The Gordian Knot (5 page)

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.

That was how Georg felt now. In fact, it
was
too much. Just as the store window hadn’t been big enough for all the trains, his resources were too limited for all the work he was getting. There ought to have been constant collisions and mishaps, but it could all be managed if one concentrated. Like trains, the jobs could be coupled and uncoupled, maneuvered past one another, put on standby, accelerated, or brought to a stop. He was in complete command, and applied his concentration with gusto.

Françoise was usually at home when he came back from work in the evening. She was watching for him, came to the door when she heard his car, and ran to meet him, throwing her arms around him. Sometimes, as they ran the few steps to the house, she pulled off his jacket and tie, which he now almost always wore, and led him straight into the bedroom. Georg pretended to be aloof, and let her seduce him. Sometimes she greeted him with a stream of words, telling him about her workday, Bulnakov, or Claude, a nearby
farmer who came by from time to time in his Citroën van to pick up stale bread for his geese, and to drop off cabbages, watermelons, and tomatoes. Sometimes she had already cooked dinner, other times they cooked together. In the morning Georg always got up first, did the dishes from the night before, made tea, and took it to Françoise, who was still in bed. He loved waking her up. He slipped back under the covers, felt her warm body, and tasted the familiarity of her sleepy breath. In the morning her light girlish voice was hidden beneath a smoky hoarseness. It aroused him, but she didn’t want to make love in the morning.

The appearance of the rooms changed. Françoise fixed up the one at the end of the upstairs hall for herself. She sewed a cover for the frayed armchair by the fireplace; in the bedroom, curtains for the alcove, where there was a chaos of jackets, pants, shirts, and underwear. In the kitchen a trash can replaced the plastic bags, and a small cabinet was installed in the bathroom for the toiletries that had been scattered all over the place. Françoise bought the tablecloths in Aix.

“Where did you learn to do all this?” Georg asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, cooking, sewing, and”—he was standing in the dining room, a Pernod in his hand, indicating in a wide arc the whole house—“and all this magic?”

After he had broken up with Hanne, he had often had the urge to move out. Now he once again liked where and how he was living.

“We women have a flair for this sort of thing,” Françoise replied, with a coquettish smile.

“No, I’m serious. Did your mother teach you how to do all this?”

“You’re such a nosy, fretful boy. It’s a knack I have—isn’t that all that matters?”

One evening in June, Georg didn’t come back from Marseille until very late. He stopped on the hill, from which the house was already visible. The garden gate stood open, the windows of the kitchen, the dining room, and living room were lit, as was the light on the terrace. Music wafted gently toward him. Françoise liked turning up the stereo.

Georg sat in the car and gazed at the house. It was a warm night, and the anticipation of coming home surged warmly within him: In a few minutes, he thought, I will be outside the house, the door will open, she will come out, and we will embrace. Then we will have a Campari with grapefruit juice and dinner, and we’ll talk and make out. Françoise was on edge and sensitive these days, and he had to be especially loving and gentle. He looked forward to that too.

As they lay in bed, he asked her if she wanted to marry him. She tensed up in his arms and remained silent.

“Hey, Brown Eyes. What’s wrong?”

She freed herself from his embrace, turned on the light, and sat up. She looked at him in despair. “Why can’t you let things be just the way they are? Why do you always have to crowd me, push me into a corner?”

“But what did I … I love you, I’ve never loved anyone like this, and everything is so great, and never …”

“Then why change anything, why? I’m sorry, darling. You’re wonderful. I don’t want to upset you. I just want you to be happy.”

She nestled up to him, kissing him again and again. At first he wanted to withdraw, push her away, and talk things through. But when he held her away from him at arm’s length and looked into her blank, distant face, he gave up. He let her kiss and bite his nipples, and do all the things she knew aroused him. His orgasm came, she held him tight, and then, in the numbness of approaching sleep, he felt that his proposal had become unreal.

HER REACTION WHEN HE PROPOSED TO HER
was not the only warning. Later he saw all the signals for what they had been, and realized that he hadn’t wanted to see them.

Her sudden departures. He would come home Friday evening from Marseille, and Françoise would be waiting for him in a wonderful weekend mood. They’d go to dine at Les Vieux Temps, and would talk all evening with Gérard and Catrine, and then Saturday fritter away the morning. In the afternoon he had to translate. He would finish his quota by Saturday evening or Sunday morning, and they would have breakfast, stroll through the vineyards, or by the tomato and melon fields, or through the woods on the slopes of the Luberon. When they returned they would lie down, and have a cup of tea or glass of champagne in bed. That was how their typical weekend passed. And Françoise’s leaving suddenly at four or five in the afternoon on Sundays had almost become a part of the weekend routine.

“I have to go now.”

“You do?” Georg asked the first time, taken aback. He tried to hold on to her, to pull her back. She wriggled free, and he got up to
dress. She sat down on the edge of the bed, already wearing her skirt and blouse.

“You don’t have to get up, darling,” she said. “Stay in bed and get some rest.” She tucked him in and kissed him. “I just need some time to myself. I’m going to head home and take care of a few things, and call Mom and Dad. Tomorrow evening, when you get back from Marseille, I’ll be waiting for you.”

