Bernhard Schlink - The Gordian Knot

It was time for action: close the door, turn the key, pour everything out of the bag onto the floor. Where can I set up my mirror? Will it stay upright on the toilet tank if I lean it against my wallet? He squatted before the mirror, covered his face and neck with a handkerchief, and sprayed black color onto his hair. He rubbed it in, and sprayed again. He wiped away the excess, applied the skin color, stuck on his beard, and tied his tie. He thought he looked like a villain in an old action movie, and once he had put on the dark glasses, like a silent-film-era shyster. The main thing was that he could barely recognize himself. When he got up and put on his coat and hat, he caught sight of his gray sneakers. He blackened them with the rest of the hairspray.

Nobody noticed him when he came out of the stall. He headed to the concourse, trying to walk differently, swaying, with small steps.

The redhead was standing beneath a poster in which Snoopy was advertising MetLife. Georg bought a copy of the New York Times and began leafing through it. The redhead was looking around. He walked on, and Georg folded his paper and followed him through the concourse. From the top of the flight of stairs, Georg saw him watching people. The redhead kept looking at the departures board. It wasn’t easy: it was rush hour, and a steady stream of people was pouring down the stairs. The redhead gave up. He let the stream carry him, jostled his way out of the concourse while trying to keep a lookout, but the stream carried him through the corridor leading to the subway. Georg followed the crowds down a ramp and a flight of stairs, through the turnstile, and onto the subway platform. The redhead was standing farther up the platform, and Georg made his way toward him. The downtown Lexington Avenue Express arrived, and he managed to get into the same car. So the fellow wasn’t heading to the Soviet or the Polish consulate.

They got off at Union Square. They went up the stairs, through the park with the sparse grass and benches that were spotty and leprous and had not been painted in a long time, and onto Broadway, which here was narrow and shabby. The redhead was walking fast. After a couple of blocks, he entered a building.

Georg stopped. It was an old building, with dirty brown brickwork and columns between the windows. Above the ground floor with a shuttered storefront he counted nine floors and half of a tenth, a construction of Roman arches and columns. Above the narrow entrance he read MACINTYRE BUILDING, 874. It towered over the others around it. It had seen better days, but still had a shabby dignity.

The door was locked. There was no way of looking into the hallway where he might see an elevator and an indicator light that would show what floor the redhead was going to. Next to the second buzzer Georg made out Anderson , and next to the fifth there was a new bronze plaque with fancy lettering that said TOWNSEND ENTERPRISES. The names next to the other bells were faded or nonexistent.

What was he to do now? It was a quarter past five, the traffic was heavy. He crossed the street and stopped in front of the window of a sports store, keeping an eye on the entrance to the building. At a quarter to six the redhead came out, carrying a briefcase. With him was a young man in jeans and a blue shirt, its top buttons undone. Shortly after six, a group of young women left the building-secretaries, Georg surmised-and toward seven a number of gentlemen in dark suits. It was getting dark, and on the fifth and sixth floors the lights came on.

He was tired. He was sweating beneath the nylon of his coat, his beard itched, and his back ached. With exhaustion came disappointment. Each time the door opened, he had hoped to see Françoise, or at least Bulnakov, or-he himself didn’t know who.

Patience is a virtue, as the saying goes. But then again, nobody ever feels the virtue of standing around patiently. We are taught at an early age that you earn your bread by the sweat of your brow, and that we can count on success if we work hard enough at something. What we do not learn is to wait. All of this went through Georg’s mind. If only he could wait, knowing that there would be an outcome. But he had no idea whether he had gotten even an inch closer to Françoise.

BY SEVEN THE FOLLOWING MORNING GEORG was back at the MacIntyre Building. He had decided against the hairspray, the tanning color, and the coat and hat, and settled for a mustache and sunglasses instead. He walked along the opposite side of the street. From a window table at McDonald’s he could keep the entrance in sight, as well as from what he had learned to identify as a classic New York diner on the corner. But since he wanted to be able to see the door buzzers, to see which one the redhead would ring, he had to stand in a doorway across the street. He was eyed suspiciously by everyone coming in, and soon the super appeared to ask what he was doing there. Georg told him his girlfriend worked across the street and that she was coming back from a trip, but that he didn’t know exactly at what time. She was going to go straight to work, and he didn’t want to miss her. What company was she working for? Georg said he didn’t know, otherwise he wouldn’t be standing there but would have left her a message. All he knew, Georg said, was that she worked across the street, as he’d picked her up often enough.

“Why don’t you just go ask for her across the street?”

The question was so simple and logical that Georg couldn’t come up with anything. He crossed the street, the super watching him as he went. He rang the bottom buzzer. He didn’t know what he would say if anyone answered, nor did he know why he didn’t just pretend to ring the bell, or simply walk away. The intercom remained silent, and he rang the next bell. The super was still watching him. Suddenly the redhead came walking up the street. He was walking fast, his arms swinging. Georg turned around and walked away. It took all his strength to walk calmly. He wanted to run. His heart was pounding. After twenty yards he looked back and saw neither the redhead nor the super.

That evening Helen took him to a baseball game; the Yankees were playing the Cleveland Indians. The stadium looked enormous, even from outside. But after they had taken the escalators, gone up the ramps, and climbed the stairs to their seats, Georg felt as if they were sitting on the rim of a gigantic crater, one side of which had been blown away. The upper tier sloped steeply. Below it a further tier sloped gently down to the playing field. The pitcher, the catcher, the batter, and all the rest of the players Helen pointed out to him were as small as toy figures. There was a flat row of panels and monitors the size of movie screens at the far end of the playing field, and he could see the buildings of the Bronx, and above them the darkening evening sky.

Helen explained the game, and Georg managed to follow it. The pitcher throws the ball to the catcher, and the batter has to try to hit the flying ball with his bat and drive it as far away as possible, while he runs to a certain point before the ball is thrown there and caught by someone. The game keeps stopping, the players change their roles, and balls are thrown and caught by the players in the team as if for practice or fun. The fans root for their team, boo, clap, and howl, but don’t become rowdy, don’t smash things, or beat people up. Hot dogs, peanuts, and beer are sold. Just like a picnic, Georg thought. He laid an arm around Helen’s shoulder, and in the other hand held a paper cup. He felt great.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked with a smile.

At times the ball soared up through the lights in a steep curve, a white sphere against the dark sky. A seagull flew through the lights above the stadium. The screen showed replays and close-ups of the players. The cameras also panned through the audience.