Perlmann's Silence (59 page)

Perlmann quickened his pace and went to the travel agent’s in another part of the town. Here, too, he had to wait another ten minutes, during which he paced uneasily up and down. How long would it take for an airmail package to travel from Frankfurt to St Petersburg? And how secure was the mail? He couldn’t have the text couriered – airline company employees wouldn’t think a manuscript worth sending with any great urgency. Was it possible to imagine them sending it registered post?

The computer for flight reservations was on strike, and he was told to come back later. Perlmann was glad that the stationer’s was quite a long way away; the walking helped to combat his helpless anger. Apart from the fat woman, there was a lanky boy with a pimply face behind the counter. At the woman’s request the boy silently spread out a selection of envelopes. Perlmann immediately discarded the ordinary ones without reinforcement and padding. Then he took the one with the cardboard backing and bent it back and forth until the cardboard nearly snapped. He liked its firmness, but the paper was nothing special, and he wasn’t sure whether the envelope was big enough for the unusual format of the yellow sheets. He moistened his index finger with his tongue and rubbed the saliva on the paper, which turned dark brown and dissolved layer by layer.

‘Don’t worry. Of course I’ll pay for it,’ he said to the woman, who was furiously gasping for air.

The two padded envelopes that struck him as exactly the right size were made of matte paper, less tightly pressed than the other, shiny paper, which his saliva dissolved worryingly quickly. A revolting-looking, grey wadding came out of it; the other one was padded with transparent plastic. The corrugated foil would keep the moisture out. But what happened if the address disappeared under the snow along with the disintegrating paper? Perlmann set this envelope aside as well. As the boy stared at him, mesmerized, the woman sniffed agitatedly and made a face as if he were busy pulling the shop apart.

‘You really don’t need to worry,’ Perlmann reassured her and took some cash out of his jacket pocket. ‘I’ll pay for everything.’

The last envelope was made of well-glued, shiny paper, but the padding was much thinner than it was in the others, and it was far too big. The pages would slip back and forth inside it, and be damaged even further. He asked the boy, who was glancing anxiously at the woman and still hadn’t said a word, to give him a pile of typing paper, and tried it out, shaking the envelope wildly back and forth. The result wasn’t quite as bad as he expected, but some of the pages were already slightly crushed. He asked them to show him various staplers, but none of them was capable of producing a line of staples that would have reduced the envelope to the right size. The paper survived the saliva test very well. Perlmann turned the envelope inconclusively back and forth, then suddenly asked for a glass of water.

He had to repeat the request. As the boy was going into the back, the woman resignedly lit a cigarette, and when a man came into the shop on crutches, with his foot in a cast, and greeted her like an old friend, she gave him a significant look. Perlmann walked to the door with his water and poured it over the envelope. For two or three seconds it looked as if the water would drip off the shiny paper without leaving a trace. But then the envelope was covered with dark patches that quickly got bigger and came together to form a single damp patch. Perlmann reached into the envelope and tested the dampness. The image of the Russian station platform appeared, and this time the dripping was melting snow. When he turned round he saw the three faces just behind the window.
The madman with the water on the envelopes.

Mutely, and with the face of someone who is pleased to have had a bright idea, the boy gestured to him to wait and went to the back. The man with the crutches put his wallet in his pocket and left the shop, shaking his head. Perlmann paid and wedged the damaged envelopes under his arm. He was reading the chronicle a lot, he said to the woman, who smoked as she stared at the floor in front of her. But she didn’t seem to remember, and Perlmann was glad when the boy broke the awkward silence.

The envelope he handed to him was ideal; Perlmann saw it straight away. It was a used envelope with an address and an American sender. The boy, he read from his gestures, had taken off the stamps. The envelope was made of thick yellow cardboard that felt waxy. It had plastic padding and reinforced corners and it was exactly the right size.

‘
Perfetto
,’ Perlmann said to the boy, who beamed at him and indignantly waved away his offer of money.

