Perlmann's Silence

  It was hard to keep in check his annoyance with the futility of the last half hour. But he made an effort and went on driving with calm control. Twenty minutes later the elegant villas of Chiávari came into view, and he hadn’t seen a single suitable spot: either the road had too many twists and turns or you couldn’t stop; or there were houses, time and again there were houses. Perlmann drove to the first parking lot on the edge of Chiávari and got out. Half-past three. His stomach was cramped with hunger and tension. He took the few steps to the nearest bar, ate a sandwich and asked the surprised waitress for a large glass of lukewarm water.

  The tunnel. I’ve got to do it in the tunnel. The thought came to him after he had stood there for a while with his head completely empty, and had plainly even ignored the request for a light that had been uttered right next to him. He hastily laid some money on the counter, ran to the car and drove off. I didn’t notice, but the tunnel must have passing places where you can stop; all tunnels have them, it’s the law, he thought again and again as he drove back at breakneck speed. pian dei ratti. He slowed down, turned round and looked up at the house: everything unchanged, a single shutter pulled up. At the last ascent, where the road widened, he drove at over seventy and only stopped at the entrance to the tunnel. Yes, there were several passing places on both sides, he saw that straight away.

  Back outside, he drove on another stretch, and only turned then. Here, too, he wanted to memorize the things that announced the spot. But it was actually quite easy: first of all there was a sign showing that the road climbed towards Piacenza on the left, and on the right on to Chiávari and then, just before the tunnel, came the crossing with the individual arrows. Perlmann drove on to the patch of gravel to the right before the tunnel entrance and turned off the engine.

  At the touch of a button the tinted window slid down with a quiet hum. He rested his elbow on the frame and lit a cigarette. When he had quite recovered after a brief pause for exhaustion, he stubbed out the cigarette and took his arm off the window frame. Here, outside the tunnel of death, his comfortable, sloppy attitude struck him as obscene. It was a feeling like the one yesterday morning on the handrail behind the rocky spur. Except now everything’s worse, much worse. Now all of a sudden he no longer knew what to do with his hands. Finally, he pressed them between his knees and, crouching there, stared for a moment beyond the steering wheel, into the tunnel.

  It was long enough, perhaps two kilometers. Of course, he couldn’t begin his approach out there. If you stood on this patch of gravel, you couldn’t see far enough in, and if you wanted to improve your view, you had to adopt an unnatural and conspicuous position, halfway into the road. It could take quite a long time tomorrow, and hereabouts there were also houses where people would lean out their windows and watch the expensive limousine. Perlmann felt generally drawn to the tunnel because it meant that everything – the waiting as well as the collision – could happen in secret.

  He drove in and stopped on the bright mud with which the first passing place was covered. Now he could see to the end of the tunnel, and in the side-view mirror, without conspicuously having to turn his head, establish whether the road was clear behind him. There was comfortable room here for a second car. Tomorrow he would have to stop in such a way that no one would think of stopping and offering him help. The best thing to do would be to park at an angle to the mud-pile with the shovel sticking in it. He could only hope that the police didn’t come by. At that thought he gave a start and went on driving. He didn’t dare turn into the tunnel, but drove out and then back to the patch of gravel. As before, he crouched down and rested his forehead on the steering wheel.

  The first thing he would see of the truck would be its lights, bigger than those of a passenger vehicle, and fixed higher up. He wouldn’t set off until the driver’s cab was clearly visible, so that he could be sure that it was a big, stable vehicle. Ideally, it would one of those American trucks that were proper great fortresses. What he would have to do, down to the individual movements, was much less clear than he had previously assumed. In order to ensure that they were both killed, he would have to hit the truck head-on. In order to do that, he would have to switch to the opposite lane early and completely, as if he were trying to overtake. But that would make it clear to anyone who saw it – at least to the truck driver – that it was intentional. And, of course, during those horrifying seconds in which the front of the truck came hurtling towards them, Leskov would recognize that he had a murderer beside him, a murderer and a suicide. He might grab the wheel, and there would be a struggle, a struggle with an uncertain outcome. Again, as if in a dream.

  On the other hand, if he pulled the wheel round just before the collision, if he did it a moment too late the truck’s bumper would only hit the left-hand side of the Lancia. He might be killed, but Leskov would stay alive, and perhaps be able to testify to attempted murder. If, on the other hand, Perlmann did it a bit sooner, so that the whole length of the Lancia ended up in the opposite lane, diagonally in front of the truck, the right fender and then the right door would be crushed. Leskov would be killed and pressed against him. His fat body would be the protective shield that saved his life and so, buried under Leskov’s corpse, he would feel the truck shoving the crumpled Lancia in front of it for a while, before coming to a standstill with a snort of its hydraulic brakes.

  Perlmann was shocked by the macabre precision of his fantasy. He tried to resist the pull of the imagined details and turned on the radio to break the power of his visions. When that didn’t help, he got out and walked mechanically up and down on the gravel, sometimes stopping at the edge, staring blankly at the rubble and blowing his cold hands.

