And what if, even so, she came even now?
Paul rejected this hope, which he knew to be false. He didn’t want to harbour new vain hopes. Yet the alluring thought persisted: It’s not impossible that she still might come.
No, it wasn’t impossible, he had to recognize that. So many times before, towards morning, when the lights were being turned out, when the jazz music was yawning into silence, when the metal instruments were returning to their cloth bags and only the piano continued to play for the dancers who were washing off their makeup and the coat-check girls or a client who had delayed his departure, so many times, opening the curtains at the end of the hall, pale, wide-awake, dazzling, with her decisive step and her morning smile, Ann had come in.
Paul raised his head, as though to call out to this apparition. But the curtains at the opposite end of the room were motionless; with their heavy folds, their reddish old-copper tone, they separated one world from another.
Even so, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from that point where, from one moment to the next, she might appear. He had the feeling that a nub of pain had moved over there, like a second soul released from within him and dispatched to watch and wait for her.
Sometimes the curtains moved, a hand appeared. Then Paul, seemingly unable to bear a new level of tension, felt an abrupt tremolo of awareness that permitted him to observe without crying out, with a resigned stupefaction, as the curtains opened to let a dancer, a coat-check girl or a flower-girl pass. Even harder to bear was when a hand appeared for an instant then withdrew without opening the curtains and without allowing him to see who precisely was behind it, since then nobody would be able to convince Paul that Ann wasn’t there, that she had not come as far as the threshold of the bar only so that at the last minute (because it was too late or because there weren’t very many people) she could have second thoughts and leave. He would have liked to run after her, catch up to her just as she was going out the door and be able to say to her: Stay! But he saw himself returning alone between the lines of dancers, between the tables full of clients intrigued by his comings and goings. He didn’t feel in any condition to put up with indiscreet looks, so many hinting gestures, so many whispers ...
A waiter was turning out the shaded lamps at the tables that had remained empty. From the next table, the piano-player, who was talking with one of the establishment’s dancers, turned towards Paul. “Drink sales are pathetic. It’s a bad sign. They’re starting to save money on the lighting.”
Only in the middle of the room had the dance floor remained illuminated, like a silver planet sailing through the white space of the cigarette smoke.
The owner approached Paul’s table and asked to sit down next to him. It was the hour for confessions, as the bar personnel and the regular clients fell into informal conversation.
“I don’t know what else I can do,” the owner moaned. “I think I’m going to have to sell up. It’s just not working any more. Three whole nights with one whisky and two lemon squashes. I’m not superstitious, but since Miss Ann stopped coming here things have got worse and worse. You don’t know what’s got into her? Why she might be angry? I wanted to ask her tonight, but ...”
“She was here?”
“Yes. Around one o’clock.”
“Alone?”
“I think she was alone. Unless someone was waiting for her in the car. She didn’t even want to come in. ‘Aren’t you staying, Miss Ann?’ ‘No, I’m looking for someone.’ And she left.”
Paul looked at the man in front of him without seeing him, heard him without understanding what he was saying.
Ann came here to look for me. The thought was of a simplicity that did not admit a reply. She was here and she looked for me.
No, in fact, she had been unable to let midnight pass without meeting him. She had looked for him at home, she had called him at the office, she had come here ... And while she had been running after him all over town in order to put an end to this stupid separation, while she had been racing to bring him her welcome-back kiss, her reconciliation kiss, he had allowed himself to get dragged into that stupid street accident.
Paul paid for his glass of whisky, which only now he realized he had not drunk. He consoled the owner: “Don’t worry, it’ll work out. Bars like this are like women: you never know where they come from or why they leave you.” He tossed a wave at the piano-player, skirted the dance floor with an indolent stride, with the lazy gestures that suit so well the client of a bar at the approach of daybreak. No one was going to read the glowing impatience, the unseen light, on his pale face ...
He stopped in front of the telephone and looked with feeling at the black funnel in which a moment from now Ann’s voice would vibrate, her voice aroused from sleep, troubled at first, then made lucid by surprise.
His hand shuddered as he rotated the phone’s disk to compose her number, that number he had sworn to forbid himself from dialling, and which, nonetheless, he had mimed hundreds of times on imaginary disks, mechanically, while standing at the window, working at the office or leaning over his files. The telephone rang several times without a reply. Probably a wrong number, Paul thought. It wasn’t surprising, given his state of impatience.
He took up the operation from the beginning again, dialling the number digit by digit, slowly, carefully, like a beginner, with the attentive care recommended by the instructions on the wall of the telephone booth. The ring repeated its regular call and, as though a light had come on at the other end of the line, Paul saw with closed eyes the telephone close to Ann’s bed and the familiar surrounding objects: the small silver elephant, the ashtray of burnt wood (Guyannese teak, he thought, pointlessly remembering the wood’s name), the portrait of Ingrid on the wall, the red armchair, the carpet – the entire apartment in which the ring sounded without meaning or response.
“Is it broken?” the wardrobe girl, who was waiting to hand him his overcoat, asked on seeing him standing for such a long time with the receiver in his hand without speaking.
“No, it’s not broken. She’s not home,” he replied, without knowing why, without noticing to whom he was speaking.
