Perlmann's Silence (53 page)

When he came out of the bathroom wearing his pyjamas, his eye fell on his light-colored jacket, which they had hung on the back of a chair. It wasn’t only the two strips of dirt above the chest; both sleeves were dirty on the outside, too, just under the elbow. He had propped himself up on the garbage bin. And the hotel folder was missing. Now it was clear once and for all. There was nothing left – nothing – that could still betray him.

At the back of the desk, with one corner under the foot of the lamp, lay a stack of paper. It was the text that he had written in the night.
The trashy text
. That was where they had put it. In whose hand had it been carried up? Silvestri’s? Millar’s? His handwriting on the pages was bigger than usual, the lines jauntier, more expansive. On the last few pages much of the writing was unreadable. Perlmann tore each sheet in two several times and let the bits fall into the waste-paper basket.

Then he lay down in bed. He would have liked to sleep for a year. Silvestri hadn’t found his notes outrageous. Perlmann saw Silvestri’s smile in his mind’s eye when he had spoken of the expectation of the others. That mocking detachment, which needed no spite – Perlmann had never envied anyone anything so fiercely. He tried to imagine his way entirely into that smile – to be someone who could smile about the matter like this. As he did so he slipped, for the first time in days, into a deep, dreamless sleep.

42

It was just before three when the phone woke him. As if he had never experienced such a sensation before, he flinched from the ringing as from a physical assault.
But I don’t need to hide myself away any more. It’s all over.
He picked up the phone and heard Leskov’s voice, far too loud. Could he visit him? Only, of course, if it didn’t disturb him. Perlmann’s head started thumping. His face, still hot with sleep, was filled with a dry, stinging sensation, as if he had been hiking for hours in cold winter air.

‘Are you still there?’ asked Leskov.

Perlmann said he would be glad of a visit. He didn’t know what else he could have said.

The sky was overcast, and a light rain fell from the pale grey.
The second version. The rain falling on the yellow pages.
The journey via Recco and Uscio would take an hour at the most. If he got rid of Leskov quickly, he could be there in time to pick up the pages in daylight. He took the car key out of the pocket of his blazer, and put on his soiled jacket. That way it would be obvious that he was about to leave.

As soon as Leskov had slumped into the red armchair, he took his pipe from his pocket and asked if he could smoke.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Perlmann. He shouldn’t have needed to say it.
I’d rather you didn’t
, he could have said instead. From the mouth of someone in need of care that would have been enough. A few short words. He hadn’t said them. He hadn’t managed to. Now he smelled the sickly sweet tobacco. It would linger everywhere. He would have to smell it for days. He hated this Russian.

He had given them a real fright there, Leskov said. Of course, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of his nausea on the journey and the excitement in the tunnel. The others didn’t know anything about it, incidentally. Last night he’d just said something vague about him not being very well, to explain why Perlmann wasn’t there at dinner. The details, he said with a smile, were no one’s business but his, were they?

The intimacy that Leskov was forcing on him with that remark could not be the intimacy of blackmail, Perlmann knew that, even though his certainty still felt very fresh and slightly unsteady. Nonetheless, it was an unbearable intimacy, and it made Perlmann so furious that he suddenly didn’t care that the rain seemed to be getting heavier.

‘By the way,’ Leskov said, ‘I was told about the reception at the town hall.’ He smiled. ‘So that was your medal and your certificate on the back seat. And now I understand the tie that was lying around as if you’d furiously thrown it into the back. The whole thing must have been incredibly awkward and distasteful to you! We were doubled up with laughter at lunchtime when Achim described the whole scene.’

Leskov was enthusiastic about Perlmann’s text. He had stayed up for a long time last night to read it all the way through. He hadn’t understood absolutely everything; there were a number of English words and phrases that he didn’t know. But both the subjects and the way of addressing them – it had all been surprisingly close to his own work. It was really a shame that Perlmann had found the Russian text too hard. Otherwise he would have recognized how close it was straight away. But he must have understood the title?