  If only he knew what the traffic here was like on working days. The fact that there were only a few cars on the road today – and so far not a single truck – didn’t mean anything. What if there were traffic jams tomorrow, so that it couldn’t be accomplished without putting other people’s lives at risk? But this is the only possibility. And I can’t give it all up. I can’t walk into the university every day as an unmasked fraudster, an ostracized man.

  Twenty to five. It was still light down at the coast, but here in the valley it was already starting to darken. They would be here tomorrow around about now. By the time Leskov had got through customs with his luggage it could easily be as late as half-past three. They could drive more briskly than today; there was nothing more to be sought and memorized, and in Genoa there would be far more traffic than today. He had seen that when he was buying his CDs. It would hardly be possible to get here in less than an hour. A shocking, endless hour, during which he would have to talk to Leskov as if everything was fine and he was delighted by his arrival. Before pelting, foot to the floor, into the glowing white headlights of a truck.

  More traffic could also be a help, he thought, back behind the wheel. Rather than just driving along the line that you make when overtaking, he could make it look as if he had really been overtaking. That often happened: someone swerving and colliding head-on with the vehicle coming in the opposite direction. To make it believable, the driver of the swerving car would have to have his vision of the oncoming traffic obscured. As the traffic in this instance was a big truck, there couldn’t be a car in front of him. He would have to be driving behind another truck or a bus, then pull out of its wake and on to the other side, at full speed and at precisely the moment when the truck in question appeared. The whole thing would have to be calculated in such a way that the truck or bus driving ahead, if it were to remain unaffected, was already past the oncoming vehicle when the collision took place. No, it couldn’t be a bus, at least not one with passengers. So that’s the last thing I’m going to do in my life: gauge the speed of physical bodies moving towards one another.

  He rejected this plan as well. Too many things had to come together: a suitable oncoming truck; another one that he could drive behind for a moment; and an otherwise empty tunnel. This arrangement was far too unlikely; he couldn’t rely on it
. There was also the fact that no one actually overtook in a tunnel with oncoming traffic; the double line in the middle of a tunnel was respected even by people who otherwise drove recklessly. It wouldn’t prove anything, but people would still be amazed that Perlmann had been driving like a hooligan.

  As at the station three hours previously, he was overpowered for a moment by a numbing indifference. He was tempted simply to drive to the hotel and – without thinking about anything any more – go to bed. In the middle of this weary indifference, which made the world retreat by a few steps and covered it in dull grey, a truck emerged from the tunnel. In an instant Perlmann was wide awake, got out of the car and, resting on the open door, stared spellbound at the vehicle; it was carrying a load of gravel, water trickling from its platform. The front bumper hung down on one side and was fastened provisionally with a piece of rope. It was as if he were hypnotized by the sight of it, and didn’t see the driver waving to him as he drove past. Then he watched after the damp trail and tried to become aware of the perception that was beginning to torment him. The gas tank. On this rickety old truck it was right at the front – the filler neck was just past the front wheel – and it had looked as if the tank behind the wheel was even further forwards. A vehicle like that would immediately go up in flames; it would be certain death for the driver.

  It had been at the harbor, on Friday, when he had seen all the trucks waiting for the unloaded goods. It must have been around the spot where he had seen the freshly laid tarmac leading to the harbor area. There he could check that in modern vehicles the tank was set further back and better protected. But he couldn’t leave this place before he was completely clear about the whole progress of the faked accident, the last movements that he would execute in his life. He got back into the car, slid the window closed and switched on the air heater. He quickly turned off the music on the radio when he felt the tears coming. Someone planning the things that he was had forfeited the right to music, and also to tears.

  He stared out into the dusk, where the contrast in light between the inside of the tunnel and the world outside was slowly weakening. Yes, that was it: at first he would drive quite normally towards the approaching truck and then, still two or three hundred meters away from it, start to careen inside the empty tunnel, so that the driver and the police would have to assume there was suddenly something wrong with his steering wheel. Regardless of whether the driver tried to avoid him, or whether he simply braked: with a last swerve he would aim the Lancia straight at the truck’s radiator. The autopsy would eliminate a suspicion of alcohol.

  But in this variant, too, wouldn’t Leskov grab the wheel? Was that something a person who didn’t drive himself would do? He would do it when he recognized Perlmann’s intention; it would be like a reflex. But he wouldn’t do it if Perlmann acted as if the steering had failed – if he behaved as if he were convulsively trying to bring the car under control. He would have to underline it with a desperate remark, with a curse. He ran through a few in his mind. So the last scene of my life will be theater, a cheap deception, a farce. At this thought he had the impression for a moment that the worst thing about his plan was not its recklessness and its cold ruthlessness, not even its brutality, but the terrible shabbiness of its treatment of a man who had been in prison, who had had to live in much harsher conditions than he did, and who was now, for the first time and with great expectations, travelling to meet admiring colleagues in the West.

