The Gordian Knot (9 page)

Things had become easier for Bulnakov’s men. When they had searched Georg’s house, they had made copies of his office keys. He always left them in the briefcase in which he carried his translation work to and from Marseille. Needless to say, when he’d gone to Cucuron shopping he hadn’t taken his briefcase with him. Just you wait, he thought. I’m not going to make things so easy for you, Monsieur Bulnakov! He called a locksmith and had him change
the locks on the door and the safe. He urged the locksmith to work as fast as he could, and by evening the job was done. In a store earlier that day he had happened to find a postcard of a tongue sticking out. When he left his office to go to dinner he pinned it to the door.

He stayed the night in Marseille. Mermoz was running late with the new plans, and was going to messenger them over to him the next day. It was a big job, the last of a series. Georg was pleased with the prospect of so much work. The weekend was coming up, the first weekend without Françoise. He didn’t believe she would come back. He also didn’t believe she was in trouble, or that something had happened to her. It wouldn’t make sense, after Bulnakov had gotten hold of all the plans so easily. No, Françoise had simply dropped him. He’d burned his bridges with Bulnakov, and consequently with her too.

He slept on the couch in his office. He had drunk a lot that evening and didn’t hear whether or not Bulnakov’s men had tried to get in. The next morning the card with the tongue was gone. Though anyone could have taken it.

It was evening by the time Mermoz’s messenger came by with two thick rolls of plans and a large batch of construction details and instructions. By the time he had made copies of everything it was getting dark. He had driven the road home so often by day, by night, in heavy traffic, in all weather, even in sleet that he barely noticed the surroundings, until he became aware of a car whose lights stayed behind him. He noticed it on the last part of the highway from Aix to Pertuis, and in Pertuis he tried to shake it. He got away at a red light, which he managed to cross right in front of a big tractor-trailer, and then wove his way through backstreets. But when he got to the road outside town that led to Cucuron they were waiting for him and began tailing him again. Now he knew it was him they were after.

As the road sloped upward he revved his old Peugeot for all it was worth, but the other car followed with ease. He passed other vehicles, but the car tailing him was right behind.

The road beyond Ansouis was empty. He was still driving as fast as he could. He wasn’t going to head home but to Cucuron, straight to Les Vieux Temps, where he would honk his horn, bringing everyone out from the restaurant and the bar across the street that was full of billiard- and cardplayers. He wasn’t really afraid. He had to concentrate on the road. It was him they were after—his mind went to Bulnakov’s men and the plans on the backseat. The postcard of the tongue he had pinned to the door might have made them angry. But what could they do to him on this road from Ansouis to Cucuron, which he had driven a thousand times and where everyone knew him? Perhaps it wasn’t them at all, only some idiots playing games.

But it wasn’t some idiots playing games. As he came to the dirt track that led to his house, the other car pulled up and swerved toward him, forcing him onto the dirt track. The car swerved again; Georg jammed on the brakes and came to a halt in the ditch, his forehead banging against the steering wheel.

They tore the door open and pulled him out of the car. He was stunned and bleeding from a cut over his eyebrow. As he raised his hand to feel the cut he was punched in the stomach. Then came another punch, and another. He was incapable of even attempting to defend himself. He didn’t know where the punches were coming from, how many men were hitting him, or how he could protect himself.

At some point he fell to the ground and lost consciousness. A neighbor found him after he had staggered up, looked in the car, and seen what he knew anyway: the Mermoz plans were gone. He had only been unconscious for a few moments. When he had last checked his watch in Ansouis it was a quarter to ten. Now
it was ten. The neighbor insisted on calling the police and an ambulance—“Just look at yourself, just look at yourself!” he kept saying, and Georg looked into his side mirror and saw his bloodstained face. He was in such pain that he could barely stand up.

“No bones broken,” the doctor said, after putting some stitches on his eyebrow, “nor any signs of internal injuries. You can go home. Take it easy for a few days.”

