Bernhard Schlink - The Gordian Knot

“The report doesn’t say,” Mr. Epp replied.

“But where there’s a seller there has to be a buyer.”

“You’re right, but the buyer didn’t appear on the credit report.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the buyer didn’t take out a loan to take over the company. If, for instance, you buy an apartment on Central Park South and pay cash, there won’t be a credit report on you. That’s a bad example, though, because you’d arouse suspicion if you turned up with half a million dollars in cash. Nor is it necessarily a given that the buyer didn’t borrow any money: if he has enough assets to cover the credit, then the creditor doesn’t care whether he uses the money to buy Townsend or to go to Bermuda on vacation.”

“So how can I find the buyer?”

“If he doesn’t want to be found by you or someone like you, there’s nothing you can do.”

“What about the seller?”

“You can try that. Townsend Enterprises belonged to a Mr. Townsend, who lived in Queens. Perhaps he still does. Would you like his address?”

Georg wrote it down. He went to Queens, but didn’t get very far. Mr. Townsend said he wouldn’t tell him anything. No, he wouldn’t let him in. No, he didn’t care how important it was. No, he wouldn’t talk to him, even if he paid him. Mr. Townsend kept the chain on the door.

Georg called home to Germany, the call costing him more money than he had. But in the end his parents and some friends promised to wire him seven thousand marks.

Then he called Helen. “Can we meet this evening? I have a problem I can’t solve. I’d like to discuss it with you.” It was a difficult call for him to make.

“All right,” she replied hesitantly.

THEY MET AGAIN AT PERTUTTI and waited for a table.

“What did you do today?” he asked.

“I spent the day writing.”

“What were you writing?”

“My thesis.”

“What part are you working on right now?”

“The Brothers Grimm had various versions of their fairy tales, and… oh, let’s forget about that. You’re not really interested, and I’m not either right now. If you aren’t ready to start on what you wanted to talk to me about, then don’t say anything. That seems to be your specialty.”

They remained silent until they were seated at the table, had ordered, and had a bottle of wine in front of them.

“It’s about that girl from France, the one I told you about.”

“The one you’re looking for? You want me to help you find her?”

He rolled the wineglass back and forth between his palms.

“That’s what it is, isn’t it,” she continued. “You sleep with me, but she’s the one you want to be with. And now you’re asking me to help you get back together with her? Don’t you think that’s a bit twisted?”

“I’m sorry if I hurt you, Helen. I didn’t mean to. The night we spent together was wonderful, and I wasn’t thinking about Françoise. You asked if I still love her. I really don’t know. But I must find her. I need to know what it was between her and me-whether it was all in my imagination. I don’t trust anyone or anything anymore, especially not myself and my feelings. I… it’s as if everything is blocked and grinding to a halt.”

“What is it you imagined?”

“That everything between her and me was perfect. Like with no other woman.”

Helen looked at him sadly.

“I can’t tell you the whole tangled story,” he went on. “I think you’ll see why when I tell you what I can tell you. If you’d rather I didn’t”-he looked up and saw that the waitress had brought their food-“then we can just have our spaghetti.” He sprinkled some cheese on his dish. “You told me last night that I need to figure out what I want. I don’t just want to find her-I want to put my life back on track. I want to be able to connect with people again, to talk about myself, listen to people, ask for advice when I’m stuck, and even for help. I don’t think you took what I said before seriously, but it is true, I have lost my social skills. I think I’ll go crazy if I go on like this.” He laughed. “I know I can’t expect people to welcome me back with open arms, but I also know I can’t go off and feel sorry for myself if they don’t.” He wound the spaghetti around his fork. “You know, I probably should be happy I could even ask you.”

“And what is the question you would be happy to ask if you could ask?”

“Ah, you’ve happened upon one of those linguistic issues.”

“No, it’s a logical one. And I didn’t happen upon it-I crafted it. But do go on.”

He pushed his full plate to the side. “I don’t even know what her name is. In France she called herself Françoise Kramsky, but I’m certain that’s not her name. The French and Polish background reflected in that name might be real, but then again it might just have been part of the role she was playing. She was passing herself off as a Polish woman who has to work for the Polish or Russian secret service because her parents and brother back in Poland are in danger. For all I know this may or may not be the case. Either way, she used to live in New York, and I think she’s still living here. After yesterday, I believe this more than ever.”

“How do you know she used to live here?”

Georg told her about the poster in Françoise’s room in Cadenet, about his looking for her at the cathedral, and about his meeting with Calvin Cope. “And you saw what happened yesterday evening at the game,” he added.

“Are you saying that the only thing you knew when you came to New York was that… I mean, all you had to go on was a poster of a cathedral in New York? I used to have a poster on my wall of Gripsholm Castle!”

“But you didn’t make a secret of the fact that it was Gripsholm Castle. Françoise had cut off the wording at the bottom of the poster and told me it was the church in Warsaw where her parents got married. Be that as it may, I now know that she took part in the theater workshop at the cathedral, and that in any event nobody here seemed to have taken her for Polish or Russian. So she not only speaks French, but also English, and both, it seems, fluently.”

“Does she speak Polish too?” Helen asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know any Polish.”

“She couldn’t have known that. She must have anticipated that you might know Polish. Go on.”

“I’ve told you pretty much all I know. I have reason to believe that her previous employer has an office near Union Square, and that she might still be working for him.”

“Do you have the address?”

“Yes.”

“You went there?”

“I went a couple of times, but didn’t see her going in or coming out.”

“So you’re saying… you’re saying that the Polish or Russian secret service is operating here in Manhattan? And you know the address? Sixteenth Street, seventh floor, ring three times, KGB sort of thing?”

“No, I’m not saying that. But in Cucuron they threatened me, followed me, and beat me up, and here they’ve been shadowing me. There’s no rhyme or reason for all this, except that it must be the same Polish or Russian secret service. And the fellow who’s been following me goes to work every morning and then returns there in the evening after his day of shadowing.”

“Your spaghetti’s getting cold.”

He pulled the plate toward him and began to eat. “It’s already cold.”

She had finished eating. “So you’re asking me how you should go looking for Françoise because I live in New York and might have some ideas about how to find someone in this city. Good, I’ll share my ideas with you. But whether you like it or not, I’ll also give you a piece of my mind about the story you’ve just told me. First, if you believe your girlfriend is in the clutches of an Eastern Bloc secret service and that you can free her on your own, that’s pure nonsense. If she’s in anybody’s clutches, then the CIA would do a far better job at freeing her. If she isn’t going to the CIA herself, then it’s because she can’t or doesn’t want to be freed. Second, you should go to the CIA too. I don’t know what your dealings with the KGB are, but you should have seen your face when you told me about how they beat you up. Do you want to hit back at them? Do you want to blackmail them into returning your girlfriend to you? Do you want compensation for being beaten up? I imagine these secret services are never worth the money put into them, but if they couldn’t handle someone like you, nobody would invest a cent in them. I’ve just tied in my third point with my second one, but that doesn’t matter. To go to the CIA, but also to leave things as they are, wouldn’t be a bad idea. I like that neighborhood, and it gets to me to hear about a KGB office there. My favorite shops are there and a bunch of galleries are not too far away; there’s a nice new restaurant I like, and then the KGB moves in? I don’t like that! Don’t you feel the same way?”