The Gordian Knot - Bernhard Schlink [69]
She looked at him skeptically. “I’m sorry I’m so late. I had to drop by Benton’s.”
“So you really … Where are they? How much time do I have to come out with my hands raised?” He stood up.
“No!” she called out. The shopping bag fell and burst open as she threw herself in front of the door to the bedroom. “Don’t do anything to her, don’t! I didn’t say anything about you! There’s an article about you in the Times, wait, I’ll show it to you.” She thrust out her left hand at him as if she were fending him off, bent down, pulled the newspaper from the ruins of the shopping bag, and began leafing through it. “I found it. Here.”
“I know the article.” So she really believed he was capable of doing something to Jill.
She straightened up. “Next week my vacation is over, and in any case I wanted to go to Townsend, and after reading the article …”
“Did you speak to Benton?”
“Yes, he’s pretty annoyed. He didn’t want that article in the paper. The painters in the stairwell called an ambulance and the police; then the reporters came, nosed around, and the man you pushed down the stairs gave them your name. After he came to, he didn’t know what he was doing. It’s turned into a circus, Joe said, a regular circus.”
“Joe is Benton?”
“Yes. Do you know that the other one, the one who fell into the elevator shaft, broke both his legs?”
“How should I know that? I didn’t have time to stop and look.”
“Why did you do it?” she asked anxiously. He had become strange to her. Someone who lashes out indiscriminately, and before whom she had better watch her step.
“What did he tell you? Bulnakov—Benton—Joe; soon I’ll be calling the bastard sweetie and honey.”
“He said you’re no longer satisfied with the money you got in Cucuron, that you want more and are trying to blackmail him.”
“And what would I blackmail him with?”
“You found out that we … that he … that you weren’t dealing with the Russians in Provence, and you threatened to tell the Russians, and they’d be angry.”
“He says I came to him with this idiotic blackmail? And what was I supposed to have got from him in Cucuron?” Georg was really angry. “How stupid do you think I am? You know yourself that it’s bullshit—what’s this song and dance about? God, I’m fed up with your lies, fed up, fed up!” And with every fed up he gave her a slap in the face. He clenched his fists. She shielded herself with her arm. They stood opposite each other. Eye to eye, her terrified look and his enraged one. He took a deep breath. “It’s over, I won’t do anything more to you. Does Benton come here sometimes? Are you still having an affair with him?”
“That’s over. Anyone who comes here calls me up ahead of time in case the child’s asleep. You needn’t worry. And I certainly haven’t breathed a word to anyone. I don’t want to lose my babysitter, either.” She looked and sounded different from one minute to the next. At first fearful, then conspiratorially serious, and with her last words cheerful, with a wink. “Oh look at this mess!” she said, picking up the burst bag. Milk was leaking onto the floor. “Will you help me with supper?”
Later, when they went to bed, he was unyielding. He took the bed next to Jill, while Françoise slept in the living room on the couch. He locked the door; he would hear Jill if she woke up, and if he didn’t, Françoise could knock and wake him up. He did hear Jill when she woke up in the night, even before Françoise did, and went into the other room and woke Françoise up. She gave Jill her breast, and he fell asleep. She took off her nightgown and slipped beside him under the blanket.
39
ALREADY BY THE NEXT DAY living together had become oddly routine. It reminded Georg of their last days together in Cucuron.
“What were you thinking, when from one day to the next you didn’t come back? Without a word?” Georg saw the pale blue morning sky through the venetian blind. Françoise lay exhausted and satisfied beside him, her head on his arm.
“Joe sent me to New York and told me to stay here.”
“But what were you thinking, I mean about me, about