Perlmann's Silence

by Pascal Mercier

  When she opened her eyes for a moment, Laura Sand must have seen that he was examining her, because an instant later she popped one eye open, and that one-eyed mockery was like a protruding tongue.

  The encore had been a little Prelude in G minor, number 902 in the catalogue, Millar replied when von Levetzov asked him.

  As with the discovery at the previous day’s session, Perlmann involuntarily sat bolt upright. His heart was beating like mad. Had he been mistaken, just because he couldn’t tell Bach’s pieces apart? Wasn’t it the birthday piece? While Millar spoke like an expert about Bach’s lesser-known piano music, Perlmann let the piece play out again within him. It was the piece, he was quite sure of it. So was the date he had in his head the wrong one? Was Hanna’s birthday the second of September?

  After a few quick draws on his cigarette, he remembered: once they had gone to the circus on her birthday. Hanna had been furious that the trapeze act had been performed without a net. She had closed her eyes, and trembled afterwards. A few days later the youngest of the acrobats had fallen to her death, her body lying in the sawdust below. And the circus had always come to Hamburg punctually at the start of the autumn, not at the beginning of September. Millar is mistaken. Brian Millar, the star who knows everything, has made a mistake. And one that involves something he called a trouvaille. But be careful – to burst out with it before he had checked it would be too risky. Thirty years had passed, and the memory could play tricks on one. Of course, it was a ridiculously insignificant mistake. It was grotesque to make anything of it. But Perlmann felt it with almost physical certainty: while he was on his hobbyhorse, having to admit this tiny mistake, this utterly inconsequential mistake, would hit Millar in the middle of his vanity, it would hit him even harder than if he had made a mistake in his academic subject. And this time there was no Jenny to blame.

  Two mistakes in the formulae, and now this. And it was always Philipp Perlmann who found fault with him. Millar would be fuming, this man who was now whipping his American ankle-boots back and forth, as he explained the difference between piano and harpsichord music to Evelyn Mistral, who was listening to him with an irritatingly devoted expression. I can’t afford to make a mistake. I must call Hanna. Tonight.

  Luckily, the guests from outside – some of them slightly drunk – were so noisy that the group soon dispersed. Angelini, who wanted to go into town with Silvestri, said goodbye. He had been delighted to meet everyone. Had nothing changed about Leskov’s refusal? Shame. And that Perlmann’s session was going to take place on the Monday of the reception – that was still the case? He absolutely wanted to be there.

  ‘Will you tell me if the date changes?’

  Perlmann nodded mutely.

  ‘Prometti?’

  Again Perlmann nodded.

  Angelini put an arm around Silvestri’s shoulder. ‘He will be the last to give a paper. Don’t you think he’s too modest?’

  Perlmann didn’t wait for Silvestri’s reaction.

  Back in his room, he didn’t even take the time to remove his jacket, but sat down on the bed straight away and looked up the international enquiries number. When he had lost touch with Hanna, she had been unmarried, and later someone had told him she was now a piano teacher in Hamburg. There were two Johanna Liebigs in Hamburg. Italian enquiries had no information about professions, so he asked for both numbers. As excited as he might have been before a first date, he lit a cigarette.

  The first Johanna Liebig was an old woman who was outraged that someone should disturb her so late at night. Perlmann stammered an apology and put the phone down, disappointed, but secretly pleased about the little delay. The second number rang for a very long time. Then Hanna answered. He recognized her voice straight away.

  ‘Philipp!’ she said, much more quickly than he expected. ‘Philipp Perlmann! My God, how long is it since we heard from one another! Where on earth are you?’

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m sure you remember the little Bach Prelude, the one that people don’t know, and that you played so often. You know, the ingenuous birthday piece.’

  ‘Yes, of course. What about it?’

  ‘Could you quickly play it down the phone for me?’

  ‘What – now? I’ve got guests.’

  ‘Hanna, please, it’ll just take three minutes. I need to know whether I’ve remembered it right. It’s important.’

