Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

‘So you think,’ Millar asked after a while, speaking dangerously slowly, ‘that the text headed the personal past as linguistic creation is a text that you wrote and Perlmann merely translated?’

‘Erm… yes, that is the case,’ Leskov replied uncertainly, confused and alarmed at Millar’s tone and the jerky, jabbing movements that he made with his knife.

The renewed silence must have been deafening.

‘That is incredible,’ murmured Millar, ‘simply incredible.’ Catching Leskov’s quizzical eye he went on: ‘You see, Vassily, it is a sad fact that we have all, each individual one of us, been given a copy of this very text. Admittedly, Phil’s name isn’t on it, but we were led to believe it was his contribution to tomorrow’s session. He hasn’t handed out any other text, or done anything to rectify the situation. There is also the fact,’ he might have added, ‘that the text was distributed at a point in time when no one knew of your arrival, not even Phil himself. All of this forces us to assume that Perlmann wanted to deceive us by presenting your text as his own. Plagiarism, then. Unimaginable, but there is no other explanation for it. And now we can no longer be surprised that he hasn’t appeared at dinner.’

It took Perlmann for ever to take the first bite of the sandwich. He chewed and chewed; each movement of his jaw was an achievement. The smoked salmon and egg didn’t taste of anything, and the obstruction that had formed in his throat could only be overcome by pushing very hard with his eyes closed. Of course, it was Millar who had voiced the thought. Perlmann’s old hatred flared, and despair made it even darker than usual. He set the bread back down on the table and started taking small sips of his whisky.

He didn’t dare to imagine Leskov’s face after the revelation of the truth, which had started working away in him after his first shock. The many curious features of the journey suddenly returned to his mind, and assembled themselves into a pattern: Perlmann’s irritation at the airport; his agitation at the wheel and his taciturnity; the strange route; the nausea; the insane driving in the tunnel and the lame explanations afterwards. Leskov couldn’t prove anything, even though he had been watching Perlmann like a hawk. There hadn’t been a single false move, nothing that would have clearly and irrefutably revealed an intention to commit murder. That someone, at a moment when a wide car had to be driven through a bottleneck, should have taken his hands off the wheel and closed his eyes, was careless, negligent and even more irresponsible than speeding. It wasn’t even superficially comprehensible, and pointed to a darkness in the driver’s personality. But it wasn’t a trace – not a shadow of proof – of premeditated murder. That much was clear to Leskov, too, so he wouldn’t tell anyone; such an accusation was too monstrous. Even in confidence he wouldn’t be able to accuse him. He couldn’t prove that Perlmann’s story about nausea and a morbid fear of bulldozers were outright lies. And yet Perlmann was quite sure that this evening – now, at this moment – Leskov knew everything. It was completely out of the question for him ever to meet this man, who would regard him as a murderer, ever again.

When Perlmann’s hand accidentally brushed the edge of the table, the bandage on his finger came off. It was only now that he noticed that his finger was very swollen. Around the bruised spot it was yellow and green, the skin was tense and hot. And now his head was itchy again as well. He took out the box of sleeping pills, held them under his jacket, looked furtively around and took one from it. After a moment’s hesitation he broke it in two and washed one half down with mineral water.

They would all be waiting for him in silence when he stepped into the Marconi Veranda tomorrow morning.

‘You’ve all got this text now,’ he would be able to say with a smile. ‘I hope you didn’t mistake it for my own, even though my name isn’t on it. By now I am sure you will know that it is a text by our Russian colleague, which I have translated. I had it distributed because it was to serve as the starting point for an idea I should like to develop now. And it is a happy coincidence that Vassily himself can now be here. I expect a great deal from this.’

It would be an audacious bluff. Perlmann grew quite dizzy at the idea, and that dizziness merged with the start of the effect of the pill. They wouldn’t believe a word he said, not a single word. They knew he was a fraud, a con man, and now they were also getting to know him as an ice-cold liar. He would never summon the strength to return each of their contemptuous stares with harsh defiance, forcing them into a state of uncertainty. They would only be uncertain if he now proceeded to deliver a thoroughly original, brilliant lecture. But he had nothing to say, not a single sentence. He would stand up there at the front like someone mutely gasping for air.

Or should he sit up there and in dry words, stony-faced, tell the truth? What words would he use? How many sentences would he need? Where would he look? And when he had said it, what then? Could one, in fact, apologize for such a thing? Was it not almost mockery simply to say, ‘I’m terribly sorry’ and then get up and go? And where to?

Could one go on living with such ostracism? Really live and inwardly develop, so that you weren’t merely crouching and creeping, enduring and surviving, vegetating? You would have to find a possible way of making yourself independent of the judgment of others and of the need for recognition. A way of becoming free, truly free. All of a sudden Perlmann felt calmer. The surge of panic and despair subsided, and he seemed to be standing very close to a crucial, redeeming insight, the most important of his whole life. Why, then, should it not be possible to withdraw entirely from his professional role, his public identity, into his private, authentic person, the identity that was the only thing that counted?

Basically, it had been simply the pleasure of translating – his old love of jumping back and forth between linguistic worlds, his dream of being an interpreter – that had brought him back repeatedly to Leskov’s text. That was how he was. There was nothing wrong with it. He could stand by it. No intention to deceive had been involved, either consciously or as a hidden undercurrent. He was absolutely sure of that. It was just how things were. He didn’t need to persuade himself. And the rest – the rest had been self-defense. He had held Leskov’s text up in front of him as a shield protecting him against the intrusive eyes of the others, against their unchanging, monotonously updated expectations, which they treated as if people developed in an uninterrupted, linear fashion – as if the successful life consisted in making those professional decisions that were taken early, too early, and that hardly ever merited the name in any case, in total identification, with a complete lack of emotional detachment, decade after decade. What do you want to be? You have to be something. Whatever would become of him? Those were the principles his parents expressed over lunch and dinner. He had heard them countless times, and they had sunk into his deepest depths, and deeper still. They were sentences that had never been up for discussion. They came along hypnotically, as if they were completely natural, and in their monotonous, thoughtless repetition they became a background noise, so vast and all-consuming in its diabolical self-evidence that afterwards one couldn’t imagine what a life without it might be like.

You have to be something, or you’re nothing. That was the axiom, in all its perfidious simplicity and obviousness. He would take it, that iron axiom, Perlmann thought, he would summon all his powers, even those at the hindmost corner of his soul, and then use those concentrated powers to bend it until it broke. What he had become – a respected professor with prizes and an invitation to Princeton – he was as of tonight no longer. That was destroyed. But that was a long way from saying he was nothing now. There was a great deal left in him, a very great deal, and the others had no idea about it. He would lodge himself in there, and then it would be a question of making his soul quite spherical and coating it with wax so that everything would slide off it, even the hostile glances of the others. He would walk along the streets quite upright, with his head held high.