7
BULNAKOV HAD ASSUMED A SOMBER EXPRESSION. “Come in, my young friend. Sit down.” He slumped heavily into the chair behind his desk and waved at the one across from him. A newspaper lay open in front of him. “You can fill me in about the IBM conference in the next day or so, there’s no rush. But read this.” He picked up a page from the newspaper and handed it to Georg. “I marked it with an X.”
It was a short article: Last night Bernard M., the director of a Marseille translation agency, had had a fatal accident in his silver Mercedes on the Pertuis road. The police were still investigating the circumstances, and any witnesses were asked to contact the authorities.
“You worked for him, didn’t you?” Bulnakov said, while Georg repeatedly read the short article.
“Yes, for almost two years.”
“A great loss to our profession. You might think there’s a dog-eat-dog war between our agencies, but the market isn’t that small, and, I’m glad to say, respect and professional esteem are not impossible between competitors. I didn’t know Maurin that long, but I had a high regard for him as a colleague. That’s the first thing I wanted to say. The second thing, my young friend, is about the consequences his demise might have for you. You’re good at what you do, you’re young, you’re going to make it in this world, but you’ve lost an important source of work. Well, there’s always me, and I’m sure you can stand on your own two feet. But let me give you a bit of fatherly advice.” Bulnakov smiled with a solicitous, friendly frown, and raised his hands in a gesture of blessing. He waited a moment, heightening the suspense, stretched it out even further, got up, walked to the other side of the desk, still without saying a word, his hands raised. Georg also stood up. He was looking at Bulnakov quizzically, inwardly amused. This must be what it was like asking a father for his daughter’s hand. Bulnakov patted Georg on the shoulder. “Don’t you agree?”
“I’m not sure yet what you’re advising me to do.”
“You see,” Bulnakov said with a concerned look, “I’m aware of that, and it worries me. That young people nowadays find it hard to…”
“To do what?”
“Now, that’s the right question!” Bulnakov said, exuding joy and benevolence once again. “To do what? To do what? Zeus asked that question, Lenin asked it, and there’s only one answer: grab life by the horns. Seize the opportunities life presents you with, seize the opportunity offered you by Maurin’s death. One man’s demise is another man’s prize. I know it’s dreadful, but isn’t it wonderful, too: the Wheel of Fortune? Talk to Maurin’s widow, talk with your colleagues, take over his business!”
Of course Maurin’s widow would be pleased if he took over the agency, paid her a percentage, and kept it running. Employees Chris, Isabelle, and Monique, Georg’s colleagues working for Maurin, wouldn’t be up to the task-a few weeks ago he wouldn’t have been able to either-so they would surely continue working with him, for him.
“Thank you, Monsieur Bulnakov. You’ve given me very good advice. I suppose there’s no time to lose. I ought to…”
“Indeed, there’s no time to lose!” Bulnakov said, leading him to the door and patting him on the back.
The reception area was empty. Before Georg closed the door, Bulnakov called out after him to come back in two days for his next job.
Georg went out into the street and stopped in the square. Hadn’t he left the car near the statue of the drummer boy? He looked up and down the square. He found it next to a construction site and got in, but then got out again and went into a bar on the corner. He took a cup of coffee and a glass of wine over to a table and stood beside it, looking out through the hazy window.
He felt weary with everything that lay ahead of him before he even started, before he could picture it. He drank the coffee, the wine, and ordered another glass. Then Nadine came in. She painted and made a living from pottery, making bowls, cups, plates-and producing homemade raisin bread. Thirty-six years old, interrupted studies, divorced, a ten-year-old son. She and Georg had slept together for a while on a whim, and then on a whim stopped sleeping together, though they kept on meeting with a burned-out familiarity.
“Maurin’s dead. An accident. I’ve been weighing whether I ought to take over his business.”
“Great idea!”
“A lot of work. I’m not sure that’s what I want. But then again…” Georg ordered a third glass of wine and sat down next to Nadine. “Would you?”
“Take over Maurin’s business? I thought writing was what you wanted to do. Didn’t you tell me about some love story between a little boy and his teddy bear you were working on?”
“Yes, writing is what I want to do.”
“And didn’t you tell me that there was some American writer you wanted to translate and see published, and those mysteries by Solignac that nobody knows in Germany? But, that’s the way things go: we always end up doing something other than what we want.” She laughed a small, bitter laugh that was not without charm, brushed back a lock of hair from her face, and flicked the ash from her Gauloise. The scent of her perfume wafted over to Georg.
“Still wearing Opium?”
“Uh-huh. Did you know that of all the old crowd I’m the one who’s been here longest? Some have left-I’ve no idea what they’re up to-and others are either doing well or not so well. Some have gotten themselves jobs with the city or with the district administration, have a shop, or have hit the skids like Jacques, who’s on drugs and has been doing some breaking and entering and will be caught one of these days. I like the fact that I’m somewhere in between, and I thought you’d hold out too.”
“But you are painting. Don’t tell me you don’t want to have an exhibition someplace, or have people buy your paintings, or become famous.”
“Sure I do. But I want my freedom, even if it doesn’t amount to much. You’re right, though-sometimes I do dream of exhibitions and all that, but I want to get to a point where I don’t even dream about that kind of stuff anymore.”
Georg drove home slightly tipsy, proud of his life, proud that he hadn’t gone down the slippery slope or risen to the top through compromise. Nadine was right. But when he got home and saw the dirty dishes, and couldn’t call Françoise because the phone had been cut off again since he hadn’t paid the bill, he said to himself that enough was enough: “I’m fed up with this mess and with nothing going well for me, not having any money, wanting to write something but never getting anything written. My only accomplishment in life is that I gave up a shaky law office in Karlsruhe for a shaky existence in Cucuron. I’ll give Maurin’s agency a try!”
With this decision the weariness returned, and now also the fear that he was taking on too much, that he would be out of his depth. He lay down on the bed, fell asleep, and had nightmares about agencies, unfinished jobs, unpaid bills, a ranting Bulnakov, Françoise fending him off with frightened eyes, Maurin lying dead. He woke up at four in the afternoon and was still worried. He showered, put on a white shirt, a black tie, and his old gray suit. By five-thirty he was in Marseille, ringing the doorbell of Maurin’s apartment.
8
“DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE DRIVING from Gordes to Cadenet on Monday? I felt that the whole world lay at my feet. But then the feeling disappeared. I’m kind of fainthearted, and your not wanting to move in with me made me even more uncertain. But you were right: I wasn’t yet the kind of man I wanted to be, the kind you could love.”
Georg and Françoise were having an aperitif. The house was clean, the table set; a duck was roasting in the oven, oak logs burning in the fireplace; clean sheets were on the bed.
“Here’s to us,” he said.
Their glasses met. She was wearing a red dress with a zipper down its whole length, a prim, girlish pin in her hair, and her perfume-“You look wonderfully enticing.”