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widow’s side, and on Friday Maxim came over to set up the contract, by which time we’d already gotten our first jobs from Mermoz. So this morning I finally got back from Marseille to Cucuron.”
    “At the funeral you were at Madame Maurin’s side? When’s the happy day?”
    “Don’t be silly!” Georg said. He looked at Françoise. Was she jealous? Was she poking fun at him?
    “Oh no, the duck!”
    He ran into the kitchen and poured gravy over the hissing brown meat.
    Françoise sat at the table, fiddling with her knife and fork. “Will you be moving to Marseille?” she asked. “I … I have … oh, come here, my fainthearted lover.”
    She pulled him down onto her knee, wrapped her arms around his stomach, and lay her head on his chest. She looked up at him. “I’ve been thinking about you and me.”
    Again he saw the dimple by her eyebrow. “I see you’re still thinking.”
    “Stop it. You’re making fun of me. I’m being serious. You asked if I’d move in with you. I felt you were going too fast, that I needtime. But when I didn’t see you all week, when I couldn’t touch you, feel you, I thought … You know what I’m trying to say, and you’re just sitting there like a tin soldier!”
    He went on sitting there like a tin soldier, saying nothing and gazing at her happily.
    “If you’re not moving to Marseille, and have a glass for my toothbrush,” she said, “if you can make some space in your closet and give me a desk and a shelf, then—I don’t want to give up my apartment, but I’d like to spend a lot of time here with you. Is that okay?”

9
    GEORG COULDN’T REMEMBER EVER BEING as happy as he was the next few months.
    Françoise moved in at the end of March. Spring exploded into a luxuriant summer. The year before the garden hadn’t blossomed with so much color, the days had not been as bright, the nights not as mild. When the heat began in June and the earth grew dry, Georg saw a gentle radiance instead of parched dryness. And he saw Françoise growing more and more beautiful. Her skin became tanned, delicate, and smooth. She gained weight, grew more curvaceous and feminine, which he liked.
    There were times when the work and all the commuting between Marseille and Cucuron were too much, but four times a week he managed to be at the office by nine, to assign work to Chris, Monique, and Isabelle, edit their translations, and do some translating himself. He managed to make deadlines, keep old clients and bring in new ones, and install a word-processing system. In April an officer from National Security asked him questions about his citizenship, work, lifestyle, and political views. He asked Georg for references in Germany, and had him sign a consent form that would allow National Security to request informationfrom the German authorities. In May Georg received a confirmation from Mermoz that he had been given security clearance, and that all confidential materials sent to his agency would have to be translated by him personally. Now the work really began. There was hardly a weekend when he didn’t have to spend hours poring over construction plans, manuals, lists of materials, and flowcharts. He managed that too.
    As a boy he had never had an electric train. His father had given him a heavy, metallic locomotive that could be wound up, two railway cars, and a few tracks, enough to form a circle. At Christmas Georg had gazed longingly at the store window of Knoblauch’s, the biggest toy store in Heidelberg, where toy trains rolled over an extensive network of tracks—lots of trains at once, with no collisions or derailments, with blinking signals and barriers being raised and lowered. He was able to see a shop assistant maneuvering the trains from a small podium.
    That was how Georg felt now. In fact, it
was
too much. Just as the store window hadn’t been big enough for all the trains, his resources were too limited for all the work he was getting. There ought to have been