Perlmann's Silence

by Pascal Mercier

  Osvaivat’. Appropriation. So that’s true. The thought ran through Perlmann’s head without his intervention. It felt strange, and cut off from everything else. Or rather it didn’t feel like anything at all. It wasn’t really present as a thought of his own. It was more as if he were thinking someone else’s thought. As if someone else were now thinking that thought.

  Leskov took out the handkerchief that he had previously offered to Perlmann and laboriously blew his nose. ‘And I had almost forgotten the text. It was still a bit too soon to drive to the airport, and I took another look at it and made a few notes. Then there’s this phone call that I get really excited about, not least because of the post I’m hoping for. It goes on and on, and suddenly I’m short of time. I pick up the two cases and walk to the door, still filled with rage, and it’s only when I see the open outside pocket on the suitcase that it occurs to me. I’d have been left standing there like a bit of an idiot.’

  I should tell him about the text on the road. Because if he discovered the loss, he would immediately put two and two together: that strange stop in the middle of the road, and after that the tires had barely been mentioned. His fury would be boundless: once, of course, because of the destruction of his paper, and then over the fact that Perlmann, the coward, hadn’t even had the courage to tell the whole truth. And that rage might loosen his tongue.

  Now came the turn-off to Uscio, and then down to the sea at Recco. Perlmann stopped. ‘I’ve got to stretch my legs for a moment,’ he said.

  If he took the turn-off, there was no second chance: it wasn’t a road for big trucks. Then he would walk up the steps beside Leskov, and the disaster would take its course. Then there was no longer anything that could stop it. If he drove straight ahead, in ten minutes they would be in Pian dei Ratti. Perlmann stood there motionlessly, his hand on his trouser-zip by way of disguise. He couldn’t deliver his confession, with its lengthy explanation, at the steering wheel. At some point he would have to look Leskov in his bright, grey eyes and tell him that he had destroyed his text. The text he had put everything into. The text that had helped him win his post. That he had simply set it down in the road under the exhaust like a pile of rubbish, of filth.

  It was impossible.

  Pian dei Ratti. The factory, the pines, the Renault poster. Wait for the front of the truck with the big lights. Sit next to Leskov again, silent and mute. Drive off once more, the whistling noise again and the feeling about the glasses.

  It was impossible.

  Perlmann got in and drove on towards Uscio and Recco. He drove fast on the almost deserted road, just fast enough for Leskov not to protest. Perlmann didn’t want another thought ever to pass through his head ever again. The Lancia took the many bends effortlessly. Only once, on a sharp curve to the right, did it sound as if the tires were touching the crushed metal.

  ‘I expected us to get to the hotel more quickly,’ Leskov said at one point. ‘What time is dinner?’

  In Recco, when they turned into the alleyway leading to the coast road, it was just before seven. Perlmann stopped at a gas station. ‘Just a moment,’ he said and disappeared into the toilet, where the stench of urine took his breath away. He propped himself on the washbasin and threw up. But hardly anything came, apart from mucus and gastric acid; in the end it was nothing but dry retching. The face in the mirror was as white as a ghost. Under his nose and on his chin there was dried, almost black blood. His hair on his forehead was damp with sweat. He shovelled cold water into his face and then rubbed it dry with the sleeve of his jacket.

  He would have to behave towards this Russian, who repelled him and whose paternal tone he found unbearable, as one does towards a father confessor, with the hope of absolution. And Perlmann would be in his thrall for ever, for good or ill. It was inconceivable.

  But then there was this calculation: it was no longer possible that his deception would remain undiscovered. There was nothing more, absolutely nothing, that Perlmann could have done to deflect the exposure. So there was only the question of how many people would find out – whether the discovery would stop with Leskov, or reach everyone else. And looking at it quite soberly everything argued for at least making the attempt. He no longer had anything to lose.

  A fat man came in. Perlmann gave a start. For a moment he thought it was Leskov. He couldn’t meet him at the moment. He wasn’t ready yet. He didn’t want it to be a confession in a stinking toilet. He locked himself in a stall. He wanted to sit down and rest his head in his hands, but it was a squat toilet, so all he could do was lean against the door, his forehead and nose pressed hard against the greasy plastic.