Perlmann nodded.

‘We should write a text together one day!’ said Leskov and touched his knee.

At any rate, Perlmann’s text had given Leskov the courage to talk about his own things here. He’d had the jitters a bit. In such illustrious company. He thought it was great that you could be so open here, and there didn’t seem to be any kind of academic straitjacket. If only that terrible slip with his text hadn’t happened. He hurriedly exhaled great clouds of smoke, which condensed more and more in the room into a solid blanket of blue haze that cleaved the whole room at head height.

‘Oh, of course, you couldn’t know anything about that,’ he interrupted himself and gesticulated animatedly. ‘I told you about the second version of my text, and how I nearly left it at home because of that annoying phone call.’ Leskov waited until Perlmann nodded. ‘And now it seems that that’s exactly what happened. Last night, in fact, when I’m coming back from dinner, I reach into the outside pocket of the suitcase, where the text should have been. But there’s nothing there. Nothing at all. Empty.’ Leskov pressed his fists against his temples. ‘It’s a complete mystery to me. I could swear that I put it in there at the last moment. It was the open outside pocket that reminded me of it.’

Perlmann opened the window, leaned out and looked to the north-west. It was lighter in that direction. Maybe it had stayed dry up there.

‘Does the smoke really not bother you?’ Leskov asked.

‘Not at all,’ Perlmann replied into the rain and glanced furtively at his watch. Twenty-five to four.

He had spent half the night puzzling about it, Leskov went on. And from time to time he had had the feeling that his memory of packing the text had really only been a delusion, whose vividness simply expressed the strong desire to have done so.

‘It’s very unpleasant,’ he said, ‘and not only because of the text. It gives me the feeling of no longer being able to rely on myself. Have you ever known anything like that?’

Yes, said Perlmann, awkwardly lighting a cigarette, he did know that feeling.

He was used to reading something whenever he had to wait around, Leskov said thoughtfully. So he had now been wondering whether he might have taken the text out on the journey and left it somewhere. Not in St Petersburg. It had been too hectic for that at the airport. And not on the flight to Moscow, either, where an inebriated war veteran in the next seat had constantly bothered him. At Larissa and Boris’s he had been monopolized by the children the whole time. At the airport in Moscow, perhaps. Or on the plane. Or in Frankfurt, when he’d been waiting for his connecting flight. It was crazy: because there wasn’t a trace of a memory of such an action. He would now have to think of himself as if he were a stranger, from outside, so to speak. And Leskov ardently hoped that he was wrong. Admittedly, his address was written at the end of the text, he did that quite automatically, even with a manuscript. But he didn’t think anyone would take the trouble. Certainly not at Moscow Airport. And in Frankfurt no one would be able to read it. Perhaps Lufthansa would do something if the text were found on the plane. On the other hand: a cleaning crew would simply throw a pile of unreadable pages out with the rest of the rubbish. ‘Or what do you think?’

‘I . . . I don’t know,’ Perlmann said tonelessly.

Leskov paused and looked straight ahead with his eyes slightly narrowed. Perlmann knew what was coming next. There was one more small thing, he went on, that he barely dared to mention, however ludicrous it might seem: a little bit of rubber band had got stuck in the zip of the outside pocket. He couldn’t get that out of his head, because it could mean that he had taken the text out and broken the rubber band with which it was held together. He tapped his forehead with his knuckles. ‘If I only had some kind of memory!’ After a while he opened his eyes and looked at Perlmann, who was staring at the floor. ‘I’m sorry for bothering you with this. In your condition. But you know how much this text matters to me. I’ve already tried to phone friends at home to look in my apartment. But I can’t get through.’ He set his pipe down on the round table and hid his face in his hands. ‘I hope to God it’s there. Otherwise . . . I can’t bring myself to think about it.’

