Perlmann's Silence (15 page)

The first Johanna Liebig was an old woman who was outraged that someone should disturb her so late at night. Perlmann stammered an apology and put the phone down, disappointed, but secretly pleased about the little delay. The second number rang for a very long time. Then Hanna answered. He recognized her voice straight away.

‘Philipp!’ she said, much more quickly than he expected. ‘Philipp Perlmann! My God, how long is it since we heard from one another! Where on earth are you?’

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m sure you remember the little Bach Prelude, the one that people don’t know, and that you played so often. You know,
the ingenuous birthday piece
.’

‘Yes, of course. What about it?’

‘Could you quickly play it down the phone for me?’

‘What – now? I’ve got guests.’

‘Hanna, please, it’ll just take three minutes. I need to know whether I’ve remembered it right. It’s important.’

‘But why in God’s name do you need to know now, in the middle of the night, after . . . wait a moment . . . after thirty years?’

‘Please, Hanna. Please.’

‘Like in the old days. OK, then,’ she said, and after a while in which he heard voices, a door closing and the loud sound of the receiver being put on the piano, came the piece that Millar had played.

‘So?’ asked Hanna as soon as the last note had faded away.

‘I wasn’t mistaken. Are you quite sure this is the piece? A hundred per cent? No mistake possible?’

‘Philipp! My pupils have to play it. You know how suitable it is.’

‘And your birthday is the thirtieth of September? And not the second?’

‘It still is. And incidentally that piece, the 902, is in G major.’

‘And the piece is from the
Klavierbüchlein
for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach?’

‘Yes, Philipp,’ said Hanna as if to a troublesome child, ‘and it isn’t one of the two pieces some people think might have been written by the son, with the father’s help.’

‘Is it true that the piece hasn’t been recorded?’

‘No, that isn’t true. There’s a CD released by CBS. Glenn Gould, in fact.’

‘Hanna, you’re a marvel! But how will I get hold of it?’ Perlmann said out loud.

‘I can lend it to you, if that’s any use.’

‘It’ll arrive too late if you send it to me. I need to try to get it here tomorrow.’

‘So where are you right now?’

‘Near Genoa.’

‘Philipp, what on earth’s going on? You sound so strange, so . . . stubborn.’

‘I need to prove something to someone, and quickly.’

‘Are you in some sort of trouble?’

‘No, no.’

‘You just need to be right?’

‘Not that exactly, but not far off.’

‘You don’t seem to have changed very much.’

‘It’s a long story, Hanna, I’ll explain later.’

They were both silent for a while, until Perlmann asked in a different voice: ‘Do you remember:
glass clarity with velvet edges
?’

‘Of course I remember. The others laughed at us.’

‘Yes. But I’ve never heard a better formula for Glenn Gould.’

‘Neither have I. Do you still play sometimes?’

‘No.’

‘You’re not in a good way, are you?’

‘Not especially.’

Gently, as if it were fragile, Perlmann rested the receiver on its cradle. So that was how Hanna remembered him: as someone who always wanted to be right. That hurt, and he thought it was unfair. And yet after a while he admitted to himself that it probably wasn’t a coincidence. For example, the conversation from a moment ago: he hadn’t asked about her at all; he hadn’t asked a single question about her. He had effectively ambushed her with his urge to get one over on Millar, without giving her anything at all by way of explanation. Still, sitting on the edge of the bed, full of exhausted sobriety, he was shocked by the extent of his self-obsession. In the tiny world of this hotel he threatened to lose all sense of proportion.

So it was true that she had become a piano teacher. She had imagined things differently back then.
I’ll visit her when I’m home again. In four weeks and one day.

Hanna had been the only one who had immediately understood his decision and found it correct. She knew the limits of his talent precisely, and she wasn’t, like the teachers, under a self-imposed compulsion to believe the student. Not that she said a single word to that effect. Not a single one. When he visited her that day, after he had closed the lid over the keys, she mutely stirred her coffee cup for a while and then asked simply, ‘So what do you plan to do now?’

