Эрнест Хемингуэй - Across the River and Into the Trees

'I think we will have a good time to–night. Even under the circumstances, whatever they are.'

'Should we take this new bottle in the gondola?'

'Yes,' the girl said. 'But with deep glasses. I'll tell the Gran Maestro . Let's get our coats and go.'

'Good. I'll take some of this medicine and sign for the G.M. and we'll go.'

'I wish it was me taking the medicine instead of you.'

'I'm glad as hell it isn't,' the Colonel said. 'Should we pick our gondola or have them bring one to the landing?'

'Let's gamble and have them bring one to the landing. What do we have to lose?'

'Nothing, I guess. Probably nothing.'

They went out the side door of the hotel to the imbarcadero and the wind hit them. The light from the hotel shone on the blackness of the gondola and made the water green. She looks as lovely as a good horse or as a racing shell, the Colonel thought. Why have I never seen a gondola before? What hand or eye framed that darked symmetry?

'Where should we go?' the girl asked.

Her hair, in the light from the hotel door and window, as she stood on the dock by the black gondola, was blowing back in the wind, so she looked like the figure–head on a ship. The rest of it, too, the Colonel thought.

'Let's just ride through the park,' the Colonel said. 'Or through the Bois with the top down. Let him take us out to Armenonville.'

'Will we go to Paris?'

'Sure,' the Colonel said. 'Tell him to take us for an hour where the going is easiest. I don't want to drive him into that wind.'

'The tide is quite high with this wind,' the girl said. 'Some of our places he couldn't get under the bridges. May I tell him where to go?'

'Of course, Daughter.'

'Stow that ice bucket aboard,' the Colonel said to the second waiter, who had come out with them.

'The Gran Maestro said to tell you, as you embarked, that this bottle of wine was his present.'

'Thank him properly and tell him he can't do that.'

'He had better go into the wind a little first,' the girl said. 'Then I know how he should go.'

'The Gran Maestro sent this,' the second waiter said.

It was a folded, old U.S.O.D. blanket. Renata was talking to the gondoliere, her hair blowing. The gondoliere wore a heavy blue navy sweater and he was bare–headed too.

'Thank him,' the Colonel said.

He slipped a bill into the second waiter's hand. The second waiter returned it. 'You already made the notation on the check. Neither you nor I nor the Gran Maestro are starving.'

'What about the moglie and the bambini?'

'I don't have that. Your mediums smacked our house in Treviso.'

'I'm sorry.'

'You needn't be,' the second waiter said. 'You were a foot soldier as I was.'

'Permit me to be sorry.'

'Sure,' the second waiter said. 'And what the hell difference does it make? Be happy, my Colonel and be happy, my Lady.'

They got down into the gondola and there was the same magic, as always, of the light hull and the sudden displacement that you made and then the trimming in the dark privacy and then the second trimming, as the gondoliere started to scull, laying her partly on her side so that he would have more control.

'Now,' the girl said. 'We are in our home and I love you. Please kiss me and put all love into it.'

The Colonel held her close, with her head thrown back and kissed her until there was nothing left of the kiss but desperation.

'I love you.'

'Whatever that means,' she interrupted.

'I love you and I know whatever that means. The picture is lovely. But there is no word for what you are.'

'Wild,' she said. 'Or careless or unkempt?'

'No.'

'The last was one of the first words I learned from my governess. It means you do not comb your hair enough. Neglectful is when you do not brush one hundred strokes at night.'

'I'm going to run my hand through it and make it unkempter still.'

'Your hurt hand?'

'Yes.'

'We're sitting on the wrong sides for that. Change over.'

'Good. That is a sensible order couched in simple language and easily understood.'

It was fun moving over, trying not to disturb the balance of the gondola, but having to trim again carefully.

'Now,' she said. 'But hold me tightly with the other arm.'

'You know just what you want?'

'I do indeed. Is it un–maidenly? I learned that word, too, from my governess.'

'No,' he said. 'It's lovely. Pull up the blanket good and feel that wind.'

'It's from the high mountains.'

'Yes. And beyond there it's from somewhere else.'

The Colonel heard the slap of the waves and he felt the wind come sharply and the rough familiarity of the blanket and then he felt the girl cold–warm and lovely and with upraised breasts that his left hand coasted lightly over. Then he ran his bad hand through her hair once, twice and three times and then he kissed her and it was worse than desperation.

'Please,' she said, from almost underneath the blanket. 'Let me kiss now.'

'No,' he said. 'Me again.'

The wind was very cold and lashed their faces but under the blanket there was no wind nor nothing; only his ruined hand that searched for the island in the great river with the high steep banks.

'That's it,' she said.

He kissed her then and he searched for the island, finding it and losing it and then finding it for good. For good and for bad, he thought and for good and for all.

'My darling,' he said. 'My well beloved. Please.'

'No. Just hold me very tight and hold the high ground, too.'

The Colonel said nothing, because he was assisting, or had made an act of presence, at the only mystery that he believed in except the occasional bravery of man.

'Please don't move,' the girl said. 'Then move a great amount.'

The Colonel, lying under the blanket in the wind, knowing it is only what man does for woman that he retains; except what he does for his fatherland or his motherland, however you get the reading, proceeded.

'Please, darling,' the girl said. 'I don't think I can stand it.'

'Don't think of anything. Don't think of anything at all.'

'I'm not.'

'Don't think.'

'Oh please let's not talk.'

'Is it right?'

'You know.'

'You're sure.'

'Oh please not talk. Please.'

Yes, he thought. Please and please again.

She said nothing and neither did he, and when the great bird had flown far out of the closed window of the gondola and was lost and gone, neither of them said anything. He held her head lightly with his good arm and the other arm held the high ground now.

'Please put it where it should be,' she said. 'Your hand.'

'Should we?'

'No. Just hold me tight and try to love me true.'

'I love you true,' he said and just then the gondola turned to the left, quite sharply and the wind was on his right cheek and he said, with his old eyes catching the outline of the Palace where they turned and noting it, 'You're in the lee now, Daughter.'

'But it is too soon now. Don't you know how a woman feels?'

'No. Only what you tell me.'

'Thank you for the you. But don't you really know?'

'No. I never asked, I guess.'

'Guess now,' she said. 'And please wait until after we have gone under the second bridge.'

'Take a glass of this,' the Colonel said, reaching accurately and well for the champagne bucket with the ice and uncorking the bottle the Gran Maestro had uncorked and then placed a common wine cork in.

'This is good for you, Daughter. It is good for all the ills that all of us have and for all sadness and indecision.'

'I have none of those,' she said, speaking grammatically as her governess had taught her. 'I am just a woman, or a girl, or whatever that is, doing whatever it is she should not do. Let's do it again, please, now I am in the lee.'