  ‘But why in God’s name do you need to know now, in the middle of the night, after . . . wait a moment . . . after thirty years?’

  ‘Please, Hanna. Please.’

  ‘Like in the old days. OK, then,’ she said, and after a while in which he heard voices, a door closing and the loud sound of the receiver being put on the piano, came the piece that Millar had played.

  ‘So?’ asked Hanna as soon as the last note had faded away.

  ‘I wasn’t mistaken. Are you quite sure this is the piece? A hundred per cent? No mistake possible?’

  ‘Philipp! My pupils have to play it. You know how suitable it is.’

  ‘And your birthday is the thirtieth of September? And not the second?’

  ‘It still is. And incidentally that piece, the 902, is in G major.’

  ‘And the piece is from the Klavierbüchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach?’

  ‘Yes, Philipp,’ said Hanna as if to a troublesome child, ‘and it isn’t one of the two pieces some people think might have been written by the son, with the father’s help.’

  ‘Is it true that the piece hasn’t been recorded?’

  ‘No, that isn’t true. There’s a CD released by CBS. Glenn Gould, in fact.’

  ‘Hanna, you’re a marvel! But how will I get hold of it?’ Perlmann said out loud.

  ‘I can lend it to you, if that’s any use.’

  ‘It’ll arrive too late if you send it to me. I need to try to get it here tomorrow.’

  ‘So where are you right now?’

  ‘Near Genoa.’

  ‘Philipp, what on earth’s going on? You sound so strange, so . . . stubborn.’

  ‘I need to prove something to someone, and quickly.’

  ‘Are you in some sort of trouble?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘You just need to be right?’

  ‘Not that exactly, but not far off.’

  ‘You don’t seem to have changed very much.’

  ‘It’s a long story, Hanna, I’ll explain later.’

  They were both silent for a while, until Perlmann asked in a different voice: ‘Do you remember: glass clarity with velvet edges?’

  ‘Of course I remember. The others laughed at us.’

  ‘Yes. But I’ve never heard a better formula for Glenn Gould.’

  ‘Neither have I. Do you still play sometimes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not in a good way, are you?’

  ‘Not especially.’

  Gently, as if it were fragile, Perlmann rested the receiver on its cradle. So that was how Hanna remembered him: as someone who always wanted to be right. That hurt, and he thought it was unfair. And yet after a while he admitted to himself that it probably wasn’t a coincidence. For example, the conversation from a moment ago: he hadn’t asked about her at all; he hadn’t asked a single question about her. He had effectively ambushed her with his urge to get one over on Millar, without giving her anything at all by way of explanation. Still, sitting on the edge of the bed, full of exhausted sobriety, he was shocked by the extent of his self-obsession. In the tiny world of this hotel he threatened to lose all sense of proportion.

  So it was true that she had become a piano teacher. She had imagined things differently back then. I’ll visit her when I’m home again. In four weeks and one day.

  Hanna had been the only one who had immediately understood his decision and found it correct. She knew the limits of his talent precisely, and she wasn’t, like the teachers, under a self-imposed compulsion to believe the student. Not that she said a single word to that effect. Not a single one. When h
e visited her that day, after he had closed the lid over the keys, she mutely stirred her coffee cup for a while and then asked simply, ‘So what do you plan to do now?’

  That university studies would take the place of musical training was something as fixed as an axiom. He had to concede that he himself had also acknowledged this axiom, at least in the sense that he had never visibly resisted it. And yet, he thought today, it was not a principle that was the natural, undistorted expression of his feelings at the time, and in that sense his own principle. It had had its origin not within himself, but in his parents. Not so much in what they said – one could have defended oneself against that. What had exerted its unassuming, sly power was the whole way they were, the post-office worker and his ambitious, half-educated wife. She, the daughter of a director of studies, had never been able to cope with the fact that her husband wasn’t an academic, so the son had to become what the father was not. And the father, who depended upon her entirely in defiance of his domestic tyranny, had made that ambition her own. The pianist idea had at first made the parents insecure; but then they had started talking about the son as an artist, and of course it was much more than if he had just become one of the many academics who, as his mother said, were often rather respectable people. Then, when that flight of fancy had ended prematurely, a few days after the shock and recriminations, praises began to be sung about a solid academic career.

