Georg had nothing to say to any of this. All his strength, courage, and trust were gone. I’m an open wound, he thought.
There was nothing left with which he could ease his thoughts and longing for Françoise.
He was furious: I gave you my love and you took it, but for you it was only physical. You enjoyed our nights together as much as I did, gave yourself to me with as much abandon and pleasure as I gave myself to you. For me the passion I gave and took was a seal on our love, but for you it was only a passion each partner kindles and satisfies, a passion that doesn’t seal anything. If I could have been so wrong, if you could have deceived me like that, if such devotion cannot even act as a seal of love—what’s left for me to believe in? How am I supposed to ever love again? One silent reproach followed another. But even the most absurd accusations couldn’t bring her back. When someone leaves us, we accuse them so that they apologize and come back. In this way we are serious about the accusations, but are ready to agree to any conditions. Georg was aware of that.
He tried to be reasonable. The pain of separation is just a phantom pain, he told himself. How can something that no longer exists hurt me? Yet the slightest circumstance taught him that a phantom pain is not just phantom, but in fact real pain. He was sitting in the restaurant, had eaten well, was having a glass of Calvados and a cigarette, and suddenly imagined her sitting across from him, sighing contentedly, leaning back, and rubbing her tummy. He had always felt uncomfortable when she did this. But now, even this image stung. Or he found a long brown hair in the basin, which unleashed cascades of beautiful memories, though in the past, when he found a hair of hers in the basin, it had always irritated him.
He toyed with cynical quips that he found elegant or that sounded clever. One can’t end a relationship by splitting up. One must continue in the relationship and weave it into the tapestry of one’s life, or forget the relationship. Forgetting is the garbage dump of life. I’m throwing you into the garbage, Françoise!
None of that changed the fact that he missed her. When he woke up, sat down at the breakfast table, busied himself with the herb garden, and felt the empty house behind him; when he walked along the paths the two of them had walked; when—everyone has experienced something similar. He no longer had anything to do. He lived off the rest of the money that had come in so lavishly over the past few months. What he would do when it ran out, he didn’t know. He couldn’t think about that. He often sat all afternoon in the rocking chair, staring blankly at the trees.
19
IN SEPTEMBER AN OLD FRIEND FROM HEIDELBERG came to visit. The first evening they stayed up late, lit a fire in the fireplace after midnight, and opened a bottle of wine.
“Do you want to hear a crazy story?” Georg asked, and told him what had happened.
“I only saw Françoise that one time when you invited us all to your party,” his friend said. “Do you have any pictures of her?”
“I took a lot of pictures, but she either took them with her or they got lost when my place was ransacked. I only have one left.” He got up and went to find it. It was a picture of Françoise on a couch in her apartment, reading, her eyes downcast.
“Ah yes. By the way, what’s that picture on her wall?”
“It’s the cathedral in Warsaw where her parents were married.”
A short while later, Georg’s friend asked to see the photograph again.
“It isn’t a particularly good one,” Georg said. “She didn’t like being photographed, so I often took snapshots of her when she wasn’t looking. Though some of the pictures did turn out quite …”
“That’s not in Warsaw. I know that church. I can’t think of its name. It’s in New York.”
Georg looked at him in surprise. “Why would she have a picture from New York on her wall?”
“No idea. All I know is that it’s in New York, a cathedral they never finished that’s still under construction. St. John! That’s it! It’s enormous! I think it’s the biggest church in the world after St. Peter’s.”
“New York …” Georg shook his head.
Over the next few days Georg kept coming back to the subject. “Are you sure that the cathedral in the picture is in New York?”
“Well, perhaps Warsaw has the same one. In Wiesbaden there’s a cathedral that was built from Schinkel’s plans. Wiesbaden’s municipal architect had purchased the plans in Berlin, and there’s probably a church just like it somewhere in Berlin. But as for America, it’s a bit hard to imagine. The Americans would sooner have copied Chartres than Warsaw, and as for the Poles constructing their churches along American designs—you tell me if that makes sense.”
The evening before his friend left, Georg asked him if he knew anyone in New York who might put him up for a while.
“I’ll give it a try.”
“Please, it’s important.”
“You mean now?”
“I put in a call to a travel agent this morning,” Georg told him. “I’m flying next week from Brussels.”
“For how long?”
“Until I find her.”
“It’s a big city,” his friend said dubiously.
“I know. I also know that Françoise could be anywhere in the world. But why did she lie about the picture?”
“You don’t know where she got it. Maybe she herself didn’t know where it was from.”
Georg looked at him irritated. “You’ve seen for yourself the kind of life I’m leading. What am I supposed to do here? I’d rather take the money I still have and … I don’t know how I’ll look for her, but I’ll think of something.”
After his friend had left, Georg sold what he could sell, and threw away whatever didn’t fit in his car and nobody wanted.
A week later he gave the landlord the keys to his empty house.
