Prussian Blue

Начало книги

This book is for Martin Diesbach, who is no relation but a very good friend, to whom I am always indebted.

It was the end of the season and most of the hotels on the Riviera, including the Grand Hôtel Cap Ferrat, where I worked, were already closed for the winter. Not that winter meant much in that part of the world. Not like in Berlin, where winter is more a rite of passage than a season: you’re not a true Berliner until you’ve survived the bitter experience of an interminable Prussian winter; that famous dancing bear you see on the city’s coat of arms is just trying to keep himself warm.

The Hotel Ruhl was normally one of the last hotels in Nice to close because it had a casino and people like to gamble whatever the weather. Maybe they should have opened a casino in the nearby Hotel Negresco—which the Ruhl resembled, except that the Negresco was closed and looked as if it might stay that way the following year. Some said they were going to turn it into apartments but the Negresco concierge—who was an acquaintance of mine, and a fearful snob—said the place had been sold to the daughter of a Breton butcher, and he wasn’t usually wrong about these things. He was off to Bern for the winter and probably wouldn’t be back. I was going to miss him but as I parked my car and crossed the Promenade des Anglais to the Hotel Ruhl I really wasn’t thinking about that. Perhaps it was the cold night air and the barman’s surplus ice cubes in the gutter but instead I was thinking about Germany. Or perhaps it was the sight of the two crew-cut golems standing outside the hotel’s grand Mediterranean entrance, eating ice cream cones and wearing thick East German suits of the kind that are mass-produced like tractor parts and shovels.

Читать дальше →