Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

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 desk 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.