I guess the best, probably.
I never walked in it that it wasn't fun.
I could learn it really well, he thought, and then I'd have that.
It's a strange, tricky town and to walk from any part to any other given part of it is better than working crossword puzzles.
It's one of the few things to our credit that we never smacked it, and to their credit that they respected it.
Christ, I love it, he said, and I'm so happy I helped defend it when I was a punk kid, and with an insufficient command of the language and I never even saw her until that clear day in the winter when I went back to have that small wound dressed, and saw her rising from the sea.
Merde, he thought, we did very well that winter up at the juncture.
I wish I could fight it again, he thought. Knowing what I know now and having what we have now.
But they'd have it too and the essential problem is just the same, except who holds the air.
And all this time he had been watching the bow of the beat-up beautifully varnished, delicately brass-striped boat, with the brass all beautifully polished, cut the brown water, and seen the small traffic problems.
They went under the white bridge and under the unfinished wood bridge.
Then they left the red bridge on the right and passed under the first high-flying white bridge.
Then there was the black iron fret-work bridge on the canal leading into the Rio Nuovo and they passed the two stakes chained together but not touching: like us the Colonel thought.
He watched the tide pull at them and he saw how the chains had worn the wood since he first had seen them.
That's us, he thought. That's our monument.
And how many monuments are there to us in the canals of this town?
Then they still went slowly until the great lantern that was on the right of the entrance to the Grand Canal where the engine commenced its metallic agony that produced a slight increase in speed.
Now they came down and under the Accademia between the pilings where they passed, at touching distance, a heavily loaded black, diesel boat full of cut timber, cut in chunks, to burn for firewood in the damp houses of the Sea City.
''That's beech, isn't it?'' the Colonel asked the boatman.
''Beech and another wood that is cheaper that I do not recall, at this moment, the name of.''
''Beech is, to an open fire, as anthracite coal is to a stove.
Where do they cut that beech?''
''I'm not a man of the mountains.
But I think it comes from up beyond Bassano on the other side of the Grappa.
I went there to the Grappa to see where my brother was buried.
It was an excursion that they made from Bassano, and we went to the big ossario.
But we returned by Feltre.
I could see it was a fine timber country on the other side as you came down the mountains into the valley.
We came down that military road, and they were hauling lots of wood.''
''In what year was your brother killed on Grappa?''
''In nineteen-eighteen.
He was a patriot and inflamed by hearing d'Annunzio talk, and he volunteered before his class was called.
We never knew him very well because he went so quickly.''
''How many were you in the family?''
''We were six.
We lost two beyond the Isonzo, one on the Bainsizza and one on the Carso.
Then we lost this brother I speak of on the Grappa and I remained.''
''I'll get you the God-damned jeep complete with handles,'' the Colonel said. ''Now let's not be morbid and look for all the places where my friends live.''
They were moving up the Grand Canal now and it was easy to see where your friends lived.
''That's the house of the Contessa Dandolo,'' the Colonel said.
He did not say, but thought, she is over eighty, and she is as gay as a girl and does not have any fear of dying.
She dyes her hair red and it looks very well.
She is a good companion and an admirable woman.
Her palazzo was pleasant looking, set well back from the Canal with a garden in front and a landing place of its own where many gondolas had come, in their various times, bringing hearty, cheerful, sad and disillusioned people.
But most of them had been cheerful because they were going to see the Contessa Dandolo.
Now, beating up the Canal, against the cold wind off the mountains, and with the houses as clear and sharp as on a winter day, which, of course, it was, they saw the old magic of the city and its beauty.
But it was conditioned, for the Colonel, by his knowing many of the people who lived in the palazzos; or if no one lived there now, knowing to what use the different places had been put.
There's Alvarito's mother's house, he thought, and did not say.
She never lives there much and stays out at the country house near Treviso where they have trees.
She's tired of there not being trees in Venice.