Beggarman, Thief by Irwin Shaw Read Free Book Online

the next war to come along. Poor, hopeful, doomed Italian generals. Not worth the trouble, not worth the bones of a single Calabrian peasant. It wasn’t Bella Nizza anymore, it was a modern, junked-up commercial city, a peeling jumble of tenements, with rock music blaring from the loudspeakers of music shops, promoting its past loveliness in fake tourist brochures. All things became worse.
    The lamps of the Promenade des Anglais were lit, reflecting off the roofs of the endless stream of cars, twinkling in the polluted sea murmuring against the meager strip of gravelly beach. In his conversation with the consul the man had said that Nice was a good post in the Foreign Service. The consul must know something about Nice that was not evident to the naked eye. Or perhaps he had been stationed in the Congo or Washington and even Nice would look good after that. Rudolph wondered if he had passed his brother’s murderer somewhere between the consulate and the sea. Entirely possible. Murderers were constantly being arrested by the police in Nice. He speculated about what he would do if a man sat down next to him in a café and recognized him and said, calmly, “Bonjour, monsieur, you may be interested to know that I am the one who did it.”
    He opened the door to his car, then stood there, not getting in, thinking of the night ahead of him, going back to the hotel in Antibes, having to explain to Jean that they would have to plan on staying on in the place that had become a horror for them, having to explain to Kate and Wesley and Dwyer that nothing was settled, that everything was in abeyance, that they were tied indefinitely to death, that there was no way of knowing when they could get on with the business of living.
    He closed the door of the car. He could not face what was ahead of him in Antibes. As unattractive as Nice was it was better this evening than Antibes. At least he had stopped crying.
    Careful in the traffic, his nostrils assailed by the fumes the scientists of his country had assured him were deadly to the human race, he crossed to the other side of the Promenade des Anglais, bright with illuminated storefronts and the lights of cafés. He went into a café, seated himself at a table on the terrasse, ordered a whiskey and soda. Time-hallowed cure, palliative, nepenthe, transient unraveler of knotty problems. When the whiskey came, he drank slowly, glad that Jean was not with him, since he could not drink in her presence. Sometimes he felt he could not breathe in her presence—a condition to be dealt with at another time. He took another sip of his drink.
    Suddenly, he was ravenously hungry. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and then only a croissant and coffee. The body had its own rhythms, made its own uncomplicated, imperative claims. His hunger drove all other thoughts from his mind. He sat back in his chair sipping his whiskey, luxuriously composing the menu for the evening meal. Melon with a dash of port to begin with, then fish soup, he decided, specialty of the region, with garlicked croutons and a sprinkling of grated cheese, steak and salad, slab of Brie, strawberries for dessert. A half bottle of blanc de blancs with the soup and a half bottle of heavy red wine of Provence with the steak and cheese. The evening stretched out ahead of him in gluttonous splendor. He never had to worry about getting fat, but he knew that he would have been ashamed to order so self-indulgent a meal at a time like this if he were not alone. But he knew nobody in Nice. The mourners were in another town. He paid for his whiskey and went along the promenade to the Negresco and asked the concierge for the name of the best restaurant in Nice. He walked to the address he was given, striding out briskly, his eyes dry.
    The best restaurant in Nice was lit by candles, decorated with glowing bouquets of pink roses, with just the right faint aroma of good cooking from the kitchen. There were not many diners, but they looked prosperous