Perlmann's Silence (63 page)

In the middle of Leskov’s surname he paused. There were various conventions of transcription. Particularly with the sibilants, with which the address was swarming, and that was particularly aggravating. What system had Leskov used when he had written his address out again for Perlmann on that draughty street corner? If he made a mistake now, he would end up with a sequence of Russian letters that was different from the ones Leskov had written under his text. The postal service would probably manage anyway. But for Leskov it would be one more incongruity: why had the Russian-reading employee in Frankfurt made so many mistakes when all he had to do was copy out the address? And if he thought about it for long enough . . .

Perlmann wrote over the line with the felt-tip pen until all that could be seen was a block of opaque black. Then he put the envelope in the suitcase and set it out ready for tomorrow.

52

Laura Sand was holding the chronicle as she waited for him in the hall. Her face lacked its usual shadow of rage.

‘I’m sorry about what I said,’ she said. ‘It was completely superfluous. And that
Love Party
thing is actually quite witty.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Perlmann, but wished it hadn’t sounded so irritable. You would have to consider someone unstable, even vulnerable, to apologize for such a harmless joke. Without another word, he took the chronicle from her and asked Signora Morelli, who was staring at the envelope with great curiosity, to look after it until afterwards.

Was he mistaken, or were the others treating him indulgently and attentively as one might treat a convalescent – just as they had two evenings before? It was striking how quickly Evelyn Mistral drew back her hand when they both reached for the salt at the same time. And was there not a new veil of self-consciousness over her smile?

‘Maybe it’s not a bad idea to give a chronicle this sort of packaging,’ said von Levetzov as their eyes met. ‘And actually these are the things you really remember.’

‘And no one reads serious stuff anyway – far too dry,’ grinned Ruge.

Again Perlmann saw the others, doubled up with laughter when he wasn’t there. He looked at his plate and choked down his food, even though his lunch from the trattoria still lay heavy in his stomach.
Just this one hour. It could be even less. And tomorrow the goodbyes. It will be quite different in Ivrea. Freer. Much freer.

When the waiter had served dessert, Brian Millar tapped his glass. Perlmann gave a start. A speech to which he would have to react. It caught him entirely unawares. As if he had never before experienced such a thing. He thought back to the first session in the veranda, when he had feverishly thought about what his subject should be.

They had been wonderful weeks, said Millar. The intense exchange of ideas. The collegial, even friendly atmosphere. The excellent hotel. The magical town.

‘On behalf of us all, I would like to thank you, Phil.’ He raised his glass. ‘You did a great job. And we all know how much work it was for you. We hope you got something out of it yourself – in spite of your difficult situation.’

Just don’t say anything that might sound like an apology
, thought Perlmann as he lit a cigarette to occupy his hands during the prolonged applause. He pushed back his chair, crossed his legs and was about to start his answer, when Leskov got to his feet with a groan.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to be here for long, Leskov said solemnly, but they had been unforgettable days for him. He had never made so many friends all at once, or learned so much in such a short time. He was an outsider, not to say an eccentric, he smiled. All the more because of that he wanted to thank them for their kindness and the consideration they had shown him. He looked at Ruge. ‘Even if I have made some assertions that must have sounded quite crazy.’ Ruge grinned. But most of all he would like to thank his friend Philipp. ‘He invited me without knowing much about me. After a conversation in the course of which he – as I have discovered here – understood my train of thought better than anyone else before – almost better than I do myself. It was fantastic to experience this trust and sympathy. I will never forget them.’ He pressed his hands together and made the gesture of thanks.

He, too, had got a lot out of his stay, Perlmann began. Much more than he had been able to show. A very great deal more. To some people it must sometimes have seemed as if he were engaged in a feud with his subject. But precisely the opposite was the case.

Perlmann realized with horror that he could no longer stop what was about to come. He spoke very calmly and even slipped into a thoughtful pose. But at the same time he clutched with his left hand, which was threatening to tremble, the wrist of his right, which lay on his knee.

Recently, in fact, he said, he had been writing a book on the principles of linguistics. Millar and von Levetzov raised their eyebrows at almost the same time, and Ruge reached for the mended arm of his glasses. His work on it had brought him to increasingly fundamental issues such as this: how the central questions of the discipline had come about in the first place; how one could distinguish questions that could open something up from erroneous questions; what it was that linguistics really wanted to understand about language, and in what sense. And so on.

Leskov’s fist was clamped, unmoving, on his unlit pipe. He smiled conspiratorially. The ice cream in the glass bowl in front of him melted.

