Bernhard Schlink - The Gordian Knot

With this decision the weariness returned, and now also the fear that he was taking on too much, that he would be out of his depth. He lay down on the bed, fell asleep, and had nightmares about agencies, unfinished jobs, unpaid bills, a ranting Bulnakov, Françoise fending him off with frightened eyes, Maurin lying dead. He woke up at four in the afternoon and was still worried. He showered, put on a white shirt, a black tie, and his old gray suit. By five-thirty he was in Marseille, ringing the doorbell of Maurin’s apartment.

“DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE DRIVING from Gordes to Cadenet on Monday? I felt that the whole world lay at my feet. But then the feeling disappeared. I’m kind of fainthearted, and your not wanting to move in with me made me even more uncertain. But you were right: I wasn’t yet the kind of man I wanted to be, the kind you could love.”

Georg and Françoise were having an aperitif. The house was clean, the table set; a duck was roasting in the oven, oak logs burning in the fireplace; clean sheets were on the bed.

“Here’s to us,” he said.

Their glasses met. She was wearing a red dress with a zipper down its whole length, a prim, girlish pin in her hair, and her perfume-“You look wonderfully enticing.”

She laughed and held out her hand across the table for him to kiss. “The dress is old, I didn’t have time to wash my hair, and as for Jil Sander, I’d say her Eau de Toilette is austere rather than seductive. Why don’t you fill me in on everything that happened this week. I was waiting for you to call or come by. I thought you’d at least come to the office to pick up some work. And then Bulnakov tells me you’re inviting me to dinner on Saturday, all the while dropping hints that when I saw you I wouldn’t recognize you. That wasn’t fair,” she added with a pout, “even if the invitation was very sweet. I don’t see why I shouldn’t have recognized you. You’re even wearing the same jeans you had on last weekend.”

Georg got up. “Allow me to introduce myself, Mademoiselle. Georg Polger, director, president, and CEO of Marseille’s famous Maurin Translation Service, the most successful translation agency from Avignon to Cannes, and from Grenoble to Corsica!” He bowed.

“What? What do you mean?”

Georg told her what had happened. He described Madame Maurin, with her excessively blond hair, heavy makeup, her excessively tight skirt, and her exaggerated mourning. The only genuine things about her were her hard eyes and even harder sense of business. It was good that he had come; she’d already been made various offers, but, needless to say, former employees would be given preference. Then she named an absurdly high price. Georg had remained cool and polite. That same evening he had called on Chris, Isabelle, and Monique to make sure they would stay with the firm. He spent the night in Marseille and set up an appointment with Industries Aéronautiques Mermoz in Toulon for Tuesday morning. “That was the hardest nut to crack,” he told Françoise. “A young manager, dark blue suit and vest, gold-rimmed glasses, cold as ice. Luckily he foresaw a lot of translation work over the next few months and had intended to hire Maurin’s agency, but hadn’t heard about the fatal car crash. And luckily the manager was up on the technical details of the helicopter they were working on, and I threw some terminology at him that I picked up from my jobs last year, until he got the point he needed a professional for the translations and I was that professional. I proposed the same terms Maurin had always had with them, and naturally gave him the line about all this being on a trial basis and so on. But from what I gathered, all they want is for the translations to be reliable and on time. And that they will be.”

“What about Madame Maurin?”

“Do you remember Maxim, the lawyer from Montélimar we met at the conference in Lyon? I gave him a call and asked him about the legal details of taking over an agency of this kind. Then, when I went back to Madam Maurin and flung my trump card on the table, that I was already working with Mermoz, she saw reason. She’ll be getting 12 percent of our turnover over a five-year period. She and I sifted through her husband’s correspondence, and notified all our clients about the takeover. The funeral was Thursday-I was standing at the widow’s side, and on Friday Maxim came over to set up the contract, by which time we’d already gotten our first jobs from Mermoz. So this morning I finally got back from Marseille to Cucuron.”

“At the funeral you were at Madame Maurin’s side? When’s the happy day?”

“Don’t be silly!” Georg said. He looked at Françoise. Was she jealous? Was she poking fun at him?

“Oh no, the duck!”

He ran into the kitchen and poured gravy over the hissing brown meat.

Françoise sat at the table, fiddling with her knife and fork. “Will you be moving to Marseille?” she asked. “I… I have… oh, come here, my fainthearted lover.”

She pulled him down onto her knee, wrapped her arms around his stomach, and lay her head on his chest. She looked up at him. “I’ve been thinking about you and me.”

Again he saw the dimple by her eyebrow. “I see you’re still thinking.”

“Stop it. You’re making fun of me. I’m being serious. You asked if I’d move in with you. I felt you were going too fast, that I need time. But when I didn’t see you all week, when I couldn’t touch you, feel you, I thought… You know what I’m trying to say, and you’re just sitting there like a tin soldier!”

He went on sitting there like a tin soldier, saying nothing and gazing at her happily.

“If you’re not moving to Marseille, and have a glass for my toothbrush,” she said, “if you can make some space in your closet and give me a desk and a shelf, then-I don’t want to give up my apartment, but I’d like to spend a lot of time here with you. Is that okay?”

GEORG COULDN’T REMEMBER EVER BEING as happy as he was the next few months.

Françoise moved in at the end of March. Spring exploded into a luxuriant summer. The year before the garden hadn’t blossomed with so much color, the days had not been as bright, the nights not as mild. When the heat began in June and the earth grew dry, Georg saw a gentle radiance instead of parched dryness. And he saw Françoise growing more and more beautiful. Her skin became tanned, delicate, and smooth. She gained weight, grew more curvaceous and feminine, which he liked.

There were times when the work and all the commuting between Marseille and Cucuron were too much, but four times a week he managed to be at the office by nine, to assign work to Chris, Monique, and Isabelle, edit their translations, and do some translating himself. He managed to make deadlines, keep old clients and bring in new ones, and install a word-processing system. In April an officer from National Security asked him questions about his citizenship, work, lifestyle, and political views. He asked Georg for references in Germany, and had him sign a consent form that would allow National Security to request information from the German authorities. In May Georg received a confirmation from Mermoz that he had been given security clearance, and that all confidential materials sent to his agency would have to be translated by him personally. Now the work really began. There was hardly a weekend when he didn’t have to spend hours poring over construction plans, manuals, lists of materials, and flowcharts. He managed that too.

As a boy he had never had an electric train. His father had given him a heavy, metallic locomotive that could be wound up, two railway cars, and a few tracks, enough to form a circle. At Christmas Georg had gazed longingly at the store window of Knoblauch’s, the biggest toy store in Heidelberg, where toy trains rolled over an extensive network of tracks-lots of trains at once, with no collisions or derailments, with blinking signals and barriers being raised and lowered. He was able to see a shop assistant maneuvering the trains from a small podium.