He had been eagerly looking forward to his question and her response. He was certain she would say yes, that everything was perfect between the two of them. In fact—life was perfect.
The conference had been a success. He had come across as relaxed and informed. Clever questions had been asked, and he had given witty answers. He had handed out not only Bulnakov’s card but his own too, and a lawyer from Montélimar who specialized in computer leasing and software liability wanted to work with him on future French-German cases. The Xerox representative had been surprised when Georg told him about the TEXECT translation he had just done. “But that’s been available in French for more than a year!” But what did Georg care, it wasn’t his problem. In his jacket pocket he could feel Bulnakov’s envelope with six thousand francs.
And Françoise was sitting beside him. The second night, Thursday, he had thrown all caution to the winds. He was going to enjoy it; he wasn’t going to fall in love, wouldn’t lose himself, but was still slightly afraid that this affair might last only one night, or a few days. He had woken up in the night and sat in the bathroom, his elbows propped on his knees, his head resting in his hands. He was moody and sad. Then Françoise came in, stood next to him, and he leaned his head against her bare hip while she ran her fingers through his hair. She said Georg, not Georges as she usually did. It sounded clumsy, but it made him feel good. He had told her that his parents and sister had called him Georg, his friends in high school and college too, but that when he went to France after his internship at the law firm it had become Georges or Shorsh. He had told her a lot about his childhood, his years at school and university, his marriage to Steffi, and the years with Hanne. She kept asking questions.
She didn’t reveal much about herself—the silent type, he thought. It wasn’t that she didn’t talk. She described in great detail how she had moved from Paris to Cadenet, how she had found an apartment and fixed it up, how she settled in, what she did evenings and on weekends, and how she started making friends. She also answered his questions about Bulnakov’s office in Paris, told him about the heart attack Bulnakov had had a year earlier, and his decision to work less and away from Paris. Bulnakov had wanted her to come with him, and had made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. “You don’t leave Paris for Cadenet just like that,” she said. Her talk was mostly fast, lively, and amusing, and made Georg laugh a lot. “You’re making fun of me,” she’d say with a pout, and, hugging him, would give him a kiss.
They had arrived at Poët-Laval early, and after they carried their bags up to the room they couldn’t get into bed fast enough. With one sweep he pulled his sweater, shirt, and T-shirt up over his head, with another his pants, underwear, and socks. They made love, fell asleep, and then, kissing and touching, were aroused again. She knelt on him, moving rhythmically, and stopped whenever his excitement grew too strong. Outside it was dusk, and her face and body shimmered in the twilight. He couldn’t gaze at her enough, but had to close his eyes because he was brimming over with love and pleasure. She was next to him, and yet he still longed for her. “If you give me a child—you will be present when I give birth, won’t you?” She looked at him intently. He nodded. Tears were running down his cheeks, and he couldn’t speak.
They were approaching Bonnieux when he asked if she would move in with him. She stared straight ahead, and didn’t say anything. She took her hand from his thigh and buried her face in her hands. He stopped the car at the top of the hill. Behind them lay the little town, and before them, in the shadow of the early morning, the ravine that cuts through the Luberon. He waited, not daring to ask any questions or to pull her hands from her face and see some terrible truth. Then she spoke, through her hands. He barely recognized her voice. It was colorless, timid, fending off, the voice of a little girl.
“I can’t move in with you, Georg. Don’t ask me why, don’t press me—I can’t. I would love to, it’s so wonderful being with you, but I can’t, not yet. I can come to you, I can come to you often, and you can come to me. But please drop me off at my apartment now. I need to get ready quickly and go to the office. I’ll call you.”
“Why not come to the office with me right now? What about your car?” Georg asked, though he wanted to ask something quite different.
“I can’t,” she said, taking her hands from her face and wiping away her tears. “Drop me off at my place and then park the car somewhere near the office. I don’t mind walking a little. You drive on.”
“But Françoise, I don’t understand. After the days we’ve just spent together.”
She flung her arms around him. “They were wonderful, and I want more days like that. I want you to be happy.” She kissed him. “Please, drive on now.”
He drove on and dropped her off at her place. She had rented a former caretaker’s lodge in a villa on the outskirts of the village. He wanted to take her bags in for her but she stopped him, insisting that he drive on. In his rearview mirror he saw her standing in front of the iron gate, between the stone posts crowned with stone globes and flanked on both sides by an old, thick box-tree hedge. She raised her hand and waved with a coquettish flutter of her fingers.
7
BULNAKOV HAD ASSUMED A SOMBER EXPRESSION. “Come in, my young friend. Sit down.” He slumped heavily into the chair behind his desk and waved at the one across from him. A newspaper lay open in front of him. “You can fill me in about the IBM conference in the next day or so, there’s no rush. But read this.” He picked up a page from the newspaper and handed it to Georg. “I marked it with an X.”
It was a short article: Last night Bernard M., the director of a Marseille translation agency, had had a fatal accident in his silver Mercedes on the Pertuis road. The police were still investigating the circumstances, and any witnesses were asked to contact the authorities.
“You worked for him, didn’t you?” Bulnakov said, while Georg repeatedly read the short article.
