Beggarman, Thief

by Irwin Shaw

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” the woman asked. Her voice was husky, with a certain harshness in it that was not displeasing.

  “Moderately,” he said.

  “Are you in a hotel here in Nice?”

  “No,” he said. He supposed that there was a certain set routine ladies such as this one went through. He guessed that she was one of the higher paid members of her profession, who did not get to the point immediately but flattered a man by pretending that she was interested in him, putting the eventual transaction on a level that was not merely physical and commercial. “I’m just passing through,” he said. He was beginning to think, Why not? Once in my life, he thought, why not see what it’s like? Besides, he had been continent for a long time. Too long. He had not slept in the same room with Jean since she had had her miscarriage. More than a year. Sometimes, he thought, you must remember you are a man. Bare, forked animal. Even he. He smiled at the woman. It felt good to smile. “May I offer you a drink?”

  He had never offered a drink to a stranger before, man or woman. About time to begin. What have I been saving myself for, what have I been proving? In the one city of Nice itself, at this moment, there were probably thousands of men tumbling with women in joyous beds, regretting nothing, grasping the pleasure their bodies were conceived for, forgetting the day’s labors, the day’s fears. What put him above common humanity? “I’m alone,” he said daringly. “I don’t really speak French. I would enjoy some company. Somebody who speaks English.” Always the saving, modifying hypocritical clause, he thought.

  The woman looked at her watch, pretended at decision. “Well,” she said, “that would be very nice.” She smiled at him. She was pretty when she smiled, he thought, even white teeth and nice little wrinkles around the dark gray eyes. She folded her magazine and picked up her handbag and stood up and took the three steps to his table. He stood up and held the chair for her and she said, “Thank you,” as she sat down. “I like to talk to Americans whenever I get a chance. I was in Washington for three years and I learned to like Americans.”

  Gambit, Rudolph thought, but keeping his face agreeable. If I were Swedish or Greek, she’d say she liked Swedes and Greeks. He speculated on how she had spent her three years in Washington. Entertaining lobbyists, subverting congressmen in the bedrooms of motels for pay?

  “I like some Americans myself,” he said.

  She chuckled, a small, ladylike chuckle. She was definitely not a sister to the prowling, gaudy savages of the streets of New York, regardless of the bond of their profession. He had heard that there were well-mannered whores in America, too, who charged a hundred dollars or more for an hour’s visit, and who could only be ordered by telephone, out-of-work actresses and models, elegant housewives working on a mink coat, but he had never met any of them. In fact, he had never spoken more than three words to any prostitute: “Thank you, no.”

  “And the French,” the woman was saying. “Do you like them?”

  “Moderately,” he said. “Do you?”

  “Some of them.” She chuckled again.

  The waiter appeared, his face stolid, accustomed to movements from table to table. “La mimê chose? Un vin blanc?” Rudolph asked the woman.

  “Ah,” she said, “you speak French.”

  “Un petit peu,” Rudolph said. He felt playful, tipsy. It was a night for games, masks, pretty French toys. Whatever happened that night, the lady was going to see that she didn’t have just another ordinary American tourist on her hands. “Je l’ai étudié à l’école. High school. What’s that in French?”

  “Collège? Lycée.”

  “Lycée,” he said, with a sense of triumph.

  The waiter shuffled his feet, a small reminder that he didn’t have all night to stand around listening to an American trying to remember his high-school French to impress a lady who had just picked him up. “Monsieur?” the waiter said. “Encore un cognac?”

  “S’il vous plaît,” Rudolph said with dignity.

  After that, they spoke in a mixture of the two languages, both of them laughing at the kind of French Rudolph managed to dredge up from his memory, as he told her about the bosomy French teacher he had had as a teenaged boy at home, about how he had believed he was in love with her, had written her ardent letters in French, had once drawn a picture of her, naked, which she had confiscated. For her part, the woman had seemed to be pleased to listen to him, to correct his mistakes in her language, to praise him when he got out more than three words in a row. If this was what French whores were like, Rudolph thought drunkenly, after a bottle of champagne, he understood why prostitution was such a respected fixture of French civilization.

