Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

Having grown impatient, the others began to express their doubts about Leskov’s method. Perlmann thought that Leskov didn’t put up a good defense on this point. For the first time he became aware that during the weeks that he had spent translating, he had anticipated all of these reservations and even a large number of others, and come up with possible defenses for them. Which means that I have been working the whole time. Then I’m still on top of things after all. He intervened in the discussion. As he did so he argued with a calm lack of agitation, and at one point he even managed an ironic remark. And then, as he coolly – one might even have said icily – fired off a series of rhetorical questions, looking at all the others in turn, the whole liberating effect of his decision finally unfolded. It happened with the momentum of a physically perceptible thrust. Last of all he looked at Silvestri. The unshaven Italian responded with an expression of clinical curiosity. That expression, Perlmann thought, was the only thing he didn’t like about the man.

One thing he hadn’t touched upon, said Leskov, was the idea that one can appropriate one’s past through narrative memory. For someone like him – who liked to stress the inventing, creating character of memory – that was, of course, a problematic thought. And there wasn’t time for more than a hint in that direction. He cast a glance at Perlmann: ‘Above all, one must clearly understand that the narrating self is none other than the narrated stories. Apart from the stories there is nothing. Or rather, no one.’ He smiled. ‘Most people find that a shocking assertion. I’ve never understood why. I find it quite pleasant that that’s how it is. Somehow… liberating.’

‘One question, Vassily,’ said Millar. ‘Do you really mean creating and inventing when you talk about remembering? I assume you mean creative and inventive . I could go along with that.’

Leskov looked over at Perlmann. ‘What would be the difference in German?’

‘ Erschaffend and erdichtend as opposed to schöpferisch and erfinderisch ,’ said Perlmann.

Leskov smiled. ‘I see. No, Brian, I’m afraid I mean the former.’

Millar looked at his watch. Ruge gathered his papers together and started playing with his pencil. But Laura Sand had another question. Did he mean in the end that that which we take to be an actually experienced past is merely an invention?

Leskov pursed his lips and nodded, his eyes laughing. One of the subheadings of his new text was: Neizbezhno vydumannoe proshloe , the inevitably invented past, he said.

‘One moment.’ Ruge jutted his bottom lip and leaned far over the table on both elbows. ‘ In that case is there such a thing as a true story about the experienced past?’

Silvestri audibly inhaled his smoke. Laura Sand playfully pulled a strand of hair over her face. You could see that Leskov would have loved to capture this moment for ever. Never, it appeared, had this man enjoyed a moment so much. Perlmann wouldn’t have thought him capable of that face. It was the unbuttoned face of someone who has shed all anxiety and is now entirely at home with himself. Perlmann liked it.

‘No, there is no such thing as a true story about the experienced past,’ said Leskov with the stem of his pipe to his lips. ‘Of course not. Klim Samgin.’ His grey eyes were very bright and very clear, and their challenge consisted entirely in that brightness and clarity.

The pencil in Ruge’s hands broke in two with a loud crack. Millar took a film from the pocket of his windbreaker and picked up his camera. Von Levetzov smiled appreciatively when he saw that.

As he got to his feet, Silvestri stepped up and invited Leskov for a drink in the bar. Laura Sand wanted to know if she could come, too. She wanted to find out more about this cheeky thesis.

The paces that Perlmann later took as he walked up and down in his room were both exaggeratedly cautious and aimless. Often he interrupted his restless walking, folded his arms and lowered his head on his chest. How did one do it? How did one abandon a professorship? What did one write in the requisite letters? They would have to be laconic. He sat down at his desk and wrote some drafts. The texts grew shorter and shorter. Even words that seemed at first to be the bare minimum struck him, on rereading, as superfluous. Ideally, he would just have written: I’ve had enough and request my dismissal. An explanation would be demanded. After a while he noticed that in his thoughts he was sitting opposite the dean, a small, pale man with a crooked mouth, a ramrod-straight head and faultless creases in his trousers. You would like to know why? Very simple: I’ve just discovered my professional incapacity . That was the explanation he liked best. Especially if he managed to deliver it with a laugh. He couldn’t see enough of the dean’s uncomprehending expression. But suddenly the whole scene collapsed, and he felt as exhausted as if he had been talking for hours. He tore the pages with the drafts on them into tiny scraps. All of a sudden he was anxious after all.

He had left the toothbrush unused in the morning. He took Leskov’s text from the wardrobe. In many places, where yesterday there had still been a hint of damp, the dirt could now be blown away after a light touch with the bristles. But that wasn’t the only reason why the work was different today. Suddenly, Perlmann was no longer interested in the yellow sheets. No, of course that wasn’t quite true. He was resolutely determined to give the text back. He just needed to think about how Leskov had savored his punchline a little while before: the man must have his text back, regardless of the matter about the position. No, it was something different. All of a sudden he didn’t care that he didn’t know the Russian words for inevitable and invented , which Leskov had pronounced so quickly and indistinctly, and couldn’t fit them in his mind into the inky traces that remained of the subheading. That it was a Russian text at all – he didn’t even care about that. He didn’t understand the connection, but it had something to do, he thought, with the fact that they had talked about the text in the veranda. It was as if the others had stolen the text from him by learning of its content – but without freeing him of it.

Perlmann rang Frau Hartwig.

‘You are missed,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s asking when you’re coming.’

He asked her to give him Leskov’s home address, the only one she had. He wanted to bring the conversation to an end as quickly as possible, and sensed how hurt Frau Hartwig was that he was so abrupt.

‘When shall I tell the others you’re coming?’

‘Don’t tell them anything.’

‘I’m just saying,’ Frau Hartwig said stiffly.

Perlmann studied the sheet of hotel paper with the jotted address. It had been on a street corner with mountains of swept-up, dirty snow. Leskov had rested on his briefcase and scribbled his address on a piece of paper that fluttered in the wind.

‘I’m sorry, my handwriting’s a disaster,’ he had said when he noticed how much difficulty Perlmann was having in reading it. He took out another, crumpled piece of paper and wrote down the address again, this time in Latin capitals. ‘When you write to me, please use this address,’ he had said. ‘It’s safer.’ Perlmann remembered his embarrassed facial expression, because it was that expression that had kept Perlmann from asking whether it was because of the secret police or because he didn’t have an office at the university.

What use was that address to him? An envelope would arrive at Leskov’s house, containing the text which would turn out to be missing, among other things, the final page with the address. After his first, massive relief Leskov would start brooding. How had the stranger who must have found these sheets somewhere on his travels obtained his address? It had been sent from the West. Who in the West apart from Perlmann knew this address?