‘Three thousand,’ the woman said, looking up from the floor for one brief moment.

As Perlmann gave her the money, the boy furiously grabbed the envelope, looked in a drawer and finally stuck fresh labels over the address and the sender’s details. Without deigning to look at the woman he handed Perlmann the envelope and gave him a jokey salute.

On the next corner Perlmann threw all the other envelopes into a garbage bin. When he crossed the street, he saw the man with the crutches, who seemed to have been watching him the whole time.
The lunatic throwing away envelopes.
At a school drinking fountain Perlmann splashed water over the yellow envelope. Spherical droplets formed, and disappeared completely when shaken and blown on. Suddenly, the Russian platform couldn’t have mattered less.

In the travel agent’s they booked Perlmann a flight to Frankfurt for lunchtime on Saturday. For the return flight at five they could only put him on the waiting list. Then Perlmann walked slowly towards the hotel and wondered how he could disguise his handwriting when he wrote Leskov’s address on the label – and
which
address?

48

A hand grabbed him by the sleeve from below, and when he turned round, startled, he found himself looking into the laughing face of Evelyn Mistral, who was sitting at a café table. She pulled him down on to a chair and waved to the waiter. Perlmann hesitantly laid the yellow envelope on the table.
It’s not dangerous. She can’t possibly know what it’s for.
As he waited for his coffee and they talked about how warm it still was, even though the sun was setting and the lights were being lit at the tables, he frantically wondered what he could say if she started talking about the envelope. Then, when he was stirring his coffee, she rested her hand on his other arm for a moment. What had been up with him over the past few days? She wanted to know. They’d hardly seen him, and when they did he had been so strange. ‘
Reservado
,’ she smiled. And then fainting like that. They’d all been rather puzzled, and concerned.

Perlmann took another spoonful of sugar. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, and when he put them in his jacket pocket, he touched the disk, which he had forgotten in the meantime. As if he had touched something burning hot or particularly disgusting, he immediately took his hands out of his pockets and lit a cigarette. Then, for a while, he looked across at the moored yachts, rocking on the wake from a motorboat.

‘I don’t even know myself,’ he said at last, and avoided looking at her. ‘I . . . I’ve just somehow lost my equilibrium.’

‘And you really didn’t want to deliver any kind of lecture, did you?’ she asked softly and brushed the hair out of her face, which rested on her open hand. Perlmann looked at the levelling waves and nodded. He really wanted to leave, but at the same time he wished she would go on asking him questions.

‘Can I say something? But you must promise not to take it amiss.’

Perlmann attempted a smile and nodded.

‘If I may put it this way: I think you’ve made a mistake. You should have explained at the outset that everything’s a bit difficult for you at the moment, and you could also just have said that you didn’t want to give a lecture. Your wife’s death – everyone would have understood straight away. As things stand, everything that happened – dinner and everything – was interpreted as arrogance. Until Vassily put us right. The rest of us were completely in the dark.’

So it was a good idea to tell Leskov about Agnes at the fortress back then. It meant that he was able to provide a redeeming interpretation. The man I was inches away from murdering.

In their seductive simplicity, Evelyn Mistral’s words had been an enticing offer of self-deception, which Perlmann was unable at that moment to resist. He had committed a social solecism. He had made a very simple error. He wanted to enjoy the peace that lay within that insight. It could happen to anyone. You could avoid it in future. And in three days, at this time, he would be at home.

‘You’re completely right,’ he said, ‘it was a mistake. Nothing more to be said.’ It sounded shallow, almost insincere. So, after a pause, he added, ‘Sometimes it’s so hard.’ He hoped he wasn’t overdoing it with his tortured face.

Ruge, Millar and von Levetzov slumped on to their chairs with feigned exhaustion and put their shopping bags full of presents under the empty table next to them. Perlmann had been able to see them coming from a long way off and, with a movement that looked like a reflex, he had taken the envelope off the table and rested it against the leg of the chair.

