It took Evelyn Mistral almost an hour to shake off her nerves. Only then did her frantic play with her glasses stop, and she started sitting comfortably in the big armchair. It was plainly hard for her to believe that Millar and Ruge weren’t just being polite, but that they had really liked her paper. But then, when she felt safe, she became more commanding from one minute to the next, delivered a lot that wasn’t in the text, and reported on a series of exciting experiments of imagination and will that Millar found really inspiring. The feeling of having succeeded in this illustrious circle was making her increasingly excited. Her face was red and she smoked much more than usual, von Levetzov holding out a burning match to her, always at exactly the right time, with the attentiveness of a trainer. Once when, contrary to her usual habits, she tried to inhale and started coughing, there was laughter which unambiguously expressed the fact that the others accepted her in her accomplishment and were glad of her relief.
Perlmann took the greatest trouble to look interested, and on Wednesday afternoon he finally – constantly struggling against exhaustion – caught up with reading her paper. But everything he said sounded wooden, and even as he spoke all the meaning seemed to drain from his words. In the first third of the text came the passage where Evelyn Mistral spoke about why the differentiation of imagination and will occurred in the medium of language. It wasn’t the same reflection as the one in Leskov’s work, he noticed straight away. But when he tried to remember Leskov’s argument, there was nothing but emptiness. That kind of emptiness, which had something definitive about it, and was quite unlike a temporary gap in the memory, chilled him to the core. He only just managed to fight down the idea that he was on the point of losing his mind.
On Thursday evening he went to the trattoria. He saw that it was on the tip of the proprietor and his wife’s tongues to ask him where he had been for the last few days. But after a long, startled look at him they both suppressed their curiosity. Perlmann went to the toilet and looked at his face in the mirror. It wasn’t, he thought, any paler than usual. On the contrary, the boat trip with Kirsten had left a hint of a tan. But the color, he saw now, had not been the cause of his hosts’ shock. It was the lifelessness of his features that had made them start. His face had something of the exhaustion of a shipwreck about it, something forlorn that gave one the strange idea that its owner had run off and simply left it there. Perlmann attempted a smile, but immediately stopped when he saw how cold and mask-like it looked.
When Sandra came skipping into the almost empty restaurant, her parents glanced at Perlmann to tell her to be quiet. Then he asked the girl to sit down with him and enquired about school. She didn’t seem to notice anything special about his face, but was bored by all the questions and relieved when she was allowed to go again. Perlmann left half of his dinner on the plate, mumbled a vague apology and was glad when the glass-bead curtain rattled shut behind him.
For a while he stood in the harbor watching the waves breaking on the concrete blocks in front of the jetty. It wasn’t at all true that it was going to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow was, after all, only Friday, the day when he had been supposed to give Maria his text. Assuming that he was going to deliver lectures at his session rather than use handouts, he still had six days to play with. Minus the time for Silvestri’s sessions. He took a few deep breaths. Now the important thing was to keep alive the little bit of confidence that still stirred. Five days, that was basically a lot of time. After all, he had experience of writing lectures, a lot of experience. Slowly, as if his confidence might be broken by excessively violent movements, he walked back to the hotel.
When he opened the door to his room, the phone began to ring.
‘It’s me,’ Kirsten said. ‘I just wanted to hear quickly how you’ve been.’
At first Perlmann didn’t understand. It was only when Kirsten called ‘Hello?’ for the second time that he got it: she thought his session had been today. It was out of annoyance at the tone of student camaraderie, which she was using again now, that he hadn’t mentioned the postponement to her on Sunday in Rapallo.
‘It isn’t my turn yet,’ he said. ‘There was a change to the timetable. I’m not for a week.’
‘Oh, so there was no point in me touching wood. Whose turn was it today?’
‘Evelyn.’
‘Aha.’
There was a pause.
‘Is Giorgio still there?’
He laughed, and was surprised. ‘Yes, he’s still here.’
‘Say hello from me. Don’t be too friendly, though! And tell him… no, leave it.’
Perlmann sat down at the desk and looked at the page of headings, on which he had drawn some figures in the margin. When I get bored in the seminar, I doodle as well, she had said. He would probably never know what had happened between her and Silvestri. And he couldn’t ask under any circumstances. He had only made that mistake once. He saw her furious face in front of him and heard the joke that Agnes had made about his startled reaction.
At that moment the phone rang again.
‘I have to go to Bologna, to the clinic, tonight,’ said Silvestri. ‘Now of all times, when the boss is away, the other senior doctor is ill and suddenly all hell seems to have broken out.’ Perlmann heard him smoking. ‘Two patients have… run away. They’re considered dangerous, and the police are involved.’ He coughed. ‘I’m sorry to be so unreliable. But I can’t just leave the others hanging. My sessions on Monday and Tuesday are out of the window. I assume you yourself will take on these dates. I’ll be coming back, and perhaps I can present something in the second half of the week.’ He laughed. ‘And if not – academia will have to go on without me!’
Perlmann slowly hung up. His fingers left traces of sweat on the receiver. Monday. Tomorrow is Friday. And I have nothing. Not a single sentence. He wiped his hands on his trousers. He shivered. What he did now didn’t matter in the slightest. Any movement was just as unfounded and useless as any other. There was now no stopping it.
With dragging steps he walked into the bathroom and took a whole sleeping pill. The water tasted more chlorinated than usual. The taste reminded him of his first swimming lesson in the municipal pool, when he had almost drowned. It was an oppressive memory, but it led away from the present, and he clung to it as the numbness slowly spread within him.
II
The Plan
25
He woke with a headache and a film of sweat on his face. It was a quarter to ten, and the sun shone from a cloudless sky on the mirror-smooth water of the bay. Today I have to make a decision. Any decision.
Here in this room, under the eyes of the others, so to speak, he couldn’t reach a decision, he thought in the shower. He left the hotel by the rear entrance and had a coffee in a bar on the Piazza Veneto. His headache gradually eased, and he was better able to bear looking out into the radiant autumn day.
There was no point hushing up Silvestri’s departure from the others. Over the course of the day they would find out from Signora Morelli, certainly by the time they asked for the texts for the Monday session. And then they would inevitably assume that he, Perlmann, would be giving the next two sessions. Where are his papers? he could hear Millar asking. By dinner time Perlmann would have to be able to say that copies were being made. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to show his face.