  It wasn’t true that he had nothing to lose. But it was a while before Perlmann could summon the necessary concentration. The crux of it was this: if he didn’t confess to the murder plan straight away – and that was simply unthinkable – he had no plausible explanation for getting rid of the second version. That wouldn’t matter in the slightest if Leskov acknowledged the English text as his own. So what had he imagined he would achieve by getting rid of it? You should have got rid of me at the same time, Leskov could say. The separating wall that might still exist between that remark and the apprehension of the truth would be extremely thin, and could at any moment collapse if Leskov thought again about the tunnel.

  And then Perlmann suddenly had the vision of Leskov, now in command of all moral authority, telling him to turn round and collect the crushed and scattered pages. He saw himself creeping around in the dark on the embankment, and scurrying back and forth across the carriageway in front of beeping cars with flashing headlights.

  Battling against the sharp stench of urine, he breathed in deeply and then very slowly out. A confession was impossible. It was impossible.

  ‘This is how I’ve always imagined the Riviera by night,’ said Leskov as he looked down on Recco and later on Rapallo. ‘Exactly like this. It’s fantastic!’

  Perlmann didn’t look. He stared at the road, lit by the one-sided beam of light. He drove, and with each passing meter he concentrated only on the fact that he was driving. Although his gums still stung from the gastric acid, he would have given anything for a cigarette. But the 1,600 lire – his money – hadn’t been enough to buy a pack. Right at the back of his consciousness, with dull indifference, he registered that his thinking had been correct: for the first plan – the car rolling over the edge – the coast road would have been out of the question.

  ‘Who’s going to be presenting the final paper this week?’ asked Leskov as the lights of Santa Margherita came into view.

  Once again, one last time on this journey, Perlmann gave a start. Over the last four tormented, breathless hours he had managed not to address Leskov directly, and avoided using the familiar you. It had been difficult at times, and had involved all kinds of linguistic somersaults. There must be a sentence, he thought, that would do it. But his brain couldn’t do it any more, so he said it: ‘You. Du.’

  They turned the corner. The crooked pine. The streetlamps. The neon sign. The painted window frames. The flags. There were lights on in Millar’s, Ruge’s and Evelyn Mistral’s rooms. Perlmann drove up to the gas station parking lot. It was closed. So no questions about the body damage. When he lifted Leskov’s suitcase out of the trunk, he saw a bit of the red rubber band that had got stuck in the zip of the outside pocket. ‘Along here,’ he said and, as if he were Leskov’s servant, he picked up a case in each hand.

  38

  What happened then was something that Perlmann had seen in his mind’s eye so many times that it was more or less exhausted from being imagined. Now that it was actually taking place it was just a scene that had been rehearsed ad nauseam – flat, papery and without the reality of experience; the only real thing was the angular wooden handle on Leskov’s suitcase, which was cutting into his hand. But there was no relief associated with that unreality. On the contrary, the sensation of waste and death that clung to the walk up the steps was, as Perlmann knew, an expression of the utmost
horror. His gait was more sluggish than the luggage called for, and his body felt like that of a puppet, each movement of which had to be put individually into action. It took him a huge effort of will to impel that body step by step closer to the front door.

  As he entered the portico, he noticed that Leskov was no longer following him. He was standing at the top of the steps, looking up at the illuminated facade of the hotel.

  ‘Fantastic!’ he called breathlessly to Perlmann and, with his arm, his coat hanging over it, made a gesture that encompassed the whole hotel. Then he turned round, supported himself on the balustrade and looked out on the nocturnal view of the bay.

  Perlmann set the luggage down. Waiting for Leskov was unbearable. Admittedly, it meant that the moment of his exposure was momentarily deferred. But this waiting was worse than any other waiting, worse even than the waiting at the airport a short time before. There it had been a waiting at the end of which he himself would assume control – bloody, murderous control, admittedly, but at least he could do something; it was down to him what would happen next and when. Now, on the other hand, there was nothing more he could do. He was no longer an active participant in the events that would follow. Now he was only their victim, their plaything. He had to wait impotently until Leskov condescended to emerge from his absorption to take delivery of the text that spelled the end for Perlmann. And Perlmann had to linger in that waiting, regardless of whether it lasted hours, days or years. His humiliation was his own responsibility, and his alone. But that insight was unbearable. He couldn’t stay on his own with it for more than a brief moment. He would explode if he locked himself away in it entirely, in line with the terrible logic of the matter. He needed some exoneration, someone who could bear at least a portion of the guilt, so this feeling of humiliation struck in blind hatred at Leskov, who came now, at last, a dreamy and enthusiastic expression on his spongy face.

