Pascal Mercier - Perlmann's Silence

A policeman with a radio came around the corner and walked along the queue of cars that was moving at a walking pace. Perlmann gave a start, and when the policeman, a giant with long sideburns, suddenly stopped, looked at the Lancia and then walked straight over to him, his heart pounded and his mouth turned dry. The giant gestured to him to lower his window. Twice Perlmann pressed the wrong button with his damp fingers, and he felt that as long as he had lived, no face had ever come as close to him as this big, dark face behind the glass.

‘Your lights are on,’ the giant said in a friendly voice.

‘Oh, yes, mille grazie ,’ Perlmann stammered solicitously.

A moment later the traffic started flowing again. The turn-off by the bakery wasn’t a problem, because another policeman was pointing the way to the line of traffic, and, of course, the third turn-off was at the big square with the column.

Perlmann relaxed. For a few moments he enjoyed the feeling, and leaned back in his seat. Then he started. It was a sensation like twitching awake from half-sleep from no outward cause: how could he relax, when he was driving to his death?

While Leskov was talking about the delays and the chaos at Moscow Airport and blowing clouds of his sickly sweet tobacco towards the windscreen, the underpass came into view. Perlmann was about to get into the left-hand lane, when a Jaguar came hurtling up from behind and forced him back. He came very close to losing his nerve. Suddenly, all his anxiety and despair discharged themselves, flowing into a boiling-hot, overwhelming desire to pull the steering wheel round and crash with all his might into that dark-red, gleaming bodywork. For God’s sake, let’s not have an accident now. The warning came from a long way away, and its power seemed to be hampered by that distance, but Perlmann clung firmly to it with what remained of his will and braked hard, so that Leskov tipped forward again, and when the Jaguar was past, just before the concrete plinth that marked the start of the underpass, Perlmann slipped across on to the cobblestones. He immediately put his foot on the accelerator again and asked Leskov, whose hand was now on the door handle, what changing at Frankfurt had been like.

Difficult, he said. And he’d got lost. ‘There are these endless corridors. You have the feeling you’re never going to arrive.’

‘I know the airport,’ said Perlmann. He no longer had the strength to conceal his irritation.

It was twenty past four when they reached the river and drove through Molassana. Half-past four, that was just an approximate time, it could vary, and besides, it’s the start of the week, perhaps the carriers are more active then.

When the climb began, Leskov asked, after a pause, when they were going to get to the coast road. ‘There is one, isn’t there?’

Perlmann took the cigarette lighter, which had just clicked, out of its holder and held it to the tobacco for a long time. As he put it back in, he slowly blew the smoke out through his nose.

‘Yes,’ he said with a calm that had an underlying vibration, ‘there is a coast road. But it’s closed at the moment because of a serious accident. The report was on the radio. So I’m driving around the back, through the mountains.’

His words came fluently. They sounded a bit as if he were reading them out. Now he simply summoned them up from his memory after formulating them over and over again on the way to the airport, making sure that they sounded neither noticeably curt nor unnecessarily long.

‘Ah,’ said Leskov, disappointed. ‘And the highway? A moment ago we drove past some green signs that said Autostrada.’

‘The traffic’s terrible at this time of day,’ Perlmann said and breathed quietly. It was over now. It was twenty-eight minutes past four.

Trucks were still coming towards them. Perlmann started staring at their bumpers. When they drove past, he quickly turned his head and looked for the gas tank. Unable to resist, he slipped further and further into the state of mind in which he had run his hand along the damp bumpers the previous evening, in the red fog of the harbor, and, after a while, he felt last night’s dream images forcing their way into his consciousness.

‘Have you had a chance to take a look at my paper?’ Leskov asked all of a sudden. His voice had changed. It contained a note of anxious expectation, bordering on submissiveness.

Perlmann wasn’t prepared for the question. It was unbearable, absolutely impossible, in fact, to talk to Leskov about that disastrous text, which had destroyed everything, and which would in a few minutes kill them both. It was a thought so unendurable, so far beyond his powers, that Perlmann crouched behind the wheel as if paralyzed, and glared through the red of the fog in his imagination at the bumper of the next truck that was coming towards them, high and white. In a few minutes it will all be over . He clung to that desperate thought as – the truck had passed them – he sat up again in his seat and said, ‘I started it, but couldn’t get beyond the first few sentences. I had to set the paper aside. It’s still too hard for me. Maybe I’ll try again later.’

‘But then you won’t be reading that first version, but the new one,’ said Leskov, whose voice seemed to have regained some of its self-confidence. ‘I’ve fundamentally reworked the text over the past few months. It’s much better now. It’s actually a totally new paper. When I cast my eye over the first version recently, it struck me as terribly primitive and confused. I can throw that one away now! I’m just glad I didn’t hand in that text. The new paper is the best, the most self-contained that I’ve ever managed to write. One should be careful with the word original : but I think there are a few things about it that really are original. At any rate I have the feeling that it’s come entirely from myself. I’m really a little bit proud of it. And I also hope that this work will finally get me a post. There is one free at the moment, as a matter of fact.’ He had the text with him, and would report on it to the group. Unfortunately, he had only his hand-written version, which was far too confusing to be copied, and unreadable to anyone else. As soon as he had transcribed it, he would send Perlmann a copy straight away. ‘I’m quite sure,’ he said with playful impudence, touching Perlmann on the arm, ‘that you’ll understand this paper. If you just take the time!’

Perlmann felt ill, and his stomach cramp had returned. Again he had that sensation of diarrhea. He switched gear. His body had reacted faster than his mind. Only now, in fact, did he begin to grasp the nature of the shock that Leskov’s words had provoked in him: if the car didn’t burn up completely, the text in question, back in the trunk, would survive the collision. It would be found, and then there was the possibility that the deception would be discovered – with all the consequences that that might have, not least for the explanation of the apparent accident. Even the changes in the second version could not keep that from happening. Certainly, he said to himself once again, no one in the hotel spoke Russian. But if the belongings of the deceased were in the hotel after they had been identified, it was quite possible that both texts, the Russian and the English, would end up in the same room, perhaps even on the same table, side by side, page by page. And the mere possibility, the mere thought, that someone with a command of both languages might approach that table brought him out in a cold sweat.

Before they reached the tunnel there was another gas station. Perlmann would have to get rid of Leskov’s manuscript there; sheltered by the open lid of the trunk he would quickly have to take it out of the suitcase, hide it behind something and drive on straight away.