Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

Perlmann tried to protect himself with contempt. He stared at the rubber bands and did everything he could to see Ruge as a stiff who was only worth laughing at. And here he was assisted by Ruge’s horrible English accent, which sounded like a caricature. He automatically expected Ruge to make grammatical mistakes. But it didn’t happen. On the contrary, Ruge had a perfect command of English, and used words and phrases which Perlmann understood, certainly, but which were not actively at his disposal. His carefully constructed contempt faltered. Ruge’s presence seemed even more threatening to him than it had before, and again Perlmann used his hands to erect a shield in front of his eyes.

Before she started talking, Evelyn Mistral put on a pair of glasses with a delicate matte silver frame. She had put up her hair, and in spite of the skewed T-shirt under her cinnamon-colored jacket she looked older than yesterday: an academic, the red elephant doesn’t suit her at all today . All of a sudden she was quite alien to him – in fact, as a reader, as a worker, she’s an opponent I have to be wary of. Perlmann tried to hide and made one last desperate attempt to remember a subject that he knew something about. After her it’s my turn . But then he heard her bright voice, which sounded tense and harassed. Her feet under the table slipped out of her red shoes and back in again. She propped herself with her arms on the table, before changing position again a moment later. Instead of merely outlining her theme she constantly justified her work and talked for longer than necessary. After a while Perlmann felt that her tension had passed into his body, as if he could take it away from her. He thought he had to defend her against the faces of the others, even though there wasn’t a hint of criticism to be seen in them, merely a patronizing benevolence.

And then, all of a sudden, she had finished, took her glasses off and leaned back with her arms folded. Perlmann felt as if the veranda were filling up with an intoxicating silence, and time seemed only to want to go on flowing when he had started talking. He felt for his cigarettes, touched the pack and discovered that it was empty. With his hand still on the box his eye drifted above Silvestri’s head and out and beyond to the sea, to check that the world, the real world, was much bigger than this hateful room, where he was now encircled by all the people whom he had assembled here only because he had wanted to accompany Agnes on her photographic journey through Italy in winter.

Silvestri grinned, and he picked up his pack of Gauloises and threw it to Perlmann in a high arc all the way across the room. Still half-immersed in his attempt to hide in his own gaze and escape unnoticed into the light, Perlmann raised his arm and confidently caught the box. Even though that confidence seemed to issue not from himself as such, but only from his body, which he had been trying to leave behind as a decoy, it gave him back a little of his confidence. He thanked Silvestri with a nod and put one of the unfiltered cigarettes between his lips. What I say now will be completely random.

At the first drag the sharp smoke took his breath away, and he couldn’t help coughing. He heard Silvestri laughing. Perlmann hid for a while behind his cough and finally, after wiping his weeping eyes with his handkerchief, looked around.

‘I’m working on a text about the connection between language and memory,’ he said. He was both relieved and shocked by the calm in his voice. It was something, he went on, that had interested him for many years. Too rarely, he thought, did his discipline investigate how language was interwoven with the various forms of experience. And in this respect it was precisely the experience of time that had received special treatment. It was an unorthodox theme for a linguist, he added with a smile that felt like a strenuous piece of facial gymnastics. But he also understood his stay here as an opportunity to go in alternative directions.

Evelyn Mistral looked at him with radiant eyes, and now, for the first time, Perlmann noticed the green of those eyes, a sea-green with a few splinters of amber set into it. She was pleasantly surprised that he was dealing with something related to her own subject, and Perlmann had to look away to keep, in his deceitfulness, from being exposed to her smiling face any longer.

Less had happened in the faces of the others than he had expected. Millar’s head seemed to be a little more bent than usual, but there was no mockery to be discovered in his expression, and in Adrian von Levetzov’s dark eyes there was even a gleam of moderate interest.

Laura Sand’s suggestion for the sequence of the sessions met with general agreement. The date that Perlmann had fixed for himself was now treated as something quite natural. On that point, of course, von Levetzov avoided Perlmann’s eye. Instead he came to see him at the end of the session. He had found his announcement rather surprising, he said. But thinking about it properly he was also a little bit nervous. It must be a lovely feeling, trying out something new. He couldn’t wait to hear the result!

Perlmann went to see Maria in the office, and introduced Millar to her. Today, as usual, she was wearing a glittering pullover that matched her hair-do, and as on the first evening Perlmann was captivated by the contrast between the hint of punk that surrounded her and the warm, almost maternal smile with which she addressed people. His two texts would be copied by four o’clock, she assured Millar. A copy would be put in everyone’s pigeonhole.

‘One text you know already,’ Millar said to Perlmann as he left, ‘and I’ll be keen to hear what you have to say about the other one. You have been subject to severe criticism, I’m afraid. But you know it isn’t meant personally.’

‘It won’t be a problem to give you another room,’ Signora Morelli said off-handedly after Perlmann had told her – in halting Italian full of mistakes – his story about the bed and the pains in his back. ‘At this time of year we are far from full.’ She saw his hesitation and paused as she was about to turn towards the key racks.

Then Perlmann summoned all his courage and said firmly, ‘I would like the new room to be on the other side of the building. Between empty rooms, if possible.’

The hint of a smile appeared on Signora Morelli’s severe face, and her eyes narrowed slightly. She flicked through her papers, took a key from the rack and said, ‘ Va bene , try this one.’

When he turned towards her again on the stairs, she was resting both arms on the shelf behind the counter, and was watching him with her head slightly inclined.

The new room was on the top floor of the south wing, far from the others. The corridor was gloomy, because of the three art nouveau lamps in the ceiling only two were lit: the middle one was dark, and the bulbs were broken in the other two. For a moment Perlmann was horrified by the room. It was bigger than the previous one, admittedly, and the ceiling was higher – it was almost a sort of hall – but the stucco on the ceiling was crumbling, the carpet was worn and the big mirror on the wall was half-blind. It also smelled musty, as if it hadn’t been aired for years. Only the bathroom had been completely refurbished, with a marble tub and gleaming metal taps. He opened the window and looked down the facade: the room was in the only row without balconies. Over by the swimming pool Giorgio Silvestri had stretched himself out on one of the yellow loungers. He had taken off his shoes and socks, and the open newspaper lay over his face. Like a tramp. A fearless man, a free man – and my thoughts about him are the purest kitsch .