  Perlmann could not remember a single conversation in which the pros and cons of university study had been discussed. Calling something so obvious into question was literally unthinkable. The worst thing, he thought, was that the silent power of this premise had paralyzed the imagination, about the very question of what one could do with one’s life as a whole – the most important question, then, that anyone ever addressed. When his interest in academia – or what he saw as academia – began to crumble, he had begun to investigate what professions other people were pursuing. He was utterly astonished by all the things there were that he didn’t know about, and then he began to irritate Agnes by complaining with childish fury that no one had told him anything about them. At first he fell into romanticizing other professions, above all those that lay far from his own. By now his gaze had become more sober and analytic, and always determined by the same question, namely whether he would have found it easier to experience the present in some other profession.

  Tonight Perlmann quarrelled with his dead parents, because he thought there was a clearly visible causal connection between the unshakeable, rigidly dogmatic expectations they had imposed on their only child, and the fatal situation and inner misery in which he found himself at present. Tidal waves of accusation, of reproach, of reckonings of guilt and neglect buried him beneath themselves and dragged him, against all efforts of reason, away with them. When it was approaching two o’clock he took half a sleeping pill. At three he swallowed the other half. He was playing the A flat major Polonaise in front of an audience that seemed to extend infinitely back into the darkness of the hall. He knew he had to concentrate entirely on playing: everything depended upon him making no mistakes. Instead, he stared into the darkness of the hall and looked for Millar. He knew his gleaming glasses were there somewhere, but he couldn’t see him anywhere, his eyes streaming with exertion. Then, all of a sudden, Evelyn Mistral’s face appeared, with a radiant smile, as if she wanted to ask a question, but now it was Hanna’s face that studied him quizzically; it was Hanna’s face and also Laura Sand’s, mocking and white and still. From the very outset he heard the dangerous passage like a paradoxical, premonitory echo, he knew that he couldn’t rely on himself, that it was a matter of chance whether his fingers would do it right or not, whether they would be able to assert themselves against the paralysing influence of fear, his hands were sweating, the sweat was coming more and more, it was getting between his fingers and the keys, his fingers were slipping, now came the passage, he could hear quite loudly what it was supposed to sound like, but he couldn’t do anything, his fingers ceased to grip, it was a sensation of boundless impotence, and then he woke up with dry and very cold hands, which he immediately stuffed back under the covers.

  9

  The effects of the pill lay heavy on his eyes, but he still couldn’t get to sleep. While the first, pale light gave the bay an unreal presence, Millar’s invisible dream-figure transformed into a real person, to whom he had to prove his superior knowledge of Bach. But how was he to deliver that proof? Getting hold of the score was not a solution; on no account must it look as if he had made a special effort. The crucial thing, if he were to draw Millar’s attention to his error, was the incisive casualness of the man who had been familiar with these things for decades. The CD that Hanna had talked about. This would prove that it was a twofold error: it was not only the catalogue number that was incorrect, but the assertion that there was no recording. The story that it was a trouvaille thus acquired a ridiculous note in retrospect. Once again Perlmann heard Millar’s impossible pronunciation of the French word. You had to think about it for a moment before you understood. But the question about the CD was similar to the one about the score: how come he had it with him? A cassette would be easier to explain; with a Walkman, for example. He couldn’t have bought one of those little CD players that cost an absolute fortune. Or could he?

  I happened to see it and just picked it up. That had exactly the right casual feeling, Perlmann thought as he shaved. And the sentence, if spoken in the right tone, had an urbane touch about it. The remark also explained why he didn’t mention it until the following day. Signora Morelli had already referred to the CD player in the drawing room upon his arrival.

