Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

Only the title was still missing. Formirovanie was formation . So: on the role of language in the formation of memories. Perlmann hesitated, looked up Rolle in his German-English Langenscheidt, and then replaced role with part . The whole thing sounded wooden, he thought, and also formation was actually too weak for the subject if one considered the radical theses of the texts. Had Leskov become frightened by his own courage? If one looked up formation , one found formirovanie and obrazovanie with the note ( creation ). Nonetheless, creation was unambiguously sozdanie or tvorenie ; those were the words Leskov should have called upon here. The intricate, programmatic sentence that had caused too much trouble also included sozdavat’ , after all. Perlmann sat there motionlessly for a while. Then he wrote in capital letters at the top edge: the personal past as linguistic creation. There was no room for his name.

To make further amends for yesterday, he set off for the dining room. Maria was still sitting in front of the screen in the office. When Perlmann saw her he stopped, teetered on his heels a few times and then went back up to his room. He irresolutely held the translation in his hands, half rolled it up and then opened it again. In the end he took it with him.

The others were now standing in the hall. He waved to them with the text and stepped into Maria’s office.

‘I thought you weren’t going to give me the text until Friday morning,’ said Maria.

‘Erm… this is… this isn’t actually it,’ stammered Perlmann, feeling his face burning.

‘Ah, so this is a different one,’ she said. ‘How industrious you all are!’ She flicked through it and suddenly paused. ‘There are a few lines in Italian here! Why did you cross them out?’

‘It… it was a sort of experiment,’ he said quickly with a dismissive gesture.

‘When do you need the text by?’ she asked as he turned to the door. ‘Because of Signor Millar, I mean.’

‘There’s no rush.’

She fastened the text together with a big paperclip, and held it away from herself. ‘Cute title,’ she smiled. ‘Where do you want your name? Over the title, under it, or only at the end of the text?’

‘No name, please.’ His per favore was out of place; not only was it superfluous, but it sounded suspicious to his ears. ‘The text is just for me,’ he added stiffly.

She rocked her head as if to say she didn’t think it was a good reason. ‘ Va bene . As you wish. We can always add it. And what about the other text?’ she asked, when his hand was already on the door handle. ‘Will I have it by Friday morning?’

‘Yes,’ he said, without looking at her.

‘By the way, Phil,’ said Millar as Perlmann dipped his spoon into the soup, ‘about Maria: she said she’d have time to type something out for me by Thursday. But I thought it was a misunderstanding. She could hardly have typed your text in two days. And a moment ago I saw you bringing her your text. No problem. Jenny will just have to get down to it as soon as I’m back.’

The soup scalded Perlmann’s tongue and throat. ‘Erm… no, no, you can…’ he began, and then closed his eyes until the peak of pain had passed. He coughed and wiped the water from his eyes. ‘I mean… yes, thank you very much.’

Millar looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You OK?’ Perlmann nodded and had to rub his eyes again.

He was glad that every subsequent mouthful hurt. The pain was something that he could deal with while the others gossiped about a series of colleagues who had recently published something.

‘I noticed again today how precisely you read,’ von Levetzov suddenly said to him.

Perlmann let the ice cream melt on his tongue and swallowed it in small portions. He had been repelled by the way his mother, after his tonsil operation, had enjoyed playing the role of nurse.

‘Yesterday it almost looked as if he hated the whole subject,’ Ruge giggled, unashamedly licking the cream from his upper lip.

Perlmann thought of the cramped nursery with its floral wallpaper, and managed a vague smile.

‘By the way, there really is another wedding in our church on Sunday,’ said Evelyn Mistral when they were going upstairs together afterwards. ‘This time I went in. An unusual space. Just chains of colored lights. There’s something of the fairy tale about it. Shall we go on Sunday? Now you’ve finished your text?’

Perlmann said nothing.

‘Oh, well, let’s see,’ she went on and touched his arm. ‘You look as if you’ve been working solidly for the past few days. Get some sleep!’

She had already turned into her corridor when she suddenly came back. ‘Maria printed out a copy of my text for you this afternoon. It’s in your pigeonhole. Would you tell me what you think of it? Especially the thing we talked about in the café.’

‘Yes… of course,’ said Perlmann and turned round on the stairs.

Only now did he become aware that he hadn’t looked in his pigeonhole for days. Giovanni handed him a big stack of things. Laura Sand’s texts for Thursday were there as well, and two envelopes from Frau Hartwig.

‘A lot to read!’ grinned Giovanni, who had been flicking through a magazine. Perlmann walked in silence to the elevator.

As soon as he had set the papers down on his desk the telephone rang.

‘Guess what – it worked!’ said Kirsten. ‘Admittedly, Lasker frowned at first and fiddled with his bow tie even more than usual. Luckily, Martin was there. But then when I plucked apart one after another of those theses of unity, the old man suddenly looked attentive and flicked through the text. I shifted into gear and got cheekier and cheekier. I even attacked the claim that elements of one story are echoed in the other. And at last, even though it wasn’t in my notes, I went so far as to say that the romanticism in the two stories was very different. I stumbled a bit there. But in the end there was a lot of applause, and then Lasker said in that grouchy tone of his: “Quite clever, Fräulein Perlmann, quite clever.” Incredible: Fräulein Perlmann! He’s the only one in miles who could still get away with something like that. But the comment, I’ve learned in the meantime, was huge praise coming from him. Imagine, the great Lasker! Dad, I’m quite high!’

She was talking like a waterfall, and it was only towards the end that he remembered the presentation had been about Faulkner’s The Wild Palms .

‘Aren’t you glad?’ she asked, when he didn’t reply.

‘Yes, yes, of course I congratulate you on your success,’ he said woodenly, and even before he had finished the sentence he found himself in a strange panic: for the first time in his life he couldn’t find the right tone with his daughter.

‘That sounded very formal,’ she said uncertainly.

‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ he replied and cursed his awkwardness.

She gave an audible jolt and found her way back to her cheerful tone. ‘When will you be ready with your presentation? I mean your lecture?’

‘The middle of next week.’

‘When exactly?’

‘Thursday.’

‘How long do your sessions actually last?’

‘Three or four hours.’

‘God, that’s twice as long as a seminar. And you have to talk all that time?’

‘Well…’ he said so quietly that she couldn’t hear him.

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

‘Is there anything wrong? You sound so far away.’

‘Nothing. It’s nothing, Kitty.’

‘You haven’t called me that in ages.’

Perlmann felt his face falling. ‘Sleep well,’ he said quickly and hung up. Then he buried his head in the pillow. Only after almost an hour did he get undressed and turn out the light.