Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

If only he knew what the traffic here was like on working days. The fact that there were only a few cars on the road today – and so far not a single truck – didn’t mean anything. What if there were traffic jams tomorrow, so that it couldn’t be accomplished without putting other people’s lives at risk? But this is the only possibility. And I can’t give it all up. I can’t walk into the university every day as an unmasked fraudster, an ostracized man.

Twenty to five. It was still light down at the coast, but here in the valley it was already starting to darken. They would be here tomorrow around about now. By the time Leskov had got through customs with his luggage it could easily be as late as half-past three. They could drive more briskly than today; there was nothing more to be sought and memorized, and in Genoa there would be far more traffic than today. He had seen that when he was buying his CDs. It would hardly be possible to get here in less than an hour. A shocking, endless hour, during which he would have to talk to Leskov as if everything was fine and he was delighted by his arrival. Before pelting, foot to the floor, into the glowing white headlights of a truck.

More traffic could also be a help, he thought, back behind the wheel. Rather than just driving along the line that you make when overtaking, he could make it look as if he had really been overtaking. That often happened: someone swerving and colliding head-on with the vehicle coming in the opposite direction. To make it believable, the driver of the swerving car would have to have his vision of the oncoming traffic obscured. As the traffic in this instance was a big truck, there couldn’t be a car in front of him. He would have to be driving behind another truck or a bus, then pull out of its wake and on to the other side, at full speed and at precisely the moment when the truck in question appeared. The whole thing would have to be calculated in such a way that the truck or bus driving ahead, if it were to remain unaffected, was already past the oncoming vehicle when the collision took place. No, it couldn’t be a bus, at least not one with passengers. So that’s the last thing I’m going to do in my life: gauge the speed of physical bodies moving towards one another.

He rejected this plan as well. Too many things had to come together: a suitable oncoming truck; another one that he could drive behind for a moment; and an otherwise empty tunnel. This arrangement was far too unlikely; he couldn’t rely on it. There was also the fact that no one actually overtook in a tunnel with oncoming traffic; the double line in the middle of a tunnel was respected even by people who otherwise drove recklessly. It wouldn’t prove anything, but people would still be amazed that Perlmann had been driving like a hooligan.

As at the station three hours previously, he was overpowered for a moment by a numbing indifference. He was tempted simply to drive to the hotel and – without thinking about anything any more – go to bed. In the middle of this weary indifference, which made the world retreat by a few steps and covered it in dull grey, a truck emerged from the tunnel. In an instant Perlmann was wide awake, got out of the car and, resting on the open door, stared spellbound at the vehicle; it was carrying a load of gravel, water trickling from its platform. The front bumper hung down on one side and was fastened provisionally with a piece of rope. It was as if he were hypnotized by the sight of it, and didn’t see the driver waving to him as he drove past. Then he watched after the damp trail and tried to become aware of the perception that was beginning to torment him. The gas tank . On this rickety old truck it was right at the front – the filler neck was just past the front wheel – and it had looked as if the tank behind the wheel was even further forwards. A vehicle like that would immediately go up in flames; it would be certain death for the driver.

It had been at the harbor, on Friday, when he had seen all the trucks waiting for the unloaded goods. It must have been around the spot where he had seen the freshly laid tarmac leading to the harbor area. There he could check that in modern vehicles the tank was set further back and better protected. But he couldn’t leave this place before he was completely clear about the whole progress of the faked accident, the last movements that he would execute in his life. He got back into the car, slid the window closed and switched on the air heater. He quickly turned off the music on the radio when he felt the tears coming. Someone planning the things that he was had forfeited the right to music, and also to tears.

He stared out into the dusk, where the contrast in light between the inside of the tunnel and the world outside was slowly weakening. Yes, that was it: at first he would drive quite normally towards the approaching truck and then, still two or three hundred meters away from it, start to careen inside the empty tunnel, so that the driver and the police would have to assume there was suddenly something wrong with his steering wheel. Regardless of whether the driver tried to avoid him, or whether he simply braked: with a last swerve he would aim the Lancia straight at the truck’s radiator. The autopsy would eliminate a suspicion of alcohol.

But in this variant, too, wouldn’t Leskov grab the wheel? Was that something a person who didn’t drive himself would do? He would do it when he recognized Perlmann’s intention; it would be like a reflex. But he wouldn’t do it if Perlmann acted as if the steering had failed – if he behaved as if he were convulsively trying to bring the car under control. He would have to underline it with a desperate remark, with a curse. He ran through a few in his mind. So the last scene of my life will be theater, a cheap deception, a farce . At this thought he had the impression for a moment that the worst thing about his plan was not its recklessness and its cold ruthlessness, not even its brutality, but the terrible shabbiness of its treatment of a man who had been in prison, who had had to live in much harsher conditions than he did, and who was now, for the first time and with great expectations, travelling to meet admiring colleagues in the West.

Perlmann wished he could do it right now and get the whole thing over with. But first of all there was dinner to get through, and this time it wouldn’t be enough just to let it wash over him in silence. Because of the reception tomorrow, Angelini would be there, too. They would talk about Leskov, and now that his arrival was imminent the others would want to know more than they had before, when the only issue was his refusal. Perlmann would have to provide information in a natural, unforced way, because this was a conversation that the others would remember when news of the accident came in. The impression he left behind would have to be such that every individual, if he were to secretly suspect, would say to himself: No, that’s impossible. He couldn’t have talked about Leskov like that yesterday evening.

And then the ceremony in the town hall at which Perlmann – on his way to a terrible deed – would be made an honorary citizen of the town. He would be deluged with quivering rage, mixed with nausea, a rage directed at Carlo Angelini, who had caught him unawares and thus brought him to a state of fatal affliction, and who had now, to crown it all, organized this ludicrous ritual, this empty shell of exaggerated politeness, this conventional nothingness. Perlmann saw him in his mind’s eye, the slim Italian in the tailored jacket, his tie in a skilfully loose knot. Angelini’s whole manner and appearance, which Perlmann had secretly envied, now struck him as smarmy, pomaded and repellent. He gripped the steering wheel hard and banged his forehead against it until his own hooting brought him back to his senses.