“I’m so sorry,” she said. I felt I had a certain advantage.
“You were quite right.”
“I’m dreadfully sorry,” she said. “I just couldn’t stand the nurse’s-eveningoff aspect of it. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I did hurt you, didn’t I?”
She was looking at me in the dark. I was angry and yet certain, seeing it all ahead like the moves in a chess game.
“You did exactly right,” I said. “I don’t mind at all.”
“Poor man.”
“You see I’ve been leading a sort of a funny life. And I never even talk English. And then you are so very beautiful.” I looked at her.
“You don’t need to say a lot of nonsense. I said I was sorry. We do get along.”
“Yes,” I said. “And we have gotten away from the war.”
She laughed. It was the first time I had ever heard her laugh. I watched her face.
“You are sweet,” she said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes. You are a dear. I’d be glad to kiss you if you don’t mind.”
I looked in her eyes and put my arm around her as I had before and kissed her. I kissed her hard and held her tight and tried to open her lips; they were closed tight. I was still angry and as I held her suddenly she shivered. I held her close against me and could feel her heart beating and her lips opened and her head went back against my hand and then she was crying on my shoulder.
“Oh, darling,” she said. “You will be good to me, won’t you?”
What the hell, I thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. She was crying.
“You will, won’t you?” She looked up at me. “Because we’re going to have a strange life.”
After a while I walked with her to the door of the villa and she went in and I walked home. Back at the villa I went upstairs to the room. Rinaldi was lying on his bed. He looked at me.
“So you make progress with Miss Barkley?”
“We are friends.”
“You have that pleasant air of a dog in heat.”
I did not understand the word.
“Of a what?”
He explained.
“You,” I said, “have that pleasant air of a dog who—”
“Stop it,” he said. “In a little while we would say insulting things.” He laughed.
“Good-night,” I said.
“Good-night, little puppy.”
I knocked over his candle with the pillow and got into bed in the dark.
Rinaldi picked up the candle, lit it and went on reading.
6
I was away for two days at the posts. When I got home it was too late and I did not see Miss Barkley until the next evening. She was not in the garden and I had to wait in the office of the hospital until she came down. There were many marble busts on painted wooden pillars along the walls of the room they used for an office. The hall too, that the office opened on, was lined with them. They had the complete marble quality of all looking alike. Sculpture had always seemed a dull business—still, bronzes looked like something. But marble busts all looked like a cemetery. There was one fine cemetery though—the one at Pisa. Genoa was the place to see the bad marbles. This had been the villa of a very wealthy German and the busts must have cost him plenty. I wondered who had done them and how much he got. I tried to make out whether they were members of the family or what; but they were all uniformly classical. You could not tell anything about them.
I sat on a chair and held my cap. We were supposed to wear steel helmets even in Gorizia but they were uncomfortable and too bloody theatrical in a town where the civilian inhabitants had not been evacuated. I wore one when we went up to the posts and carried an English gas mask. We were just beginning to get some of them. They were a real mask. Also we were required to wear an automatic pistol; even doctors and sanitary officers. I felt it against the back of the chair. You were liable to arrest if you did not have one worn in plain sight. Rinaldi carried a holster stuffed with toilet paper. I wore a real one and felt like a gunman until I practised firing it. It was an Astra 7.65 caliber with a short barrel and it jumped so sharply when you let it off that there was no question of hitting anything. I practised with it, holding below the target and trying to master the jerk of the ridiculous short barrel until I could hit within a yard of where I aimed at twenty paces and then the ridiculousness of carrying a pistol at all came over me and I soon forgot it and carried it flopping against the small of my back with no feeling at all except a vague sort of shame when I met English-speaking people. I sat now in the chair and an orderly of some sort looked at me disapprovingly from behind a desk while I looked at the marble floor, the pillars with the marble busts, and the frescoes on the wall and waited for Miss Barkley. The frescoes were not bad. Any frescoes were good when they started to peel and flake off.
I saw Catherine Barkley coming down the hall, and stood up. She did not seem tall walking toward me but she looked very lovely.
“Good-evening, Mr. Henry,” she said.
“How do you do?” I said. The orderly was listening behind the desk.
“Shall we sit here or go out in the garden?”
“Let’s go out. It’s much cooler.”
I walked behind her out into the garden, the orderly looking after us. When we were out on the gravel drive she said, “Where have you been?”
“I’ve been out on post.”
“You couldn’t have sent me a note?”
“No,” I said. “Not very well. I thought I was coming back.”
“You ought to have let me know, darling.”
We were off the driveway, walking under the trees. I took her hands, then stopped and kissed her.
“Isn’t there anywhere we can go?”
“No,” she said. “We have to just walk here. You’ve been away a long time.”
“This is the third day. But I’m back now.”
She looked at me, “And you do love me?”
“Yes.”
“You did say you loved me, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I lied. “I love you.” I had not said it before.
“And you call me Catherine?”
“Catherine.”
We walked on a way and were stopped under a tree.
“Say, ‘I’ve come back to Catherine in the night.’ ”
“I’ve come back to Catherine in the night.”
“Oh, darling, you have come back, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I love you so and it’s been awful. You won’t go away?”
“No. I’ll always come back.”
“Oh, I love you so. Please put your hand there again.”
“It’s not been away.” I turned her so I could see her face when I kissed her and I saw that her eyes were shut. I kissed both her shut eyes. I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into. This was better than going every evening to the house for officers where the girls climbed all over you and put your cap on backward as a sign of affection between their trips upstairs with brother officers.
