Perlmann's Silence by Pascal Mercier Read Free Book Online Page A

penetrate him unhindered, and it seemed to Perlmann that he had no way of preventing words from flourishing inside him like malignant tumours.
    Starting more or less with von Levetzov’s reference to that conference the previous year, Perlmann had assumed that he would be an ordinary participant when he had agreed, nothing more. He hadn’t been to conferences for a long time, and had seen this one as a good opportunity to show himself and to secure with a few skilful questions the general opinion that he was quite on top of things. To some extent he wanted to work on his disguise. It was a shock when he received the printed program two weeks before the agreed date and saw that he was presented as the main speaker, alongside a very vague and general title that someone had cobbled together for him out of a superficial knowledge of his work. In a mixture of fury and panic he picked up the phone, but as soon as he heard it ringing at the other end he hung up. He couldn’t give himself away. A man like him, an authority in his field, couldn’t lose face because of such a misunderstanding. However, if the opportunity presented itself he could make a barbed remark on the subject. But someone like Philipp Perlmann actually needed to have a lecture ready at all times. He couldn’t phone up and just say, ‘It’s a misunderstanding. I have nothing to say at the moment. Please pass that on.’ But really, why not? Agnes asked when she saw the way he was sitting at his desk. After that question he felt very alone. For a while he considered phoning in sick at the last moment. In the end he delivered a lecture that summed up what he had published over the last few years. Not a bad text, he thought, reading it through beforehand. But when he left the lectern to polite applause, he would really have liked to take the shortest way to the station, even though the conference lasted another two days. At dinner von Levetzov had sat down next to him. ‘A lecture of familiar clarity,’ he had said with a smile that wasn’t unfriendly or malicious, yet which had had the effect of a pinprick on Perlmann, ‘but it was more of a look back at the past, wasn’t it, or have you simply ignored the new?’
    A moment before, down in the lobby, von Levetzov had called that lecture a report . Nothing escaped him, that keen-minded man with his phenomenal memory, and he weighed his words very carefully. He had mastered the game like very few others. It had been almost impossible not to invite von Levetzov. Perlmann stepped to the window and looked out at the bay. The setting sun shone through a fine grey bank of clouds and gave the water the color of platinum. Lights were already going on one by one over by Sestri Levante. Only a few seconds had passed since the first cigarette, and already he was smoking as if he had never stopped. It hurt when he became aware of it. He felt as if he was crossing out the last five years, and he had the feeling that he was betraying Agnes.
    He thought of the other four colleagues that he still had to welcome, and planned to be laconic. Not unfriendly, not even cool, but laconic, with a certain terseness in his words. He usually said too much, even though he didn’t feel like talking, and they were explanations that often sounded like explanations, like justifications that no one had asked for. Also, he often expressed too much sympathy with other people, sympathy that wasn’t expected and perhaps not even wished for. Then he came across as intrusive, which was anathema to him. It was like an addiction.
    He reached for Leskov’s text. The first sentences in the second paragraph resisted his efforts, and several times he vacillated between the various meanings that the dictionary gave for a word; several appeared possible, yet none seemed really to fit. But afterwards things became more transparent and he understood one sentence or another without inwardly faltering in the slightest. The excitement that he had felt