The Gordian Knot (8 page)

He crouched down and caressed them. They were still warm.

The phone rang. He got up slowly, went inside, and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

It was Bulnakov, his voice serious. “Did you find them?”

“Yes.” Georg would have liked to shout threats at him, but he couldn’t speak.

“I have already made it clear, Monsieur Polger, that this isn’t a game. For the last few days I’ve been very patient. I waited, hoping you’d see reason. But it seems that you haven’t quite grasped the situation. You thought that good old Bulnakov would give up, that he’d turn his back and go on his way. No, Monsieur Polger! Good old Bulnakov will only go on his way when he’s got what he wants!” He hung up.

Georg stood there with the receiver in his hand. He understood what Bulnakov had said. He was aware that for the past few days he had lived in an illusion, but didn’t know what to do with this awareness. You lie in bed feeling cold, and outside it’s even colder: What can you do except pull the thin blanket over you to conserve
whatever little heat you have? What use is being aware that the cold is too great and the blanket too thin? Should you tell yourself that you’ll freeze to death anyway, and that you might as well get it over with as soon as possible?

But why freeze to death, Georg asked himself. The only thing they want me to do is keep on doing knowingly what I’ve done up to now unknowingly. I just have to go on with my work and from time to time let Françoise … in fact, I don’t need to take any action. All I have to do is let things happen. So much in this world isn’t the way it ought to be and I look the other way. God knows, the Russians getting the details of the helicopter that the Europeans are building isn’t the worst the world has to offer. Perhaps it’s even a good thing, creating a balance of power, helping peace. But it’s not a matter of what I’m doing: the issue is that I’m being ordered to do it. I haven’t accomplished much in life, but at least it can be said that I never did anything I didn’t want to do. I might have liked things to be different. But in the end, whatever I did was always my decision. I don’t care if that’s pride, defiance, independence, or eccentricity.

He hadn’t yet grasped that the cats were dead. He knew it, but the knowledge was strangely abstract. As he dug a hole and laid the cats in it, he cried. But as he sat by the living room door staring into the twilight, he felt as if at any moment Dopey would come prancing around the corner.

FRANÇOISE KNEW WHAT HAD HAPPENED
. “I was there when the two of them showed up. Bulnakov told me to go outside, but I realized what they were up to. My poor darling!”

“You never liked those cats.”

“That’s not true. Perhaps not as much as you did, but I still liked them.” She was leaning against the door frame, running her fingers through his hair.

“Gérard bought some fresh salmon, but I can’t say I have much of an appetite. Are you hungry?”

She nestled up to him and put her arm around him. “Why don’t we lie down?”

He couldn’t make love to her. They lay together in bed, and at first Françoise held him, saying over and over, “My darling, my darling.” Then she kissed him and reached to arouse him. But for the first time he found her touch unpleasant. She stopped, rolled onto her stomach, crumpled the pillow under her head, and looked at him. “We still have some champagne in the fridge. How about it?”

“What are we celebrating?”

“Nothing. But it might do us good. And the fact that it’s all behind us now.… I’m so happy it’s all behind us.”

“What’s behind us?”

“All this nonsense. You and them battling it out. You can’t imagine how worried I’ve been.”

Georg sat up. “Are they going away? Have they given up? What have you heard?”

“Them, give up? Never. But you … I thought you had … well, you don’t want …” She sat up too, looking at him perplexed. “Don’t tell me you still don’t get it! They’re going to destroy you. They’ll do such a good job of it, that … They’ve already killed a man for these stupid plans. We’re not talking about three cats now, we’re talking about you!”

He looked at her blankly and said despondently, obstinately, “I can’t give them those plans.”

“Are you crazy?” she shouted. “Don’t you care whether you live or die? Life—that’s here and now!” She took his hands and put them on her thighs, hips, breasts, and stomach. She wept. “I thought you loved all this. I thought you loved me.”

“You know I do.” How lame it sounded! She looked at him, disappointed through her tears. As if something beautiful had fallen on the floor and was now lying in pieces.

