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WITH RED CROSS GIRLS AND MY PERSONAL SAFETY, HE’D SAY; I WAS IN THE AIR FORCE AND FLEW A TIGHT DESK, TAPPING OUT STORIES FOR HOMETOWN NEWSPAPERS ABOUT THE BRAVE BOYS WHO FLEW THE MISSIONS.
    STILL, HE “DID” ENLIST, HE “DID” GET WOUNDED, OR ANYWAY, HURT, ON THE WAY BACK FROM A MISSION. I WONDER IF I WOULD HAVE DONE AS MUCH. THE ARMY, AS I SEE IT FROM HERE AND FROM WHAT I READ IN THE PAPERS ABOUT VIETNAM, IS A MACABRE PRACTICAL JOKE. OF COURSE, AS EVERYONE SAYS, THAT WAS A DIFFERENT WAR. WITH THE COLONEL I ASSUME AN EXTREME MILITARY POSE, BUT IF WAR IN EUROPE DID BREAK OUT, I’D PROBABLY DESERT THE FIRST TIME I HEARD A SHOT FIRED.
    NATO IS FULL OF GERMANS, ALL VERY PALSEY AND COMRADES-INARMS, AND THEY’RE NOT MUCH DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER ANIMALS. MONIKA, WHO IS GERMAN, IS ANOTHER STORY.
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    It was almost dark when Rudolph left the consulate. The consul had been an agreeable man, had listened thoughtfully, made notes, called in an aide, promised he would do everything he could to help, but it would take time, he would have to call Paris, get legal advice, he was not convinced that the lawyer in Antibes had been on sure ground when he had told Rudolph to ignore the French, there would have to be a determination from higher authorities as to what documents would be needed to transfer the ownership of the Clothilde and free the bank accounts. The death of an American in a foreign country always presented knotty problems, the consul had said, his tone hinting that it bordered on treason to commit an act of such importance on alien soil. That day, Rudolph thought, hundreds of Americans had died in Vietnam, which might be considered a foreign country, but the deaths had not produced knotty problems for consuls anywhere.
    The demise of Thomas Jordache was going to be even more complicated than usual, the consul warned; it could not be solved overnight. Rudolph had gone out into the gathering dusk feeling hopeless, trapped in a dark web of legalisms which would entangle him ever more tightly with every move he made to free himself. Trapped once more, he thought, self-pityingly, in other people’s necessities.
    What did they do, Rudolph wondered as he left the consulate behind him, in the old days in the American wilderness when the leader of the tribe was killed in battle? Who got the wampum, the wives, custody of the children, the tepee, the warbonnets, the eagle feathers, the lances and arrowheads? What clever nonwarrior, what shaman or medicine man, took the role of administrator and justifier?
    He had left his car along the shore, in front of the Hôtel Negresco on the Promenade des Anglais because he hadn’t wanted to risk getting lost in the streets of the unfamiliar city and had taken a taxi to the consulate. On foot now, not knowing exactly where he was going, not caring, he went in the general direction of the Negresco, not paying attention to the people around him hurrying home to dinner. Suddenly he stopped. His cheeks were wet. He put his hand to his eyes. He was crying. He had been crying without knowing it as he walked blindly toward the sea. Oh, God, he thought, I had to come all the way from the Hudson River to Nice to cry for the first time since I was a boy. None of the passersby seemed to notice his tears; there were no curious stares. It could be that the French were used to seeing grown men walking weeping through their streets; maybe it was a national custom. Perhaps, he thought, after what their country had gone through since Louis the Sixteenth, there was plenty to cry about.
    When he reached his car it was already dark. He had wandered through back streets, changed direction aimlessly. Bella Nizza, he remembered. The Italians had taken it back in the Second World War. Briefly. In the Italian equivalent of the Pentagon there probably was a plan for recapturing it at some belligerent future date. Good neighbors. They were growing jasmine and roses for the moment on all battlefields, waiting for