Perlmann's Silence (45 page)

36

He was wearing the same worn-out loden coat as the last time, and looked even broader and more shapeless than Perlmann remembered. In one hand he was carrying a big, antediluvian-looking suitcase of a pallid, stained brown that made it look as if it were made of cardboard. The other hand held a small suitcase with an outside pocket. Leskov stopped and looked uncertainly around through his thick glasses, bent slightly forward because of his heavy case. Perlmann felt as if he were shivering with cold when he saw him standing like that. Over the past few weeks Leskov had been the invisible author of a text, a voice without physical presence, which Perlmann had liked and admired more and more as the translation had progressed, and with whose haunting tone he had temporarily been able to identify. Now he stood there, a lost-looking man with an untidy, sweaty fringe of hair around his bald pate, and greying stubble, and with the tip of his tongue wedged between his teeth in tense expectation. Perlmann found him repellent. There was also something ludicrously dramatic about the sight of him. But those feelings did nothing to mitigate the thought that swept over him, that that physically present man over there who now, rather than putting down his suitcase, was standing there, legs apart, shifting his weight, was the man he was to kill.

Perlmann pushed his way through the group of waiting people, and then walked stiffly towards Leskov, his hands in his trouser pockets. When Leskov saw him, his whole face lit up. He set down his luggage and spread his arms. Earlier than necessary, Perlmann took his right hand out of his pocket and took his last steps with his arm outstretched. His face was devoid of feeling, and refused to obey him. The only thing he was able to muster was a gaze aimed rigidly at the open collar of Leskov’s red-and-blue checked shirt. Leskov ignored the outstretched hand, grabbed him by the shoulders with both hands and wrapped him silently in his arms, burying Perlmann’s formal ‘Hello’ beneath him.

He smelled of sickly sweet tobacco and sweat. Perlmann stiffened when Leskov pressed him firmly to him, and wished he could shrink away quite quickly. But Leskov mustn’t notice that he was disgusted by him, so Perlmann hesitantly put his arms around him and hugged him briefly and lightly. When he tried to break away from the embrace, Leskov went on holding him tight, and Perlmann felt like shoving him away with all his strength. At last Leskov let go, too, and now, with a guilty conscience, Perlmann gripped him by the upper arms and moved his hands up and down, as if stroking him. It was a mechanical gesture, hollow and empty, and yet it was a mockery, Perlmann felt, and wanted to sink into the ground.

‘Philipp,’ said Leskov, pausing dramatically, ‘it’s wonderful to see you again! Fantastic! You can’t imagine how glad I am!’

‘Yes,’ was all that Perlmann could force out. He could only endure Leskov’s gaze for one or two seconds, then he bent industriously for the suitcase and, in his nameless trepidation, it all seemed entirely unreal to him, as if it were not really happening; as if it were just a possibility, a scene in his imagination.

‘Wait, please,’ said Leskov when Perlmann hurried ahead with the suitcase as if they had to catch a waiting train. ‘I would like to change some money.’ He awkwardly took his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a fifty dollar note. ‘I haven’t got much,’ he said with an embarrassed smile, ‘but I quickly managed to rustle this together and would like to change it straight away.’

In his obsessively detailed fantasy, Perlmann had imagined everything in the tiniest detail. He had tried to calculate every individual step, to master every factor so as to leave as little as possible to chance. There was only one thing he hadn’t thought about: that Leskov was a flesh-and-blood human being with his own will and pride. In Perlmann’s fantasy, Leskov had been a figure with a particular appearance, with a past and, of course, with a scholarly voice; also a figure which, in quite general and abstract terms, behaved like a human being in such a way that it could broadly be predicted – but again, merely a figure that could be shoved back and forth by the imagination, a creature without the particular, surprising and stubborn desires and preferences that constituted the resistance, independence and autonomy of a human being.

Very slowly Perlmann set the suitcase down, breathed out and stayed bent for longer than usual, his eyes closed. It was a good thing that he was facing the door and Leskov couldn’t see his face. By the time he stood up and turned round, Perlmann had regained his composure. Over by the bureau de change the fourth traveller was about to join the line. But it wasn’t just a waste of time. Much worse was the fact that the changing of money was preparation for an open, expectant future, which, for Leskov, who had followed Perlmann’s eye and was already taking his first step, would last no more than a single hour.

‘That isn’t necessary,’ said Perlmann, and he was relieved that only the first word had sounded hoarse. ‘There are expenses waiting at the hotel.’

Leskov hesitated and looked down at the bill. ‘I like to have my own money,’ he said with an apologetic smile that also contained a hint of firmness. ‘And it won’t take long,’ he added, pointing to the first of the four travellers, who was just leaving the counter.

‘But it really isn’t necessary,’ Perlmann repeated with uncontrolled sharpness. ‘And anyway, they can change money at exactly the same rate in the hotel,’ he added in a conciliatory voice and made a gesture that dismissed everything as barely worth mentioning. Then, without waiting for any further reaction from Leskov, he took the case and went through the door, which, without turning round, he held open for Leskov until he had no option but to follow him.

Only now, when he saw the kiosk with the cash desk, did Perlmann remember his parking fee.
What an idiot I am. Then at least he would have had some money.
He walked to the counter and pushed the parking ticket under the sliding window. Inside, deafening rock music came from a transistor radio. A man with a red peaked cap looked at him vacantly and waited.

‘How much?’ yelled Perlmann and bent down to the opening.