She didn’t go on about how he ought to give Bulnakov the plans. She went to get the champagne, and after the third glass they began to kiss and make love. The next morning she crept out of bed early. When he woke up at seven, she and her car were gone.

He didn’t think anything of it. He worked on the translation, and late in the afternoon headed to Cucuron to do some shopping. Then he went to the Bar de l’Étang to see Gérard, and went with him to the wine cooperative at Lourmarin, as he could do with a few bottles himself. It was getting dark when he came home.

He got out of the car and walked toward the house. Suddenly he saw that the door was open. It had been broken open. Inside the house, closets and shelves had been emptied, drawers tipped out,
pillows slashed open. The kitchen floor was covered in shattered dishes, cans, oatmeal, spaghetti, cookies, coffee beans, tea bags, tomatoes, eggs. They had gone through everything. He walked through the house, at first stepping carefully amid the books, records, vases, ashtrays, clothes, and papers. But what was the point of watching where he stepped? At times he turned something over with his toe or pushed it out of the way. “Well!” he thought. “There’s that telephoto lens I’ve been looking for everywhere. And it’s fine. And there’s the Guinness ashtray I thought someone must have swiped.”

The plans were still stashed in the drainpipe. He rummaged through the chaos for his dictionaries, the ruler, and a pen, cleared the area in front of his desk, pulled up the chair, and began to work. The translations had to be ready by tomorrow. He would get Françoise to help him clean up later. He was surprised at how unruffled he was.

Françoise didn’t appear. At midnight he drove over to Cadenet. The windows of her apartment were dark and her car wasn’t there. Maybe she’s on her way to my place, he thought. But when he got back home her car wasn’t there either.

It was a moonlit night, and as he lay on the fresh sheets covering the slashed mattress he could see the disarray even after he turned out the light. The outlines he was used to seeing from his bed were askew. The small cabinet by the wall on the left lay on its side, and the painting on the right had been taken down. His bed was immersed in a disarray of pants, shorts, jackets, sweaters, and socks. Something lay gleaming among the clothes. He got up to see what it was. A belt buckle.

He couldn’t sleep. Just as he wanted to look away from the chaos but couldn’t, he also wanted to look away from what Bulnakov had done and what he was still likely to do. And yet there was nothing to be seen. Or there was something to be seen but
nothing that could be done about it. To face the disarray meant rolling up his sleeves and putting everything back in its place. But what would it take to face Bulnakov? Getting a gun and shooting him and his henchmen? Georg pulled the blanket up to his chin. I can only hide under the blanket and hope they’ll just give up and go away. As for my life—I don’t think it would do them much good to kill me.

He got up again and turned on the light. He went downstairs to where he had found the telephoto lens, looked for his camera, which he also found undamaged, and a new roll of film. They’ve been very systematic, he thought; I just have to look on the floor in front of the appropriate closets and chests of drawers. Georg put the film in the camera and set the alarm clock for six in the morning.

He couldn’t shoot those guys, but at least he could photograph them, in case he got involved with the police or wanted to tell someone about all this and needed something to back it up. He knew though that shooting pictures of them was really a substitute for shooting them with a gun.

The following morning at seven-thirty he was already lying in wait in Cadenet. He couldn’t keep an eye on both the side-street entrance to the office and the parking lot by the statue of the drummer boy, so he opted for the parking lot. If he could catch them in their cars along with their license plates, perhaps the police might be able to do something with it.

He’d been in Cadenet since seven, had parked his car by the church some distance away, and looked on the square for a place to hide. Street corners, doorways, abutments—but every place where he could get a good view, they could also get a good view of him. Finally he went to the building across from the parking lot and rang the bell of the apartment on the second floor. The family was at the breakfast table. He told them he was a journalist and that he
wanted to take pictures of the square in the morning light for
Paris-Match
. They were also eager for him to take some pictures of their building. He promised he would, and they offered him a cup of coffee. He fiddled with the lenses by the window, and began to act as if he were preparing his photo shoot.