Georg would perhaps have come to terms with this had Françoise kept only Sunday evenings for herself. But she said she needed some time to herself, then that she had to take care of important business for Bulnakov, or that she was expecting an important phone call she simply had to take at home. This didn’t happen often during the week. But there were times when she suddenly got up and left after dinner, or after he’d fallen asleep. He kept trying to stop her from leaving—with questions, or a sharp or ironic word or two—but always came up against her unyielding resistance. She warded him off tenderly, angrily, or desperately, but in the end she always left. The first few times, he did remain in bed. But it was usually dusk when she left, and he found the aching beauty of the twilight hour alone painful, with her scent in his bed. So he too would dress, go with her downstairs, and stand at the garden gate until he could no longer see her car.

One weekend he had picked her up at Bulnakov’s office on Friday afternoon, and so she had to ask him to drive her home on Sunday when she needed to go. He took advantage of the situation, kept stalling and saying “Just a second,” and they made love one more time. She wanted to get it over with quickly, but he kept her at it, and it was so wonderful for her that she could not leave. Finally she begged him to make her come. Not because she was anxious to leave, but because she couldn’t stand it anymore. And when he did, she was ecstatic. As he drove her home she nestled up
against him and whispered tenderly, all the while urging him to drive faster. “Oh God, I’m going to be late! What did I want that orgasm for?”

She rarely invited him into her apartment, two adjoining rooms on the ground floor, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a terrace outside the larger room. The place felt unlived-in. He took a few snapshots of her, though she didn’t like being photographed: Françoise on the terrace, Françoise hanging out the washing, Françoise standing in front of the refrigerator, or sitting on the couch beneath a large drawing of a church facade that had been executed with architectural precision.

“What’s the church?” he asked.

She hesitated. “That’s the cathedral in Warsaw in which my parents got married.”

He knew she had parents, but knew nothing about them. “When did they leave Poland?”

“I didn’t say they weren’t still living in Warsaw.”

“But you often talk to them on the phone,” he said, unable to make sense of it.

The washing machine stopped and Françoise went to unload it. He followed her.

“Why are you so secretive about your parents?”

“Why do you want to know so much about my family? You’ve got me—isn’t that enough?”

In July Georg had a party. He had long dreamed of inviting everyone he knew and liked: his parents, sister, uncles and aunts, business associates, colleagues and friends—old friends from Germany and new ones he had met in Provence.

The party would begin in the afternoon, they would have fun, dance, and it would all end with a big fireworks display. His relatives couldn’t come and only a few of his German friends showed up, but the party was fun, and the last guests left at dawn. Initially
Georg had wanted to surprise Françoise, but then he decided that her friends and relatives should come too. She did write a few invitations and help him with the preparations, but when she drove over to Marseille on the morning before the party to get some fresh oysters, she called to say that she wouldn’t be able to make it because she had to fly to Paris on business. Nor did anyone she had invited show up.

On the afternoon after the party, Georg was sitting on the terrace drinking champagne with some old friends from Heidelberg. They had gone for a long hike while the cleaning ladies from the office had removed the last traces of the party. His friends had to head back to Germany, but they kept on talking and putting off their departure. The familiarity of long friendship was like the warm bed one doesn’t want to leave in the morning.

Françoise came driving down the hill in her green Deux Chevaux. Georg jumped up, opened the garden gate, and opened the car door for her. She got out, saw his friends, greeted them awkwardly, and hurried into the kitchen to put away some things she had brought, staying there quite a while. Then she came out and joined the others, but didn’t fit in. Gerd asked her about her flight to Paris, but she avoided the question. Walter asked when she and Georg were planning to marry, at which she blushed bright red. Jan said that he heard she was from Poland and that he’d just been to Warsaw, and began talking about his trip, but she didn’t say anything. Gerd made a few pleasant remarks about the difficulties that a new girlfriend encountered with her boyfriend’s old friends, but she didn’t seem to be listening. After half an hour the friends from Heidelberg left, and while Georg was still standing next to Françoise at the door waving, she hissed at him, “What did you tell them about me?”

“Why are you in such a bad mood, Brown Eyes? What’s wrong?”

But she was in a bad mood and shouted at him in a little girl’s voice, fretful and cantankerous, her sentences starting with “And let me tell you!” “And if you think!” and “Of one thing you can be certain!” He didn’t know what to say, and stood there flustered.

That evening she said she was sorry, boiled the asparagus she had brought, and pressed herself into his arms. “I had the impression you were talking about me, and that your friends had already come to conclusions about me, and wouldn’t see the real me anymore. I’m sorry. I ruined your afternoon.”

Georg was understanding. The trip to Paris must have been stressful. In bed she said, “Georges, why don’t we go visit your friends in Heidelberg some weekend. I’d like to get to know them better. They seem really nice.” Georg fell asleep happy.

IT WAS THE END OF JULY
. Georg woke up in the night in the dark room, rolled sleepily onto his stomach, and tried to lay one of his legs across Françoise. Her side of the bed was empty.

He waited for the sound of the flushing toilet and her footsteps on the stairs. Did minutes pass, or had he fallen asleep and woken up again? He still didn’t hear anything. Where was she? Wasn’t she feeling well?