And one question, Perlmann went on, preoccupied him particularly: whether the subject, as it was currently pursued, could do justice to the eminently important role that language played in the diverse and multi-faceted development of experience. Much of what he had said here had concerned that question, he concluded. And he had often played devil’s advocate. To learn from the others.

‘It has advanced my own work greatly. And for that I should like to thank you all.’

It was still too early to light a cigarette. His hand might tremble. It hadn’t sounded too bad. Even quite convincing. But within the heads of each of those sitting at the table, the same question must have been forming:
Then why didn’t he deliver anything from that book, rather than inflicting that other, weird stuff on us?
With a hasty movement that was supposed to mask the trembling that he feared, Perlmann reached for his cigarettes and then, so that his hands could keep one another calm, he held his lighter as if a storm were sweeping through the dining room. The smoke tasted unfamiliar, as if it wasn’t his brand. He tried frantically to think of the bright office in Ivrea, and even managed to conjure a precise image of the desk. In spite of this he felt ill.

When could one expect the publication of this interesting book, asked von Levetzov, thus seeming to take the words out of Millar’s mouth. He wanted to give himself time, Perlmann answered, and let the ash fall past his knee to the carpet so that he didn’t have to bring his hand to the ashtray. Might the publication of the work discussed here not be the ideal place to introduce his first ideas? von Levetzov asked. When he saw Perlmann’s hesitation, a shadow of suspicion flitted across his face.

‘That publication is firmly planned, isn’t it?’

‘Of course,’ Perlmann heard himself saying. ‘But you know how these things are: sounding out the publishing companies, negotiating – the usual. And I will have to talk to Angelini about finance. Then you will all be hearing from me.’

‘I could imagine my publisher in New York being interested,’ said Millar. ‘Especially in a book like yours. Shall I talk to him?’

Perlmann nodded silently. He had no idea what else he could have done. His cigarette burned his fingers. He dropped it and trod it out on the pale carpet. Leskov drew lines on the table cloth with the handle of his spoon.
He’s thinking about a translation of his text. He’ll ask me again tomorrow.

Signora Morelli appeared and offered them coffee and cognac in the lounge. ‘
L’ultima serata!
’
In the hall, Perlmann turned round and went back to the dining room. He picked up his cigarette butt and wiped the spot with his napkin. It had left a big, black stain. There was only one couple left in the room. They were preoccupied with themselves, and only glanced at him fleetingly.

‘I went outside for a moment,’ said Millar as Perlmann sat down in one of the armchairs in the lounge. ‘Still dry. Now the money can only go to you or Vassily, who guessed it would take an hour.’ He took a 10,000 lire note from his pocket. ‘We could get the jackpot ready now.’ He weighed down the resulting bundle of notes with the ashtray. ‘How long should we keep the bet going on for? Shall we say till midnight?’

53

Perlmann hadn’t known he was going to do it. He only realized at the moment when Millar rested his arms on the arms of the chair and pressed himself backwards in preparation for standing up. It was almost as if Perlmann were being pushed by an invisible force that knew more about him than he did about himself. With a single movement he was on his feet, and walked quickly to the grand piano. Before he sat down, he screened his hands with his body and pulled the bandage from his finger. As he lifted up the lid, from the corner of his eye he saw Millar slipping back from the edge of his chair.

Perlmann didn’t need to think. Nocturnes were the only thing that he thought himself capable of playing after almost a year without playing a single note. Anything apart from Chopin was technically too difficult; the danger of disgrace was too great. And in the Nocturnes there was no problem with memory. He had grown up with these pieces. He had heard and played them hundreds of times.

If only there weren’t that damned problem with the rhythm. He had a very precise and effortless sense of rhythm. But it was always a while before it settled in and his internal metronome started ticking. He played the first few bars like someone walking after being roughly woken from sleep, Bela Szabo had always said. And he was right. But when his sense of rhythm kicked in it was like an awakening; there was a liberating security in his head and hands, and every time it happened Perlmann had the impression of never having been really awake, as awake as he was now. He had learned to put those brief phases of uncertainty behind him before playing to anyone. But now they would all hear.

He started Opus 9, Number 1 in B minor. Without a bandage, the ring finger of his left hand felt cooler than the others, and when he touched the keys he didn’t feel, as expected, pain, but a fine, sticky film. Nonetheless, the attack was good, he felt, the feared strangeness of touch had faded after a few notes. He had slipped into the first run, and was concentrating on the strange mixture of protraction and acceleration, when with a deafening crash it began to thunder. The first crack hadn’t yet faded away when the cold light of a flash of lightning lit up the lounge, mixing unpleasantly with the warm, golden light of the chandeliers. Immediately afterwards a new, even louder crash made everything tremble. Perlmann took his hands from the keys. All heads were now turned towards the window, through which a quick succession of lightning flashes could be seen, bright ramifications of spookily brief duration. Perlmann took out his handkerchief, moistened it and cleaned his ring finger. A moment later he felt a sting along the scar.

