The Gordian Knot - Bernhard Schlink [8]
“No, Françoise, it depends on how you pronounce it. The ending of your name can sound like an explosion or like a breath of air”—he demonstrated—“and … and … I would never call you Franziska in German.”
“What would you call me?”
“Brown Eyes. You have the brownest eyes I’ve ever seen. You can’t turn that into a name in French, but you can in German, and that’s what I would call you.”
She kept her eyes on the road. “Is that a term of endearment?”
“It’s a term for someone one likes.”
She looked at him earnestly. A lock of hair fell across her face. “I like driving with you through the countryside.”
He turned onto the highway, stopped at a tollbooth, took a ticket, and threaded into the stream of cars.
“Will you tell me a story?” she asked.
He told her the tale of the little goose maid, speaking the rhymes first in German, then in French. He knew them by heart. When the false bride pronounced her verdict—“Naked as the day you were born you will be put in a barrel of sharp nails that two wild horses will drag till you die!”—Françoise caught her breath. She suspected what the old king would say: “False bride, you have just pronounced your own sentence! This will now be your own fate!”
As they drove toward Montélimar, she told him a Polish story in which a farmer outwits the devil. Then they sat listening in silence to Mozart’s flute quartets on the radio. When Georg noticed that Françoise had fallen asleep he turned the music down, delighting in the motion of the car, the wind in his face, Françoise at his side, her breathing and contented sighs when her head tilted to one side and she sat up again, then rested her head on his shoulder.
In Lyon the hotels were all fully booked, and they had to drive six miles into the mountains and even there had to take a double room. Françoise’s neck was sore, and Georg massaged it. They changed, drove into town, had a bite to eat, and then went to the mayor’s reception, where they chatted with various people, their eyes often seeking each other out in the town hall. There was thick fog as they drove back to the hotel and Georg drove very slowly, keeping to the center line. “I like your sitting next to me,” he said.
Then they lay next to each other in bed. Françoise told him about a lovesick friend of hers who had left for America only to fall unhappily in love there with a Lebanese man. As she reached over to the nightstand to turn out the light, Georg put his arm around her waist. She nestled against him in the dark. He caressed her, they kissed, and they could not get enough.
After they had made love, she cried quietly.
“What is it, Brown Eyes?”
She shook her head, and he kissed away the tears from her face.
6
THEY DIDN’T RETURN TO CADENET UNTIL Monday, though the conference was over on Friday. They went to St. Lattier, had dinner at the Lièvre Amoureux, and slept late on Saturday. They looked in their Michelin Guide for the restaurant Les Hospitaliers in Le Poët-Laval—it had a star—and they found a place to stay in the town. They spent their last night near Gordes, in the open. They didn’t want their picnic to end: there was a mild evening breeze; the sky was full of stars, and in the coolness before dawn they slept cuddling beneath the blankets that Françoise kept in her car. It was a two-hour drive to Cadenet. The sun was shining, the air was clear, and the road was free. In the little towns through which they drove, stores were raising their shutters, cafés and bakeries were already open, and people were carrying home loaves of bread. Georg was at the wheel,