‘At exactly the usual time,’ Evelyn Mistral smiled, glancing at her watch.

‘Yes,’ said Millar with a nostalgic sigh. ‘The first time we came here, a month ago, it was still light at this time of day. I’ll miss these daily meetings.’ He looked at Perlmann. ‘Just a shame you were never there.’

The others nodded. Perlmann felt cold, and when he buttoned up his jacket, the disk bumped, with a quiet, dull sound, against the arm of the chair.

‘But if I imagine,’ Millar went on, ‘the same thing happening to me as happened to you – I don’t think I’d feel like doing anything. Except sailing,’ he added with a grin.

The remark took Perlmann’s breath away for a moment, and he felt himself welling up. Achim Ruge must have seen that something was happening in his face. With an expression and a voice that Perlmann wouldn’t have thought possible, he started talking about his younger sister, whom he had loved very much. He couldn’t even have imagined her taking drugs. Until she was found dead.

‘You know,’ he said to Perlmann in German, and his bright green eyes seemed to be even more watery than usual, ‘I basically dropped out for almost a year after that. Things went up and down in the lab. I had to cancel lectures, and my irritability towards my colleagues became legendary. Nothing seemed to have a point any more.’

Superficial
, thought Perlmann,
my fear of them has made me terribly superficial.
So superficial that he couldn’t even imagine them capable of the most elementary, the most natural impulses and reactions. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been so flabbergasted. Fear made other people bigger and stronger than they were, and at the same time they became smaller and more primitive. Couldn’t he have gone to them on Saturday morning and explained his irrational actions? And wouldn’t that still have been possible at a later time?

‘I could imagine,’ von Levetzov said, ‘that your invitation to Princeton hasn’t come at exactly the right time.’

Perlmann nodded, and again he was surprised by the sympathy that he was suddenly encountering. Was it, perhaps, not only fear that had made him superficial, but also that fear had come about because his view of things had been superficial from the outset – because he hadn’t thought the others capable of sympathy, and hence of depth?

‘Things like that can be postponed,’ confirmed Millar, when Perlmann looked at him quizzically.

He was actually considering that, Perlmann said, and tried to look at von Levetzov with a particularly open and personal expression, as a way of apologizing for his abruptness over breakfast. A personal relationship with Adrian von Levetzov would be more easily achieved in the presence of the others than in private. When Perlmann realized that, he became very confused. All of a sudden he had a sense that he didn’t know the slightest thing about people and their relationships with each other.

The others seemed not to see Leskov, who was waddling and flailing his way towards town. Perlmann hadn’t recognized him at first, because tonight he was wearing a peaked cap that lay on the bulges of his neck and, as a result, looked too small.
If only he would walk more quickly
.

‘Hang on, that’s Vassily!’ called von Levetzov, jumping to his feet and running after him.

Perlmann reached for the envelope beside the leg of the chair. No, it would attract less attention down here than on the next table.

Leskov liked the jokes about his cap. He showed it around and acted the clown. Later, when the conversation turned to the session, he touched Perlmann on the shoulder and said he hadn’t been able to get over his amazement when listening to him.

‘I would have bet my head that you’d read my text,’ he laughed, ‘and very carefully, too. I sent him,’ he said, turning to the others, ‘the earlier version. But he denies it. Apparently, my Russian’s still too hard for him.’

‘Didn’t you say you didn’t speak Russian?’ von Levetzov asked with a face in which irritation and admiration balanced one another.

Perlmann avoided Evelyn Mistral’s eyes, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
It doesn’t matter. I haven’t committed plagiarism. No plagiarism.
‘Just a few words,’ he said.

He couldn’t bear the pause that followed for very long, and went inside with an apology. At the end of the corridor where the toilets were, a door was open, leading to the other side of the quay wall. He walked to the water. Kitchen waste floated below him. He took the disk out of his jacket pocket and looked round. When he let go of it, it was caught by a gust of wind and fell with a clatter on the wall. He looked round again, and then kicked it out.