When the natural spectacle seemed to be over, and everything was calm but for a distant rumble, Perlmann started over again. Now his sense of rhythm was there immediately. He had the whole piece clearly in front of his eyes and grew calm. Yes, he could still do them, his soft yet glass-clear Chopin notes – the only thing that Szabo had always acknowledged, and even slightly envied him for. It was with a similar touch, Perlmann imagined, that Glenn Gould had played Chopin.
Glass clarity with velvet edges
. He was also pleased with the pearly runs. But it didn’t sound dreamy. And that wasn’t due to the fact that his left ring finger, now that the accompaniment was growing louder, was really starting to hurt, just as the two fingers of his right hand, which had previously been holding his cigarette, stung when they rubbed against one another. What was that about?

To prevent any applause, Perlmann seamlessly moved on to the second Nocturne from the same Opus. Again it thundered, but this time the crash was no longer directly over the hotel, and he went on playing.

‘Now I’ve got to see if it’s raining,’ Millar said sotto voce and got to his feet. Evelyn Mistral put her finger to her lips. Millar stepped outside.

That was it, Perlmann thought: he had always compared his sound with Millar’s Bach, and that acted as a block that prevented him from finding his way into the right state of mind. He closed his eyes, yielded more to the notes and tried to forget. The third Nocturne was more successful. Only his sore fingers were gradually becoming a problem.

Towards the end of the piece Millar came back, unmistakeably clearing his throat.

Next Perlmann chose Number 1 in F major from Opus 16. He only noticed that this one contained a danger when he was in the middle of a theme. Suddenly, he felt that he had a face. It started to sting behind his closed eyelids.
For God’s sake.
He involuntarily stretched his back and closed his eyes tight in a violent grimace. Seconds of horrified waiting. No. Once again it had been fine. At the very last moment he had managed to force back the tears.
So I can’t play the piece in D flat minor. Under no circumstances.

A moment before, he had played two wrong notes, but the relief made him forget that, and now came the dramatic, technically difficult passage. He no longer had any time to be afraid of it, and suddenly it exploded in his hands, and he played the passage all the way through without a mistake as if he had been practising it only that morning. A massive feeling of relief, almost of arrogance, took hold of him. The pain in his fingers was unimportant now, and as he played the piece to the end he was suddenly sure of it:
then I’ll do the Polonaise as well.

But before he did that he needed time to gather himself. The best thing for that was the third, technically easy piece from Opus 15, which was also easy on the fingers. He wasn’t quite on top of things. He had started to become agitated. So the first third was a flat, lackluster sequence of notes. But then came the ‘Debussy passages’, as Szabo had called them when they were going through the piece. The melodic structure became weaker, the notes seemed to flow aimlessly, and developed an irresolute, hesitant, almost random quality.
Perlmann
, Szabo used to say with an irritated sigh,
you can’t play that as if it’s Debussy. There’s still a clear melody, a clear logic in it. It sounds almost as if you are advocating a melancholy of dissolution. Gloom, fair enough. But Chopin!
Perlmann made the notes sound as vague as possible.
To hell with Szabo
. It was a declaration of war on Millar and his obsession with structure, and Perlmann had to struggle against the temptation to look across at him. He felt something in him breaking free. He was asserting himself against this man Brian Millar, and standing up for himself in front of everyone else. And now he did something he would have considered unthinkable during his public performance: later in the work he repeated two of the passages in which this self-liberation seemed most successful. He had needed a jolt to get beyond Szabo’s internal presence, and now defiance and a bad conscience held each other in balance.

To plunge straight into the A flat major Polonaise – no, that was too risky. First he needed something more technically demanding than what he had done so far. Because of his self-confidence. He wasn’t entirely sure. The A flat major Waltz from Opus 34. A piece that he had played on many solemn occasions, almost ad nauseam. Now, once again, it would have to be impeccable. It contained some chord runs like the ones in the Polonaise. And after that he would be attuned to the key.

At first he made two pedal errors, and once he played one key too many. But otherwise it was impeccable. When it started thundering again and the storm seemed to be approaching once more, he effortlessly stayed in time. He started shivering slightly, but now it wasn’t, as it had been so often over the past few days, an expression of anxiety, but of tense expectation. He could play the Polonaise. He would play it. His arms and hands, which felt very safe and strong, told him that.

