Free Perlmann's Silence by Pascal Mercier

always something random about such decisions. I’m sure it’s the same in Spain, isn’t it?’
    It was exactly the same, she said. To put it mildly. What annoyed her most was that awards were often given to professors who had basically stopped working a long time ago, who lived off their past merits and lazed about in the safeguarding of reputations earned many years ago.
    ‘You would be horrified, Philipp, if you saw that. These are people who have stopped achieving anything at all!’
    On her forehead, right above her nose, a faint red stripe had formed. Perlmann had heard a familiarity in her tone, and the tension between that intimacy and her fury, which cut into him like a big, sharp knife, was almost unbearable. Why did I even think she was different? Because of the red elephant?
    He was glad of the fuss that von Levetzov made about the food to show that he was a gourmet. He took the silence that fell a moment later, and in which all that could be heard was the clatter of cutlery and the voices from neighboring tables, as a sign that from now on he was not the center of attention.
    ‘By the way, Phil,’ Millar said into the silence, ‘that business with the prize doesn’t surprise me at all. The day before I left I was staying with Bill in Princeton – you know Bill Saunders – and he was telling me that you’ll soon be receiving an invitation for a guest semester. They already know what you’re doing,’ he added with a smile in which, it seemed to Perlmann, the customary reverence for Princeton was mixed with a doubt, held at bay with difficulty and nonetheless enjoyed, about the wisdom of this very special decision.
    Even though he was holding his fish knife with grim desperation, as about to cut a piece of stubborn, stringy meat, Perlmann was proud that he managed not to look at Millar. Say nothing. Keep silent.
    ‘Bill was, incidentally, a bit cross that you didn’t invite him, too,’ Millar said at last, and because his voice contained a hint of irritation at Perlmann’s lack of reaction, it sounded almost as if he himself were Bill Saunders complaining.
    ‘Oh, really?’ said Perlmann, and looked at Millar for a moment. He was pleased about the mildly ironic tone that he had managed, and now he looked again at Millar, for longer this time, and quite calmly. His eyes aren’t steel-blue, but porcelain-blue. In Millar’s grin, he thought, there was a hint of insecurity, and the fact that he now started talking briskly and loquaciously about Princeton in general seemed to confirm that impression. But rather than a feeling of triumph, a vacuum suddenly appeared inside Perlmann, and then the sensations of a fugitive suddenly crashed in on him. Why won’t they just leave me in peace? As he removed fish bones in slow motion, he fought the impulse to stand up and run away. With relief he joined in just as Millar’s language was beginning to make him furious once again. He greedily immersed himself in his fury.
    Millar let himself tumble into his sentences, particularly his idiomatic, colloquial turns of phrase with a delight that Perlmann found repellent. Wallowing. He’s actually wallowing in his language. Perlmann hated dialects, and he hated them because they were often spoken like that, with the same trampling presumption with which Millar spoke his Yankee American. Worst of all was the north German dialect that he had grown up with. That his parents had finally grown very remote from him had a great deal to do with it. The older they grew, the more defiantly they insisted on speaking to him in Platt, and the more clearly he sensed that defiance, the more resolutely he spoke in High German to them. It had been a mute battle with words. You couldn’t talk about it. What use would it have been to say to them that their faces were becoming more and more rigid and dogmatic, and that that had much to do with the fact that they were increasingly led simply by the phrases and metaphors of the dialect,