A CUT EYEBROW WILL HEAL
, and though bruises are more painful on the second day, they are less so on the third, and after the fourth day just feel like a fading muscle ache. After the police questioned him and drove him home, Georg took a warm bath, and spent much of the weekend in bed and in his hammock. By Sunday he felt strong enough to collect his car and head over to Les Vieux Temps for dinner. Things could have been worse, he told himself; soon everything would be fine. But as the pain subsided, his feeling of helplessness grew. My body, he concluded, whether strong or infirm, is my house, and, like the house I actually live in, is the expression of my integrity. Without my body my integrity is an illusion. That it is here, that I reside in it, that I alone am master of it, is a vital part of being alive; just as the solidity of the ground beneath our feet is an important part of our being alive. He had never thought of it in this way, but now realized that he had felt this way all along. As a boy, during a vacation in Italy, he had experienced an earthquake and realized with dread that there was no depending on the ground on which we stand and walk so confidently. What was worse now than the pain and the horror of being so helpless when they had dragged
him out of the car and beat him up was the realization that his body could be ravaged just like his house.

Once every movement no longer hurt and he could walk, bend over, and stretch, he felt anger and hatred. They’ve taken Françoise away, they’ve beaten me to a pulp, killed my cats, ransacked my house and my office. They used me, and anything I didn’t give them of my own free will they took anyway. If I let them do that, I’m not worth more than a stone or garden hose or cigarette butt. And if it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m going to beat the hell out of Bulnakov! I’ll blow him up in his car, him and those bastards who did this to me!

He pictured what he would do to them, and how. There was nothing original in his fantasies, just images of avenging heroes from the movies, but when the images ran out and he began to think more clearly, he realized how little he knew. How many people were working for Bulnakov? Where did Bulnakov live, what did he do all day?

On Monday morning Georg drove to Marseille by way of Cadenet. It was a detour, but it took him past Françoise’s place. He kept hoping for a sign, a hope he told himself was futile, and for which every disappointment was a confirmation. He no longer went to her apartment.

But her car was there: parked the way she always parked it on the other side of the narrow street, at an angle, only the left wheels on the asphalt, the right ones against the hedge. He pulled up outside the front gate, hurried up the stairs, ran over the gravel, and pressed down on the latch. She never locked the door when she was home. But today the door was locked, and when Georg stepped back confused, he saw that the curtains were still drawn. He knocked on the door, waited, and knocked again.

A truck honked its horn as it carefully edged past Georg’s car,
which was blocking the road. Somebody called to him from a window in the villa, and he looked up.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Mademoiselle Kramsky. I see her car is here.”

“Mademoiselle Kramsky? She moved out. About a week ago. Ah, the car is back, is it? Well, it’s my car, not hers. She rented it from me until today.”

“But you said that it was a week ago that she …”

“One moment, I’ll be right down.”

Georg waited by the door. An elderly gentleman in a dressing gown came out.

“Good morning. You are a friend of Mademoiselle’s, I believe; I’ve seen you before. She rented the apartment and the car from me. She wanted to keep the car a little longer so she could go out driving for a few days.”

“Do you have her new address?”

“No.”

“Then where do you forward her mail?”

“Mail? She never got any.”

“I’m sorry to be so insistent, but this is really important. You can’t just rent a car like that without having an address.”

“That’s enough of that, young man. Mademoiselle Kramsky lived here quite a while, and I know whom I can trust. As you said yourself, the car is parked right outside. Good day!”

Georg walked slowly down the stairs and stopped in front of the gate. He took a deep breath. This time the disappointment was not just a confirmation, it hit him full force. His anger was back. He would go to Bulnakov’s office and confront him.

He parked his car near the statue of the drummer boy and walked up the rue d’Amazone. The brass plaque next to the bell was no longer there—it was the right building, but the plaque was gone. A man in white overalls came walking up the street, told
Georg the door was open, and went inside. Georg followed him up to the third floor. The door stood open. Here, too, Bulnakov’s plaque was gone, and the painters were at work.

“What’s going on?” Georg asked the man he had followed up the stairs.

“What does it look like? We’re painting.” He was a young man with a cheerful, cheeky face, who had been whistling all the way up the stairs.

“What about the people who had the office here?”

“Monsieur Bulnakov? He’s the one who hired us.” He laughed. “He paid us too.”

“Do you know the landlord or the owner of the building?”

“Oh, are you thinking of renting the place? Monsieur Placard lives on the ground floor.”

Georg knew what Monsieur Placard would say: Monsieur Bulnakov hadn’t left a forwarding address or any other contact information. Saturday afternoon he and some other men had vacated the premises. “He gave me all the furniture. My son and I brought it down to the cellar. Might you be interested in it?”

