41
A wild honking of car horns on the coast road woke him with a start. Perlmann felt disoriented and immediately sank back into leaden weariness. His eyelids seemed paralyzed, and would only open after he had made an extreme effort of will to sit up on the edge of the bed. His head hurt at the slightest movement, and his veins seemed to be far too cramped for his violently pounding blood. The noise of traffic was unbearable. It was seven minutes to nine.
No time for showering and shaving, nor could he order any more coffee. He was relieved to establish that his tongue, although thick and stinging, was under his command again. He shovelled cold water into his face with both hands, evoking the memory of the gas station toilet in Recco. No murder. No plagiarism. He hurriedly bundled together the sheets of paper on the desk. There were at least twenty pages, he thought. The last half-page was crossed out. I’ll have to improvise at the end.
The elevator was busy. Two minutes past nine. Perlmann gritted his teeth and hobbled downstairs. He had forgotten the printout of his notes, and when he went to check that he was at least carrying a pen, he saw that there were two big stripes of dirt running diagonally across his jacket. The garbage bin by the fan. He looked at his trousers: bloodstains everywhere. Arriving in the hall, through the glass front door he saw the sea glittering in the morning sun. At some point in the night, he remembered, he had thought he had finally found the present. An illusion, woven from relief, alcohol and pills. The present was further off than ever.
The door to the veranda was open. Perlmann felt no more twinges as he walked through the lounge towards it and took the three steps. The anxiety settled on him like a numbing veil. He wasn’t quite in the room before he had seen that they were all there, even Silvestri and Angelini. And at the back, on the right, Leskov with his pipe in his mouth. Perlmann immediately looked away. He didn’t want to be wounded by any of those faces. As he had been during the night. He wanted to stay completely closed away in himself, inaccessible to the others.
As always, there was coffee on the table, a special pot for the speaker. Perlmann sat down without a greeting, poured himself a coffee and concentrated on not shivering. The coffee was hot. One could only drink it slowly. He couldn’t possibly drain the first cup with everyone staring at him. After taking three sips he set it down. He had planned to say some introductory words of explanation, about the distributed text and his relationship to what he was about to say. But he couldn’t have said such words with his eyes lowered, and he couldn’t now bring himself to meet the eyes of the others. Not before they had heard last night’s text, which would rehabilitate him. He took another sip of coffee, lit a cigarette and began to read.
The introductory sentences were too long-winded. Perlmann noticed it immediately, became impatient and rattled them off hastily so that he could finally get to his first thesis, which, in its originality – he was quite sure of it – would immediately grab the attention of everyone present. He set aside the first page and was glad to see that there were only three lines to go before the crucial paragraph. When they were over with, he took two big swigs of coffee, looked up for a moment, and then plunged into his train of thought.
When he read them the words were so unutterably weak that the sentences literally stuck in his throat. It took a special effort – almost a retch – to read each of them to the end. It was pure kitsch, nothing but sentimental nonsense, cobbled together by someone at the end of his powers and also under the influence of alcohol and pills, so that all critical capacity, all self-censorship, had completely closed down. Perlmann wanted to sink into the floor, and when he went on reading, in a voice that grew quieter and quieter, he only did so because he didn’t know how he would bear the silence that would fall if he stopped.
Leskov choked on his pipe smoke and had a coughing fit. His face bright red, he bent double, his coughing so loud that Perlmann’s lecture was interrupted. Perlmann looked over at him, and in that moment a thought forced his way into his consciousness that had until then been suppressed by some power or other: I would have killed him for no good reason whatsoever. It would have been a completely pointless murder. A murder based on an error. Without his really noticing, the sheets slipped from his hand, his mouth half-opened, and his face went blank. He shivered. He heard the penetrating, high-pitched whistle, and saw the huge shovel of the bulldozer with its side prongs coming towards him. It turned quite silent, as if they were surrounded by cotton wool and snow. Perlmann took his ice-cold, sweat-drenched hands from the wheel. Then there was nothing but weakness and darkness. Perlmann’s cigarette fell from his hand and, in a curiously retarded, flowing motion he slipped sideways to the floor.
