THE TRIP TO GALENA
793
so," he said, speaking with obvious difficulty. "Something she wants
to work through with me that I've just about finished with my–
self. That's why I don't want to. My sister knows about it, too. And
you may as well, now that it comes up. That man in front of the
Hotel Excelsior in Rome, that was I myself."
Scampi did not immediately understand the reference, but then
he remembered and trod backward one step in the softly creaking
straw of
his
slippers.
" ... who went up to that Italian and asked him where the
hotel was."
"Yes, I remember."
"And hit him on the head with the whiskey bottle. You know,
I told the story the other day in the lounge, about somebody else, that
a soldier stopped the man and asked the way to the Excelsior, and
when he said 'This is the Excelsior,' hit him on the head."
"Yes, I said that I understood you," said Scampi impatiently,
almost harshly.
"Too much for you to swallow, is it?"
"In the excitement of entering the city, I suppose. All kinds of
things were taking place. You must have been drunk," Scampi pain–
fully tried to reconstruct and explain it. Weyl himself appeared un–
moved. But how could he be?
"I wasn't drunk," he said.
"Then what was the reason?"
"I haven't found out. I don't expect that I ever will find out
or that it will ever come to look pardonable to me. Which isn't to
say that I suffer from it any more. I don't, much. Maybe it was my
personal act of war. Or an idea that a man is bound to do everything
in his lifetime. It's very strong in me; it's just about hypnotic with
me, terribly powerful. Yes, it must have been my act of war, since
I was there, to do something lousy and hateful on my own, and did
it spontaneously, a piece of violence in my personal quality. Since
I was on the ride of the world, to ride the hateful thing through.
All right, I joined; I became a member. I signed up with the blacks, if
you like. It doesn't make any difference, does it?"
"No?" said Scampi with sober softness, musingly.
"I can't spend my life pissing and moaning over it."
"Did he die of it, this man? Do you know what happened?"
