Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

He was glad of the fuss that von Levetzov made about the food to show that he was a gourmet. He took the silence that fell a moment later, and in which all that could be heard was the clatter of cutlery and the voices from neighboring tables, as a sign that from now on he was not the center of attention.

‘By the way, Phil,’ Millar said into the silence, ‘that business with the prize doesn’t surprise me at all. The day before I left I was staying with Bill in Princeton – you know Bill Saunders – and he was telling me that you’ll soon be receiving an invitation for a guest semester. They already know what you’re doing,’ he added with a smile in which, it seemed to Perlmann, the customary reverence for Princeton was mixed with a doubt, held at bay with difficulty and nonetheless enjoyed, about the wisdom of this very special decision.

Even though he was holding his fish knife with grim desperation, as about to cut a piece of stubborn, stringy meat, Perlmann was proud that he managed not to look at Millar. Say nothing. Keep silent.

‘Bill was, incidentally, a bit cross that you didn’t invite him, too,’ Millar said at last, and because his voice contained a hint of irritation at Perlmann’s lack of reaction, it sounded almost as if he himself were Bill Saunders complaining.

‘Oh, really?’ said Perlmann, and looked at Millar for a moment. He was pleased about the mildly ironic tone that he had managed, and now he looked again at Millar, for longer this time, and quite calmly. His eyes aren’t steel-blue, but porcelain-blue. In Millar’s grin, he thought, there was a hint of insecurity, and the fact that he now started talking briskly and loquaciously about Princeton in general seemed to confirm that impression. But rather than a feeling of triumph, a vacuum suddenly appeared inside Perlmann, and then the sensations of a fugitive suddenly crashed in on him. Why won’t they just leave me in peace? As he removed fish bones in slow motion, he fought the impulse to stand up and run away. With relief he joined in just as Millar’s language was beginning to make him furious once again. He greedily immersed himself in his fury.

Millar let himself tumble into his sentences, particularly his idiomatic, colloquial turns of phrase with a delight that Perlmann found repellent. Wallowing. He’s actually wallowing in his language. Perlmann hated dialects, and he hated them because they were often spoken like that, with the same trampling presumption with which Millar spoke his Yankee American. Worst of all was the north German dialect that he had grown up with. That his parents had finally grown very remote from him had a great deal to do with it. The older they grew, the more defiantly they insisted on speaking to him in Platt, and the more clearly he sensed that defiance, the more resolutely he spoke in High German to them. It had been a mute battle with words. You couldn’t talk about it. What use would it have been to say to them that their faces were becoming more and more rigid and dogmatic, and that that had much to do with the fact that they were increasingly led simply by the phrases and metaphors of the dialect, and by the prejudices that were crystallized in it?

The man with the rolled-up jacket sleeves, the open-necked shirt and the pale, unshaven face who was now looking round in the doorway and then coming towards them must have been Giorgio Silvestri. When Perlmann shook his hand and saw the relaxed, ironic alertness in his dark eyes, very different from Millar’s, the alertness of a cat about to pounce, he was immediately won over by him. He felt as if in the form of this thin, frail-looking Italian, who appeared to be scruffy until you took a closer look at his clothes, someone had arrived who could help him. And then when the first thing he did was to light a Gauloise and blow the smoke into Millar’s face, Perlmann was quite sure of things. Only the fact that he replied to Evelyn Mistral’s greeting in fluent, unaccented Spanish and thus merited her radiant laughter, was slightly disturbing.

His English was no less fluent, although accented. Addressed on the subject by Laura Sand, who was staring at him unwaveringly, Silvestri talked about the two years that he had spent working on a psychiatric ward in Oakland near San Francisco.

‘ East Oakland,’ he said, turning to Millar, and went on when he saw Millar’s sour, frowning smile. ‘After that I had enough. Not of the patients, who still write to me. But of the merciless, in fact one would have to say barbaric American health system.’

Millar avoided the renewed cloud of smoke as if it were poison gas.

‘Well,’ he said at last, suppressed what was on the tip of his tongue and devoted himself to his dessert.

Silvestri ordered from the waiter, who started treating him as an old acquaintance as soon as he heard his Florentine accent, a special dessert and a triple espresso. Perlmann made a joke about it, and that was when it happened: he was giving in to his need for contact.

For years he had battled against that habit of touching people, particularly when he had just met them, when he addressed a charming joke or a personal remark to them. As he was now doing with Silvestri, he rested his hand on their forearm, and when standing up he would often enough find himself suddenly putting an arm around their shoulders. There were people who saw this simply as evidence of an outgoing, lovable nature, and others who found his behavior disagreeable. His need for physical contact did not differentiate between men and women, and in the case of women there were often misunderstandings. The presence of Agnes had helped, but not always, and when she had witnessed the event, one had been able to tell from her face how puzzling and even weird she found it that he, who preferred to sit on the edge of big, empty squares, had this particular tic. It was no less puzzling to him, and each time it happened he felt the compulsion as a crack running right through him.

It was von Levetzov’s idea to go across, after dinner, to the drawing room where the ochre-colored armchairs stood. Brian Millar, who came last because he had been inspecting the little room with the round, green-baize-covered gaming tables, stopped and then walked over to the grand piano.

‘A Grotrian-Steinweg,’ he said, ‘I would prefer this to any Steinway.’ He played a few notes and then closed the lid again. ‘Another time,’ he smiled when von Levetzov encouraged him to play something.

Perlmann felt his breathing suddenly becoming more difficult. So he can do that too. He asked the waiter who brought the drinks to open a window.

Von Levetzov raised his glass. ‘As no one else is doing so, I would like to greet everyone and raise a toast to our favorable collaboration,’ he said with a sideways glance at Perlmann, who felt the sweat of his hands mixing with the condensation on the glass. ‘So we will be working up there,’ he went on, pointing at the door of the veranda, which was reached by a flight of three steps. ‘A perfect room for our purposes. I took a picture of it before. Veranda Marconi, it is called, after Guglielmo Marconi, a pioneer of radio technology, as the plaque outside says.’

Perlmann, who hadn’t noticed the plaque, looked down at his new shoes, which hurt him. The painful pinch that would always be associated with confirmation and hard church pews merged with the hot sensation of shame about his forgotten welcome speech and a looming, helpless vexation with von Levetzov’s behavior as travel guide.

‘Now we’re just waiting for Vassily Leskov,’ said Laura Sand, and Perlmann felt as if she had been reading his thoughts and was trying, by changing the subject like this, to prevent the others from rising to their feet to catch sight of the veranda. ‘When’s he coming? And more particularly, who is he?’