For the time being it was only Maria that he would have to say anything to. His colleagues’ questions would only start on Monday, and the situation would only come to a definitive head on Wednesday. His anxiety was somewhat assuaged by this thought, and Perlmann continued his aimless walk through little side streets.
He got to the trattoria early. The proprietress brought him the chronicle and told him with delight that Sandra’s drawings had been singled out for special praise by the art teacher that morning. Then he had allowed Sandra to travel across to Rapallo with some other children. Perlmann forced out a smile and struggled to stuff into his mouth the spaghetti that he thought was overcooked today. The proprietor’s question of where he had been for the past two days annoyed him, and he pretended not to have heard it.
His interest in the chronicle was over now, once and for all, he established as he flicked through its pages. Just as he was about to snap it shut, his eye fell on a painting by Marc Chagall. In the cheap, miniaturized reproduction the blue had lost much of its luminous power. Nonetheless, Perlmann had immediately recognized that it must be Chagall’s blue. He fully opened the book again and read the text. There was something about that date; but it escaped his remembering gaze and remained far outside on the periphery of his consciousness, as intangible as the mere memory of a memory. It had had nothing to do with Chagall’s colors, of that he was sure. He had avoided that subject for many years, so as not to have to hear Agnes’s harsh judgment about it. And, in fact, it seemed to him, it hadn’t really been about Chagall at all. Something else was to blame for the fact that he had suddenly felt quite alone. But behind his closed lids nothing appeared that might have explained why his disappointment then seemed so closely connected with his anxiety now.
The memory only came later, when he was sitting in front of the television at the hotel, just as alone and desperate as he had been in the living room after he had called off the lecture. If you think so, was the first thing Agnes had said when he had asked her, even though there was no longer any possibility. And when she saw the wounded expression on his face: Oh, all right then, why not. It can happen to anyone. But her relaxed tone and dismissive gesture hadn’t been able to conceal her disappointment: her husband, a rising star in his subject, hadn’t managed to write the lecture that he had been supposed to deliver in the Auditorium Maximum, even though for days he had been sitting over it until late into the night.
But the worst thing was that twelve-year-old Kirsten heard him cancelling down the lecture with a reference to illness. But you aren’t ill at all, Dad. Why did you lie? That was the only time that he had wished his daughter was far away, and had even hated her for a moment. He had gone into the living room and had, contrary to his custom, closed the door. And then Chagall’s death had been announced on the television news. He had stared at the stained-glass window shown in the report with a fervour which was, when he noticed it, so embarrassing to him that he swiftly changed channels.
Perlmann had lost the thread of the film that was playing out in front of him, and turned off the television. That was seven years ago now. And throughout all that time he hadn’t thought once about that cancelled lecture. In the nights leading up to his capitulation he had for the first time the very same experience that had paralyzed and frozen him for weeks: the experience of having absolutely nothing to say. It had been such a shock, this sudden experience, that he had had to banish it from his mind. And in that he had been very successful, because he had gone on to write dozens of lectures which had flowed easily and naturally from his pen. And throughout all that time not a single trace of a memory of that failure had crossed his path. Until today, from which perspective that late-March evening appeared as the first, menacing premonition of his present catastrophe.
He took half a sleeping pill, hopped through all the television channels again and then turned out the light. It was not quite true to say that the experience that had been banished back then had never again announced its presence. He thought once more of that moment a year ago, when he had suddenly found himself presented as a main speaker. From the panic that had flared up then there was – it now appeared to him – a hidden experience arc leading six years back to the day of Chagall’s death. And why not? Agnes had said when he irritably explained to her that he couldn’t simply tell the organizers of the conference that he had nothing to say.
Perlmann’s thoughts began to blur at the edges. How did Agnes’s two reactions – the one a year ago and the one seven years ago – fit together? He tried to imagine the face that had accompanied the two remarks. But the only face that came was the one in the photograph in Frankfurt, which he had fled yesterday because it knew too much.
Whenever all thinking and wanting began to dissolve and silence could have begun at any moment, he gave a start, and then everything behind his forehead convulsed. The fourth time he turned the light on and washed his face in the bathroom. Then he dialled Kirsten’s number. Her drowsy voice sounded annoyed.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I woke you.’
‘Oh, it’s you, Dad. Just a second.’ He heard a wiping sound, then for a while nothing more. Only now did he look at his watch: a quarter to one.
‘So, here I am again.’ Now her voice sounded fresher. ‘Is anything up? Or are you just calling?’
‘Erm… just calling. That is… I wanted to ask you why Agnes . . . why Mum didn’t like Chagall’s colors.’ He cursed himself for ringing her up with a heavy, furry tongue and not at least testing out his voice beforehand.
‘What colors?’
He clenched his fist and was tempted simply to hang up. ‘The colors in Marc Chagall’s paintings.’
‘Oh, right. Chagall. You’re speaking so indistinctly. Well… I don’t know… funny question. Did she really not like them?’
‘No, she didn’t. But there’s something else, too: do you think she would have understood if I’d had nothing to say?’
‘What do you mean, nothing to say?’
‘If… I mean, simply if nothing had occurred to me.’
‘About what?’
‘About… just like that. Nothing had occurred to me. And the others were all waiting.’
‘Dad, you’re speaking in riddles. What others?’
‘Just the others.’ He had said it so quietly that he was unsure whether she had heard.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Dad, what’s up with you?’
He quickly tried to produce some spit, and let it run over his tongue. ‘Nothing, Kirsten. It’s nothing. I just wanted to talk to you a bit. Good night now.’
‘Erm… yes. So, ah… good night.’
He went into the bathroom and took another quarter tablet. Luckily, he hadn’t asked her if she remembered his cancelled lecture back then. It had been a close thing. He turned on to his belly and pressed his face into the pillow, as if by doing so he could force sleep to come.