He shut the door. It was a corner room with windows on two sides, a bare wall, and a wall with a picture of two beach chairs beneath an umbrella by the sea. In the corner between the windows stood the large desk, and across from it a sofa and chairs. They sat down. He’s all show, Georg thought, and not even especially good at it. The gloomy room they had put him in for the movie, the door without a knob—that had been quite something. But they’d have done better to corner him right then and there: with the walk to Bulnakov’s office and all of Bulnakov’s swagger, Georg’s fear had dissipated.
“One look at you, and I can see you’re a changed man,” Bulnakov said. “This is no longer the timid young …”
“We’ve been through all that before. I’m sure you know what I want. I don’t like Provence anymore, and Provence doesn’t like me. Beginning a new life in a new place takes money. And I want that money from you.”
Bulnakov sighed. “Money … Had you agreed to my proposal back in Cadenet, we could have saved ourselves a whole lot of trouble. Especially you. But let’s forget about that, it’s water under the bridge, over and done with, finito! You see, I have no funds in connection with this matter anymore.” He held his empty hands out to Georg.
“Over and done with?” Georg replied. “Surely this story has the kind of plot that could go on. In fact, it has gone on quite excitingly for me: scene changes, a world metropolis instead of the back of beyond, this elegant office instead of the little poky one, rare woods and precious gems instead of technical translations, Mr. Benton instead of Monsieur Bulnakov. And yet the interests and the players are still the same. The next episode could be a winner if journalists, the police, and the CIA make an entrance.”
“Let’s not go into all that again. We already established back in Cadenet that the last thing you want is police involvement,” Bulnakov said, shaking his head with the kindly but impatient expression usually reserved for a petulant child.
“I came to you because what I want is two million dollars. I’d be happier with those two million than having to deal with the police, the CIA, or reporters, but if I don’t get the money, I’m quite prepared to endure the little bit of trouble the police might put me through.” Georg stressed little bit and trouble.
“Two million dollars? Are you mad?”
“Fine, then let’s make it three. You mustn’t forget that I’m quite irritated. I loved my life in Cucuron, my cats, and my physical well-being. I’d need a large sum of money to turn my back on all the fuss I could make.”
Bulnakov laughed. “How do you picture your next step? You just go waltzing over to the CIA, ask for whoever’s on duty, and tell him your story? Whisper in his ear that Townsend Enterprises is a front for …”
“… the Polish or even the Russian secret service.”
“And they’ll lap it all up, no questions asked? I have to say …” Bulnakov continued laughing, slapping his thighs, his belly hopping.
Georg waited. “In case you’re interested,” he began, and Bulnakov fell silent, “First of all I’d go to the press and show them all my papers and photographs. I’d let them decide when I should go to the CIA or the police. They’ll have their own ideas about timing and so on. Furthermore … as I’ve just seen in your screening room, you have quite a bit of photographic material yourself, but still you might like this little souvenir of the good times, our good times, back in Provence.” Georg took out the photograph of Bulnakov sitting behind the wheel of his Lancia, his arm resting on the rolled-down window, the sun in his face and on the license plate. He reached across the table and handed it to him.
“It’s a nice picture,” Bulnakov said. “And how nicely you put it: ‘the good times in Provence.’ It is amazing how you’ve developed. What a pity that you weren’t then who you are now. I’m sorry to bring this up again, but we could have worked so well together. As for the money …” He shook his head. “Even if we forget your little joke about the three million, I can’t see how … not to mention …” He rested his head on his right hand, and with his middle finger rubbed his left eyebrow. Then he sat up. “Give me a few days. I need to give this some thought and make a few calls. Can we reach you at your friend’s number?”
At the door Georg asked about Françoise. “Is she okay?”
“Most definitely. She’s living a quieter life, doesn’t get out much. She’ll go to a baseball game now and then,” Bulnakov said with a smile. “You might even bump into her at one. I hear you’ve become a Yankees fan.”