  Then, the woman—he had asked her name, which was Jeanne—had looked at her watch and become serious. “It’s getting late,” she said in English, gathering in her bag and magazine, “I must be getting on.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve wasted your time,” he said. His voice was thick and he was having difficulty getting the words out.

  She stood up. “I’ve enjoyed it very much, Jimmy,” she said. He had told her that was his name. One more mask. He would not be traced. “But I expect an important call …”

  He stood up to say good-bye, half relieved, half sorry that he wasn’t going to make love to her. His chair fell back and he teetered a little as he rose. “It’s been sharm—charming,” he said.

  She frowned at him. “Where is your hotel?” she asked.

  Where was his hotel? For a moment the map of France was blotted from his consciousness. “Where’s my—my hotel …” he said, his voice blurred. “Oh. Antibes.”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “Yes.”

  She thought for a moment. “You are in no condition to drive, you know.”

  He hung his head, abashed. Americans, he felt she was saying, scornfully, arrived in France in no condition to drive. In no condition to do anything. “I’m not really a drinking man,” he said, making it sound like an excuse. “I’ve had a bad day.”

  “The roads are dangerous, especially at night,” she said.

  “Especially at night,” he agreed.

  “Would you like to come with me?” she asked.

  At last, he thought. It would not be a sin now, merely a safety measure. As a businessman, he really should ask her what it would cost, but after the drinks together and the friendly conversation it would sound crass. Later would do just as well. Whatever the price turned out to be, he certainly could afford one night in Europe with a courtesan. He was proud of himself for thinking of the word—courtesan. Suddenly he felt his head clearing. “Volontiers,” he said, using her language to show her he wasn’t as far gone as she thought. He called loudly for the waiter: “Garçon,” and got out his wallet. He covered his wallet with his hands so that she couldn’t see how many bills he had in it. In situations like this, even though he was not used to them, he knew one had to be careful.

  The waiter came over and told him, in French, how much he owed. He couldn’t understand the man and turned helplessly, ashamed, to the woman. “What did he say?”

  “Two hundred and fifteen francs,” she said.

  He took three hundred-franc bills out of his wallet and waved away the waiter’s fumbling effort to make change.

  “You shouldn’t have tipped him that much,” she whispered as she took his arm and guided him out of the restaurant.

  “Americans,” he said. “A noble and generous race.”

  She laughed, held his arm more tightly.

  They found a taxi and he admired the grace with which she raised her arm to hail the driver, the shapeliness of her legs, the warm curve of her bosom.

  She held his hand in the taxi, no more. It was a short ride. The taxi now smelled of perfume, musky, just the hint of flowers in its past. The taxi stopped in front of a small apartment house on a dark street. She paid the driver, then took his arm again and led him into the house. He followed her up one flight of stairs, admiring her from below now. She opene
d the door with a key, guided him along a dark hallway and through a doorway and switched on a lamp. He was surprised at how large the room was and how tastefully furnished, although he couldn’t make out too many details in the shaded light of the single lamp. She must have a generous clientele, he thought, Arabs, Italian industrialists, German steel barons.

  “Now …” she began to say, when the telephone rang.

  She wasn’t lying, he thought, she was expecting a call. She hesitated, as though she didn’t want to pick up the phone. “Would you mind …?” she said. She gestured toward another doorway. “I think it would be better if I was alone for this.”

  “Of course.” He went into the next room and switched on a light. It was a small bedroom, with a double bed, already made up. He heard her voice through the door that he had closed behind him. He got the impression that she was angry with whomever she was talking to, although he couldn’t make out what she was saying. He looked thoughtfully at the big bed. Last chance to leave. The hell with it, he thought and undressed, dropping his clothes carelessly on a chair and switching his wallet to a different pocket from the one he had been carrying it in. He got into bed and pulled the covers over him.

