'Can you tell me about that and why?'
'No,' the Colonel said. And that was the end of that.
'Then let's have fun.'
'Let's,' the Colonel said. 'With our one and only life.'
'Maybe there are others. Other lives.'
'I don't think so,' the Colonel said. 'Turn your head sideways, beauty.'
'Like this?'
'Like that,' the Colonel said. 'Exactly like that.'
So, the Colonel thought, here we come into the last round and I do not know even the number of the round. I have loved but three women and have lost them thrice.
You lose them the same way you lose a battalion; by errors of judgment; orders that are impossible to fulfil and through impossible conditions. Also through brutality.
I have lost three battalions in my life and three women and now I have a fourth and loveliest and where the hel