That university studies would take the place of musical training was something as fixed as an axiom. He had to concede that he himself had also acknowledged this axiom, at least in the sense that he had never visibly resisted it. And yet, he thought today, it was not a principle that was the natural, undistorted expression of his feelings at the time, and in that sense his own principle. It had had its origin not within himself, but in his parents. Not so much in what they said – one could have defended oneself against that. What had exerted its unassuming, sly power was the whole way they were, the post-office worker and his ambitious, half-educated wife. She, the daughter of a director of studies, had never been able to cope with the fact that her husband wasn’t an academic, so the son had to become what the father was not. And the father, who depended upon her entirely in defiance of his domestic tyranny, had made that ambition her own. The pianist idea had at first made the parents insecure; but then they had started talking about the son as an
artist
, and of course it was much more than if he had just become one of the many academics who, as his mother said, were often rather respectable people. Then, when that flight of fancy had ended prematurely, a few days after the shock and recriminations, praises began to be sung about a solid academic career.

Perlmann could not remember a single conversation in which the pros and cons of university study had been discussed. Calling something so obvious into question was literally unthinkable. The worst thing, he thought, was that the silent power of this premise had paralyzed the imagination, about the very question of what one could do with one’s life as a whole – the most important question, then, that anyone ever addressed. When his interest in academia – or what he saw as academia – began to crumble, he had begun to investigate what professions other people were pursuing. He was utterly astonished by all the things there were that he didn’t know about, and then he began to irritate Agnes by complaining with childish fury that no one had told him anything about them. At first he fell into romanticizing other professions, above all those that lay far from his own. By now his gaze had become more sober and analytic, and always determined by the same question, namely whether he would have found it easier to experience the present in some other profession.

Tonight Perlmann quarrelled with his dead parents, because he thought there was a clearly visible causal connection between the unshakeable, rigidly dogmatic expectations they had imposed on their only child, and the fatal situation and inner misery in which he found himself at present. Tidal waves of accusation, of reproach, of reckonings of guilt and neglect buried him beneath themselves and dragged him, against all efforts of reason, away with them. When it was approaching two o’clock he took half a sleeping pill. At three he swallowed the other half. He was playing the A flat major Polonaise in front of an audience that seemed to extend infinitely back into the darkness of the hall. He knew he had to concentrate entirely on playing: everything depended upon him making no mistakes. Instead, he stared into the darkness of the hall and looked for Millar. He knew his gleaming glasses were there somewhere, but he couldn’t see him anywhere, his eyes streaming with exertion. Then, all of a sudden, Evelyn Mistral’s face appeared, with a radiant smile, as if she wanted to ask a question, but now it was Hanna’s face that studied him quizzically; it was Hanna’s face and also Laura Sand’s, mocking and white and still. From the very outset he heard the dangerous passage like a paradoxical, premonitory echo, he knew that he couldn’t rely on himself, that it was a matter of chance whether his fingers would do it right or not, whether they would be able to assert themselves against the paralysing influence of fear, his hands were sweating, the sweat was coming more and more, it was getting between his fingers and the keys, his fingers were slipping, now came the passage, he could hear quite loudly what it was supposed to sound like, but he couldn’t do anything, his fingers ceased to grip, it was a sensation of boundless impotence, and then he woke up with dry and very cold hands, which he immediately stuffed back under the covers.

9

The effects of the pill lay heavy on his eyes, but he still couldn’t get to sleep. While the first, pale light gave the bay an unreal presence, Millar’s invisible dream-figure transformed into a real person, to whom he had to prove his superior knowledge of Bach. But how was he to deliver that proof? Getting hold of the score was not a solution; on no account must it look as if he had made a special effort. The crucial thing, if he were to draw Millar’s attention to his error, was the incisive casualness of the man who had been familiar with these things for decades. The CD that Hanna had talked about. This would prove that it was a twofold error: it was not only the catalogue number that was incorrect, but the assertion that there was no recording. The story that it was a
trouvaille
thus acquired a ridiculous note in retrospect. Once again Perlmann heard Millar’s impossible pronunciation of the French word. You had to think about it for a moment before you understood. But the question about the CD was similar to the one about the score: how come he had it with him? A cassette would be easier to explain; with a Walkman, for example. He couldn’t have bought one of those little CD players that cost an absolute fortune. Or could he?

I happened to see it and just picked it up
. That had exactly the right casual feeling, Perlmann thought as he shaved. And the sentence, if spoken in the right tone, had an urbane touch about it. The remark also explained why he didn’t mention it until the following day. Signora Morelli had already referred to the CD player in the drawing room upon his arrival.

He relaxed, and when he reached for the receiver to order coffee, he suddenly wanted to sit opposite Millar this morning, bolstered by the secret of his plan. On the steps he felt as if his brain were swimming around inside his skull. But somehow it would work. At eight on the dot he walked into the dining room.