  He must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew a warm perfumed body was in bed beside him, the room was dark, there was a satiny, firm leg thrown across him, a soft, exploring hand on his belly, a mouth against his ear, murmuring words he could not understand.

  He did not know what time it was when, all nerves quiescent, his body glowingly at rest, he finally lay still, his fingertips just touching the now familiar body that had given him so much pleasure. Fragrant, accidental humanity lying in the bed beside him. All praise to the animal hidden in the black suit. Disregarded, gloriously disregarded the deprived Puritan. He raised his head, leaned on one elbow over the woman, kissed her gently on the cheek. “It must be late,” he whispered. “I have to go now.”

  “Drive carefully, chéri,” the woman said, dreamy, replete. His doing.

  “I’m all right now,” he said. “I’m not drunk anymore.”

  The woman twisted and reached out and lit a lamp on the bedside table. He got out of bed, proud of his nakedness. Adolescent vainglory, he admitted wryly to himself, and dressed. The woman rose, too, strong, supple body, breasts full, haunches muscled, and covered herself in a gown, sat in a chair watching him with a little smile as he put on his clothes. He wished she hadn’t put on the light, had not wakened. Then he could have left a hundred francs, maybe a thousand francs, on the mantelpiece, darkness and sleep concealing his provincial American ignorance of such matters; he could have slipped out of the apartment and out of the house, all connections broken. But the light was on, the woman was watching him, smiling. Waiting?

  There was no avoiding the moment. He took out his wallet. “Is a thousand francs enough?” he asked, stumbling a little over the “enough.”

  She looked at him curiously, the smile vanishing. Then she began to laugh. The laugh was low at first, then became raucous. She bent over, put her head in her hands, her thick, gleaming hair falling in a dark cascade, hiding her face, the laugh continuing. He watched her, feeling his nerves twitching, regretting that he had been in her bed, that he had offered her a drink, that he was in Nice, regretting that he had ever set foot in France.

  “I’m sorry,” he said inanely. “It’s just that I’m not accustomed …”

  She raised her head, her face still distorted by laughter. She stood up and came over to him and kissed his cheek. “Poor dear,” she said, the laughter still there, at the back of her throat. “I didn’t know I was worth that much.”

  “If you want more …” he said stiffly.

  “Much more,” she said. “I want nothing. The most exorbitant price. Dear man. Thinking all this time that I was professional. And being so polite and gentle, too. If all customers were like you, I think we’d all become whores. I liked Americans before, but I like them even better now.”

  “Christ, Jeanne,” he said. It was the first time he had spoken her name. “It never occurred to me that anybody would pick me out, take me home with her and … I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything. You’re too modest, my charming American, too modest by half.”

  “Well,” he said, “it never happened to me before.” He was afraid she was going to start laughing again.

  She shook her head wonderingly. “What’s wrong with American women?” she said. She moved over to the bed and sat on the edge. She patted it. “Come, sit down, please,” she said.

  He sat down next to her. She took his hand, sisterly now. “If it will make you feel any better, chéri,” she said, “it never happened to me before, either. But I have been so lonely—starved—Couldn’t you tell?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I’m not really a ladies’ man.”

  “Not a ladies’ man,” she said, gently mocking. “Not a drinking man. Just the sort of man I needed tonight. Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m married. To a major in the army. He was an aide to the military attaché in Washington.”

  That’s where the English came from, he thought, no lobbyists, no congressmen, no motels.

  “Now he is stationed temporarily in Paris. At the Ecole Militaire,” she said. “Temporarily.” She laughed shortly, harshly. “He’s been there three months now. I have two children in school here in Nice. They are visiting their grandmother tonight.”

  “You weren’t wearing a wedding ring,” he said. “I looked.”