  Perlmann wished he could do it right now and get the whole thing over with. But first of all there was dinner to get through, and this time it wouldn’t be enough just to let it wash over him in silence. Because of the reception tomorrow, Angelini would be there, too. They would talk about Leskov, and now that his arrival was imminent the others would want to know more than they had before, when the only issue was his refusal. Perlmann would have to provide information in a natural, unforced way, because this was a conversation that the others would remember when news of the accident came in. The impression he left behind would have to be such that every individual, if he were to secretly suspect, would say to himself: No, that’s impossible. He couldn’t have talked about Leskov like that yesterday evening.

  And then the ceremony in the town hall at which Perlmann – on his way to a terrible deed – would be made an honorary citizen of the town. He would be deluged with quivering rage, mixed with nausea, a rage directed at Carlo Angelini, who had caught him unawares and thus brought him to a state of fatal affliction, and who had now, to crown it all, organized this ludicrous ritual, this empty shell of exaggerated politeness, this conventional nothingness. Perlmann saw him in his mind’s eye, the slim Italian in the tailored jacket, his tie in a skilfully loose knot. Angelini’s whole manner and appearance, which Perlmann had secretly envied, now struck him as smarmy, pomaded and repellent. He gripped the steering wheel hard and banged his forehead against it until his own hooting brought him back to his senses.

  The click of the seatbelt as it shut was already a memory, and he already had his hand on the ignition key when it occurred to him. The seatbelt. I must make Leskov’s belt unusable. He released his own belt, turned on the light in the car and leaned over the passenger seat to get a look at the little box containing the roll of the belt. The only inconspicuous manipulation would be to block the narrow slit through which the strap ran. He took a handful of Italian coins out of his jacket pocket. The 100 lire pieces were the most suitable. But they only seemed to jam between the belt and the side of the box; if you pulled on the belt, they either came out at the same time or, more often, slipped into the box. Perlmann’s movements became increasingly frantic. He wasted coin after coin and at last, helplessly and slipping away from himself like an addict, he pushed in all the coins that had seemed unsuitable from the outset. All the coins in the box made it rattle a bit when he tugged on the belt: but the strap still passed unobstructed through the slit.

  Perlmann sat up, rested his head on the headrest and forced himself to be calm by breathing slowly. In his seat pocket he felt the wallet in which he still carried around his German money, even though he had often planned to leave it behind. He took it out. The two five mark pieces felt fatter and more massive than the Italian money, and when he tried one of them out it fitted more firmly, and resisted an initial pull. But at the second, rather more energetic tug it, too, fell into the box on to the other coins with a quiet chink.

  When Perlmann reached into his jacket pocket for the lighter, he felt one last remaining coin. It was a thin 200 lire piece. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and set the half-blackened brass coin on top of the second five mark piece. The two coins couldn’t be pressed into the slit at the same time by hand, but it was a close thing. Perlmann got out and searched through the tools in the belt. Then he opened the passenger door, set the two coins on the slit with his right thumb and ring finger, and with his index and middle fingers held the tip of a screwdriver over them, carefully tapping it in with an adjustable wrench. Light blows had no effect, but when he tapped harder the screwdriver slipped off, and at one point the brass coin almost fell into the slit. Once, when he sat up and stretched his aching back, Perlmann was passed by a cyclist in worker’s clothes and a peaked cap, holding a pick over his shoulder. ‘Buona sera,’ he said with a curious expression. ‘Buona sera,’ Perlmann wanted to reply, but afterwards he wasn’t sure if he had actually uttered it, or only thought it.

  A moment later, when the screwdriver slipped again and scratched the black plastic box, he lost his nerve and the next time he struck it with all his might. When the screwdriver squashed the tip of his ring finger and slit it open, he dropped everything, stuck his finger in his mouth and hopped up and down with pain. After a while he wrapped his handkerchief around his finger and gave it one last try. The two coins caught, and now, carefully, millimeter by millimeter, he hammered them in. Once there was a groaning sound as if the box were about to explode. But it held and, at last, the belt was blocked. Perlmann sat down and tried it
out. The curves of the two coins remained visible. He couldn’t get them any further in. Otherwise they would slide in with the others. If Leskov looked carefully when he noticed that the belt was jammed, he could, with a shake of his head, say something about vandalism.

  First he had borrowed the map, then rented the car, and now this. He was getting deeper and deeper into the realization of his plan. His actions were gradually becoming more deliberate, his reflections more ingenious, his traces clearer. And even so, he thought as he packed the tools away, it all felt like an inward-rotating spiral that was constricting itself around him all by itself and without his help, and would in the end strangle him with his own crime.

  With his hand still on the lid of the trunk, he saw a woman on the other side of the crossing opening a grocer’s shop and turning on the light. He ran over and walked into the shop. The old woman’s white hair was so fine and sparse that she looked almost bald. Her in-turned lips and jutting chin reminded him of the toothless old woman at the window in Portofino.

  ‘Closed,’ she said, pushing her pointed chin even further forward.

  ‘Just one question,’ Perlmann said.

  She looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘Do lots of trucks come along here?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lots of trucks. Is there a lot of traffic? Through the tunnel, I mean.’