Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

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.

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 into 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.’

Perlmann opened the window, leaned out and looked to the north-west. It was lighter in that direction. Maybe it had stayed dry up there.

‘Does the smoke really not bother you?’ Leskov asked.

‘Not at all,’ Perlmann replied into the rain and glanced furtively at his watch. Twenty-five to four.

He had spent half the night puzzling about it, Leskov went on. And from time to time he had had the feeling that his memory of packing the text had really only been a delusion, whose vividness simply expressed the strong desire to have done so.

‘It’s very unpleasant,’ he said, ‘and not only because of the text. It gives me the feeling of no longer being able to rely on myself. Have you ever known anything like that?’

Yes, said Perlmann, awkwardly lighting a cigarette, he did know that feeling.

He was used to reading something whenever he had to wait around, Leskov said thoughtfully. So he had now been wondering whether he might have taken the text out on the journey and left it somewhere. Not in St Petersburg. It had been too hectic for that at the airport. And not on the flight to Moscow, either, where an inebriated war veteran in the next seat had constantly bothered him. At Larissa and Boris’s he had been monopolized by the children the whole time. At the airport in Moscow, perhaps. Or on the plane. Or in Frankfurt, when he’d been waiting for his connecting flight. It was crazy: because there wasn’t a trace of a memory of such an action. He would now have to think of himself as if he were a stranger, from outside, so to speak. And Leskov ardently hoped that he was wrong. Admittedly, his address was written at the end of the text, he did that quite automatically, even with a manuscript. But he didn’t think anyone would take the trouble. Certainly not at Moscow Airport. And in Frankfurt no one would be able to read it. Perhaps Lufthansa would do something if the text were found on the plane. On the other hand: a cleaning crew would simply throw a pile of unreadable pages out with the rest of the rubbish. ‘Or what do you think?’

‘I… I don’t know,’ Perlmann said tonelessly.

Leskov paused and looked straight ahead with his eyes slightly narrowed. Perlmann knew what was coming next. There was one more small thing, he went on, that he barely dared to mention, however ludicrous it might seem: a little bit of rubber band had got stuck in the zip of the outside pocket. He couldn’t get that out of his head, because it could mean that he had taken the text out and broken the rubber band with which it was held together. He tapped his forehead with his knuckles. ‘If I only had some kind of memory!’ After a while he opened his eyes and looked at Perlmann, who was staring at the floor. ‘I’m sorry for bothering you with this. In your condition. But you know how much this text matters to me. I’ve already tried to phone friends at home to look in my apartment. But I can’t get through.’ He set his pipe down on the round table and hid his face in his hands. ‘I hope to God it’s there. Otherwise… I can’t bring myself to think about it.’