She kissed him kind, and hard, and desperately, and the Colonel could not think about any fights or any picturesque or strange incidents.
He only thought of her and how she felt and how close life comes to death when there is ecstasy.
And what the hell is ecstasy and what's ecstasy's rank and serial number?
And how does her black sweater feel.
And who made all her smoothness and delight and the strange pride and sacrifice and wisdom of a child?
Yes, ecstasy is what you might have had and instead you draw sleep's other brother.
Death is a lot of shit, he thought. It comes to you in small fragments that hardly show where it has entered.
It comes, sometimes, atrociously.
It can come from unboiled water; an un-pulled-up mosquito boot, or it can come with the great, white-hot, clanging roar we have lived with.
It comes in small cracking whispers that precede the noise of the automatic weapon.
It can come with the smoke-emitting arc of the grenade, or the sharp, cracking drop of the mortar.
I have seen it come, loosening itself from the bomb rack, and falling with that strange curve.
It comes in the metallic rending crash of a vehicle, or the simple lack of traction on a slippery road.
It comes in bed to most people, I know, like love's opposite number.
I have lived with it nearly all my life and the dispensing of it has been my trade.
But what can I tell this girl now on this cold, windy morning in the Gritti Palace Hotel?
''What would you like to know, Daughter?'' he asked her.
''Everything.''
''All right,'' the Colonel said. ''Here goes.''
CHAPTER 29
THEY lay on the pleasantly hard, new-made bed with their legs pressed tight against one another, and her head was on his chest, and her hair spread across his old hard neck; and he told her.
''We landed without much opposition.
They had the true opposition at the other beach.
Then we had to link up with the people who had been dropped, and take and secure various towns, and then we took Cherbourg.
This was difficult, and had to be done very fast, and the orders were from a General called Lightning Joe that you never would have heard of.
Good General.''
''Go on, please.
You spoke about Lightning Joe before.''
''After Cherbourg we had everything.
I took nothing but an Admiral's compass because I had a small boat at that time on Chesapeake Bay.
But we had all the Wehrmacht stamped Martell and some people had as much as six million German printed French francs.
They were good until a year ago, and at that time they were worth fifty to the dollar, and many a man has a tractor now instead of simply one mule who knew how to send them home through his Esses, or sometimes his G's.
''I never stole anything except the compass because I thought it was bad luck to steal, unnecessarily, in war.
But I drank the cognac and I used to try to figure out the different corrections on the compass when I had time.
The compass was the only friend I had, and the telephone was my life.
We had more wire strung than there are cunts in Texas.''
''Please keep telling me and be as little rough as you can.
I don't know what the word means and I don't want to know.''
''Texas is a big state,'' the Colonel said. ''That is why I used it and its female population as a symbol.
You cannot say more cunts than Wyoming because there are less than thirty thousand there, perhaps, hell, make it fifty, and there was a lot of wire, and you kept stringing it and rolling it up, and stringing it again.''
''Go on.''
''We will cut to the break-through,'' the Colonel said. ''Please tell me if this bores you.''
''No.''
''So we made the mucking break-through,'' the Colonel said, and now his head was turned to her head, and he was not lecturing; he was confessing.
''The first day most of them came over and dropped the Christmas tree ornaments that confuse the other people's radar and it was called off.
We were ready to go but they called it off.
Quite properly I am sure.
I love the very highest brass like I love the pig's you know.''
''Tell it to me and don't be bad.''
''Conditions were not propitious,'' the Colonel said. ''So the second day we were for it, as our British cousins, who could not fight their way out of a wet tissue towel, say, and over came the people of the wild, blue yonder.