Bernhard Schlink - The Gordian Knot

He excused himself and went to the toilet. When he got back, she was no longer there. In his room he went and stood by the window. He felt a lump rising from his chest to his throat. How will I ever be able to love anyone again? How can I learn once more to interact normally with people? I’m going insane, really insane. He began to cry and felt better, though the lump in his throat didn’t dissolve.

One of the guests came bursting into the room. Larry had put all the coats on Georg’s bed. Georg blew his nose. Other guests came and collected their things. The party was over. Before she left, Helen asked him if he wanted to meet Effi. She sounded natural and friendly. His suspicion was once more aroused. Effi? Who was this Effi? Oh, of course! Effi was her cat. He laughed and they set a date.

GEORG LAY ON HIS BED and looked out the window. It was dawn, the sky was still dark, but the upper windows of the tall buildings across the Hudson were already reflecting the red morning sun. Glowing windows-he had seen the burning light of the setting sun in the windows of Manhattan skyscrapers. This city isn’t just a forest, he thought, it is also mountains, alps.

He had dreamed of Cucuron, of the cats, and of Françoise. In the dream they had packed their suitcases and put them in the car, but he couldn’t recall where they were thinking of going. Or were they running away? Something in the dream frightened him. He still felt the fear.

Is that what my life has become? Things happen that I don’t understand and I only react to with fear and awkwardness? I have to act, not react. He had often brooded about this over the past few weeks, though he wasn’t quite sure what the difference was.

But maybe what truly matters is not acting and changing the world but interpreting differently. Georg laughed and put his arms behind his head. That he was being shadowed was the way they interpreted it. Why not interpret the whole thing differently, and see the shadowing as a trail that he could follow, an opportunity that he could use?

He let his thoughts roam. He imagined himself walking through a dark Riverside Park, the redheaded man some fifty yards behind him: Georg comes to a large tree and reacts, no, acts, with lightning speed. He glances back and sees his shadower sauntering along casually. Georg slips behind the thick tree trunk, hears his heart pounding, and then the steps of his shadower coming closer. Suddenly there is silence. Keep on walking! Georg thinks. Keep going! On the street above, a bus rumbles by. He hears the steps again, hears them hesitate, become decisive, then run. It’s all a child’s game. He trips the redhead, and even as he falls Georg kicks him in the stomach. He kicks him as he lies there: that’s for the cats, that’s for the attack, that’s for all the pain he has endured for Françoise. His first punch breaks the man’s nose. The bleeding face utters words in faulty English: They had heard he was coming to New York and were worried he would …

Would what? Georg didn’t know what his imagination should make the redhead say. That was why he wanted to beat it out of him. But if it wasn’t a child’s game? Georg trips up the running man, the redhead leaps forward, rolls, and jumps back up before Georg can even steady himself. A knife flashes in the man’s hand.

Georg tried another scenario. Where could he get a false beard and color for his face and hair? Where could he get a hat and dark glasses? And what could he wear and take with him so that after a few minutes in a men’s room he could turn into someone else? There had to be costume rentals and theatrical wardrobes in the Yellow Pages. But what would his shadower think if he saw him go there? Georg imagined putting black shoe polish in his hair, brown color on his face, and a beard he would make from his pubic and chest hair. He peered under the covers-there wasn’t a lot there.

He heard Larry leaving the apartment. He got up, looked through the closets, and found a black hat and a light-colored nylon coat that was rolled up. If he buttoned it up all the way, nothing but the knot of his tie would show. There were a dozen ties hanging on the inside of the closet door. He put everything back in place.

All morning he strolled down Broadway, keeping an eye out for the shadower. The weather had changed. The sky hung low and gray, and the air was warm and humid. The people hurrying by had left their coats and jackets at home, and only the panhandlers were wrapped in layers of clothing, some holding out paper cups in gloved hands begging for money. The storm broke, and Georg took shelter beneath the awning of a fruit stand. Beside him were heaps of melons, pineapples, apples, and peaches. There was a pleasant aroma. He watched the flow of buses, trucks, bright-colored cars, and yellow cabs.

The rain stopped, and he walked on. He went into several drugstores. He found some tan coloring that was good enough in the first one. However, the drugstores didn’t sell false beards or the kind of hair dye that could be quickly applied or sprayed on. He looked for his shadower in vain. Between Seventy-eighth and Seventy-ninth streets he almost walked past the Paper House store with its greeting cards for every occasion and masks of Mickey Mouse, King Kong, Dracula, and Frankenstein’s monster. Shrink-wrapped beards, side-burns, and mustaches of shiny, black synthetic fiber hung by the entrance. He wanted to get to the greeting-card section in case the shadower peered through the store window. He quickly grabbed one of the beards and found a selection of hairspray in all colors, took a can with a black cap, picked three greeting cards at random, and paid the cashier before anyone stopped outside the store window. He put the beard and the hairspray in his coat pocket and stood by the door, looking at the cards he had bought: “Be My Valentine.” Three times.

At the optician’s, he quickly hid the sunglasses he had bought in his bag, and stood outside again polishing his own glasses before anyone had a chance to walk by.

He no longer left his apartment without a plastic bag. In it were the hat, the coat, a tie, the brown tanning color, the black hairspray, the beard, and a small mirror. But either no one was shadowing him, or he didn’t see anyone. He took the subway to Brooklyn to meet the head of the kindergarten, who, it turned out, couldn’t tell him any more about Françoise than the former head of the Ladies Guild in Queens had. Again he stood outside the Polish and Soviet consulates, but every time he walked away he didn’t notice anyone shadowing him. Mostly he wandered the streets aimlessly, only occasionally glancing back sheepishly to see if he was being followed. Sometimes he got lost. That didn’t worry him-sooner or later he always found a subway station. The weather remained stormy and humid. He now saw the city as a living organism, a hissing dragon, or the kind of gigantic whale that castaways in old adventure books mistook for islands. The whale spouted fountains of water from time to time, and its sweat evaporated in a haze.

One evening Georg went out with Helen. He had given much thought to what he would tell her about himself as they were getting to know each other. He had been a lawyer in Germany and had lived in France as a translator and writer-so far so good. But what was he doing in New York? He told her he was doing research for a book, but then also told her about Françoise, that he had met her in Cucuron, and was looking for her in New York. A lame story, he himself realized. It wasn’t surprising that Helen seemed more comfortable talking to the waiter than to him. Her manner struck him as friendly but cautious. They were having dinner at Pertutti, an Italian restaurant on Broadway not far from Columbia. She often went there for lunch. The place reminded him of his own student years, and his lunches and dinners with friends.