  “Not tonight.” Her face grew grim. “I didn’t want to be married tonight. When I got my husband’s telegram this afternoon telling me he was going to call, I knew what he was going to say. He was going to say that once again he would be too busy with his work to come to Nice. He has been too busy for three months. They must be preparing a terrible war at the Ecole Militaire when a poor little major can’t get off for even one day to fly to Nice to see his wife once in three months. I have a very good idea of what kind of war my major is preparing in Paris. You heard me on the telephone …?”

  “Yes,” Rudolph said. “I couldn’t hear what you were saying.… You sounded angry.”

  “It wasn’t a friendly conversation,” Jeanne said. “No, not friendly at all. So now you are beginning to have some idea of why I was sitting at a café table, not wearing a wedding ring?”

  “More or less,” Rudolph said.

  “I was on the point of quitting and going home when you came into the café and sat down,” she said quietly. “Two men had approached me before. Posing, stuffy men, experts, connoisseurs of—what’s the American phrase—one-night …?”

  “One-night stands,” Rudolph said.

  “That’s it.”

  “At least they didn’t think you were a whore,” he said ruefully. “Forgive me.”

  She patted his hand. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she said. “It added just the right note of comedy to the evening. When you came in and sat down, with your decent, bony, respectable American face, I decided not to go home.” She smiled. “Not just then. It turns out I didn’t make a mistake. You must never be modest again.” Another sisterly pat of the hand. “Now, it’s late. You said you had to go.… Do you want my telephone number? Can I see you again?”

  “I suppose I ought to tell you a little about myself, too,” Rudolph said. “First of all, my name isn’t Jimmy. I don’t know why I …” He shrugged. “I guess I was ashamed of what I was doing.” He smiled. “What I thought I was doing. Maybe I half believed if it wasn’t my own name it wasn’t me who was really doing it. More likely, if we ever met and I was with somebody else and you said hello, Jimmy, I could say, I’m sorry, madam, you must be thinking of somebody else.”

  “I wish I could dare keep a diary,” Jeanne said. “I would write down all that happened tonight in detail. In great detail. It would give my children something to laugh at when they discovered it after my death. What do you know, dear, old, sensible Maman?”

&
nbsp; “My name is Rudolph,” he said. “I was never fond of the name. When I was a boy I thought it sounded un-American, though it’s hard to tell what sounds American anymore and what doesn’t. And why anybody should care. But when you’re a boy in his teens, your head full of books, with heroes with names like Huckleberry Finn, Daniel Boone, Studs Lonigan … Well, it seemed to me that Rudolph sounded like … like heavy German cooking. Especially during the war.” He had never told anyone how he felt about his Christian name, had never formulated it clearly for himself even, and now found that it was with a sense of relief, mixed with wry amusement, that he could speak about it openly to this handsome stranger, or almost stranger. Also, sitting in the muted lamplight on the bed which had been the furniture of exquisite pleasure, he wanted to make a further offering of himself to the woman, find reasons for delaying leave-taking, join her in the pretense that the dawn was not near, departure inevitable.

  “Rudolph,” Jeanne said. “Neither good nor bad. Think of it as Rodolfo. That has a better sound, doesn’t it?”

  “Much better.”

  “Good,” she said teasingly. “From now on I will call you Rodolfo.”

  “Rodolfo Jordache,” he said. It gave him a new, more dashing view of himself. “Jordache. That’s my family name. I’m at the Hôtel du Cap.” All defenses down now. Names and addresses. Each at the other’s mercy. “One more thing. I’m married.”

  “I expected as much,” Jeanne said. “Your affair. Just as my marriage is my affair.”

  “My wife is with me in Antibes.” He didn’t feel he had to tell her that they were not on the best of terms, either. “Give me your telephone number.”

  She got up and went over to a little desk where there was a pen and some paper and wrote down her telephone number. She gave him the slip of paper and he folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.

  “Other times,” she said, “you will have to rent a hotel room. The children will be here.”