Not with Germans.
Yes, I said.
But they probably wouldn't do that, he said.
It was too simple.
They'd try something complicated and get royally cooked.
I had to go, I said.
I had to get back to the hospital.
"Good-by," he said.
Then cheerily, "Every sort of luck!" There was a great contrast between his world pessimism and personal cheeriness.
I stopped at a barber shop and was shaved and went home to the hospital.
My leg was as well as it would get for a long time.
I had been up for examination three days before.
There were still some treatments to take before my course at the Ospedale. Maggiore was finished and I walked along the side street practising not limping.
An old man was cutting silhouettes under an arcade.
I stopped to watch him.
Two girls were posing and he cut their silhouettes together, snipping very fast and looking at them, his head on one side.
The girls were giggling.
He showed me the silhouettes before he pasted them on white paper and handed them to the girls.
"They're beautiful," he said. "How about you, Tenente?"
The girls went away looking at their silhouettes and laughing.
They were nice-looking girls.
One of them worked in the wine shop across from the hospital.
"All right," I said.
"Take your cap off."
"No.
With it on."
"It will not be so beautiful," the old man said. "But," he brightened, "it will be more military."
He snipped away at the black paper, then separated the two thicknesses and pasted the profiles on a card and handed them to me.
"How much?"
"That's all right." He waved his hand. "I just made them for you."
"Please." I brought out some coppers. "For pleasure."
"No.
I did them for a pleasure.
Give them to your girl."
"Many thanks until we meet."
"Until I see thee."
I went on to the hospital.
There were some letters, an official one, and some others.
I was to have three weeks' convalescent leave and then return to the front.
I read it over carefully.
Well, that was that.
The convalescent leave started October fourth when my course was finished.
Three weeks was twenty-one days.
That made October twenty-fifth.
I told them I would not be in and went to the restaurant a little way up the street from the hospital for supper and read my letters and the Corriere Della Sera at the table.
There was a letter from my grandfather, containing family news, patriotic encouragement, a draft for two hundred dollars, and a few clippings; a dull letter from the priest at our mess, a letter from a man I knew who was flying with the French and had gotten in with a wild gang and was telling about it, and a note from Rinaldi asking me how long I was going to skulk in Milano and what was all the news?
He wanted me to bring him phonograph records and enclosed a list.
I drank a small bottle of chianti with the meal, had a coffee afterward with a glass of cognac, finished the paper, put my letters in my pocket, left the paper on the table with the tip and went out.
In my room at the hospital I undressed, put on pajamas and a dressing-gown, pulled down the curtains on the door that opened onto the balcony and sitting up in bed read Boston papers from a pile Mrs. Meyers had left for her boys at the hospital.
The Chicago White Sox were winning the American League pennant and the New York Giants were leading the National League.