Эрнест Хемингуэй - Across the River and Into the Trees

'The wind made it very tangled,' she said. 'Do you love me still?'

'Yes,' the Colonel said. 'May I help you?'

'No, I've done it all my life.'

'You could stand sidewise.'

'No. All contours are for our five sons and for your head to rest on.'

'I was only thinking of the face,' the Colonel said. 'But thank you for calling my attention. My attention has been faulty again.'

'I am over bold.'

'No,' the Colonel said. 'In America, they make such things of wire and of sponge–rubber, such as you use in the seats of tanks. You never know there, whether there is any truth in the matter, unless you are a bad boy, as I am.'

'Here it is not that way,' she said, and, with the comb, swung her now parted hair forward so that it came below the line of her cheek and, slanting back, hung over her shoulders.

'Do you like it neat?'

'It's not too neat but it is damn lovely.'

'I could put it up and all that sort of thing if you value neatness. But I cannot manage hairpins and it seems so silly.' Her voice was so lovely and it always reminded him of Pablo Casals playing the 'cello that it made him feel as a wound does that you think you cannot bear. But you can bear anything, he thought.

'I love you very much the way you are,' the Colonel said. 'And you are the most beautiful woman I have ever known, or seen, ever in paintings by good painters.'

'I wonder why the portrait has not come.'

'The portrait is lovely to have,' the Colonel said, and now he was a General again without thinking of it. 'But it is like skinning a dead horse.'

'Please don't be rough,' the girl said. 'I don't feel at all like being rough to–night.'

'I slipped into the jargon of my sale mètier .'

'No,' she said. 'Please put your arms around me, gently and well. Please. It is not a dirty trade. It is the oldest and the best, although most people who practise it are unworthy.'

He held her as tight as he could without hurting and she said, 'I would not have you be a lawyer nor a priest. Nor sell things. Nor be a great success. I love you to be in your trade and I love you. Please whisper to me if you wish.'

The Colonel whispered; holding her tight, and with his heart broken, honestly and fairly, in his whisper that was as barely audible as a silent dog whistle heard close to the ear, 'I love you, devil. And you're my daughter, too. And I don't care about our losses because the moon is our mother and our father. And now let's go down to dinner.'

He whispered this last so low that it was inaudible to anyone who did not love you.

'Yes,' the girl said. 'Yes. But kiss me once more first.'

They were at their table in the far corner of the bar, where the Colonel had both his flanks covered, and he rested solidly against the corner of the room. The Gran Maestro knew about this, since he had been an excellent sergeant in a good company of infantry, in a first–rate regiment, and he would no more have seated his Colonel in the middle of a room than he would have taken up a stupid defensive position.

'The lobster,' the Gran Maestro said.

The lobster was imposing. He was double the size a lobster should be, and his unfriendliness had gone with the boiling, so that now he looked a monument to his dead self; complete with protruding eyes and his delicate, far–extended antennae that were for knowing what rather stupid eyes could not tell him.

He looks a little bit like Georgie Patton, the Colonel thought. But he probably never cried in his life when he was moved.

'Do you think that he will be tough?' he asked the girl in Italian.

'No,' the Gran Maestro assured them, still bowing with the lobster. 'He's truly not tough. He's only big. You know the type.'

'All right,' the Colonel said. 'Serve him.'

'And what will you drink?'

'What do you want, Daughter?'

'What you want?'

'Capri Bianco,' the Colonel said. 'Secco and really cold.'

'I have it ready,' said the Gran Maestro .

'We are having fun,' the girl said. 'We are having it again and without sorrow. Isn't he an imposing lobster?'

'He is,' the Colonel answered. 'And he better damn well be tender.'

'He will be,' the girl told him. 'The Gran Maestro doesn't lie. Isn't it wonderful to have people who do not lie?'

'Very wonderful and quite rare,' the Colonel said. 'I was thinking just now of a man named Georgie Patton who possibly never told the truth in his life.'

'Do you ever lie?'

'I've lied four times. But each time I was very tired. That's not an excuse,' he added.

'I lied a lot when I was a little girl. But mostly it was making up stories. Or I hope so. But I have never lied to my own advantage.'

'I have,' said the Colonel. 'Four times.'

'Would you have been a general if you had not lied?'

'If I had lied as others lied, I would have been a three–star general.'

'Would it make you happier to be a three–star general?'

'No,' said the Colonel. 'It would not.'

'Put your right hand, your real hand, in your pocket once and tell me how you feel.'

The Colonel did so.

'Wonderful,' he said. 'But I have to give them back you know.'

'No. Please, no.'

'We won't go into it now.'

Just then the lobster was served.

It was tender, with the peculiar slippery grace of that kicking muscle which is the tail, and the claws were excellent; neither too thin, nor too fat.

'A lobster fills with the moon,' the Colonel told the girl. 'When the moon is dark he is not worth eating.'

'I didn't know that.'

'I think it may be because, with the full moon, he feeds all night. Or maybe it is that the full moon brings him feed.'

'They come from the Dalmatian coast do they not?'

'Yes,' the Colonel said. 'That's your rich coast in fish. Maybe I should say our rich coast.'

'Say it,' the girl said. 'You don't know how important things that are said are.'

'They are a damn sight more important when you put them on paper.'

'No,' the girl said. 'I don't agree. The paper means nothing unless you say them in your heart.'

'And what if you haven't a heart, or your heart is worthless?'

'You have a heart and it is not worthless.'

I would sure as hell like to trade it in on a new one, the Colonel thought. I do not see why that one, of all the muscles, should fail me. But he said nothing of this, and put his hand in his pocket.

'They feel wonderful,' he said. 'And you look wonderful.'

'Thank you,' she said. 'I will remember that all week.'

'You could always just look in the glass.'

'The mirror bores me,' she said. 'Putting on lipstick and moving your lips 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.'