Bernhard Schlink - The Gordian Knot

“In this weather?” He shivered.

“It’s just a little rain. It’ll be like a blanket, you won’t be seen or recognized. You’ve been cooped up in the apartment all week.”

“Maybe later.”

At three-thirty she got to the point. “Somebody’s coming at four, and I’d be happy if you could leave me alone with him for a while.”

“Who’s coming? What’s going on?”

“Sometimes… a man comes to see me and we…”

“You sleep together.”

She nodded.

“Is he the one who called up before?”

“He’s married, and only knows at short notice when he can get away.”

“Then he calls up, comes over, you fuck, and he buttons up his pants and leaves.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Do you love him?”

“No. It’s… he is…”

“Benton?”

She looked at him, afraid. How he knew and hated that glance. And the small, shrill voice in which she finally asked him: “You’re not going to do anything to me? Or to Jill?”

The old feeling of helplessness and fatigue came over him. No, he thought, I won’t put up with that anymore, but I won’t beat her either. “Fran, I don’t want this. I’m not sure what our relationship is, but everything will be ruined if you sleep with Benton now, and I don’t want everything to be ruined. Don’t open the door when he comes.” Should he tell her he loved her?

But she had already started rationalizing, sentence after sentence, in a whining voice. “No, Georg, that’s impossible. He knows I’m here and that if I’m here I’ll open the door. He’s coming all the way from Queens. He’s my boss, and Monday I’ve got to go back to work-Monday, that’s tomorrow. I won’t let you mess up my life. You’d like that, wouldn’t you! And how do you imagine it? Joe is outside the door, hears Jill screaming and me running around, and I don’t open it? Have you thought of that? It doesn’t work that way. You come bursting into my life and make demands. I never promised you anything. And what do you think Joe is going to do when he’s outside and I don’t let him in? Do you think he’ll shrug his shoulders, go down the stairs, get in his car, and go home? He would obviously think something happened to me when I tell him he can come over and then don’t open the door. He’ll call the super and the fire department, and I wouldn’t like to think what would happen then. I…”

He grabbed her, shook her, and screamed into her face in which her voiceless mouth went on forming sentences: “Shut up, Fran, stop!” She screwed up her face. “You’ll write a note saying you had to take Jill to the hospital, and you’ll leave it on the door downstairs. And if he comes up anyway-I’ll deal with him, which is perhaps the right end for this crazy story! I’ve had it!” Jill had woken up and was screaming, and Georg saw the fear again in Fran’s look. “Do it, otherwise you and Jill will regret it.”

She wrote the note and stuck it on the door downstairs. Benton didn’t buzz. They finished reading the paper, cooked together, and went to bed early, because Fran had to be up early. They made love, and it seemed to Georg that she was so passionate because he was so remote.

In his thoughts he was with Townsend Enterprises, Gorgefield Aircraft, and the Russians. He wanted to bring the story to an end. The way the players were placed and the cards dealt, it looked bad for him. The cards needed to be called in, reshuffled, and dealt again-and why not bring in a new player? If the Russians weren’t in the game, he’d have to bring them in.

IF THE THIRTY MILLION JOE had gotten from Gorgefield Aircraft wasn’t enough, and Joe wanted another thirty million from the Russians-how would he go about it? He would make contact, present them with a model construction sketch, and name a price. Joe wouldn’t do this as head of Townsend Enterprises-in fact, he would perhaps go through a straw man. How would the Russians react? They would study the designs thoroughly, want details about all the material, haggle over the price, find out whom they were dealing with, and whether they were being taken for a ride. And how would he, Georg, set his trap?

By the time Fran came home from work Monday evening, he had a plan. Up till then, he had celebrated Fran’s return home according to the image of the ideal American housewife he had gotten from the movies, with Jill on his arm, dinner on the stove, cocktails in the fridge, and candles on the table. It was an ironic game, but an affectionate one. On this evening, Georg was playing another game.

“Which do you want to hear first, the good news or the bad?” he asked.

Fran realized that something was up, and smiled uncertainly. “The good news.”

“I’m leaving in a few days.”

“But you have to… I mean, we…”

He waited, but she couldn’t finish the sentence. She looked at him; the dimple above her right eyebrow was trembling. He was hoping that she would… he himself didn’t know what he was hoping.

“And the bad news?”

“Either you and Jill go with me, or I’ll take Jill alone.”

“Go where?” There was alarm in her voice.

“To San Francisco, for a week.”

“Are you crazy? I started work today and can’t take another week off.”

“Then I’ll go alone with Jill.”

She put down the brown shopping bag and put her hands on her hips. “You really are crazy. You and Jill… What are you up to? What do you hope to gain from it?”

“I’m taking Jill as a hostage if you really want to know. As a hostage so that you won’t say a word to anyone until I come back and get away for good. So you don’t run to Joe Benton and betray me.”

“I would never do that. I haven’t done it all the time you’ve been here.”

“I’m taking her as a hostage so you don’t confess to Benton that you copied the Mermoz documents and gave them to me. For that’s exactly what you’ll do tomorrow or the day after.”

“Oh no! I don’t know what game you’re playing, but it won’t work. Even if I wanted to-I just can’t, I have no idea where he keeps the documents, how I could get hold of them, how I should copy them-”

“You can photograph them. You know how to do that. And don’t try telling me you can’t… You’ve been his lover for years, you still sleep with him, you know he got thirty million from Gorgefield Aircraft, which you couldn’t have learned from the assets report of Townsend Enterprises, you know he arranged Maurin’s murder and…”

“And your cats, don’t forget your cats,” she said. He looked at her, dumbfounded. She again had her shrill little girl’s voice, but at the same time scorn and sheer hatred in her voice and her narrowed eyes. “You on your high horse! You think you’re better than him and better than me. You look down on us. But that’s just the way life is, everyone fights for their own piece of the cake, you too, only not as well! Joe didn’t make the rules!”

“You don’t understand the key point,” he said calmly. “All these years you’ve known Benton well enough to be able to find out where he keeps the Mermoz documents and how you can get hold of them. The point isn’t who made the rules. Okay, Benton didn’t make them, you didn’t make them, I didn’t make them. But the thing is that I’ve finally understood them, just the way you and Benton have long understood them! I have Jill. You get hold of the Mermoz documents. You’ll also get hold of the names of Benton’s contact at Gorgefield Aircraft and a letterhead of Gorgefield’s, a brochure, whatever has the firm’s logo on it. If you want Jill back, you’d better get to it.”

“You really mean it!”

“Yes, Fran, I really mean it.”