He tried to lift his shoulders, but couldn’t manage it. Not even his oldest gestures came to his aid.
The taxi went down Griviţei Street towards the city. In front of the Găra de Nord, Paul motioned for the driver to stop. “Do you know if any trains leave at this time?”
The driver turned his head towards his strange passenger.
“Why?”
“I asked if any trains were leaving.”
“At this time, no. The first train’s at 5:40 AM. The slow train to Timişoara.”
Paul saw himself collapsed in a compartment in a third-class carriage, rocking to the noise of the wheels, dizzy, travelling aimlessly all day and all night, then another day, then another night, getting off at some nameless station in the middle of the countryside, filthy, black with soot, wrecked by sleeplessness, lying down on the frozen earth to sleep and to forget.
The driver set off again, without asking for directions. He was used to picking up passengers whom he found alone on street corners at night, hesitating between hailing a taxi and putting a bullet in their heads. Paul didn’t even notice that they had headed off again. Turning his head, he caught sight, as if through a screen of shadow, of the building housing the National Theatre through the window where a moment earlier the Găra de Nord building had been visible.
The taxi raced down Calea Regală, but when they reached Bulevardul Brătianu it was the driver’s turn to stop, not knowing in which direction to take him.
“Should I take you home?”
“What home?”
“How do I know? Maybe somebody’s waiting for you.”
Paul shuddered. Maybe somebody’s waiting. It seemed he had already heard these same words tonight. It’s someone who knows, it’s someone who’s waiting.
The thought was ridiculous, and Paul felt he really didn’t have the energy to deal w
ith it any more. In the ashes of his resignation, there was no place for this new expectation, this new useless hope. He would have liked to stop it short somewhere beyond awareness, in the dark room of memory, but the dazzling word, having been uttered, had developed into an image swifter and more vivid than his desire to forget: Upstairs, in my room, Ann is waiting.
He was ashamed of believing this, yet he couldn’t do otherwise. He told the driver the address, slowly, in an embarrassed whisper
– and even so, with what impatience! The taxi flew down the deserted boulevard towards a miracle that with each passing second became more plausible, more heated, more convincing. Ann was at his place and was waiting for him.
So many times, yes, so many times, although he had broken up with her only a few times before, he had found her sleeping in his bed, in one of his pairs of pyjamas that were too long for her, in which she looked as lost as a child. So many times he had found her in his study reading a novel selected at random from among his books, or, when it wasn’t a novel, a book on commercial law, a legal journal, in which she was completely immersed. He remembered, he couldn’t prevent himself from remembering, that forgotten November evening in 1932 when, after he had stayed at home for two days to study the files for a trial, she had rung his doorbell at night. She had appeared on the threshold with a small overnight bag, in which she had a nightshirt, her toothbrush, a pair of stockings: “I’ve come to sleep at your place. They’re repairing the tramline on my street and the noise is deafening. You don’t mind, do you?”
He stopped the taxi in front of his building, paid the driver and waited for him to leave. He gave himself a few more minutes of hope. Nothing was yet decided, nothing was lost. As long as he remained there in front of the door, his destiny was frozen in place. It was still possible that Ann was upstairs.
He looked up at his third-floor window, as though mulling this over, and trembled: there was a light in the window.
He counted the floors again, he counted the windows – the second one from the right – and wondered whether he wasn’t fooling himself or dreaming. He kept his eyes locked on that eye of light that was awaiting him at the end of this terrible night. So it’s true. So she’s really there.
He felt his eternal fatigue, as though all the pressure he had been under until now had burst in a single instant. For a moment the absurd impulse to leave, to remain alone, ran through his mind. Ann was upstairs, and this fact brought him an unexpected peace that answered all his questions as in a dream. He shook off thoughts of renunciation and set off madly up the stairs with the sudden, desperate need to see her, to hold her in his arms. Ann! Ann! Ann! Her name rushed ahead of him like a shout.
He found the door open and pushed it with his shoulder. On a hook in the entrance hall hung a cloth coat he didn’t recognize.
He stopped in the doorway of his study and took in the room with a single glance. In the study was a young woman with a book open before her. “It’s not Ann,” he whispered to himself, feeling dizzy.
Only then did he recognize Nora.
III
THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER IN SILENCE FOR A FEW MOMENTS. “What are you looking for here?”
Nora stood up, leaning towards him, seemingly ready to come to his aid.
As though he needed to examine the strange situation more closely, he repeated the question. “You’re here, at this time of night?”
She didn’t recognize his voice. It was too guttural, too coarse. She didn’t recognize anything in his uncertain face.
How he’s changed! Nora thought. Where was the smile that had protected him so well, like a vizor, yesterday evening? Now his features looked devastated. What disaster had overtaken him, what had befallen him in the hours since their parting, to make him arrive here in this lamentable state?
She waved in the direction of the armchair next to the desk. “Don’t you want to sit down?”
“Hey, you know you’ve got guts!” Paul exclaimed. “I find you at my place at four in the morning – and what for? So that you can offer me a seat?”
She didn’t reply. She continued to regard him with the same surprised look, trying to decipher what had happened from that devastated face. She remained with her hand extended in the unfinished gesture with which she had offered him the chair.
