Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

For a while he stood in the harbor watching the waves breaking on the concrete blocks in front of the jetty. It wasn’t at all true that it was going to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow was, after all, only Friday, the day when he had been supposed to give Maria his text. Assuming that he was going to deliver lectures at his session rather than use handouts, he still had six days to play with. Minus the time for Silvestri’s sessions. He took a few deep breaths. Now the important thing was to keep alive the little bit of confidence that still stirred. Five days, that was basically a lot of time. After all, he had experience of writing lectures, a lot of experience. Slowly, as if his confidence might be broken by excessively violent movements, he walked back to the hotel.

When he opened the door to his room, the phone began to ring.

‘It’s me,’ Kirsten said. ‘I just wanted to hear quickly how you’ve been.’

At first Perlmann didn’t understand. It was only when Kirsten called ‘Hello?’ for the second time that he got it: she thought his session had been today. It was out of annoyance at the tone of student camaraderie, which she was using again now, that he hadn’t mentioned the postponement to her on Sunday in Rapallo.

‘It isn’t my turn yet,’ he said. ‘There was a change to the timetable. I’m not for a week.’

‘Oh, so there was no point in me touching wood. Whose turn was it today?’

‘Evelyn.’

‘Aha.’

There was a pause.

‘Is Giorgio still there?’

He laughed, and was surprised. ‘Yes, he’s still here.’

‘Say hello from me. Don’t be too friendly, though! And tell him… no, leave it.’

Perlmann sat down at the desk and looked at the page of headings, on which he had drawn some figures in the margin. When I get bored in the seminar, I doodle as well , she had said. He would probably never know what had happened between her and Silvestri. And he couldn’t ask under any circumstances. He had only made that mistake once. He saw her furious face in front of him and heard the joke that Agnes had made about his startled reaction.

At that moment the phone rang again.

‘I have to go to Bologna, to the clinic, tonight,’ said Silvestri. ‘Now of all times, when the boss is away, the other senior doctor is ill and suddenly all hell seems to have broken out.’ Perlmann heard him smoking. ‘Two patients have… run away. They’re considered dangerous, and the police are involved.’ He coughed. ‘I’m sorry to be so unreliable. But I can’t just leave the others hanging. My sessions on Monday and Tuesday are out of the window. I assume you yourself will take on these dates. I’ll be coming back, and perhaps I can present something in the second half of the week.’ He laughed. ‘And if not – academia will have to go on without me!’

Perlmann slowly hung up. His fingers left traces of sweat on the receiver. Monday . Tomorrow is Friday. And I have nothing. Not a single sentence. He wiped his hands on his trousers. He shivered. What he did now didn’t matter in the slightest. Any movement was just as unfounded and useless as any other. There was now no stopping it.

With dragging steps he walked into the bathroom and took a whole sleeping pill. The water tasted more chlorinated than usual. The taste reminded him of his first swimming lesson in the municipal pool, when he had almost drowned. It was an oppressive memory, but it led away from the present, and he clung to it as the numbness slowly spread within him.

He woke with a headache and a film of sweat on his face. It was a quarter to ten, and the sun shone from a cloudless sky on the mirror-smooth water of the bay. Today I have to make a decision. Any decision .

Here in this room, under the eyes of the others, so to speak, he couldn’t reach a decision, he thought in the shower. He left the hotel by the rear entrance and had a coffee in a bar on the Piazza Veneto. His headache gradually eased, and he was better able to bear looking out into the radiant autumn day.

There was no point hushing up Silvestri’s departure from the others. Over the course of the day they would find out from Signora Morelli, certainly by the time they asked for the texts for the Monday session. And then they would inevitably assume that he, Perlmann, would be giving the next two sessions. Where are his papers ? he could hear Millar asking. By dinner time Perlmann would have to be able to say that copies were being made. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to show his face.

Down at the jetty, where the liners docked, people were gathering: locals with baskets and bicycles, but also a few tourists with cameras. All of a sudden it seemed to Perlmann that a long boat trip would help him more than anything else to gain clarity, and he put as much emphasis as possible on that thought to drown out his mounting panic.

A boat left for Genoa at eleven. He stood aside from the waiting group. Another quarter of an hour. He smoked impatiently. Now he didn’t think he could bear to stay on dry land a moment longer. He finally wanted to set foot on the boat and watch the stretch of water widening between himself and the jetty. At eleven o’clock the ship had still not come into view. He cursed the Italian lack of punctuality.

When he stood at the railing half an hour later, right at the front of the ship, he made an effort to open his senses wide so that their impressions would penetrate him deeply and powerfully, overwhelming and suffocating his despairing thoughts. He had no sunglasses with him. It hurt to look out into the dazzling light, but he narrowed his eyes and tried to take it all in even so. The light broke on the water. Near the bow it was sparkling points, gleaming little stars, further out calm surfaces of white gold and platinum; above it a layer of gauzy mist, and in the distance the glittering surface passed seamlessly into haze that dissolved at the top in a dome of milky blue. He inhaled the heavy, slightly intoxicating smell of seawater in slow, deep draughts, a smell that had repeatedly drawn him to the harbor in Hamburg, even as a child, because it promised an intense and also a completely effortless present.

I must concentrate. When I pass this spot again on the way back, I’ll have to know what I’m going to do. He sat down in the shade under the cabin porch. There were only three possibilities. One consisted in presenting nothing at all. No text. No session. That would be a declaration of bankruptcy, which would also alienate the others, because it would come unheralded and without a request for understanding. He had missed that. On the contrary, when asking Millar for information about English words, he had inevitably created the impression of working on a paper. It would be a sudden, speechless bankruptcy, without explanation on his part and without understanding from the others, an abyss of mute embarrassment. And that possibility struck Perlmann as completely unbearable, when he considered how he could announce it. He couldn’t simply put a piece of paper in his colleagues’ pigeonholes telling them aridly that he would not be providing a contribution, that the sessions assigned to the purpose had been cancelled. Should he add: because with the best will in the world I haven’t been able to think of anything? They would demand an explanation, either explicitly or through their silence. Or should he admit complete failure over dinner, tap his glass and then, with words upon which the very situation would bestow a dreadful and involuntary solemnity, explain that unfortunately he had absolutely nothing more to say in academic terms? Should he perhaps visit the individual colleagues in their rooms and tell them of his incapacity, six times in a row and then a seventh time on the phone to Angelini, who was so keen to come to his session? Perlmann got a dry mouth and walked quickly back to the bow to let the airstream dispel that thought.