“But was there nothing noble or truly happy about it?”
“Surely,” the Colonel told her. “We fought from Bas Meudon, and then the Porte de Saint Cloud, through streets I knew and loved and we had no deads and did as little damage as possible. At the Etoile I took Elsa Maxwell’s butler prisoner. It was a very complicated operation. He had been denounced as a Japanese sniper. A new thing. Several Parisians were alleged to have been killed by him. So we sent three men to the roof where he had taken refuge and he was an Indo-China boy.”
“I begin to understand a little. But it is disheartening.”
“It is always disheartening as hell. But you are not supposed to have a heart in this trade.”
“But do you think it was the same in the time of the Grand Captains?”
“I am quite sure it was worse.”
“But you got your hand honorably?”
“Yes. Very honorably. On a rocky, bare-assed hill.”
“Please let me feel it,” she said.
“Just be careful around the center,” the Colonel said. “It’s split there and it still cracks open.”
“You ought to write,” the girl said. “I mean it truly. So someone would know about such things.”
“No,” the Colonel disagreed, “I have not the talent for it and I know too much. Almost any liar writes more convincingly than a man who was there.”
“But other soldiers wrote.”
“Yes. Maurice de Saxe. Frederick the Great. Mr. T’sun Su.”
