Читать онлайн «Prussian Blue»
Автор Филип Керр
Prussian Blue
(Bernie Gunther #12)
by Philip Kerr
This book is for Martin Diesbach, who is no relation but a very good friend, to whom I am always indebted.
I am not so weak as to submit to the demands of the age when they go against my convictions. I spin a cocoon around myself; let others do the same. I shall leave it to time to show what will come of it: a brilliant butterfly or maggot.
ONE
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. Just seeing those two thugs ought to have put me on my guard but I had something important on my mind; I was looking forward to meeting my wife, Elisabeth, who, out of the blue, had sent me a letter inviting me to dinner. We were separated, and she was living back in Berlin, but Elisabeth’s handwritten letter—she had beautiful Sütterlin handwriting (banned by the Nazis)—spoke of her having come into a bit of money, which just might have explained how she could afford to be back on the Riviera and staying at the Ruhl, which is almost as expensive as the Angleterre or the Westminster. Either way I was looking forward to seeing her again with the blind faith of one who hoped reconciliation was on the cards. I’d already planned the short but graceful speech of forgiveness I was going to make. How much I missed her and thought we could still make a go of it—that kind of thing. Of course, a part of me was also braced for the possibility she might be there to tell me she’d met someone else and wanted a divorce. Still, it seemed like a lot of trouble to go to—it wasn’t easy to travel from Berlin these days.
