Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

When the door shut, the telephone rang inside the room. They’ve started looking for me. Unseen, he made it to the rear entrance.

It would soon be very dark behind the rocky outcrop from which the reflection of the city lights could no longer be seen, and the calm, black surface of the water struck Perlmann as quietly menacing. Over by Sestri Levante there flowed an endless stream of light, and far in the distance a ship was just visible, a light blinking rhythmically in its bow. In the long pauses between the cars he listened to the quiet rush of the little waves, and the exhaustion that numbed him helped him to think of nothing. At one point he gave a start, when a young couple walked in a close embrace. And only now, when the hotel folder nearly slipped over the balustrade, did be become aware of how absurd, how utterly nonsensical it had been to smuggle his copy of Leskov’s text out of the hotel, when all the others had a copy already. ‘Now I’m losing my grip on the simplest things,’ he said into the night, and he felt the weird sensation creeping over him that his thoughts were going off the rails and his ability to think was silently disintegrating.

He started shivering. Heading on towards Portofino was out of the question; the cat with the divided face was there, and the landlord in suspenders, knocking at the door. And that way it was dark, dark and cold. Perlmann walked hesitantly back to the rocky outcrop, the folder under his arm, his hands in his pockets. He looked across to the hotels and on to the city and its lights like someone standing on the threshold of a forbidden world.

The Miramare looked like something out of an advertising prospectus, very elegant, the illumination of the porch and the floodlights in the pines made it look mysterious, enticing, seductive, and then there were the white neon letters against a royal blue background – film images, dream images. From here, the front windows of the dining room were concealed by the columns, but through the furthest one back he thought he could make out a chandelier.

He could neither go forwards into that glittering world nor back into the dark. He felt as if he could no longer take a single step in his life, as if he were damned to stand for ever in that one place.

Outside the Regina Elena Hotel a taxi stopped, and the driver helped an old woman out. Perlmann ran as if he had to catch the last taxi in the world. The folder was cumbersome, the covers forced apart by the thickness of the text, he waved and called, and by the time he breathlessly reached it, the driver had already turned on the engine. He got into the back and gave his destination as the Hotel Imperiale. As they drove past the Miramare, he shielded his head with the hotel folder, feeling as if he were in a cheap thriller full of kitsch and clichés. On the hill leading up to the Imperiale it occurred to him that he couldn’t enter the hotel with the folder, on which the word miramare was engraved in big gold letters. He took out the text and quietly slid the folder under the passenger seat.

The chairs by the window, where he had sat with Kirsten, were occupied by a group of elegantly dressed people who were celebrating something, drinking champagne and laughing loudly as Perlmann came in. He sat down in the dark corner, where the light seemed to be broken, and ordered a whisky and a mineral water. Kirsten had been particularly impressed by that: a waiter coming all the way from the bar to serve them. You feel so important, and rich , she had said, and he had seen how her enjoyment of this elegant world was in conflict with other, contrary attitudes that she had expressed for a long time, attitudes typical of her generation.

He set Leskov’s text face down on the low marble table and lit a cigarette. His lungs felt dirty and sticky after the two packs he had already smoked today, and in the taxi a few moments ago his dry cough had been very painful and seemingly endless. But that was no longer of any importance. He wasn’t hungry, but he did feel queasy, and a strange weakness all the way through his body gave him the ridiculous feeling of sitting uncertainly in the high-armed chair. When the waiter brought the drinks, he ordered a sandwich. He would have to force it down. But he did have to eat something.

He had never before found himself in this situation of not having the faintest idea how his thoughts – if he ever had any ever again – might continue. It wasn’t blindness. It wasn’t like trying to stare through a plank. It was a sensation of hopelessness that settled on the imagination like mildew, coated it with a milky and impenetrable whiteness and completely paralyzed it. Nonetheless, now, at the end, making a mistake out of pure physical weakness – that was something he didn’t want to do.

Twenty-five past nine. Now they would all know. Over dinner the conversation would have turned to tomorrow’s session, and Leskov would have asked if there was a written text by Perlmann – he’d forgotten to ask him as they drove to the hotel. Millar had looked up in amazement. He himself had put a copy of Perlmann’s text in Leskov’s pigeonhole, and he, Leskov, had been holding it in his hand when they had greeted him earlier on. No, no, Leskov would have replied, perplexed, that had been something quite different; a surprise that Perlmann had prepared for him: an English translation of a text that he, Leskov, had written. He had been utterly flummoxed to discover how much massive effort Perlmann had taken with it, and he could still scarcely believe it. Such overwhelming kindness! And it seemed to be an excellent translation: it was only with the title that Perlmann had made a curious error. Leskov was also especially grateful for that, because he could now give them all something in writing to hold, particularly since a terrible slip had occurred: he had left another text, which he had planned to talk about here – the new version of the one translated by Perlmann – at home in St Petersburg, although he could have sworn he had packed it. But it wasn’t so bad after all. He could explain the changes orally. Tomorrow morning he would ask for copies to be made for all of them, in preparation for the session that he was, as Perlmann had told him, to hold on Thursday.

At first, thought Perlmann, there would be a pause. Evelyn Mistral understood now why Perlmann had wanted to keep his Russian a secret. He saw her laughing face as she spoke of her complicity. The confusion would only set in later on when she had worked out that his secrecy had been illogical: if it was Leskov that he wanted to surprise, why couldn’t the others know? And if the game of hide-and-seek was supposed to be part of the surprise prepared for Leskov’s arrival, why had he been playing it weeks before the telegram, when he could not have known that Leskov was on his way? But those questions had never been asked.

It would be Achim Ruge, Perlmann imagined, who would ask the crucial, annihilating question. He would pose it quite dryly and – a sign of tense foreboding – savor his Swabian pronunciation: what was the title of Perlmann’s translation that he had got so wrong? the personal past as linguistic creation, Leskov would say. A crass and somehow incomprehensible error of translation, but still a beautiful title, much more so than his own, and apt. He would ask Perlmann’s permission to use it in future, of course with the appropriate reference to him.

It would have gone quiet at the table, Perlmann thought, incredibly quiet. He saw the others pausing as they ate, and staring at their plates. They couldn’t believe their ears; what followed on from this information was too monstrous to contemplate. At first they didn’t look at each other, each one of them wondered whether there mightn’t be another, harmless explanation.