But who do you suppose that character is? He looks like a caricature of an American who has been run one half way through a meat chopper and then been boiled, slightly, in oil. I’m not being so gentle, he thought.
Ettore, with his emaciated face, and his love of joking and fundamental and abiding disrespect, came over and the Colonel said, “Who is that spiritual character?”
Ettore shook his head.
The man was short and dark with glossy black hair that did not seem to go with his strange face. He looked, the Colonel thought, as though he had forgotten to change his wig as he grew older. Has a wonderful face though, the Colonel thought. Looks like some of the hills around Verdun. I don’t suppose he could be Goebbels and he picked up that face in the last days when they were all playing at G'ötterd'ämmerung. Komm’ S'üsser Tod, he thought. Well they sure bought themselves a nice big piece of Süsser Tod at the end.
“You don’t want a nice Süsser Tod sandwich do you Miss Renata?”
“I don’t think so,” the girl said. “Though I love Bach and I am sure Cipriani could make one.”
“I was not talking against Bach,” the Colonel said.
“I know it.”
“Hell,” the Colonel said. “Bach was practically a co-belligerent. As you were,” he added.
“I don’t think we have to talk against me.”
“Daughter,” the Colonel said. “When will you learn that I might joke against you because I love you?”