That morning, when he had driven past her house, Françoise’s car was still not there. At eight he saw it pull into the parking lot. Two men got out. Georg knew them from Bulnakov’s office. He was gripped by panic. Had they done something to her? First the cats, then the break-in, and now—oh God!—now Françoise? The men were still standing by the car when Bulnakov arrived. He parked his Lancia but didn’t get out, and the two men walked over to him. Georg took one picture after another: Bulnakov resting his arm on the open car window, facing the camera; Bulnakov with the other two standing by his car, then by Françoise’s car; and then Bulnakov standing alone in the parking lot, watching the two men drive off in her Deux Cheveaux. If the pictures were to be of any use, he had to have clear shots of the faces, the license plates, and the faces together with the license plates.

Georg drove to Marseille and checked his answering machine for messages. Nothing from Françoise. That evening there was no sign of her, nor was there a note on the door from her. He had bolted shut the broken-down kitchen door and was using the door to the living room to get into the house. Françoise didn’t have a key for that door. Might she think he had locked her out and was now furious at him? But she’d still have left him a note. He had called Bulnakov’s office a few times, but she hadn’t answered. Her car hadn’t been in front of her house, and she hadn’t opened the door when he rang. The curtains were drawn.

This went on for the next few days. There was no sign of Françoise. He didn’t see or hear from Bulnakov or his men. They left his house alone, didn’t vandalize his garden or his car, and
didn’t harm him. Georg spent one more morning in Cadenet, lying in wait. This time he waited at the end of the small side street that led to Bulnakov’s office, and photographed them as they entered: Bulnakov himself, the two others, and a young blonde he hadn’t seen before. Françoise didn’t show up, nor did she go to his place, or to hers, or pick up the phone at Bulnakov’s when he called.

In the end Georg was so frayed from waiting for Françoise and his fear for her that he was on the verge of calling Bulnakov and giving in:
You can have it all, I’ll send you whatever you want, I’ll do whatever you want, steal, copy, take pictures! I just want her back
.

IN THE MORNING GEORG WENT TO HIS OFFICE
and opened the safe where he kept the originals of the plans, intending to transcribe what he had translated.

The cigarettes were missing—the pack of Gauloises he specifically remembered placing on the plans in the safe the day before yesterday. He always did this; as a smoker, there was nothing worse than being caught short without a cigarette. There were times when he worked late into the night and couldn’t buy any downstairs once the bar closed.

It wasn’t just about the cigarettes. He had some on him, and even found the pack he’d put on the plans on one of the lower compartments. Someone had gotten into the safe.

His secretary, Chris, Monique, Isabelle? Why would they want to break into the safe? They had all known one another for a long time. They had worked for Maurin long before Georg had, and at better pay. They had come to Provence from elsewhere seeking a quieter life, which they had found with their translation work, and were relieved to be able to work under Georg after Maurin’s death. They didn’t envy his running the firm, and sometimes poked fun
at him for being so industrious. Why should they want to make trouble for him?

Unless Bulnakov had bribed or blackmailed them. We all have our price, Georg thought; it’s just a question of the amount. What’s surprising is not the number of people being bribed or what they are prepared to do, but for how little most people are prepared to do it. It’s a matter of putting the money and morals in relation to each other: when the bribe is high enough, the success is so inevitable that bribery is no longer immoral. What is immoral is selling oneself cheaply. Georg was not angry that his coworkers might let themselves be bribed by Bulnakov for a substantial sum; what annoyed him was that he would have to arrange for a new lock and be more careful. He was relieved, feeling that he and Françoise would no longer be in trouble since Bulnakov had gotten what he wanted. But the question remained: Where had she disappeared to and what had happened to her? Might she be in Marseille, and now assigned to Chris?

He looked out the window. A courtyard, clothes hanging to dry from windows, one newly painted building and paint flaking on others, tall brick chimneys on the roofs. Loud voices of playing children. Beyond the roofs he saw taller buildings and a church tower. Might Françoise be somewhere in this big city waiting for Chris, or getting ready to spend the night.… You’re crazy, Georg said to himself. These are delusions! You’ve never seen Chris with a woman. You’ve often wondered if he’s gay.