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.
At night he had weird dreams. Many days he didn’t talk to a soul.
His money was running out. He only had a thousand dollars left, which wouldn’t last long in New York. The Epps gave him to understand, pleasantly but firmly, that it was time he moved on. He had gotten nowhere. Should he give up?
He sat in the Hungarian Pastry Shop, a café across from the cathedral. One could sit there as long as one liked. They served homemade cookies, and there were free coffee refills. The air was heavy with smoke. The paintings in the café were ugly, its mirrors dull; the paint was flaking off the walls and the column in the center of the room, beside which was a chest of drawers with a jug of coffee on top. The shop was a refuge for those who hadn’t yet made it or who no longer had any prospects of making it. Georg came here to relax and do some thinking. He exchanged a few words with people sitting at nearby tables, borrowed a newspaper, was asked for a light, or offered a cigarette.
Two men at the next table were talking about apartments and rents. One of them, Larry, was looking for a roommate. Georg told him he was looking for a place, and Larry said he had a room he could have for four hundred dollars. Larry taught German at Columbia, and liked the idea of having a German roommate. Within minutes everything was settled, and later that day Georg moved in.
He had the corner room of a twelfth-floor apartment, whose two windows looked out on different parts of the city. One faced a church tower, backyards, fire escapes, and rooftops, and had an uptown view of Broadway until the haze of the day swallowed the cars and houses, and the darkness of night swallowed their lights. His sleep was pierced by the howl of sirens, feverish spirals of sound that began and ended with a high-pitched gasp. From the other window he looked out onto a parking lot, low buildings, the trees of Riverside Park, and the Hudson River, lying wide and idle with its metallic sheen in the sun, and in bad weather melting into the opposite bank. From time to time a barge plowed its waters. The sun set between the wooden water towers on the roofs. The window facing west was larger, and the view from it wider. At times Georg felt as if he could spread out his arms and fling himself out over the parking lot, gliding over houses and trees and over the Hudson, and land like a large bird on the water. Why should he, who only had to spread out his arms in order to fly, give up his search?
Georg still hadn’t seen one of the former coordinators of the theater workshop or the former head of the Ladies Guild who was now running the kindergarten. He called and made appointments. Calvin Cope, the former director of the cathedral’s theater workshop, was now a real director, and initially said he was too busy to meet. It was a matter of life and death? he asked. Georg had crossed the Atlantic, come all the way from Europe? Well, in that case he’d meet him for lunch at a place on Fifty-second Street.
23
THE RESTAURANT SOUNDED EXPENSIVE, and Georg borrowed a jacket and tie from Larry, his roommate. The coat check and bar were at street level, and the maître d’ escorted Georg upstairs, where a table by the window had been reserved for Mr. Cope.
Georg ordered a glass of white wine and gazed out at the street. The traffic flowed by in a slow stream; there were many yellow cabs, and the occasional black limousine with tinted windows and a TV antenna on its trunk. It began to rain. A street hawker appeared on the opposite sidewalk, selling umbrellas. A young man with shining red hair, holding his coat collar up, stood huddling by the entrance of a shoe store with a large display window that exhibited only one or two pairs of shoes on tiled stands.
The waiter brought an elderly gentleman and a young woman to the table and pulled out chairs for them.
“Mr. Cope?” Georg said, standing up.
“This is the European romantic I was telling you about, Lucy, the one who followed his sweetheart across the ocean!”
They sat down. Georg couldn’t take his eyes off Lucy. She was a beauty, an American beauty. Her face was sculptured, with high cheekbones, a strong chin, deep-set eyes, and a childlike mouth with full lips. She was slender, but with wide shoulders and big breasts. He had first noticed such women in commercials, and then had seen them on the street too. He had often wondered what gave them that special something that made them stand apart from European women. He looked at her and still couldn’t figure it out.
Cope eyed him with amusement. “She’s very beautiful and young, and destined to be a marvelous actress.”
“I’m springtime and Calvin is autumn,” Lucy said laughing, and by the time Georg thought of the compliment that he would consider himself lucky to be such an autumn, the moment had passed. The compliment would have been quite sincere, not only because of Lucy, but also because Cope obviously took great pleasure in his maturity and lifestyle. He had a full head of gray hair, and peered at the menu over his spectacles with a senatorial air.
“Leave the ordering to me,” Cope said. “I’ve been coming here for years. In the meantime, aren’t you going to say something?”
Georg hadn’t said a word yet. “I’m very grateful you have taken the time to see me, Mr. Cope. I don’t even know her real name: she wanted me to call her Françoise, as it’s a French name and she loves France. But I do know,” he lied smoothly, “that she was involved with the cathedral’s theater workshop and that she had a great teacher. She often spoke of it. This rather bad picture is the only thing I have.” Georg took out the photo and gave it to Cope, who passed it on to Lucy and looked at Georg pensively.
“Isn’t there a German poem about a woman searching for someone?” Cope asked. “All she knows is his name, and she follows him across the sea? Or is it the other way around, he follows her? My mother’s Swiss. She used to recite that poem when I was a boy.”
“Do you speak German?”
“I used to. But that poem-your touching story reminded me of it when we were talking on the phone. Do you know the one I mean?”