Increasingly often, I cast around for good soldiers. Men who could fight their way through any dread with valor and without dissent. A born Kshatriya, no doubt.

Addendum (March 12, 2012)

There is an amazing story about knowledge of men somewhere in Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales.[1] If I remember it correctly, for my copy of the book is in Motovun while I am in Zagreb, the writer is standing with a concentration camp chief, himself a seasoned inmate, at the camp’s gate when a group of new inmates appears down the frozen road. Carrying only bundles with their clothing, they are some way away when the chief shakes his head in disappointment. “Dammit,” he mumbles, “not a single carpenter among them!” After so many years in the Soviet camp, he can tell a man’s trade from quite some distance. As I told my beloved this afternoon in the Bulldog Pub, where we stopped for a cigar and drinks, I could imagine the same story told by a Roman writer who had found himself at a military camp deep in the German woods. Carrying only bundles with their clothing, a group of new recruits is approaching as a seasoned centurion stands by the camp’s gate. “Dammit,” he mumbles, “not a single archer among them!” Well, that is the sort of knowledge of men I now crave ever more deeply. The knowledge of good soldiers, that is.

Footnote

1. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1982.