Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

Laura Sand didn’t know where to put her cigarette and finally jammed it between her fingers, which were holding her travel bag. ‘I’ll send you a few pictures,’ she said, tapping her camera bag. ‘Pictures that Chopin would have liked,’ she added with her mocking smile. In the doorway she tripped over her long black coat. For a moment Perlmann closed his eyes to make sure that the inner picture of her mocking face would always be available to him.

What came next was something that he had tried several times to imagine during the night, but his fantasies had got him nowhere.

‘Thanks for everything,’ said Millar, shaking his hand firmly. He said it in a workmanlike manner. That was how he would always say goodbye. And yet he wasn’t just acting in line with convention. There had been a twitch in his face, leaving yesterday evening behind. ‘And about your book: I’ll talk to my publisher next week. I’ll entrust it to him quite specifically.’

Perlmann nodded mutely, and felt as if for those whole five weeks he had given the same response to everything anyone had said to him: a silent nod of the head.

Millar pulled up the zip of his windbreaker and picked up his case. Two steps later he set it down again and turned round. ‘By the way: your Chopin – it sounded pretty good. And Liszt isn’t all that better. No comparison with Bach,’ he grinned.

Perlmann thought about Sheila and the balloon. ‘I’ve never heard Bach like yours,’ he said. ‘A very distinct style.’

Millar blushed. ‘Oh, thanks. Many thanks. No one’s ever said that to me before. We should have…’

Perlmann nodded mutely. Before Millar got into the taxi, he looked back up at Perlmann and raised his hand. When the taxi disappeared, Perlmann was filled with a feeling of emptiness and loss.

Leskov was sitting on the terrace in the sun when Perlmann and Evelyn Mistral came outside half an hour later. Her train left Genoa at eleven, she said in reply to Leskov’s question.

‘Then you’ll easily be back here by one,’ said Leskov to Perlmann. ‘Because that’s when our ship sails,’ he added, seeing Perlmann’s incomprehension. On such a beautiful day Leskov wanted to invite him on a boat trip to Genoa, harbor tour included. Especially when the coast road had just been closed. ‘I’ll pay with this!’ he said with a laugh, and pulled his crumpled winnings from his trouser pocket.

Perlmann felt the handle of the suitcase getting damp. Motionless, he looked down at Evelyn Mistral’s red shoes.

‘You can’t possibly refuse him that,’ she said to him in Spanish, lowering her voice.

Two more days of despair for him. Unless he scrubbed the idea of Ivrea. Then it’s just one.

‘Don’t you want to?’ Leskov asked. The disappointment in his voice and his anxious face were unbearable.

‘No, of course I do,’ Perlmann said hoarsely, ‘and I’ll be back by one whatever happens.’ He was glad when the taxi hooted down below.

It was a silent train journey. Perlmann fought unsuccessfully against the trepidation that was choking him. He had to extract each individual word from himself, and didn’t know how to make it clear to Evelyn Mistral that his silence had nothing to do with her. As she began, out of embarrassment, to talk about the book she was just reading, he wondered again and again whether he should give her Leskov’s text, so that she could hand it to him in Geneva. Two days. One, at any rate. No suspicion could fall on her. She had never been anywhere near Leskov’s suitcase. Perhaps Leskov would assume that his plane had flown on from Frankfurt to Geneva, where the text had been found at last. But how in the world was he to explain to her that the envelope had to reach St Petersburg as quickly as possible, when they had both stood facing its recipient half an hour before?

‘You’d rather have had the afternoon to yourself, wouldn’t you?’ she asked as the train arrived at Genoa Station.

Perlmann nodded.

‘But he seemed to be looking forward to the boat trip as excitedly as a child.’

Again he nodded mutely.

The big suitcase with the red elephant on the middle of the lid bumped against the steps of the carriage as she got in. Perlmann took the case from her, and let her hold his suitcase. When they stood facing one another in the empty, musty-smelling compartment, he ran his hand over her freshly washed, straw-like hair. After a brief hesitation, during which she tried to read his face, she put her arms around his neck and leaned playfully back.

‘ ¡No te pierdas! ’

He nodded, picked up the valise and a few steps later he was outside. When he turned round she was standing at the open carriage door.

‘That earlier text of Vassily’s: you read it didn’t you?’

Perlmann took a deep breath and looked at her. ‘Yes. But it would be too long a story.’ He looked at the floor for a moment, and then raised his head again. ‘Our secret?’

Her radiant smile crossed her face.

‘I like secrets like that. And I’m the soul of discretion.’

The conductor walked along the train and closed the doors. She stood at the compartment window. She was plainly thinking away. Her curiosity got the better of her.

‘Was it the text you had with you on the terrace when I arrived?’

Perlmann nodded.

‘And that’s why you didn’t want the others…’

‘Yes,’ he said.

The train set off.

‘You could make up various stories about that,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll try that on my journey. As a way of passing the time!’

Perlmann was glad that instead of talking he was able to wave. He went on mechanically doing so until her carriage was out of sight. Only when he lowered his arm did he notice that he was clutching the handle of the valise so tightly that it cut into his hand.

He ordered a coffee in the station bar. According to the hands of the clock on the wall, behind its cracked glass, it was just after eleven. The plane he had planned to take left at a quarter past twelve. Now Leskov was keeping him from atoning for his action as quickly as possible. It was only with difficulty that Perlmann managed to keep his impotent rage within bounds, and the young woman next to him looked with alarm at his fist with its white knuckles holding the long sugar spoon, rather than putting it back in the bowl. You can’t refuse him that. But she couldn’t have known. Disappointment over a boat trip, as against two more days of despair, that was the calculation. And it wasn’t just despair. Perhaps those were precisely the two days that would cost Leskov his job, because they were the two that would have let him copy out and rephrase the missing pages in time.

Perlmann took the bus to the airport. He closed his mind’s eye to those memories and, without looking round, he immediately went to the check-in counter and on to security control. On the x-ray screen Leskov’s text was only a vague shadow. He sat impatiently in the waiting room and looked out at the plane that was just taking the food container on board. The water beyond the runway lay in gleaming light. What had Leskov called the southern light? Siyayushchy . I’ve hardly seen anything of this area. When the coast road was closed, on top of everything . Perlmann started pacing back and forth. Then he would have to fly tomorrow, as originally planned. His reservation was still valid. Just one more day that Leskov would have to wait for the text. That would mean scrubbing Ivrea. Or at least postponing it. He imagined the bright office. Or else he could fly back here tomorrow afternoon and take a later train to Ivrea. He studied his boarding pass. Yes . He crumpled up the green piece of cardboard, threw it in the bin and pushed his way, amidst cries of protest from the security officials, past the queuing people and out into the hall.