33
THE NEXT FEW DAYS were like a vacation for Georg. He spent them in Riverside Park. A blanket of heat was smothering the streets, but in the park there was a breeze from the river. He even put up with the pigeons. They covered the benches with their droppings and nodded their heads idiotically. Sparrows bathed in the dust. Squirrels darted nervously across the paths. The same homeless people sat on the same benches at the same time every day. The same joggers jogged. The same people walked the same dogs, some picking up the dog shit with plastic bags, others letting it lie, looking around guiltily. The same little brats in designer T-shirts terrorized the same black nannies.
Georg was pleased with the way his meeting with Bulnakov had gone. He hadn’t expected him to agree to his demand for money, let alone that he’d have paid it right away. Georg was happy to make Bulnakov squirm for a while before he would grudgingly realize that he had no other choice.
One afternoon there was a sudden thunderstorm, but Georg stayed on his park bench. The wind tore through the trees. Raindrops fell like sparkling pearls in the lightning flashes. Only one of the buildings on the street had a slanting roof, and the water came pouring down the incline, flooding the gutter and spraying over the edge. He was soaked to the skin and very happy.
Sometimes he brought along a book, newspaper, or magazine. It had been a while since he had given any thought to the world at large. Was the world giving any thought to him? He was glad to loosen up a little, now that the world was taking on a friendlier face, and that substantial investments were on the horizon.
There was an article in Newsweek that he found particularly interesting. A consortium of European aircraft builders was developing a new attack helicopter, in partnership with the Gorgefield Aircraft Company. A major political breakthrough was in the works: by the late 1990s all the NATO armies were to adopt this single make of attack helicopter. The aim was to break the superiority of the Russians. The conventional wars of the future would be won or lost with attack helicopters. Uniformity in this weapon system was of vital importance, which was why the NATO defense ministers were meeting in Ottawa with a view to clinching this political breakthrough. The technological breakthrough was already under wraps. The article mentioned stub wings, ABC rotors, and RAM-coating.
How very interesting, Georg thought. I’m not surprised that the Russians would do anything to get their hands on Mermoz’s plans. Back at the apartment, he took out the copies he had made during his last few weeks of working for Mermoz. He had translated words like screws, bolts, connectors, valves, spindles, flanges, nuts, clamps, caps, joints, spars, flex beams, mufflers, regulators, filters, slots, axels, rotors, and so on, without being interested in what they meant. Now he tried to decode their meaning.
In a nearby bookstore he found a book about attack helicopters and read up on stub wings, ABC rotors, and RAM-coating. Stub wings help support the rotor and carry the weapons. As Georg read on, he realized that the suspensions were connected to the stub wings. He also recognized that on his plans the rotors were closely stacked over one another, which in the ABC concept had the advancing blades providing more thrust than the retrograde blades, giving the helicopter the remarkable speed of over three hundred miles per hour. Finally he thought he had decoded the last series of plans. There were slots at the rear letting out compressed air, helping to make the tail rotor redundant. Sensational. He didn’t have the plans for the radar absorbing RAM-coating, but here it seemed to be more of a problem of the material a
nd pricing than one of construction. About the Hokum, the newest Soviet attack helicopter, the book did not have much to say. But if it was true that the Hokum still used a tail rotor and could only reach speeds of two hundred miles per hour, then the Soviets had every reason to be alarmed by the NATO developments.
On Sunday he went to pick up Helen to take her out to brunch. The money from Germany had arrived. He had paid the rent, and had a thick roll of hundred-dollar bills hidden in his belt, and a wad of twenties in his pocket. He felt rich. Helen should enjoy his good times. When he arrived she was on the phone.
