Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

But sending it from here, with the Santa Margherita postmark, was out of the question. Should he drive to Genoa later on and send it from there? The day before yesterday, when he was listing the places where he might have left the text, Leskov had stopped at Frankfurt. It didn’t seem possible that he could have left it on the Alitalia plane. Or was it just a coincidence that he hadn’t mentioned it? If there was a reason for it, though, and he was sure that it couldn’t have happened on the flight to Genoa, the Genoa postmark would hardly be any more revealing than the postmark from Santa Margherita. No, Perlmann absolutely couldn’t send the text from Italy. He would have to do it in Frankfurt.

But he wouldn’t be there until Sunday lunchtime, and that meant three more days of despair for Leskov.

Perlmann looked at his watch. There was still the evening flight at six. But he wouldn’t get back today, and after everything that had happened he couldn’t possibly miss Silvestri’s session tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon and evening were also out of the question: they were the last few hours that the group was able to spend together, and it would be far too outrageous of him suddenly to disappear. Which left Saturday, if everyone but Leskov had left in the morning. Leskov could spend the afternoon alone, and he would be back so that they could have dinner together. Anyway, it was one less day of despair.

Perlmann quickened his pace and went to the travel agent’s in another part of the town. Here, too, he had to wait another ten minutes, during which he paced uneasily up and down. How long would it take for an airmail package to travel from Frankfurt to St Petersburg? And how secure was the mail? He couldn’t have the text couriered – airline company employees wouldn’t think a manuscript worth sending with any great urgency. Was it possible to imagine them sending it registered post?

The computer for flight reservations was on strike, and he was told to come back later. Perlmann was glad that the stationer’s was quite a long way away; the walking helped to combat his helpless anger. Apart from the fat woman, there was a lanky boy with a pimply face behind the counter. At the woman’s request the boy silently spread out a selection of envelopes. Perlmann immediately discarded the ordinary ones without reinforcement and padding. Then he took the one with the cardboard backing and bent it back and forth until the cardboard nearly snapped. He liked its firmness, but the paper was nothing special, and he wasn’t sure whether the envelope was big enough for the unusual format of the yellow sheets. He moistened his index finger with his tongue and rubbed the saliva on the paper, which turned dark brown and dissolved layer by layer.

‘Don’t worry. Of course I’ll pay for it,’ he said to the woman, who was furiously gasping for air.

The two padded envelopes that struck him as exactly the right size were made of matte paper, less tightly pressed than the other, shiny paper, which his saliva dissolved worryingly quickly. A revolting-looking, grey wadding came out of it; the other one was padded with transparent plastic. The corrugated foil would keep the moisture out. But what happened if the address disappeared under the snow along with the disintegrating paper? Perlmann set this envelope aside as well. As the boy stared at him, mesmerized, the woman sniffed agitatedly and made a face as if he were busy pulling the shop apart.

‘You really don’t need to worry,’ Perlmann reassured her and took some cash out of his jacket pocket. ‘I’ll pay for everything.’

The last envelope was made of well-glued, shiny paper, but the padding was much thinner than it was in the others, and it was far too big. The pages would slip back and forth inside it, and be damaged even further. He asked the boy, who was glancing anxiously at the woman and still hadn’t said a word, to give him a pile of typing paper, and tried it out, shaking the envelope wildly back and forth. The result wasn’t quite as bad as he expected, but some of the pages were already slightly crushed. He asked them to show him various staplers, but none of them was capable of producing a line of staples that would have reduced the envelope to the right size. The paper survived the saliva test very well. Perlmann turned the envelope inconclusively back and forth, then suddenly asked for a glass of water.

He had to repeat the request. As the boy was going into the back, the woman resignedly lit a cigarette, and when a man came into the shop on crutches, with his foot in a cast, and greeted her like an old friend, she gave him a significant look. Perlmann walked to the door with his water and poured it over the envelope. For two or three seconds it looked as if the water would drip off the shiny paper without leaving a trace. But then the envelope was covered with dark patches that quickly got bigger and came together to form a single damp patch. Perlmann reached into the envelope and tested the dampness. The image of the Russian station platform appeared, and this time the dripping was melting snow. When he turned round he saw the three faces just behind the window. The madman with the water on the envelopes.

Mutely, and with the face of someone who is pleased to have had a bright idea, the boy gestured to him to wait and went to the back. The man with the crutches put his wallet in his pocket and left the shop, shaking his head. Perlmann paid and wedged the damaged envelopes under his arm. He was reading the chronicle a lot, he said to the woman, who smoked as she stared at the floor in front of her. But she didn’t seem to remember, and Perlmann was glad when the boy broke the awkward silence.

The envelope he handed to him was ideal; Perlmann saw it straight away. It was a used envelope with an address and an American sender. The boy, he read from his gestures, had taken off the stamps. The envelope was made of thick yellow cardboard that felt waxy. It had plastic padding and reinforced corners and it was exactly the right size.

‘ Perfetto ,’ Perlmann said to the boy, who beamed at him and indignantly waved away his offer of money.

‘Three thousand,’ the woman said, looking up from the floor for one brief moment.

As Perlmann gave her the money, the boy furiously grabbed the envelope, looked in a drawer and finally stuck fresh labels over the address and the sender’s details. Without deigning to look at the woman he handed Perlmann the envelope and gave him a jokey salute.

On the next corner Perlmann threw all the other envelopes into a garbage bin. When he crossed the street, he saw the man with the crutches, who seemed to have been watching him the whole time. The lunatic throwing away envelopes. At a school drinking fountain Perlmann splashed water over the yellow envelope. Spherical droplets formed, and disappeared completely when shaken and blown on. Suddenly, the Russian platform couldn’t have mattered less.

In the travel agent’s they booked Perlmann a flight to Frankfurt for lunchtime on Saturday. For the return flight at five they could only put him on the waiting list. Then Perlmann walked slowly towards the hotel and wondered how he could disguise his handwriting when he wrote Leskov’s address on the label – and which address?

A hand grabbed him by the sleeve from below, and when he turned round, startled, he found himself looking into the laughing face of Evelyn Mistral, who was sitting at a café table. She pulled him down on to a chair and waved to the waiter. Perlmann hesitantly laid the yellow envelope on the table. It’s not dangerous. She can’t possibly know what it’s for. As he waited for his coffee and they talked about how warm it still was, even though the sun was setting and the lights were being lit at the tables, he frantically wondered what he could say if she started talking about the envelope. Then, when he was stirring his coffee, she rested her hand on his other arm for a moment. What had been up with him over the past few days? She wanted to know. They’d hardly seen him, and when they did he had been so strange. ‘ Reservado ,’ she smiled. And then fainting like that. They’d all been rather puzzled, and concerned.