Perlmann's Silence Read Online Free PDF Page B

daughter, although they don’t look at all alike .
    She had come by train, first class, and was impressed in the way a little girl might have been. You feel so important, she said. She had never been treated so well by a conductor. Then she had allowed herself a sumptuous lunch in the dining car. There had been no first-class carriage on the local train from Genoa to Santa Margherita, and it had struck her as quite odd to be suddenly sitting in a shabby, second-class compartment again. How quickly one was corrupted!
    Perlmann took the case and accompanied her to reception. She walked lightly in her faded khaki skirt, almost dancing slightly in her flat, bright red patent shoes, and yet there was something hesitant and gawky in her gait. She was greeted by Signora Morelli, who was, as she had been the day before, wearing a dark blue, sporty-looking dress and a burgundy neckerchief, which gave her the appearance of a chief stewardess, an impression reinforced by the fact that she had put her hair up in a rather severe style. When Evelyn Mistral spoke Italian she pronounced the vowels in the Spanish way, short and harsh, in sharp contrast to Signora Morelli’s leisurely sing-song. As she checked in, leaning on the desk, her feet played with her red shoes. Sometimes she laughed out loud, and then her voice again had the brightness that Perlmann remembered from their phone call. ‘See you later,’ she said to him when the porter took the case and walked ahead of her to the elevator.
    Perlmann walked slowly back across the expansive terrace to the pool. Now the red-haired man from that morning was back as well. Perlmann replied to his cheerful greeting with a brief wave, and sat down on a lounger on the other side. He abandoned himself to a feeling that was, in fact, merely the absence of anxiety. For the first time since his arrival he wasn’t battling against the things around him: the crooked pines that loomed on the coast road; the flags along the balustrade; the waiter’s red smoking jacket; the smell of pine resin and the remains of summer heat in the air. Now he was able to see that the grapes on the pergola were turning red. Agnes would have seen that first.
    ‘They’ve given me a fantastic room,’ said Evelyn Mistral, dropping her swimming towel on the lounger next to him. ‘Up there. The corner room on the third floor, a double room with antique furniture. I think the desk’s made of rosewood. And the view! I’ve never lived like this. But the price. Don’t even think about it! How are you supposed to earn that sort of money? But at least with a desk like that, you have no excuse not to work!’
    She had taken off her bathrobe and was standing at the edge of the pool. Her gleaming white one-piece swimsuit set off her brownness, a brown with a yellowish glow. A dive and she was in the water. She stayed under for a long time and then swam back and forth a few times in the big kidney-shaped pool. The water barely sprayed up; the movements of her calm, almost lazy freestyle were elegant and contrasted with her gawky way of walking. From time to time she came over to him and rested her arms on the edge of the pool. ‘Why don’t you come in? It’s wonderful!’
    Perlmann closed his eyes and tried to retain that image: the gleaming water and her radiant smile; her wet blonde hair. Even now it was no different: he could never experience the present as it was taking place; he always woke up too late, and then there was only the substitute, the visualization, a field in which he had, out of pure desperation, become a virtuoso.
    As unexpectedly as before, when he had given him a light, the waiter was suddenly standing over him, passing him Leskov’s text, the dictionary and the cigarettes.
    ‘Someone else would like to sit there,’ he said, pointing to the columns. Then he looked in the pocket of his smoking jacket and handed Perlmann a book of matches with the inscription Grand Hotel Miramare .
    Perlmann set the