He hadn’t given a thought to the scar, when a needle-sharp pain ran through him. He had to leave out three notes with his left ring finger, lost his concentration and messed up the next run of chords in his right hand. He did regain his equilibrium, but his confidence had gone. The mighty chords of the Polonaise, on which everything depended, loomed up in front of him like enormous hurdles, and now the sore fingers of his right hand were stinging much more than before. The sharp pains had gone, but his playing was hesitant now, with a ritardando that the waltz couldn’t take.
It’s impossible. I’ll stop after this one.
When the end of the piece came within sight, he speeded up again. The twinge that came now wasn’t quite as keen as it had been a moment before, but it was enough to spoil the closing run completely, so that he merely slid into the final chord.

It was shaming, having to stop like that, and Perlmann was full of rage with himself when he reflected that with his murder plan, completely unnecessary as it was, he had also ruined this attempt at self-assertion. Nonetheless, he would have got up and walked over to his armchair had Millar not at that point started waving the cash from the bet. As the rain lashed the windows, he held them up to Leskov with a smile, undeterred by the fact that Leskov irritably waved them away, and by the equally irritable faces of the others. First his attempt to disturb Perlmann’s playing a few moments ago, and now this. It was too much. Amidst the beginning applause Perlmann started in on Opus 53, the A flat major Polonaise that Chopin had called the ‘Heroic’.

From the first bar he could hear the frightening passage. But there were still almost seven minutes before he got there. Even the first chords and runs required much more pressure than anything that had gone before, and Perlmann bit his lips with pain. But soon the pain could touch him no longer. As ever, he was overwhelmed by this music; it enfolded him and gave him the feeling that he could effortlessly keep the world at a distance. After half a minute the run-up began for the big theme, dressed up in powerful chords that came cascading down from above. The last bars before the first of these expansive chords had to be played at a slightly slower tempo to provide a proper setting for the beginning of the theme. Szabo himself had acknowledged that. But Perlmann – and this had been his constant reproach – overdid it to an unjustifiable extent. He was inclined to delay the entry of the topmost chord by more than a second. That, he found, was what made the tension properly palpable, and intensified the subsequent liberation. And that liberation was what truly counted – the idea that for the moment when one touched the keys with both hands and with one’s full strength, one was master of things.
You abuse these passages
, Szabo had said.
You’re supposed to be playing Chopin, not yourself. Take Alfred Cortot as your model.

Szabo fell silent, and Perlmann played himself into a genuine state of intoxication. With a sure touch, he hammered the redeeming chords into the keys, rising from his chair with ever greater frequency to launch his attack. Unrestrainedly, he slowed down the introductory beats so that each chord had the significance – more than ever – of a liberation from chains. Then, when the storm broke out again, it fitted what he was doing perfectly. Because right now – three minutes in – came the first of the two passages in which the same dark chord was to be played seven times in a row. Never before, it seemed to him, had he played chords with such force. Trampling over what little remained of his restraint, Perlmann thundered all of his fury into the keys, his fury with Millar and all the others who beleaguered him; his fury with Szabo; his fury with the storm that he had to drown out; and above all his impotent fury with himself, with his insecurity, fear and mendacity, which had driven him into the murderous silence of the tunnel.

Afterwards, his sore fingers hurt so much it brought tears to his eyes. The thought came to him that if he brought his finger down on the keys the scar on his finger would burst, the blood would run over the white keys and seep into the gaps, and his fingers would lose their hold in the red smear. But the image was too fleeting to survive and, during the next, fourth minute, Perlmann devoted himself entirely to the effort of playing so seamlessly and compellingly as he had at the Conservatoire, when he had reaped such praise. His left hand mostly contributed to the climaxes, and he was glad that the intense pain in his finger had now become something constant that he could adjust to, something that no longer appeared in the form of unpredictable episodes. The whole passage flowed once again into a thundering repeat of a single chord. Then the same thing was repeated once again, but this time it was followed by a surprising dissolve into a sequence of bright, blithe bars. They made way for a lyrical passage, which, as Perlmann played it, was intended to remind the audience of the dreamlike mood of the Nocturnes.

He was now in the sixth minute of the piece. As the notes grew softer and quieter, Perlmann broke out in a frightened sweat, and his fingers seemed to have grown damp from one second to the next. Soon would come the run-up to the final repetition of the theme and, starting with its first chord – he remembered quite precisely, even today – it was forty seconds to the terrifying passage. Forty-three, perhaps forty-four if, out of panic-fuelled calculation, he slowed down again. The passage itself lasted less than ten seconds. Then came a speeded-up and shortened version of the theme with seven clearly articulated chords, and then it was over.