The rain had stopped. Perlmann went to the bathroom and leaned his back against the basin. He was shaking, and his head threatened to explode.
I’ve got to collect the pages. At all costs.
Five past four. If Leskov went soon, he could still do it.
You can even make out these pages in the gloom.
He flushed the toilet. Then he clenched his fists to keep from shaking and went back into the room.

Leskov was standing up. He would have to do some work. There wasn’t much time until his session on Thursday.

‘The text is probably just at home. There isn’t really any other possibility. Otherwise I’d have some kind of memory. Some kind.’

Perlmann couldn’t stand his questioning stare for long, and walked ahead of him to the door. Before he went out, Leskov stopped just in front of him. Perlmann smelled his tobacco breath.

‘Do you think a translator might be found for my text?’ he asked. ‘I’d love you and the others to be able to read it. Especially since I now know your text. Payment would be a problem, I know that.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Perlmann. It took him an enormous effort to close the door quietly.

A little while later Perlmann left the room and, after some hesitation, set off through the hall. There he was intercepted by Maria, who came sniffing out of her office, holding a handkerchief. Was he feeling better? She had heard from Signora Morelli that he had been surprised to find that the text she had finished on Friday had been distributed.

‘Please forgive me if I’ve done something wrong. But when you told me on the phone on Friday that it was urgent, I automatically assumed it was the text for your session, which is why I attached the copying instruction to it. And I think I even added your name.’

The people from Fiat?

‘Oh, them,’ she laughed, and had to blow her nose. ‘I didn’t have a sense that they got a lot of work done. And when I said something about a research group and an important text, Santini immediately waved it through. He’s very patient. He’s often been with people here.’ She rubbed her reddened eyes. ‘They’d said Saturday afternoon would be fine. But then I got the feeling this cold was on the way, and I finished typing the thing on Friday so that I could spend Saturday in bed. Oh, one moment,’ she said, gestured to him to wait and disappeared into the office.

If she hadn’t had a cold, the pigeonholes would have been empty on Saturday morning, and I would have noticed Giovanni’s omission. But if he hadn’t made his mistake, her cold would have saved me.

‘Here,’ Maria said, and handed him the black wax-cloth notebook. ‘I like typing your things up. They’re not as technical as the others, and not as dry. That was true of the other text, the one about memory. And this one here has such an original title. I like it. So are you sure nothing’s gone wrong as far as you’re concerned? Should I perhaps have had the other text printed out and copied again?

‘No, no,’ Perlmann said, and had to fight down the haste in his voice. ‘You did exactly the right thing.
Mille grazie
.’

In daylight, the damage to the Lancia looked very bad. The dark-blue paint was ripped open in several places all along the car. The scrapes went deep into the metal, and the wing had been powerfully crushed next to the headlight on the right-hand side. Perlmann took the tie, medal and certificate from the back seat and put them along with the black notebook in the empty suitcase. Then he set off.

He hadn’t even reached the big jetty when it was clear to him that he wouldn’t manage to do it now. He was shivering with weakness, and his reactions were grotesquely delayed, as if his brain were working in slow motion. Under the stare of a policeman he stopped in a no-parking zone and wiped the sweat from his cold hands.

Just as he was about to turn and drive back, his eye fell on the Hotel Imperiale on the hill. There was something about it. Again his brain made an eerily long pause.
The waiter. I didn’t wait for him. And I didn’t pay. That means bilking on top of everything else.
Compared to everything else this was so preposterous that Perlmann pulled his face into a grin. Very slowly he drove up to the hotel and waited for several minutes outside the gate until even the most distant oncoming traffic had passed.

It was the same waiter. He assessed Perlmann with a dismissive glance. The pale, unshaven face. The soiled jacket. The blood-stained trousers. The unpolished shoes.

‘I forgot to pay yesterday,’ Perlmann said and took a handful of cash from his pocket.

‘We aren’t used to guests like that here,’ the waiter said stiffly.

‘And it isn’t a habit of mine,’ Perlmann said with a weary smile. ‘I think it was a sandwich, a whisky and a mineral water.’