Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

‘Recently, at a conference in London,’ he began and, after looking briefly at Perlmann, raised his eye beyond him, as if looking for someone at the pool, ‘I went to the theater one evening to see Macbeth again. I was alone, and in a strange mood free of self-deception. I immersed myself fully in Shakespeare’s wonderful language, and suddenly I had the feeling that there was nothing rewarding to be discovered about language that was not already contained within that experience of immersion. In the minutes leading up to the interval the thought of our profession had something tired, almost ludicrous about it, and I was quite ready to throw off my professional garb like a tired and worn-out skin. I think the two colleagues whom I met in the foyer found me rather strange at that moment. And then, all of a sudden, the whole thing had passed like a ghost, and afterwards in the pub I talked heatedly to my colleagues about a new publication in our field.’

He drew his glance back from the distance and smiled at Perlmann. ‘Somehow your… outburst of a moment ago reminded me of that,’ he said, speaking in German. ‘Except: there’s nothing I can do about it. I didn’t invent our discipline, did I? And it isn’t as uninteresting as all that, either; in spite of Shakespeare. Otherwise, I’m sure you wouldn’t have called us all here. Would you?’

Perlmann lowered his eyes and gave his head a slight shake, without a clear intention and significance, turning it into an equally slight nod.

The awkward pause was ended by Ruge. ‘I didn’t know you had a weakness for poetry, Adrian,’ he said with a grin, drawing imaginary circles on the table top.

‘Neither did I,’ Millar cut in, ‘and I can’t wait to hear about the exciting kind of linguistics that Phil is doubtless going to introduce us to next week.’

Von Levetzov slowly packed his things together, got up and then stopped by the table, his hands on the stack of books and paper. He kept his eye – a searching eye that seemed to spring from an inner circling – fixed on the parquet floor beyond the table’s edge. His features, it seemed to Perlmann, had formed into an expression of self-reliance that he had never seen on this man’s face before, even Evelyn Mistral gazed at him the way one gazes at someone who is forming a completely independent judgment about something.

‘I don’t know, Brian,’ he said slowly, and the smile with which he now turned to Millar contrasted starkly with his usual solicitousness towards his admired American colleague, ‘that may not be Philipp’s concern. I could imagine that he’s not interested in that at all.’

He darted Perlmann a fleeting glance and then walked to the door with an attitude that suggested he wasn’t a part of the group any more.

Perlmann thought about von Levetzov’s attitude and his last sentence all afternoon, over and over again. As he did so, he oscillated between the worrying sensation of having completely lost his balance, and the liberating feeling of someone who, by voicing a proscribed opinion with no regard for the consequences, has edged a step closer to himself.

Finally, now, he read all the texts he should already have known that morning. They interested him not in the slightest, those texts which, as always with von Levetzov, were composed with almost baroque care and attention. But he forced himself to read every line. He wanted to be prepared for tomorrow.

Hidden behind that thought, however, he was driven by the wish discreetly to thank the tall northerner – about whom he had plainly been completely mistaken – for his considered reaction. And also for addressing him in German. Recalling that moment now, it seemed to him had never before felt the intimacy of his mother tongue so forcefully and gratefully. From time to time he imagined von Levetzov’s face without its glasses, looking strangely naked. Opera. Always Mozart. Alcohol. An actress.

Midway through his reading of the third text he suddenly got to his feet, slipped into his jacket and walked down to von Levetzov’s room. He had no idea what the apology should sound like, and to gain time he put his ear to the door. Von Levetzov was on the phone, clearly to his secretary.

‘Then we’ll have to move the whole program,’ he was saying. ‘Let the contributors know that their times are changing accordingly. All right, so that’s that. What about the application to the foundation? Aha… yes… good. And the galleys?’

Perlmann turned round and went back to his room. Again he called the end of the session to mind: von Levetzov’s sentence, his attitude. And now this businesslike voice, the voice of a man merging with his subject. It didn’t fit. Not at all.

He dragged himself to the middle of the fourth text, then broke off and went to the trattoria. Even as he parted the glass-bead curtain he sensed that it had been wrong to come here. He could only concentrate on the story of Sandra’s test by concentrating very hard, and he immediately forgot it again. There’s still Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. One whole day and two half-days. And the nights.

When the proprietor brought him the chronicle he waved it away at first, but then he took it after all and looked up the summer when he had been given his first professorship. Aldo Moro murdered. Sandro Pertini new president. Death of Pope Paul VI. Bored, he snapped the book shut.

What had been happening in the world back then didn’t interest him. He was looking for something quite different, a memory that forced its way to the surface and kept exploding just before it got there. It had something to do with the grand piano and a question asked by five-year-old Kirsten.

Lost. I’ve lost . That was it: that was what he had thought back then when he set his professorial certificate down on the grand piano and tried to play with leaden fingers. Little Kirsten, clutching her teddy, had clearly been standing in the doorway for a long time before she asked why he was playing so many wrong notes.

Are you sad?

We’re going to move, Kitty, to Berlin.

Isn’t it nice there?

Yes, child.

So why are you sad?

Dad is sad , she told Agnes, who was breathlessly setting down the shopping bags. Nonsense , he said and showed her the letter with a smile. The Berlin agency is bigger , she laughed, and gave him a kiss.

When suddenly he hadn’t been able to get to grips with the chronicle it was as if a safety net had been taken away. What still supported him was the translation of Leskov’s text, he thought on the way back, and hurried to get to his room.

Another five pages on the daring thesis that narrative memory also creates the sensory content of the remembered. Perlmann struggled once again through the thicket of unusual words for sensory nuances, and after three hours he had an English version of the part that he had translated directly into Italian the previous day – with lots of mistakes, he now realized. Immediately after that came the zealous, awkward passage on Proust. The last page and a half on this subject were easier again in terms of vocabulary; on the other hand, the concluding argument was so incomplete and bizarre that he kept checking whether it might be down to his translation. At last he came to the conclusion that Leskov had simply fudged matters – he had wanted to force through at all costs his exotic thesis of the past as an invention. He seemed to be truly in love with it.

Shortly after midnight Perlmann walked through the clear, cold, starry night to the Piazza Veneto to buy cigarettes. Next came the closing passage about appropriation: nine pages, seven of which he had largely finished, leaving aside the difficulties with the key concept. He wanted to get through it that night, so that he could finish the text in one go on Wednesday. At the same time he felt a suffocating sense of trepidation at the thought of having to set Leskov’s text aside and move over entirely to the emptiness in his head. He tore open the packet as soon as it fell from the machine, and then discovered that he hadn’t brought any matches. Shivering, he ran back to the hotel.