The Gordian Knot (13 page)

One evening Georg went out with Helen. He had given much thought to what he would tell her about himself as they were getting to know each other. He had been a lawyer in Germany and had lived in France as a translator and writer—so far so good. But what was he doing in New York? He told her he was doing research for a book, but then also told her about Françoise, that he had met her in Cucuron, and was looking for her in New York. A lame story, he himself realized. It wasn’t surprising that Helen seemed more comfortable talking to the waiter than to him. Her manner struck him as friendly but cautious. They were having dinner at Pertutti, an Italian restaurant on Broadway not far from Columbia. She often went there for lunch. The place reminded him of his own student years, and his lunches and dinners with friends.

He found it hard to talk, not only because he was worried he would reveal too much, but because he was out of practice. In the past he had enjoyed intellectual exchanges: talking about books, movies, politics, and at the same time talking about oneself, mirroring what one had read or seen in one’s own experience, and then presenting one’s experience in general terms, grasping and analyzing developments and relations of others as prototypes. He could no longer do this. He hadn’t done any of this since he had moved from Karlsruhe to Cucuron, and after he had taken over Maurin’s translation agency in Marseille, he had barely read a book or seen a movie. With Françoise he had only spoken about everyday matters. When friends had come from Germany, they had talked about what they were doing and about old times. Georg felt foolish next to Helen, who drew parallels between her students and students in general, spoke about the fairy tales she was working on for her dissertation, trends in the German short story, and Germany’s turmoil in the nineteenth century; about National Socialism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism; and of her experiences as a student in Trier.

“Did you visit Marx’s birthplace in Trier?” he asked.

Helen shook her head. “Have you?”

“No.”

“Why bring up Marx?” she asked, relieved that he had said something after his long interlude of nodding and smiling. She reached for her glass and took a sip.

“I’ve been thinking about something he wrote that has to do with changing and interpreting the world,” Georg said, and tried to explain why it was important not to take others’ behavior as they mean it, but to determine the meaning oneself.

“Isn’t that … isn’t that what the insane do?” Helen said. “Not caring about what people mean, but seeing in other people’s actions what they want to see?”

“What they want to see, or what they are compelled to? If they can choose, then they live with freedom of action instead of having to react. And freedom of action doesn’t automatically bring success and happiness. Moreover, when dealing with those whose behavior is so powerful that one can only react, insanity is perhaps better than submission.”

She didn’t understand him. He didn’t understand himself either.

“Is that what you’re writing about?” she asked.

He looked at her. “Are you joking?” he said. “We’ve been sitting here for two hours, and I can’t even talk properly about students, books, and politics, and you expect me to write about philosophy or whatever?”

“The problem here seems to be linguistic.”

“Fair enough. I’m sorry I asked you out. I’ve ruined your evening. I didn’t realize that I’ve”—he couldn’t find the right expression—“that I’ve lost so much of my social skills.”

The check had been lying on the table for some time. He took some money out of his pocket. She watched him silently, her eyes once again careful. They got up, and he walked with her along Broadway and then up Riverside Drive to where she lived.

“Do you want to come up for a drink?”

They hadn’t said a word all the way to her place. In the elevator she asked him what his sign was, and he asked her what hers was. They were both Capricorns. In her apartment, she asked him about Françoise.

“Do you love her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why are you avoiding my question?”

“Why are you asking? I mean, why are you asking whether I love her?”

“I’d like to know more about you, so I have to start somewhere.”

“I don’t know a lot about you either.”

“That’s true.”

He looked at her. Her eyes were cautious again. Perhaps her cautiousness has nothing to do with me, he thought, perhaps it’s always there. What striking features she has. She’s attractive in a sharp sort of way. And still, even with her hair drawn back into a stern ponytail, she looks friendly.

She smiled. “Would you like to see me again?”

“Yes, I would.” He was sitting next to her on the couch, and caressed her hand, his fingers running along her veins. “I don’t have much money left. Would a walk through Central Park with a Coke and french fries on a park bench be okay?”

She nodded.

“Then I’ll be on my way.”

