Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

But Leskov was really unlucky to have left his text behind, von Levetzov said. He’d taken that long journey, it was his first time in the West, and now he’d been sitting nonstop in his room since yesterday afternoon preparing himself. And he had to go back on Sunday.

‘Sometimes,’ he added, ‘he seems to be anxious that the text has been lost somewhere en route. He hinted as much to me this afternoon. He looked really distraught. Something professional seems to depend on it, too.’

Perlmann left his dessert and went out to Maria’s office. When Leskov saw him through the glass door, he came up to him with a bleary-eyed face, red with excitement.

‘We’ll be finished soon. Unbelievable what a computer like that can do! Calling a text up to the screen just with a click on a key! Just one click! You just have to move the cursor to the right place!’

Perlmann went out on to the terrace and smoked a cigarette. In his mind’s eye he saw Maria’s hands with the red fingernails and the two silver rings. She would be careful with the name of the file. She wouldn’t be scattered. She would pay attention. Before he turned to the door, he couldn’t help looking up to his room. The only row of windows without a balcony.

Over coffee, Laura Sand asked him if his father was still alive.

‘He was completely mistaken, in fact. There are wonderful corners of Mestre. If you know how to look. I always feel that modest, hard-working town is a relief after spectacular and somehow unreal Venice. I always stay in a hotel in Mestre, never in Venice. David thinks it’s a fad of mine. But I like it. Quite apart from the price.’

‘While I think Mestre is quite dreadful,’ said Millar, looking at Perlmann with a grin that was filled with conciliatory mockery. ‘I had to stay there once because there was something wrong with the causeway to Venice. The evening seemed to go on for ever.’

Perlmann was grateful for the remark: Millar wasn’t condemning him for yesterday. He’s lifted me up. Their eyes met. He, too, seemed to be thinking of the moment in the town hall.

‘I knew a girl in Mestre once,’ said Silvestri, expressionlessly. ‘Great town.’

‘Well,’ said Millar, frowning satirically.

‘ Ecco! ’ said Silvestri, blowing smoke towards him.

‘I’m going to take my next holiday in Mestre,’ chuckled Ruge as they broke up after dinner, ‘and I’m not going across to Venice once!’

The two most badly damaged pages had once again transferred moisture to the fresh sheets of blotting paper. But they were still far from dry and Perlmann laid them on the radiator along with a few others. Then he cleared the round table, fetched his toothbrush and started removing the dirt from the dry pages.

A lot of brownish stains remained, some of them speckled, which couldn’t be got rid of, and where fat drops of water had fallen, the paper had been warped when it had dried. But even if it was faded, the text was legible again, and Leskov himself would soon know, even with the shapeless ink stains. Perlmann became quite practiced with his toothbrush. He now had a feeling for the correct angle of the bristles, and knew how to remove damp bits of soil. He kept blowing the dust away, and every now and again he fetched a towel from the bathroom to clean the toothbrush. As he worked, he rocked his torso slightly back and forth, and tapped out a rhythmic beat with his foot.

He had just started on page 49, and it was half-past eleven, when there was a knock on the door.

‘It’s me,’ said Leskov. ‘Can I come in for a moment? I need to talk to you.’

I need to talk to you. Perlmann froze, and suddenly felt as if he had been sitting in icy cold for hours. She made a mistake with the file name. He’s seen the text. He knows everything.

‘Philipp?’ Leskov knocked again.

‘Just a moment, please,’ Perlmann called, unable to keep a hysterical squeak out of his voice. ‘I’ve got to get dressed!’

He feverishly packed the finished pile on top of the others and collected the pages on the radiator. As he did so, the problem page with the subheading slipped from the sheets of blotting paper, fell to the floor and ripped as he picked it up. Valuable seconds elapsed. Perlmann looked frantically around, and then shoved the whole stack under the bed. On the way to the door he threw his towel and toothbrush on to the bathroom floor. Before he opened the door, he looked back. The wire waste-paper basket was full of stained blotting paper. The powder-blue carpet covered with pale dust. The table unnaturally empty. Too late. The time has come. He’s caught up with me after all.

‘Sorry for disturbing you so late at night,’ Leskov said, hastily blowing big clouds of smoke into the room. He set a computer printout down on the table. It was his submission for tomorrow. Reading it through, he had suddenly been unsure if it would work – if one could present such a thing at all. He had a sense that it contained some contradictions, some inconsistencies. ‘But I no longer trust my tired mind. Having to do the whole thing in such a short time and without my text: it was simply too much. Would you read it through for me?’

Perlmann picked up the six pages and held them in front of his nose. He wasn’t in a state to read a single word with any understanding. The blood pounded all the way to his cold fingertips. The only sounds in the room were Leskov’s wheezing and the gurgling of the radiator. Perlmann estimated the time for a single page and turned to the next one. When it was time for the third page, he felt he urgently had to go to the toilet. For a moment he looked over the edge of the page. Leskov looked at him uncertainly. Could he quickly use the bathroom?

Perlmann threw the counterpane over the bed and pulled it up until it touched the carpet on the side of the window. Then he leaned back with his eyes closed, Leskov’s pages read in his lap. Maria had been careful with the file name. Maria wasn’t scattered. And Leskov’s text, a summary of which lay in his lap, was under the bed. It was hidden, even if Leskov were to bend down. Nonetheless, his anxiety didn’t go away. Perlmann felt twinges in the region of his heart. Fine smoke rose from Leskov’s pipe in the ashtray. Once again, it would smell sickly sweet all night. He hated Leskov. No, that wasn’t true. He just wanted him to disappear. Everything to disappear: his smell, his text, the man himself. That all of it would disappear without a trace. For ever.

‘So you really think it will be all right?’ In Leskov’s relieved face there were traces of anxiety and doubt.

Perlmann nodded.

‘And the contradictions? You know, the thing that annoys me most is that I can no longer bring together the complicated business of invention and appropriation. And it’s all there, in black and white. In Petersburg. I hope.’

‘These theses here can be defended, I’m sure of it,’ said Perlmann, handing him the sheets with a gesture so resolute that it seemed almost violent. He watched his own movement with astonishment, and was amazed at how loud and firm his voice sounded. It was the voice, he thought a moment later, with which one makes a promise.

The doubts vanished from Leskov’s face, and he held a match vertically to his pipe. Could Perlmann now see the similarity between the two texts?

Perlmann nodded mutely.

Leskov was about to start talking about that similarity when he broke off. ‘I’d better let you sleep now. You still look exhausted.’ At the door, he surprisingly gave Perlmann his hand. ‘That was very important for me,’ he said with a grateful smile. He slowly reached for the door handle behind him. ‘You know, over in my room, at the desk, the thought came to me over and over again: The text is lost. All I have in my hand is these few lines . The more tired I got, the more often that thought got in the way.’ He smiled. ‘High time for me to get a good night’s sleep.’