“Yes, for almost two years.”
“A great loss to our profession. You might think there’s a dog-eat-dog war between our agencies, but the market isn’t that small, and, I’m glad to say, respect and professional esteem are not impossible between competitors. I didn’t know Maurin that long, but I had a high regard for him as a colleague. That’s the first thing I wanted to say. The second thing, my young friend, is about the consequences his demise might have for you. You’re good at what you do, you’re young, you’re going to make it in this world, but you’ve lost an important source of work. Well, there’s always me, and I’m sure you can stand on your own two feet. But let me give you a bit of fatherly advice.” Bulnakov smiled with a solicitous, friendly frown, and raised his hands in a gesture of blessing. He waited a moment, heightening the suspense, stretched it out even further, got up, walked to the other side of the desk, still without saying a word, his hands raised. Georg also stood up. He was looking at Bulnakov quizzically, inwardly amused. This must be what it was like asking a father for his daughter’s hand. Bulnakov patted Georg on the shoulder. “Don’t you agree?”
“I’m not sure yet what you’re advising me to do.”
“You see,” Bulnakov said with a concerned look, “I’m aware of that, and it worries me. That young people nowadays find it hard to …”
“To do what?”
“Now, that’s the right question!” Bulnakov said, exuding joy and benevolence once again. “To do what? To do what? Zeus asked that question, Lenin asked it, and there’s only one answer: grab life by the horns. Seize the opportunities life presents you with, seize the opportunity offered you by Maurin’s death. One man’s demise is another man’s prize. I know it’s dreadful, but isn’t it wonderful, too: the Wheel of Fortune? Talk to Maurin’s widow, talk with your colleagues, take over his business!”
Of course Maurin’s widow would be pleased if he took over the agency, paid her a percentage, and kept it running. Employees Chris, Isabelle, and Monique, Georg’s colleagues working for Maurin, wouldn’t be up to the task—a few weeks
ago he wouldn’t have been able to either—so they would surely continue working with him, for him.
“Thank you, Monsieur Bulnakov. You’ve given me very good advice. I suppose there’s no time to lose. I ought to …”
“Indeed, there’s no time to lose!” Bulnakov said, leading him to the door and patting him on the back.
The reception area was empty. Before Georg closed the door, Bulnakov called out after him to come back in two days for his next job.
Georg went out into the street and stopped in the square. Hadn’t he left the car near the statue of the drummer boy? He looked up and down the square. He found it next to a construction site and got in, but then got out again and went into a bar on the corner. He took a cup of coffee and a glass of wine over to a table and stood beside it, looking out through the hazy window.
He felt weary with everything that lay ahead of him before he even started, before he could picture it. He drank the coffee, the wine, and ordered another glass. Then Nadine came in. She painted and made a living from pottery, making bowls, cups, plates—and producing homemade raisin bread. Thirty-six years old, interrupted studies, divorced, a ten-year-old son. She and Georg had slept together for a while on a whim, and then on a whim stopped sleeping together, though they kept on meeting with a burned-out familiarity.
“Maurin’s dead. An accident. I’ve been weighing whether I ought to take over his business.”
“Great idea!”
“A lot of work. I’m not sure that’s what I want. But then again …” Georg ordered a third glass of wine and sat down next to Nadine. “Would you?”
“Take over Maurin’s business? I thought writing was what you wanted to do. Didn’t you tell me about some love story between a little boy and his teddy bear you were working on?”
“Yes, writing is what I want to do.”
“And didn’t you tell me that there was some American writer you wanted to translate and see published, and those mysteries by Solignac that nobody knows in Germany? But, that’s the way things go: we always end up doing something other than what we want.” She laughed a small, bitter laugh that was not without charm, brushed back a lock of hair from her face, and flicked the ash from her Gauloise. The scent of her perfume wafted over to Georg.
“Still wearing Opium?”
“Uh-huh. Did you know that of all the old crowd I’m the one who’s been here longest? Some have left—I’ve no idea what they’re up to—and others are either doing well or not so well. Some have gotten themselves jobs with the city or with the district administration, have a shop, or have hit the skids like Jacques, who’s on drugs and has been doing some breaking and entering and will be caught one of these days. I like the fact that I’m somewhere in between, and I thought you’d hold out too.”
“But you are painting. Don’t tell me you don’t want to have an exhibition someplace, or have people buy your paintings, or become famous.”
“Sure I do. But I want my freedom, even if it doesn’t amount to much. You’re right, though—sometimes I do dream of exhibitions and all that, but I want to get to a point where I don’t even dream about that kind of stuff anymore.”
Georg drove home slightly tipsy, proud of his life, proud that he hadn’t gone down the slippery slope or risen to the top through compromise. Nadine was right. But when he got home and saw the dirty dishes, and couldn’t call Françoise because the phone had been cut off again since he hadn’t paid the bill, he said to himself that enough was enough: “I’m fed up with this mess and with nothing going well for me, not having any money, wanting to write something but never getting anything written. My only accomplishment in life is that I gave up a shaky law office in Karlsruhe for a shaky existence in Cucuron. I’ll give Maurin’s agency a try!”