“Stay.”

He stayed. He woke up often and looked at her as she slept lying on her back in her buttoned-up nightdress, her arms stretched out beside her. The cat was sleeping at his feet. The warmth of the shared bed and the memory of her embraces were pleasant. It was like a homecoming. But always, when he came home, he doubted whether he still belonged there.

TWICE THE FOLLOWING DAY GEORG
was under the impression that he had seen the same balding man in a gray shirt, light brown pants, and black shoes following him. But he wasn’t sure. The day after, Georg was waiting for the bus on Sixth Avenue. It was four o’clock and the street was busy, but it was before rush hour. When the light turned red, there was silence for a few seconds before the traffic came pouring in from the side streets.

He was tired, and only looked up from time to time to see if his bus was coming. He wouldn’t have looked across the street if a truck hadn’t rammed a cab. And he wouldn’t have noticed the redhead, who had been standing behind the truck and now slowly walked on.

Georg looked down the avenue again: there was no sign of a bus. He picked up his plastic bag and started walking. He walked slowly so that the redhead could follow him, but with determination, as was to be expected from someone who has waited long enough for a bus and decided it would be faster to walk. Sixth Avenue, Forty-second Street, Vanderbilt Avenue. The whole way, he didn’t look back. If the redhead wasn’t following him, too bad. Before going into Grand Central, he dropped a coin and bent
down to look for it. People bumped into him and squeezed past. Twenty-one, twenty-two—he counted with clenched teeth. This had to be enough time for the redhead to have seen him. He straightened up and went into the station.

Aha, Georg thought, I see that I can’t get away from cathedrals. The high, flat vault, and in front a gigantic photograph of hot-air balloons before liftoff. The broad steps to the left and right leading down from the street to the hall were worthy of a palace, but of a cathedral too. In the middle of the hall was a circular information booth of stone and transparent, dark blue glass with a brass sphere on top that proclaimed the time from four round dials in four directions. It looked almost like a monstrance. Georg walked down the stairs and found his bearings. To his right was the ticket counter, and above it the boards with the arrival and departure times of the trains. It was twenty past four, and at four-forty there was a train bound for Stamford. He bought a ticket for White Plains. Now he could while away the time. He strolled through the main concourse, peering into the passageways leading down to the trains. He read the flickering electronic signs indicating the share prices and currency exchange and the prices for cotton, coffee, and sugar. He went into a smaller hall where there was a newspaper stand, heavy wooden benches, and restroom signs. Five chandeliers hung from the five vaults of the ceiling.

He sat down on a bench and took a newspaper out of his bag. Has he followed me? Is he watching me? While he was strolling through the halls Georg hadn’t seen the redhead; he hadn’t wanted him to realize he was keeping an eye out for him. Can he watch me discreetly in such a place, or did he see me buying a ticket and is waiting for me to come back into the concourse before my train leaves?

He got up and followed the sign to the men’s room—a hallway, a door, a large white room with a long row of urinals and men’s
backs, and on the other side a long row of white doors. A janitor in white overalls was cleaning the washbasins, humming a song.

It was time for action: close the door, turn the key, pour everything out of the bag onto the floor. Where can I set up my mirror? Will it stay upright on the toilet tank if I lean it against my wallet? He squatted before the mirror, covered his face and neck with a handkerchief, and sprayed black color onto his hair. He rubbed it in, and sprayed again. He wiped away the excess, applied the skin color, stuck on his beard, and tied his tie. He thought he looked like a villain in an old action movie, and once he had put on the dark glasses, like a silent-film-era shyster. The main thing was that he could barely recognize himself. When he got up and put on his coat and hat, he caught sight of his gray sneakers. He blackened them with the rest of the hairspray.

Nobody noticed him when he came out of the stall. He headed to the concourse, trying to walk differently, swaying, with small steps.