  He relaxed, and when he reached for the receiver to order coffee, he suddenly wanted to sit opposite Millar this morning, bolstered by the secret of his plan. On the steps he felt as if his brain were swimming around inside his skull. But somehow it would work. At eight on the dot he walked into the dining room.

  Apart from the red-haired man from the pool there wasn’t another soul in the room. Perlmann greeted him and sat down in the other corner. He hesitantly ordered breakfast from a waiter he had never seen before. Then Evelyn appeared in the doorway and walked over to him with surprise. She had thrown a pullover over her shoulders, and her hair was tied in a ponytail. No, no, she said, communal breakfast was usually at eight, but for Sunday they’d agreed on nine. But that was too late for her today. She was plainly embarrassed at having to explain to him, the leader of the group. She straightened her cutlery and quickly changed the subject.

  ‘You won’t believe this,’ she said, ‘but the red-haired man’s name is John Smith. He comes from Carson City, Nevada. Brian talked to him recently, from one American to another, so to speak. He’s filthy rich and he’s spending his winter here. “It figures,” Brian said to him when he finally told him his name. If Brian despises somebody, he does it with good reason,’ she smiled.

  ‘And that must happen quite frequently,’ Perlmann couldn’t help saying.

  Her hand, holding its croissant, stopped mid-movement. ‘You don’t like him that much, do you?’

  Perlmann took a sip of coffee. His brain was swimming. ‘I think he’s fine,’ he said, ‘although he doesn’t exactly suffer from a lack of self-confidence.’

  ‘That’s true. But there is something he can’t deal with at all, and that’s Laura’s kind of irony. He gets completely helpless, and babbles like a little boy. But otherwise he feels he’s a match for everything – if I can put it like that.’ She gripped her ponytail, and the reddish strip appeared on her forehead. ‘Recently, at the session, I was annoyed at the way he treated me. Somehow condescending, I thought. But he played wonderfully last night, didn’t you think?’

  ‘Yes . . . yes, I did,’ Perlmann said haltingly, as if he had stumbled over a threshold.

  Only the hesitation in the movement of her knife revealed that she had noticed his halting attitude. ‘I wish I’d learned an instrument,’ she said, and only now did she look at him. ‘My f
ather urged me to; but at the time I didn’t feel like it. Juan, my little brother, did it better than me. He plays the cello. Not especially brilliantly, but he enjoys it.’

  And you, do you play an instrument? He had to prevent that question being asked at all cost, so he asked more about Juan and the whole family, including the grandparents. One might have thought he was looking for material for a family saga.

  They were in the doorway of the dining room when von Levetzov and Millar came down the stairs. They exchanged a glance that didn’t escape Evelyn Mistral. She raised her arm, made a delicate movement with her fingers as if doing a trill on the piano, took Perlmann’s arm with a smile and guided him out through the door to the flight of steps. It was only when they reached the promenade that she looked at him, and then they both burst out laughing.

  She held his arm as they strolled along the harbor. Walking did Perlmann good, and the pressure above his eyes gradually subsided. Wrapped in the remaining after-effects of the pill, which lay on his eyes like a protective filter, he yielded to his imagination, which told him that he was enjoying this radiant autumn morning with the delicate plume of mist over the smooth, sparkling water. The present was within reach when Evelyn Mistral, who had now shaken her hair free, described Salamanca, and he was quite sure it would be his next travel destination.

  They turned the corner and suddenly found themselves standing in front of a church, a bridal couple just coming out. He wished the photographs, the congratulation and the jokes would last much longer, and was disappointed at how quickly everyone suddenly climbed into the cars and drove away, honking jauntily.

  Finally, Evelyn Mistral took his arm again and drew him gently away. It was nearly half-past eleven, she said, and she still had lots of plans. ‘I’ll be back at work two weeks tomorrow!’ Maria was already working on her first chapter, but in the second there were still so many gaps and incongruities that it was hopeless. ‘And when I think about Brian, Achim and Adrian sitting there . . .’