Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

Now that he had only a few hours left to live, everything was different. The delicate operation of finding one’s way through an imagined present into the real one could only happen if one had an open future ahead of one, into which one could recast oneself. But he knew all about a stiflingly cramped and inexorably shrinking future. He could have written down the whole sequence of events still to come, to the smallest detail, so the hour left until his departure was nothing but an abstract, pallid piece of time, marked by an unshakeable, unswayable dimension of the physical world in which one could observe how the sun rose, and in which one could count how often someone beeped their horn down on the coast road.

It isn’t boredom, for God’s sake; no, it can’t be boredom. And it wasn’t, he thought with relief. It was quite different from being in bed, back then, with camomile tea, poultices and yet again the same picture book. Because what made this waiting here so terribly lifeless wasn’t a hindrance, a limitation, a lack of opportunity. It was an inner rigidity that he was trying without success to loosen, until he understood at last that it was the only thing that protected him from the horror which was – silent, high and blinding – hurtling towards him from the tunnel.

Eventually, he got up, fetched two packs of cigarettes from the cupboard and put them in his pocket. Later he went into the bathroom and washed his hands. As he dried them, he paused all of a sudden, and began to pull his wedding ring from his right hand. In spite of the soap that he used, it was difficult and painful. He turned the ring irresolutely around between his fingers, then put it in the suitcase with his valuables. Kirsten would find it, and he was sure her thoughts would turn to Evelyn Mistral. That wasn’t something he didn’t care about; but he felt the thought of others losing its influence hour by hour, and now he was plainly freeing himself from his daughter as well.

Just before half-past ten he carried the suitcase to the door. Then he went slowly through the room. He stopped before the desk and shifted the piece of paper with Kirsten’s phone number to the middle of the glass plate. After scrutinizing it for a moment he pushed it into the lower right, then the top corner. He fetched the red lighter from the round table and set it down next to it. He had already turned to the door, when he turned round, put the lighter back on the round table and shoved it with a finger until its position looked random enough.

From the door he glanced once again through the room. Only then did he notice the white paper edge peeping out from under the overhanging bedcover. It was a torn and crumpled page of the Russian text. Perlmann threw up the cover, fell on his knees and checked everything. Again and again his eye ran over the whole surface under the bed, as if a new sheet might suddenly materialize. At last he pulled the cover over, stuffed the sheet into the suitcase and waited until his pulse had calmed down. Then he went out without looking back.

In the hall Brian Millar came up to him, having just finished a conversation with Signora Morelli. He was wearing his dark blue double-breasted suit and the tie with the embroidered anchor. His face and movements bore an organizer’s zeal.

‘Have you thought of leaving a copy of your text in Leskov’s pigeonhole?’ he asked, with his eyebrows raised, and in the reproachful tone of someone who is sure of getting a negative reply.

Perlmann was bracing himself, as usual, to struggle against his fear of Millar. But now, all of a sudden, there was something of the detachment from things for which he had previously waited in vain. For three or four seconds he managed not to react at all, and to stare past Millar to the door. He enjoyed the absence of any kind of fear and any temptation to solicitude. Then he looked into those blue eyes, which already contained a hint of irritation, waited for another two or three seconds and then said with cool indifference, ‘No, that hadn’t occurred to me.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Millar, in a voice in which Perlmann thought he heard a trace of puzzlement and even uncertainty. Perlmann had never responded to him like that in the whole four weeks.

‘I gave Signora Morelli my own copy of the text so that she could do it. It’ll be nicer if Leskov has the text given to him as soon as he arrives. A question of style.’

‘OK,’ said Perlmann. He left Millar standing there and walked to the counter, where he handed Signora Morelli the key to his room. He was the only one who noticed that the gesture was performed more slowly and deliberately than usual, because before it was concluded the phone rang.

He stopped on the terrace of the steps and put on his sunglasses. No more fear of Millar, and a lack of the subservience that he usually struggled to conquer – so that was what he had gained by deciding to die. He lit a cigarette and walked slowly over to the Lancia. He wanted to savor the experience he had just had. He set the suitcase down on the back seat and then sat still behind the wheel for a while.

It was a moment of presence – or it could have been if it had belonged to a life with a future, a life with expectations, hopes and plans. Here at this gas station, with his hand on the ignition, with which he would later carry out his crime, Perlmann understood for the first time how completely the capacity for internal delineation from other people was dependent upon the experience of presence. With an exaggerated sense of clarity that almost made him dizzy, he understood that his repeatedly failed attempts at delineation and the constantly retreating present were two facets of a single difficulty which ran like a thread through his life and had turned him into a person who, even in the quietest phases of his life – and even without his really noticing – was always out of breath. And with the same clarity he saw that the thought of imminent death made delineation possible and thus created the precondition for an experienced present, but at the same time robbed him of the future and created the awareness of a guilt in which all experience was frozen.

As he drove out into the coast road, the others were all coming down the steps. Only Angelini was not among them.

‘Perlmann!’ called von Levetzov, who was wearing, with his dark suit, a grey waistcoat that gave him a distinguished appearance.

Perlmann had automatically looked over at him, and now it was impossible simply to go on driving. He stopped.

‘Nice car,’ said Millar, running his fingertips over the gleaming fender. Ignoring the honking cars, he walked around the car with the face of an expert, and then looked at Perlmann with an expression in which surprise, curiosity and acknowledgement flowed into one another. Now this murder weapon, which was forced upon me because of the industrial fair, also turns me into a man of style.

‘The dirt on the tires doesn’t fit, though,’ grinned Ruge, who was wearing his brown suit with an open shirt even for this occasion. He got into the back.

‘It’s fine,’ he said, as Perlmann prepared to move the suitcase and put it in the trunk. ‘It’s even quite comfortable,’ he added, and rested his elbow on it. Nothing would happen, even if he looked in. He can’t speak Russian. No one here can speak Russian .

When Millar and von Levetzov had got in as well, Perlmann automatically fastened his seatbelt and started the engine. The click of the belt as it fastened made Millar, who was sitting next to him, reach for his own. He tugged twice, and when the belt didn’t yield, he half-turned on his seat and tugged with both hands. Perlmann held his breath. He became aware of his injured finger and noticed that his other hand, which was moving the gearstick back and forth in neutral, was drenched in sweat.