  He touched Perlmann on the arm. ‘I’ll never forget,’ he said, ‘that you invited me to this divine place.’

  The lobby was empty as they walked across the gleaming marble floor to the reception. Perlmann saw the text from a long way off. There was only a single pigeonhole with a pile of papers sticking out of it. And now his anxiety returned to its usual form of expression: he felt his heart thumping all the way to his throat. There was no one behind the counter. I’ll just go and grab the text. The thought overwhelmed him. It allowed no other thoughts, no reflection and no contradiction. He quickly walked around the counter and took the text from the pigeonhole. He was about to roll it up to hide it from Leskov, when Signora Morelli appeared behind him: ‘Sorry, Signor Perlmann, for keeping you waiting.’

  Perlmann froze. The force of the thought that had made him take the text had to fade away before he could react.

  ‘Oh, I must have given you a start,’ said Signora Morelli. ‘I didn’t mean to.’ And now, as Perlmann turned to face her, she saw the blood on his clothes. ‘Dio mio!’ she exclaimed and threw her hand to her mouth. ‘What’s happened?’

  Perlmann looked down at himself, as if trying to recall something long forgotten. ‘Oh, that,’ he said as if Signora Morelli had grotesquely lost all sense of proportion, ‘that was just a bit of a nosebleed.’ He rolled the text up tightly, as if he were about to stuff it into a pneumatic post system. ‘I . . . I was just about to give Signor Leskov the text.’ Standing next to her, he made a gesture of introduction. ‘This is Professor Vassily Leskov, the man I told you about,’ he said in English.

  ‘Benvenuto!’ she smiled, blankly shaking the hand that Leskov held out to her across the counter.

  As Perlmann, still clutching the text, walked around the counter and back to Leskov, he had the feeling that his alert reaction had used up the very last remnants of his strength. He would never again be capable of an alert reaction, never. And why all that effort at concealment? As soon as he starts reading the text upstairs, it will all be over in a few minutes anyway. And on top of everything, here I am handing him the text myself.

  Signora Morelli had pushed a pad of registration forms towards Leskov, and he was now busy filling it in. He became uneasy when she said that she would be keeping his passport for a while, and enquired anxiously when he would get it back, as it still had his travel permit inside it. The signora reassured him that he could have it back after dinner; it was just a matter of routine. When she took his room key down from the board, she paused, fished an envelope out from the back of the drawer and handed it to Leskov. The Olivetti name was printed discreetly in olive green letters in the bottom left-hand corner.

  ‘Signor Angelini asked me to give you this. You’ll be seeing him later at dinner.’ With the corners of her mouth twitching, she watched Leskov feeling the envelope and then, with the clumsiness that came from embarrassment, putting it in his jacket pocket. She rang the bell for a porter to take his luggage.

  The time had come. Perlmann handed the text to Leskov. That movement sealed his fate, and was enfolded in the numbing silence of a nightmare. He didn’t utter a single word and their eyes met only fleetingly.

  Leskov received the text rather distractedly, because the porter was loading his luggage on to the cart, which he seemed to consider very strange. He bent down to his suitcase and opened the zip of the outside pocket. The piece of rubber band remained stuck in it. Now he’ll notice. Now.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Brian Millar, who had joined them along with Adrian von Levetzov. Leskov glanced up and straightened himself, still holding the text in his hand.

  ‘I assume you’re Vassily Leskov,’ Millar said in his sonorous voice. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ He looked at Leskov’s hand. ‘I see you’ve been given the text already.’

  ‘What in God’s name has happened to you?’ von Levetzov cried, interrupting the greeting, and pointing at Perlmann’s clothes.