Part Two
20
GEORG SET OUT LATE IN THE AFTERNOON and drove all night. He missed the turnoff to Paris at Beaune, and the highway ended at Dijon. He drove along back roads, past Troyes and Reims. The bends in the road kept him awake. He sped through dark towns and villages, where yellow lights bathed the streets in a dim haze. He slowed down at the brightly lit pedestrian crossings. Sometimes he waited at an empty intersection for the light to change. There was nobody in the streets and hardly any cars. In Reims he found an open gas station; the fuel light had been blinking for some time. He drove past the cathedral. The facade reminded him of the picture in Françoise’s room.
After a painfully slow border crossing, where the French customs officer grilled him on where he was coming from and where he was heading, he got back on the highway at Mons. By seven-thirty in the morning he was at his friends’ place in Brussels. The house was bustling. Felix was getting ready to leave for work, and Gisela was heading to the station to catch a train for Luxembourg, where she worked as an interpreter for the European parliament. The older of their two boys was off to kindergarten. Georg was warmly welcomed, but then quickly forgotten in the breakfast rush, with the babysitter arriving and everyone else leaving. Gisela told him that of course he could leave his car there, and gave him a quick hug. “Good luck in America,” she said. She saw something in his face. “Is everything all right?” Then she was gone.
The babysitter drove him to the airport. In the plane, he felt frightened for the first time. He had thought he was only leaving Cucuron, where he had nothing left to lose. Now he felt as if he were giving up his whole life.
It was a budget flight, with narrow seats and no drinks or food. No movie, either. He had intended to save money on the earphones, had looked forward to the distraction of the images on the screen. He gazed out the window at the clouds over the Atlantic, fell asleep, and woke up hours later. His neck, back, and legs were aching. The sun was setting behind red clouds, a picture of lifeless beauty. By the time the plane landed in Newark it was dark.
It took him two hours to get through customs, find the bus to New York, and arrive at the Port Authority bus terminal. He took a cab.
There was a lot of traffic, even at eleven at night. The driver swore in Spanish, drove too fast, and kept slamming on the brakes. After a while, the cab drove up an avenue with tall buildings on the left and dark trees on the right. Georg felt a rush of excitement. This had to be Central Park, and the avenue Central Park West. The cab pulled up. He had arrived. There was a green baldachin from the edge of the sidewalk to the entrance.
Georg opened the door, went in, and found himself standing in a vestibule. A guard sat reading at a desk behind a glass door. Georg knocked once, then twice. The man pointed at the wall next to Georg. There was a bronze panel with an alphabetical list of names and corresponding apartment numbers, and an intercom. Georg picked up the receiver, the line crackling as if he were making a transatlantic call. “Hello?” said the guard’s voice, and Georg gave his name and introduced himself as Mr. and Mrs. Epp’s guest. The guard buzzed him in, gave him the key to the apartment, and told him where it was. The elevator had two doors: on the sixth floor Georg kept standing before the elevator door through which he had entered, until he realized that the door behind him had opened. He was exhausted. Back in France, day was breaking over the Luberon.
The apartment was the one next to the elevator. It took him a while to figure out how to unlock all three locks. He had to turn the keys in the opposite direction from what he was used to. The door was heavy, and fell shut behind him with a contented click. He found the guest room at the end of the long hall. Near the front door was a study where he found some telephone directories. Françoise Kramsky? No, as was to be expected, there was no listing under that name. He looked for the church.
In the White Pages he found neither a John, nor a St. John, nor a Church of St. John. There was more than a column of churches, from the Church of All Nations to the Church of the Truth. But the listings seemed to be random. In the Yellow Pages, between Christmas Trees and Cigarettes, he found a listing of churches by denomination. He was certain that a church destined to become the biggest in the world after St. Peter’s wouldn’t belong to a minor denomination, and so concentrated on the Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Catholic churches. The tiny letters blurred before his tired eyes, whirled around, found themselves again in long rows, and marched down the column of listings.
CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE. The name was in larger print, and in bold. Amsterdam Avenue and 112th Street. There was a map on the wall of the study. He found the cathedral and also located the Epps’ apartment. It wasn’t too far away. Georg felt as if he had made it.
21
HE WOKE UP ON THE COUCH in the study, still dressed, curled up and aching. He crossed the hall to the living room. The sun cast a broad band of rays through the large windows. He looked out. Below him was a stream of traffic, and across the street lay Central Park. Skyscrapers in the distance towered into the clear blue sky of Manhattan. He opened the window and heard the noise of the traffic, the clattering of the subway under the street, and the children in the playground at the edge of the park.
Outside, he drank in the atmosphere of the city. He walked uptown along Amsterdam Avenue. The buildings, at first tall and well maintained, shrank into four- and five-story houses. Fire escapes hung black and heavy into the streets. The stores had signs in Spanish. The streets became louder and more lively. The pedestrians were increasingly black and Latino; there were more drunks, panhandlers, and teenagers carrying boom boxes. He walked fast, his eyes flitting over buildings, people, cars, traffic lights, hydrants, mailboxes.
Georg didn’t see the cathedral until he reached the intersection. The cross street was flanked by low Gothic buildings, behind which the massive gray cathedral rose up. He crossed the street and took out the photograph of Françoise with the print of the cathedral hanging on the wall behind her. He compared it to the building in front of him. The towers to the right and left of the portal only reached the height of the nave, and the cupola over the crossing was still in bare cement, but otherwise everything matched perfectly. Steps stretching the whole breadth of the cathedral led up from Amsterdam Avenue to the five portals.