Without turning his head, the man pointed to the display:
1000 L
. Perlmann pretended to look for his wallet, reached into both sides of his blazer, then tapped his pockets and finally pulled out the 600 lire note, which he pushed at the man.

‘That’s all I have on me,’ he shouted, his lips right next to the glass. ‘I’ve forgotten my wallet.

The man with the red cap had now half-closed his eyes, and pointed again at the display, no longer moving his whole arm, just making an infuriatingly abrupt, jerky motion from the wrist.

When Perlmann felt his face turning red with annoyance, and he sat up without having the faintest idea what to do now, Leskov touched his arm and held out, with a grin that revealed a small triumph, a 2,000 lire note in front of his nose, mended in the middle with Sellotape. ‘A souvenir that my brother-in-law gave me.’

Without a word, Perlmann took the note and waited, bobbing impatiently up and down, until the man with the cap, who was now whistling along with the tune, pushed his change towards him. He held the 1,600 lire out to Leskov. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said stiffly, ‘the rest later.’ He had been late this afternoon, and in his haste he had left his wallet in the hotel.

But Leskov waved the money away. Plainly it was hardly worth anything, he laughed.

As Perlmann put the bags in the trunk and straightened the panel that covered the spare wheel, which had slipped a little from where the books had been taken out, Leskov took off his coat and looked round. The light, he said, holding his hand as a screen over his eyes, he had never seen such a light before. ‘
Kakoi svet!
’ As a student he had once been in the south, in Gruzia, but that was a long time ago, and he didn’t think the light had been as intense there.

‘Not as
siyayushcy
. It hadn’t illuminated itself so powerfully as it does here. But at the same time this light here isn’t . . . what do you say, harsh?’

‘Yes,’ said Perlmann, turning the two cases round again for no reason.

Now Leskov stared across to the purple mountains and the brown haze, which looked like a sandstorm.

‘As it lies there in this light,’ he said dreamily, ‘
Genuya
has something about it of an oriental city, a city in the desert.’

Perlmann had known that the coming hour would be difficult. Terribly difficult. More difficult than anything ever before. And that it would seem endless to him. He had told himself that repeatedly yesterday, and had tried to arm himself. And yet, he now thought as he got in, he had had no idea how great the pain would be. First the macabre irony that he was dependent on Leskov’s money to be able to embark on the fatal, murderous journey. Then Leskov’s precise perception of the southern light and his joy. And now this statement about the city, which was exactly what he had thought himself when he had seen Genoa from the ship on Friday. The harmony of their perceptions abolished the distance that Leskov’s repellent appearance had helped to create, and when he stuck the key in the ignition Perlmann had to tell himself inwardly to be able to continue:
He alone would unmask me. Through him I would become an ostracized man, an outcast. There is no other solution. I’ve thought about it long enough.

As he turned on the ignition the clock lit up: twenty to four. Puffing, Leskov sank into his seat and rested his hands in his lap. He showed no intention of fastening his seatbelt, but sat on the elegant, light-grey leather upholstery as if in an armchair in a club. Perlmann felt himself looking at him, and couldn’t help turning his head as well. It would have been the moment to say how lovely it was that he had been able to come after all, before adding, ‘Tell me!’ Instead, Perlmann turned his eyes away again. For a fraction of a second he felt an impulse to reach for the seatbelt, but stayed his hand, which had been moving to the left instead of forwards to the ignition, just in time.
Don’t do that now, or he’ll try it as well
. Relieved that he had noticed in time, Perlmann gripped the ignition key and turned it. Immediately a high, penetrating sound rang out, which acted on Perlmann like an electric shock and for a moment disconcerted him completely.
The unfastened belt signal. Of course, they have that in cars like this. Oh my God, I’ll have to do it with this terrible noise going on.
His sleeve caught on the light-switch before he finally turned off the ignition again. Moving as economically as he could muster, he pulled the belt across his body and very carefully snapped it shut. He did so with the gentleness of someone who doesn’t want to wake a child. For one terrified moment he waited.

‘Incredible, this light,’ said Leskov.

Perlmann set off as if they were sitting in a porcelain box. After a while he really put his foot down.

Yes, said Leskov, it had all come as quite a surprise. His mother had died ten days before, not entirely unexpectedly after her illness, but much more quickly than might have been supposed. Larissa, his sister, who had come from Moscow, had urged him, when he had mentioned Perlmann’s invitation, to reapply for his exit permit. That urging, he added, probably had something to do with Larissa’s bad conscience: since she had moved to Moscow after her marriage, he had had to look after his mother all by himself.

In Perlmann’s imagination, the man next to him had been someone who looked after his mother, but who otherwise stood all on his own and had no one else who would miss him. Everything that Leskov said about his sister now, awkwardly and in a loving voice, tightened Perlmann’s throat. With each new character trait that became visible in Larissa, the invisible rope tightened further. Slowly and inconspicuously, he took a deep breath and tried to free himself by directing his attention at objects by the side of the road which had no significance for his driving.

The traffic grew denser, and two motorcycles that overtook him dangerously, and which he had to avoid, helped him to ignore the words beside him. Leskov had no sense whatsoever that someone behind a steering wheel had to pay attention to the traffic, and talked nineteen to the dozen. And then the rusty shutters of the first ironmonger’s shop had come into view. Perlmann felt his back and neck tensing up.
Absolutely not the first one.
With cold hands he strengthened his grip on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead with great concentration so as not to miss the second.