The Gordian Knot Read Online Free PDF

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 onlyaccomplishment 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