  ‘Philipp had a flow of blood from the nose,’ said Leskov as he saw Perlmann standing there like a sleepwalker. It was the first time Perlmann had heard him speaking English. The ungainliness of the sentence and the tight, nasal pronunciation sounded like mockery. It was as if he had just started running the gauntlet.

  They wouldn’t disturb him any longer, von Levetzov said and pointed to the waiting porter. They would be seeing each other over dinner at half-past eight, after all.

  By now the suitcase with the open outside pocket was on the cart as well. ‘So, see you very soon,’ said Leskov, waving the text significantly and following the porter to the elevator.

  Perlmann watched him go. He had never fainted. Now he wished it would happen, so that he wouldn’t have to experience that sensation any longer, the sensation of endless falling.

  ‘You’re as white as a sheet,’ said Signora Morelli. ‘Are you not well? Would you like to lie down?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Perlmann, and looked at her for a long time until she became embarrassed and ran her hand searchingly over her hair. I’ve got to tell someone before the others find out. Why not her? But no, that’s impossible. What would she do with such a confession? And it wouldn’t change anything at all.

  She handed him the key and made a maternal face that he had never seen before. ‘It must have been a difficult journey from Genoa to here,’ she said. ‘There’s always a lot of traffic on a Monday, especially trucks.’

  ‘Yes,’ Perlmann said, barely audibly. He took his key and went to the elevator.

  He sat on the bed and slumped back. A few moments before, when he had closed the door behind him and seen the spacious room in front of him, he had had a moment of relief: after four full hours spent in such close proximity with Leskov, he was alone again at last. Leaning on the door, he had stood there for a while and yielded to that feeling of respite, knowing that it was a stolen emotion, a lie that could be washed away by anxiety at any moment. It wouldn’t have been washed away exactly. It was more that the desperate consciousness of his situation had seeped up from below, constant and inexorable, and had colored and replaced all other sensations. He
had gone to the wardrobe and pulled a yearned-for cigarette from the hastily torn-open pack. But he had stubbed it out again after two drags.

  Now he had room for only a single sensation: the feeling of not knowing what to do with himself. In his mind he could relocate to any place imaginable, any corner of the universe – but he always felt the same thing: I have no right to be here. He felt as if he had to wring every last breath from that ruthless, devastating sensation. There was that one point from which all experience emanated and to which everything flowed back, that inner center that he always carried around with him. Again and again Perlmann attempted to withdraw entirely into that center, and find his footing at its midmost point, to put a small bit of difference between him and the overwhelming, overarching feelings of guilt and shame, a distance that would have allowed him to say: So I am something else, too; you can’t judge me in the light of this single offence. But attempt after attempt failed. Guilt and shame remained hot on his heels; wherever he turned, they followed him into the innermost depths like a shadow. He tried to duck away, and to keep taking a step back and inwards, but there was no escape. He said to himself, pressing his fists to his temples, that he, too, had a past, and that there were things in it that he had done properly. But even that was useless, the feelings that held him as if in a stranglehold refused to accept that appeal, that defense, as valid.

  Exhausted by all his vain attempts to assert himself, it seemed simply impossible that he would survive even the next second, which appeared to be taking an infinity to come. And that was something quite different from the prolongation of time that took place in the anxiety and uncertainty before making a decision. Then time was extended towards a goal. You knew that the tension would ease sooner or later, even if the outcome was not a good one, and that you would then return to the normal flow of time, its normal pace. Now, however, there was no goal and no uncertainty, which meant there was no longer any hope, either, that he would soon be able to yield to the natural self-evidence and inconspicuousness of temporal flux. His own private time beyond all present, which had emerged the previous morning from his fatal resolution, had dissolved into nothing somewhere beyond the tunnel, and he yearned to return to ordinary, shared time. But that wasn’t possible now, either. Because that ordinary time led into an open future, while his future was no longer open. The discovery of the deception by the others in a sense closed off his time. It walled it up. It brought time to an end as something in the course of which his own experience could develop. Time now was only this: a sequence of weary, extended moments stripped of possibility. Each individual one of those moments was to be awaited in its pure passing, one moment after the other, in all eternity and without any hope. It was hell.