The redhead was standing beneath a poster in which Snoopy was advertising MetLife. Georg bought a copy of the
New York Times
and began leafing through it. The redhead was looking around. He walked on, and Georg folded his paper and followed him through the concourse. From the top of the flight of stairs, Georg saw him watching people. The redhead kept looking at the departures board. It wasn’t easy: it was rush hour, and a steady stream of people was pouring down the stairs. The redhead gave up. He let the stream carry him, jostled his way out of the concourse while trying to keep a lookout, but the stream carried him through the corridor leading to the subway. Georg followed the crowds down a ramp and a flight of stairs, through the turnstile, and onto the subway platform. The redhead was standing farther up the platform, and Georg made his way toward him. The downtown Lexington Avenue Express arrived, and he managed to get
into the same car. So the fellow wasn’t heading to the Soviet or the Polish consulate.

They got off at Union Square. They went up the stairs, through the park with the sparse grass and benches that were spotty and leprous and had not been painted in a long time, and onto Broadway, which here was narrow and shabby. The redhead was walking fast. After a couple of blocks, he entered a building.

Georg stopped. It was an old building, with dirty brown brickwork and columns between the windows. Above the ground floor with a shuttered storefront he counted nine floors and half of a tenth, a construction of Roman arches and columns. Above the narrow entrance he read
MACINTYRE BUILDING, 874
. It towered over the others around it. It had seen better days, but still had a shabby dignity.

The door was locked. There was no way of looking into the hallway where he might see an elevator and an indicator light that would show what floor the redhead was going to. Next to the second buzzer Georg made out
Anderson
, and next to the fifth there was a new bronze plaque with fancy lettering that said
TOWNSEND ENTERPRISES
. The names next to the other bells were faded or nonexistent.

What was he to do now? It was a quarter past five, the traffic was heavy. He crossed the street and stopped in front of the window of a sports store, keeping an eye on the entrance to the building. At a quarter to six the redhead came out, carrying a briefcase. With him was a young man in jeans and a blue shirt, its top buttons undone. Shortly after six, a group of young women left the building—secretaries, Georg surmised—and toward seven a number of gentlemen in dark suits. It was getting dark, and on the fifth and sixth floors the lights came on.

He was tired. He was sweating beneath the nylon of his coat, his beard itched, and his back ached. With exhaustion came
disappointment. Each time the door opened, he had hoped to see Françoise, or at least Bulnakov, or—he himself didn’t know who.

Patience is a virtue, as the saying goes. But then again, nobody ever feels the virtue of standing around patiently. We are taught at an early age that you earn your bread by the sweat of your brow, and that we can count on success if we work hard enough at something. What we do not learn is to wait. All of this went through Georg’s mind. If only he could wait, knowing that there would be an outcome. But he had no idea whether he had gotten even an inch closer to Françoise.

BY SEVEN THE FOLLOWING MORNING GEORG
was back at the MacIntyre Building. He had decided against the hairspray, the tanning color, and the coat and hat, and settled for a mustache and sunglasses instead. He walked along the opposite side of the street. From a window table at McDonald’s he could keep the entrance in sight, as well as from what he had learned to identify as a classic New York diner on the corner. But since he wanted to be able to see the door buzzers, to see which one the redhead would ring, he had to stand in a doorway across the street. He was eyed suspiciously by everyone coming in, and soon the super appeared to ask what he was doing there. Georg told him his girlfriend worked across the street and that she was coming back from a trip, but that he didn’t know exactly at what time. She was going to go straight to work, and he didn’t want to miss her. What company was she working for? Georg said he didn’t know, otherwise he wouldn’t be standing there but would have left her a message. All he knew, Georg said, was that she worked across the street, as he’d picked her up often enough.

“Why don’t you just go ask for her across the street?”

The question was so simple and logical that Georg couldn’t come up with anything. He crossed the street, the super watching
him as he went. He rang the bottom buzzer. He didn’t know what he would say if anyone answered, nor did he know why he didn’t just pretend to ring the bell, or simply walk away. The intercom remained silent, and he rang the next bell. The super was still watching him. Suddenly the redhead came walking up the street. He was walking fast, his arms swinging. Georg turned around and walked away. It took all his strength to walk calmly. He wanted to run. His heart was pounding. After twenty yards he looked back and saw neither the redhead nor the super.