INTERRUPTED BY THE CHILDISH CRUELTY OF MY FRIEND
— Pro Bono — who some minutes ago seized this book out of my hands.
I protested — rose — he held it away, saying, “I have need of paper. Stay! I have need of paper!”
And perhaps our hunger and our anger at our constraint conquered both of us — for he persisted in holding it from me, laughing and saying, “What is this?”— whereas I was reduced to grabbing for it, crying, “Return it to me! Return it to me now!”
He said, “We must needs make a little sketch of the river and Norfolk and its approaches,” and I watched the book swoop around my hands and I heard my own voice, the treble of a boy in skirts, wailing, “It is mine! Bono — Private Williams! It is mine! Give it back to me!”
“The boys and me are discussing strategy.”
“Give it back to me!”
Bono thrust a palm against my chest to hold me at a distance, leaned the book on an upraised knee, and with the other hand, perused the pages. “What have you here?” he said. “You writing down things about us all?” and he called out the names as he found them: Jocko, Slant, Pomp, Isaac, Charles. I may be grateful that Charles and Isaac, who were by his side, turned their heads away, ashamed at our squabble. “What have you here?” Bono repeated.
“I’m setting down the stories of the Regiment in my Itinerarium,” I said. “That they may not be forgotten. Our heroism. Give it back.”
“Sweet mercy,” said Bono. “Your Itinerarium.” He shook his head. “You barely got your own story to write.” His aspect was lowering, and he said to me, “Prince O., you consider these people, and then you consider your own self. You lived in a special bed, you ate beef every supper, you was taught to play the fiddle, and your biggest hardship was learning the present plural singular indicative in Latin. Do you . . . — Do you truly . . . ?” He frowned wildly and did not complete his sentence; my face burned in shame.
He tore out a blank page so that he might sketch Norfolk and its defenses for his friends.
He gave the book back to me, and I sit with it now.
Bono and his companions sit only four feet away, smoking pipes and murmuring.
I will not write more this evening.