“Tell me how goes the war.”
“Rotten.”
“I don’t have to go. I’m too old, like Count Greffi.”
“Maybe you’ll have to go yet.”
“Next year they’ll call my class. But I won’t go.”
“What will you do?”
“Get out of the country. I wouldn’t go to war. I was at the war once in Abyssinia. Nix. Why do you go?”
“I don’t know. I was a fool.”
“Have another vermouth?”
“All right.”
The barman rowed back. We trolled up the lake beyond Stresa and then down not far from shore. I held the taut line and felt the faint pulsing of the spinner revolving while I looked at the dark November water of the lake and the deserted shore. The barman rowed with long strokes and on the forward thrust of the boat the line throbbed. Once I had a strike: the line hardened suddenly and jerked back, I pulled and felt the live weight of the trout and then the line throbbed again. I had missed him.
“Did he feel big?”
“Pretty big.”
“Once when I was out trolling alone I had the line in my teeth and one struck and nearly took my mouth out.”