Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

Only when the door clicked shut did Perlmann notice that Silvestri had risen to his feet, and had plainly been walking up and down. Now the Italian stubbed out his cigarette, hesitated for a moment and then, sitting on the table top, swung himself into the middle of the horseshoe. With a jerky movement he lifted the reddish piece of paper, stood in front of Millar and, without looking at him, silently and carefully let the paper float on to the table. Then he swung back over the table, meticulously straightened his chair and went on with his lecture. After a few sentences his breath became normal again. Laura Sand exhaled audibly.

When the discussion began, Millar at first cleaned his glasses for several minutes. Later, as Silvestri was battling with Leskov’s questions, which were much less clear today than they usually were, Millar stared with blank concentration at the swimming pool, where the heavy raindrops were splashing the water high into the air. Now and again Silvestri darted him quick glances from the corner of his eye. But his agitation seemed to have subsided, and here, once again, he proved to be a good listener, who encouraged his interlocutor, with a brief nod and the hint of a smile, to go on spinning out the thought that he had just embarked upon.

What Perlmann particularly envied was the amount of time that Silvestri took before answering a question. He wouldn’t, it seemed, allow any question in the world to put pressure on him. Questions weren’t something he felt coerced by. They were primarily an opportunity to think, regardless of how long it took. No wonder Kirsten took to him immediately . Again Perlmann hid his face between his folded hands and tried inwardly to imagine what it must feel like to be someone with so little fear of other people and their questions. He almost felt dizzy when he concentrated intensely on the notional point of experience that could be achieved were he to succeed in dismantling the structure of his anxiety piece by piece and transfer it into another way of feeling.

It was Ruge’s chuckling laughter that tore him from his reflections. It was plainly inspired by the way in which Silvestri defended himself against doubts about his method. He had dealt at such length and so devotedly with his patients that he had the unshakeable assurance of having achieved a profound understanding of the pattern of their linguistic and mental disturbances. What made Silvestri assailable was his refusal to have anyone look over his shoulder and check what he was doing. There is no theoretical context , Perlmann thought, but somehow that refusal could surprise no one who knew the dangerous gleam that appeared in Silvestri’s eyes when the discussion turned to the issue of bolted asylum doors. The man was a maverick and a fanatical defender of liberty, who must have seemed, in his clinic, like an anarchist, albeit an anarchist in whose office the light still burned even when his team had gone home long ago. Your hero-addicted imagination . Agnes had been proud of her verbal creation.

‘I have listened to many of these people for years,’ Silvestri said with unshakeable calm. ‘I know how they speak and think. I know it precisely. Really precisely.’

Ruge gave up with a sigh, and an uncomfortable pause settled, so that Silvestri began to get his things together. Then Millar ostentatiously sat up in his chair, rested both elbows on the table and waited until Silvestri met his eye.

‘Look, Giorgio… ’ he began, and the use of Silvestri’s first name sounded like mockery. And then he lectured Silvestri on the safeguarding and evaluation of data, about sources of error and the danger of artefacts, about multiple verification procedures, and finally about the idea of objectivity. More and more he slipped into the tone of someone explaining, in a course for first-term freshmen, the ABC of academic work, and assuming no more than an average intelligence among his listeners.

Silvestri looked out over the edge of the table to the parquet – to where the piece of paper had been a few moments before. There was a lot going on in his facial expression. The initial look of anger and indignation gave way to various shades of amusement and arrogance, but also of irony and contempt, which moved into one another uninterruptedly and without any fixed arrangement. Then, when he noticed that Millar had nearly finished, Silvestri withdrew completely from his face, straightened his papers again and sat down on the very edge of the chair. His long, white fingers were trembling slightly when he brought the lighter to his cigarette. Evelyn Mistral threw her hands to her face like someone trying to flee an inescapable disaster.

‘I believe, Professor Millar,’ he said gently, his pronunciation now impeccable, ‘that I have understood you perfectly. You want repeatable experiments. Laboratory conditions with calm, stable objects. Controllable variables. Am I wrong, or would you also really like to strap these people to chairs?’ He stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette, took his belongings and a few steps later he was outside.

Millar had red patches on his face, and for a moment he looked almost numb. ‘Well,’ he said with artificial cheerfulness, and got to his feet. His rubber soles squeaked loudly on the parquet as he stepped vigorously outside.

Only then did the others stir.

The rain had stopped, and the clouds were moving. Perlmann stood at the window and tried to apologize for Silvestri’s gaffe without being unfair to Millar. It didn’t work. He went from one extreme to the other, without finding a resting point. In his memory, Silvestri’s voice had become a hiss, and it wasn’t hard for Perlmann to sense the hatred behind that hiss. It was particularly easy to understand when one remembered Millar’s unbearably didactic tone. And at such a moment no one could have demanded that Silvestri take account of the plain fact that Millar had been trying to erase the memory of his faux pas with the piece of paper by childishly going on the attack. But then Perlmann saw, again and again, Millar’s face with its red patches; the face of someone reeling inwardly from a completely unexpected slap. He had looked very vulnerable, this man Brian Millar, not at all like the monster described by Silvestri’s unfortunate remark. All right, Millar supported the death penalty, which already made him very odd. But that evening, which Silvestri would probably never forget, Millar hadn’t advocated it with any bigoted, missionary zeal. Silvestri was right: there was a certain lack of imagination at play, a kind of naivety. But did not this very lack of imagination, this naivety, mean that one couldn’t possibly attribute to Millar the perverse and inhuman desires that resounded in Silvestri’s perfidious question? Or was it exactly the opposite?

Perlmann tried to remember all of the things he still had to do today. But he couldn’t keep his thoughts together, so he sat down at his desk and made a list. It took ages, and he had to overcome a paralysing reluctance to write down each individual point. Travel agent. It was urgent that he buy his ticket straight away. Stationery shop . Going back to that mute boy was out of the question. There must be another shop that sold envelopes. Trattoria . The bright courtyard now struck him as remote and alien. But he couldn’t bring himself simply to leave the chronicle there and vanish without a word. Not least because of Sandra. Maria . He would have to say goodbye to her today; she wasn’t in the office tomorrow. And then there was something else. That was it: Angelini . Perlmann’s stomach lurched. Should he simply wait and see whether he appeared for dinner? But then if he didn’t come, Perlmann would have to call him on his private number, which was in his recent note. Perlmann bridled at the idea. After all that had happened, he wanted to thank Angelini and say goodbye in a very formal and businesslike fashion.