ACROSS the RIVER and INTO the TREES by ERNEST HEMINGWAY

“No. I told her about things once, and she wrote about them. But that was in another country and besides the wench is dead.”

“Is she really dead?”

“Deader than Phoebus the Phoenician. But she doesn’t know it yet.”

“What would you do if we were together in the Piazza and you saw her?”

“I’d look straight through her to show her how dead she was.”

“Thank you very much,” the girl said. “You know that another woman, or a woman in memory, is a ter­rible thing for a young girl to deal with when she is still without experience.”

“There isn’t any other woman,” the Colonel told her, and his eyes were bad and remembering. “Nor is there any woman of memory.”

“Thank you very much,” the girl said. “When I look at you I believe it truly. But please never look at me nor think of me like that.”

“Should we hunt her down and hang her to a high tree?” the Colonel said with anticipation.

“No. Let us forget her.”

“She is forgotten,” the Colonel said. And, strangely enough, she was. It was strange because she had been present in the room for a moment, and she had very nearly caused a panic; which is one of the strangest things there is, the Colonel thought. He knew about panics.

But she was gone now, for good and forever; cauter­ized; exorcised and with the eleven copies of her re-classification papers, in which was included the formal, notarized act of divorcement, in triplicate.

“She is forgotten,” the Colonel said. It was quite true.

“I’m so pleased,” the girl said. “I don’t know why they ever let her into the hotel.”

“We’re enough alike,” the Colonel said. “We better not carry it too God damned far.”

“You can hang her if you wish because she is why we cannot marry.”

“She’s forgotten,” the Colonel told her. “Maybe she will take a good look at herself in the mirror sometime and hang herself.”

“Now that she is out of the room we should wish her no bad luck. But, as a good Venetian, I wish that she were dead.”

“So do I,” the Colonel said. “And now, since she is not, let us forget her for keeps.”

“For keeps and for always,” the girl said. “I hope that is the correct diction. Or in Spanish para siempre.”

“Para siempre and his brother,” the Colonel said.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THEY lay together now and did not speak and the Colo­nel felt her heart beat. It is easy to feel a heart beat under a black sweater knitted by someone in the family, and her dark hair lay, long and heavy, over his good arm. It isn’t heavy, he thought, it is lighter than anything there is. She lay, quiet and loving, and whatever it was that they possessed was in complete communication. He kissed her on the mouth, gently and hungrily, and then it was as though there was static, suddenly, when com­munications had been perfect.

“Richard,” she said. “I’m sorry about things.”

“Never be sorry,” the Colonel said. “Never discuss casualties, Daughter.”

“Say it again.”

“Daughter.”

“Will you tell me some happy things I can have for during the week and some more of war for my educa­tion?”

“Let’s skip war.”

“No. I need it for my education.”

“I do too,” the Colonel said. “Not maneuvers. You know, in our army once, a general officer through chicanery obtained the plan of the maneuver. He antici­pated every move of the enemy force and comported himself so brilliantly that he was promoted over many better men. And that was why we got smacked one time. That and the prevalence of week-ends.”

“We’re on a week-end now.”

“I know,” the Colonel said. “I can still count up to seven.”

“But are you bitter about everything?”

“No. It is just that I am half a hundred years old and I know things.”

“Tell me something more about Paris because I love to think of you and Paris in the week.”

“Daughter, why don’t you lay off Paris?”

“But I’ve been in Paris, and I will go back there again, and I want to know. It is the loveliest city in the world, next to our own, and I want to know some things truly to take with me.”

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