‘We’re just talking about this amazing envelope,’ said Leskov, and rested it on the table. ‘It fell over a moment ago when you stood up. Brian knows this kind from home. I wish we had things like that.’

‘Anything important I send in those envelopes,’ said Millar, ‘especially manuscripts.’ He rubbed the cardboard with his thumb and forefinger. ‘The things are practically watertight.’

Perlmann felt as if all the strength were suddenly draining from him, so much so that lifting his coffee cup seemed too much. He was filled with an overwhelming sense of pointlessness. Unable to think of an answer, he waited to be asked where he had got hold of the envelope. But the question didn’t come.

The conversation now turned to dinner. Just for once, the others didn’t want to eat at the Miramare. Suddenly, Millar, who had folded his hands behind his head and was looking over towards the hill on the other side of the bay, said, ‘Why don’t we go to that white hotel up there? What’s it called?’

‘Imperiale,’ said von Levetzov. ‘I had a drink there. The restaurant looked good.’

It was agreed that Silvestri and Laura Sand would have to be told, and Signora Morelli as well. Perlmann nodded. On the way to the hotel Leskov joined him and, with a smile, handed him the yellow envelope.

The lamp in the corner of the lounge where Perlmann had sat on Monday night was on again today. On the chair, two children were practising gymnastics, while their grandmother struggled to keep them under control. It made everything look very ordinary, even banal.
The viewpoint of eternity
, that was what Perlmann had thought about in that corner. The fear that he had been using that idea to defend himself against had been terrible. But it had given the thought a weight and a depth that were now lost. Now, surrounded by his good-humored colleagues, who were studying their menus, the thought seemed shallow and dull; it was little more than a sequence of words.

Perlmann was also generally bothered by the others, and he had to take care that his irritation, which had made him tear off two shirt buttons when he was changing earlier, didn’t intensify still further. This was the place where Kirsten had asked him whether he’d been happy with Agnes. And it was where he had experienced an extreme despair. It was his hotel. The others had no business here.

Through the swing door of the kitchen came the waiter that Perlmann had called an arsehole. He was wearing the same red jacket as on Tuesday, and now he whipped out his order pad and stepped up to their table. Standing at an angle, he didn’t see Perlmann at first, and took Ruge’s and Silvestri’s orders. Then, as Laura Sand was speaking, his eye wandered one chair along. Perlmann waited with his eyes half-closed, annoyed at the pounding of his heart. The waiter wrote something in his pad, then paused. His eyes narrowed and, after a further motionless moment, he turned his head sharply and looked at Perlmann, who was pressing his hands together under the table. The waiter jutted his lower lip, looked slowly away and then it seemed as if he would go on writing. But then he slipped pad and pen into his jacket pocket, turned round abruptly and walked quickly through the swing door.

‘What’s up with him?’ Laura Sand asked irritably, tapping the back of her menu rhythmically against the edge of the table.

‘No idea,’ said Perlmann, when she looked at him quizzically.

The maître d’ in the black tuxedo stood, arms folded, by the swing door and watched furiously as the waiter came back to their table. The waiter turned to Laura Sand.

‘
Scusi, signora
,’ he said tightly, ‘would you please repeat your order?’

Then he turned the page of his pad and, without deigning to glance at Perlmann, looked at Millar. Surprised by the silence, Millar looked up, glanced sideways at Perlmann, who was sitting next to him, and said in a cool voice which Perlmann envied him, ‘You seem to have forgotten someone.’

The waiter didn’t move, but just raised the pad over Millar’s head and looked into the room. The maître d’ was about to move, when Perlmann gave his order, in dry, clipped words. The waiter brought the pen to the pad, but didn’t write. Then he looked again at Millar, who, after a brief hesitation and with raised eyebrows, dictated his wishes.