Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

What had happened in the empty dining room had left behind a sensation of something crucial and definitive; the impression of a release of tension. The feeling of liberation that he had longed for, however, had not arrived. Perhaps it was only a matter of time. His decision was only about an hour old, after all. But, basically, Perlmann knew better. It was quite different from the time when, coming out of the director’s office, he had stepped into the street outside the Conservatoire. In spite of the rain he had walked through the city for a long time, without an umbrella, his briefcase full of the things from his emptied drawer. Then he had driven to the sea. That time the defining feeling had been one of great liberation. He knew that behind it, still temporarily concealed, there lurked other feelings, more complicated and less pleasant. But for the moment he enjoyed being released from the iron discipline of practising. It was a relief that his battle with self-doubt had come to an end, and at the age of just twenty-one he felt incredibly grown up. Admittedly, a feeling of emptiness had set in soon afterwards, after getting up he didn’t know quite what to do with all the time ahead of him, and was glad that his term at Hamburg University would soon be beginning. But he was left with a mood of liberating insight, of finishing one thing and emerging into something new. Now, a good thirty years later, it was also an insight that guided him. At any rate he hoped so. But it was embedded in a different, darker experience: in alienation, weariness and guilt. The only thing missing was anxiety. He would find something. Something or other. Kirsten is taken care of. Perlmann was amazed that there was no anxiety. He barely dared to trust that perception. Something had changed within him. A development had been set in motion. All of a sudden he felt light, almost cheerful.

There was a moment’s silence. Perlmann gave a start. ‘So that’s my train of thought,’ said Leskov and reached for another pipe.

When Perlmann took the floor he had no idea what he was going to say. He had been far too preoccupied with himself to listen to Leskov elucidating his paper again. Just to have something to talk about, he started by explaining how he had worked out Leskov’s train of thought over all. They listened to him with emphatically benevolent attention. Their determination not to condemn him for Tuesday, and to go on taking him seriously in spite of everything, to be scrupulously fair – he thought he could almost physically hear it, as a particularly intense kind of silence that fell when he started speaking. He deliberately chose sober, plain phrases, and used components of the academic rhetoric that he despised. Just to show that he could do that, too. At first he gave a start when he noticed that he was moving through his translation, section by section. He came close to breaking off and simply falling silent. But he was no longer in control. The text, which he knew almost off by heart from the effort of translating it twice, pulled him along with it and, all of a sudden, he realized that he was enjoying the danger like a gambler. His presentation, which had already extended far beyond the length of a contribution to a discussion, became ever more sophisticated, fluent and engaged. He closed gaps in Leskov’s train of thought, produced additional references, identified possible misunderstandings and swept them aside. Evelyn Mistral’s feet played with her red shoes as she wrote down what he said. Laura Sand slowly rubbed her forehead. Ruge and Millar picked up their pens almost instantaneously. I’m rehabilitated. Thanks to Leskov’s text.

It would have appeared unnatural – revealing, in fact – if he had not looked several times in Leskov’s direction. He helped himself by staring at the ridiculous tassels fixed to the wall, which lay at eye level. As he did so, the image of Kirsten appeared in front of him, tugging on the tassels and laughing at the clouds of dust. He started to falter and only found his thread after he had closed his eyes with a grimace and opened them again, which must have looked to the others like an epileptic twitch. Sometimes, when he couldn’t do anything else, he did look at Leskov, but to a certain extent removed himself from his gaze and soon turned his head away again. Only after Perlmann had finished did he turn to face him and look at him quizzically.

All the while, Leskov had sat leaning back in the armchair, his massive thighs crossed. At regular intervals, little clouds of smoke had escaped from the corners of his mouth. Now, when he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, his face bore an expression that alternated between joy and disbelief. He thanked Perlmann extravagantly for his summary. It was more or less precisely – no, precisely – the way his ideas had originally developed. He paused, looked thoughtfully at Perlmann, and then let his eye linger on the table for a moment as he tamped down the tobacco with his thumb. He’s sure I’ve read the text. Completely sure. But he will never be able to prove it. Meanwhile, of course, his considerations had developed further, he said and pointed to his paper. And he ran through the new points once again, checking that Perlmann, who was taking notes, could keep up with him.

As he drew a thick line under his earlier scribbles, Perlmann started thinking. He was working. It was as if something had just come crashing in; something that had been left unused for a long time and had, in its uselessness, created nothing but friction. He hadn’t been so alert for ages. He and Leskov were the only people in the room. He asked questions, recapitulated, suggested additions, to test his understanding. From the corner of his eye he saw writing hands and surprised, curious faces. They hadn’t seen him like this before. He enjoyed his concentration, his synoptic view and his presence of mind, and every now and again, when he was able to pay attention to himself because Leskov was speaking, Perlmann thought he sensed that now, slowly and inconspicuously, an inner liberation was starting to gleam through, and that his new alertness, so unlike Monday night’s, wasn’t overwrought in the slightest and was connected to that morning’s decision.

And then, when Leskov’s new train of thought was quite clear to him, he started defending the earlier Leskov against the later one. It could have been a game, and at first he suspected himself of playing games, as if he had taken leave of his senses. But soon he worked out that he actually believed what he was defending. In which case there would, in fact, have been no plagiarism. He started getting carried away by his own words. Leskov smiled to himself like someone who is only too familiar with these reflections. From time to time he hesitated, frowned, took his pipe out of his mouth and wrote something down. Evelyn Mistral’s face revealed how pleased she was that Perlmann had obviously recovered. She nodded often, and for the first time Perlmann ceased to be afraid of her glasses.

Once when Leskov said something to defend his new thought, Perlmann forgot himself. ‘But here your earlier argument is much more convincing!’ he explained.

Adrian von Levetzov pushed his glasses back along his nose with his index finger and gave him a questioning look. At first Leskov smiled understandingly, before he suddenly jerked his head and looked at him with his eyes narrowed. He meant the argument they had discussed in St Petersburg, Perlmann said after a second of terror, and assumed an expression that felt opaque and impregnable. For a while Leskov stared, blinking, into the void. Then he started nodding. His face bore a look of astonishment. Never before had anyone remembered something he had said after such a long time. His thought had never been so important to anyone. He almost seemed to be embarrassed in front of the others. Perlmann looked for signs of suspicion. It was impossible to decide whether something was shimmering there, or whether it was only incredulous astonishment that gave Leskov’s face that expression.