The Gordian Knot - Bernhard Schlink [49]
He rolled the wineglass back and forth between his palms.
“That’s what it is, isn’t it,” she continued. “You sleep with me, but she’s the one you want to be with. And now you’re asking me to help you get back together with her? Don’t you think that’s a bit twisted?”
“I’m sorry if I hurt you, Helen. I didn’t mean to. The night we spent together was wonderful, and I wasn’t thinking about Françoise. You asked if I still love her. I really don’t know. But I must find her. I need to know what it was between her and me—whether it was all in my imagination. I don’t trust anyone or anything anymore, especially not myself and my feelings. I … it’s as if everything is blocked and grinding to a halt.”
“What is it you imagined?”
“That everything between her and me was perfect. Like with no other woman.”
Helen looked at him sadly.
“I can’t tell you the whole tangled story,” he went on. “I think you’ll see why when I tell you what I can tell you. If you’d rather I didn’t”—he looked up and saw that the waitress had brought their food—“then we can just have our spaghetti.” He sprinkled some cheese on his dish. “You told me last night that I need to figure out what I want. I don’t just want to find her—I want to put my life back on track. I want to be able to connect with people again, to talk about myself, listen to people, ask for advice when I’m stuck, and even for help. I don’t think you took what I said before seriously, but it is true, I have lost my social skills. I think I’ll go crazy if I go on like this.” He laughed. “I know I can’t expect people to welcome me back with open arms, but I also know I can’t go off and feel sorry for myself if they don’t.” He wound the spaghetti around his fork. “You know, I probably should be happy I could even ask you.”
“And what is the question you would be happy to ask if you could ask?”
“Ah, you’ve happened upon one of those linguistic issues.”
“No, it’s a logical one. And I didn’t happen upon it—I crafted it. But do go on.”
He pushed his full plate to the side. “I don’t even know what her name is. In France she called herself Françoise Kramsky, but I’m certain that’s not her name. The French and Polish background reflected in that name might be real, but then again it might just have been part of the role she was playing. She was passing herself off as a Polish woman who has to work for the Polish or Russian secret service because her parents and brother back in Poland are in danger. For all I know this may or may not be the case. Either way, she used to live in New York, and I think she’s still living here. After yesterday, I believe this more than ever.”
“How do you know she used to live here?”
Georg told her about the poster in Françoise’s room in Cadenet, about his looking for her at the cathedral, and about his meeting with Calvin Cope. “And you saw what happened yesterday evening at the game,” he added.
“Are you saying that the only thing you knew when you came to New York was that … I mean, all you had to go on was a poster of a cathedral in New York? I used to have a poster on my wall of Gripsholm Castle!”
“But you didn’t make a secret of the fact that it was Gripsholm Castle. Françoise had cut off the wording at the bottom of the poster and told me it was the church in Warsaw where her parents got married. Be that as it may, I now know that she took part in the theater workshop at the cathedral, and that in any event nobody here seemed to have taken her for Polish or Russian. So she not only speaks French, but also English, and both, it seems, fluently.”
“Does she speak Polish too?” Helen asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know any Polish.”
“She couldn’t have known that. She must have anticipated that you might know Polish. Go on.”
“I’ve told you pretty much all I know. I have reason to believe that her previous employer has an office near Union Square, and that she might still be working for him.”
“Do you have the address?”
“Yes.”
“You went there?”
“I went a couple of times, but didn’t see her going in or coming out.”
“So you’re saying …