“No, Max, both shoulders. Take hold of both shoulders with both hands and fold them back until they meet. Now take both shoulders in one hand. Are you holding them? No, Max, not the sleeves.… Of course I know that the sleeves begin at the shoulders, and if you mean the beginning of the sleeves … Are you holding both shoulders where the sleeves begin with one hand? Good, then with the other, fold the side with the buttons … over the other side … the side with the buttonholes. You can’t? … Because you’re holding both shoulders together with your hand? You’ve got to let go for a second. Then you can fold the side with the buttons over the side with the buttonholes, so that only the lining is visible. What? The jacket fell on the floor? You let go of it? You can only let go of it once you’ve folded one side over the other.… You can’t?” She got up, cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder, and took her jacket off the back of a chair. “You see, Max, I know what I’m talking about. I worked in a clothing store. I have a jacket in my hands right now.…” She folded it as she had described. You learn something every day, Georg thought. “I know you can’t see me. ‘You see’ is just a turn of phrase. Of course I know you can’t see me. All I wanted to say was, I have a jacket in my hands right now and it’s quite simple when the hand that holds both shoulders from inside … no, Max, I’m not coming over to pack your jackets for you. No. You don’t have many jackets, just one? Then why don’t you just wear it? Because it’s too warm in Italy? Listen, Max, I’ve got to go. Call me this evening.… Keep practicing. Or don’t take the jacket with you, if it’ll be too hot for you anyway.…” Helen had spoken the whole time with the utmost seriousness. Now she threw Georg an impatient, exasperated look. “Listen, I really have to go. Yes, I’m hanging up. Yes, now.”
She hung up and looked at Georg. “That was Max.”
“I heard.”
“He wanted me to tell him how to fold a jacket in order to pack it into a suitcase.”
“How does one do that? Does one take both shoulders in …”
“Stop making fun of me. Shall we go?”
He flagged down a cab on Broadway. Helen was surprised. They took a table in the garden at Julia’s, an elegant restaurant on Seventy-ninth Street, and ordered eggs Benedict and Bloody Marys.
“I thought you said our next date would be a walk in the park, with french fries and a Coke?”
“Things have changed.”
“Is the KGB footing the bill?” she asked, with a touch of irony.
“Don’t worry, this is honest money we’re squandering here. I got money from Germany.”
“Have you given any thought to going to the CIA or the FBI?”
She was getting on his nerves. “To be honest, no. Is the cross-examination over?”
“Well,” she said hesitantly, “if you didn’t want my opinion, you shouldn’t have told me anything. Now it’s too late. I thought about all this, and the more I thought about it, the less I understand you. Unless you’re cynical.”
“What?”
“Cynical. I mean … in my definition, cynicism is contempt for everything that holds our world together: solidarity, order, responsibility. I’m not saying that law and order should reign supreme. But you Germans don’t understand that. When I was an exchange student in Krefeld, I saw how in class you all copy one another. No sign of a bad conscience, as if it were the noblest deed.” She shook her head.
“But if the students are all copying one another, then that’s surely a prime example of solidarity,” Georg said.
“Solidarity in the face of order imposed from above. For you guys, order is still imposed from above, and either you worship it or you try, like naughty children, to bamboozle it.”
He laughed. “Perhaps you’re right, but that’s not being cynical, not in your definition either. Contempt is missing.”
“You think it’s funny, but it isn’t a laughing matter. Contempt comes later, when the children have grown up.” The eggs Benedict arrived. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” Helen insisted.
“I’ve got to think about it for a moment,” he replied.
He savored every bite. As he relaxed, he thought the matter over. He wasn’t sure if Helen was right or not, but it was true that he didn’t care about solidarity, order, and responsibility. He didn’t think of himself as immoral. One didn’t trample on the weak, exploit the poor, or cheat the simpleminded. But that had nothing to do with solidarity, order, and responsibility. It was a question of instinct, and reached only so far as one can perceive the consequences of one’s actions. There were certain things one simply didn’t do, because one wouldn’t be able to face oneself in the mirror. One doesn’t like to face oneself in the mirror when one has pimples either, but one’s complexion is not a question of morals. Could it be that I’m not immoral but amoral? Can I tell Helen that?
