Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

Perlmann took another spoonful of sugar. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, and when he put them in his jacket pocket, he touched the disk, which he had forgotten in the meantime. As if he had touched something burning hot or particularly disgusting, he immediately took his hands out of his pockets and lit a cigarette. Then, for a while, he looked across at the moored yachts, rocking on the wake from a motorboat.

‘I don’t even know myself,’ he said at last, and avoided looking at her. ‘I… I’ve just somehow lost my equilibrium.’

‘And you really didn’t want to deliver any kind of lecture, did you?’ she asked softly and brushed the hair out of her face, which rested on her open hand. Perlmann looked at the levelling waves and nodded. He really wanted to leave, but at the same time he wished she would go on asking him questions.

‘Can I say something? But you must promise not to take it amiss.’

Perlmann attempted a smile and nodded.

‘If I may put it this way: I think you’ve made a mistake. You should have explained at the outset that everything’s a bit difficult for you at the moment, and you could also just have said that you didn’t want to give a lecture. Your wife’s death – everyone would have understood straight away. As things stand, everything that happened – dinner and everything – was interpreted as arrogance. Until Vassily put us right. The rest of us were completely in the dark.’

So it was a good idea to tell Leskov about Agnes at the fortress back then. It meant that he was able to provide a redeeming interpretation. The man I was inches away from murdering.

In their seductive simplicity, Evelyn Mistral’s words had been an enticing offer of self-deception, which Perlmann was unable at that moment to resist. He had committed a social solecism. He had made a very simple error. He wanted to enjoy the peace that lay within that insight. It could happen to anyone. You could avoid it in future. And in three days, at this time, he would be at home.

‘You’re completely right,’ he said, ‘it was a mistake. Nothing more to be said.’ It sounded shallow, almost insincere. So, after a pause, he added, ‘Sometimes it’s so hard.’ He hoped he wasn’t overdoing it with his tortured face.

Ruge, Millar and von Levetzov slumped on to their chairs with feigned exhaustion and put their shopping bags full of presents under the empty table next to them. Perlmann had been able to see them coming from a long way off and, with a movement that looked like a reflex, he had taken the envelope off the table and rested it against the leg of the chair.

‘At exactly the usual time,’ Evelyn Mistral smiled, glancing at her watch.

‘Yes,’ said Millar with a nostalgic sigh. ‘The first time we came here, a month ago, it was still light at this time of day. I’ll miss these daily meetings.’ He looked at Perlmann. ‘Just a shame you were never there.’

The others nodded. Perlmann felt cold, and when he buttoned up his jacket, the disk bumped, with a quiet, dull sound, against the arm of the chair.

‘But if I imagine,’ Millar went on, ‘the same thing happening to me as happened to you – I don’t think I’d feel like doing anything. Except sailing,’ he added with a grin.

The remark took Perlmann’s breath away for a moment, and he felt himself welling up. Achim Ruge must have seen that something was happening in his face. With an expression and a voice that Perlmann wouldn’t have thought possible, he started talking about his younger sister, whom he had loved very much. He couldn’t even have imagined her taking drugs. Until she was found dead.

‘You know,’ he said to Perlmann in German, and his bright green eyes seemed to be even more watery than usual, ‘I basically dropped out for almost a year after that. Things went up and down in the lab. I had to cancel lectures, and my irritability towards my colleagues became legendary. Nothing seemed to have a point any more.’

Superficial , thought Perlmann, my fear of them has made me terribly superficial. So superficial that he couldn’t even imagine them capable of the most elementary, the most natural impulses and reactions. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been so flabbergasted. Fear made other people bigger and stronger than they were, and at the same time they became smaller and more primitive. Couldn’t he have gone to them on Saturday morning and explained his irrational actions? And wouldn’t that still have been possible at a later time?

‘I could imagine,’ von Levetzov said, ‘that your invitation to Princeton hasn’t come at exactly the right time.’

Perlmann nodded, and again he was surprised by the sympathy that he was suddenly encountering. Was it, perhaps, not only fear that had made him superficial, but also that fear had come about because his view of things had been superficial from the outset – because he hadn’t thought the others capable of sympathy, and hence of depth?

‘Things like that can be postponed,’ confirmed Millar, when Perlmann looked at him quizzically.

He was actually considering that, Perlmann said, and tried to look at von Levetzov with a particularly open and personal expression, as a way of apologizing for his abruptness over breakfast. A personal relationship with Adrian von Levetzov would be more easily achieved in the presence of the others than in private. When Perlmann realized that, he became very confused. All of a sudden he had a sense that he didn’t know the slightest thing about people and their relationships with each other.

The others seemed not to see Leskov, who was waddling and flailing his way towards town. Perlmann hadn’t recognized him at first, because tonight he was wearing a peaked cap that lay on the bulges of his neck and, as a result, looked too small. If only he would walk more quickly .

‘Hang on, that’s Vassily!’ called von Levetzov, jumping to his feet and running after him.

Perlmann reached for the envelope beside the leg of the chair. No, it would attract less attention down here than on the next table.

Leskov liked the jokes about his cap. He showed it around and acted the clown. Later, when the conversation turned to the session, he touched Perlmann on the shoulder and said he hadn’t been able to get over his amazement when listening to him.

‘I would have bet my head that you’d read my text,’ he laughed, ‘and very carefully, too. I sent him,’ he said, turning to the others, ‘the earlier version. But he denies it. Apparently, my Russian’s still too hard for him.’

‘Didn’t you say you didn’t speak Russian?’ von Levetzov asked with a face in which irritation and admiration balanced one another.

Perlmann avoided Evelyn Mistral’s eyes, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t committed plagiarism. No plagiarism. ‘Just a few words,’ he said.

He couldn’t bear the pause that followed for very long, and went inside with an apology. At the end of the corridor where the toilets were, a door was open, leading to the other side of the quay wall. He walked to the water. Kitchen waste floated below him. He took the disk out of his jacket pocket and looked round. When he let go of it, it was caught by a gust of wind and fell with a clatter on the wall. He looked round again, and then kicked it out.

‘We’re just talking about this amazing envelope,’ said Leskov, and rested it on the table. ‘It fell over a moment ago when you stood up. Brian knows this kind from home. I wish we had things like that.’

‘Anything important I send in those envelopes,’ said Millar, ‘especially manuscripts.’ He rubbed the cardboard with his thumb and forefinger. ‘The things are practically watertight.’