Perlmann's Silence

by Pascal Mercier

  Inside the parcel was the promised copy of Leskov’s text. Underneath it, four volumes in Russian, bound in light-brown artificial leather: Maxim Gorky, Zhisn’ Klima Samgina. On the first page of the first volume it said in shaky handwriting: Moemu syno Vasiliyu. The dedication was written in black ink, and the pen had sprayed, there was a sprinkle of black dots around the words. The leather was worn, stained and in two places torn. It was the volumes that Leskov had read in prison – fourteen times.

  Perlmann knew that he was supposed to feel touched, but all he felt was fury, a fury that grew every time he looked at the books. Through those brown volumes with their gold inscriptions, Leskov had managed to make contact with his flat, and Leskov was now present in a way that was almost even more oppressive and paralysing than his physical presence. Now Perlmann also smelled the hint of sickly sweet tobacco that lingered between the pages. He felt that he might be about to lose his head and hurl the books outside into the mud, so he put his coat back on and walked slowly to his block.

  Later he set the volumes on the shelf in the broom cupboard and covered them with a dishcloth. Then, when he reluctantly flicked through the typed text, he discovered that Leskov thanked him extravagantly at the start of his acknowledgements for his discussion of an earlier version and his constructive criticism in four footnotes. The burden that had been lifted from him by Leskov’s letter seemed to sink down upon him once more, even though he didn’t understand how that could be, now that Leskov had managed to get the position he wanted.

  Perlmann defended himself against the books in the broom cupboard by finishing his review and preparing his course of lectures. When Adrian von Levetzov rang and asked about publication, Perlmann sent off a round letter to his colleagues, claiming that some participants in the group had other plans for their contributions, so that he had abandoned the plan of a special publication. The same day he rang the school authorities and asked about the possibility of taking on a job as a teacher. Not without the proper qualifications, the shrill voice at the other end informed him, and not in the current job market. That night he dreamed of Signora Medici, standing in front of an audience in a tartan skirt and hiking boots, reading sentences in an unknown language from light-brown books, as he looked excitedly in his desk for his crib sheet.

  Perlmann’s training in slowness was starting to work. Usually, it was no longer necessary to go to the living room to look at the clock; he simply paused and imagined the ticking. He started thinking about that ticking when he was on the phone, as well, and gradually understood that slowness in reacting could be the physical expression of a lack of subservience. He was so happy about this discovery that he overdid it, and had to fight once more against his tendency to fanaticism.

  Now and again, when he sat in this living room late at night and heard the clock ticking, he tried to think about why he had taken his hands off the wheel. Because of Leskov? Because of himself? But it was always the same thing: the thoughts dried up before they had really begun. In his mind, he had been ready to die. Out of despair, admittedly, not out of stoical serenity. Nonetheless, the experience of imminent death had changed something within him. Of course, it had been an error to believe that this change, whose contours were still in the dark, would develop all by themselves into greater confidence and a piece of inner freedom. It wasn’t as easy as that. But what exactly was it that he had to do about it?

  One evening, while watching a silly comedy on television, Perlmann laughed again for the first time. Then he remembered the man with the long white scarf from the airport bar, and gulped. But by the next joke he had started laughing again.

  The next day he bought the German translation of Gorky’s novel and read it until he came to the passage about the hole in the ice. Gleaming red, Gorky called the hands that clutched the edge of the ice, which broke off. Perlmann went into Agnes’s room, to look up the second word. Only when he saw the gap on the shelf did he remember the books he had thrown away. He was startled, as if he had only just found out about it.

  Perlmann found the novel heavy going, and the countless philosophical dialogues got on his nerves. He really wanted to put it down. But that day he read another hundred pages, and worked out that he would have to get through at least 120 pages if he was to finish it that year. Often he succumbed to the temptation to ease his attention and just let his eye slip over the pages without really reading. But he never overindulged himself, instead flicking back and reading everything over again with reluctant but embittered precision, knowing that he would immediately forget most of it again. In the first days he told himself that it was a matter of becoming acquainted with part of the mental world in which Leskov had taken refuge in prison. He owed him that, he thought, and each time he did so he stumbled over the vague feeling of not knowing what he thought. Only after a few days did he understand that that wasn’t what drove him to torment himself again by reading it each evening. It was more the vague desire to pay off his debt to Leskov, and atone for his planned murder. After that discovery he felt ridiculous every time he opened the book again. But he kept on with it.

  Late in December he rang Maria again. He wished her a Merry Christmas and hoped she would be able to tell him something about the deletion of his text. But nothing more came of it than a friendly exchange of good wishes, which they soon had to bring to an end to avoid embarrassment. He would never find out when the dangerous text was finally destroyed, or whether indeed it had been.

  Kirsten came on the second day of the Christmas holidays. As soon as she stepped inside the apartment, she pounced on the new carpet, looked at it from all sides and, finally, lifted it up to look at the label. When she saw the coffee stain, she burst into peals of laughter and gave Perlmann a boisterous kiss. He still didn’t let her wheedle the carpet out of him.

  Later she came into the kitchen so quietly that, preoccupied with cooking, he didn’t notice her for a long time.

  ‘You put away some pictures,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, and looked at her for a moment, the salt cellar in his hand.

  ‘But you’re leaving these, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘definitely.’

  ‘Does this Ms. Sand take good pictures?’

  ‘They’re OK,’ he said.

  ‘Black and white?’

  ‘Color.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, relieved, and took a piece of salmon from the plate.

  When they were eating, she suddenly lowered her knife and fork, and stared at his hand.

  ‘You’ve taken off your ring.’

  Perlmann blushed intensely. He didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly, ‘of course that’s your business.’

  Later, when they were clearing away the plates, she asked in a pointedly casual way, ‘The blonde in the group, what was her name again?