“What you’re saying would mean that we have still not left our authoritarian state behind us,” he said. “You have a point there. It’s like what you told me the other day about the fairy tales in the nineteenth century, which I wanted to ask you a few more questions about—”
“You want to drop the matter,” she cut in. “Fine, I’m dropping it. What shall we do after brunch? Can I have another Bloody Mary?”
They left Julia’s and strolled through Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum. A new annex had been built, and one could step out onto the roof. They stood above the trees in the park. Like on a jetty above a green lake of swaying treetops surrounded by a mountain range of buildings.
34
GEORG WAS ALWAYS SURPRISED by the speed with which construction jobs were carried out in New York, work that in France or Germany would have taken days or weeks to complete. One Saturday morning he was awakened by the noise of construction machinery breaking up the sidewalk the whole length of 115th Street. By evening the new pavement was ready, light gray cement divided into large squares, and the soil around the trees was framed by dark red bricks. Farther down Broadway he saw a building of forty or fifty stories going up. The first time he had gone past there were only cranes towering into the sky, then steel went up, and now the skeleton of the building had turned into a massive body. But at Townsend Enterprises things were not moving ahead. On Monday morning Georg was awakened by a phone call telling him to be at the office by ten, and as he climbed the stairs, the painters were still at work.
He waited in front of the map of the world, and was greeted coolly by Bulnakov who didn’t show him to his office, but to a room with two metal desks, a metal filing cabinet, and far too many metal chairs. There were open drawers, yellowing papers on the floor, the water in the cooler was brackish and brown, and there was dust everywhere. Bulnakov leaned against the window while Georg stood in the middle of the room.
“I am happy to be able to make you an offer, Mr. Polger,” Bulnakov said. “We can offer you thirty thousand dollars and a guarantee that the problems you faced in Cucuron will not recur. We will also provide you with a ticket back to Marseille or Brussels, whichever you prefer. That will be the end of the matter, and the end of your stay in the New World. This evening you will take TWA flight 126 or Air France flight 212. Bookings have been made for you on both planes. All I need is your signature, here.” Bulnakov’s hand slipped into his left inside jacket pocket and took out a thick wad of bills, laid them on the desk, and from his right outer pocket took a folded piece of paper that he handed to Georg.
; Sometimes it seems as if the world holds its breath for an instant. It is as if all the wheels stand still, all the airplanes, tennis balls, and swallows hang in the air, as if all movement were frozen. It is as if the earth were hesitating, uncertain whether to keep turning forward, turn back, or change the axis around which it rotates. The stillness is absolute. Traffic falls silent, no machine rumbles, no wave slaps the shore, no wind rustles through the leaves. At such a moment everything seems possible: the movements of the world are made up of infinitely small states of motionlessness, and one can imagine these states gathering together in a different order of things.
This happens often at moments when decisions must be made. The beloved is still standing in the door of the railway car and you can still say “stay” before the conductor blows his whistle, the door falls shut, and the train pulls out of the station. Or it is you who is standing in the door of the railway car waiting for her to say “stay.” The world can hold its breath as much in moments of another person’s decision as it can for one’s own. Even if it is not a matter of a momentous decision: when one sits in a café drinking a cup of cocoa, watching passersby through the window, when one stops for a moment while doing the ironing, or when one has just screwed on the nib of a fountain pen. It is a matter of course that the way of the world could be different.
But it’s not a matter of course either. Georg saw the frozen movement of Bulnakov’s outstretched hand, saw the piece of paper, didn’t hear the traffic or the footsteps in the hall outside. Thirty thousand dollars—sixty thousand marks, a hundred and eighty thousand francs. That was more than he needed to live a year in Cucuron. Hadn’t he always wanted time and leisure to write? Wasn’t he tired of crossing swords with Bulnakov and searching for Françoise? But even as these thoughts flashed through his mind, he knew that there was nothing to think about or decide.