Please hold me very tightly so we can be a part of each other for a little while.''
''We can try,'' the Colonel said.
''Couldn't I be you?''
''That's awfully complicated.
We could try of course.''
''I'm you now,'' she said. ''And I just took the city of Paris.''
''Jesus, Daughter,'' he said. ''You've got an awful lot of problems on your hands.
The next thing, they will parade the twenty-eighth division through.''
''I don't care.''
''I do.''
''Were they not good?''
''Sure.
They had fine commanders, too.
But they were National Guard and hard luck.
What you call a T.S. division.
Get your T.S. slip from the Chaplain.''
''I understand none of those things.''
''They aren't worth explaining,'' the Colonel said.
''Will you tell me some true things about Paris?
I love it so much and when I think of you taking it, then, it is as though I were riding in this gondola with Marechal Ney.''
''A no good job,'' the Colonel said. ''Anyway, not after he fought all those rear-guard actions coming back from that big Russian town.
He used to fight ten, twelve, fifteen times a day. Maybe more.
Afterwards, he couldn't recognize people.
Please don't get in any gondolas with him.''
''He was always one of my great heroes.''
''Yeah.
Mine too.
Until Quatre Bras.
Maybe it wasn't Quatre Bras.
I'm getting rusty.
Give it the generic title of Waterloo.''
''Was he bad there?''
''Awful,'' the Colonel told her. ''Forget it.
Too many rear-guard actions coming back from Moskova.''
''But they called him the bravest of the brave.''
''You can't eat on that.
You have to be that, always, and then be the smartest of the smart.
Then you need a lot of stuff coming up.''
''Tell me about Paris, please.
We should not make more love, I know.''
''I don't know it.
Who says it?'' ''I say it because I love you.''
''All right.
You said it and you love me.
So we act on that.
The hell with it.''
''Do you think we could once more if it would not hurt you?''
''Hurt me?'' the Colonel said. ''When the hell was I ever hurt?''
CHAPTER 14
''PLEASE don't be bad,'' she said, pulling the blanket over them both. ''Please drink a glass of this with me.