The inside was gloomy and steeped in secrets, the dim light coming from lamps and the stained-glass windows. The columns faded upward into the darkness. He walked through the nave with the respect his parents had always shown on entering a church. Only the area around the choir stalls was brighter. He found the gift shop on the left, and strolled among the display cases and tables, his eyes scanning the books and cards, soaps, fruit preserves, sweatshirts, bags, and cups, until he came upon a large print. He recognized it. Françoise had cut off the lower part where it said: THE CATHEDRAL OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE. MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK. CRAM AND FERGUSON, HOYLE, DORAN AND BERRY, ARCHITECTS, BOSTON. It was the front view of the west facade. He kept reading the text over and over as if it might reveal something.
On his way back to the entrance he sat down. Now what? Did this mean that Françoise was living in New York, or just that she had lived here before? Someone could have given her the print as a present, or she could have bought it at a flea market or in a junk store. She had cut off the reference to New York, but it wasn’t clear whether she was trying to cover something up or whether she just didn’t want the text. If she had been in New York but was no longer here, he might as well look for her in Paris, Sydney, or San Francisco. But even if she was in New York, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
His eyes had adjusted to the dim light. The distant voices he heard came from a tour group visiting the cathedral. The chairs in the row were battered, some with frayed wickerwork. The columns no longer melted into the darkness above, but were supporting a ribbed vault. No secrets—just bad lighting, gloomy corners, empty space, and distorted acoustics. But no secrets.
He got up and went back to the gift shop. He showed the cashier Françoise’s picture, an enlarged close-up of her reading on the bed. “Do you happen to know her?”
The young woman looked at him cautiously. “What do you want? Who are you?”
He had conjured up a romantic story: Françoise had visited Europe, their meeting in France, their love, a silly lover’s quarrel in which he had walked out in a huff, his not being able to find her. He looked the cashier in the eye and then lowered his gaze: such a foolish quarrel, his foolish pride, his foolish temper, he was ashamed of himself. Then he raised his eyes again with a sincere and determined look. “I’ve come to ask her to marry me.”
Since the cashier had not been working there very long, she took him to her boss, who had been the manager for ten years. The manager didn’t remember ever seeing Françoise either, but all that meant was that Françoise hadn’t worked there during the past ten years. Whether she had been a customer was another question—that, she couldn’t say. She herself wasn’t always on the floor, and she’d had many shop assistants over the years.
22
GEORG WAS NEVER SURE whether people were won over by his tale because they believed it, or because he was so sincere. Besides his romantic tale he also had one in which he was a young lawyer and Françoise an acquaintance of a client in France who didn’t know her full name or address. She was to be a key witness in a trial, the trial was vital for the client, and the client vital for Georg, who was an up-and-coming lawyer. What people liked about both tales was the role played by the picture of the cathedral, their cathedral. They looked at the photo carefully, gave the matter some thought, said they were sorry they couldn’t help him, and sometimes suggested where he might look further.
He spoke to current and former priests connected with the cathedral, with parishioners who had been volunteers, with the head of the Ladies Guild, the head of the theater workshop. Nobody recognized the face in the photograph. At times he felt her face becoming more unfamiliar to him every time he took out the picture and showed it. Was this the face that had smiled at him, that he had seen from so close, and touched and kissed? He felt that his growing unfamiliarity had to do with Françoise’s lowered eyes. Bu
t perhaps it would be even worse if her eyes had been visible. Maybe they, too, would wear away as he kept taking out the picture and showing it around. Usually the past lurks unnoticed behind the present, but Georg felt as if the past was being slowly sucked away under his helpless gaze.
In two weeks he had met over twenty people. He now knew the Upper West Side where most of them lived, and the subways and buses that took him to those who lived in other places. He knew the baroque, putto-decorated entrance of the Polish consulate, and the cold, white facade of the Soviet one. He often stood outside, or sat on a stoop across from the grand townhouse of the Poles or on the steps of the synagogue that the Russians eyed with grim faces. He didn’t know whether secret-service agents reported to their consulates, but a consulate offers a connection between its nation and the host nation, and Georg was seeking just such a relationship in the hope of finding out more about Françoise or even Bulnakov. He went inside both consulates and asked for Françoise Kramsky’s address, telling the staff he believed she had once either worked there or was somehow connected to the consulate. Both the Poles and the Russians told him they were not at liberty to provide that kind of information. He told them his tales in vain. He showed the officials her picture, but their faces betrayed no reaction.
He experienced Manhattan as a forest. This city isn’t on an island, he thought, it is an island. It isn’t part of a landscape, it is the landscape, a landscape of stone vegetation alien to its people, who must first hack paths through it and build dwellings that always risked being overwhelmed by the vegetation. Sometimes he came upon burned-out shells of buildings, lots heaped with rubble, facades with windows and doors that were empty or bricked up. It was as if they had been ravaged by war—but since there had been no war, it was as if nature had reclaimed them: not a rampant forest but a raging earthquake. The new buildings towered into the sky like growing crystals.