Apart from the red-haired man from the pool there wasn’t another soul in the room. Perlmann greeted him and sat down in the other corner. He hesitantly ordered breakfast from a waiter he had never seen before. Then Evelyn appeared in the doorway and walked over to him with surprise. She had thrown a pullover over her shoulders, and her hair was tied in a ponytail. No, no, she said, communal breakfast was usually at eight, but for Sunday they’d agreed on nine. But that was too late for her today. She was plainly embarrassed at having to explain to him, the leader of the group. She straightened her cutlery and quickly changed the subject.

‘You won’t believe this,’ she said, ‘but the red-haired man’s name is John Smith. He comes from Carson City, Nevada. Brian talked to him recently, from one American to another, so to speak. He’s filthy rich and he’s spending his winter here. “It figures,” Brian said to him when he finally told him his name. If Brian despises somebody, he does it with good reason,’ she smiled.

‘And that must happen quite frequently,’ Perlmann couldn’t help saying.

Her hand, holding its croissant, stopped mid-movement. ‘You don’t like him that much, do you?’

Perlmann took a sip of coffee. His brain was swimming. ‘I think he’s fine,’ he said, ‘although he doesn’t exactly suffer from a lack of self-confidence.’

‘That’s true. But there is something he can’t deal with at all, and that’s Laura’s kind of irony. He gets completely helpless, and babbles like a little boy. But otherwise he feels he’s a match for everything – if I can put it like that.’ She gripped her ponytail, and the reddish strip appeared on her forehead. ‘Recently, at the session, I was annoyed at the way he treated me. Somehow condescending, I thought. But he played wonderfully last night, didn’t you think?’

‘Yes . . . yes, I did,’ Perlmann said haltingly, as if he had stumbled over a threshold.

Only the hesitation in the movement of her knife revealed that she had noticed his halting attitude. ‘I wish I’d learned an instrument,’ she said, and only now did she look at him. ‘My father urged me to; but at the time I didn’t feel like it. Juan, my little brother, did it better than me. He plays the cello. Not especially brilliantly, but he enjoys it.’

And you, do you play an instrument?
He had to prevent that question being asked at all cost, so he asked more about Juan and the whole family, including the grandparents. One might have thought he was looking for material for a family saga.

They were in the doorway of the dining room when von Levetzov and Millar came down the stairs. They exchanged a glance that didn’t escape Evelyn Mistral. She raised her arm, made a delicate movement with her fingers as if doing a trill on the piano, took Perlmann’s arm with a smile and guided him out through the door to the flight of steps. It was only when they reached the promenade that she looked at him, and then they both burst out laughing.

She held his arm as they strolled along the harbor. Walking did Perlmann good, and the pressure above his eyes gradually subsided. Wrapped in the remaining after-effects of the pill, which lay on his eyes like a protective filter, he yielded to his imagination, which told him that he was enjoying this radiant autumn morning with the delicate plume of mist over the smooth, sparkling water. The present was within reach when Evelyn Mistral, who had now shaken her hair free, described Salamanca, and he was quite sure it would be his next travel destination.

They turned the corner and suddenly found themselves standing in front of a church, a bridal couple just coming out. He wished the photographs, the congratulation and the jokes would last much longer, and was disappointed at how quickly everyone suddenly climbed into the cars and drove away, honking jauntily.

Finally, Evelyn Mistral took his arm again and drew him gently away. It was nearly half-past eleven, she said, and she still had lots of plans. ‘I’ll be back at work two weeks tomorrow!’ Maria was already working on her first chapter, but in the second there were still so many gaps and incongruities that it was hopeless. ‘And when I think about Brian, Achim and Adrian sitting there . . .’

On the way back Perlmann had the feeling that his swallowing reflex had stopped working, and that he had to replace it every few seconds with an additional, almost already planned action. It didn’t mean anything, he said when she asked him why he was so quiet all of a sudden.

Back at the hotel he drew the curtains and lay down in bed. It was baffling, he thought, how little he had internally bridled against all that conventional business outside the church. What had the bride actually looked like? Her features were suddenly strangely blurred, and he tried in vain to give the face back its sharp contours. He fell asleep while doing so.

It was after three o’clock when he woke up. He showered for a long time, ordered coffee and a sandwich, and then sat down to Leskov’s paper. He wanted to finish it today. So that he could start on his own contribution tomorrow. He would just drop in very briefly at the trattoria to check on Sandra and reassure her about her test.

