The Gordian Knot - Bernhard Schlink [83]
“My party prices them at thirty million, and anything over twenty is mine. If it’s under twenty, I’ll have to check back with my party.”
The professor carefully rolled the last roll of film tighter and tighter, until it would have fit into the can five times. He slid it into the can and held it there with his finger. “Tell your party that we have been offered the same negatives for twelve million, and that we find even that price too high.” He let go of the roll, and it expanded to the confines of the can with a hiss.
Georg was struck dumb. What the professor had just said was unthinkable. What did it mean? What if it was true? What if it wasn’t? “I will inform my party. But I don’t see them believing that there is another offer—they will see that as a ploy on your part to lower the price.”
The professor smiled. “The matter is more complicated than you seem to realize. Were you to view the matter from our perspective, with the premise that the first seller does in fact exist, you will see that just as you have doubts about the existence of the first offer, we have reason to doubt the existence of a bona fide second offer that you are presenting. Not to put too fine a point on it, the crux of the matter not only hinges on the contingence you have surmised—that a potential buyer who has two offers might pitch them against each other—but a seller for his part can also influence the negotiations to his advantage by stepping up to the negotiating table, so to speak, and donning the garb of yet another seller.”
How could anyone formulate such sentences! The logic behind what the professor was saying was as immaculate as his grammar.
“Why don’t you simply decide what the designs are worth to you and name a price?” Georg said.
Now the professor laughed. “You must admit there is something ironic in the idea that someone like me should be called upon to explain the capitalist law of supply and demand and the connection between demand, price, and value. But let us shed light on another aspect of this matter. Let us suppose that you are requesting for your private use any moneys that exceed a sum that, as you inform us, your party sets at twenty million, but which, circumstances being what they are, should realistically be set at fifteen. And if we also take as a premise that you will not be able to count on our closing a deal with a sum beyond twenty-one million, as you yourself have, in a sense, intimated, then I put it to you that you are facing a personal profit in the range of one to six million dollars—a sum, I might add, that doubtless is far more manageable. Do you follow me?”
“It was hard to follow, but I find it’s worth the effort. I see you like balancing ‘ifs’ with ‘thens.’ Is that just in speaking, or in action as well?”
“Do you know the story of Alexander the Great and the Gordian knot?” the professor said.
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, in the Gordian fortress one day, Alexander the Great happened upon a great knot that no one had ever managed to unravel. The upshot was that Alexander simply took his sword and cut through the knot. Logic, you see, is a matter of unraveling chains of thought and meaning that in our everyday communication become tangled, and as the links in these chains are the ‘ifs’ and ‘thens,’ then this very game of ‘ifs’ and ‘thens’—as you have it—serves to unravel as opposed to cutting through such tangles. By extension, it also has as its focal point talking and thinking as opposed to acting. If you will allow me to point the moral of that story and regard it through the prism of you, me, our interested parties, and the merchandise in question, then our aforementioned deliberations place you in the role of Alexander the Great who is faced with the knot and the alternative of attempting, like so many prior visitors to the Gordian palace, to unravel it or simply cut through it with the swipe of his sword.”
“Those are your aforementioned deliberations, not mine.”
The professor had lifted the can, holding it between his