  Evelyn . . .’

  ‘Mistral,’ he said, and put away the coffee cups.

  He was standing in his study when Kirsten handed him his Christmas present: a navy blue sailor’s jersey, the kind he had always wanted. Inside the package there was something else, a book. Nikolai Leskov, Short Stories. He was speechless and turned the book around mutely in his hand.

  ‘A really important writer,’ said Kirsten. ‘Martin’s writing a dissertation on him. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to find a Russian edition. Don’t you like it?’

  ‘No, I do,’ he said hoarsely, and walked, moist-eyed, to the window.

  She wrapped her arms around him from behind. ‘It’s really hard for you right now, isn’t it?’ He nodded.

  As always, she walked curiously along his bookshelves. ‘You’ve done some tidying.’

  He looked at her questioningly.

  ‘I don’t see the Russian books.’

  Perlmann poked his nose into a desk drawer. ‘I . . . cleared them away. Temporarily.’

  ‘And the big dictionary I saw in Italy? The one with the revolting paper?’

&nbs
p; He nodded.

  ‘And the volume of Chekhov? I told Martin about it.’

  ‘I . . . I had a kind of impulse.’

  For a while she looked in silence at the wall of books. ‘Then perhaps Leskov wasn’t such a great idea.’

  Perlmann gave a start when he heard the name in her mouth.

  ‘No, no,’ he said quickly, ‘that’s completely different.’ It sounded tired and implausible.

  They didn’t talk much as they did the washing-up.

  ‘Dad,’ she asked into the silence, ‘did something happen down there? In Italy, I mean.’

  All of a sudden the hands with which he was cleaning the frying pan were quite numb. He ran the dishcloth over the edge. ‘What do you mean – happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. Since then you’ve been somehow . . . different.’

  He looked at the crumbs floating in the dishwater. An answer was required. ‘I . . . I lost my equilibrium. But it has nothing to do with Italy.’

  When their eyes met he saw that she didn’t believe him.

  ‘Do you remember,’ she asked in a cheerful voice that was supposed to make him forget the subject, ‘when we sat in that white hotel and the waiter came all that way from the bar with the drinks?’

  When Kirsten had gone to bed, Perlmann fetched the suitcase from the wardrobe. The wedding ring had slipped right into the corner of the tie compartment. He locked it in his desk drawer. After that he couldn’t get to sleep. Even so, he didn’t take a pill. Eventually he went to the broom cupboard and took out the key.

  In the morning it snowed, so he had an excuse not to get the car out of the garage. He was glad there were lots of practical matters to talk about in the taxi and on the platform. As they were saying goodbye Kirsten looked at him as if she wanted to ask her question again. He pretended not to notice, and lifted her gloved hand. He turned it into a sober farewell that hurt him so much he spent several minutes afterwards wandering aimlessly through the station.

  That day he had the feeling that he had to start his slowness training again from the beginning, and spent a lot of time in front of the ticking clock. He wrote half a dozen drafts of his letter to Princeton, with various white lies. He constantly had to fight against his tendency to confess the truth, and only defeated it when he gave it free rein and then threw the text away with revulsion. After that he made a point of being as laconic as possible, until he realized that they would sense his fury, which would betray him in a different way. In the end it was a bland and formal letter of refusal, which he left on the chest of drawers in the corridor.

  The tunnel dream, which had left him in peace for a while, now assailed him again, many times, and when he woke up, it was always with the sentence: The red hands will never let him go. He never found out whether these words were being uttered by Leskov, sitting next to him, or whether they only came to mind after the dream ended. He became used to getting up straight away and listening to some music over a cup of tea.

  The ring finger on his left hand bore a fine white scar.

  Once Perlmann dreamed he was playing the A flat minor Polonaise. Everything went smoothly, even the frightening passage, and he didn’t understand why he awoke as if from a nightmare. Only in the course of the day did it become clear to him: he had been bored while playing. Unsettled, he took a long walk past shops in which the Christmas decorations were being taken down. He felt as if someone had broken a great piece out of him. He heard the chords quite loudly in his head, and now he thought again of Brian Millar. He hated him.

  He wrote his letter to Leskov on the last day of the year. That day he couldn’t eat anything, and the letter was stiff. He had, he wrote towards the end, bought himself a copy of Gorky’s novel immediately upon his return. For that reason he was returning his, Leskov’s, copy, because the books were so very precious to him. He fine-tuned those sentences for ages. He wanted to create a sense of distance, without hurting Leskov. It was an insoluble task. At last he decided that the practical tone he had given the whole thing was quite clear enough.

  The day after New Year’s Day Perlmann took everything to the post office. When he bought a newspaper on his way back to the kiosk, he met the institute librarian. As they laughed about the latest gossip, Perlmann was tempted to put his arm around her shoulder. He felt the anticipated movement in his arm, but managed inwardly to halt it, and his hand stayed in his pocket.

  In the paper he came upon an advertisement looking for a teacher at the German School in Managua. He set off and had the required photograph taken. On the way he reflected that he could have taken the job with Olivetti that very day. When he had finished his application, it occurred to him that he had forgotten to go shopping. Perlmann stepped inside a crowded bar with trashy Christmas decorations on the walls. When he was greeted with the loud laughter of a large group sitting around a table he turned on his heel and walked along deserted streets to the station, where he stood at a snack bar and ate a burnt sausage and a roll that tasted like sawdust.

  On Monday morning Perlmann put his application for Managua in the post box opposite the university. On the way to the lecture hall he slipped and fell. After he had brushed the snow from his coat, he stood still for a moment and closed his eyes. He thought about the ticking clock as he stepped inside the hall and slowly walked towards the auditorium.

  Nothing had happened.