Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

Perlmann drew one curtain and lay down on the bed. There were, strictly speaking, not only these two temporal realities, he thought, and was grateful for the soft, velvety sound that his thoughts now assumed. There was, in fact, also the time that belonged to him and Kirsten alone, the time that began with Agnes’s death, the time of shared abandonment and grief. That one – Perlmann’s hands clawed involuntarily into the cover – Martin had no business with, absolutely no business at all. And before that there was, again, another time in which Herr Wiedemann or Wiedemeier or whatever that young whippersnapper’s name was, had no place: the time with Agnes and Kirsten, the time when all three of them had chosen, from mountains of pictures, the photograph of the month and in the end the photograph of the year: family time, so to speak.

Perlmann rubbed his eyes. The serious picture of Agnes on the windowsill appeared, and now he also saw the coffee seeping into the pale carpet. There was also Frankfurt time, the snowed-in time when his letterbox filled up with junk mail and the dean waited for his report. That time had something to do with Kirsten’s time in Konstanz, it seemed to him; but now the thoughts became so gentle and pleasantly vague that it would have been a shame to spoil them by concentrating.

When Kirsten woke him with her knocking it was late afternoon. ‘I slept like a log!’ she said and whirled through the room. ‘Will you show me the town now?’

When he came out of the bathroom, she was holding the big Russian-English dictionary, flicking through it and then constantly rubbing her fingers on her jeans.

‘That’s an amazing thing,’ she said. ‘Every single turn of phrase explained! I don’t think Martin knows that. Except the paper’s horrible to the touch. Actually repellent. Where did you get this great tome?’

Perlmann felt as if he were seeing Santa Margherita for the first time. And as if this wasn’t the town that had the Marconi Veranda in it. The many squares, arches, alleyways – it was as if they hadn’t been there before, and sprang into being under Kirsten’s gaze. By the wooden way he stood around when she went up to things to look at details, one might have thought he was bored. In fact, with his eyes often half-closed, he was letting himself fall into the borrowed present of her enthusiasm, feeling like someone looking out at the sea through the barred windows of his cell.

Afterwards, in the café, he was a hair away from succumbing to the overwhelming temptation to tell Kirsten about his desperation. Just before it came to that, he felt the blood pulsing through his whole body. At once disappointed and relieved, he then heard her asking the waiter the way to the toilet, and when she came back with her springy gait and swinging bag, it seemed to him impossible to take the step which, he knew, would have changed so much between them. But his blood pulsed on, so he took out his cigarettes.

She stared at him, thunderstruck.

‘You… since when have you been smoking again?’

He played it down, spoke with hollow nonchalance about Italy, the cafés and the cigarettes that were simply a part of it. He was revolted by himself, and she didn’t believe a word. There was a shadow on her face now. She felt it was like a betrayal of Agnes, a desertion. He was quite sure about that. A burning helplessness took hold of him, and without anticipating it, he started talking about intimacy, about various forms of loyalty, about love and freedom.

‘If intimacy has something to do with the harmony of two lives, one might wonder whether it’s compatible with the ideal that two people shouldn’t curtail each other’s freedom,’ he concluded.

‘Dad,’ she said quietly, ‘I don’t know you like this!’

The shadow had disappeared, making way for a smile full of curious dread. She accepted one of his cigarettes and took out her red lighter.

‘Actually, I don’t think it’s so bad that you’re smoking again,’ she said. ‘At least it means I don’t have to apologize!’

Turning the corner of a building on the way back, they were suddenly in front of the trattoria. Perlmann stopped and pushed the flat of his hand between the glass beads of the curtain. Then he slowly drew it back and walked on without a word.

‘What was that?’ asked Kirsten.

‘Nothing. That kind of curtain… I like it. There’s something… something of the fairy tale about it.’

‘You’re full of surprises today!’ she laughed. ‘And on the subject of fairy tales: doesn’t that white hotel on the hill up there look fantastic? Could we go there tomorrow?’

‘The Imperiale. You have expensive tastes,’ he laughed, and for a moment he disappeared entirely in her time and forgot that the other time, the time of the veranda, was ruthlessly ticking on.

When he collected her from her room for dinner, he was struck dumb for a moment.

‘Smashing,’ he said at last, in English, after she had twirled twice on her axis in her glittering black dress, still slightly crumpled in places from the journey. Around her neck she wore a piece of Indian jewellery, and all the rings but one had vanished. When his eye settled in puzzlement on her hands, she winked an eye and grinned.

‘You didn’t like them, did you?’

‘Was it that obvious?’

‘I can read you like a book. Always could. Don’t you remember?’

He looked at his watch. ‘Time to go. Don’t forget your bag.’

On the way to the door she looked at herself again in the big, half-blind mirror on the wall and straightened a stocking. If only she would drop the damned purple , he thought. And her heels didn’t need to be quite so high, either. Just before they left the corridor, he stopped and held her back by the arm.

‘I wanted to ask you a favor. Just a small thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Brian Millar will probably play in the lounge after dinner. At the grand piano, I mean.’ He paused and looked at the floor. ‘No one here knows that I play as well. Played. And I’d like it to stay that way. OK?’

She looked at him quizzically and shook her head very slightly.

‘But you don’t need to hide yourself! I’d like to see if this man Millar plays better than you!’

‘Please. I… I can’t really explain. But that’s how I’d like it.’

‘If you want, of course,’ she said slowly, and played absently with the strap of her bag. ‘But… there’s something up with you. I’ve been feeling it for some time. Won’t you tell me?’

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘or we’ll be the last ones in.’

At dinner Perlmann felt as if he were sitting on hot coals. He tried not to look, but his attention was focused entirely on what his daughter was saying, and he twitched at every mistake she made in English. But she did dazzlingly well. She had ended up next to Silvestri, diagonally opposite Millar.

The Italian had – and Perlmann wouldn’t have expected it of him – immediately stood up when they stepped to the table, and had straightened Kirsten’s chair for her as she sat down. At the sight of this, Ruge’s face had twisted into a grin, and Kirsten had blushed slightly under her freckles. When she dared to speak a few words of Italian, Silvestri immediately continued in his mother tongue, until she waved him to stop and he rested his hand, laughing, on her bare arm. And even though she talked mostly to Millar after that, Perlmann was quite sure that she didn’t forget Silvestri’s presence beside her for a moment.

English and history, she said, when Millar asked her what subjects she was studying. But that might change, she was still only starting. When answering Millar’s questions about the details of her study she made more linguistic mistakes than before, and Perlmann had no idea what he was eating.