Ernest Hemingway

ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES
complete book, e-book

Nové Literární doupě!

Literární doupě bylo modernizováno a přechází pod novou doménu literdo.com!.

Nový web LD vám přínáší ještě více knih s možností výhodného stahování většího množství e-knih podle vlastního výběru (tedy nejen jednotlivých knih nebo balíčků podle autorů) ve formátech ePub , PDF  a MOBI.

 Přejít na nový web Literární doupě

 

CHAPTER XXI

THE Colonel took the ten centesimi gondola across the Canal, paying the usual dirty note, and standing with the crowd of those condemned to early rising.

He looked back at the Gritti and saw the windows of his room; still open. There was no promise nor threat of rain; only the same strong wild, cold wind from the mountains. Everyone in the gondola looked cold and the Colonel thought, I wish I could issue these wind-proof coats to everyone on board. God, and every officer that ever wore one, knows they are not water-proof, and who made the money out of that one?

You can’t get water through a Burberry. But I suppose some able jerk has his boy in Groton now, or maybe Canterbury, where the big contractors’ boys go, because our coats leaked.

And what about some brother officer of mine who split with him? I wonder who the Benny Meyers of the ground forces were? There probably wasn’t only one. Probably, he thought, there must be very many. You must not be awake yet, to talk that simply. They do keep the wind out though. The raincoats. Raincoats my ass.

The gondola pulled up between the stakes on the far bank of the canal and the Colonel watched the black-clad people climb up out of the black-painted vehicle. Is she a vehicle? he thought. Or must a vehicle have wheels or be tracked?

Nobody would give you a penny for your thoughts, he thought. Not this morning. But I’ve seen them worth a certain amount of money when the chips were down.

He penetrated into the far side of the city, the side that finally fronted on the Adriatic, and that he liked the best. He was going in by a very narrow street, and he was going to not keep track of the number of more or less north and south streets that he crossed, nor count the bridges, and then try and orient himself so he would come out at the market without getting up any dead ends.

It was a game you play, as some people used to play double Canfield or any solitary card games. But it had the advantage of you moving while you do it and that you look at the houses, the minor vistas, the shops and the trattorias and at old palaces of the city of Venice while you are walking. If you loved the city of Venice it was an excellent game.

It is a sort of solitaire ambulante and what you win is the happiness of your eye and heart. If you made the market, on this side of town, without ever being stymied, you won the game. But you must not make it too easy and you must not count.

On the other side of the town, game was to leave from the Gritti and make the Rialto by the Fondamente Nuove without a mistake.

Then you could climb the bridge and cross it and go down into the market. He liked the market best. It was the part of any town he always went to first.

Just then he heard the two young men behind him saying the things about him. He knew they were young men by their voices and he did not look back, but listened carefully for distance and waited for the next turn to see them, as he turned.

(...)

(......)