For a while the image of the rickety truck with the loose bumper seemed to have been vanquished, and he was ready to head back. But then he was drawn on towards the next truck, which he examined with the same precision, after he had established that it was of a quite different type. The third truck bore a construction made of two powerful metal bars, making it look like a vehicle that had been designed to crush anything that entered its path. Perlmann saw it driving towards a red-brick wall and, with playful ease, smashing through it as if it were a cardboard film set. He took a few steps back into the reddish fog and then walked slowly to the front of the truck, thinking about the steering wheel, with his foot on the accelerator.
He was shivering, his clothes were damp, and his leg in his ragged trousers was icy cold. His nose was running, and it didn’t help at all when he cleaned it with the last clean tip of his handkerchief. Afterwards, as he was walking to the next truck, it started running again. The urge to keep on going intensified as his sense of the absurdity of his actions grew. By now he was too tired to search all the trucks for their gas tanks. His examinations became increasingly rudimentary, and at last he was merely feeling his way along the bumpers. At first he did so by bringing his narrowed eyes up to them, his useless glasses in his left hand, and comparing a new type of bumper with the ones he was already familiar with. Later, when he had long since lost count of the trucks, he ran his hand only lightly over the damp metal. More and more rarely he stopped, and at last he fell into a trot with an arm that hopped from bumper to bumper, a bit like on the way to school when he had ran his hands, interrupted by the gaps for the house doorways, over the iron fences of his Hamburg district.
It was only when he had briefly touched the last truck that he turned around. The fog was now as dense as an enveloping cloth that one might bump one’s face into. He would have liked to touch the truck with the huge metal bar one last time. But the fog had stripped him of all feeling for distance, and when, for a moment, blind behind his misted-up glasses, he seemed to lose the ground beneath his feet, he was no longer sure whether that truck even existed.
He slipped off twice before – bent double, head down – hanging over the fence again. He had thrown away the repellent handkerchief that repelled him, his injured finger stung, and his nose was running so violently that now, disgustedly, he blew his nose with his bare hand. At last he simply let himself fall, and was glad that it didn’t hurt more than it did.
He was worried that he wouldn’t find his car. But suddenly, without transition, the foggy cloth was gone. He was standing in a star-bright night, and saw the Lancia straight away. At first he hesitated to sit on the elegant, immaculate upholstery in his damp and dirty clothes. Then he swallowed a few times, slipped, exhausted, behind the wheel and switched the heating to its highest setting. A quarter past seven. In twenty hours he will be waiting for his luggage behind customs control. Or else he will just be stepping out, and he will see me.
After Santa Margherita, Perlmann took the highway and didn’t worry about speed limits. He wanted to get out of his clothes and into the shower. Physical needs remain the same; they’re stronger than anything else. The high speed helped him to think of nothing. It was ten past eight when he parked the Lancia by the filling station next to the hotel. Before he walked to the steps, he glanced back. The tires were covered with pale mud.
32
In the hall he ran straight into his colleagues, who were standing outside the dining room with Angelini. They looked at him with a mixture of puzzlement and shock.
‘What have you done to yourself?’ asked von Levetzov, pointing to Perlmann’s trouser leg, where the frayed triangle of torn fabric hung and flapped each time he moved.
‘I was helping someone with a breakdown, and had to creep under the car,’ Perlmann said without hesitating, ‘and I got caught on something.’ He had no idea where the sentence came from; it was as if there were an invisible ventriloquist standing next to him.
‘I didn’t know you could do things like that,’ Millar said with his head tilted, and it was clear how reluctant he was to revise his image.
‘Oh, sure,’ Perlmann smiled, and felt relieved that he was once again master of his utterances. ‘I know a bit about cars.’
Never before in his life had he lied so unconcernedly, so brazenly. An impetuous feeling of freedom spread within him, a feeling of playful boundlessness in the face of a running clock. Now he was ready to invent everything about himself, any story was fine, the bolder the better.
‘I used to be a good rally driver, in fact, and when you do that you pick up a whole lot of technical knowledge,’ he added, and ostentatiously set off upstairs, two steps at a time.
The artificial high spirits that he had managed to preserve while hastily showering and changing were further reinforced when he elaborated his story about the breakdown over dinner and, as the driver of the car in question, invented a woman to whom he attributed the qualities of a local television presenter. Casually, as if it were barely worth mentioning, he wove in the rental car and a trip into the mountains. His story, backed up with dramatic hand movements that were quite alien to him, also prompted the others to tell anecdotes. There was a great deal of laughter. Perlmann laughed most of all. He drank glass after glass and plunged himself with all his might into a desperate exuberance. He became aware that his laughter constantly had to overleap the obstacle of the soul when it became something that could be felt as a distinct tug of his facial muscles, a mechanical process that made him feel unpleasantly hot. For a few black and icy minutes he felt like a sophisticated doll, a dead man pretending to the others, by laughing, that he is alive. Then he asked the waiter to top up his glass and went on drinking and laughing until he had found his way back to his old mood, which was a bit like invisibly warped glass that would shatter into a thousand pieces if the play of forces were to get out of kilter.
Laura Sand seemed to have been watching him for quite a long time when he caught her thoughtful eye. He turned round, waved to the waiter and asked for some more bread. No, she can’t possibly have seen through me. She might find me a bit strange this evening, and perhaps tomorrow evening when it all comes out she’ll think about it. But even she doesn’t know anything that could establish a connection between the two things. Absolutely nothing at all.
‘It’s very gratifying that Signor Leskov can come for a few days after all,’ Angelini said beside him, adding, after an expressive pause, ‘I found out from the others.’
Under normal circumstances Perlmann would have fallen into the trap, and would have solicitously produced an explanation for his omission. Now nothing meant less to him than the fact that he had forgotten to leave Angelini a message.
‘Didn’t you get my message?’ he asked in a cool, almost indifferent tone, and took a sip of wine.
‘No,’ said Angelini, now very obliging again, ‘but now I know, and I’ll see to it that he gets some cash when he arrives. Things are a bit different for people in his situation. By the way,’ he continued quietly in Italian, resting his hand on Perlmann’s arm, ‘at the reception I was given Giorgio’s copy of your paper, and I had a read of it in my room. I’m very excited to hear what your colleagues will have to say about this unusual work. But, of course, you’ll be able to defend yourself.’