With this decision the weariness returned, and now also the fear that he was taking on too much, that he would be out of his depth. He lay down on the bed, fell asleep, and had nightmares about agencies, unfinished jobs, unpaid bills, a ranting Bulnakov, Françoise fending him off with frightened eyes, Maurin lying dead. He woke up at four in the afternoon and was still worried. He showered, put on a white shirt, a black tie, and his old gray suit. By five-thirty he was in Marseille, ringing the doorbell of Maurin’s apartment.
8
“DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE DRIVING from Gordes to Cadenet on Monday? I felt that the whole world lay at my feet. But then the feeling disappeared. I’m kind of fainthearted, and your not wanting to move in with me made me even more uncertain. But you were right: I wasn’t yet the kind of man I wanted to be, the kind you could love.”
Georg and Françoise were having an aperitif. The house was clean, the table set; a duck was roasting in the oven, oak logs burning in the fireplace; clean sheets were on the bed.
“Here’s to us,” he said.
Their glasses met. She was wearing a red dress with a zipper down its whole length, a prim, girlish pin in her hair, and her perfume—“You look wonderfully enticing.”
She laughed and held out her hand across the table for him to kiss. “The dress is old, I didn’t have time to wash my hair, and as for Jil Sander, I’d say her Eau de Toilette is austere rather than seductive. Why don’t you fill me in on everything that happened this week. I was waiting for you to call or come by. I thought you’d at least come to the office to pick up some work. And then Bulnakov tells me you’re inviting me to dinner on Saturday, all the while dropping hints that when I saw you I wouldn’t recognize you. That wasn’t fair,” she added with a pout, “even if the invitation was very sweet. I don’t see why I shouldn’t have recognized you. You’re even wearing the same jeans you had on last weekend.”
Georg got up. “Allow me to introduce myself, Mademoiselle. Georg Polger, director, president, and CEO of Marseille’s famous Maurin Translation Service, the most successful translation agency from Avignon to Cannes, and from Grenoble to Corsica!” He bowed.
“What? What do you mean?”
Georg told her what had happened. He described Madame Maurin, with her excessively blond hair, heavy makeup, her excessively tight skirt, and her exaggerated mourning. The only genuine things about her were her hard eyes and even harder sense of business. It was good that he had come; she’d already been made various offers, but, needless to say, former employees would be given preference. Then she named an absurdly high price. Georg had remained cool and polite. That same evening he had called on Chris, Isabelle, and Monique to make sure they would stay with the firm. He spent the night in Marseille and set up an appointment with Industries Aéronautiques Mermoz in Toulon for Tuesday morning. “That was the hardest nut to crack,” he told Françoise. “A young manager, dark blue suit and vest, gold-rimmed glasses, cold as ice. Luckily he foresaw a lot of translation work over the next few months and had intended to hire Maurin’s agency, but hadn’t heard about the fatal car crash. And luckily the manager was up on the technical details of the helicopter they were working on, and I threw some terminology at him that I picked up from my jobs last year, until he got the point he needed a professional for the translations and I was that professional. I proposed the same terms Maurin had always had with them, and naturally gave him the line about all this being on a trial basis and so on. But from what I gathered, all they want is for the translations to be reliable and on time. And that they will be.”
“What about Madame Maurin?”
“Do you remember Maxim, the lawyer from Montélimar we met at the conference in Lyon? I gave him a call and asked him about the legal details of taking over an agency of this kind. Then, when I went back to Madam Maurin and flung my trump card on the table, that I was already working with Mermoz, she saw reason. She’ll be getting 12 percent of our turnover over a five-year period. She and I sifted through her husband’s correspondence, and notified all our clients about the takeover. The funeral was Thursday—I was standing at the widow’s side, and on Friday Maxim came over to set up the contract, by which time we’d already gotten our first jobs from Mer
moz. So this morning I finally got back from Marseille to Cucuron.”
“At the funeral you were at Madame Maurin’s side? When’s the happy day?”
“Don’t be silly!” Georg said. He looked at Françoise. Was she jealous? Was she poking fun at him?
“Oh no, the duck!”
He ran into the kitchen and poured gravy over the hissing brown meat.
Françoise sat at the table, fiddling with her knife and fork. “Will you be moving to Marseille?” she asked. “I … I have … oh, come here, my fainthearted lover.”
She pulled him down onto her knee, wrapped her arms around his stomach, and lay her head on his chest. She looked up at him. “I’ve been thinking about you and me.”
Again he saw the dimple by her eyebrow. “I see you’re still thinking.”
“Stop it. You’re making fun of me. I’m being serious. You asked if I’d move in with you. I felt you were going too fast, that I need time. But when I didn’t see you all week, when I couldn’t touch you, feel you, I thought … You know what I’m trying to say, and you’re just sitting there like a tin soldier!”
He went on sitting there like a tin soldier, saying nothing and gazing at her happily.
“If you’re not moving to Marseille, and have a glass for my toothbrush,” she said, “if you can make some space in your closet and give me a desk and a shelf, then—I don’t want to give up my apartment, but I’d like to spend a lot of time here with you. Is that okay?”