“Do you have a specific detail in mind?”
“Helen told me once,” Georg began, but then turned and looked at me. “You know all the details, you wrote them down. Why should I go over it all again?” He went to the table and raised his glass. “To Joe Benton!” We drank, and he refilled our glasses. “And to the nameless professor, who tried to teach me how to cut through the Gordian knot.” He sat down. “I reread the story about Alexander the Great and the Gordian knot. It was just as the professor said: many had tried to unravel the knot, but Alexander simply cut through it with his sword. Whoever was to unravel the knot would rule Asia, and the promise came true for Alexander. And yet he fell ill in Asia and died. You see, he ought to have tried untying the knot. All knots can be untied, because we are the ones who tie them.” Georg smiled at me. “There are no Gordian knots, just Gordian ribbons.”
Bernhard Schlink
Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany. He is the author of the internationally bestselling novels The Reader and Homecoming, as well as The Weekend and the collection of short stories Flights of Love and four prizewinning crime novels- The Gordian Knot, Self’s Punishment, Self’s Deception, and Self’s Murder. He lives in Berlin and New York.
