Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

The carabinieri would have to find something in Perlmann’s wallet to show that he had been staying at the Miramare. Unless the car went up in flames. It was the first time that Perlmann thought of the possibility of burning to death at the wheel, and he started perspiring with terror at the idea that the flames might engulf him when he wasn’t even dead, perhaps only unconscious. He was relieved that the sound of the arriving train tore him away from that idea.

The rhythmical knocking of the wheels did him good; it gave him the feeling that everything was still in suspension. He was free and could at any time revoke his desperate decision. He would have loved to be carried along by that knocking for ever, and was annoyed that he had taken a slow train that stopped at every station. When the knocking started again after a halt, and grew faster again, he managed to escape for a few minutes into the thought that things weren’t that bad, it was just a text, after all, a few written pages – that couldn’t possibly be a reason to put a violent end to everything. But then, when the train stopped again, he was seized once more with horror at the idea of having to live through the discovery of his plagiarism and the ostracism that it would entail, minute by minute, hour by hour, until the end of his life. When an old woman in a black crocheted headscarf sat down opposite him in Nervi, made a friendly remark and gave him a maternal smile, he got up without a word and went to another compartment where the seats were free.

The worst of it was that because it was supposed to look like an accident he couldn’t sort anything out before his death. There were people he would have liked to say something to. Kirsten above all, even though the right sentences wouldn’t come to mind. He would have liked to see Hanna again, too. He owed her an explanation for that sudden ghostly phone call in which he hadn’t asked her a single thing about her own life. He tried to imagine what she must look like now. He saw that flat face in front of him, framed in her blonde hair with the single dark strand, but her face remained frozen in the past, and refused to develop through the three decades that had passed in the meantime.

He would have liked to walk through his bright Frankfurt apartment again, sit down at his desk for one last time and look, for one last time, at Agnes’s photographs. And then his diaries. He wished he still had the chance to destroy them. This way, Kirsten would find them now. He tried in vain to remember what was actually in them. He fervently hoped he was mistaken, but when he stepped on to the platform in Genoa, he had the oppressive feeling that he was leaving behind a big pile of kitsch.

He went out into the station portico, had to put off a number of taxi drivers and finally found a quiet corner. He would take the smallest car they had, one with a short hood and no crumple zones. So that it would happen quickly and he could be sure that it would work. Suddenly, he felt he was having an attack of diarrhea and ran to the toilet. It was a false alarm. His heart was pounding in his throat when he went back to the car rental company’s counter. He stopped in a corner and forced himself to breathe calmly. Renting the car, in itself, didn’t force him into anything. He could always bring it back as if nothing had happened. He had to utter that thought out loud to himself a few times, slowly and with great concentration, before he managed to contain his excitement, and he had a sense that he could be sure of his voice.

The counters of all three companies were closed. He hadn’t expected that, and he hadn’t noticed before, even though they were all right in front of his nose as he stepped out. For a few minutes he just stood there, his hands in his trouser pockets, and gazed into the void. Then he slowly walked over to the timetable and checked when the next train left for Santa Margherita. On the way to the platform he paused abruptly, bit his lip and then walked back to the taxis.

‘Here you are, after all,’ grinned the driver he had turned away before.

Perlmann slammed the car door shut. ‘To the airport,’ he said in a tone that made the driver turn round and look at him in amazement before he drove off.

‘I’m sorry, Signore,’ said the Avis lady, with bright make-up and a red dress, ‘but we just have one car free, a big Lancia. All the others are out until the middle of the week. There’s a big industrial fair in the city.’

‘If that’s the case,’ Perlmann said irritably, fighting down his mounting hysteria, ‘then why is your counter at the station closed, and why are the other companies here closed as well?’

‘That, Signore, I can’t tell you,’ the hostess snapped back and turned her attention to her computer.

Perlmann looked at his watch: half-past eleven. In five hours it would be dusk, and it could take a long time before he had found a suitable location.

‘All right, I’ll take it,’ he said.

The hostess took her time before starting to fill in the form. How long did he want to rent the car for?

The question took Perlmann aback, as if he had been asked something obscene. That he was being asked for information that extended beyond his death and was hence without any significance for him once again made him keenly aware how deep the gulf had become between his private time, which was about to come to an end, and public time, the time of contracts and money, that would go on for ever.

‘For two days,’ he said hoarsely.

Would he be bringing it back tomorrow evening?

It was far too long before he finally, without any reason and with the feeling of saying something completely random, opted for a ‘yes’, and the hostess was visibly surprised at how little this customer, who had seemed so arrogant only a few moments before, seemed to know about his own plans.

What insurance did he want to take out? Did he want to include fully comprehensive cover?

‘The usual,’ Perlmann said tonelessly.

‘I’m sorry?’ the hostess asked, not trying to conceal her impatience.

‘The usual,’ Perlmann repeated with forced firmness, and had the feeling that she must be able to see how his face was burning. In the worst case, then, the police would be able to get to the hotel via his licence and Avis, he thought, when the hostess finally entered his local address.

As he walked towards the exit he stopped in front of the monitor showing the arriving flights. The last one currently on the list was coming from Paris and was supposed to be landing at five to three. It didn’t matter in the slightest, he said to himself, where Leskov’s flight came from. There was, of course, no direct flight to here, but it really couldn’t have mattered less where Leskov changed. And the plane that he took tomorrow wouldn’t necessarily be a daily flight. Nonetheless, Perlmann stopped, smoked, and stared fixedly at the flickering screen. And when he had stamped out his second cigarette and looked up again, the flight was there: AZ 00423, 15.05 from Frankfurt.

For a moment Perlmann saw Leskov flailing and snorting his way through Frankfurt Airport in the threadbare loden coat that he had worn before. It was childish and, in his situation, grotesque, Perlmann thought, but the possibility of Leskov changing at his, Perlmann’s, airport enraged him, and he felt as if Leskov were violating his personal sphere. Irritated, he dismissed the image and went outside to the parking lot.

As he got into the long, dark-blue limousine, his eye immediately fell on the handbrake. In this car it was unusually far over towards the passenger seat. So, he would inevitably have to touch Leskov’s broad body when he freed the lever over the abyss. It gave him a feeling of helplessness that this idea held him prisoner for a moment, even though it was obsolete and no longer had any practical significance. In the end he managed to shake it off, and he unfolded the map.