It was a pleasant, effortless glide up through ever thinner, ever paler layers. At the end there came a faint, quiet start, the world stood quite still, and with a tiny hesitation that he only just noticed, before immediately forgetting it again, it became clear to Perlmann that the impressions forcing their way to him through his open eyes meant that he was awake.
He was lying under the covers in all his clothes except his jacket and shoes. In the red armchair by the open window sat Giorgio Silvestri. His back was turned towards Perlmann and he was reading the newspaper. Perlmann was glad that he was smoking. That made the situation less like a sick-bed visit. He would have liked to look at his watch. But Silvestri would have heard that, and he wanted to be on his own for a little while longer. He closed his eyes and tried to order his thoughts.
His unconsciousness had calmed him, and even if his tiredness slowed everything down, he still had the feeling of being able to think clearly. He could no longer remember the details of what had happened in the veranda. All he remembered was his horror at his embarrassing text, and then the coughing Leskov, who had slipped uninterruptedly into a maelstrom of images from the tunnel. I have disgraced myself for ever. It couldn’t have been more embarrassing. But now it’s over. I didn’t commit fraud and I didn’t commit murder. And never again will I have to sit at the front in the veranda. Never again.
Two men must have carried him upstairs. Perlmann was glad they hadn’t undressed him. Who had it been apart from Silvestri? Apart from those two, had anyone else come into his room? The strong sleeping pills were in his jacket pocket. Had Silvestri found them? Had he seen that he was poisoned, and deliberately looked for them? Or had they perhaps fallen out when he was being carried upstairs?
Leskov’s text. For God’s sake, I hope they didn’t find it here. Perlmann sat up involuntarily. Silvestri turned round, got to his feet and looked at him with a face that strangely combined a warm smile and a professional, medical expression.
‘I came back at just the right time,’ he said.
‘How long was I unconscious for?’ Perlmann asked.
Silvestri looked at his watch. ‘Just a few minutes. Stay calm. There’s no reason to worry.’
Perlmann sank back into the pillow. A few minutes. That could be ten, or twenty. Enough at any rate to find the text. If they hear Leskov saying practically the same thing as in the text on Thursday, they will know that something’s wrong, and put two and two together. It isn’t over yet.
‘Was Leskov in here, too?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘Yes,’ Silvestri said with a smile, ‘he insisted on helping Brian Millar carry you. He started wheezing terribly. A nice guy.’
Then he saw his text here, and now he’ll be thinking back to the tunnel. Perlmann started sweating and asked for a glass of water.
As he drank, Silvestri looked at him thoughtfully. He hesitated at behaving like a doctor, but then he took Perlmann’s pulse. ‘Has that happened to you many times before?’
‘No,’ Perlmann said, ‘that was the first time.’
‘Do you take sleeping pills?’ Silvestri made the question sound innocuous, almost incidental.
Perlmann liked and knew straight away that he was being seen through.
After he had folded up the newspaper and lit a Gauloise, Silvestri leaned against the de
sk and said nothing for a while. Perlmann was about to tell him everything. Just so as not to be alone with his thoughts any more. To have peace at last.
‘You know,’ Silvestri said slowly, without a hint of an instructive or patronizing tone in his voice. ‘You are in a state of profound exhaustion. Not quite dangerous yet. But you should be a bit careful. Take a rest. Get a lot of sleep. And go and see your doctor at home. He should give you a thorough examination, at any rate. If you need anything, just give me a call.’ He walked to the door.
‘Giorgio,’ said Perlmann.
Silvestri turned round.
‘I . . . I’m glad you were there. Grazie.’
