” the Colonel said. “It is truly lovely.”
The concierge and the second waiter were holding it, and looking at it around the edges. The Gran Maestro was admiring fully. The American, two tables down, was looking at it with his journalistic eyes, wondering who painted it. The back of the canvas was to the other diners.
“It is wonderful,” the Colonel said. “But you can’t give me that.”
“I already have,” the girl said. “I’m sure my hair was never that long over my shoulders.”
“I think it probably was.”
“I could try to let it get that long if you want.”
“Try,” the Colonel said. “You great beauty you. I love you very much. You and you portrayed on canvas.”
“Tell the waiters if you like. I’m sure it won’t come as a great shock to them.”
“Take the canvas upstairs to my room,” the Colonel said to the concierge. “Thank you very much for bringing it in. If the price is right, I am going to buy it.”
“The price is right,” the girl said to him. “Should we have them take it and the chairs down and make a special showing of it for your compatriot? The Gran Maestro could tell him the address of the painter and he could visit the picturesque studio.”
“It is a very lovely portrait,” the Gran Maestro said. “But it should be taken to the room. One should never let Roederer or Perrier-Jouet do the talking.”
“Take it to the room, please.”
“You said please without a pause before it.”
“Thank you,” the Colonel said. “I am very deeply moved by the portrait and I am not entirely responsible for what I say.”
“Let’s neither of us be responsible.”
“Agreed,” the Colonel said. “The Gran Maestro is really very responsible. He always was.”
“No,” the girl said. “I think he did not only from responsibility but from malice. We all have malice, you know, of some kind or another in this town. I think perhaps he did not want the man to have even a journalist’s look into happiness.”
“Whatever that is.”
“I learned that phrase from you, and now you have re-learned it back from me.”
“That’s the way it goes,” the Colonel said. “What you win in Boston you lose in Chicago.”