“In office furniture?” Georg shook his head and left. Like a nightmare, he thought, but like a nightmare it’s gone away.

BUT NOW HIS WHOLE LIFE TURNED
into a nightmare.

It was at the office that Georg first noticed that everything had changed. The Mermoz job, for which he had been beaten up, had not only been the last in a series, but the very last. No more jobs came. He called Mermoz and asked what the matter was, but was put off. When he called again, he was told in no uncertain terms that Mermoz was no longer interested in his services. All his major accounts began to dry up, one after the other. Within a month his agency was ruined. Not that there weren’t any translation jobs, but there wasn’t even enough work to cover the rent or pay the secretary.

Then his problems with the police began. They had initially accepted that he didn’t know who had attacked him or why. The two officers who took his statement had been pleasant and sympathetic. But a few weeks later two other officers showed up. They wanted to know the exact particulars of the accident, the route he’d taken, what he had in his car. They asked him for his opinion about the attack: If he were going to rob anyone, would he choose to rob someone driving an old Peugeot? Why he had moved from Karlsruhe to Cucuron? What did he do for a living? What had he
done for a living in Germany? No, they couldn’t drop the matter. They kept coming back, sometimes two officers, sometimes one, always asking the same questions.

The policeman in Cucuron also had his eye on him. The little town had only one policeman, everybody knew him and he knew everybody. Nobody held it against him when he took it upon himself to have a car towed that someone had left in the middle of the street in a drunken stupor, or if he stopped someone from burning trash in their backyard, or had a door broken down for the bailiff. Can one blame a dentist if he drills and there is pain? And like a dentist, Cucuron’s policeman didn’t inflict pain without good reason.

At first Georg wasn’t particularly concerned when the policeman didn’t return his greeting. I suppose he didn’t see me or didn’t recognize me, he thought, or maybe his mind was elsewhere, or perhaps he mistook me for one of those tourists passing through Cucuron.

One day he was sitting at a table outside the Bar de l’Étang. Gérard and Nadine were with him, and the bartender had come out to sit with them. The other tables were full too, as the morning market was over. He had parked his car where he always did, and where everyone else did too: among the old plane trees by the pond.

“Is that your car?” the policeman asked, towering before Georg and pointing at his yellow Peugeot.

“It is, but …” Georg wanted to reply that he knew well enough it was his car, and ask him what this was all about.

“You can’t leave your car there.”

Georg was more taken aback than outraged. “Why not? Everyone parks there.”

“I repeat, you’ll have to move your car.” The policeman had raised his voice, and everyone at the surrounding tables was watching and
listening. Georg looked at the curious and indifferent faces. The bartender got up and went back behind the bar. Gérard stirred his espresso, avoiding Georg’s eyes. Nadine was fidgeting with her bag.

Georg controlled himself. “Could you tell me why I can’t leave my car there?”

“I will not repeat myself. Move it now.”

Georg again looked at the people sitting at the tables. He knew most of them, had chatted with many of them, played billiards or table-top football, had drunk Pernod with them. After two years in Cucuron, he felt that he belonged here, particularly now in summer when flocks of tourists were milling about the town. But he didn’t belong. There was spite in the faces, not just the indifference of not wanting to get involved. Georg got up and went over to his car. It was like running a gauntlet. He didn’t look for another parking spot, but drove home.

From that day on everyone’s behavior toward him changed: the baker, the butcher, the grocer, and the people he met in the post office, in the bar, and on the street. Or was he imagining things? The quick looking away that obviated the need to greet or be greeted, the slight hesitation of the baker’s wife from whom he bought a loaf of bread, the hint of condescension with which the café owner took his order. He couldn’t have proven any of this in court, but he felt it. What surprised him the least was that the branch manager of his bank asked him to step into his office. For months there had been a lot of activity in his account, and now there were no more deposits, only withdrawals. Needless to say, the bank had to check that everything was as it should be. As for his landlord—he had always been something of a psychopath. That he drove around his house every evening in his old Simca might have something to do with it. But now there were phone calls from the landlord’s wife, who had always been reasonable in the past. They were sorry, but their daughter was coming back from
Marseille and wanted to move into Georg’s house. They would have to discuss terminating his four-year lease early.