Sensory content?
It was a while before he understood his marginal note again. Leskov himself now addressed this point, and Perlmann was waiting impatiently for his conclusion. But the paper approached the question indirectly. First of all it discussed the case of remembered emotional qualities. Again the text became very difficult, because now Leskov began to deploy the rich Russian vocabulary for emotions and moods, and the pocket dictionary was not up to these nuances. Irritated, and with a feeling of linguistic imposture, Perlmann inched his way along from one example to the next. The conclusion was concise: if the story of the experienced past is retold, the remembered qualities of the experience also presented themselves in a different way.

Perlmann was annoyed that he couldn’t understand the examples in all their depth because of the gaps in his language. It meant that he didn’t know what to make of the general assertion. And it was the key to what came next, because now Leskov constructed the case of remembered sensory impressions in analogy with the case of the emotions. The vocabulary for shadings in smell and taste became a problem, and there was much that Perlmann understood only very vaguely.

Could one rewrite a whole world of past sensory impressions in the course of a new narrative memory? He doubted it. What he had felt at the sight of the new patient in his mother’s bed might really look different, even in terms of its quality of experience, if the narrative memory were one day to take a different path – if, as Leskov wrote, it were on the one hand to describe larger loops and on the other hand to grow more dense. And something similar might apply to the internal drama that was played out that evening when his father accused him of ingratitude for breaking off his training at the Conservatoire.
It’s my life, and mine alone
, Perlmann had replied in a quivering voice before rushing into the night. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that different stories could give different shades to the remembered experience of that moment. If, for example, one added the contemporary insight that his life had remained under the diktat of parental expectations, in spite of the touching heroics of his rebellion, his fury at the time still felt quite different from what it might have been in a story of a successful liberation.

To this extent, then, one could follow Leskov. But the color of his father’s wool jacket, and the thumps on the coffin? Could that be rewritten? In a separate section Leskov, quoting no source, introduced Marcel Proust. But Perlmann found that less helpful than embarrassing, since it didn’t sound as if Leskov knew Proust at first hand.

He turned on the light. Another nine pages. In conclusion, Leskov wrote, he now wanted to address the question of what his previous conclusions meant for the idea of the
osvaivat’
of his own past. The page on which
osvaivat’
should have appeared was missing from the dictionary. Perlmann furiously established that three pages were missing. He flicked to the end and glanced at the last few sentences of the paper. And so, he hoped that he had shown, Leskov concluded, that the ability to narrate and the ability to create a particular, very individual past were in the end one and the same. In this way, language and experienced time were much more closely linked than one might at first imagine. No one – this was the last, rather bombastic sentence – had understood the nature of language if they did not see it as the medium which, above all others, made possible a sophisticated experience of time.

Perlmann set off for the trattoria. When he sat down to these last sentences after taking a break, he would also know, at last, the meaning of
osvaivat’
.

Sandra wasn’t there. A child needs to have a bit of a life, too, her mother said, so she had let her go out when her friends had called round. The test – God, yes. ‘
Che sarà, sarà!
’

Perlmann rested his elbow on the chronicle and smoked. He saw himself lying on his belly in the shade of the hotel garden, with his Latin book in front of his nose. Holidays on the Mediterranean, the first that his parents had been able to afford thanks to a small inheritance from Switzerland; then, seven years after the end of the war, still a sensation. Siesta time. Even his parents had had a lie down for a bit. Some of the hotel guests were dozing in the loungers on the beach. Over there was the sea, glimmering in the midday sun, and that shimmering glare, that was the present, the thing that really mattered. Some children were in the water, splashing each other and shrieking. Back then, of course, at thirteen, he hadn’t thought it explicitly but he had behaved and felt as if he had to master all those Latin words and irregular verbs before he would be allowed to go out into that glittering present.

Perlmann opened the chronicle. It must have been in July. He read what it said about politics as if it had happened before he was born, it had so little to do with his life at the time. That applied equally to Eisenhower and King Farukh, and the death of Kurt Schumacher the following month. Benedetto Croce, finally, was something from another world. He only remembered Juan Manuel Fangio, the racing driver, and the day after his return from Italy there had been that radio report on the funeral of Evita Perón. They had sat by the little radio, and the speaker’s melodramatic voice, hacked about with atmospheric disturbances, had turned the funeral procession into something mythical, making his mother cry. Was it then that he had started to understand the time difference between continents? Because it was very curious for hundreds of thousands of people to walk through the Argentinian afternoon late in the evening.

On the day of his visit to the circus with Hanna, the chronicle recorded only one event: Antonio Segni, who was still Italian prime minister at the time, set off on a trip to Washington.