Bernhard Schlink - The Gordian Knot

It wasn’t just about the cigarettes. He had some on him, and even found the pack he’d put on the plans on one of the lower compartments. Someone had gotten into the safe.

His secretary, Chris, Monique, Isabelle? Why would they want to break into the safe? They had all known one another for a long time. They had worked for Maurin long before Georg had, and at better pay. They had come to Provence from elsewhere seeking a quieter life, which they had found with their translation work, and were relieved to be able to work under Georg after Maurin’s death. They didn’t envy his running the firm, and sometimes poked fun at him for being so industrious. Why should they want to make trouble for him?

Unless Bulnakov had bribed or blackmailed them. We all have our price, Georg thought; it’s just a question of the amount. What’s surprising is not the number of people being bribed or what they are prepared to do, but for how little most people are prepared to do it. It’s a matter of putting the money and morals in relation to each other: when the bribe is high enough, the success is so inevitable that bribery is no longer immoral. What is immoral is selling oneself cheaply. Georg was not angry that his coworkers might let themselves be bribed by Bulnakov for a substantial sum; what annoyed him was that he would have to arrange for a new lock and be more careful. He was relieved, feeling that he and Françoise would no longer be in trouble since Bulnakov had gotten what he wanted. But the question remained: Where had she disappeared to and what had happened to her? Might she be in Marseille, and now assigned to Chris?

He looked out the window. A courtyard, clothes hanging to dry from windows, one newly painted building and paint flaking on others, tall brick chimneys on the roofs. Loud voices of playing children. Beyond the roofs he saw taller buildings and a church tower. Might Françoise be somewhere in this big city waiting for Chris, or getting ready to spend the night… You’re crazy, Georg said to himself. These are delusions! You’ve never seen Chris with a woman. You’ve often wondered if he’s gay.

Things had become easier for Bulnakov’s men. When they had searched Georg’s house, they had made copies of his office keys. He always left them in the briefcase in which he carried his translation work to and from Marseille. Needless to say, when he’d gone to Cucuron shopping he hadn’t taken his briefcase with him. Just you wait, he thought. I’m not going to make things so easy for you, Monsieur Bulnakov! He called a locksmith and had him change the locks on the door and the safe. He urged the locksmith to work as fast as he could, and by evening the job was done. In a store earlier that day he had happened to find a postcard of a tongue sticking out. When he left his office to go to dinner he pinned it to the door.

He stayed the night in Marseille. Mermoz was running late with the new plans, and was going to messenger them over to him the next day. It was a big job, the last of a series. Georg was pleased with the prospect of so much work. The weekend was coming up, the first weekend without Françoise. He didn’t believe she would come back. He also didn’t believe she was in trouble, or that something had happened to her. It wouldn’t make sense, after Bulnakov had gotten hold of all the plans so easily. No, Françoise had simply dropped him. He’d burned his bridges with Bulnakov, and consequently with her too.

He slept on the couch in his office. He had drunk a lot that evening and didn’t hear whether or not Bulnakov’s men had tried to get in. The next morning the card with the tongue was gone. Though anyone could have taken it.

It was evening by the time Mermoz’s messenger came by with two thick rolls of plans and a large batch of construction details and instructions. By the time he had made copies of everything it was getting dark. He had driven the road home so often by day, by night, in heavy traffic, in all weather, even in sleet that he barely noticed the surroundings, until he became aware of a car whose lights stayed behind him. He noticed it on the last part of the highway from Aix to Pertuis, and in Pertuis he tried to shake it. He got away at a red light, which he managed to cross right in front of a big tractor-trailer, and then wove his way through backstreets. But when he got to the road outside town that led to Cucuron they were waiting for him and began tailing him again. Now he knew it was him they were after.

As the road sloped upward he revved his old Peugeot for all it was worth, but the other car followed with ease. He passed other vehicles, but the car tailing him was right behind.

The road beyond Ansouis was empty. He was still driving as fast as he could. He wasn’t going to head home but to Cucuron, straight to Les Vieux Temps, where he would honk his horn, bringing everyone out from the restaurant and the bar across the street that was full of billiard- and cardplayers. He wasn’t really afraid. He had to concentrate on the road. It was him they were after-his mind went to Bulnakov’s men and the plans on the backseat. The postcard of the tongue he had pinned to the door might have made them angry. But what could they do to him on this road from Ansouis to Cucuron, which he had driven a thousand times and where everyone knew him? Perhaps it wasn’t them at all, only some idiots playing games.

But it wasn’t some idiots playing games. As he came to the dirt track that led to his house, the other car pulled up and swerved toward him, forcing him onto the dirt track. The car swerved again; Georg jammed on the brakes and came to a halt in the ditch, his forehead banging against the steering wheel.

They tore the door open and pulled him out of the car. He was stunned and bleeding from a cut over his eyebrow. As he raised his hand to feel the cut he was punched in the stomach. Then came another punch, and another. He was incapable of even attempting to defend himself. He didn’t know where the punches were coming from, how many men were hitting him, or how he could protect himself.

At some point he fell to the ground and lost consciousness. A neighbor found him after he had staggered up, looked in the car, and seen what he knew anyway: the Mermoz plans were gone. He had only been unconscious for a few moments. When he had last checked his watch in Ansouis it was a quarter to ten. Now it was ten. The neighbor insisted on calling the police and an ambulance-“Just look at yourself, just look at yourself!” he kept saying, and Georg looked into his side mirror and saw his bloodstained face. He was in such pain that he could barely stand up.

“No bones broken,” the doctor said, after putting some stitches on his eyebrow, “nor any signs of internal injuries. You can go home. Take it easy for a few days.”

A CUT EYEBROW WILL HEAL, and though bruises are more painful on the second day, they are less so on the third, and after the fourth day just feel like a fading muscle ache. After the police questioned him and drove him home, Georg took a warm bath, and spent much of the weekend in bed and in his hammock. By Sunday he felt strong enough to collect his car and head over to Les Vieux Temps for dinner. Things could have been worse, he told himself; soon everything would be fine. But as the pain subsided, his feeling of helplessness grew. My body, he concluded, whether strong or infirm, is my house, and, like the house I actually live in, is the expression of my integrity. Without my body my integrity is an illusion. That it is here, that I reside in it, that I alone am master of it, is a vital part of being alive; just as the solidity of the ground beneath our feet is an important part of our being alive. He had never thought of it in this way, but now realized that he had felt this way all along. As a boy, during a vacation in Italy, he had experienced an earthquake and realized with dread that there was no depending on the ground on which we stand and walk so confidently. What was worse now than the pain and the horror of being so helpless when they had dragged him out of the car and beat him up was the realization that his body could be ravaged just like his house.