Two Weeks in Another Town by Irwin Shaw Page A

journalists.” He turned to Jack and held him affectionately by the arms. “Dottore,” he said, “I had no idea you were so beautiful when you were young. My God, Dottore, how the girls must have dropped.” Despière spoke Italian, English, German, and Spanish, aside from French, and when he was with Jack in Italy, he paid tribute to the manners of the country by calling Jack Dottore. In France, it was Monsieur le Ministre, in ironic recognition of Jack’s diplomatic status. “Weren’t you overflowing with pride of yourself in there tonight?” Despière gestured toward the theatre.
    “Overflowing,” Jack said.
    “You don’t want to talk about it?” Despière said, surprised.
    “No.”
    “Imagine that,” Despière said. “If I’d made that picture, I’d walk up and down the streets of Rome with sandwich boards on my back, announcing, I, Jean-Baptiste Despière, am totally responsible.”
    Despière was a nimble, slender man, his narrow, rectangular shape disguised by nipped-in suits with padded shoulders that had clearly been made for him in Rome. His face was sallow and brilliantly alive, with a cynical, narrow French mouth and large, luminous gray eyes. His hair was black and cut short and worn brushed forward in a style that came from the cafés of St.-Germain-des-Prés. It was hard to judge his age. Jack had known him for more than ten years and he hadn’t seemed to have grown a day older in that time, but Jack guessed he was somewhere in his late thirties. He had lived in America, and while his accent was unmistakably French, he had soaked up a good deal of American slang, which he used knowingly and without affectation. He had been in the Free French Air Force during the war, after escaping to London at the time of the surrender, and had served as a navigator in a Halifax, in a squadron that had been sent to Russia. He had come back from Russia with a ruined stomach, and he was constantly inquiring, especially of Americans, for a cure for ulcers which would not interfere with his drinking. He was a successful journalist and worked for one of the best magazines in France, but was always in debt, partly because of his carelessness with money and his easy generosity, but also because for long periods at a time he refused to work. He knew where all the restaurants were, and who was in what town at what time, and the first names of all the pretty girls of the crop of the current year. He was invited everywhere and given inside information by cabinet ministers and staff officers and movie stars and he paid his way with his wit and high energy and he had a surprising number of enemies. The car drove up and they all got in. Delaney didn’t ask them where they would like to eat, but growled out the name of a restaurant and then subsided in his corner. He was silent and didn’t seem to be listening to either Despière or Jack all the way to the restaurant.
    “Chaos begins at the top,” Despière was saying, across the table, in the quiet restaurant. “In the big, official buildings, with the statues of Reason and Justice and ancient heroes in the halls. Where would you find a private citizen foolish enough to attack the Suez Canal without any reserve of oil?” He chuckled happily. “One day’s fighting and they had to ration gasoline for a year. You have to be carefully selected by your fellow citizens to run a government to be able to be that splendidly idiotic. The most inept of kings, let us say Louis the Sixteenth, would never have pulled off a master stroke like that. Or maybe it is only France…” He shrugged. He looked around him with pleasure at the other diners. “Ah,” he said, “you have no idea how enjoyable it is to sit in a restaurant and be reasonably sure nobody will throw a bomb through the front door.”
    “What do you mean by that?” Delaney asked. He had been sullen and untalkative, drinking his wine and picking lightly at the plate of pasta in front of him and crumbling