Richard Cantwell

Richard Cantwell is a fifty-year-old United States Army infantry colonel whose military authority and physical decline are inseparable. He can receive news that a position has fallen and speak with the confidence of a veteran commander, yet he has concealed a cardiac condition and eventually recognizes that his failing heart may leave him no time to spare. His relationship with Renata reveals another side of that toughness: affection, gentleness, and a willingness to speak honestly about violence and loss.

Identity and Physical Vulnerability

Cantwell is fifty and holds the rank of colonel in the infantry of the United States Army. Before coming to Venice for a shoot, he takes mannitol hexanitrate in order to pass a physical examination, though he admits to himself that he does not quite know how it will help. The surgeon is skeptical, repeats the readings, and warns that the drug is contraindicated in increased intraocular and intracranial pressure. The episode establishes that Cantwell is not simply facing an abstract future illness: he is already managing his body through a risky attempt to remain fit for duty.

He describes his health to Renata as wonderful except for ulcers and a small cardiac condition, a formulation that minimizes what he has not previously told her. When he learns she is concerned by the omission, his heart reacts strongly enough to choke him. The disclosure makes the gap between his controlled account of himself and his physical vulnerability difficult to maintain. His military identity depends on endurance, but his body has its own limits, and concealment cannot make them disappear.

Command and the Cost of Orders

Cantwell remains connected to the battlefield even while in Venice. When the telephone buzzes and a message reports that a position has fallen, he immediately asks which way the opposing force went. His response is practical and directed toward the next military question, showing how readily command reasserts itself in a civilian setting.

His account of losing a regiment gives that authority a more painful dimension. He says that he received the regiment after a younger officer he had known since the age of eighteen was relieved; the regiment was more than that officer could manage and was the command Cantwell had hoped for in his own life. He then explains that he lost it while trying to work toward the high ground. In his description, a local situation that might have been resolved through negotiation is overridden by orders from higher headquarters to take a town by assault, an order he associates with the town’s appearance in the newspapers. He emphasizes that the decision was made under orders. The distinction does not erase his participation, but it shows how he understands the distance between professional judgment on the ground and demands imposed from above. His account presents command not as uncomplicated mastery but as responsibility exercised within a chain of command, where obedience can carry lasting personal cost.

Renata, Loss, and Affection

Renata enters Cantwell’s life as a vivid presence, and his greeting makes clear that he regards her with admiration and intimacy. Their relationship is not only romantic; it is also a setting in which he can be challenged. Renata explains that she cannot share his tolerant attitude toward the people who killed her father, burned the family villa on the Brenta River, and whom she associates with a German officer shooting pigeons in Piazza San Marco. Cantwell answers that after killing so many people, they can afford to be kind. When she asks how many he has killed, he gives the number of 122, not counting possible kills. His answer places his own history of violence beside the losses that shape Renata’s anger. Their disagreement does not dissolve into a simple judgment: it exposes the different experiences from which their responses to the past arise.

Cantwell also speaks to Renata with tenderness. After a conversation in which he has been occupied with military matters, she places both hands on his injured hand and tells him he was gentle; he tells her that she is beautiful and that he loves her. Their exchange allows care to coexist with the hard account of his military life, rather than cancel it. Later, when they meet at the time she promised, Renata asks whether he is all right. Her concern gives his condition a place within their shared life: it is something she notices and asks about, not merely a private fact he can keep contained.

Fighting and the Meaning of Toughness

Cantwell’s toughness is practical and physical, but the narrative does not present it as invulnerability. When two sailors provoke him, he identifies one as an old army man who knows his rights and then strikes him. In the ensuing encounter, he also turns on the other sailor. The episode shows his readiness to answer a challenge with force; it does not settle the larger questions raised by his conduct in war or his relationship with Renata. Instead, it makes the contrast between his fighting capacity and his weakening heart more pronounced.

After the fight, Renata asks whether he still cares for her. Cantwell tells her that he loves her more than before, as if that were possible, and she responds that her love has increased since she saw what happened. Their exchange connects violence to intimacy without treating the fight as proof of emotional strength. Renata’s response is an act of attachment, while Cantwell’s answer makes love something that can deepen even when the event itself offers no reassurance that he is safe. In their relationship, toughness is not only the ability to strike or endure; it also includes receiving care and acknowledging affection.

Final Recognition

Near the end, Cantwell recalls the reported last words of General Thomas J. Jackson, including the request to cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees. As he speaks with Ronald Jackson, Cantwell begins to speak again, but a third attack stops him. He understands that he cannot live. Rather than continue the conversation, he asks Ronald Jackson to pull over, switch to parking lights, and tell him the way to Trieste. The practical instructions echo his earlier battlefield responses, but the circumstances have changed: there is no position to recover and no order that can restore his health. His recognition of impending death gives his continuing attention to movement and direction a grave finality. Cantwell’s story closes on the tension that has shaped him throughout: a commander accustomed to acting decisively, now forced to face the limit that command cannot overcome.