“Please leave,” he said. He crossed to the other side of the study and gripped her arm. “Please leave now. Don’t make me do things I’ll be ashamed of tomorrow. Just leave. I’m tired. I have to be alone.”
But as her silence went on and she continued to look at him with the same expression, which asked no questions, he changed his tone. With an effort at warmth, a voice that he would have liked to be warm and which succeeded only in being muted, he pleaded with her slowly, as if choking: “I know I owe you an explanation. I’ve behaved sickeningly with you. You have the right to ask questions. I have the obligation to reply. But not now. I beg you, not now. I just can’t talk. We’ll meet another time, any time you like, tomorrow if you want, but now leave.”
Nora moved away from his side. “All right, I’m leaving. But not right away. I promise you that five minutes from now I won’t be here. But listen to me for the next five minutes. With your eyes on the clock.”
With a loyal gesture she loosened the watch from her wrist and set it on the desk between them. She raised her glance to look at him. “I’m afraid you may do something stupid ... That’s why I came.”
He kept his eyes fixed on the small watch, following the movement of the second hand around the dial and waiting as if nothing mattered to him but the passing of those five minutes.
“I’m afraid you’ll kill yourself.”
“Why?” he asked, with a slight shudder, and without looking up.
“I don’t know why. Your gaze that doesn’t take anything in. Your crushed smile. Your way of lifting your shoulders. And finally you flee ... since ... you fled. Also, when you leave your apartment you don’t even check that you’ve closed the door. If you only knew what fear you left behind you ...”
She stopped for an instant. She had uttered the final words in a murmur, as though speaking to herself. But she returned immediately to her usual clarity of speech.
“At the beginning I didn’t know what was happening. I watched you from my window as you ran away, and everything struck me as ridiculous, like a stupid joke. I think I shouted at you, but I don’t remember. Nor do I remember how long I stood there at the window. Above all, I’d like to think that I wasn’t hurt. I’m thirty-two years old and I have a few memories. Enough for an event like that not to be a disaster ... But I felt as though your departure was a step towards death. Four years ago a girlfriend of mine committed suicide. She had your smile. Details like that are a little ridiculous before the event, but they’re unbearable afterwards ... I made up my mind to look for you, to find you. I told myself I couldn’t leave you alone on a night like this ... I found your address in the telephone book, I came over here almost breathless, and I found the door locked. I decided to go back down to the street and wait downstairs until I saw you return. I don’t know where I got the idea to look under the doormat: that’s where I put the key in the morning when I go out, so that the cleaning lady can find it when she comes to mop and dust. In that at least we’re similar. I opened the door, I entered, I waited for you. I’d made up my mind to wait as long as it took.”
She stopped speaking again and looked at the clock.
“I’ve still got two minutes. Too little for the rest of what I wanted to say. Even so, I’d like to say one more thing to you. You should know that if I came here, if I committed the lunacy of coming here, it wasn’t only for you. It was also a little bit for me.”
She seemed about to say more. She stopped, hesitated, but finally, with a decisive gesture, she picked up her watch from the table and put it back on her left wrist.
“That’s all. Now I’ll leave you.”
She approached him, extended her hand, but in that moment she gli
mpsed last night’s flower in the buttonhole of his shirt, that pathetic flower, now faded and shrivelled. She removed it with infinite care, with an endless series of precautions, afraid of breaking its overly long stem, and looked around for a vase. But there was only one, too big for a single flower. “Better a glass,” she said, and went into the bathroom in search of water, but the cold water was like ice and the hot water tap didn’t work. (What a mess this apartment is! How obvious it is that he lives alone!) She opened a door which gave onto an office, where she found a bottle of drinking water. She returned to the other room, poured the water, then put the flower in the glass. She placed the glass on a small table next to his bed, kneeling and balancing the glass carefully between her palms, as if to infuse the flower’s pallor with the warmth of her hands.
She stood up and headed towards the entrance hall.
On the threshold she found Paul, his arms spread wide as though to block her passage. He looked as though he wanted to say something to her but was at a loss and didn’t know how.
“Thank you for coming. Now ... If it weren’t too late, I’d ask you to stay.”
As if that “too late” referred to the time and not to what had occurred until now, she looked at her watch. “In fact, it is very late. Ten past four. Even so, if you want, we could wait for daybreak together. It won’t be long.”
There was a calendar on the desk. She tore off the sheets for days that had passed and read from the coming day’s page: December 19th. Sunrise: 7:41 AM.
“We have two hours and thirty-nine minutes left.” The torn sheets from the days that were over remained in her hand. She offered them to him, smiling. “You see? It’s over. It was hard, but it’s over.” Then, with unaccustomed gravity: “I don’t think you’ll ever forget me. I’ll always be the woman you met the night you turned thirty.”
They faced each other in semi-darkness. They had turned out all the lights except for the shaded lamp on the desk. He was in the armchair where she, with an authoritarian voice, had ordered him to sit. She was in the corner next to the sofa, where she had piled up some pillows. Between them was the tea table, the hot, white cups like feeble globes of light.
Accident Page 4
