The Gordian Knot Read Free

paid for. He couldn’t recall the foolish impulse that had led him to place the order. There was more than enough wood lying about in the woods of Cucuron.
    Georg didn’t like going into the studio. The memory of Hanne was especially present and painful. Her large desk by the window, which they had assembled together and on which they had made love by way of inauguration and to test its sturdiness. The sketches for her last big oil painting hung on the wall, and the smock she had left behind was hanging on a hook. Because the boiler and the boxes of books were in the studio, he couldn’t avoid going there altogether, but he had neglected it.
    He wanted to do something about the studio, but didn’t get very far. By the time he finished, the boxes of books were stacked up, there was space for the firewood, and Hanne’s smock was in the trash. But then what did he need the studio for?
    A car pulled up outside, but it wasn’t the wood being delivered or the mail. It was Herbert, another German living in Pertuis, whose aim in life was to paint, but who always seemed to be kept from doing so by things coming up. They had a bottle of wine together and talked about this and that. Mostly about the latest things that had come up.
    “By the way,” Herbert said as he was leaving, “can you help meout with a loan of five hundred francs? You see, there’s this gallery in Aix, and …”
    “Five hundred? I’m sorry, but I don’t have that kind of money,” Georg replied with a shrug, holding up his empty hands.
    “I thought we were friends!” Herbert said angrily.
    “Even if you were my own brother, I couldn’t give you anything—I don’t have anything.”
    “I bet you have enough to pay for the next bottle of wine and the next month’s rent. At least you could be decent enough to say you don’t want to give me the money!”
    The truck delivering the firewood arrived. It was a scratched and dented pickup with an open bed, the doors of the cab missing. A man and a woman got out, both quite old. The man had only one arm.
    “Where would Monsieur like us to stack the wood? It’s good wood, dry and aromatic. We collected it over there.” The man waved his one arm toward the slopes of the Luberon.
    “You’re such a lying asshole!” Herbert said, got in his car, and drove off.
    The old couple wouldn’t let Georg unload the wood himself. He couldn’t keep the old woman from dragging it to the edge of the truck bed, or the man from stacking it up in the studio. Georg kept hurrying with armfuls of wood from her to him.
    At lunchtime he drove to Cucuron. The town is spread out over two adjacent hills, one crowned with a church, the other with the ruins of a castle. The old wall still winds around half the town, houses leaning against it. The positive feeling Georg had had many years ago when he first visited Cucuron returned whenever he went rattling through its lanes in his car, and even more whenever he set out on a half-hour walk through the fields and the town came into view—ocher-colored in the shining sun, or gray as it hid under low-hanging clouds—always stolid, cozy, reliable.
    The
étang
lies in front of the town gate, a large, walled pond, rectangular and surrounded by old plane trees. On the narrow side facing the town lies the market and the Bar de l’Étang, with tables set up on the sidewalk from spring to fall. In the summer it’s cool, and in the fall the plane trees drop their leaves early enough so one can sit outside in the last warm rays of the sun. This place was cozy too. In the bar they served sandwiches and draft beer, and everyone Georg knew would get together here.
    This time Georg found that even with his third beer contentment didn’t set in. He was still angry about Gérard and Herbert. Angry about the whole miserable situation. He drove home and took a nap. Will I end up like Herbert, or am I already there?
    At four o’clock the phone woke him up. “I’m calling from Bulnakov