‘Di niente,’ Silvestri smiled and reached for the door. Then he let go of the handle and came two steps back. ‘By the way, I find a lot of the observations in your text very interesting. Particularly the things about the freezing of experience through language, and the point that sentences can both inspire and paralyze the imagination.’ He grinned. ‘Of course, the others expected something slightly different from you. But I wouldn’t place too much importance on that. And, generally speaking, you shouldn’t take all of this too seriously,’ he said with a gesture that took in the whole hotel.
Perlmann nodded mutely.
When the door clicked shut, he threw back the covers and hobbled hastily over to his case. He saw with horror that the lock was set at the correct combination. No text in there now. The veins at his temples seemed about to burst with each pulse beat. He sat down on the edge of the bed, only to jump up again a moment later. The phone book. Pressing his hand to his head, he pulled open the desk drawer. There was no text under the phone book either. He knew there was no point, but he checked in the bedside table and the wardrobe as well. So they’d discovered it and taken it away as evidence. Leskov would identify the text. Attempted plagiarism. That was the only explanation for Perlmann so carefully keeping the existence of the text a secret. And seen in that light, what happened in the veranda also became comprehensible. They would go easy on him today. To some extent he was unfit to stand trial. But tomorrow they would call him to account.
Perlmann stubbed out his cigarette and was glad that the nausea subsided when he lay down. Now, he couldn’t present the text as a welcome gift. He had learned of Leskov’s arrival less than three days before. And why hadn’t he given him the present ages ago? He had thought the text was so good that he had planned to send the finished translation to St Petersburg and suggest publication in a relevant journal. Then, when he learned that he was coming, he had prepared the text as a surprise. He planned to hand it to him tonight at dinner. That’s OK. That doesn’t sound incredible. At any rate, they can’t refute it. The thumping in his head subsided. It’s over. One or other of them may be left with a feeling of suspicion. Nothing more can happen. It’s over. He turned onto his stomach and let his face sink deep into the pillow.
But the text was no longer here. I threw it away during the night. Perlmann sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees. The big garbage bin under the fan had been empty apart from potato peelings. And the open lid had covered the fan. He conjured up as many details of the situation as possible, to assure himself that these were really memories, and not a trick being played on him by his imagination. He heard once again the dull thud when the stack of paper had landed, and smelled again the kitchen fumes that had passed through the fan. It was an effort to call all that to mind, because it was swathed in fine mist that wouldn’t be dissolved even by the utmost effort of concentration, as if it were not merely a veil of the remembered objects, but belonged to their essence. And the images were erratic and hard to hold on to; it was as if the remembered perceptions last night had not really had the opportunity to bury themselves into his brain. Nonetheless, Perlmann’s certainty grew that they were real memories. The imagination would not provide images that were so dense and coherent, in spite of the mist. Yesterday evening – he remembered that, too, now – getting rid of the text had struck him as the epitome of senselessness. Now he was glad of this attack of unreason. Loads of refuse, huge great loads of it, had fallen on the dangerous text in the meantime, and buried it.
When he came out of the bathroom wearing his pyjamas, his eye fell on his light-colored jacket, which they had hung on the back of a chair. It wasn’t only the two strips of dirt above the chest; both sleeves were dirty on the outside, too, just under the elbow. He had propped himself up on the garbage bin. And the hotel folder was missing. Now it was clear once and for all. There was nothing left – nothing – that could still betray him.
At the back of the desk, with one corner under the foot of the lamp, lay a stack of paper. It was the text that he had written in the night. The trashy text. That was where they had put it. In whose hand had it been carried up? Silvestri’s? Millar’s? His handwriting on the pages was bigger than usual, the lines jauntier, more expansive. On the last few pages much of the writing was unreadable. Perlmann tore each sheet in two several times and let the bits fall into the waste-paper basket.
Then he lay down in bed. He would have liked to sleep for a year. Silvestri hadn’t found his notes outrageous. Perlmann saw Silvestri’s smile in his mind’s eye when he had spoken of the expectation of the others. That mocking detachment, which needed no spite – Perlmann had never envied anyone anything so fiercely. He tried to imagine his way entirely into that smile – to be someone who could smile about the matter like this. As he did so he slipped, for the first time in days, into a deep, dreamless sleep.
