“Everybody,” she said. “Always. They were traders as well and several of them were Doges of this city as you know.”
“But they all fought?”
“All,” she said. “As far as I know.”
“OK,” the Colonel said. “I’ll tell you any God damn thing you want to know.”
“Just something picturesque. As bad or worse than in the illustrated papers.”
“Domenica Del Corriere or Tribuna Illustrata?”
“Worse if possible.”
“Kiss me first.”
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
