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.