42
It was just before three when the phone woke him. As if he had never experienced such a sensation before, he flinched from the ringing as from a physical assault. But I don’t need to hide myself away any more. It’s all over. He picked up the phone and heard Leskov’s voice, far too loud. Could he visit him? Only, of course, if it didn’t disturb him. Perlmann’s head started thumping. His face, still hot with sleep, was filled with a dry, stinging sensation, as if he had been hiking for hours in cold winter air.
‘Are you still there?’ asked Leskov.
Perlmann said he would be glad of a visit. He didn’t know what else he could have said.
The sky was overcast, and a light rain fell from the pale grey. The second version. The rain falling on the yellow pages. The journey via Recco and Uscio would take an hour at the most. If he got rid of Leskov quickly, he could be there in time to pick up the pages in daylight. He took the car key out of the pocket of his blazer, and put on his soiled jacket. That way it would be obvious that he was about to leave.
As soon as Leskov had slumped into the red armchair, he took his pipe from his pocket and asked if he could smoke.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Perlmann. He shouldn’t have needed to say it. I’d rather you didn’t, he could have said instead. From the mouth of someone in need of care that would have been enough. A few short words. He hadn’t said them. He hadn’t managed to. Now he smelled the sickly sweet tobacco. It would linger everywhere. He would have to smell it for days. He hated this Russian.
He had given them a real fright there, Leskov said. Of course, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of his nausea on the journey and the excitement in the tunnel. The others didn’t know anything about it, incidentally. Last night he’d just said something vague about him not being very well, to explain why Perlmann wasn’t there at dinner. The details, he said with a smile, were no one’s business but his, were they?
The intimacy that Leskov was forcing on him with that remark could not be the intimacy of blackmail, Perlmann knew that, even though his certainty still felt very fresh and slightly unsteady. Nonetheless, it was an unbearable intimacy, and it made Perlmann so furious that he suddenly didn’t care that the rain seemed to be getting heavier.
‘By the way,’ Leskov said, ‘I was told about the reception at the town hall.’ He smiled. ‘So that was your medal and your certificate on the back seat. And now I understand the tie that was lying around as if you’d furiously thrown it int
o the back. The whole thing must have been incredibly awkward and distasteful to you! We were doubled up with laughter at lunchtime when Achim described the whole scene.’
Leskov was enthusiastic about Perlmann’s text. He had stayed up for a long time last night to read it all the way through. He hadn’t understood absolutely everything; there were a number of English words and phrases that he didn’t know. But both the subjects and the way of addressing them – it had all been surprisingly close to his own work. It was really a shame that Perlmann had found the Russian text too hard. Otherwise he would have recognized how close it was straight away. But he must have understood the title?
Perlmann nodded.
‘We should write a text together one day!’ said Leskov and touched his knee.
At any rate, Perlmann’s text had given Leskov the courage to talk about his own things here. He’d had the jitters a bit. In such illustrious company. He thought it was great that you could be so open here, and there didn’t seem to be any kind of academic straitjacket. If only that terrible slip with his text hadn’t happened. He hurriedly exhaled great clouds of smoke, which condensed more and more in the room into a solid blanket of blue haze that cleaved the whole room at head height.
‘Oh, of course, you couldn’t know anything about that,’ he interrupted himself and gesticulated animatedly. ‘I told you about the second version of my text, and how I nearly left it at home because of that annoying phone call.’ Leskov waited until Perlmann nodded. ‘And now it seems that that’s exactly what happened. Last night, in fact, when I’m coming back from dinner, I reach into the outside pocket of the suitcase, where the text should have been. But there’s nothing there. Nothing at all. Empty.’ Leskov pressed his fists against his temples. ‘It’s a complete mystery to me. I could swear that I put it in there at the last moment. It was the open outside pocket that reminded me of it.’
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